Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

“So we are here at last,” Gialaurys said. “And here we will find magicians to hire to our service, and perhaps will even learn a trick or two of magic ourselves that will send Korsibar running in fright to his mother, eh?”

“I envy you the certainty of your faith in magic,” said Prestimion. “Even here at the very borders of Triggoin I still resist the idea that there’s any merit to it.”

“Ah, just accept the evidence of your eyes, Prestimion! Wherever you look about you in the world, you see sorcery at work, and the work it does is real!”

“Wherever I look I see deceit and illusion, Gialaurys, which lead the world ever deeper into darkness.”

“Was it deceit when your mother’s magus showed you your very self pictured in that bowl, crossing the Valmambra? Was it deceit when Thalnap Zelifor came to us in the Labyrinth to warn you of the secret enemy who would contend with you for the Castle, and of the terrible war that would break out? Was it deceit when—”

“Spare me the rest,” Prestimion said, holding up one hand. “It will be a wearisome story, rehearsing all the omens I failed to heed on the road that brought us from there to here, and I’m weary enough these days as it is. Let me be, Gialaurys. My soul relinquishes its doubt very slowly, it seems. But perhaps I’ll experience a great conversion out of my skepticism here: who knows?”

“I’ll pay some magus a rich fee to give me a spell that will bring you to your senses,” said Gialaurys.

“Yes,” Prestimion said. “I think you have the solution now: use sorcery to lead me to belief in sorcery’s merits. That may be the only way it can be done.” And all three of them laughed. But they laughed in different ways, for Svor and Gialaurys had long been believers, and the robust tone of their laughter seemed to express their confidence that Prestimion would go out of Triggoin a different man from the one who was entering it But Prestimion’s laughter was thin and hollow. Any laughter that came from him these days was forced. There was little mirth left in him after the calamity of the Mavestoi Dam.

The city looked less cheery and innocent once they were inside its walls. A cobbled plaza just within the gate led to a dark chaos of medieval streets that went winding off in a dozen directions, all of them coiling tightly in upon themselves so that it was impossible to see more than a few dozen yards down any of them.

The style of construction here ran to narrow five-story mustard-colored buildings of an ancient-looking sort, all jammed one against another, most with gabled roofs and blank-looking facades pierced only by the tiniest of windows. Now and then a shadowy passageway separated two buildings, and these passageways seemed occupied. Whispers could be heard coming from them, and occasionally hooded eyes, bright and keen-looking and unfriendly, peered out of them. Sometimes two pairs of green eyes looked out, for there were many Su-Suheris foIk in these streets, and also an unusually great number of Vroons. But everyone, human and alien alike, carried himself with an air of being privy to the great mysteries of the universe. These are people, Prestimion thought, who walk and talk daily with invisible spirits, and have no doubts of themselves as they consort with phantoms. He had never felt so profoundly ill at ease in his life.

“You seem to know where you’re going,” he said to Svor as they marched single file through the streets, which were too narrow and crowded to let them walk three abreast. “I thought you’d never been here except in dreams.”

“But they were vivid dreams,” said Svor. “I have some idea of what to expect. Look, here’s a hostelry. We should take rooms, first.”

“Here?” Prestimion cried. It was a dark, grimy, slouch-sided building that looked to be five thousand years old. “This would be no fitting place for pigs!”

“We are not in Muldemar now, O Prestimion,” said Svor very softly. “This place will do, I think, and it’s not likely that we’ll find a better one hereabouts.”

The rooms were small, with low ceilings and small windows that admitted the barest nip of light, and they smelled of rank spices and stale meat, as though previous boarders had been in the habit of cooking their meals in them. But the lodgings Prestimion had had in the Valmambra left him little disposed to quibble over these, which seemed palatial enough in comparison with lying half frozen under the open sky in the desert, or sleeping in some wickerwork Ghayrog hut through which sandy winds blew all night The place was reasonably clean, at least, with decent lavatory facilities just down the hall, and Prestimion’s mattress, though it rested right on the stone floor and seemed both stiff and clammy, had clean sheets on it and a relatively insignificant population of bugs and ticks.

“I’ll return shortly,” said Svor after they were settled. He was gone an hour and a half. When he came back, he brought with him a frail white-haired man clad in simple dark robes, who from the look of him might have been two hundred years old, or even two thousand: so thin that any vagrant wind might have carried him away, and with pale skin whiter than the whitest paper and almost transparent. Svor introduced him as Gominik Halvor, who had been, he said, his instructor in the wizardly arts long ago; and added that he was the father of Heszmon Gorse, who was chief magus to the former Coronal Lord Confalume.

“His father!” Prestimion blurted, astonished. It had always seemed to him that the somber and aloof Heszmon Gorse must be the fifth or tenth oldest man in the world, and it had never occurred to him that Heszmon Gorse’s father too might still be alive. But Gominik Halvor seemed incurious about the reason for Prestimion’s outburst. He merely smiled and studied Prestimion a moment with small dark eyes, very bright and shining, that were half buried within the wrinldes and folds of his ancient face.

Svor said, indicating Prestimion, “This is Polivand of Muldemar. And this,” with a nod toward Gialaurys, “is Gheveldin of Piliplok. There will be a fourth student also, who has not yet joined us, but we believe he is somewhere in Triggoin. We are ready to begin our course of studies at any time.”

“The seventh hour of the night will be an auspicious time to start,” said Gominik Halvor. His voice was another surprise: not the faint reedy whistling one might expect from someone so ancient, but the strong and deep voice of a man in the prime of life. Looking from Prestimion to Gialaurys, he said, “You, Gheveldin: I see that you have had some initiation already into our mysteries. But Polivand here has the aura of an utter novice.”

“That is what I am,” said Prestimion. “I have no skills at magic whatever, nor any knowledge of its secrets.”

“So I see, if you call our arts ‘magic.’ We prefer to speak of them as our ‘philosophy,’ or else as our ‘science.’ ”

“Philosophy, then. I stand corrected and beg your pardon.”

“Are you fully prepared, do you think, to open your mind to our disciplines?” the old man asked.

“Well—” Prestimion hesitated. He was not at all prepared for that, or for any other aspect of this conversation: Svor had led him without warning into some scheme beyond his understanding.

And indeed it was Svor who quickly spoke over Prestimion’s uncertain pause: “Count Polivand is deeply interested in every aspect of the great philosophy, master. He has never had opportunity to study it before; but he has come to Triggoin for that express purpose now. As have we all. And dedicate ourselves now to be your most devoted pupils.”

Prestimion remained silent as arrangements were concluded for the beginning of their education in wizardry. But then, when Gominik Halvor was gone, he whirled on Svor and said, “What’s all this about our studying magic with this man? I thought we were going to hire sorcerers here, not apprentice ourselves to them! And why these names—Polivand, Gheveldin?”