Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

“Do I look ill, Thalnap Zelifor?”

“You look—weary. Pale. Dark borders beneath your eyes. I have a spell to improve sleep, my lord.”

“Does it give a sleep without dreams?”

“There is no spell for that,” said the Vroon.

“Then I’ll do without it. My dreams are dreadful ones, that bring me awake and sweating with fear again and again; and when I’m awake things are no better.” Korsibar’s brow was clouded and his jaw was clenched; he sat over at one side of Lord Stiamot’s ancient unadorned marble throne, his shoulders hunched high with tension, his fisted hands pressing against each other, damped knuckle to knuckle. “A thousand times a night I see that dam breaking,” he said bleakly, looking off toward the bare stone wall. “The water spilling forth below me, flooding into nearby farms along the river, into villages—so many dead, Thalnap Zelifor, Prestimion’s men and all those villagers also—”

“The dam was Dantirya Sambail’s doing, my lord.”

“The dam was his idea, which he slipped into my mind like a trickle of poison to infect my soul; but I gave the order. The guilt is mine.”

“Guilt? My lord, you were fighting a rebellion!”

“Yes,” Korsibar said, looking away, closing his eyes a moment. “A rebellion. Well, Prestimion’s dead now, or so it’s generally thought. The rebellion’s over. But when will I sleep again? And still I have Dantirya Sambail wandering around here, plaguing me with his schemes, and my sister also, who smolders with wrath against me and won’t be pacified, and the secret faction of my enemies too—I know there’s one; I know I’m being conspired against; for all I know, Farquanor and Farholt, or maybe Oljebbin, or some others whose names I’ve never heard, are at this moment scheming to replace me with some brother of Prestimion, or with the Procurator himself—”

“My lord—”

“Tell me,” Korsibar said, “do you conspire against me too?”

“I, my lord?”

“You come and go, you move from one side to another, you always have: you sell yourself now to Gonivaul, to Thismet, to Prestimion. And now you come back to the Castle claiming to have defected from Prestimion’s side and sell yourself again to me. What is there about me that causes such swarms of tricky folk to attach themselves to me? First there was sly little Svor, whom I loved and who leaped from me to Prestimion’s bosom, and then Farquanor, who’ll say anything to anyone so long as it does him some good, and then Dantirya Sambail, who managed to betray both his cousin Prestimion and do great harm to me at the same time by talking me into bringing down that dam, a thing which I would gladly undo if I could undo any act of my life.”

“My lord—”

But Korsibar could not halt his flow. “Even my own magus, Sanibak-Thastimoon: he seems loyal enough, but there’s treachery in him somewhere, that I know. And Oljebbin. Gonivaul. I trust none of them. Navigorn, I suppose: he’s a true friend. And Mandrykarn. Vents perhaps. Iram. But even they seem to have turned from me since the dam, though they pretend still to love me as before.” He paused at last, and stared balefully down at the Vroon. “Shall I trust you, Thalnap Zelifor? Why should I?”

“Because no one else but you in this Castle or outside it will protect me, my lord. You are my bulwark. My own self-interest leads me to be your faithful servant.”

Korsibar managed a faint smile at that. “Good. That has some ring of honesty to it.” He gave the Vroon a sidelong look and said, “Have you heard the rumors that Prestimion survived the flood, and lives in hiding somewhere in the north at this very moment?”

“Yes, my lord, I have.”

“Do you think it’s true? Sanibak-Thastimoon does. He’s cast the runes and uttered his spells and sent his mind forth, roving, and he says it’s very likely Prestimion’s alive.”

“Sanibak-Thastimoon is a master of these arts, my lord.”

“Yes. So he is. He’s being tactful; but if he says he thinks there’s a possibility that Prestimion lives, then what he means is he knows perfectly well that he does. Well, I’m not troubled by that. I never wanted Prestimion dead. I was fond of him: do you know that, Thalnap Zelifor? I admired him. I would have named him to my Council. But no, no, he had to refuse, and tell me that I’m an unlawful Coronal, and start an uprising against me. None of that was necessary. He could have had his Council seat and a happy life at his vineyards.” A second time Korsibar closed his eyes, for a longer while now. They ached. They ached all day and all night, from the pounding of his fevered mind behind them.

He looked out toward the Vroon after a time and said, very quietly, “Do the people hate me, do you think?”

“What, my lord?” said the Vroon, surprised.

“In the cities. Up and down the Mount, and outward across the land: what are they saying about me? Do they think I’m a tyrant? A monster? They know about the dam: do they understand that it was an act of war, that Prestimion’s uprising had to be stopped, or do they think I’m a criminal for having done it? My getting the throne: what do they think about that? Are they coming to feel Prestimion should have had it? I fear what they may be whispering out there. I dread it. What can you tell me about that, Thalnap Zelifor?”

“I have not left the Castle, my lord, since I came back to it from Prestimion’s camp. And that was before the event at Lake Mavestoi.”

“Can you cast your mind out there by means of some sorcery, as Sanibak-Thastimoon does, and tell me what the people say about me?”

“I can do better than that, my lord. I can make it possible for you to go into the world yourself and move secretly among them, so that you can listen with your own ears.”

Korsibar sat forward, his heart suddenly racing. “What? Outside the Castle, secretly?”

“Indeed. To Bombifale for half a day, let’s say, or Halanx, or Minimool. In perfect safety, no one aware that it’s the Coronal who’s in their midst.”

“How is this possible?”

Thalnap Zelifor said, “You know, my lord, that in my workshop in the Tampkaree Tower are many devices of my own design, not magical devices but scientific ones, all of which have to do with the transmission of thought from one mind to another?”

“Yes. So you’ve told me.”

“They are, unfortunately, incomplete, most of them. But I’ve finished one lately that would, I think, be of great value to you in precisely the regard you’ve mentioned. One that casts an illusion—that allows a perfect deception of identity—”

Arranging for his departure from the Castle was no simple thing, Coronal though he was. It was necessary first to let word go forth to all his staff that he would be retiring to his bedchamber at the hour of thus-and-so on the evening of thus-and-so for a period of solemn meditation on the condition of the world, and that he must not be disturbed by anyone under any circumstances whatever until he had emerged, even if a day or more were to elapse.

Korsibar needed also to have one of the court secretaries order a high-speed floater to be made available at the south gate, on demand, for the use of the Vroon Thalnap Zelifor and his driver. Another essential step was the invention of a Su-Suheris on the Coronal’s staff who had a certificate providing him with the right of departure and access at the Castle. Thalnap Zelifor had designed his machine to give its user the guise of a member of the two-headed folk, for the sake of better mystification, since they all looked very much alike to people of other races.

Each of these steps had to be carried out in independence of all the others, so that no one would think to connect the retreat of the Coronal to his bedchamber with the comings and goings of the Vroon wizard and his Su-Suheris driver. Several days were required to put everything in place. But that gave Korsibar time to master the trick of Thalnap Zelifor’s shapechanging device.