Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

It was a small instrument, shaped much like a decorative dagger, that a man could wear at his hip without attracting attention. In using it, one had first to sweep the mind free of all distraction and inner noise, so that the device might attune itself to its user’s mental functioning. Then one merely put one’s hand over the hilt of the little dagger and slid downward on the switch that activated it, and took care to hold the switch in the downward position all the while the machine was in use.

“Is there no way to lock it in place?” Korsibar asked.

“None. I am still working on that aspect of it. But it’s no great thing to keep your hand on that little lever for a few short hours, is it, lordship?”

“I suppose not. Let me try it now.”

“Clear your mind of thought, my lord.”

“Not so easily done. But I’ll try,” said Korsibar. He strapped the device to his side, and closed his eyes, and set his mind adrift in a featureless sea where all was gray above and below, and there was nothing whatever to behold. When he thought he had properly quieted all the noises of his mind, he moved the switch downward and held it there.

Across the room from him was a mirror, and after a time he thought to glance into it. But he saw only his own reflection. He tried again, dipping again into that gray sea and drifting calmly on the breast of it, and after a time he was so calm that he nearly forgot what he was trying to do; but then it came to him and he moved the switch again, and again the face of Lord Korsibar looked back at him from the mirror across the way.

“It isn’t working, Thalnap Zelifor.”

“On the contrary, my lord. To my eyes you are the Su-Suheris Kurnak-Munikaad, precisely as it says on this official certificate. And quite a splendid figure you are, as Su-Suheris figures go. You look like the very twin of Sanibak-Thastimoon.”

“I see only myself in the mirror.” He touched his hand to his head. It felt like his own. Mustache, beard: Su-Suheris folk had no beards. Nor was there any second head that he could detect. “Nothing has changed in me,” said Korsibar. “I have only one head. My flesh feels like human flesh.”

“Of course, lordship! You are not changed at all. What has changed is the way you appear to others. To any onlooker you are—but come, let me show you—”

They went into the hall. Korsibar kept his hand pressed to the switch at his hip. A chambermaid passed just then, and Thalnap Zelifor said to her, “Lord Korsibar has entered into his retreat, and no one is to approach his door until he comes forth again.”

“I’ll send the word around, sir,” said the chambermaid. She glanced without sign of recognition at Korsibar, and looked away. She gave no indication whatever that she saw the Coronal of Majipoor standing beside the Vroon at that very moment.

“So I am a Su-Suheris now,” said Korsibar, feeling the first flicker of amusement he had known in many weeks. “Or seem that way to others, at any rate. Well done, Thalnap Zelifor! Let’s be on our way!”

Thalnap Zelifor had already ordered up the floater, and it was waiting at Dizimaule Plaza when he and Korsibar emerged from the Castle. None of the Castle servants whom they had encountered as they moved outward through the building had paid any attention to them: no starbursts, no genuflections. It was only a Vroon and a Su-Suheris, members of the Castle staff like themselves, bound on some errand of their own.

Korsibar did not want to be absent overlong on this first excursion, and so they directed themselves to High Morpin, which was the city of the Mount closest to the Castle itself, a ride of less than an hour away. A sense of great relief and freedom came over him as the floater went soaring down the Grand Calintane Highway and the fantastic many-limbed monster that was the Castle dwindled behind him. He had not been at the controls of a floater since becoming Coronal, and it was pleasant to be guiding one now. He scarcely ever was allowed to do anything for himself any longer there were people to drive for him, people to cut his meat for him and pour his wine, even people to dress and undress him. For the moment, at least, he was a free man again.

He had reverted to his own appearance once they left the Castle. But Thalnap Zelifor reminded him that he would have to be in the Su-Suheris form if any floaters came near them on the road. “I understand,” Korsibar said, and every few minutes he would reach down to touch the little switch. “Is it still working? Did I turn into a Su-Suheris?”

“You are the very image of one, my lord,” dedared Thalnap Zelifor.

Soon the golden airy webwork out of which the streets of the pleasure-city of High Morpin were constructed could be seen gleaming on the slope of the Mount to their left. They parked the floater at the edge of the city, near the great fountain that had been built in the reign of Korsibar’s father, which unendingly sent spears of tinted water shooting hundreds of feet into the air, and walked into the heart of the city. “Am I all right?” Korsibar asked nervously again and again. “I have no way of telling, you know, whether this thing of yours is functioning correctly.”

“When people begin kneeling down before you and making starbursts, my lord, you’ll know that something is wrong. But for the moment you seem to be unnoticed here.”

It was nearly midnight, but the pleasure-city bustled with eager throngs of amusement-seekers. Korsibar allowed the Vroon to perch on his shoulder, to spare him from being trampled. Although tempted, Korsibar did not try any of the rides and games himself—it seemed inappropriate, somehow, for a stern and dour Su-Suheris to be disporting himself on the mirror-slides or in the power-tunnels-but simply moved about through the crowds, one hand kept constantly on the switch of the Vroon’s device, marveling that it was possible for the Coronal of Majipoor to walk here undisturbed.

More than once he caught sight of some holidaying gentleman of the court—Woolock Fals of Gossif, Count Gosbeck, Iram of Normork—and braced himself to be hailed by them, but they went by him with nothing more than the most casual of fleeting giances. This was indeed a wondrous magic, Korsibar thought. Or else the work of science, as Thalnap Zelifor insisted: but he was hard pressed to comprehend the difference.

As he walked, he listened to what was being said.

The Coronal and his policies were not the most common topics of conversation in High Morpin that night. At least an hour had gone by before Korsibar heard his name at all. But then, stopping in the doorway of a tavern, he heard someone call out lustily, “Let’s drink to the Coronal!” And from elsewhere in the hall came the cry, “Lord Korsibar! Lord Korsibar!” and cheers, and the clinking of glasses. Had they recognized him amongst them? No. No. They all were looking the other way. They were simply drinking toasts to his name. But if they were offering toasts to the Coronal’s health in the pleasure-city of High Morpin, could there be much substance to the rumors he had heard of a general displeasure with his administration?

Several more times in the course of the night Korsibar heard his name mentioned, and even smatterings of political talk. Someone said in a knowing tone that he had heard Dantirya Sambail was hoping to make himself High Counsellor in place of Farquanor, with an eye toward becoming Coronal himself someday when old Confalume died and Korsibar went to be Pontifex. But another replied just as knowingly, “Lord Korsibar’ll never put the Procurator so high. Never. Procurator’s too dangerous: Korsibar will send him packing home to Ni-moya. He knows how to deal with troublesome characters, Korsibar does. Look what he did to Prestimion!”