Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

Madness, was it? The megalomaniacal follies of his own troubled mind? He reminded himself that Korsibar was Coronal, and he a bewildered fugitive hiding under a name he often could not remember in this eerie city of wizards.

He was lost in confusions.

And becoming estranged from his friends as well. His partial embrace of sorceries had put him apart from Septach Melayn, whose irreverent wit and dancing-master mannerisms no longer amused him. But even Svor and Gialaurys, for all their love of him and their joy at seeing him come over at least a little way to their beliefs, had grown very distant from his soul. Prestimion held them guilty in a fashion for having brought this torrent of incomprehensible contradiction down upon him. Why had he chosen believers to be his companions? Why had he not limited himself to the company of cheerful materialist men like Septach Melayn? He was doing Svor and Gialaurys a great injustice by this, he knew, but so frayed were the moorings of his heart that he shrank away even from them, which was something they were altogether unable to understand.

No question of it, he had lost his way entirely. He was wandering hopelessly in a terrible desert. His only comfort was in the sendings that came from Kunigarda; and they were few and far between, and gave him no help in fulfilling the high destiny whose compulsions, he was coming to admit, still plagued him.

Then one night there came to him in a dream not the Lady Kunigarda, but the magus Gominik Halvor, who stood before him as he lay sleeping in his dismal little room and said to him, “This must not go on any longer. The time has come for you to seek guidance.” And when Prestimion awakened, he knew it had been a true dream: that he had wandered long enough without purpose or understanding in this chaos, and guidance now must be sought.

On a night when no moons were in the sky, but only the potent cold blaze of the ten million million stars, Prestimion rose in the hour after midnight and quietly left his little low-ceilinged room, carrying under his arm a small bundle of things that he had been collecting over the previous ten days. He went out from the inn and made his way through the tangled winding streets of Triggoin, no longer as much of a mystery to him as when he first came here, and left the city by the gate known as Trinatha Gate at the northern side of town, which faced the white star of that name.

There was a pleasant open park here, up against the double-humped mountain that lay just north of the city, a place of meadows and streams and some copses of leafy trees. No one, or hardly anyone, went to that park at this hour. And he wanted to be away from the city and its inhabitants, its crowded narrow old buildings impregnated with five thousand years of magic, its multitude of sorcerers casting spells day and night, its josthng invisible hordes of demons and ghosts and spirits. The park, close though it was by sorcerous Triggoin, was a peaceful place. Prestimion needed to be calm: as calm as was possible for him to be just now.

In a quiet grassy place between two little groves of trees, where a trickling stream so narrow that he could hop across it went flowing by, he set down his bundle and knelt beside it. He did not dare allow himself to think. Thinking, now, would be fatal to his purpose.

The strange new star that had burst into the sky while he was making the journey between the Labyrinth and the Castle was almost directly overhead, bathing him in the great intensity of its light. He could feel its blue-white fire streaming down upon him. It was a welcome sensation, a purifying sensation. “Lord Korsibar’s Star” was what they were calling it, or so he had heard, but to Prestimion it seemed there was nothing at all of Korsibar in its brilliant radiance. It was a star of change, a star of great transformation, yes: but it was not Lord Korsibar’s Star and never would be.

“Help me,” he whispered.

Prestimion understood that he was praying, a thing he had never done before in his life. He did not ask to know to whom he prayed.

He knelt a long while in that prayer, first looking down at the soft thick dewy grass, which looked almost black in the starlight though in fact its true color was closer to scarlet, and then very slowly lifting his head, looking up, straight up, into the eye of the new star.

“Help me.”

He had learned some words, and he spoke them now. “Voro liuro yad thearchivoliia,” he said, and said them backward too, “Thearchivoliid yad liuro voro.” And heard a rumbling in the distance, as of thunder, though the night was clear and dry. He said then also the Five Words that had never been written down, and the Three Words that could never be written down. Then he took from his bundle the balls of colored twine that he had brought with him, and carefully laid out strips of different colors according to certain patterns he had learned.

When the patterns were complete, he looked up at the sky again, but this thne with his eyes closed, and he uttered Names that he had heard others utter before, but never had expected to be speaking himself.

“Bythois!” he said, and waited a moment, and said also, “Proiarchis!” There were two loud rumbles of thunder. Prestimion did not ask himself why. “Sigei!” he said, and waited.

And then:

“Remmeri!”

At that last and most puissant of Names there was a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning that danced across the sky, of such a brightness that he could see it even behind the lids of his closed eyes.

From his pack now he took the herbs he had brought with him, the powdered circaris leaves and the seeds of the cobily and the dried jangars, and sprinkled them into the palm of his hand and licked them into his mouth. Which smarted and stung for a moment, until he found the flask that contained the oil of gallicundi, and drank that down, which eased the stinging somewhat. There was only the pardao-berry to eat after that, which he did; and then he waited. Sweat rose in beads on his forehead and streamed down his face. A powerful dizziness overcame him, so that his head reeled and spun and the world was whirling three ways at once. And still he waited, kneeling in the soft grass, head turned to the sky, eyes shut.

After a time he opened his eyes and saw that a greenish-yellow mist had arisen and that there were four moons in the sky that he had never seen before, three small pale angular ones that were like white slivers and a greater, redder one in the midst of those. That fourth one was diamond-shaped, and from its four sharp corners came a sparkling blue-white radiance much like the light of the new star. Prestimion fixed his eyes on that and after a little while felt himself beginning to rise. He drifted up above the feathery hilltops of the two-humped mountain that overlooked Triggoin, and shortly saw the city spread out far below him, flat, like a mere sketch of itself. And went higher still, so that distant Castle Mount stood out against the night like a lantern, and a bright bronzy giow appeared to him in the east beyond it where the cities on the other side of the Mount were already opening to the new day.

Higher yet. He was above the realm of clouds. The world billowed like a carpet of thick fog beneath him.

The stars here burned with a brilliance beyond all comprehension. The air, which had for a time during his ascent been engulfed in a dazzling whiteness, grew dark again, and then darker than dark, and became very cold. He was in a kingdom of perpetual night. This was, he knew, the border of heaven; and as he soared through it he saw apparitions and portents all about him, great armies of fierce men wielding spears and swords who were battling on every side, and streaks of bloody lightning coursing among them, and swirling lights like comets ripped from the firmament plunging wildly down toward the world below.