Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

Two days later, when Aibeil Gammis had returned to Stee and was going over inventories at his warehouse with his accountant, a man named Hazil Scroith who claimed some sort of tenuous kinship with a younger brother of the Duke of Alaisor, he said, “If we were smart, you know, we’d start getting up a line of goods to sell to the Metamorphs. After all, we’ve got one as our Coronal now.”

“A Metamorph? What are you talking about?”

“Well, I had this from Sebbigan Kless himself, and Sebbigan Kless is no tippler, you know, so I doubt that he was making it up. It seems he was visiting Sipermit, you know, to see that jiggly little Zimroel girl that he doesn’t want his wife to find out about, and they were in the park where the sexy statues are when just as you please the Coronal comes strolling through, Korsibar himself, only he’s disguised as a Su-Suheris. Well, you ask, how does a human being manage to make himself look like a seven-foot-tall monster with two heads, and how did Sebbigan Kless manage to discover that the seven-foot-tall monster was in fact our beloved Coronal? And the answer, my friend, is that the Coronal isn’t a human at all, but has to be a Shapeshifter, because Sebbigan Kless actually saw him change form—it was just for a moment, mind you, but Sebbigan Kless isn’t a man whose eyes deceive him—the Su-Suheris turned into the Coronal, who looked very surprised to find himself revealed that way, and turned himself back into a Su-Suheris just as fast as I can tell you the story! But it was done and seen. A Shapeshifter! No wonder Korsibar was able to put the hex on Confalume and all those lords in the Labyrinth! He wasn’t Korsibar at all, was he, but some kind of thing out of the Metamorph country! Or can it be that Confalume’s a Shapeshifter too? That we’ve had a whole family of Shapeshifters running the world for the last forty years? And if that’s true, let me tell you—”

Which revelations Hazil Scroith duly reported in his next letter to his wife’s nephew Jispard Demaive, who was not the younger brother of the Duke of Alaisor at all but who did indeed have a clerical post in the duke’s Ministry of Prisons and Warehouses. “We are all buzzing here with the news,” wrote Hazil Scroith, “that the Coronal Lord Korsibar is in fact a Metamorph, the real Korsibar evidently having been done away with while his father was still Coronal. Word of this comes from an absolutely reputable source in Stee who was able to observe the supposed Lord Korsibar changing shape in a public park—is that not incredible?—and turning himself very quickly from human form to that of a Su-Suheris and immediately back again. Why he would do such a thing in plain view of others is hard to understand, dear nephew, but who has ever understood the way the minds of the Metamorphs work?

“Anyway, the tale is all over the Mount now, and nobody is discussing anything else. Just yesterday a salesman who was here from Normork told me the latest bit of news, which is that the Su-Suheris sorcerer Sanibak-Thastimoon, who has been standing at our new Coronal’s elbow ever since he came to the throne, is a Metamorph also! Both of them are impostors, the king and his magus too, and where will it end? Will we find that the whole government is shot through and through with Shapeshifters pretending to be human? It stuns the mind. The whole crowd of them up there at the Castle nothing but masquerading Metamorphs!”

“Horpidan, Duke of Alaisor, to the esteemed Grand Admiral Prince Gonivaul:

Dear Uncle:

You will be astonished, I think, by the remarkable story that has been floating around Alaisor for the past few weeks. I had it from one of the chamberlains in my Customs office, who says that he’s heard it from at least two dozen people this week alone. The essence of it is that the entire pack of you at the Castle, from Korsibar and his Council on down, are a bunch of Metamorphs: we are asked to believe that a squadron of aboriginals secretly infiltrated the Castle sometime during Lord Confalume’s reign and one by one killed off the leading men of the realm and took their places. That includes Confalume himself, apparently. Which would explain why the former Coronal was so acquiescent when Korsibar, or the creature that we understood to be Korsibar, made his astonishing grab of the throne. It was all arranged between them—a Metamorph conspiracy to gain control of Majipoor! And, if you can believe the stories, it has brilliantly succeeded.According to the newest versions of the story, the only one they didn’t manage to replace with one of their own was poor Prince Prestimion. He slipped out of their grasp somehow. But they were able, at least, to push him aside in favor of Korsibar when the Coronalship became vacant, and when Prestimion threatened to expose the whole foul conspiracy, they drove him into exile and eventually, so it seems, killed him by blowing up that dam when he was camped below it on the Iyann, getting ready to launch a campaign to set things to right. Seamier and seamier, uncle!Of course it’s all crazy nonsense, this Metamorph thing, isn’t it? The mere gabble of ignorant provincial rumor-mongers? I would certainly hope so, although everybody who tells the story is willing to swear by all that’s holy that Korsibar was definitely seen changing shapes right out in the open in some public park in Stee or Halanx or one of the other big Mount cities. Supposedly there are witnesses, affidavits, et cetera.Put my mind at rest, uncle, I beg you. If the story is true, then presumably you are a Metamorph in disguise too. Are you? I’d be saddened to hear that, because you have always been one of my favorite relatives, not to mention being the head of our family since the death of my father, and it would upset me terribly to learn that you are in fact some repellent soft-boned noseless thing out of the jungles of Ilirivoyne. Please let me know the truth, one way or another.Your affectionate nephew—I hope—

And in Sisivondal they were saying—

In Bailemoona—

In Sefarad—

In Sippulgar—

Korsibar, pacing endlessly, whirled without warning and advanced toward Farquanor as though he meant to rend him limb from limb. Farquanor, quailing, took a quick couple of steps backward, then felt himself butting against the wall of the throne-chamber.

“These stories, Farquanor! These impossible ridiculous stories about me—”

“Lies, my lord,” said Farquanor, trembling. “Every one of them, a lie!”

Korsibar stared, wonderstruck.

“Thank you,” he said acidly after a little while. “I had begun to believe the truth of them myself, but you have greatly reassured me, Count Farquanor. How pleased I am to know I’m not a Shapeshifter after all.”

“I only meant, my lord, that—”

“You meant! You meant! You meant!”

“My lord, I beg you, take hold of yourself!”

“I’ll take hold of you, and hurl you from here to Zimroel if you don’t stop spouting nonsense. You are my High Counsellor, Farquanor. I call upon you for advice, and you spout platitudes instead. Tell me: what are we to do about these lunatic tales that are heard suddenly on all sides?”

“Ignore them, my lord.”

“Ignore? Not deny?”

“They are too contemptible to deny. Can you imagine it, going before the world and saying, ‘I am not a Shapeshifter’? Such a denial only gives life to the thing. Let it die of its own absurdity, my lord.”

“You think it will?”

Farquanor took a deep breath. He felt uncomfortably confined, with Korsibar’s great bulk looming before him and the wall only inches behind him. And the Coronal seemed to be almost at the edge of madness: face rigid with tension, eyes bulging, altogether looking like a man driven to distraction by the responsibilities of the office he had seized for himself and by the annoyance of this most curious of rumors concerning him. It would not take much to cause him to snap entirely and erupt into wild violence. One wrong word, Farquanor thought, and he will squash me against this wall like a bug.