Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

“In favor of Prestimion?” Serithorn asked, eyebrows lifting in surprise.

“No,” said Oljebbin sharply. “In favor of Prankipin’s embalmed corpse. In favor of the statue of Lord Stiamot, maybe. Who do you think I’m talking about, Serithorn?”

“Prestimion doesn’t have a chance of becoming Coronal, not now, not ever,” said Serithorn in a quiet emphatic tone.

“You say this?” asked Oljebbin. “You, his good friend for so long, his mother’s very good friend?”

Serithorn reddened faintly at that. But his voice remained calm as he replied, “There’s a curse of some sort on Prestimion. Anybody who couldn’t keep an idiot like Korsibar from nudging him aside when the throne became vacant and the whole world was expecting him to become Coronal is plainly marked by the gods for misfortune. Now that he’s back in view and heading this way, something will go wrong again. Korsibar will dump another reservoir on him or a stray arrow will get him or he’ll be eaten by vorzaks as he comes over the mountains. Mark my words, Prestimion won’t have any more success this time than he did before.”

“So if we were to back him,” Oljebbin said, “we’d be cutting our own throats?”

“Essentially,” said Serithorn.

“But that would leave us with a Coronal who half the world believes is a Metamorph! There’s no way Korsibar can stand up in front of everybody and prove he isn’t one, is there? This numbskull rumor will eventually do irreparable harm to his ability to govern, if it hasn’t already, and then—”

“You’re forgetting someone,” Gonivaul said.

Oljebbin stared. “What do you mean?”

“The name of Dantirya Sambail hasn’t been mentioned at all since I entered the room. Korsibar’s done for, I agree: these wild stories never get properly contradicted, and sooner or later everybody out there will have been made permanently suspicious of him. As for Prestimion, I share Serithorn’s view of him: he’s simply a poor unlucky devil and I can’t believe he’ll ever manage to get the throne he so richly deserves to have. That leaves the Procurator. Since the Mavestoi business he’s quietly pushed Farquanor and everybody else aside and has made himself Korsibar’s chief adviser, at least unofficially. Now Korsibar is having political problems in the provinces because of this bizarre Metamorph thing. All right: either Dantirya Sambail will very shortly overthrow Korsibar himself—‘for the good of Majipoor,’ as he’ll piously tell everybody—or else, in the coming war with Prestimion, Dantirya Sambail will advise Korsibar right into some terrible calamity. One way or the other, Korsibar goes out of the picture before long and Dantirya Sambail emerges on top. If we’re smart, and we are, we’ll cultivate the friendship of Dantirya Sambail at this particular point in time. —What do you think, Serithorn?”

“I agree completely. Korsibar’s position is suddenly very wobbly, not that it was tremendously strong in the first place, because of the legalities, Coronal’s son becoming Coronal, and all that. Prestimion’s isn’t any better. He was never officially named Coronal-designate, after all. So, even if he’s the winner in this new war that’s shaping up, he’s got no very valid claim himself. Dantirya Sambail, on the other hand, can argue that as Procurator of Ni-moya he stands second only to the Pontifex Confalume, and therefore is the logical and legitimate heir to the Coronal’s throne.”

“Very well thought out,” said Oljebbin. “At last I make out a pattern in all this chaos. Our strategy, my lords, is to pledge our undying support in the coming challenge for the throne to our beloved Lord Korsibar and his loyal ally the Procurator of Ni-moya, and roundly condemn the audacity of the criminal upstart Prestimion. If Korsibar somehow survives and remains on the throne, he’ll be indebted to us forever. If he doesn’t, he’ll almost certainly be replaced as Coronal by Dantirya Sambail, who also will be grateful to have had our help. Either way, we’re on the winning side. Are we agreed, gentlemen?”

“Absolutely,” said Gonivaul at once.

“Let us drink to it,” said Serithorn, pulling a dusty bottle of wine from his cabinet. “Good Muldemar wine, as it happens, Prestimion’s own. Fifteen years old. —To peace, gentlemen! To everlasting peace and harmony in the world!”

Thismet said, “Have you heard these stories, Melithyrrh, that say that my brother is a Metamorph?”

“What foolishness they are, my lady!”

“Yes. Foolishness indeed. If he is a Metamorph, then what am I, who was hatched in the same womb as he?”

“The stories, as I hear them, have it that he was replaced by a Metamorph secretly as a grown man, not that he was born one. But all of it is nonsense. You should pay no attention, my lady.”

“True. I shouldn’t. But it’s so hard, Melithyrrh!”

Thismet rose from her divan and crossed the room to the octagonal window that gave a view of Lord Siminave’s dazzling reflecting pool, and then, pivoting restlessly, went to the other side, opening her wardrobe’s fragrant doors of shimmak-wood to reveal all her wealth of clothing within, the scores of brocaded robes and jeweled gowns and bodices and chemises and cassocks and all the rest, everything fashioned from her own design by the most skilled clothing-makers of Majipoor. She had worn many of them only once or twice, some not at all; and now they needed to be refitted, so lean and gaunt had she become in these sour days. She barely ate any longer; she scarcely slept. Korsibar’s coming to the throne, which had seemed such a glorious thing to her once, had been the ruination of them both.

Melithyrrh said, “My lady, please—this pacing, this constant fretting of yours—”

“I’ve had to swallow too much, Melithyrrh! Traitors and villains on all sides. The sorcerer Sanibak-Thastimoon, who deludes me into thinking great things are in store for me, and turns his back on me at the first opportunity! The other sorcerer, Thalnap Zelifor, who goads me into giving offense to my brother, and then leaves me altogether, and when he returns is suddenly my brother’s devoted servant! Or the vile Farquanor, who comes right into these rooms—he stood over there, in the jade drawing room—I should have had the floor scrubbed with acid afterward—and says to me, cool as ice, ‘Marry me, Thismet, it will improve your social standing at the Castle.’ Calling me Thismet, as though I were a serving-wench! And going unpunished for it when I denounced him to Korsibar.”

“My lady—”

“And Korsibar,” Thismet went on. “My wonderful heroic brother, who made himself Coronal simply because I told him to do it, and who rewards me by making me an exile within the very walls of the Castle, ignored, excluded, shunted about with impunity, while he surrounds himself with cheats and liars and treacherous traitors who are leading him to destruction, men like Dantirya Sambail lording it around the Castle now as though he were Coronal and Pontifex both at once—too much, Melithyrrh, much too much! I can abide this place and these people no longer.” She drifted on into the room adjacent, where her treasures of jewelry were housed, her wondrous rings and pendants and necklaces that were the equal of the best that any Coronal’s consort had ever possessed, and stood with her delicate white hands plunged deep amongst them as though it was some hoard of buried treasure that she had just uncovered. After a time she said in a much quieter voice, “Melithyrrh, will you accompany me on a little journey?”

“Of course, my lady. A few days in High Morpin, perhaps—they’ll do you a world of good. Or a visit to the gardens at Tolingar—a holiday in Bombifale—”