Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

“No,” Thismet said. “Not Bombifale, not Tolingar. Nor High Morpin neither. A longer journey is what I have in mind. Do you know where Gloyn is, Melithyrrh?”

“Gloyn?” Melithyrrh repeated blankly, as though Thismet had spoken the name of some other planet.

“Gloyn. It’s a city, or maybe a town, in western Alhanroel, across the Trikkala Mountains, but this side of Alaisor.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Melithyrrh, mystified.

“No. Nor I, before this day. But I have a mind to go there now. To leave tomorrow, just you and I together. Come, let’s pack some things. You can operate a floater, can’t you? And I’m fairly sure I can. I can’t tell you how eager I am to get away from this place—out into the fresh air, a little adventure of our own, the first one I’ve ever had: just you and me, Melithyrrh—”

“May I ask, lady, what attraction there is in Gloyn?”

“Prestimion,” Thismet said.

In the end she took much less with her than she would have imagined possible to travel with, almost none of her elegant robes and gowns, only simple rough clothes that would be useful in the place where she was going, and just a handful of baubles, a few rings and necklaces to remind her that she was the owner of such things. But also she took a small jewel-handled dagger that she could strap along the inside of her left arm, and, after some thought, an energy-thrower she had borrowed in a moment of foresight from the weapons storehouse, a month before. She had no clear idea of how to use it, and had heard that the things were terribly unreliable in any case, but she supposed it would serve to frighten away anyone who might think that two young women traveling by themselves were easy prey.

Operating the floater was the most challenging part. She had never driven one herself or even paid much attention to what the driver was doing as she was taken about. Nor, as it developed, had Melithyrrh had any experience in driving. But there couldn’t be much to it, could there? Start, stop, up, down, slower, faster—that was about it, she thought. At an hour when Korsibar and the others were having another of their interminable Council meetings—they were always having long meetings nowadays, what with Prestimion’s new rebellion gathering strength in the west and this absurd ongoing crisis of the Metamorph rumors—Thismet requisitioned a pleasure-floater from the captain of the guards, and she and Melithyrrh went down to Dizimaule Plaza together to pick it up.

The guardsman who brought the floater around looked at them a little strangely when he realized they had no driver of their own with them. But it was not his place to ask questions of the Coronal’s sister. He helped them load their baggage in the storage compartment, and held the door open for them.

“You drive it first,” Thismet whispered.

“Me? But—my lady—”

“They’ll think something’s really wrong if I sit down in front of the controls. Go on!”

“Yes, my lady.”

Melithyrrh studied the panel of controls for a moment. Eight or nine knobs, none of them identified. She took a long deep breath and touched one. Nothing happened. The guardsman was staring open-mouthed at them. Surely he had never seen two ladies of rank get into a floater before on their own.

Melithyrhh pressed another knob. A humming sound came from below them.

“Those are the rotors starting up,” said Thismet. “Now touch the knob to the left of it.”

It was only a guess, but a good one. The nose of the floater came up six inches from the ground, eight inches, ten. And kept on rising.

“Let go of it!”Thismet cried. The floater descended a bit and leveled off. “Now the next knob to the left!” That one sent the floater jolting violently backward. Thismet snatched Melithyrrh’s hand from the knob and put her own on the one just to the right of the rotor control Just as violently; the floater began moving forward. The guardsman, who had backed away from the vehicle at its first lurch, stood off to one side, mouth gaping even wider. “Here we go!” Thismet exclaimed as the floater went cruising uncertainly off toward the Grand Calintane Highway.

“I think I have the essence of the thing now,” Melithyrrh said. “This one makes it go faster, this one slows it down. And this one turns it to the—right? No, the left, I guess. So this one must be—”

“You’re doing very well,” Thismet said. And indeed she was. The floater was remaining level in relation to the ground now, and moving smoothly down the center of the highway track. A sign loomed up. High Morpin to the left, Halanx to the right. “Take the Halanx road,” Thismet ordered. Melithyrrh touched a knob. The floater veered to the right, not too jerkily. “You see?” said Thismet. “Nothing to it at all. We’re on our way.”

Getting off the Mount was the first task. They needed to go west once they were in the flatlands: that meant leaving the Mount by the Dundilmir side, Thismet knew. But Dundilmir was a Slope City; far down near the bottom of the Mount. To get there they had to make their way first through the three higher levels, the Inner Cities, the Guardian Cities, the Free Cities. She had a vague idea of a route that ran down through Banglecode to Hoikmar or Greel and another that led downward from there to Castlethorn or Gimkandale, which ought to take them to Dundilmir and thence to ground leveL But her knowledge of Mount geography was imperfect and did not at all include an awareness of the intricate spires and secondary peaks that complicated travel up and down the sides of the immense mountain. One couldn’t simply go from Point A to Point B because they were in a straight line on a map; one had to find a road that actually connected them, and sometimes that involved going halfway around the Mount. And so they spent their first night, unexpectedly, at an inn in the city of Guand, which Thismet had never visited in her life, and which they arrived in under the mistaken impression that they had taken the Banglecode road out of Halanx.

The inn was the best they could find, but it was something less than luxurious. From the innkeeper came impertinent stares, even though they had dressed as unflatteringly as they knew how, with all color washed from their faces and their hair pulled severely back. The room was small and bleak and there were stains on the walls and the bedding did not seem fresh. The dinner they bought for themselves there was unthinkably bad, unknown pale meat fried in grease. All night there were sounds of laughter and bedsprings from adjacent rooms.

“Will it be like this, do you imagine, all the way to Gloyn?” Thismet asked.

“Worse, my lady. This is still Castle Mount.”

When the time came to pay the reckoning, Thismet discovered she had brought no money with her. Money was not something a Coronal’s sister was accustomed to carrying. Fortunately, Melithyrrh had a purse of royals with her; but it seemed a small purse, and Thismet began to think they would be pawning her jewelry to pay for these miserable lodging-houses as the journey went on. Things would get worse, yes, Thismet saw.

Somehow they found their way down the Mount. Somehow they located roads that would take them westward, though they had no maps and no skill at traveling. “We should look for highway signs that say ‘Alaisor,”’ Thismet said. “Alaisor is in the west.” But Melithyrrh pointed out that Alaisor was thousands of miles away—eight thousand miles, ten, perhaps, all the way out by the sea—and was not likely to be shown on highway signs this far inland. So they tried to think of other cities closer to the Mount that lay in the right direction. “Arkilon,” Thismet suggested, remembering that there had been a big battle there the year before and that she had seen on the map it was west of the Mount. So they went to Arkilon.