Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

“May I remind you, my lord, that your line had already broken of its own accord, before Prestimion’s wizards had even brought the darkness down upon—”

It was too much. Korsibar felt all the woe of this dreadful day falling upon him like a crumbling mountain dropping from the sky, and pain and sorrow and guilt overflowed in him beyond control. They had all led him into this disaster, had seduced him into it step by step—this alien magus, first and foremost of all—and now they had left the monstrous shame of it to stain his name forever.

His sword sprang into his hand; he plunged wildly forward, slashing at the sorcerer, only to find nothing before him but a curtain of blackness, a zone of deeper darkness within the artificial dusk all about them. “Where are you?” he called. “Where did you go, Sanibak-Thastimoon!”

It seemed to him that he saw a movement at his side, and began to turn. But he was too late. The Su-Suheris, still half concealed by his spell, had come around behind him: and now, as Korsibar flailed furiously at shadows with his sword, the sorcerer’s dagger slipped into his back just below the cage of his ribs, gliding upward until it touched the tip of his heart.

All strength left him at that touch. Korsibar fell forward and knelt in the mud, choking and gasping, looking dazedly downward at the sight of his own blood cascading from his lips.

Through the thickening mists of his consciousness he heard a voice calling to him.

“Brother? Brother!”

It was Thismet, suddenly swirling up out of nowhere like an apparition. Korsibar raised his head—it was a terrible effort—and stared at her with dimming eyes.

She knelt beside him.

“What are you—doing—here?” he asked indistinctly.

“I came to urge you to yield to Prestimion while there was still a chance,” she said.

He smiled and nodded, but said nothing.

Her arm was about his shoulder, but he was sagging heavily and she barely had the strength to hold him upright. Three harsh gusts of breath came from him, and then the death-rattle. Gently Thismet released him, and he sprawled out before her. “Oh, Korsibar—Korsibar—so it was all for nothing, brother, all for nothing—”

She looked toward Sanibak-Thastimoon, who still stood to one side, arms folded, watching in silence.

“You!” she cried. “You’re responsible for all this, with all your talk of how he was born for greatness, how he’d shake the world. Well, he shook it, all right. But now look! Look!” She snatched up Korsibar’s sword, which had fallen from his nerveless hand, and brandished it frenziedly at the sorcerer in a wild thrust. Sanibak-Thastimoon, towering far above her, swept it aside with his own as though it were a mere stick. And, stepping swiftly toward her, drove deep into her the dagger with which he had killed Korsibar, plunging it home between her breasts. She fell without a sound.

Then someone said nearby, “What, Sanibak-Thastimoon? Both of them dead, brother and sister too? And at your hand, is it?”

It was Septach Melayn. He came darting forward in an easy lope, sword in hand, long body already stretching into the posture of attack. The Su-Suheris retreated once more behind his spell of darkness; but Septach Melayn unhesitatingly swept his blade like a scythe through that zone of night before him, at the last moment imparting a twist to his wrist with the utmost of his dexterity and executing a horizontal cut into the dark nothingness. At once the black cloud vanished and Sanibak-Thastimoon stood revealed before him, with the eyes of his leftward head gaping wide in shock and the other fork of the long column of his two-pronged neck ending in nothing but a bloody stump.

Septach Melayn’s sword flashed once more, and the job was done.

Pensively, he looked down at the bodies of Korsibar and Thismet, lying side by side in the bloody mud of Beldak marsh. The starburst crown of Majipoor lay in the mud also, just next to Korsibar. Septach Melayn snatched it up, and wiped the mud from it as best he could with the cuff of his sleeve, and slung it around his left forearm as though it were a quoit. And went trudging across the field to look for Prestimion. There was much news he had to tell him, both good and sad.

All the remainder of that day and the next, and the one after that, the gathering of the dead went on and the burials took place, one grave next to another all across the marsh of Beldak below Thegomar Edge. For there was no way to transport such a great host of corpses to their native cities for interment. It was best simply to let them rest here.

Prestimion felt little joy over his victory. They had brought him the lists of those lost that day, and he studied them in sorrow. On his side the Count of Enkimod had fallen, and Earl Hospend, Kanif of Kanifimot, Talauus of Naibilis, and some threescore more, at least, among his captains; and who knew how many soldiers of the line? And above all others there was Svor, whose body had been found entangled with that of dead Farquanor. That loss alone stung Prestimion more than all the rest together who had fallen in the battle that day, except for one.

He had heard from Septach Melayn how that one had died: as strangely as she had lived, encircled to the last by treason and betrayal. So he would never learn what his life with her might have been. He found a flower somewhere and laid it on her grave, and tried to seal away in some corner of his heart the pain that he knew he would always feel.

Korsibar he buried by Thismet’s side, feeling as much regret for the one as for the other, though it was a different quality of regret for each: for one had been a great man wasted, and the other had been a woman he had learned unexpectedly and too late to love. But there had been greatness in her too, and it was gone now.

Farquanor—Farholt—well, who would miss them? But a whole host of Korsibar’s other captains had fallen with them, such men as Mandrykarn and Venta; Gapithain, Duke of Korsz; the good-hearted Kanteverel of Ballemoona Sibellor of Banglecode; and also Count Iram, and good Earl Kamba of Mazadone, who had taught the art of archery to him, and Vimnad Gezelstad, among many another. Prestimion would have had them all alive again, if he could, for they had each in their own way been ornaments to the world, and he pitied them for the fatal decision they had made to cast in their lots with Korsibar.

A waste, a waste, a ghastly terrible waste. And all of it unnecessary, Prestimion thought.

If only it could all be undone—if only—

Of those of Korsibar’s faction who had survived the battle, he pardoned all. The war was over there were no more enemies, and the world had but one Coronal. Navigorn of Hoikmar came before him first, and knelt and made the starburst with unfeigned sincerity. He had seen his error and repented of it, he said; and Prestimion believed him. After him came Oljebbin and Serithorn and Gonivaul, and Prestimion pardoned them too, though he had no illusions concerning those three. But he was determined that the bitterness of this war would be washed away. The faster these seething hatreds were put to rest, the better for all.

“And you,” Prestimion said, looking down at the Vroon, Thalnap Zelifor. “How many more shifts of allegiance can you make, now that there’s only one allegiance to have?” And laughed, for there was no malice in his heart today. “You told me when we were in the west country that you were going back to the Castle, as I recall, only for the sake of fetching your mind-reading devices, and then would return with them to help me in my war.”

“I cast the runes for you, and they said you were doomed,” replied the Vroon. “And the report from Lake Mavestoi confirmed it you had been lost in the flood. Why, then, should I go to the aid of a dead man? But my runes were wrong, and so were the reports.”