Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

“And the spells of true sorcerers do, is that what you would claim?” asked Septach Melayn, drawling his words in his laziest, most mocking way. He eyed the massive Farholt with unconcealed distaste. “Answer me this, good friend Farholt: someone has put a rapier through the fleshy part of your arm in a tournament, let us say, and you lie bleeding on the field, watching your blood flow from you in bright wondrous spurts. Would you rather have a sorcerer run out to mutter incantations over you, or a good surgeon to stitch up your wound?”

“When has anyone ever put a rapier through my arm, or any other part of my body?” Farholt demanded, glaring sullenly.

“Ah, but you quite overlook my point, don’t you, my dear friend?”

“Do you mean the point of your rapier or the point of your question?” said quick-witted little Duke Svor, that sly, mercurial man, who for a long while had been a companion to Prince Korsibar but now was reckoned among Prestimion’s most cherished comrades.

There was a brief flurry of brittle laughter. But Korsibar, with a furious roll of his eyes, threw his arms upward in disgust “An end to all this idle chatter, now and forever! Don’t you see what foolishness it is to be passing our days like this? Wasting our time in this dank airless prison of a city, when we could be up above, living as we were meant to live—”

“Soon. Soon,” Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar said, raising his hand in a soothing gesture. He was older than the others by twenty years, with a thick shock of snowy hair and deep lines in his cheeks to show for those years; he spoke with the calmness of maturity. “This can’t go on much longer now.”

“A week? A month? A year?” Korsibar asked hotly.

“A pillow over the old man’s face and it would all be done with this very morning,” Farholt muttered.

That provoked laughter again, of a coarser kind this time, but also stares of amazement, most notably from Korsibar, and even a gasp or two at the big man’s bluntness.

Duke Svor said, with a chilly little smile that briefly bared his small wedge-shaped front teeth, “Crude, Farholt, much too crude. A subtler thing to do, if he continues to linger, would be to suborn one of the Pontifex’s own necromancers: twenty royals would buy a few quick incantations and conjurations that would send the old man finally on his way.”

“What’s that, Svor?” said a new and instantly recognizable voice from the vestibule, resonant and rich. “Speaking treason, are we, now?”

It was the Coronal Lord Confalume, entering the room on the arm of Prince Prestimion. The two of them looked for all the world as if they had already succeeded to their new ranks and now, with Confalume as Pontifex and Prestimion as Coronal, had been merrily reshaping the world to their own liking over breakfast. All eyes turned toward them.

“I beg your pardon, lordship,” said Svor smoothly, swinging about to face the Coronal. He executed a graceful if abrupt bow and a quick flourish of the starburst gesture of respect. “It was only a foolish jest. Nor do I believe that Farholt was serious a moment ago, either, when he advocated smothering the Pontifex with his own pillow.”

“And were you, Farholt?” the Coronal asked the big man. His tone was light but not without menace.

Farholt was not known for the quickness of his mind; and while he was still struggling to frame his reply, Korsibar said, “Nothing serious has been said in this room for weeks, Father. What is serious is the endless delay in this matter. Which is greatly straining our nerves.”

“And mine as well, Korsibar. We must all be patient a little longer. But perhaps a medicine for your impatience —a better one than Svor’s or Farholt’s—is at hand.” The Coronal smiled. Easily, he moved to the center of the room, taking up a position beneath a scarlet silken canopy that bore the intricately repetitive Pontifical emblem in a tracery of golden filigree and black diamonds.

Confalume was a man of no more than middle height, but sturdily built, deep-chested and thick-thighed, true father to his stalwart son. From him there emanated the serene radiance of one who has long been at home in his own grandeur. This was Lord Confalume’s forty-third year as Coronal, a record matched by very few. Yet he still seemed to be in the fullness of his strength. Even now his eyes were bright and his high sweep of chestnut hair was only just starting to turn gray.

To the collar of the Coronal’s soft green jersey a little astrological amulet of the sort known as a rohilla was fastened, delicate strands of blue gold wrapped in an elaborate pattern around a nugget of jade. He touched it now, the quickest of little pats and then another, as though to draw strength from it. And others in the room touched amulets of their own in response, perhaps without conscious thought. In recent years Lord Confalume, taking his cue from the ever more occult-minded Pontifex, had come to show increasing sympathy for the curious new esoteric philosophies that now were so widely embraced on all levels of Majipoori society; and the rest of the court had thoughtfully followed suit, all but a stubbornly skeptical few.

The Coronal seemed to be giving his intimate attention to everyone in the room at once as he spoke: “Prestimion has come to me this morning with a suggestion that has much merit, I think. He is aware, as are we all, of the strain that this period of enforced idleness is causing. And so Prince Prestimion proposes that instead of our waiting for his majesty’s death to initiate the traditional funeral games, we set about holding the first round of competition immediately. It will be a way of passing the time.”

From Farholt came a grunting sound of surprise mixed with an undertone of approbation. But the others, even Korsibar, were silent for a moment.

Then Duke Svor asked very quietly, “Would such a thing be proper, my lord?”

“On grounds of precedent?”

“On grounds of taste,” said Svor.

The Coronal regarded Svor with undiminished amiability. “And are we not the world’s arbiters of taste, Svor?”

There was a stirring now in the little group of Prince Korsibar’s close friends and hunting companions. Mandrykarn of Stee whispered something to Count Venta of Haplior, and Venta drew Korsibar aside and spoke briefly to him. The prince appeared troubled and surprised by what Venta had to say.

Then Korsibar looked up and said abruptly, “May I speak, Father?” Uneasiness was evident on his long strong—featured face, which was tightened and twisted by a heavy scowl; he tugged at the ends of his thick black mustache, wrapped one powerful hand over the back of his neck and squeezed. “I see it in the same way as Svor: the thing seems improper. To launch into the funeral games before the Pontifex is even in his grave—”

“I find nothing wrong with that, cousin,” offered Duke Oljebbin. “So long as we save the parades and the feasting and the other such celebrations for afterward, what does it matter if we get the contests under way now? Prankipin’s finished: that’s undeniable, is it not? The imperial sorcerers have cast their runes and tell us the Pontifex is soon to die. His doctors predict the same thing.”

“With, let us hope, more substantial evidence than the sorcerers,” put in Septach Melayn, who was notorious for his scorn of magics of all sorts, even in this most superstitious of ages.

Korsibar made an irritable brushing gesture in the air as though Septach Melayn were no more than a buzzing gnat. “You all know that no one is more eager than I am to end this time of grinding inaction. But—” He halted a moment, frowning deeply and letting his nostrils flare, as if finding the right words involved him in a terrible struggle. Glancing quickly as if for support toward Mandrykarn and Yenta, Korsibar said at last, “I beg the great Duke Oljebbin’s pardon if I offend him by disagreeing. But there are proprieties, Father. There are issues of appropriate conduct here. And—yes, by the Divine, Svor is right—issues of taste.”