Robert Silverberg: Sorcerers of Majipoor

“You astonish me, Korsibar,” Lord Confalume said. “I thought you of all people would leap at the idea. But instead—this unexpected fastidiousness of yours—”

“What, Korsibar fastidious?” came a raucous blustery voice from the entrance to the chamber. “Yes, and water is dry, and fire is cool, and sweet is sour. Korsibar! Fastidious! Two words I’d never have thought to hear yoked in a single sentence.”

It was Dantirya Sambail, the abrasive and ferocious prince who held the title of Procurator of Ni-moya. Into the antechamber now he strode, hard-soled boots clacking against the black marble of the floor, and instantly he was the center of all attention.

The Procurator, offering no gesture of homage to Lord Confalume, fixed his eyes steadily on those of the Coronal and said, “What is it that we are discussing, pray tell, that has brought forth this implausible linkage of opposing concepts?”

“What has happened,” Lord Confalume replied, matching Dantirya Sambail’s choleric loudness with his own sweetest and most pleasant tone, “is that your kinsman of Muldemar has suggested the immediate inception of the funeral games, because we are all becalmed here unhappily as Prankipin keeps his grasp on life. My son appears to oppose the idea.”

“Ah,” said Dantirya Sambail, in seeming fascination. And then again, after a moment: “Ah!”

The Procurator had taken up his characteristic spread-legged stance, squarely facing Lord Confalume beneath the central canopy. He was an imposingly sizable man of about fifty, who might have been the tallest in the room had his stubby legs not been so oddly disproportionate to his long, thick torso; as it was, he was second here only to Farholt in bulk, a commanding figure.

But a repellent one. Dantirya Sambail was strikingly, almost magnificently, ugly. His head was a huge glossy dome thickly furred with coarse orange hair; his skin was pale and flecked with myriad flaming freckles; his nose was bulbous, his mouth wide and savagely downturned, his cheeks fleshy and drooping, his chin strongly jutting. Yet out of this violent and disagreeable face stared incongruously sensitive and tender violet-gray eyes, the eyes of a poet, the eyes of a lover. He was Prestimion’s third cousin twice removed, on his mother’s side, and by virtue of his authority over the far-off continent of Zimroel, was subordinate only to the Pontifex and Coronal among the high ones of Majipoor. The Coronal was known to detest him. Many people did. But he was too powerful to ignore.

“And why, I wonder, does the good Korsibar object to beginning the games?” Dantirya Sambail asked the Coronal. “I would think he’d be more eager than any man here to get them underway.” A lively glint of mischief flickered suddenly across those beguilingly poetic eyes. “Can the problem be simply that the idea came from Prince Prestimion, perhaps?”

Even Lord Confalume was startled into silence by the audacity of that remark.

There had lately sprung up a certain unvoiced tension, to be sure, between Korsibar and Prestimion. Here was Korsibar on the one hand, the Coronal’s only son and a man of lordly grace in his own right, respected and even beloved throughout the land, but he was barred by age-old custom from succeeding his father on the throne; and here on the other was Prestimion, far less grand by birth and much less imposing in his person, who in all probability would be the outgoing Coronal’s choice as his successor. There were those who privately regretted the constitutional necessities that would block Korsibar from taking possession of the Coronal’s seat when shortly it became vacant. No one spoke openly of that, though: no one. Especially not in the presence of Korsibar, and Prestimion, and Lord Confalume himself.

Prestimion, who had remained silent since his entry into the room, now said mildly “If I may speak, my lord?”

Confalume, in what was very nearly an absent-minded way, granted permission with a wave of his left hand.

The prince was a compact, trimly built man of surprisingly small stature but extraordinary physical strength. His hair was of a golden tone but without much sheen, and he wore it cut short, an unfashionable style in these years. His eyes were of unusual keenness and intensity, light greenish-blue in color and set perhaps a shade too close together; his face was pale and narrow, his lips thin.

It was easy to overlook Prestimion in any gathering of the princes of Castle Mount because of his unprepossessing size; but what he lacked in height he made up for in agility, muscular power, innate shrewdness, and energy. In Prestimion’s childhood and even in young manhood no one would have predicted any sort of distinction of rank for him; but gradually, in recent years, he had moved to a position of preeminence at the court of the Coronal. By now he was widely recognized throughout the precincts of the Castle as the Coronal-designate, though only unofficially, for it would not have been appropriate for Lord Confalume to make that choice formally known while the old Pontifex was still alive.

Coolly, the prince acknowledged the Coronal’s permission to speak. The undiplomatic and indeed flagrantly provocative words of his kinsman of Ni-moya did not appear to have ruffled Prestimion in anyway. But, then, he rarely appeared to be ruffled by anything. He gave the impression always of being governed by premeditation, a man who took no action without much thought and calculation. Even Prestimion’s most impulsive moments—and there were many of them—often somehow aroused the suspicion in those who did not entirely admire him that they had been planned.

He offered a calm smile to Korsibar and another to the Procurator, and said, addressing his words to nobody in particular, “What is it, after all, that we commemorate in the games that we traditionally hold upon the death of a Pontifex? The end of a great monarch’s life, yes, to be sure. But also the commencement of a new reign, the advancement of a distinguished Coronal to the even higher authority of the Pontificate, the selection of a promising prince of the realm as the world’s Coronal Lord. One cycle closes, another begins. Therefore the games should have a double purpose: to welcome the new monarchs of the world to their seats, yes, but also to celebrate the life of the one who is leaving us. And so I feel that it is right and proper and natural to embark on the games while Prankipin still lives. By doing so we create a bridge between the old reign and the new one.”

He ceased to speak, and the room was utterly still.

Then the quiet was broken by the sharp sound of Dantirya Sambail’s loudly clapping hands.

“Bravo, cousin Muldemar! Bravo! Brilliantly argued! My vote is for the games, at once! And what does the fastidious Korsibar have to say?”

Korsibar, his dark eyes smoldering with only partly suppressed rage, glowered at the Procurator.

“I would be pleased to start the games this very afternoon, if that be the sense of the group,” he said tautly. “I never voiced any objection to that. I simply raised the question of propriety. Of unseemly haste, shall we say?”

“And that question has been prettily disposed of by Prince Prestimion,” said Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar. “So be it I move the question, my lord. I further suggest that we announce the games to the citizens of the Labyrinth not as funeral games but merely as games held in honor of our beloved Pontifex.”

“Agreed,” Korsibar said.

“Do I hear opposition?” Lord Confalume asked. “No. Good. So be it. Make your preparations, gentlemen, for what we will call the Pontifical Games. The ancient and traditional Pontifical Games. By the Divine, who’ll know there’s never been such a thing before? It’s forty years and some since last a Pontifex has died, and who will remember how these matters are supposed to go, and of those who remember, who will dare speak out, eh?” The Coronal smiled broadly, letting his gaze rest on each member of the company in turn; only when he came to Dantirya Sambail did it seem as if the warmth of his smile cooled somewhat. Then he made as though to leave; but, pausing at the place where the room gave way to the vestibule he looked back at his son and said, “Korsibar, attend me in my suite in ten minutes, if you please.”