Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

Far to the south, half a vast continent away in the humid city of Narabal on Zimroel, where winter was unknown and vegetation grew with violent abandon in the cloak of soft, dense, sultry air, the cult of flagellanti held sway. Men in white robes crisscrossed by broad yellow stripes ran through the streets in maniacal bounding leaps, brandishing swords and maces and knives. From time to time they would halt and throw their heads forward until their long hair covered their faces, and dance first on one foot and then the other while wildly rotating their necks, and bite themselves savagely on their forearms with no show of distress, as though they were unaware of pain. Then, eyes wild with glee, they slashed their own flesh with their knives, or presented their bared backs to women who rushed upon them bearing whips made of thokka vines strung with the knucklebones of blaves. Blood flowed freely in the streets, mixing with the rain of Narabal’s fine, steady downpours and carried away with it in the cobblestone gutters. “Yamaghai! Yamagha!” they shouted, over and over. Nobody knew what those words meant, but they were deemed to be words of notable power, for one was immune to the pain of the knives and the whips so long as one shouted them. “Yamaghai! Yamagha! Yamaghai! Yamagha!”

It was the blood of bull-bidlaks with which they hoped to purify themselves in great glistening Ni-moya, grandest of the cities of the western continent, seven thousand miles to the east of the crystalline city of Dulorn. By hundreds they crowded into newly built underground sanctums, huddling shoulder to shoulder beneath the slitted gratings that covered these dank musty chambers and looking upward to the mages in ornate ritual vestments and golden helmets topped with quivering crests of red feathers who stood chanting in the street above them. And the slow heavy-thighed bidlaks were led forth over the grates; and the long knives flashed; and the blood came running down in bright rivulets upon the worshipers below, who crowded forward, shoving one another roughly aside as they strived to receive it on their upturned faces and tongues, to catch it in their hands and smear it over their eyes, to drench their clothing in it. With grunting cries of ferocious joy they received the bloody sacrament and were dizzied and inflamed by it; and then they moved along, some dancing, some merely lurching, and others taking their places as new bidlaks were led into position on the grates above.

In golden Sippulgar on the sunny southern coast of Alhanroel on the other side of the world, it was Time, the remorseless winged serpent that flies ever onward, whose face was the face of a ravening, all-devouring jakkabole, to whom the people turned as suppliants. Weeping, praying, chanting, they drew his image through the streets on a wheeled platform made of freshly tanned volevant skin stretched over a framework of bright green gabela-wood, accompanied by a thunder of kettledrums and an ear-splitting clash of cymbals and the screeching of hoarse-throated horns. And behind those privileged ones who drew the platform of the god came the other good citizens of golden Sippulgar, stripped to loincloths and sandals, their sweating bodies bright with gaudy streaks of paint and their faces turned rigidly toward the sky.

In Banglecode, high up on Castle Mount, it was the fancied disappearance of the moons, and especially the Great Moon, that was the thing most deeply dreaded. Few nights went by when someone did not reach the conclusion that the light of the moons was waning and rush wild-eyed out into the streets to howl forth his contagious terror. But there were archimages in Banglecode who specialized in the encouragement of the moons. When the people began to weep and gibber over the vanishing of the moons, these mages came forth and made a clattering with brass instruments, they blew loud blasts on trumpets, they clapped cymbals together and waved holy staffs on high. “Sing!” they cried, and the people sang, and gradually—gradually, gradually—the moons seemed to regain the brightness that they had earlier lost, and the crowds went, still weeping but grateful now for their deliverance, to their homes. And the next night it would all be the same way again.

“What a troubled time this is, this time of mysteries and wonders,” said Kunigarda, the Lady of the Isle of Sleep; and the hierarch Thabin Emilda, the closest of the Lady’s associates at Inner Temple, simply sighed and nodded, for they had had this conversation often enough in recent days.

It was the task of the Lady of the Isle of Sleep to bring comfort, and wisdom to the minds of sleeping millions each night, and in these times she was striving with all her formidable energies to restore peace to the world. From the ancient mechanisms installed in the great stone chambers of her isle the sweet sendings of the Lady and her many acolytes went forth, urging calm, patience, confidence. There was no reason for alarm, they told the world. Pontifexes had died before, on Majipoor. Prankipin had earned his rest. The Coronal Lord Confalume was prepared to assume his new tasks; there would be another Coronal in his place, as capable as Confalume had been; everything would go on harmoniously as it had before, and would forever, world without end.

So the Lady Kunigarda knew, and so she sought nightly to announce. But all her striving was futile, for she herself was a living reminder of the changes that were coming, and the dreams she sent produced as much anxiety as anything else, simply because she was a presence in them.

Her own term as Lady of the Isle was reaching its inevitable end as the Pontifex’s life ebbed. By long tradition the mother of the Coronal, or else his closest living female relative, held the Ladyship. So it was that the mother of Lord Confalume had come to the Isle upon his accession; but Prankipin had ruled as Pontifex so long that Lord Confalume’s mother had died in office, and the Ladyship had passed to Kunigarda, the Coronal’s older sister. Kunigarda had held the post for twenty years now. But soon she must give way to the Princess Therissa, mother of the new Lord Prestimion, and instruct her in the secret of the mechanisms of the Isle, and then take up residence herself on the Terrace of Shadows where the former Ladies went to live; everyone knew that, and that was one more cause for insecurity and apprehension in the world.

“One thing is sure, that peace and truth will prevail,” said the Lady to the hierarch Thabin Emilda. “The old emperor will die, and the new Coronal will come, and the new Lady as well; and perhaps there will be difficulties, but in time all will be well. I believe that, Thabin Emilda, with all my soul.”

“And I also, Lady,” said Thabin Emilda. But once more she sighed, and turned away so that the Lady would not see the sorrow and doubt in her eyes.

So there was no contending against the tide of magic and fear. In a thousand cities furious confident mages came forth, saying, “This is the way of salvation, these are the spells that will restore the world,” and the people, doleful and frightened and hungry for salvation, said, “Yes, yes, show us the way.” In each city the observances were different, and yet in essence everything was the same everywhere, processions and wild dances, shrieking flutes, roaring trumpets. Omens and prodigies. A brisk trade in talismans, some of them loathsome and disgusting. Blood and wine freely flowing and often mixing. Incense; abominations; the droning chants of the masters of the Mysteries; the propitiation of demons and the adoration of gods. Flashing knives and whips whistling through the air. New strangenesses every day. Thus it was, in this feverish epoch of new beliefs, that the myriad citizens of the huge planet awaited the end of the time of Prankipin Pontifex and the Coronal Lord Confalume, and the coming of the time of Confalume Pontifex and the Coronal Lord Prestimion.