Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

His friends had been aghast at the sight of him when he first came forth from the vaults. Gialaurys was incoherent with fury. Svor’s fingers coiled about one another like anguished serpents. But now they were in Muldemar, and as ever, Septach Melayn bubbled over with optimism. “A little decent food in you, a few sips of wine each day, Prestimion—fresh air, the river, the sun—look, you begin to heal already, and you’re only newly free!—Were they starving you in there, is that it?”

Prestimion smiled wryly. “Starving would have been no worse, I think, than eating the stuff they gave me. Such slops I wouldn’t feed to mintuns scavenging in the streets! A thin sour soup of old cabbage it was, most of the time, with fragments of the Divine only knows what sort of tired meat swimming in it —pfaugh! And the light: that terrible throbbing light, Septach Melayn, hammering at me out of the walls every hour and every minute of every day and every night! That was the worst of it, far beyond the awful food. If I never see anything red again, it’ll be a hundred years too soon.”

“They say the unending light of the tunnels was put in those stones by some ancient magic now forgotten,” Svor observed. “And the magic that turns it off has been forgotten also.”

Prestimion shrugged. “Magic, science—who knows where the distinction lies? It is a dreadful thing, that light. It hits you hard as a fist. There is no hiding it. You close your eyes and still you see it behind your lids, and you feel it day and night. I’d have gone mad altogether but for the little green amulet of Thalnap Zelifor, which gave me some defense.” A bemused look came over him. “He told me how it was used. I would stroke the thing with my fingertip, in this fashion, every mealtime when they unshackled my hands. And as I did so I said secretly, inside my head, as though I were praying to the Divine: ‘Let my eyes be eased, let me have some rest.’ And after a fashion it worked, do you know? Bad as things were for me, I think they would have been even worse without my having done that. Though who or what I was praying to, I could not guess: not the Divine, surely. —What became of that little Vroon, anyway?”

“He’s here at Muldemar House,” said Septach Melayn.

“Here? How did that happen?”

“He was freed when you were, and in the confusion attached himself to us, and came along with us from the Castle.”

“Well,” said Prestimion, smiling, “there’s no harm in that, I suppose. I came to like him more than a little, in all that time while we were penned up facing each other on the walls of our tunnel.”

“You are a very tolerant and kindly man,” said Svor. “You find things to like in the most surprising people.”

“Even the vile Korsibar,” said Gialaurys with a furious grimace. “You continued to have good words for him even after he did you out of your throne. But not, I think, any longer.”

“No.” And red wrath flared up in Prestimion’s eyes. He had reached some turning point in that prison, that much was evident. “For along while I thought of him as a decent simple man who was pushed onward in an evil course by villains and monsters; but I see now that a man who pays heed to monsters ultimately makes himself one also. Korsibar had no mercy on me, merely because I’d not grovel before him as he sat on his stolen throne. And I’ll have none on him when things are reversed. There will be a reckoning now, and a heavy one, for all that has happened.”

“Well, now! Well! So the sweet Prestimion we love is now the savage vengeful Prestimion who will do battle to take his rightful seat at the Castle,” said Septach Melayn. “I take this for the best of news. Plainly it was Korsibar’s most foolish day, out of a great many such, when he thrust you into that dungeon. For now it will be war.”

“It will be war now, yes,” Prestimion said.

He drew from his bedside table a coiled chart and spread it out on his knees facing them to show them the plan. It was the map of Alhanroel, done in a multitude of bright colors, with many a fancy scrolling ornament and curlicue. He tapped it at the place where Castle Mount was drawn in deep stark purple rising high above all else.

“We must isolate the Castle before we attack its false Coronal. This we will do both by words and by deeds. There will be a proclamation, first, in my name and in that of the present Lady of the Isle of Dreams, to the effect that Korsibar holds the Castle against all law and precedent, by dint of having worked a sorcery against his father Lord Confalume in the hour of Prankipin’s death, and that he is a false usurper and traitor against the will of the Divine, who must be cast down from the great height that he has illicitly made his own.”

“The present Lady of the Isle?” Svor said. “You mean Kunigarda, I suppose, and not Roxivail. But do you actually have her support, Prestimion?”

“I will. She’s come to me three times in dreams, these past four weeks, to tell me so. I’ll have a message on its way to her quickly, confirming that I’m free and intend to challenge Korsibar’s claim to be Coronal. And I will request a public statement from her, declaring that she recognizes me as Coronal Lord and has vowed never to give up her own place at the Isle to the illegally designated Roxivail, but only to my own mother once I am installed at the Castle. To which I think she will agree.”

And Septach Melayn: “This business of claiming that Korsibar worked magic against Confalume when he grabbed the crown—do you believe that, Prestimion? Or are you only saying it for the sake of impressing the credulous?”

“It makes no difference what I believe in the privacy of my heart. You know that the mass of the people give credence to sorcery. If I charge that Confalume was ensorcelled, that’ll help turn them against Korsibar, which is my goal. No one wants a Coronal who improperly got his crown by dint of witchcraft.”

“But it was by magic anyway,” said Gialaurys. “Oh, Prestimion, when will you believe the evidence that rises in mountains on all sides of you?”

Prestimion merely smiled. But it was a very wan smile.

Turning stubbornly to Septach Melayn, Gialaurys said, “You were there when it happened. Your own mind was clouded by the spell. Do you deny there was magic at work?”

“Something put a mist over my mind, that I freely admit. Whether it was magic or something else, I’m in no position to tell you.” A wicked twinkle entered Septach Melayn’s eyes. “My mind was clouded, Gialaurys. Since that was so, how could I know what was clouding it?”

Impatiently Prestimion said, tapping his chart again, “To continue. We proclaim the illegitimacy of Korsibar’s reign, and descend the Mount to begin its encirclement. I’ll announce myself as Coronal first in the city of Amblemorn, by the black marble monument that marks the old timberline, where the ancient conquest of the Mount first began: for we will be commencing a new conquest of the Mount in that place. In Amblemorn I’ll call for volunteers for my army. We’ll have a host of Muldemar men with us, well armed, in case there’s any trouble with local troops; but I think that Amblemorn will come over to us easily enough. From Amblemorn we proceed down the rest of the way to the foot of the Mount, at the place where the Glayge has its source. Then we move this way, to the west, going steadily rightward around the base of the Mount through each of the great foothill cities in its turn, Vilimong, Estotilaup, Simbilfant, Ghrav, and onward clear around the entire circuit.” He jabbed his finger again and again to the chart, calling off the names. “Arkilon. Pruiz. Pivrarch. Lontano. Da. And here we come to Hazen, Megenthorp, Bevel, Salimorgen, Demigon Glade, and finally Matrician, where good Duke Fengiraz will open his arms to us, and Gordal, and then we are back at the Glayge, below Amblemorn, with the road to the Castle opening before us. How many people live in all those foothill cities? Fifty million? More, I would think. They’ll flock to our banner: I know they will. And at the same time Dantirya Sambail will have come from Zimroel with his armies, and his warlike brothers Gaviad and Gaviundar, to join forces with us at the western base of the Mount. Meanwhile atop the Mount itself they will hear what is happening, and will they rally behind Korsibar against me? I think not. They’ll tell each other that Lord Prestimion has the mandate of the Divine, and that Lord Korsibar is a false Coronal; and they will leave his side in droves. Then we begin to ascend the Mount.”