Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

“Hear, hear!” cried Septach Melayn.

And Prestimion said, “I would embrace sorcery with all my heart, my friend, if I could hear prophesies of that kind from my mages all the time.”

The coming of a warm bright morning and the return of his dear friends gave a great lift to Prestimion’s spirit, and he began to put the grief of the battle at Arkilon behind him. All day stragglers continued to arrive, until he had something of the semblance of an army again, weary and battered and muddied though it was.

They would have to leave the forest quickly, Prestimion knew. It was rash to assume that Navigorn would let them camp here unchallenged for long. But where to go? They had no maps with them; and none of them had much acquaintance with the great open stretches of territory that lay west of Arkilon, but for the great and celebrated Gulikap Fountain just beyond the forest, which was well-known to all.

Some information came from Nemeron Dalk of Vilimong, a man of some years, who had traveled from time to time in those lands. He knew the names of rivers and hills, and roughly where they lay in relation to one another. Elimotis Gan, who hailed from Simbilfant, had some knowledge of the region also. And one of the skills that Thalnap Zelifor claimed was the casting of inquiry-spells that permitted the divining of correct roadways and routes. In mid-morning these three, with Septach Melayn and Prestimion and Svor, came together to draw up a route of march.

The Vroon lit some little cubes of a brown stuff that looked like sugar, but which he said was the incense of sorcery, and wriggled his tentades and stared into the distance, murmuring softly to himself. And after a time he began to describe the lay of the land beyond them as he claimed to perceive it in his incense-visions, and Elimotis Gan and Nemeron Dalk provided amplification and correction, and Septach Melayn sketched out a rough chart of it from their words with the tip of his sword on abare damp patch of soil, smoothing out his errors with the toe of his boot.

“These hills here—hills, are they, or mountains?—what are they called?” Prestimion asked, pointing to a line on Septach Melayn’s map that ran boldly for a great distance from north to south.

“The Trikkalas,” said Elimotis Gan. “More mountains than hills, I would say. Yes, very definitely mountains.”

“Can they be easily crossed if we were to march due west from here?”

Elimotis Gan, who was a short wiry man with a look of great vigor about him, exchanged a glance with the robust, sturdy Nemeron Dalk. It seemed to Prestimion that it was a very pessimistic look that passed between them.

Nemeron Dalk said, “The Sisivondal highway runs through here,” he said, pointing to the lower end of the line, which marked the southern end of the mountains, “and this is the Sintalmond road, here, in the north. In the middle, which is where you say you want to go, the range is at its highest and most jagged, and there’s only the pass known as Ekesta, which is to say, in the dialect of the region, ‘Accursed.’”

“A pretty name,” said Septach Melayn.

“Not a pretty road,” Elimotis Gan said. “A rough trail, very steep, I hear, little to eat along the way, and packs of hungry vorzaks to harass travelers at night.”

“But direct,” Prestimion said. “This is what I ultimately want to reach, this broad river here, on the far side of the mountains. It’s the Jhelum, isn’t it?”

“The Jhelum, yes,” said Nemeron Dalk.

“Good,” said Prestimion. “We head westward and take your accursed pass through the Trikkalas, and throw stones at the damned vorzaks if they bother us, and when we come out on the other side of the mountains we cross the river after what ought to be a much easier march below the pass. And then we can sit ourselves down here, beyond the Jhelum’s western bank, in what I think is the Marraitis meadowland, where the best fighting-mounts are bred and schooled. Do you see my drift?”

“We will need a cavalry, if we intend to fight again,” said Septach Melayn.

“Exactly. We requisition a host of mounts from the Marraitis folk, and we send off messengers to any city that may be favorable to our cause, asking for volunteers, and we build and train a real army, not just the sort of randomly assembled horde that Navigorn cut to pieces yesterday. Eventually Korsibar will find out where we are, and he’ll send an army after us. But he won’t send it over the mountain pass, if it’s as nasty a place as these two gentlemen say it is. They’ll go south or north of the mountains instead, which will take them many months; and so by crossing by way of the Ekesta ourselves, we’ll get ourselves a head start, bringing us into the western country far ahead of them and giving ourselves time to prepare, at the cost of just the little extra effort of traveling the hardest route.”

“How do you see this pass?” Svor asked Thalnap Zelifor. “Can it be taken, do you think?” The Vroon lifted his tentacles again, and went through some sort of conjuring motions. “It will be difficult, but not impossible,” he replied after a bit.

“Difficult but not impossible: good enough,” said Prestimion with a smile. “I choose to believe that you have the true gift and I accept your findings as accurate and trustworthy.” He looked around at the others. “Are we agreed, then? Ekesta pass to the Jhelum, and across the river by some means that we’ll worry about later, and make our headquarters in the Marraitis meadows? And by the time we go into battle again, the Divine willing, we’ll have a proper army to throw against the usurper.”

“Not to mention the reinforcements that Dantirya Sambail will surely have sent us from Zimroel by then,” said Svor.

“There’s a wicked look in your eye as you say that,” said Septach Melayn. “Do you doubt that the Procurator’s armies will come?”

“There’s always a wicked look in my eye,” Svor answered. “It’s not my fault I was born that way.”

“Spare us this byplay, if you please, both of you,” said Prestimion crisply. “The Divine willing, the Procurator will keep his word. Our task now is to get to Marraitis and make ourselves more ready for war than we were yesterday. What may come afterward is something to fret about in its appropriate hour.”

At midday their baggage-train came into the forest, such of it as remained intact, bearing the belongings and weaponry that had been following them through the foothills cities. It was good to have fresh clothing, and such other things that they had lacked in their night in the woods. Another few hundred stragglers found them also; and then, when it appeared certain that there was no one else who would be rejoining them here, Prestimion gave the order to begin the westward march toward the Trikkala Mountains and the Jhelum River beyond.

Beyond the forest all was ordinary farming land for a while, but soon the landscape grew strange, for they were approaching the famous Gulikap Fountain. First came the bubbling up of warm springs, which scalded the ground into moist brown bareness, and then spouting geysers, and chalky terraces, like dustered bathtubs, holding sheets of water pervaded by algae of many colors, red and green and blue and all mixtures thereof.

Prestimion paused in wonder to watch black steam spouting hundreds of feet from a purse-shaped fumarole. Then they crossed a dead plateau of glassy sediments, zigzagging to avoid gaping vents that were giving off foul rotting gases.

“Beyond doubt I could acquire a belief in demons in a place like this,” said Prestimion, and he was near halfway to being serious. “This countryside is like a piece out of some other world, brought here by some dread enchanter’s whim.”