Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

And finally came the news Prestimion had anticipated most keenly without ever quite daring to believe that he would ever hear it word that a huge army under the command of Gaviad and Gaviundar, the brothers to Dantirya Sambail, had landed some weeks ago at Alaisor and was making its way quickly overland to Marraitis to join the growing rebel force. Dantirya Sambail himself, the message added, had been delayed in Ni-moya by the responsibilities he held as Procurator there, but would be leaving Zimroel shortly and would affiliate himself with Prestimion’s armies as quickly as he could.

Was it so? Yes. Yes. Hot on the heels of this message, the outriders of the Zimroel force appeared, and then the bulk of the army, with the Procurator’s two brothers riding at his head.

“This is quite a pair, these brothers of Dantirya Sambail,” said Gialaurys softly to Septach Melayn, watching them arrive. “They are of the same pretty breed as their elder brother, are they not?”

“Even prettier, far prettier,” said Septach Melayn. “They are true paragons of beauty.”

Gaviad and Gaviundar shared Dantirya Sambail’s ruddy orange hair and freckled complexion, and they were as gloriously ugly as he was, though in differing ways. Gaviad, the older of the two, was short and thick, watery-eyed and blubbery-faced, with a great red blob of a nose and a coarse fiery mustache jutting out like tufts of copper wire beneath it, above marvelously fleshy sagging lips; he was a heavy man, of monstrous appetites, with a chest like a drum and a belly like a swollen sack. His brother Gaviundar was much taller, of a height nearly approaching Septach Melayn’s, and his face was broad and perpetually flushed, with small cruel blue-green eyes flanked by the largest and thickest ears any human had ever been given, ears that were like wagon-wheels. He had gone bald very young: all that remained of his hair was two astonishing bristly tufts springing far out from the sides of his head. But as if to compensate, he had grown himself a dense and tangled reddish-yellow beard, so huge that birds could hide in it, that tumbled like a cataract down to the middle of his chest. He was, like Gaviad, an inordinate eater and a man with a colossal capacity for drink; but Gaviundar held his wine well, whereas stumpy little Gaviad, it quickly became evident, took great pleasure in drinking himself into a stupor as frequently as possible.

That could be tolerated, Prestimion decided, as long as the man could fight. And in any event the brothers had come with a great horde of troops that they had raised along the eastern coast of Zimroel, mainly from Piliplok and Ni-moya, but from twenty other cities as well.

All through the autumn and winter and on into spring, Prestimion labored to meld these variously assorted soldiers into a single effective fighting force. The one question now was when and how to move against Korsibar.

Prestimion inclined to his original strategy of marching through the foothills of Castle Mount, making the circuit once again from Simbilfant to Ghrav to Arkilon to Pruiz and all the way around past Lontano and Da back to Vilimong, this time at the head of a large and ever-increasing army that eventually would go swarming up the side of Castle Mount and demand Korsibar’s abdication. But Gialaurys had a different course in mind. “Let us wait here in the middle of Alhanroel for Korsibar to come out and chastise us,” he said. “We smash his army beyond all repair, out here far from the Mount, and then we proceed at will to the Castle, accepting the surrender of any troops we might encounter along the way.”

There was merit in both plans. Prestimion arrived at no quick decision.

Then one day Duke Svor came to him and said, “We have reliable dispatches from the other side of the Jhelum. Two large armies, far greater even than our own, are approaching us: one under Farholt, taking the southern route around the Trikkalas, and the other led by Navigorn, traveling the northern way. Farholt brings with him an enormous force of war-mollitors. Once they’ve crossed the river, they plan to come up behind us, one army from above and one from below, and catch us between them and grind us to pieces.”

“Then our strategy is settled,” Gialaurys said. “We’ll meet them here at Marraitis, as I proposed.”

“No,” said Prestimion. “If we wait for them here until they’ve joined forces, we’re lost. Big as our army is, we’re outnumbered by far, if we can believe reports. Either they’ll shatter us here in the meadowlands, if that’s so, or they’ll drive us eastward until they can shove us into the river.

“What do you suggest, then?” asked Septach Melayn.

Prestimion said to Svor, “Which army is likely to reach the Jhelum first?”

“Farholt’s, I would say. The southern route is quicker.”

“Good. Let him come. We’ll feed him to his own mollitors. What I propose is this: we cross the Jhelum first, while he’s still camped on the eastern shore building his boats, and come around behind him. The one thing Farholt isn’t going to be expecting from us is an attack on his eastern flank.”

“Can we get there quickly enough?” Septach Melayn asked.

“We got here quickly enough, didn’t we?” Prestimion said.

That night Prestimion wandered the camp by himself, pausing now to speak with Valirad Visto, who had charge of the mounts, and with Duke Miaule of Miaule, and Thurm of Sirynx and Destinn Javad of Glaunt, and even going over into the Zimroel force to pass some time with Gaviad and Gaviundar. Gaviad was long gone in drink by the time Prestimion got there, but big shaggy-bearded Gaviundar greeted Prestimion as though they were not simply distant kinsmen but actual brothers, giving him an enveloping embrace out of which emanated a great stink of garlic and dried sea-dragon meat “We have waited much too long in life to get to know each other,” Gaviundar bellowed. “But we will be good close friends once you are installed at the Castle, eh, Prestimion?” He had been drinking too, it seemed. And he said also, “My brother the Procurator thinks you are the finest man in the world, bar none. He looks forward to the day you ascend the throne as keenly as though it were he who were being made Coronal rather than you.”

“I’m grateful for all his assistance,” said Prestimion. “And yours, and that of your brother too,” he added, with a glance at Gaviad, who sat in full armor, slumped forward with his face in his plate, snoring loudly enough to summon lovesick gappapaspes from the distant river.

And when he had returned to his own side of the camp, Prestimion went from this tent to that one, restless, far from any desire for sleep, though it was very late now. He spoke with his brother Taradath for a while, and then with Septach Melayn, and with young Spalirises, who could scarcely contain himself in his eagerness to see action.

A light was still shining in the tent of Thalnap Zelifor; when Prestimion looked in, he found the Vroon wizard at his worktable, bent intently over something that looked somewhat like a kind of rohilla—an intricate circular weavery of bright gold wires and bits of crystal, it was, but far too big to be any sort of an amulet, ten times a rohilla’s size, more like a crown than anything else. “What is this?” Prestimion asked. “Some new kind of witchery-device? Are you conjuring up success for us with this in our attack on Farholt?”

“No witchery here, O Prestimion. Do you remember that I told you, when we were prisoners together in the tunnels, that I was building a mechanism by which I could amplify the waves coming from people’s minds, and read their thoughts, and put thoughts of my own into their heads?”

“The thing that Gonivaul had hired you to devise, yes. Is this it?”