Robert Silverberg - The Mountains of Majipoor

"You see, prince?" asked Korinaam smugly.

"What’s he saying?"

"Essentially, that he isn’t interested in discussing this topic with you. That the subject isn’t negotiable and in any event he thinks you aren’t qualified to talk about it. He’s using the scornful form of the pronoun you, by the way."

"The scornful form?"

"They employ it when they want to cast doubts on the virility of an enemy."

Harpirias felt his own temper rising. "Still clinging to that notion, is he? Well, you can tell him for me—"

"Wait," Korinaam broke in. The king was still speaking.

"He says — we should take ourselves out of his presence at once, he says. No talks at all today. The session is canceled."

"Because he’s so upset over the hajbaraks?"

"Not only that. It’s much more complicated. He was in a touchy mood to begin with, but you’ve made it a lot worse, I’m afraid. Just as I warned you. He’s worked himself up into a real fit of rage. We have to go, right now."

"You can’t mean that. Waste yet another day? It’ll be winter here before we ever get down to—"

"We have no choice. If you could understand the things he’s saying, you’d know that. Come — come — he’ll be throwing pieces of the throne at us in another minute." Konnaam plucked nervously at the sleeve of Harpirias’s jerkin. "Come, prince!"

When they were outside Harpirias said, "All right. What was it that sent him up the tree like that?"

"It’s the matter of your vow of chastity, prince. That’s what is really troubling him, not the hostages or anything else. When you began to talk about the women who are being sent to the hostages, you reminded him of the other thing — your refusing of his daughter."

"My chastity is no concern of his."

"Ah, but it is, it is, prince! Just as you heard yesterday from those men in the ice-cave: he is expecting you to sire a royal heir for him. He is furious because you sent his daughter away, and the talks are not going to make any progress whatever until you embrace her and plant the son of a Coronal in her womb."

"The son of a Coronal!" Harpirias cried. "Is that what he thinks he’ll get out of me?"

The Shapeshifter’s impenetrable eyes might have been showing a certain sly pleasure. He said nothing.

"For the love of the Divine, Korinaam, do you see what you’ve done? I told you and told you and told you again that I didn’t care for the idea of letting him think that I was Lord Ambinole. I ordered you on at least three different occasions to make the truth known to him. But you refused, and refused, and refused once more, and now — do you see? He wants a Coronal’s child for a grandson, and how can I give him that? I am not the Coronal, Korinaam! Not! Not!"

"You are of royal blood, prince."

"A thousand years removed."

"Nevertheless. Your ancestor was a great king. Even if you are not Coronal yourself, we can explain that you are royal. Make the child, and Toikella will be satisfied."

"Make the child?" Harpirias sputtered. "What are you saying?"

"Is it such a dreadful chore? The girl seemed fair enough to me."

Harpirias drew a deep breath. "As if you could tell. But what the girl looks like is completely beside the point. I’m simply not going to — No," he said grimly. "We go back in there and you let him know the truth about who I am, and that’s that."

"He will kill us, prince." There was no mockery in the Shapeshifter’s tone now.

"Do you mean that?"

"He thinks you are his lordship. It is too late to tell him anything else. He has too much pride invested in having the Coronal of Majipoor as a suppliant in his village. If we tell him at this late hour that we’ve allowed him to deceive himself about who you really are up till now, he’ll kill us both out of hand. Believe me, prince."

"But that would be an act of war! His lordship’s government would send an army in here and carry him away into prison for the rest of his life."

"He has no idea of the strength of his lordship’s government," Korinaam said. "As you know, he believes that his lordship is a tribal chieftain who is no more important or powerful than he is himself, and that no invader could possibly mount a successful assault on this village. Of course, he would find out eventually that he is wrong. But you and I would still be dead."

Hopeless. Hopeless. Harpirias saw that he was totally boxed in by Korinaam’s steadfast refusal to speak the truth to the king and the king’s own ill-informed assumptions.

He retreated to his room in the guest house to ponder the situation.

It was wild folly to have let Korinaam sustain this witless misunderstanding this long. And what a tangle it had become now! To be forced to go on and on with this nonsensical hum-buggery, on pain of death, pretending that he was indeed the anointed master of Castle Mount — and to be asked, of all things, to provide the king with an heir in whose veins the royal blood of Majipoor would be combined with that of the Othinor chieftain -

But certainly it was a high crime against the realm to pose as a Coronal. Regardless of the explanations he could give for having undertaken such an imposture, he knew that it was unthinkable to attempt it. And yet — and yet -

Lord Harpirias, Coronal of Majipoor!

He could pretend to it if there was a good reason for doing so, could he not? For the sake of the mission? Conduct himself as though he were king? Stalk around this icy realm of misery as though he were indeed the master of Castle Mount, as though it was he who held the royal seat upon the glorious Confalume Throne, he who wore the starburst crown? How would Toikella ever know it was not so?

No. This was vacuous nonsense.

He could no more imagine himself to be Coronal than he could imagine himself old. He was Harpirias of Muldemar, a young man of the Prestimion line, a minor prince of the Castle Mount aristocracy. He wanted to go on being Harpirias of Muldemar. He was satisfied with that. He had no ambitions beyond that. To masquerade, even here, even for a moment, even out of supposed diplomatic necessity, as the lord of the world would be a grotesque blasphemy.

He knew he must correct the foolishness into which Korinaam had thrust him before it proceeded any further.

But how?

No answer presented itself. Harpirias was still puzzling over it, alone in his room, far into the evening.

Then, very late, came a voice at his door, a woman’s voice, speaking softly to him in words he was unable to understand.

"Who is it?" he called. But he had a good idea.

She spoke again. There seemed to be a plaintive, imploring note in her voice.

Harpirias went to the door, pulled the leather flap aside. Yes, it was she: the one who had come to him before, the king’s young dark-haired daughter. Tonight she was more formally dressed, a fine robe of white fur, leather buskins, a bright scarlet ribbon elaborately woven through the glossy bowl of her hair. A spindle-shaped sliver of carved bone had been thrust into her upper lip from side to side: some sort of tribal jewelry, no doubt.

She looked terrified. Her eyes were wide and rigidly fixed on him, and she was trembling in a way that had nothing to do with the chill of the air. A muscle was jerking rhythmically in her cheek. Harpirias stood there a long while, staring at her, not knowing what to do.

"No," he said to her after a time, trying to keep his voice gentle. "I’m really sorry. But I can’t do this. I simply can’t." He smiled sadly, shook his head, pointed outward through the door. "Can you understand what I’m saying? You have to go. What you want from me is something I can’t give you."

She shivered in an almost convulsive way. Held out her hands to him. They were shaking.