The Coronal seemed to be giving his intimate attention to everyone in the room at once as he spoke: “Prestimion has come to me this morning with a suggestion that has much merit, I think. He is aware, as are we all, of the strain that this period of enforced idleness is causing. And so Prince Prestimion proposes that instead of our waiting for his majesty’s death to initiate the traditional funeral games, we set about holding the first round of competition immediately. It will be a way of passing the time.”
From Farholt came a grunting sound of surprise mixed with an undertone of approbation. But the others, even Korsibar, were silent for a moment.
Then Duke Svor asked very quietly, “Would such a thing be proper, my lord?”
“On grounds of precedent?”
“On grounds of taste,” said Svor.
The Coronal regarded Svor with undiminished amiability. “And are we not the world’s arbiters of taste, Svor?”
There was a stirring now in the little group of Prince Korsibar’s close friends and hunting companions. Mandrykarn of Stee whispered something to Count Venta of Haplior, and Venta drew Korsibar aside and spoke briefly to him. The prince appeared troubled and surprised by what Venta had to say.
Then Korsibar looked up and said abruptly, “May I speak, Father?” Uneasiness was evident on his long strong—featured face, which was tightened and twisted by a heavy scowl; he tugged at the ends of his thick black mustache, wrapped one powerful hand over the back of his neck and squeezed. “I see it in the same way as Svor: the thing seems improper. To launch into the funeral games before the Pontifex is even in his grave—”
“I find nothing wrong with that, cousin,” offered Duke Oljebbin. “So long as we save the parades and the feasting and the other such celebrations for afterward, what does it matter if we get the contests under way now? Prankipin’s finished: that’s undeniable, is it not? The imperial sorcerers have cast their runes and tell us the Pontifex is soon to die. His doctors predict the same thing.”
“With, let us hope, more substantial evidence than the sorcerers,” put in Septach Melayn, who was notorious for his scorn of magics of all sorts, even in this most superstitious of ages.
Korsibar made an irritable brushing gesture in the air as though Septach Melayn were no more than a buzzing gnat. “You all know that no one is more eager than I am to end this time of grinding inaction. But—” He halted a moment, frowning deeply and letting his nostrils flare, as if finding the right words involved him in a terrible struggle. Glancing quickly as if for support toward Mandrykarn and Yenta, Korsibar said at last, “I beg the great Duke Oljebbin’s pardon if I offend him by disagreeing. But there are proprieties, Father. There are issues of appropriate conduct here. And—yes, by the Divine, Svor is right—issues of taste.”
“You astonish me, Korsibar,” Lord Confalume said. “I thought you of all people would leap at the idea. But instead—this unexpected fastidiousness of yours—”
“What, Korsibar fastidious?” came a raucous blustery voice from the entrance to the chamber. “Yes, and water is dry, and fire is cool, and sweet is sour. Korsibar! Fastidious! Two words I’d never have thought to hear yoked in a single sentence.”
It was Dantirya Sambail, the abrasive and ferocious prince who held the title of Procurator of Ni-moya. Into the antechamber now he strode, hard-soled boots clacking against the black marble of the floor, and instantly he was the center of all attention.
The Procurator, offering no gesture of homage to Lord Confalume, fixed his eyes steadily on those of the Coronal and said, “What is it that we are discussing, pray tell, that has brought forth this implausible linkage of opposing concepts?”
“What has happened,” Lord Confalume replied, matching Dantirya Sambail’s choleric loudness with his own sweetest and most pleasant tone, “is that your kinsman of Muldemar has suggested the immediate inception of the funeral games, because we are all becalmed here unhappily as Prankipin keeps his grasp on life. My son appears to oppose the idea.”
“Ah,” said Dantirya Sambail, in seeming fascination. And then again, after a moment: “Ah!”
The Procurator had taken up his characteristic spread-legged stance, squarely facing Lord Confalume beneath the central canopy. He was an imposingly sizable man of about fifty, who might have been the tallest in the room had his stubby legs not been so oddly disproportionate to his long, thick torso; as it was, he was second here only to Farholt in bulk, a commanding figure.
But a repellent one. Dantirya Sambail was strikingly, almost magnificently, ugly. His head was a huge glossy dome thickly furred with coarse orange hair; his skin was pale and flecked with myriad flaming freckles; his nose was bulbous, his mouth wide and savagely downturned, his cheeks fleshy and drooping, his chin strongly jutting. Yet out of this violent and disagreeable face stared incongruously sensitive and tender violet-gray eyes, the eyes of a poet, the eyes of a lover. He was Prestimion’s third cousin twice removed, on his mother’s side, and by virtue of his authority over the far-off continent of Zimroel, was subordinate only to the Pontifex and Coronal among the high ones of Majipoor. The Coronal was known to detest him. Many people did. But he was too powerful to ignore.
“And why, I wonder, does the good Korsibar object to beginning the games?” Dantirya Sambail asked the Coronal. “I would think he’d be more eager than any man here to get them underway.” A lively glint of mischief flickered suddenly across those beguilingly poetic eyes. “Can the problem be simply that the idea came from Prince Prestimion, perhaps?”
Even Lord Confalume was startled into silence by the audacity of that remark.
There had lately sprung up a certain unvoiced tension, to be sure, between Korsibar and Prestimion. Here was Korsibar on the one hand, the Coronal’s only son and a man of lordly grace in his own right, respected and even beloved throughout the land, but he was barred by age-old custom from succeeding his father on the throne; and here on the other was Prestimion, far less grand by birth and much less imposing in his person, who in all probability would be the outgoing Coronal’s choice as his successor. There were those who privately regretted the constitutional necessities that would block Korsibar from taking possession of the Coronal’s seat when shortly it became vacant. No one spoke openly of that, though: no one. Especially not in the presence of Korsibar, and Prestimion, and Lord Confalume himself.
Prestimion, who had remained silent since his entry into the room, now said mildly “If I may speak, my lord?”
Confalume, in what was very nearly an absent-minded way, granted permission with a wave of his left hand.
The prince was a compact, trimly built man of surprisingly small stature but extraordinary physical strength. His hair was of a golden tone but without much sheen, and he wore it cut short, an unfashionable style in these years. His eyes were of unusual keenness and intensity, light greenish-blue in color and set perhaps a shade too close together; his face was pale and narrow, his lips thin.
It was easy to overlook Prestimion in any gathering of the princes of Castle Mount because of his unprepossessing size; but what he lacked in height he made up for in agility, muscular power, innate shrewdness, and energy. In Prestimion’s childhood and even in young manhood no one would have predicted any sort of distinction of rank for him; but gradually, in recent years, he had moved to a position of preeminence at the court of the Coronal. By now he was widely recognized throughout the precincts of the Castle as the Coronal-designate, though only unofficially, for it would not have been appropriate for Lord Confalume to make that choice formally known while the old Pontifex was still alive.
Coolly, the prince acknowledged the Coronal’s permission to speak. The undiplomatic and indeed flagrantly provocative words of his kinsman of Ni-moya did not appear to have ruffled Prestimion in anyway. But, then, he rarely appeared to be ruffled by anything. He gave the impression always of being governed by premeditation, a man who took no action without much thought and calculation. Even Prestimion’s most impulsive mo
ments—and there were many of them—often somehow aroused the suspicion in those who did not entirely admire him that they had been planned.
He offered a calm smile to Korsibar and another to the Procurator, and said, addressing his words to nobody in particular, “What is it, after all, that we commemorate in the games that we traditionally hold upon the death of a Pontifex? The end of a great monarch’s life, yes, to be sure. But also the commencement of a new reign, the advancement of a distinguished Coronal to the even higher authority of the Pontificate, the selection of a promising prince of the realm as the world’s Coronal Lord. One cycle closes, another begins. Therefore the games should have a double purpose: to welcome the new monarchs of the world to their seats, yes, but also to celebrate the life of the one who is leaving us. And so I feel that it is right and proper and natural to embark on the games while Prankipin still lives. By doing so we create a bridge between the old reign and the new one.”
He ceased to speak, and the room was utterly still.
Then the quiet was broken by the sharp sound of Dantirya Sambail’s loudly clapping hands.
“Bravo, cousin Muldemar! Bravo! Brilliantly argued! My vote is for the games, at once! And what does the fastidious Korsibar have to say?”
Korsibar, his dark eyes smoldering with only partly suppressed rage, glowered at the Procurator.
“I would be pleased to start the games this very afternoon, if that be the sense of the group,” he said tautly. “I never voiced any objection to that. I simply raised the question of propriety. Of unseemly haste, shall we say?”
“And that question has been prettily disposed of by Prince Prestimion,” said Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar. “So be it I move the question, my lord. I further suggest that we announce the games to the citizens of the Labyrinth not as funeral games but merely as games held in honor of our beloved Pontifex.”
“Agreed,” Korsibar said.
“Do I hear opposition?” Lord Confalume asked. “No. Good. So be it. Make your preparations, gentlemen, for what we will call the Pontifical Games. The ancient and traditional Pontifical Games. By the Divine, who’ll know there’s never been such a thing before? It’s forty years and some since last a Pontifex has died, and who will remember how these matters are supposed to go, and of those who remember, who will dare speak out, eh?” The Coronal smiled broadly, letting his gaze rest on each member of the company in turn; only when he came to Dantirya Sambail did it seem as if the warmth of his smile cooled somewhat. Then he made as though to leave; but, pausing at the place where the room gave way to the vestibule he looked back at his son and said, “Korsibar, attend me in my suite in ten minutes, if you please.”
2
REPORTS OF THE PONTIFEX’S critical condition had traveled all up and down the immensity of Majipoor, from city to city and shore to shore—from the Fifty Cities of Castle Mount throughout all of far-spreading Alhanroel, and across the Inner Sea to the Isle of Sleep from which the beloved Lady sent forth her soothing dreams, and farther west to the giant cities of the younger and wilder continent Zimroel, and downward into the torrid zone and the hot dry wastelands of the southern continent, Suvrael. The Pontifex is dying! The Pontifex is dying! And there was scarcely anyone, among all of Majipoor’s innumerable billions of people, who did not in some way feel uneasiness over the consequences of his death. For there was hardly anyone alive who was able to remember a time when Prankipin had not occupied one or the other of Majipoor’s two thrones; and who knew what would life be without him?
Indeed, fear was general in the land: fear of the dismantling of hierarchies, the disruption of order, the unleashing of chaos. It was so long since a change in the government had occurred that the people had forgotten how strong the bonds of tradition can be. Anything seemed possible once the old emperor was gone; they feared the worst, some dire transformation of the world that would engulf land and sea and farthest heaven.
An abundance of sorcerers and mages stood ready on all sides to guide them in this difficult moment. The time of the Pontifex Prankipin was a time when sorcery had flourished and proliferated luxuriantly on Majipoor.
No one could have expected, when the strapping young Duke Prankipin of Halanx became Coronal long ago, that ultimately he would cause the world to be inundated by a flood of wizardry and magic. The occult arts had always been a significant element in the life of Majipoor, most notably in the area of the interpretation of dreams. But until Prankipin’s time it was only the lower levels of society that had embraced such arcane disciplines as lay beyond simple dream-speaking that huge population of fishermen and weavers and gatherers of wood, of dyers and chariot-makers and potters and smiths, of sausage-sellers and barbers and slaughterers and acrobats and jugglers and boatmen and peddlers of dried sea-dragon meat, that formed the broad base of the giant planet’s bustling economy.
Curious cults had always thrived among such people—strange beliefs, often savage and violent, in powers and forces beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals. The believers in these things had their prophets and their shamans, yes, and their amulets and their talismans, and their feasts and rituals and processions; and those who dwelled in the loftier regions of Majipoori life, the merchants and manufacturers and the members of the aristocracy above them, saw no serious harm in any of that. Perhaps, they said, there might even be some value in it for the poor folk who had faith in such things. On the other hand, very few of those more prosperous people tended to dabble themselves in what they regarded as the fantasies and superstitions of the lower classes.
But the Coronal Lord Prankipin’s enlightened trade policies had led Majipoor into a splendid golden age of economic expansion that brought widespread abundance of wealth at every level of society; and with increasing affluence often comes increased insecurity and fear of losing what one has attained. Such feelings frequently breed a longing for supernatural protection. The new wealth also brought an increase in self-indulgence, a hatred of boredom and a willingness, even an eagerness, to experiment with novel and remarkable things.
What had come to Majipoor also, with the access of this new prosperity, was not only greater credulity, but also a certain measure of greed, dishonesty, sloth, cruelty, debauchery, a love of wild excess and luxury, and other such vices for which the big planet had not been particularly known before. These things too created changes in Majipoori society.
So a fascination with the occult spread upward in Lord Prankipin’s time to the propertied classes, fostered by the multitudes of nonhuman Vroon and Su-Suheris folk, who arrived on Majipoor at this time—both of them much given to the practice of the mantic and prognostic arts. And through the devices and cunning of these sorcerers, people who were already eager for miracles were made to see not only the shape of things to come, but also a great host of wonders, gorgons and cockatrices, salamanders and winged serpents, feathered basilisks that spit hissing flame; and they were allowed to look through chasms of dark smoke and doors of white fire into universes beyond the universe, and the domains of all manner of gods and demigods and demons. Or so it seemed, to those who had faith in the evidence of what was before their eyes, though there were those skeptics that said it was all a fraud and a snare and a delusion. But the number of those sour cold-eyed onlookers grew ever fewer all the time.
Amulets and talismans were worn everywhere, and the scent of incense was ubiquitous in the land, and brisk trade was done in ointments with which to anoint doorposts and thresholds against the forces of evil. Also it became the fashion among certain of the newly rich to consult soothsayers concerning matters of business and investment, and then the more respectable of the new cults and mysteries received the approbation also of the educated and nobly born. The women of the aristocracy, and soon afterward the men as well, began to hire personal astrologers and seers; and ultimately Lord Prankipin himself gave his formal blessing to many of these exotic predilections by devoting more and more of his time to the company of mages, diviners, thaumaturges, and the like.
His court came to have a full complement of sorcerers and wizards, whose wisdom was regularly employed in the course of governmental business.
By the time Lord Prankipin had moved on to the Labyrinth to assume the duties of Pontifex, and Confalume succeeded him as Coronal, these policies were too deeply entrenched for anyone, even the new Coronal, to speak out against them. Whether the new Lord Confalume maintained the occult disciplines in their supremacy at first out of inner conviction or mere shrewd tolerance of the status quo, was something that he had never revealed even to his closest advisers; but as the years passed he became as wholehearted an advocate of the wizardly philosophies as ever Prankipin had been. With Pontifex and Coronal united on this point, sorcery was a universal practice on Majipoor now.
And so, in this uncertain time, a good many practitioners of dark arts that once might have been deemed curious and strange indeed were available to offer strange and curious consolations to the millions—the billions—of frightened citizens whose souls were uneasy over what might be about to happen.
In Sisivondal, the busy mercantile center through which all the overland caravans of western Alhanroel passed on their way to the wealthy cities of Castle Mount, the Mystery of the Beholders was the rite by which the people hoped to hold back the dread demons that might burst loose at the hour of the Pontifex’s death.
No visitors came to Sisivondal for its beauty or its elegance. It was set in the midst of a bare featureless plain. One could set out from it and travel a thousand miles in any direction and see nothing but dry, dusty, flat lands. It was a flat dull city in the midst of a flat dull region, and its only distinction was that it was a place where a dozen major highways met.