Under Gominik Halvor he was arriving at certain misty forecasts of his own. Once again he looked into a bowl of the kind Galbifond had showed him; and though the things it showed him now were far murkier than that other vision, they hinted at his going forth from Triggoin eventually and resuming his quest for the throne, and of further great battles, and of many more deaths, and of some immense ultimate event whose nature he could not comprehend at all but which seemed almost to hint at the end of the world, a time of blankness and blackness beyond which nothing could be seen.
“What is this?” he said to Gominik Halvor, of that last apocalyptic revelation. “What am I seeing here?”
But Gominik Halvor peered into the bowl for no more than half a second, and said in a tone of the greatest indifference, “Sometimes what looks inexplicable is merely meaningless, my good Count Polivand. And not everything that a novice conjures up has meaning. I advise you to put this from your mind.”
Which Prestimion attempted to do. But it stayed with him, that swirling vortex of nothingness churning in the bowl. The fact that he was working small sorceries of his own had already begun to unsettle him; the fact that they showed him, and Gominik Halvor, things that were incomprehensible but ominous, unsettled him even more. He felt feverish and strange much of the time now. He sometimes felt that his mind might be breaking up. To Septach Melayn, who had been his only ally in skepticism, and who remained invincibly closed-minded even now, Prestimion said one rainy night when they had sat up late together and had shared some bowls of wine, “I have built all my life about the certainties of reason, Septach Melayn, and I find that my faith in those certainties is threatened now.”
“Is it, Prestimion? Are you succumbing to your own incantations, then?”
“I confess that much of what Gominik Halvor says is beginning to make sense to me. But that statement itself makes no sense to me!”
“A sad plight, to be driven into madness by contradictions of your own devising. Relax, old friend. What these wizards spout is half madness and half fraud, and there’s no need to take either half seriously. I never have, and never will, and neither should you. Since I was a boy I’ve discarded and cast off from myself everything that didn’t seem to fit my understanding of how the world really is.”
“I can no longer do that,” said Prestimion. “Or perhaps my understanding of how the world really is has begun to change, here in this city of sorcerers. I do think I’m coming to believe these folks, at least somewhat.”
“Then I pity you.”
“Spare me that,” Prestimion said. He hunched forward, so that his face was close to Septach Melayn’s, across the table. In a quiet voice he said, “Day by day I try to find the strength to leave here and resume my struggle with Korsibar. I’m along way from that now, but the desire has begun to possess me again. Korsibar must not be allowed to hold his stolen crown: of that I’m as convinced as ever. The fate of the world may depend on what I do, once I’ve gone from here; and I may well need the help of sorcerers, which once I foreswore, in gaining my purposes.”
“Well, then, use them, Prestimion! I never said that I discarded anything that might be of use.”
“But you have no faith in sorcerers, Septach Melayn. So how can you advise them for me?”
“You have the faith. What I believe is unimportant.”
“Faith? I said only that I believe a little of what they—”
“If you believe any at all, you are converted to their creed. You’ve hooked yourself as deeply as Svor or Gialaurys or any of the rest of them. You’ll be wearing a tall brass hat next, and robes with mystic symbols on them.”
“Are you mocking me?” Prestimion asked, feeling himself grow heated.
“Would I do such a thing?”
“Yes. Yes, I think you would. You’re sitting here laughing at me, Septach Melayn.”
“Do you take offense? Shall we go outside and fight?”
“With swords perhaps?”
“Any weapon you prefer, Prestimion. Swords, yes, if you’re in a suicidal mood. Or rocks, or pieces of raw meat. Or we could stand in the street and cast spells at each other until one of us falls down with a paralytic ague.” And with that he began to laugh, and after a moment Prestimion also, and then with one impulse they reached their hands across the table and clasped them, still laughing.
But behind his laughter Prestimion was still heartsore and full of confusion, and it was a long time that night before sleep found him. Somehow, he thought, he had lost his path, and was wandering in a desert far more bewildering and hostile, even, than the one he had crossed a month or two before, in coming here to Triggoin.
3
THE HIGH COUNSELLOR Farquanor said, “The wizard Thalnap Zelifor is outside, and asks an audience with you, lordship. Shall I send him away?”
The High Counsellor’s face had a curdled look. He had never made any attempt to disguise his distaste for the little Vroon.
But Korsibar said, “He’s here at my request. Let him come in. And take yourself away afterward.”
That last did not make Farquanor’s expression any sweeter. He stalked without a word to the door—it was the stark and severe little Stiamot throne-room, where Korsibar spent most of his working hours nowadays—and went out, holding the door open just long enough for Thalnap Zelifor to slip inside.
“Lordship?” the Vroon said, his yellow eyes going wide as he made his starburst before the Coronal. “Lordship, are you well?” That took Korsibar aback, that his distress should be so easily seen. He had been awake all this night past, turning restlessly and unable to find a position of comfort, and more than a few other nights recently before that one.
“Do I look ill, Thalnap Zelifor?”
“You look—weary. Pale. Dark borders beneath your eyes. I have a spell to improve sleep, my lord.”
“Does it give a sleep without dreams?”
“There is no spell for that,” said the Vroon.
“Then I’ll do without it. My dreams are dreadful ones, that bring me awake and sweating with fear again and again; and when I’m awake things are no better.” Korsibar’s brow was clouded and his jaw was clenched; he sat over at one side of Lord Stiamot’s ancient unadorned marble throne, his shoulders hunched high with tension, his fisted hands pressing against each other, damped knuckle to knuckle. “A thousand times a night I see that dam breaking,” he said bleakly, looking off toward the bare stone wall. “The water spilling forth below me, flooding into nearby farms along the river, into villages—so many dead, Thalnap Zelifor, Prestimion’s men and all those villagers also—”
“The dam was Dantirya Sambail’s doing, my lord.”
“The dam was his idea, which he slipped into my mind like a trickle of poison to infect my soul; but I gave the order. The guilt is mine.”
“Guilt? My lord, you were fighting a rebellion!”
“Yes,” Korsibar said, looking away, closing his eyes a moment. “A rebellion. Well, Prestimion’s dead now, or so it’s generally thought. The rebellion’s over. But when will I sleep again? And still I have Dantirya Sambail wandering around here, plaguing me with his schemes, and my sister also, who smolders with wrath against me and won’t be pacified, and the secret faction of my enemies too—I know there’s one; I know I’m being conspired against; for all I know, Farquanor and Farholt, or maybe Oljebbin, or some others whose names I’ve never heard, are at this moment scheming to replace me with some brother of Prestimion, or with the Procurator himself—”
“My lord—”
“Tell me,” Korsibar said, “do you conspire against me too?”
“I, my lord?”
“You come and go, you move from one side to another, you always have: you sell yourself now to Gonivaul, to Thismet, to Prestimion. And now you come back to the Castle claiming to have defected from Prestimion’s side and sell yourself again to me. What is there about me that causes such swarms of tricky folk to attach themselves to me? First there was sly little Svor, whom I
loved and who leaped from me to Prestimion’s bosom, and then Farquanor, who’ll say anything to anyone so long as it does him some good, and then Dantirya Sambail, who managed to betray both his cousin Prestimion and do great harm to me at the same time by talking me into bringing down that dam, a thing which I would gladly undo if I could undo any act of my life.”
“My lord—”
But Korsibar could not halt his flow. “Even my own magus, Sanibak-Thastimoon: he seems loyal enough, but there’s treachery in him somewhere, that I know. And Oljebbin. Gonivaul. I trust none of them. Navigorn, I suppose: he’s a true friend. And Mandrykarn. Vents perhaps. Iram. But even they seem to have turned from me since the dam, though they pretend still to love me as before.” He paused at last, and stared balefully down at the Vroon. “Shall I trust you, Thalnap Zelifor? Why should I?”
“Because no one else but you in this Castle or outside it will protect me, my lord. You are my bulwark. My own self-interest leads me to be your faithful servant.”
Korsibar managed a faint smile at that. “Good. That has some ring of honesty to it.” He gave the Vroon a sidelong look and said, “Have you heard the rumors that Prestimion survived the flood, and lives in hiding somewhere in the north at this very moment?”
“Yes, my lord, I have.”
“Do you think it’s true? Sanibak-Thastimoon does. He’s cast the runes and uttered his spells and sent his mind forth, roving, and he says it’s very likely Prestimion’s alive.”
“Sanibak-Thastimoon is a master of these arts, my lord.”
“Yes. So he is. He’s being tactful; but if he says he thinks there’s a possibility that Prestimion lives, then what he means is he knows perfectly well that he does. Well, I’m not troubled by that. I never wanted Prestimion dead. I was fond of him: do you know that, Thalnap Zelifor? I admired him. I would have named him to my Council. But no, no, he had to refuse, and tell me that I’m an unlawful Coronal, and start an uprising against me. None of that was necessary. He could have had his Council seat and a happy life at his vineyards.” A second time Korsibar closed his eyes, for a longer while now. They ached. They ached all day and all night, from the pounding of his fevered mind behind them.
He looked out toward the Vroon after a time and said, very quietly, “Do the people hate me, do you think?”
“What, my lord?” said the Vroon, surprised.
“In the cities. Up and down the Mount, and outward across the land: what are they saying about me? Do they think I’m a tyrant? A monster? They know about the dam: do they understand that it was an act of war, that Prestimion’s uprising had to be stopped, or do they think I’m a criminal for having done it? My getting the throne: what do they think about that? Are they coming to feel Prestimion should have had it? I fear what they may be whispering out there. I dread it. What can you tell me about that, Thalnap Zelifor?”
“I have not left the Castle, my lord, since I came back to it from Prestimion’s camp. And that was before the event at Lake Mavestoi.”
“Can you cast your mind out there by means of some sorcery, as Sanibak-Thastimoon does, and tell me what the people say about me?”
“I can do better than that, my lord. I can make it possible for you to go into the world yourself and move secretly among them, so that you can listen with your own ears.”
Korsibar sat forward, his heart suddenly racing. “What? Outside the Castle, secretly?”
“Indeed. To Bombifale for half a day, let’s say, or Halanx, or Minimool. In perfect safety, no one aware that it’s the Coronal who’s in their midst.”
“How is this possible?”
Thalnap Zelifor said, “You know, my lord, that in my workshop in the Tampkaree Tower are many devices of my own design, not magical devices but scientific ones, all of which have to do with the transmission of thought from one mind to another?”
“Yes. So you’ve told me.”
“They are, unfortunately, incomplete, most of them. But I’ve finished one lately that would, I think, be of great value to you in precisely the regard you’ve mentioned. One that casts an illusion—that allows a perfect deception of identity—”
Arranging for his departure from the Castle was no simple thing, Coronal though he was. It was necessary first to let word go forth to all his staff that he would be retiring to his bedchamber at the hour of thus-and-so on the evening of thus-and-so for a period of solemn meditation on the condition of the world, and that he must not be disturbed by anyone under any circumstances whatever until he had emerged, even if a day or more were to elapse.
Korsibar needed also to have one of the court secretaries order a high-speed floater to be made available at the south gate, on demand, for the use of the Vroon Thalnap Zelifor and his driver. Another essential step was the invention of a Su-Suheris on the Coronal’s staff who had a certificate providing him with the right of departure and access at the Castle. Thalnap Zelifor had designed his machine to give its user the guise of a member of the two-headed folk, for the sake of better mystification, since they all looked very much alike to people of other races.
Each of these steps had to be carried out in independence of all the others, so that no one would think to connect the retreat of the Coronal to his bedchamber with the comings and goings of the Vroon wizard and his Su-Suheris driver. Several days were required to put everything in place. But that gave Korsibar time to master the trick of Thalnap Zelifor’s shapechanging device.
It was a small instrument, shaped much like a decorative dagger, that a man could wear at his hip without attracting attention. In using it, one had first to sweep the mind free of all distraction and inner noise, so that the device might attune itself to its user’s mental functioning. Then one merely put one’s hand over the hilt of the little dagger and slid downward on the switch that activated it, and took care to hold the switch in the downward position all the while the machine was in use.
“Is there no way to lock it in place?” Korsibar asked.
“None. I am still working on that aspect of it. But it’s no great thing to keep your hand on that little lever for a few short hours, is it, lordship?”
“I suppose not. Let me try it now.”
“Clear your mind of thought, my lord.”
“Not so easily done. But I’ll try,” said Korsibar. He strapped the device to his side, and closed his eyes, and set his mind adrift in a featureless sea where all was gray above and below, and there was nothing whatever to behold. When he thought he had properly quieted all the noises of his mind, he moved the switch downward and held it there.
Across the room from him was a mirror, and after a time he thought to glance into it. But he saw only his own reflection. He tried again, dipping again into that gray sea and drifting calmly on the breast of it, and after a time he was so calm that he nearly forgot what he was trying to do; but then it came to him and he moved the switch again, and again the face of Lord Korsibar looked back at him from the mirror across the way.
“It isn’t working, Thalnap Zelifor.”
“On the contrary, my lord. To my eyes you are the Su-Suheris Kurnak-Munikaad, precisely as it says on this official certificate. And quite a splendid figure you are, as Su-Suheris figures go. You look like the very twin of Sanibak-Thastimoon.”
“I see only myself in the mirror.” He touched his hand to his head. It felt like his own. Mustache, beard: Su-Suheris folk had no beards. Nor was there any second head that he could detect. “Nothing has changed in me,” said Korsibar. “I have only one head. My flesh feels like human flesh.”
“Of course, lordship! You are not changed at all. What has changed is the way you appear to others. To any onlooker you are—but come, let me show you—”
They went into the hall. Korsibar kept his hand pressed to the switch at his hip. A chambermaid passed just then, and Thalnap Zelifor said to her, “Lord Korsibar has entered into his retreat, and no one is to approach his door until he comes forth again.”
“I’ll send the wor
d around, sir,” said the chambermaid. She glanced without sign of recognition at Korsibar, and looked away. She gave no indication whatever that she saw the Coronal of Majipoor standing beside the Vroon at that very moment.
“So I am a Su-Suheris now,” said Korsibar, feeling the first flicker of amusement he had known in many weeks. “Or seem that way to others, at any rate. Well done, Thalnap Zelifor! Let’s be on our way!”
Thalnap Zelifor had already ordered up the floater, and it was waiting at Dizimaule Plaza when he and Korsibar emerged from the Castle. None of the Castle servants whom they had encountered as they moved outward through the building had paid any attention to them: no starbursts, no genuflections. It was only a Vroon and a Su-Suheris, members of the Castle staff like themselves, bound on some errand of their own.
Korsibar did not want to be absent overlong on this first excursion, and so they directed themselves to High Morpin, which was the city of the Mount closest to the Castle itself, a ride of less than an hour away. A sense of great relief and freedom came over him as the floater went soaring down the Grand Calintane Highway and the fantastic many-limbed monster that was the Castle dwindled behind him. He had not been at the controls of a floater since becoming Coronal, and it was pleasant to be guiding one now. He scarcely ever was allowed to do anything for himself any longer there were people to drive for him, people to cut his meat for him and pour his wine, even people to dress and undress him. For the moment, at least, he was a free man again.
He had reverted to his own appearance once they left the Castle. But Thalnap Zelifor reminded him that he would have to be in the Su-Suheris form if any floaters came near them on the road. “I understand,” Korsibar said, and every few minutes he would reach down to touch the little switch. “Is it still working? Did I turn into a Su-Suheris?”
“You are the very image of one, my lord,” dedared Thalnap Zelifor.
Soon the golden airy webwork out of which the streets of the pleasure-city of High Morpin were constructed could be seen gleaming on the slope of the Mount to their left. They parked the floater at the edge of the city, near the great fountain that had been built in the reign of Korsibar’s father, which unendingly sent spears of tinted water shooting hundreds of feet into the air, and walked into the heart of the city. “Am I all right?” Korsibar asked nervously again and again. “I have no way of telling, you know, whether this thing of yours is functioning correctly.”