Robert Silverberg - Majipoor - The Book of Changes

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MAJIPOOR

ROBERT SILVERBERG

LORDVALENTINE’SCASTLE(1980)

MAJIPOORCHRONICLES(1981)

VALENTINEPONTIFEX(1983)

THEMOUNTAINS OFMAJIPOOR(1995)

THE PRESTIMION TRILOGY:

SORCERERS OFMAJIPOOR(1997)

LORDPRESTIMION(1999)

THEKING OFDREAMS(2001)

The giant world of Majipoor, with a diameter at least ten times as great as that of our own planet’s, was

settled in the distant past by colonists from Earth, who made a place for themselves amidst the Piurivars,

the intelligent native beings, known to the intruders from Earth as “Shapeshifters” or “Metamorphs”

because of their ability to alter their bodily forms. Majipoor is an extraordinarily beautiful planet, with a

largely benign climate, and is a place of astonishing zoological, botanical, and geographical wonders.

Everything on Majipoor is large-scale—fantastic, marvelous.

Over the course of thousands of years, friction between the human colonists and the Metamorphs

eventually led to a lengthy war and the defeat of the natives, who were penned up in huge reservations in

remote regions of the planet. During those years, also, species from various other worlds came to settle

on Majipoor—the tiny gnomish Vroons, the great shaggy four-armed Skandars, the two-headed

Su-Suheris race, and several more. Some of these—notably the Vroons and the Su-Suheris—were

gifted with extrasensory mental powers that permitted them to practice various forms of wizardry. But

throughout the thousands of years of Majipoor history the humans remained the dominant species. They

flourished and expanded, and eventually the human population of Majipoor came to number in the

billions, mainly occupying huge and distinctive cities of ten to twenty million people.

The governmental system that evolved over those years was a kind of nonhereditary dual monarchy.

Upon coming to power the senior ruler, known as the Pontifex, selects his own junior ruler, the Coronal.

Technically the Coronal is regarded as the adoptive son of the Pontifex, and upon the death of the

Pontifex takes his place on the senior throne, naming a new Coronal as his own successor. Both of these

rulers make their homes on Alhanroel, the largest and most populous of Majipoor’s three continents. The

imperial residence of the Pontifex is in the lowest level of a vast subterranean city called the Labyrinth,

from which he emerges only at rare intervals. The Coronal lives in an enormous castle at the summit of

Castle Mount, a thirty-mile-high peak whose atmosphere is maintained in an eternal springtime by

elaborate machinery. From time to time the Coronal descends from the opulence of the Castle to travel

across the face of the world in a Grand Processional, an event designed to remind Majipoor of the might

and power of its rulers. Such a journey, which in Majipoor’s vast distances could take several years,

invariably brings the Coronal to Zimroel, the second continent, a place of gigantic cities interspersed

among tremendous rivers and great unspoiled forests. More rarely he goes to the torrid third continent in

the south, Suvrael, largely a wasteland of Sahara-like deserts.

Two other functionaries became part of the Majipoor governmental system later on. The development of

a method of worldwide telepathic communication made possible nightly sendings of oracular advice and

occasional therapeutic counsel, which became the responsibility of the mother of the incumbent Coronal,

under the title of Lady of the Isle of Sleep. Her headquarters are situated on an island of continental size

midway between Alhanroel and Zimroel. Later, a second telepathic authority, the King of Dreams, was

set in place. He employs more powerful telepathic equipment in order to monitor and chastise criminals

and other citizens whose behavior deviates from accepted Majipoor norms. This office is the hereditary

property of the Barjazid family of Suvrael.

The first of the Majipoor novels,Lord Valentine’s Castle, tells of a conspiracy that succeeds in

overthrowing the legitimate Coronal, Lord Valentine, and replacing him with an impostor. Valentine,

stripped of all his memories, is set loose in Zimroel to live the life of a wandering juggler, but gradually

regains an awareness of his true role and launches a successful campaign to reclaim his throne. In the

sequel,Valentine Pontifex, the now mature Valentine, a pacifist at heart, must deal with an uprising

among the Metamorphs, who are determined to drive the hated human conquerors from their world at

last. Valentine defeats them and restores peace with the help of the giant maritime beasts known as

sea-dragons, whose intelligent powers were not previously suspected on Majipoor.

The story collectionMajipoor Chronicles depicts scenes from many eras and social levels of Majipoor

life, providing detailed insight into a number of aspects of the giant world not described in the novels. The

short novelThe Mountains of Majipoor , set five hundred years after Valentine’s reign, carries the saga

into the icy northlands, where a separate barbaric civilization has long endured. And the most recent of

the Majipoor books,The Prestimion Trilogy, set a thousand years prior to Valentine’s time, tells of an

era in which the powers of sorcery and magic have become rife on Majipoor. The Coronal Lord

Prestimion, after being displaced from his throne by the usurping son of the former Coronal with the

assistance of mages and warlocks, leads his faction to victory in a civil war in which he too makes use of

necromantic powers.

The story presented here offers an episode dating back to a time before any of the Majipoor novels

published so far—a period more than four thousand years before Valentine’s time, more than three

thousand years before Prestimion. But its setting is ten thousand years after the time of the first human

settlement, and the early history of Majipoor is already becoming legendary—

THE BOOK OF CHANGES

ROBERT SILVERBERG

Standing at the narrow window of his bedchamber early on the morning of the second day of his new life

as a captive, looking out at the blood-red waters of the Sea of Barbirike far below, Aithin Furvain heard

the bolt that sealed his apartment from the outside being thrown back. He glanced quickly around and

saw the lithe catlike form of his captor, the bandit chief Kasinibon, come sidling in. Furvain turned toward

the window again.

“As I was saying last night, it truly is a beautiful view, isn’t it?” Kasinibon said. “There’s nothing like that

scarlet lake anywhere else in all Majipoor.”

“Lovely, yes,” said Furvain, in a remote, affectless way.

With the same relentless good cheer Kasinibon went on, addressing himself to Furvain’s back, “I do

hope you slept well, and that in general you’re finding your lodgings here comfortable, Prince Aithin.”

Out of some vestigial sense of courtesy—courtesy, even to a bandit!—Furvain turned to face the other

man. “I don’t ordinarily use my title,” he said, stiffly, coolly.

“Of course. Neither do I, as a matter of fact. I come from a long line of east-country nobility, you know.

Minor nobility, perhaps, yet nobility nevertheless. But they are such archaic things, titles!” Kasinibon

grinned. It was a sly grin, almost conspiratorial, a mingling of mockery and charm. Despite everything

Furvain found it impossible to dislike the man. —“You haven’t answered my question, though. Are you

comfortable here, Furvain?”

“Oh, yes. Quite. It’s absolutely the most elegant of prisons.”

“I do wish to point out that this is not actually a prison but merely a private residence.”

“I suppose. Even so, I’m a prisoner here, is that not true?”

“I concede the point. You are indeed a prisoner, for the time being. My prisoner.”

“Thank you,” said Furvain. “I appreciate your straightforwardness.” He returned his attention to

Barbirike Sea, which stretched, long and slender as a spear, for fifty miles or so through the valley below

the gray cliff on which Kasinibon’s fortresslike retreat was perched. Long rows of tall sharp-tipped

crescent dunes, soft as clouds from this distance, bordered its shores. They too were red. Even the air

here had a red reflected shimmer. The sun itself seemed to have taken on a tinge of it. Kasinibon had

explained yesterday, though Furvain had not been particularly interested in hearing it at the time, that the

Sea of Barbirike was home to untold billions of tiny crustaceans whose fragile bright-colored shells,

decomposing over the millennia, had imparted that bloody hue to the sea’s waters and given rise also to

the red sands of the adjacent dunes. Furvain wondered whether his royal father, who had such an

obsessive interest in intense color effects, had ever made the journey out here to see this place. Surely he

had. Surely.

Kasinibon said, “I’ve brought you some pens and a supply of paper.” He laid them neatly out on the little

table beside Furvain’s bed. “As I said earlier, this view is bound to inspire poetry in you, that I know.”

“No doubt it will,” said Furvain, still speaking in that same distant, uninflected tone.

“Shall we take a closer look at the lake this afternoon, you and I?”

“So you don’t intend to keep me penned up all the time in these three rooms?”

“Of course I don’t. Why would I be so cruel?”

“Well, then. I’ll be pleased to be taken on a tour of the lake,” Furvain said, as indifferently as before. “Its

beauty may indeed stir a poem or two in me.”

Kasinibon gave the stack of paper an amiable tap. “You also may wish to use these sheets to begin

drafting your ransom request.”

Furvain narrowed his eyes. “Tomorrow, perhaps, for that. Or the day after.”

“As you wish. There’s no hurry, you know. You are my guest here for as long as you care to stay.”

“Your prisoner, actually.”

“That too,” Kasinibon said. “My guest, but also my prisoner, though I hope you will see yourself rather

more as guest than prisoner. —You will excuse me now. I have my dreary administrative duties to deal

with. Until this afternoon, then.” And grinned once more, and bowed and took his leave.

Furvain was the fifth son of the former Coronal Lord Sangamor, whose best-known achievement had

been the construction of the remarkable tunnels on Castle Mount that bore his name. Lord Sangamor

was a man of a strong artistic bent, and the tunnels, whose walls were fashioned from a kind of artificial

stone that blazed with inherent radiant color, were considered by connoisseurs to be a supreme work of

art. Furvain had inherited his father’s aestheticism but very little of his strength of character: in the eyes of

many at the Mount he was nothing more than a wastrel, an idler, even a rogue. His own friends, and he

had many of them, were hard pressed to find any great degree of significant merit in him. He was an

unusually skillful writer of light verse, yes; and a genial companion on a journey or in a tavern, yes; and a

clever hand with a quip or a riddle or a paradox, yes; and otherwise—otherwise—

A Coronal’s son has no significant future in the administration of Majipoor, by ancient constitutional

tradition. No function is set aside for him. He can never rise to the throne himself, for the crown is always

adoptive, never hereditary. The Coronal’s eldest son would usually establish himself on a fine estate in

one of the Fifty Cities of the Mount and live the good life of a provincial duke. A second son, or even a

third, might remain at the Castle and became a councilor of the realm, if he showed any aptitude for the

intricacies of government. But a fifth son, born late in his father’s reign and thereby shouldered out of the

inner circle by all those who had arrived before him, would usually face no better destiny than a drifting

existence of irresponsible pleasure and ease. There is no role in public life for him to play. He is his

father’s son, but he is nothing at all in his own right. No one is likely to think of him as qualified for any

kind of serious duties, nor even to have any interest in such things. Such princes are entitled by birth to a

permanent suite of rooms at the Castle and a generous and irrevocable pension, and it is assumed of

them that they will contentedly devote themselves to idle amusements until the end of their days.

Furvain, unlike some princes of a more restless nature, had adapted very well to that prospect. Since no

one expected very much of him, he demanded very little of himself. Nature had favored him with good

looks: he was tall and slender, a graceful, elegant man with wavy golden hair and finely chiseled features.

He was an admirable dancer, sang quite well in a clear, light tenor voice, excelled at most sports that did

not require brute physical force, and was a capable hand at swordsmanship and chariot racing. But

above all else he excelled at the making of verse. Poetry flowed from him in torrents, as rain falls from the

sky. At any moment of the day or night, whether he had just been awakened after a long evening of

drunken carousing or was in the midst of that carousing itself, he could take pen in hand and compose,

almost extemporaneously, a ballad or a sonnet or a villanelle or a jolly rhyming epigram, or quick

thumping short-legged doggerel, or even a long skein of heroic couplets, on any sort of theme. There was

no profundity to such hastily dashed-off stuff, of course. It was not in his nature to probe the depths of

the human soul, let alone to want to set out his findings in the form of poetry. But everyone knew that

Aithin Furvain had no master when it came to the making of easy, playful verse, minor verse that

celebrated the joys of the moment, the pleasures of the bed or of the bottle, verse that poked fun without

ever edging into sour malicious satire, or that demonstrated a quick verbal interplay of rhythm and sound

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