Silverberg, Robert - Majipoor - The Book of Changes.pdf

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MAJIPOOR
ROBERT SILVERBERG
L ORD V ALENTINE ’ S C ASTLE (1980)
M AJIPOOR C HRONICLES (1981)
V ALENTINE P ONTIFEX (1983)
T HE M OUNTAINS OF M AJIPOOR (1995)
THE PRESTIMION TRILOGY:
S ORCERERS OF M AJIPOOR (1997)
L ORD P RESTIMION (1999)
T HE K ING OF D REAMS (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 collection Majipoor 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 novel The 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
 
without actually being about anything at all.
“Make a poem for us, Aithin,” someone of his circle would call out, as they sat at their wine in one of the
brick-walled taverns of the Castle. “Yes!” the others would cry. “A poem, a poem!”
“Give me a word, someone,” Furvain would say.
And someone, his current lover, perhaps, would say at random, “Sausage.”
“Splendid. And you, give me another, now. The first that comes to mind.”
“Pontifex,” someone else would say.
“One more,” Furvain would beg. “You, back there.”
“Steetmoy,” the reply would come, from someone at the back of the group.
And Furvain, glancing for just a moment into his wine-bowl as though some poem might be lurking there,
would draw a deep breath and instantaneously begin to recite a mock epic, in neatly balanced hexameter
and the most elaborate of anapestic rhythms, about the desperate craving of a Pontifex for sausage made
of steetmoy meat, and the sending of the laziest and most cowardly of the royal courtiers on a hunting
expedition to the snowbound lair of that ferocious white-furred creature of northern Zimroel. Without
pausing he would chant for eight or ten minutes, perhaps, until the task was done, and the tale,
improvised though it was, would have a beginning and a middle and an uproariously funny end, bringing
him a shower of enthusiastic applause and a fresh flask of wine.
The collected works of Aithin Furvain, had he ever bothered to collect them, would have filled many
volumes; but it was his custom to toss his poems aside as quickly as he had scribbled them, nor were
many of them ever written down in the first place, and it was only through the prudence of his friends that
some of them had been saved and copied and circulated through the land. But that was of no importance
to him. Making poetry was as easy for him as drawing breath, and he saw no reason why his quick
improvisations should be saved and treasured. It was not, after all, as though they had been intended as
enduring works of art, such as his royal father’s tunnels had been meant to be.
The Coronal Lord Sangamor had reigned long and generally successfully as Majipoor’s junior monarch
for nearly thirty years under the Pontifex Pelxinai, until at last the venerable Pelxinai had been gathered to
the Source by the Divine and Sangamor had ascended to the Pontificate himself. As Pontifex it was
mandatory for him to leave Castle Mount and relocate himself in the subterranean Labyrinth, far to the
south, that was the constitutional home of the elder ruler. For the remainder of his life he would rarely be
seen in the outside world. Aithin Furvain had dutifully visited his father at the Labyrinth not long after his
investiture as Pontifex, as he and his brothers were supposed to do now and then, but he doubted that he
would ever make another such journey. The Labyrinth was a dark and gloomy place, very little to his
liking. It could not be very pleasing for old Sangamor either, Furvain suspected; but, like all Coronals,
Sangamor had known from the start that the Labyrinth was where he must finish his days. Furvain was
under no such obligation to reside there, nor even to go there at all if he chose not to. And so Furvain,
who had never known his father particularly well, did not see any reason why the two of them would ever
meet again.
He had effectively separated himself from the Castle as well by then. Even while Lord Sangamor still
reigned there, Furvain had set up a second residence for himself at Dundilmir, one of the Slope Cities far
down toward the base of the gigantic upthrusting fang of rock that was Castle Mount. A schoolmate and
close friend of his named Tanigel had now come into his inheritance as Duke of Dundilmir, and had
offered Furvain some property there, a relatively modest estate overlooking the volcanic region known as
 

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