Robert Silverberg's Majipoor
(For a quick introduction to Silverberg's Majipoor, see
Welcome to Majipoor. For the Wikipedia article on these works, go here.)
I confess -- I originally posted this in my own domain, which no longer exists, several years ago, and discovered that someone had archived it, so I'm re-publishing it as part of this blog. It has been lightly edited, and the links are still good.
In his
Lord Valentine’s Castle, (New York:
Bantam Books, 1981) Robert Silverberg, (a five-time Nebula award winner,
but not for this book) has created a fascinating world. Silverberg has
written about that world again, in
Majipoor Chronicles, (New York: Bantam, 1989) in
Valentine Pontifex
(New York: Bantam, 1989), in Sorcerers of Majipoor, (New York: HarperPrism, 1996) in
Lord Prestimion
(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), in The King of Dreams
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001, in "The Seventh Seal," (in
Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy,
edited by Silverberg--New York: Tor, 1998) and possibly in some other works.
Warning:
if you are wondering about whether to read these books, but are the kind
of person who doesn't want to know about what happens until you have
finished a book, you should not read this web page further. I recommend
the books to you. I have found them worth reading, and reading again.
Majipoor’s
geography and government
The planet is very large, probably as large, or larger, than Jupiter or Saturn. (As a
reviewer points out, Silverberg claims that it is the largest inhabited planet in fantastic literature, but isn't as large as Larry Niven's
Ringworld. The Ringworld is supposed to
be a manufactured object.) However, because of a lack of heavy elements,
gravity is not oppressive. Most of it is covered by water, but the land
areas combined are larger than those of any other inhabited planet.
There are four main land areas, Alhanroel, Zimroel, Suvrael, and the
Isle of Sleep. There is also one large archipelago. Castle Mount, on
Alhanroel, is very tall--so tall, thirty miles high--that there are
weather machines near its top, producing a breathable atmosphere for the
inhabitants of its cities, and its Castle. Other features, including
the oceans and rivers are also, as it were, larger than life. So are
some of the manufactured objects, especially the Labyrinth, a vast
underground city several miles deep, and the Castle, with thousands of
rooms, on Castle Mount.
The
Piurivars, an indigenous race, who used to be found on all continents,
are almost all confined to a large reservation in Zimroel in
Castle. (Some of Silverberg's other writing about Majipoor goes back long before
Castle, including before the Piurivars
were moved to the reservation.) This species is also known as
metamorphs, or shape-shifters, because they have the ability to alter
their appearance, even their structure, to mimic other species.
There
are four powers of the government throughout most of the books. (There
are stories going back before all four were established, and a fifth
power is established at the end.) These are the Pontifex, who issues
decrees relating to commerce from the Labyrinth, in Alhanroel; the
Coronal, who is the ceremonial head of government, carrying out the
decrees of the Pontifex, from the Castle, also in Alhanroel; the Lady,
sending out, with her subordinates, dreams of peace and goodness from
the Isle, and the King of Dreams, sending out dreams to punish criminals
from Suvrael. The Coronal becomes Pontifex on the death of an old
Pontifex. The new Pontifex chooses a Coronal, usually from a small group
of those trained to lead, but does not choose his own relatives. The
Coronal’s mother becomes the Lady. The King of Dreams is a hereditary
office, passed down within the Barjazid family.
One
interesting aspect of the governmental institutions that Silverberg
created is that Coronals don't like their jobs very much. They must sign
countless documents, and attend countless ceremonies, and listen to
countless speeches by various minor functionaries. They are expected to
make Grand Processionals every few years, which takes them around
Majipoor for as much as five years at a time. They look forward with
real horror to moving to the Labyrinth, where they will live as Pontifex
when they succeed to that office, coming above ground but rarely.
Culture
Majipoor is so large that its human rulers invited non-humans to come
and help colonize it, thousands of years before the time of Castle,
the first book written. As a result, there are several species who
have lived on Majipoor for a long time. The Skandars are tall and
covered with fur, and have four arms. The Su-Suheris have two heads. The
Ghayrogs lay eggs. Hjorts and Vroons and Liimen are obviously
non-human. These species are all living in harmony, and share a single
culture, more or less, and a common language. They travel and work
together, and live in the same cities, and have the same government.
There
is an indigenous species, the Piriuvar, or metamorphs, who are not part
of the common culture, although a few of them do live among the other
species, and communication is possible.
The
first book describes how Valentine, the Coronal, has been deprived of
his memory, and his rulership, but becomes aware of his loss, and, with a
group of associates, including humans, Skandars, a Hjort, a Vroon, and
even an alien being, (a tourist on Majipoor) regains his memory and his
position. During this story, Silverberg often gives us just names of
great cities, without any description, or with a very modest
description. In no case, except for a city inhabited mostly by Ghayrogs,
does he describe one of these cities as having a different culture. The
cultural differences in the mostly Ghayrog city, Dulorn, are because
Ghayrogs don’t sleep, except at one season of the year, not because they
wish to be separate, or others from them.
One
theme, spread throughout the Majipoor books, is how the Piurivars were
originally mistreated, and how they finally come to accept a role as
part of the common culture.
The second book in the series,
Chronicles, is a group of stories.
Silverberg uses a fictional device. It has been possible for citizens of
Majipoor to store their memories and experiences in such a way that
they can be re-lived. The book relates these experiences, which are
re-lived by Hissune, one of the main characters in the first three
books, and are part of his training to take Valentine’s place as
Coronal.
In
the very first of these episodes, “Thesme and the Ghayrog,” Silverberg
takes us back to a time long before Valentine and Hissune, when
non-human species are new on Majipoor. Thesme has decided to live in
isolation in the forest. She finds an injured Ghayrog, and helps him
recover. She eventually has sexual experiences with him. Finally, she
tires of this, and returns to living with her family and human
acquaintances, but the episode closes with the understanding that
humans, Ghayrogs, and other species are going to work together in
harmony to tame Majipoor.
Silverberg's use of Culture Compared with Jack Vance's Work
In case anyone wonders, Silverberg has read Vance, and, in fact, he
says: "Vance was an influence so far as the design of the planet was
concerned -- I borrowed his
Big Planet
concept, though I designed my own." (Interview
with Jim Freund, Ellen Datlow, and Mike McCoy, September 7, 1997.)
Actually, I didn't know this when I decided to start this comparison. I
just knew that Majipoor was way too homogenous to be a Vance creation.
The
most thorough treatment of Vance's propensity to invent culture is
"People are Plastic: Jack Vance and the Dilemma of Cultural Relativism,"
by Tom Shippey, in
Jack Vance: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography,
Edited by A. E. Cunningham (Boston Spa and London: The British
Library, 2000, pp. 67 - 84) Shippey's first paragraph says, in part:
.
. . Vance’s work should not be treated as merely whimsical or
decorative, but should be seen as centrally preoccupied with one of the
most acute moral dilemmas and major intellectual developments of our
age: a dilemma and a development furthermore which tend to be avoided or
left unfocused, to our detriment, in literature of the mainstream. The
intellectual development is that of social or cultural anthropology, . .
. and the dilemma it generates is, to put it bluntly, whether any sense
of absolute value, or of ‘human nature’, can survive a thoroughgoing
acceptance of the cultural relativism recommended so forcefully by so
many anthropologists.
Silverberg's
creation has a culture, and there are local variations, but nothing
like those of Vance. Every city, almost every neighborhood, seems to
call upon Vance's creative powers, as he invents new types of clothing,
food, occupations, amusements, language, religion and courtship for so
many of these. Or, perhaps, it's the other way around. Vance adds
neighborhoods and cities so he can have places for his permutations of
culture to inhabit. Majipoor does have a few isolated pockets where
there is a separate language, or a separate religion, (even, in
Prestimion, an area where several
intelligent alien species live) but they are in the minority on the
planet, and Silverberg does not dwell on them.
Silverberg
uses some of his creative powers in describing variety in the
landscape, (or sometimes in the seascape) and in the animals and plants
that inhabit it. Besides the several diverse species of intelligent
beings that have come to Majipoor, there is an abundant variety of
supposedly non-intelligent life there. The most spectacular of these are
the sea-dragons, immense beasts that migrate in herds, in paths that
take them years, around the planet. They can swim, and have wing-like
appendages, but cannot fly. In
Castle, Valentine and his companions
travel with the dragon-hunters to reach the Isle of Sleep. On the way, a
giant sea-dragon attacks their ship, and some of his companions are
lost. Valentine, himself, with his giant human female bodyguard, is
swallowed by the dragon. The bodyguard finally cuts a tunnel in the side
of the dragon, and they escape. In
Pontifex, we, and the central culture,
find that the sea-dragons are highly intelligent, and have the power to
send their thoughts to other intelligent beings at a great distance, but
the central culture lived in ignorance of that for thousands of years.
Scattered
throughout the books are descriptions of strange landscapes, soil,
geological formations of many types. Also, I have not counted, but there
must be names, and, in some cases, descriptions, of at least a hundred
different species of plants, and as many animals. In both
Pontifex
and Prestimion, some animals have been
produced (by genetic engineering?) for evil purposes. Except for these,
the culture of Majipoor lives in general harmony with the land, the sea,
and their non-intelligent inhabitants. The variety of natural features,
living and non-living, has probably not been matched in any other works
of fantastic literature.
It
is true that, having established a nearly homogenous culture on the
largest inhabited planet in the first three books about Majipoor,
Silverberg departs somewhat from that in later writings.
The Mountains of Majipoor
(New York: Bantam: 1996) presents a story that takes place several
hundreds of years after Valentine has departed the scene. Harpirias, a
young noble, is sent to a newly-discovered group of humans that have
been geographically isolated for thousands of years. They speak a
different language, have a different religion, etc. However, Harpirias
is able to learn the language, and to understand them. If Vance had
written about the same situation, there would surely have been some
incomprehensibility between the two cultures. (Mountains
also presents the Piurivars as not having been completely homogenized yet.)
Sorcerers of Majipoor (New York: Harper Prism, 1998 -- excerpt from novel
here)
takes place long before Valentine's time. In it, Silverberg describes
how many religious cults, each bizarrely different, have arisen.
However, these are all manifestations of the same thing:
In
a thousand cities, furious mages came forth, saying, "This is the way
of salvation, these are the spells that will restore the world," and the
people, doleful and frightened and hungry for salvation, said, "Yes,
yes, show us the way." In each city the observances were different, and
yet in essence everything was the same everywhere: processions and wild
dances, shrieking flutes, roaring trumpets. (p. 33)
Revenge
Since this is fantastic fiction, there is plenty of opportunity for
bizarre crime.
The first book begins shortly after one such has been committed.
Valentine, the Coronal, has had his body taken over by another, who now
masquerades as Coronal. Some of his consciousness, but not all—not
enough even to remember that he was Coronal—has been placed in a
different body. The story of the first book is the story of Valentine’s
quest, which is, at first, undertaken very reluctantly, to overthrow the
false Coronal and restore harmony to the realm.
At
the end, Valentine and his followers discover that one of the Barjazid
family members has had his mind placed in what had been Valentine’s
body. The force behind this awful act, however, was a group of
metamorphs (Piurivars), who have masqueraded as humans, one of them even
assuming the form of the King of Dreams, the usurper’s father. When the
plot is unmasked, and Valentine is back in his rightful place, one of
his friends proposes vengeance upon the Piurivars. Valentine does not
agree: “But I think also we must reach toward those people, and heal
them of their anger if we can, or Majipoor will be thrown into endless
war.” (Castle, p. 444) He also did not
seek vengeance on the human who was the tool of the Piurivars: "Lord
Valentine . . . had gently and lovingly sought even to win the soul of
his enemy the usurper Dominin Barjazid, in the last moments of the war
of restoration."
Pontifex, p. 49.
There are three stories in the
Chronicles
that also demonstrate that vengeance is not central to Silverberg’s
characters. In one, a merchant has been sold shoddy goods. While he is
meeting with the man who sold them to him, he impulsively pushes him out
the window of the hotel room into the river, to his death. The river is
so boisterous that the body will not be found. Things go along well
enough for a while, but eventually the King of Dreams starts sending
terrible dreams to the murderer. He flees, taking on new identity, again
and again, each time escaping for a while. Finally, he becomes a
pilgrim in the Isle, where pilgrimage from level to level, toward the
center, usually takes many years. After some years there, he sees a man
who looks like the merchant he murdered. He converses with the man, who
turns out to be the son of the dead man. The son says that he does not
want to punish the murderer. He has already been punished, and all that
the son wants is to find out what happened to his father.
Another
story concerns the establishment of the King of Dreams. Dekkeret, a
noble from the Castle, has business in Suvrael, which is mostly an
oppressive desert wasteland, and hires a Barjazid as a guide into the
interior. While on the journey, he is beset by terrible dreams, and
almost dies while sleepwalking during one. He discovers that the guide
has been sending them, using an apparatus he wears on his head to
project dreams from his own brain. Barjazid asks if the noble will
punish him. The noble says that he will not. Instead, he wants Barjazid
to come to Castle Mount, to show the apparatus to the Coronal and
others. This Barjazid’s son, Dinitak Barjazid, will become the first
King of Dreams.
In
a third story, a shopkeeper is visited by two rascals, who tell her
that she has inherited one of the great homes in a city far away. For a
significant sum, they will process her claim to the estate. She pays
them, and goes to claim her inheritance, finding that she has no such
claim, and that the rascals have been saying the same thing to many
others. Through a long series of circumstances, the girl does become
mistress of this same great home. One day she sees the rascals. She has
them arrested, because they have defrauded many, but asks that their
punishment be slight, because her circumstances are so much better,
because of what happened to her as a result of the swindle.
A fourth story details an episode in the conquest of the Piurivars by Stiamot, the Coronal. In
Prestimion,
which takes place much later, we read that Stiamot, many years
later, tried to travel to ask forgiveness of the Danipiur, the leader of
the Piurivars, but died before he was able to finish that journey.
Silverberg said
(in the interview cited above, with Freund, Datlow, and McCoy) that "I knew that Lord Valentine's Castle
needed a sequel to deal with the problem of the disgruntled Shapeshifters." He said the same thing in other interviews.
There is another interesting aspect of revenge in
Pontifex. The Piurivars have a long
memory. They remember sacrificing two sea-dragons in their holiest
place, on land, long before humans came to Majipoor. They believe that
they have so defiled the place, and themselves, that they abandon it.
However, the greatest of the sea-dragons tells (through telepathy)
Faraataa, Piurivar leader who thinks he is leading his people to atone
for this sin:
The
gods gave themselves willingly, that day in Velalisier. It was their
sacrifice, which you misunderstand. You have invented a myth of a
Defilement, but it is the wrong myth. . . . The water-king Niznorn and
the water-king Domsitor gave themselves as sacrifices that day long ago,
just as the water-kings give themselves yet to our hunters as they
round the curve of Zimroel. (p. 362--this idea, of a willingness to be
sacrificed by intelligent beings, is reinforced in "Seventh Shrine.")
Silverberg's characters don't always feel that they need revenge. The
sea-dragons go further--they willingly offer themselves as victims.
Religion, with comparison to Jack Vance
Although
he doesn't spell out its theology, clearly Majipoor, and, presumably,
Silverberg, consider that religion is important, and often, although not
always, beneficial. Not so with
Vance,
who never presents religion as anything but empty, and usually
dangerous, ritual. Vance's priests, or the equivalent, are usually
greedy and hypocritical.
The
Lady of the Isle, although a living human person, is, in a sense,
worshipped by the inhabitants of Majipoor. They address prayers to her.
There is, however, another sort of deity for Majipoor, understood as
above all, and, somehow, influencing and controlling events.
Here is a dialog near the end of
Castle
(p. 375):
Deliamber
said . . . "It may be that the present troubles of the realm are the
beginning of the retribution for the suppression of the Metamorphs."
Valentine stared at him. "What do you mean by that?"
"Only that we have gone a long way, here on Majipoor, without paying any
sort of price for the original sin of the conquerors. The account
accumulates interest, you know. . . . perhaps the past is starting to
send us its reckoning at last."
"But Valentine had nothing to do with the oppression of the Metamorphs," Carabella protested. . . .
Deliamber shrugged. "Such things are never fairly distributed. What makes you think that only the guilty are punished?"
"The Divine--"
"Why do you think the Divine is fair? In the long run, all wrongs are
righted, every minus is balanced with a plus, the columns are totaled
and the totals are found correct. But that's in the long run. We must
live in the short run, and matters are often unjust there. The
compensating forces of the universe make all the accounts come out even,
but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process."
"More than that," said Valentine suddenly. "It may be that I was chosen
to be an instrument of Deliamber's compensating forces, and it was
necessary for me to suffer in order to be effective."
Pontifex, in a sentence, is about the long run--righting all wrongs.
It is a story of sin, sacrifice, and redemption. The book begins by
describing how the life of Majipoor is falling apart, with the agents
being, in part, the metamorphs, and ends with the establishment of these
Piurivars as equal and participating members of the society of
Majipoor. Throughout the book, there is frequent mention of higher
powers:
"We
have no choice in that: it is the will of the Divine. Is that not so?"
(p. 24. The speaker is Aximaan Threysz, an ancient and respected Ghayrog
matriarch and farmer.)
"Noor groaned. 'The Divine spare me!'" (p. 27. Noor is an government agricultural agent.)
"By the Divine, if you could know how I long to see the sun again!" (Valentine speaking, p. 47)
"But is he acceptable to the Divine, my friends?" (A human, claiming that Valentine should not be Coronal, pp. 129-130)
Actually,
the humans who came to Majipoor long ago are not the only beings who
have sinned. Their sin was not "original sin," or not the original one
on the planet. The Piurivars sinned, at least in their own eyes, by
sacrificing two sea-dragons, before humans ever came to the planet. Here
is a dream of a Piurivar:
"In the beginning was the Defilement, when a madness came over us and we
sinned against our brothers of the sea," he cries. "And when we
awakened and beheld what we had done, for that sin we destroy our great
city and go forth across the land. But even that was not sufficient, and
enemies from afar were sent down upon us, and took from us all that we
had, and drove us into the wilderness, which was our penance, for we had
sinned against our brothers of the sea. And our ways were lost and our
suffering was great and the face of the Most High was averted from us,
until the time of the end of the penance came, and we found the strength
to drive our oppressors from us and reclaim that which we had lost
through our ancient sin. . . ." (Pontifex, p. 118)
Throughout
the Majipoor books, it is clear that there is a higher power. The
land-dwelling inhabitants speak of The Divine. The sea-dragons speak of
"That Which Is." (All words capitalized in the original.)
(An
aside here: in my view, Silverberg has a genius for naming characters,
or at least for inventing names. Not all fantastic writers have been so
good. Tolkien was, but he was drawing on the
languages that he had created
to produce those names. Silverberg, so far as I know, did not create any
languages for Majipoor, but there is music in some of the names above
these lines: Deliamber, Carabella, Aximaan Threysz.)
An
on-line chat, apparently held in 1999, and apparently no longer available on-line, includes the following:
R Silverberg: Advocating any doctrine seems to me a violation of the reader-writer relationship.
OrsonScottCard: Obviously I'm not a fan of the genre.
RSilverberg: Exploring, yes. Peddling, no,
RSilverberg: Christianity is at least as worth exploring as atomic theory.
RSilverberg: In fiction, I mean.
. . .
RSilverberg: I was once asked
to provide a quote for a Christian novel by Roger Elwood. He was
astounded when I pointed out I wasn't Christian.
RSilverberg: And that Zeus was about as real to me as Jehovah.
I
believe Silverberg has set out to explore Christianity in the Majipoor
writings. It isn't the only thing he explores, and I doubt if he would
say it's the main one, but it's part of the exploration. What has he
explored? At least four themes closely related to Christianity. As I
have said, one of these is revenge, or, rather, forgiveness and love
instead of revenge. He has also explored sacrifice, in several ways.
Valentine goes to the Piurivars, knowing that he may be killed, in
Pontifex, because he is willing to be
sacrificed for the good of Majipoor as a whole. Dekkeret's lovely cousin
dies, killed by a madman who is trying to kill Prestimion, in
Prestimion. Her death brings Dekkeret, who will eventually become
Coronal, to Prestimion's attention. The Water-Kings, or seadragons,
allow the Piurivars to kill them in a sacrificial ritual. Several
warriors die gladly so that their leaders may live. A third is sin, and
its consequences. Although there is forgiveness, evil leads to
destruction, desolation, and death. Tying all these together is the
theme of redemption. Valentine, and, later, Prestimion and Dekkeret,
realize that Majipoor needs redemption--some act of love to free them
from the consequences of wrong.
Sorcerers of Majipoor: revenge and religion
Sorcerers of Majipoor
is set long before the time of Valentine. The plot is this: sorcerers
have become prominent in the land. Most people consult them. The wealthy
hire them to tell the future, and find things, and even, sometimes, to
perform magic. The Pontifex is dying. Coronal Confalume (remembered for
the throne he had built, in the marvelous Castle, the throne that
Valentine ascended) will become Pontifex. He has chosen Prestimion to be
the next Coronal. Although a Coronal's son has never succeeded a
Coronal to the throne, Confalume's daughter, Thismet, and her sorcerer,
persuade Thismet's twin brother, Korsibar, that he is the man most fit
to succeed. (He is not--he is selfish, vain, and shallow, and has not
paid much attention to the details of government.) The sorcerer casts a
spell of confusion on everyone but Korsibar when the Pontifex dies, and
Korsibar seizes the crown and proclaims himself Coronal. Confalume, the
new Pontifex, still confused, does not dispute this rash act. Prestimion
decides that he cannot accept Korsibar, and that no one should, so
rebels. Many follow him, including, apparently, his distant cousin,
Dantirya Sambail, the Procurator, the most powerful man on Zimroel, the
second-largest continent of Majipoor. Eventually, there is war. Dantirya
Sambail betrays Prestimion, and suggests to Korsibar that Prestimion be
lured into the valley below a great dam, then have the dam breached.
Prestimion escapes, but most of his army, and thousands of innocent
farmers, do not. Prestimion, never a believer in sorcery, flees to the
city where the most powerful sorcerers live, and decides to try again to
remove Korsibar by force. He raises another army, this time with
sorcerers in it. Thismet decides that she has no place in Korsibar's
Castle. Her sorcerer has left her for her brother, the false Coronal.
Her brother does not give her any power, and ignores her. She leaves
Castle Mount, and travels to join Prestimion, and becomes his consort.
Battle is joined again. Thousands perish, including Korsibar and
Thismet, both slain by her former sorcerer, who betrays Korsibar.
Prestimion, still not been a devotee of sorcery, reluctantly decides
that the only thing that will heal Majipoor is to have the two most
powerful sorcerers perform one last sorcery--they make everyone in the
whole world, including themselves, forget that Korsibar ever existed,
that wars were ever fought, that the dam was breached. Only Prestimion
and two of his friends, Septach Melyn and Gilaurys, will remember. The
three of them believe that these terrible events, and their effects, are
over.
A
word about sorcery--in the two previous Valentine books, there is a
little sorcery. Two of the races, Vroon and Su-Suheris, have what might
be called extra-sensory powers. Autifon Deliamber, who is with Valentine
almost from the beginning of his restoration, is a Vroon. Deliamber is
able to find ways for Valentine and his companions to travel, by
projecting himself, or his senses, ahead to find safety. There is little
else in the Valentine books that indicates that sorcery had any
prominence. In
Sorcerers, it seems that sorcery has
recently come to prominence, in part because of the recent arrival of
the two races that are most likely to practice it. (Others, including
humans, also do.) Apparently it loses its appeal, and its influence,
during the reign of Prestimion, or some time after that.
Religion, in
Sorcerers, is fractured. There is still
some acknowledgement of the Divine. However, it is clear that sorcery
has become not only a wide-spread practice, but belief in it has become a
religion, or many religions:
So
there was no contending against the tide of magic and fear. In a
thousand cities furious mages came forth, saying, "This is the way of
salvation, these are the spells that will restore the world," and the
people, doleful and frightened and hungry for salvation, said, "Yes,
yes, show us the way." In each city the observations were different, and
yet in essence everything was the same everywhere, processions and wild
dances, shrieking flutes, roaring trumpets. Omens and prodigies.
Sorcerers, p. 33.
Clearly
Silverberg understands, as some authors of fantastic fiction do not,
(No less than Tolkien, a faithful Roman Catholic, has been
accused of this)
that religion plays an important part, often positive, sometimes not,
in the lives of people, and this should be reflected even in fantastic
worlds. Here are two examples, spoken by Prestimion, from page 264:
"Item
two, Korsibar's done something foul and dark and blasphemous by
crowning himself like that. Such deeds are inevitably repaid on high. . .
."
"It's well known I have no use for sorcerers and such-like flummery. To
that extent I'm a skeptic; but that doesn't mean I'm godless, Dantirya
Sambail. There are forces in the universe that punish evil: this I do
believe. The world will suffer if Korsibar's left to go unopposed. My
own private ambitions aside, I feel he must be taken down, for the good
of all."
Near the close of
Sorcerers, Prestimion, like Valentine, rejects violence. He has Dantirya Sambail in his power:
Nothing
unhappy had befallen him that Dantirya Sambail had not had a hand in,
somewhere. Prestimion felt himself grow hot with fury. Strike at him, he
thought, and you are striking at all your misfortunes in a single
thrust. . . .
"Go ahead," the Procurator said, "Shove it home, cousin!"
"What
a pleasure that would be," said Prestimion. "But no. No, cousin, no."
Not like this; not the slaughter of a prisoner, even this one. He could
not. He
would
not. All his wrath had turned away. There had been enough killing for now. (pp. 598-9, emphasis in original)
Prestimion has him put into prison. He also puts a Vroon wizard, who
changed sides more than once during the conflict, into the charge of a
man named Barjazid, and tells him to take the wizard to Suvrael, the
desert continent. The wizard has been working on devices to contact the
mind at a distance.
Lord Prestimion: revenge and religion continued
An aside, before I consider the main plot and themes of this work. In
Chronicles, Hissune accesses a memory left behind by Dekkeret, which
has this statement in the second paragraph. "It was as an act of
penance that Dekkeret had undertaken a voyage to the burning wastes of
barren Suvrael." (p. 100)
Prestimion
gives more of the background of this story. Prestimion sees Dekkeret, a
commoner, and believes that he has qualities of greatness. He elevates
him to the Castle, to training for leadership. Part of that is a trip to
Zimroel. After many days as a bureaucrat, Dekkeret goes on a hunting
trip. The guides are not friendly, and don't respect Dekkeret and his
companion, a noble from the Castle. The quarry animal appears. He goes
after it, and kills it, running past his guide as he engages the animal.
It develops that the beast has injured the guide, and, when Dekkeret
returns to the scene, she is dead. Others do not blame Dekkeret. Indeed,
the woman probably would have died in any case, but Dekkeret asks for
assignment to Suvrael as penance.
Lord Prestimion
continues Sorcerers. Several things which seemed settled aren't really
settled. Varaile, a young commoner, with a wealthy widower for a father,
is in charge of her household. A servant leaps to her death out of a
window, killing two tourists in the street. Others are affected, also.
There is a madness that strikes randomly. Not everyone is affected, but
too many are. People have horrible headaches, or stop functioning for a
few minutes, or go mad, and attack others, or jump off boats. As nearly
as anyone can understand, they are in despair. Prestimion, now Coronal,
thinks that these troubles are because so many of the citizenry are
trying to deal with the changes that came about as a result of the
enormous sorcery he ordered, which was designed to put all memories of
Korsibar, and the war, out of people's minds. They don't seem able to
remember how their friends, relatives, or acquaintances died, or they
have forgotten that they existed. They have made up stories about how
and why missing people are missing. Confalume, still Pontifex, does not
remember that he had any children. He cannot remember Thismet and
Korsibar. Prestimion fears that there is a price to pray for the
suppression of all this truth.
Besides
his two friends, who know what has happened, Prestimion tells Dantirya
Sambail enough of what happened to explain why the latter is imprisoned,
because Prestimion doesn't feel that he can keep the second most
powerful man on the planet in jail for no apparent reason. Dantirya
Sambail does not beg forgiveness, and escapes. Prestimion tells a few
others, also. He has told his Su-Suheris mage, Maundigand-Klimd (who, by
the way, claims, and acts as if, his sorcery is a science, not magic).
Prestimion tells his mother, who has become Lady of the Isle, one of the
powers of Majipoor, and Variale, who has become his wife, while on a
visit to the Isle. In his despair, he tells them: "I thought I was
healing the world. Instead, I was destroying it. I opened the gateway
for this madness that consumes it now, the full dimensions of which have
only become apparent to me today." (p. 394) A little later, Variale
remarks that Prestimion must hate Dantirya Sambail, who seems to be at
large, and raising an army to rebel. Prestimion realizes that he does
hate him.
The King of Dreams
King
concludes the second trilogy. Dantirya Sambail's poison-taster,
Mandralisca, is a consummately evil man. He establishes a kingdom of his
own in Zimroel, with five of Sambail's nephews as fronts for his
leadership. A Barjazid, kept by Dinitak from coming to the Castle, goes
to Mandralisca, with the secret of thought-projecting helmets that can
be used to attack enemies in another continent. Mandralisca uses a
helmet to send horrible dreams to members of Prestimion's family.
Prestimion's brother is driven to take his own life by Mandralisca's
visitation. Prestimion, now Pontifex, believes that the government must
go to war against Mandralisca and his followers. However, Dekkeret, now
Coronal, hopes that there is some method short of outright war. He, like
Valentine, wants to win by projecting goodness. Dinitak Barjazid, now
Dekkeret's best friend and confidante, also has the secret of the
thought-projecting helmets. He acts to protect Dekkeret from evil
thought projection, and Mandralisca is overthrown, without a war. Just
before his final overthrow, one of Mandralisca's most trusted
lieutenants, Thastain, an innocent farm boy placed into events he has
not understood, understands how evil Mandralisca is, and gives his life
to protect Dekkeret. Septach Melyn, Prestimion's old friend, as a
representative of the Pontifex, kills Mandralisca, but dies himself.
During
the time leading up to Dekkeret's expedition to Zimroel to overthrow
Mandralisca, he receives powerful messages, apparently from the Divine,
that he must do something to change the way things are done on Majipoor.
At the end, he decides that what he must do is to set up Dinitak
Barjazid as the first King of Dreams, who will punish evil-doers all
over the planet.
Mr. Silverberg, himself, found the previous incarnation of this document, and e-mailed me about what I had said about religion and his work. See here.
Thanks for reading! Read Silverberg, if you wish.
