Majipoor Chronicles

The Coronal said, 'Who do we have there? Is that Finiwain?'

'Eremoil, my lord. In command of the forces carrying out the burning.'

'Eremoil. Yes. Eremoil. I recall. Come, sit with us. We are giving thanks to the Divine for the end of the war, Eremoil. These people have come to me from my mother the Lady of the Isle, who guards us in dreams, and we will spend the night in songs of praise and gratitude, for in the morning the circle of fire will be complete. Eh, Eremoil? Come, sit, sing with us. You know the songs to the Lady, don't you?'

Eremoil heard the Coronal's cracked and frayed voice with shock. That faded thread of dry sound was all that remained of his once majestic tone. This hero, this demigod, was withered and ruined by his long campaign; there was nothing left of him; he was a spectre, a shadow. Seeing him like this, Eremoil wondered if Lord Stiamot had ever been the mighty figure of memory, or if perhaps that was only mythmaking and propaganda, and the Coronal had all along been less than met the eye.

Lord Stiamot beckoned. Eremoil reluctantly moved closer.

He thought of what he had come here to say. My lord, there is a man in the path of the fire who will not move and will not allow himself to be moved, and who cannot be moved without the loss of life, and, my lord, he is too fine a man to be destroyed in this way. So I ask you, my lord, to halt the burning, perhaps to devise some alternative strategy, so that we may seize the Metamorphs as they flee the fire zone but do not need to extend the destruction beyond the point it already reaches, because—

No.

He saw the utter impossibility of asking the Coronal to delay the end of the war a single hour. Not for Kattikawn's sake, not for Eremoil's sake, not for the sake of the holy Lady his mother could the burning be halted now, for these were the last days of the war and the Coronal's need to proceed to the end was the overriding force that swept all else before it. Eremoil might try to halt the burning on his own authority, but he could not ask the Coronal for approval.

Lord Stiamot thrust his head toward Eremoil.

'What is it, captain? What bothers you? Here. Sit by me. Sing with us, captain. Raise your voice in thanksgiving.'

They began a hymn, some tune Eremoil did not know. He hummed along, improvising a harmony. After that they sang another, and another, and that one Eremoil did know; he sang, but in a hollow and tuneless way. Dawn could not be far off now. Quietly he moved into the shadows and out of the tent. Yes, there was the sun, beginning to cast the first greenish light along the eastern face of Mount Haimon, though it would be an hour or more before its rays climbed the mountain wall and illuminated the doomed valleys to the southwest. Eremoil yearned for a week of sleep. He looked for the adjutant and said, 'Will you send a message for me to my subaltern on Zygnor Peak?'

'Of course, sir.'

'Tell him to take charge of the next phase of the burning and proceed as scheduled. I'm going to remain here during the day and will return to my headquarters this evening, after I've had some rest.'

'Yes, sir.'

Eremoil turned away and looked toward the west, still wrapped in night except where the terrible glow of the fire zone illuminated it. Probably Aibil Kattikawn had been busy all this night with pumps and hoses, wetting down his lands. It would do no good, of course; a fire of that magnitude takes all in its path, and burns until no fuel is left. So Kattikawn would die and the tiled roof of the manor-house would collapse, and there was no helping it. He could be saved only at the risk of the lives of innocent soldiers, and probably not even then; or he could be saved if Eremoil chose to disregard the orders of Lord Stiamot, but not for long. So he will die. After nine years in the field, Eremoil thought, I am at last the cause of taking a life, and he is one of our own citizens. So be it. So be it.

He remained at the lookout post, weary but unable to move on, another hour or so, until he saw the first explosions of flame in the foothills near Bizfern, or maybe Domgrave, and knew that the morning's incendiary bombing had begun. The war will soon be over, he told himself. The last of our enemies now flee toward the safety of the coast, where they will be interned and transported overseas, and the world will be quiet again. He felt the warmth of the summer sun on his back and the warmth of the spreading fires on his cheeks. The world will be quiet again, he thought, and went to find a place to sleep.

THREE In the Fifth Year of the Voyage

That one was quite different from the first. Hissune is less amazed by it, less shattered; it is a sad and moving tale, but it does not rock his soul's depths the way the embrace of human and Ghayrog had done. Yet he has learned a great deal from it about the nature of responsibility, about the conflicts that arise between opposing forces neither of which can be said to be in the wrong, and about the meaning of true tranquillity of spirit. Then too he has discovered something about the process of mythmaking: for in all the history of Majipoor there has been no figure more godlike than Lord Stiamot, the shining warrior-king who broke the strength of the sinister aboriginal Shapeshifters, and eight thousand years of idolization have transformed him into an awesome being of great majesty and splendor. That Lord Stiamot of myth still exists in Hissune's mind, but it has been necessary to move him to one side in order to make room for the Stiamot he has seen through Eremoil's eyes — that weary, pallid, withered little man, old before his time, who burned his soul to a husk in a lifetime of battle. A hero? Certainly, except perhaps to the Metamorphs. But a demigod? No, a human being, very human, all frailty and fatigue. It is important never to forget that, Hissune tells himself, and in that moment he realizes that these stolen minutes in the Register of Souls are providing him with his true education, his doctoral degree in life. It is a long while before he feels ready to return for another course. But in time the dust of the tax archives begins to seep to the depths of his being and he craves a diversion, an adventure. So, too, back to the Register. Another legend needs exploring; for once, long ago, a shipload of madmen set out to sail across the Great Sea — folly if ever folly had been conceived, but glorious folly, and Hissune chooses to take passage aboard that ship and discover what befell its crew. A little research produces the captain's name: Sinnabor Lavon, a native of Castle Mount. Hissune's fingers lightly touch the keys, giving date, place, name, and he sits back, poised, expectant, ready to go to sea.

In the fifth year of the voyage Sinnabor Lavon noticed the first strands of dragon-grass coiling and writhing in the sea alongside the hull of the ship.

He had no idea of what it was, of course, for no one on Majipoor had ever seen dragon-grass before. This distant reach of the Great Sea had never been explored. But he did know that this was the fifth year of the voyage, for every morning Sinnabor Lavon had carefully noted the date and the ship's position in his log, so that the explorers would not lose their psychological bearings on this boundless and monotonous ocean. Thus he was certain that this day lay in the twentieth year of the Pontificate of Dizimaule, Lord Arioc being Coronal, and that this was the fifth year since the Spurifon had set out from the port of Til-omon on her journey around the world.

He mistook the dragon-grass for a mass of sea-serpents at first. It seemed to move with an inner force, twisting, wriggling, contracting, relaxing. Against the calm dark water it gleamed with a shimmering richness of color, each strand iridescent, showing glints of emerald and indigo and vermilion. There was a small patch of it off the port side and a somewhat broader streak of it staining the sea to starboard.

Lavon peered over the rail to the lower deck and saw a trio of shaggy four-armed figures below: Skandar crewmen, mending nets, or pretending to. They met his gaze with sour, sullen looks. Like many of the crew, they had long ago grown weary of the voyage. 'You, there!' Lavon yelled. 'Put out the scoop! Take some samples of those serpents!'

'Serpents, captain? What serpents you mean?'

'There! There! Can't you see?'

The Skandars glanced at the water, and then, with a certain patronizing solemnity, up at Sinnabor Lavon. 'You mean that grass in the water?'

Lavon took a closer look. Grass? Already the ship was beyond the first patches, but there was more ahead, larger masses of it, and he squinted, trying to pick individual strands out of the tangled drifts. The stuff moved, as serpents might move. But yet Lavon saw no heads, no eyes. Well, possibly grass, then. He gestured impatiently and the Skandars, in no hurry, began to extend the jointed boom-mounted scoop with which biological specimens were collected.

By the time Lavon reached the lower deck a dripping little mound of the grass was spread on the boards and half a dozen staffers had gathered about it: First Mate Vormecht, Chief Navigator Galimoin, Joachil Moor and a couple of her scientists, and Mikdal Hasz, the chronicler. There was a sharp ammoniac smell in the air. The three Skandars stood back, ostentatiously holding their noses and muttering, but the others, pointing, laughing, poking at the grass, appeared more excited and animated than they had seemed for weeks.

Lavon knelt beside them. No doubt of it, the stuff was seaweed of some sort, each flat fleshy strand about as long as a man, about as wide as a forearm, about as thick as a finger. It twitched and jerked convulsively, as though on strings, but its motions grew perceptibly slower from moment to moment as it dried, and the brilliant colors were fading quickly.

'Scoop up some more,' Joachil Noor told the Skandars. 'And this time, dump it in a tub of sea-water to keep it alive.'

The Skandars did not move. 'The stench — such a filthy stench—' one of the hairy beings grunted.

Joachil Noor walked toward them — the short wiry woman looked like a child beside the gigantic creatures — and waved her hand brusquely. The Skandars, shrugging, lumbered to their task.

Sinnabor Lavon said to her, 'What do you make of it?'

'Algae. Some unknown species, but everything's unknown this far out at sea. The color changes are interesting. I don't know whether they're caused by pigment fluctuations or simply result from optical tricks, the play of light over the shifting epidermal layers.'

'And the movements? Algae don't have muscles.'

'Plenty of plants are capable of motion. Minor oscillations of electrical current, causing variances in columns of fluid within the plant's structure — you know the sensitives of northwestern Zimorel? You shout at them and they cringe. Sea-water's an excellent conductor; these algae must pick up all sorts of electrical impulses. Well study them carefully.' Joachil Noor smiled. 'I tell you, they come as a gift from the Divine. Another week of empty sea and I'd have jumped overboard.'

Lavon nodded. He had been feeling it too: that hideous killing boredom, that frightful choking feeling of having condemned himself to an endless journey to nowhere. Even he, who had given seven years of his life to organizing this expedition, who was willing to spend all the rest of it carrying it to completion, even he, in this fifth year of the voyage, paralyzed by listlessness, numb with apathy—

'Tonight,' he said, 'give us a report, eh? Preliminary findings. Unique new species of seaweed.'