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The Book of Changes
by 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 gri
“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 mille
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 pe
“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 gri
Furvain was the fifth son of the former Coronal Lord Sangamor, whose best-known achievement had been the construction of the remarkable tu
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 i
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 so