Tales of Majipoor (16 page)

So in raising an argument that cast doubts on Dvorn’s literal existence, Simmilgord realized, he was simply taking an extreme position for the sake of overcoming Lutiel’s doubts about their taking the job. What he yearned for, above all else, was to get out of dusty, parched Sisivondal, away from the endless paper-shuffling and bureaucratic nonsense of university life, and plunge into some genuine historical research. And he very much wanted Lutiel to accompany him, because there definitely would be some excavating to do at the tomb site and he was no archaeologist, and Lutiel was. They would make a good team out there in Kesmakuran. But suggesting that in the present state of knowledge no one could even be sure that Dvorn had ever existed was to overstate the case. Of
course
Dvorn had existed.

That much they could take for granted. It would be their job to discover what he really had been like and how he had achieved what he had achieved. And what an exciting task it would be! To dig deep into the world’s remote, almost mythical past – to make direct contact with the stuff of fantasy and romance – !

“I don’t think I’m phrasing this the right way,” he said finally. “What I mean is that most of what we think we know about Dvorn is derived from an epic poem of long ago, not from direct scientific research, and we’re being handed an invitation to do that research and establish our scholarly reputations by bringing him out of the realm of myth and poetry into some sort of objective reality. Forget the part about setting up a tourist attraction there. That’s just incidental. The chance to do important research is what matters. Come with me, Lutiel. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

In the end, of course, Lutiel agreed. Unlike Simmilgord, he had not a shred of romance in his soul. He was no climber of hills, no dreamer of wondrous dreams. What he was was a patient plodder, a stolid sifter of sand and pebbles, as archaeologists often tend to be. But even so he could see the merits of the offer. There had never been any scientific excavations carried out at Kesmakuran: just some occasional amateur digs in the course of the past thousand years or so, turning up a few fragmentary inscriptions that appeared to date from the time of the first Pontificate, and that was all – though it had been enough for the uncritical residents of the place to seize upon as proof of the claim that Dvorn had been born and died in their ancient but otherwise unremarkable town. But beyond question there was no event more important in the long history of human settlement on Majipoor than the inspired creation of a political system that had survived in nearly its original form these twelve thousand years. Kesmakuran was generally accepted as the traditional place of the great first Pontifex’s birth; it was reasonable at least to postulate that some evidence of Dvorn’s existence might be found there. And the city fathers of Kesmakuran were handing the two of them the key to the site.

“Well said Lutiel Vengifrons.”

Kesmakuran turned out to be not much more than a village, with a population of perhaps a hundred thousand at most, but it was a pretty village, and after the brutal implacability of Sisivondal and the long, wearying journey across central Alhanroel into the western provinces it seemed almost idyllic. It lay in the heart of prosperous farming country – everything from Gannamunda and Hunzimar westward was farming country, thousands of miles of it, blessed by the beneficial westerly winds that carried the rains inland from the distant coast – and Simmilgord rejoiced in the sight of broad fertile plains and cultivated fields again, so different from the interminable brick drabness of Sisivondal’s innumerable warehouses and depots. He had never been this far west before, and, although Alaisor and the other coastal cities still lay many days’ journey beyond here, it seemed to his eager imagination that he need only climb the nearest hill to behold the bosom of the Inner Sea shimmering in the golden-green afternoon sunlight. The air was fresh and sweet and moist out here, with a bit of the tang of a wind from the ocean. In parched, nearly rainless Sisivondal every intake of breath had been a struggle and the hot, dry air had rasped against his throat.

Simmilgord and Lutien were given a cottage to share, one of a row of nearly identical square-roofed buildings fashioned from a pinkish-gold stone that was quarried in the mountains just south of town. Their host, Kesmakuran’s mayor, fluttered about them fussily as though he were welcoming some dukes or princes of Castle Mount, rather than a pair of uncertain young academics newly emerged from a sheltered scholastic existence.

Kyvole Gannivad was the mayor’s name. He was a stubby, rotund man, bald except for two reddish fringes above his ears, stocky with the sort of solid stockiness that made you think that no matter how hard you pushed him you could not knock him over. He had trouble remembering their names, calling Simmigord “Lutilel” a couple of times and once transforming Lutiel’s surname into “Simmifrons,” which seemed odd for a politician, but otherwise he was ingratiating and solicitous to the point of absurdity, telling them again and again what an honor it was for the town of Kesmakuran to be graced by renowned scholars of their high intellect and widely acclaimed accomplishments. “We are counting on you,” he said several times, “to put our city on the map. And we know that you will.”

“What does he mean by that?” Lutiel asked, when they were finally alone. “Are we supposed to do real research here, or does he think we’re going to act as a couple of paid publicists for them?”

Simmilgord shrugged. “It’s the sort of thing that mayors like to say, that’s all. He can’t help being a home-town booster. He thinks that if we set up a nice little four-room museum next door to the site of the tomb and find a few interesting old inscriptions to put in it, visitors will come from thousands of miles around to gawk.”

“And suppose that doesn’t happen.”

“Not our problem,” said Simmilgord. “You know what you and I came here to do. Pulling the tourists in is his job, not ours.”

“What if he tries to push us in directions that compromise the integrity of our work?”

“I don’t think he will. But if he tries, we can handle him. He’s nothing but a small-town mayor, remember, and not a particularly bright specimen of his species. Come on, Lutiel. Let’s unpack and have a look at the famous tomb.”

But that turned out not to be so simple. They needed to go with the official custodian of the tomb, and it took more than an hour to locate him. Then came the trek to the tomb itself, which was at the southern edge of town, far across from their lodgings, at the foot of the range of mountains out of which the city’s building-blocks had been carved. It was late afternoon before they reached it. An ugly quarry scar formed a diagonal slash across the face of the mountain; below and to both sides of it grew a dense covering of blue-black underbrush, descending to ground level and extending almost to the outermost street of the city, and here, nearly hidden by the thick tangle of brush, was the entrance to Dvorn’s tomb, or at least what was said to be Dvorn’s tomb: a black hole stretching downward into the earth.

“I will go first,” said their guide, Prasilet Sungavon, the local antiquarian who was the custodian of the tomb. “It’s very dark down there. Even with our torches, we won’t have an easy time.”

“Lead on,” Simmilgord said impatiently, gesturing with his hand.

Prasilet Sungavon had annoyed them both from the very start. He was a stubby little Hjort, squat and puffy-faced and bulgy-eyed, a member of a race that apparently could not help seeming officious and self-important. About a third of the population of Kesmakuram were Hjorts, evidently. By profession Prasilet Sungavon was a dealer in pharmaceutical herbs, who long ago had taken up amateur archaeology as a weekend hobby. “I’ve been digging down here, man and boy, for forty years,” he told them proudly. “And I’ve found some real treasures, all right. Just about anything that anybody knows about Dvorn, they know because of the things I’ve found.” Which would irritate Lutiel Vengifrons considerably, because, as a professionally trained archaeologist, he surely would dislike the thought that this pill-peddler had spent decades rummaging around at random with his spade and his pick in this unique and easily damaged site. Simmilgord was bothered by him too, since it was unlikely that Prasilet Sungavon had the knowledge or the wit to derive any sort of solid historical conclusions from whatever he had managed to scrape loose in the depths of the tomb.

But, whether they liked it or not, the Hjort was the official municipal custodian of the tomb, the man with the keys to the gate, and they could do nothing without his cooperation. So they lit their torches and followed him down a stretch of uneven flagstone steps to a place where a metal grillwork barred their entry, and waited while Prasilet Sungavon elaborately unlocked a series of padlocks and swung the gate aside.

A dark, muddy, musty-smelling passage, low and narrow, with a cold breeze rising up out of it, lay before them. Through swerves and curves it led onward for some unknown distance into the heart of the mountain on a gradual sloping descent. Because of his height, Simmilgord had to crouch from the start. The floor of the passage was a thick, spongy layer of muddy soil; the sides and roof of it had been carved, none too expertly, from the rock of the mountain above them. The entranceway, the Hjort told them, had now and then been blocked by the backwash from heavy storms, and had had to be cleared at least five times in the last two thousand years, most recently a century ago. When they had gone about fifteen feet in, Prasilet Sungavon indicated a crude niche cut into the tunnel wall. “I found remarkable things in there,” he said, without explanation. “And there, and there,” pointing at two more niches further along. “You’ll see.”

The air in the tunnel was cold and dank. From somewhere deeper in came the sound of steadily dripping water, and occasionally the quick clatter of wings as some cave-dwelling creature, invisible in the dimness, passed swiftly by overhead. Other than that, and the hoarse, ragged breathing of the Hjort, ill was silent in here. After about ten minutes the passage expanded abruptly into a high-roofed circular chamber, lined all about by a coarse and irregular wall of badly matched blocks of gray stone, that could very readily be regarded as a place of interment. And against the left side of it sat a rectangular lidless Dink-marble box, three or four feet high and about seven feet long, that was plausibly a sarcophagus.

“This is it,” said the Hjort grandly. “The tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn!”

“May I?” Lutiel Vengifrons said, and, without waiting for a reply, stepped forward and peered into the box. After a moment Simmilgord, more diffidently, went up alongside him.

The sarcophagus, if that indeed was what it was, was empty. That was no surprise. They had not expected to find Dvorn lying here with his hands crossed on his chest and a benign smile on his Pontifical features. The stone box was roughly carved, with clearly visible chisel-marks all along its bare sides. There did not seem to be any inscriptions on it or any sort of ornamentation.

“A tomb, yes, very possibly,” said Lutiel Vengifrons after a while. He made the concession sound like a grudging one. “But just how, I wonder, were you able to identify this place specifically as the tomb of Dvorn?”

His tone was cool, skeptical, challenging. Unflustered, the Hjort replied, “We know that he was born in Kesmakuran, and that after his glorious century-long reign as Pontifex he died here. There is no doubt of that. It has always been understood locally that this is his tomb. That is the tradition. No one questions it. No other city in the world makes any such claim. Plainly this is an archaic site, going back to the earliest days of the settlement of Majipoor. The effort that must have been involved at that early time in digging such a long passageway indicates that this could only be the tomb of someone important. I ask you: Who else would that be, if not the first Pontifex?”

The logic did not seem entirely impeccable. Simmilgord, who had his own ideas about the unquestioning acceptance of local tradition as historical certainty, began to say something to that effect, but Lutiel nudged him ungently in the ribs before he could get out more than half a syllable. For the moment it was Lutiel who was conducting the interrogation. Prasilet Sungavon continued, still unperturbed, “Of course the body had disintegrated in the course of so long a span of time. But certain relics remained. I will show them to you when we come out of here.”

“What about the lid?” Lutiel Vengifrons said. “Surely nobody would bury such an important personage in a sarcophagus that had no lid.”

“There,” said the Hjort, aiming his torch into a dark corner of the tomb-chamber. Against the far wall lay what must once have been a long stone slab, now cracked into three pieces and some bits of rubble.

“Tomb-robbers?” Simmilgord asked, unable to keep silent any longer.

“I think not,” the Hjort said sharply. “We are not that sort of folk, here in Kesmakuran. Doubtless some visitors long ago lifted the lid to make certain that Dvorn’s body really did lie here, and as they carried it to one side they dropped it and it broke.”

“No doubt that is so,” said Simmilgord, working hard to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

He could feel himself slipping into a profound bleakness of spirit. This dark, muddy hole in the ground – this miserable crude stone coffin with its shattered lid – these unprovable conjectures of Prasilet Sungavon – how did any of this constitute any sort of substantive information about the life of the Pontifex Dvorn? He wondered how he and Lutiel could possibly fulfill even the slightest part of the scientific mission that had taken them halfway across the continent from Sisivondal. It all seemed hopeless. There was so little to work with, and what little there was undoubtedly was contaminated by the passionate desire of the Kesmakuran folk to inflate its significance into something of major historical importance. Right here at the beginning of everything Simmilgord saw only disaster encroaching on him from all sides.

Prasilet Sungavon, though, stood before them smiling an immense Hjortish smile, a foot wide from ear to ear. Obviously he was very pleased with himself and the cavern over which he presided.