Tales of Majipoor by Robert Silverberg Page B

thing, a work of significant breadth and meaning, and a kind of majesty. Of that he was sure, or reasonably sure, anyway: it had been the major poem of which everyone but he himself was certain he was capable, offering itself to his mind at last. Teasing him, tempting him. But never showing anything more of itself to him than its aura, its outward gleam, and then dancing away, as though to mock him for the laziness of all his past years. An ironic tragedy: the great lost poem of Aithin Furvain. The world would never know, and he would mourn its loss forever.
    Then he decided that he was simply being foolish. What had he lost? His drowsy mind had been playing with him. A poem that is only a shadow of a shadow is no poem at all. To think that he had lost a masterpiece was pure idiocy. How did he know how good the poem, had he been granted any clear sight of it, would have been? What means did he have to judge the quality of a poem that had refused to come into being? He was flattering himself to think that there had been any substance there. The Divine, he knew, had not chosen to give him the equipment that was necessary for the forging of major poems. He was a shallow, idle man, meant to be the maker of little jingling rhymes, of light-hearted playful verse, not of masterpieces. That beckoning poem had been a mere phantom, he thought, the delusion of a weary mind at the edge of sleep, the phantasmagoric aftermath of his bizarre conversation with Master Kasinibon. Furvain let himself drift downward again into slumber, and slipped away quickly this time.
    When he woke, with vague fugitive memories of the lost poem still troubling his mind like a dream that will not let go, he had no idea at first where he was. Bare stone walls, a hard narrow bed, a mere slit of a window through which the morning sun was pouring with merciless power? Then he remembered. He was a prisoner in the fortress of Master Kasinibon. He was angry, at first, that what he had intended as a journey of private discovery, the purifying voyage of a troubled soul, had been interrupted by a band of marauding ruffians; then he was once more amused at the novelty of having been seized in such a fashion; and then he became angry again over the intrusion on his life. But anger, Furvain knew, would serve no useful purpose. He must remain calm, and look upon this purely as an adventure, the raw material for anecdotes and poems with which to regale his friends when he was home at last in Dundilmir.
    He bathed and dressed and spent some time studying the effects of morning light on the still surface of the lake, which at this early hour seemed crimson rather than scarlet, and then grew irritable again, and was pacing from room to room once more when the Hjort appeared with his breakfast. In midmorning Kasinibon paid his second visit to him, but only for a few minutes, and then the morning stretched on interminably until the Hjort came by to bring him lunch. For a time he plumbed his consciousness for some vestige of that lost poem, but the attempt was hopeless, and only instilled in him pangs of regret for he knew not what. Which left him with nothing to do but stare at the lake; and though the lake was indeed exquisite, and of the sort of beauty that changed from hour to hour with the changing angles of the sunlight, Furvain could study those changes only so long before even such beauty as this ceased to stir a response in him.
    He had brought some books with him on this journey, but he found that he had no interest in reading now. The words seemed mere meaningless marks on the page. Nor could was he able to find distraction in poetry of his own making. It was as if the vanishing of that imaginary masterpiece of the night had taken the ability even to write light verse from him. The fountain that had flowed in a copious gush all his life had gone mysteriously dry: just now he was as empty of poetry as the walls of these rooms were of ornament. So there he was without