The King of Dreams

by Robert Silverberg

  A great circle closes. The intricate drama and colorful weave of a gargantuan planet peopled by thirty billion of human and alien aspect is again brilliantly rendered by a master of fantastic invention. And the troubled reign of Lord Prestimion is threatened once more by specters from a non-waking world.

  The years since first he gained the Starburst Crown have been difficult ones for Coronal Lord Prestimion and the vast, unfathomable realm he rules. But finally peace has been restored to Majipoor. And now it is time for Prestimion to name the able Prince Dekkeret his succeeding Coronal and to descend to the Labyrinth as Pontifex. But a power from a dark past that both men believed was dead is stirring once again—an evil more potent and devastating than either leader dares to remember.

  Once, decades past, a then knight-initiate Dekkeret had his dreams stolen from him. His quest for recovery led him to a remarkable helmet that could invade the psyches of sleeping foes, a device the newly anointed Coronal Prestimion later utilized to defeat his enemy Dantirya Sambail, tyrant of the continent Zimroel. In the fires of civil war, the terrible weapon was destroyed forever—or so it was believed.

  The noxious weed of rebellion was torn out at its roots but its seeds have borne frightening fruit. Dantirya Sambail is dead, and the hungry jackals who ran at his heels now scheme to recover his lost lands and power. At their head is the tyrant’s former henchman Mandralisca—a villain of great wiles and icy heart, who somehow has unleashed a devastating plague of the mind upon Prestimion’s subjects. Dark visions are invading the sleep of those loyal to the Lords and the Lady of Majipoor—soul-shattering scenes of madness and monstrosity, driving those inflicted to commit horrible, destructive acts. And the dark wave is flowing ever-closer to the throne, seeping beneath the doors of the 30,000 rooms of the towering edifice atop Castle Mount…and into the sacrosanct depths of the imperial Labyrinth itself.

  A new campaign for the soul of Majipoor has ·been declared—and its catastrophic opening salvos have been fired in silence and in mystery. Once again Prestimion and Dekkeret have been called onto the battlefield of nightmare. But this time it will be a war to the death against a foe greater than all who came before: the master of murderous shadows who aspires to be King of all.

  By Robert Silverberg

  The Majipoor Cycle

  LORD VALENTINE’S CASTLE

  VALENTINE PONTIFEX

  MAJIPOOR CHRONICLES

  THE MOUNTAINS OF MAJIPOOR

  SORCERERS OF MAJIPOOR

  LORD PRESTIMION

  THE KING OF DREAMS

  Other Titles

  STARBORNE

  HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT

  KINGDOMS OF THE WALL

  THE FACE OF THE WATERS

  THEBES OF THE HUNDRED GATES

  THE ALIEN YEARS

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  EOS

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Copyright © 2001 by Agberg, Ltd.

  Interior design by Kellan Peck

  ISBN: 0-06-105171-3

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Eos, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Silverberg, Robert.

  The king of dreams / Robert Silverberg.

  p. cm.

  “Book Three of the Prestimion trilogy.”

  ISBN 0-06-105171-3 (hardcover)

  1. Majipoor (Imaginary place)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.I472 K55 2001

  813'.54—dc21 00-046648

  First Eos hardcover printing: June 2001

  Eos Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. and in Other Countries,

  Marca Registrada, Hecho en U.S.A.

  HarperCollins® is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  FIRST EDITION

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  www.eosbooks.com

  For Jennifer and Peter

  —such twists, such turns!

  And Lord Stiamot wept when he heard them singing the ballad of his great victory at Weygan Head, because the Stiamot of which they sang was not the Stiamot he knew. He was not himself any more. He had been emptied into legend. He had been a man, and now he was a fable.

  — AITHIN FURVAIN

  The Book of Changes

  Contents

  I

  The Book of Waiting

  II

  The Book of Lords

  III

  The Book of Powers

  I

  The Book of Waiting

  1

  “That has to be what we’re looking for,” said the Skandar, Sudvik Gorn, standing at the edge of the cliff and pointing down the steep hillside with harsh jabbing motions of his lower left arm. They had reached the crest of the ridge. The underlying rock had crumbled badly here, so that the trail they had been following terminated in a rough patch covered with sharp greenish gravel, and just beyond lay a sudden drop into a thickly vegetated valley. “Vorthinar Keep, right there below us! What else could that building be, if not the rebel’s keep? And easy enough for us to set it ablaze, this time of year.”

  “Let me see,” young Thastain said. “My eyes are better than yours.” Eagerly he reached for the spyglass that Sudvik Gorn held in his other lower arm.

  It was a mistake. Sudvik Gorn enjoyed baiting the boy, and Thastain had given him yet another chance. The huge Skandar, better than two feet taller than he was, yanked the glass away, shifting it to an upper arm and waving it with ponderous playfulness high above Thastain’s head. He grinned a malicious snaggle-toothed grin. “Jump for it, why don’t you?”

  Thastain felt his face growing hot with rage. “Damn you! Just let me have the thing, you moronic four-armed bastard!”

  “What was that? Bastard, am I? Bastard? Say it again?” The Skandar’s shaggy face turned dark. He brandished the spyglass now as though the tube were a weapon, swinging it threateningly from side to side. “Yes. Say it again, and then I’ll knock you from here to Ni-moya.”

  Thastain glared at him. “Bastard! Bastard! Go ahead and knock me, if you can.” He was sixteen, a slender, fair-skinned boy who was swift enough afoot to outrace a bilantoon. This was his first important mission in the service of the Five Lords of Zimroel, and the Skandar had selected him, somehow, as his special enemy. Sudvik Gorn’s constant maddening ridicule was driving him to fury. For the past three days, almost from the beginning of their journey from the domain of the Five Lords, many miles to the southeast, up here into the rebel-held territory, Thastain had held it in, but now he could contain it no longer. “You have to catch me first, though, and I can run circles around you, and you know it. Eh, Sudvik Gorn, you great heap of flea-bitten fur!”

  The Skandar growled and came rumbling forward. But instead of fleeing, Thastain leaped agilely back just a few yards and, whirling quickly, scooped up a fat handful of jagged pebbles. He drew back his arm as though he meant to hurl them in Sudvik Gorn’s face. Thastain gripped the stones so tightly that their sharp edges bit into the palm of his hand. You could blind a man with stones like that, he thought.

  Sudvik Gorn evidently thought so too. He halted in mid-stride, looking baffled and angry, and the two stood facing each other. It was a stalemate.

&nb
sp; “Come on,” Thastain said, beckoning to the Skandar and offering him a mocking look. “One more step. Just one more.” He swung his arm in experimental underhand circles, gathering momentum for the throw.

  The Skandar’s red-tinged eyes flamed with ire. From his vast chest came a low throbbing sound like that of a volcano readying itself for eruption. His four mighty arms quivered with barely contained menace. But he did not advance.

  By this time the other members of the scouting party had noticed what was happening. Out of the corner of his eye Thastain saw them coming together to his right and left, forming a loose circle along the ridge, watching, chuckling. None of them liked the Skandar, but Thastain doubted that many of the men cared for him very much either. He was too young, too raw, too green, too pretty. In all probability they thought that he needed to be knocked around a little—roughed up by life as they had been before him.

  “Well, boy?” It was the hard-edged voice of Gambrund, the round-cheeked Piliplok man with the bright purple scar that cut a vivid track across the whole left side of his face. Some said that Count Mandralisca had done that to him for spoiling his aim during a gihorna hunt, others that it had been the Lord Gavinius in a drunken moment, as though the Lord Gavinius ever had any other kind. “Don’t just stand there! Throw them! Throw them in his hairy face!”

  “Right, throw them,” someone else called. “Show the big ape a thing or two! Put his filthy eyes out!”

  This was very stupid, Thastain thought. If he threw the stones he had better be sure to blind Sudvik Gorn with them on the first cast, or else the Skandar very likely would kill him. But if he blinded Sudvik Gorn the Count would punish him severely for it—quite possibly would have him blinded himself. And if he simply tossed the stones away he’d have to run for it, and run very well, for if Sudvik Gorn caught him he would hammer him with those great fists of his until he was smashed to pulp; but if he fled then everyone would call him a coward for fleeing. It was impossible any way whichever. How had he contrived to get himself into this? And how was he going to get himself out?

  He wished most profoundly that someone would rescue him. Which was what happened a moment later.

  “All right, stop it, you two,” said a new voice from a few feet behind Thastain. Criscantoi Vaz, it was. He was a wiry, broad-shouldered gray-bearded man, a Ni-moyan: the oldest of the group, a year or two past forty. He was one of the few here who had taken a liking of sorts to Thastain. It was Criscantoi Vaz who had chosen him to be a member of this party, back at Horvenar on the Zimr, where this expedition had begun. He stepped forward now, placing himself between Thastain and the Skandar. There was a sour look on his face, as of one who wades in a pool of filth. He gestured brusquely to Thastain. “Drop those stones, boy.” Instantly Thastain opened his fist and let them fall. “The Count Mandralisca would have you both nailed to a tree and flayed if he could see what’s going on. You’re wasting precious time. Have you forgotten that we’re here to do a job, you idiots?”

  “I simply asked him for the spyglass,” said Thastain sullenly. “How does that make me an idiot?”

  “Give it to him,” Criscantoi Vaz told Sudvik Gorn. “These games are foolishness, and dangerous foolishness at that. Don’t you think the Vorthinar lord has sentries aplenty roving these hills? We stand at risk up here, every single moment.”

  Grimacing, the gigantic Skandar handed the glass over. He glowered at Thastain in a way that unmistakably said that he meant to finish this some other time.

  Thastain tried to pay no attention to that. Turning his back on Sudvik Gorn, he went to the very rim of the precipice, dug his boots into the gravel, and leaned out as far as he dared go. He put the glass to his eye. The hillside before him and the valley below sprang out in sudden rich detail.

  It was autumn here, a day of strong, sultry heat. The lengthy dry season that was the summer of this part of central Zimroel had not yet ended, and the hill was covered with a dense coat of tall tawny grass, a sort of grass that had a bright glassy sheen as though it were artificial, as if some master craftsman had fashioned it for the sake of decorating the slope. The long gleaming blades were heavy with seed-crests, so that the force of the warm south wind bent them easily, causing them to ripple like a river of bright gold, running down and down and down the slope.

  The hillside, which descended rapidly in a series of swooping declines, was nearly featureless except where it was broken, here and there, by great jagged black boulders that rose out of it like dragons’ teeth. Thastain could make out a sleek short-legged helgibor creeping purposefully through the grass a hundred yards below him, its furry green head lifted for the strike, its arching fangs already bared. A plump unsuspecting blue vrimmet, the helgibor’s prey, was grazing serenely not far away. The vrimmet would be in big trouble in another moment or two. But of the castle of the rebellious lordling, Thastain was able to see nothing at all at first, despite the keenness of his vision and the aid that the spyglass provided.

  Then he nudged the glass just a little to the west, and there the keep was, snugly nestling in a deep fold of the valley: a long low gray curving thing, like a dark scar against the tawny grassland. It seemed to him that the bottommost part of the structure was fashioned of stone, perhaps to the height of a man’s thigh, but everything above that was of wood, rising to a sloping thatched roof.

  “There’s the keep, no doubt of it,” Thastain said, without relinquishing the spyglass.

  Sudvik Gorn was right. In this dry season, it would be no great challenge whatever to set the place on fire. Three or four firebrands hurled from above and the roof would go up, and sparks would leap to the parched unmown grass that came clear up to the foundations of the building, and the gnarled oily-looking shrubs nearby would catch. There would be a roaring holocaust all around. Within ten minutes the Vorthinar lord and all his men would be roasted alive.

  “Do you see sentinels?” Criscantoi Vaz asked.

  “No. Nobody. Everybody must be inside. No—wait—yes, someone’s there!”

  A strange figure, very thin and unusually elongated, coming into view around the side of the building. The man paused a moment and looked upward—straight at Thastain, so it seemed. Thastain dropped hastily to his belly and signalled with a furious sweep of his left hand for the men behind him to move back from the ridge. Then he peered over the edge once more. Cautiously he extended the glass. The man was continuing on his path, now. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed anything after all.

  There was something exceedingly odd about the way he was moving. That swinging gait, that curious flexibility of movement. That strange face, like no face Thastain had ever seen before. The man looked weirdly loose-jointed, somehow—rubbery, one might say. Almost as though he were—could it be—?

  Thastain closed one eye and stared as intensely as he knew how with the other.

  Yes. A chill ran down Thastain’s spine. A Metamorph, it was. Definitely a Metamorph. That was a new sight for him. He had spent his whole short lifetime up here in northern Zimroel, where Metamorphs were rarely if ever encountered—were, indeed, practically legendary creatures.

  He took a good look now. Thastain fined the focus of the glass and was able to make out plainly the greenish tint of the man’s skin, the slitted lips, the prominent cheekbones, the tiny bump of a nose. And the longbow the creature wore slung across his back was surely one of Shapeshifter design, a flimsy, highly flexible-looking thing of light wickerwork, the kind of weapon most suitable for a being whose skeletonic structure was pliant enough to bend easily, to undergo almost any sort of vast transformation.

  Unthinkable. It was like seeing a demon walking patrol before the keep. But who, even someone who was in rebellion against his own liege lords, would dare ally himself with the Metamorphs? It was against the law to have any traffic with the mysterious aboriginal folk. But, thought Thastain, it was more than illegal. It was monstrous.

  “There’s a Shapeshifter down there,” Thastain said in a rough whisper over his sh
oulder. “I can see him walking right past the front of the house. So the story we heard must be true. The Vorthinar lord’s in league with them!”

  “You think he saw you?” said Criscantoi Vaz.

  “I doubt it.”

  “All right. Get yourself back from the edge before he does.”

  Thastain wriggled backward without rising and scrambled to his feet when he was far enough away from the brink. As he lifted his head he became aware of Sudvik Gorn’s glowering gaze still fixed on him in cold hatred, but Sudvik Gorn and his malevolence hardly mattered to him now. There was a task to be done.

  2

  Morning in the Castle. Bright golden-green sunlight entered the grand suite atop Lord Thraym’s Tower that was the official residence of the Coronal and his consort. It came flooding in a brilliant stream into the splendid great bedroom, walled with great blocks of smooth warm-hued granite hung with fine tapestries of cloth of gold, where the Lady Varaile was awakening.

  The Castle.

  Everyone in the world knew which castle was meant, when you said “the Castle”: it could only be Lord Prestimion’s Castle, as the people of Majipoor had called it these twenty years past. Before that it had been called Lord Confalume’s Castle, and before that Lord Prankipin’s, and so on and so on back into the vague mists of time—Lord Guadeloom’s Castle, Lord Pinitor’s Castle, Lord Kryphon’s Castle, Lord Thraym’s Castle, Lord Dizimaule’s Castle, Coronal after Coronal across the endlessly flowing centuries of Majipoor’s long history, the great ones and the mediocre ones and the ones whose names and achievements had become totally obscure, king after king all the way back to the semi-mythical builder himself, Lord Stiamot of seventy centuries before, each monarch giving his name to the building for the duration of the time of his reign. But now it was the Castle of the Coronal Lord Prestimion and his wife, the Lady Varaile.

  Reigns end. One of these days, almost certainly, this place would be Lord Dekkeret’s Castle, Varaile knew.