But that she had come running here at Dinitak’s behest, after all that had passed between them—
She could remember only too well saying to Fulkari, upon learning that he was leaving her behind when he went to Zimroel, “I never want to see him again!”
And Fulkari smugly saying, “You will.”
She had thought then that Fulkari was wrong, simply wrong. She could never swallow such humiliation. But time had passed, days and weeks and months, time in which she had the leisure to dwell in memory on those hand-in-hand strolls in the hallways of the Castle, those candlelit dinners, those nights of astounding passion. Time to reflect, also, on Dinitak’s unique nature, his strangely intense sense of right and wrong. Time to think that perhaps she could almost comprehend his reasons for going to Zimroel without her.
And then, by special courier, those two messages from abroad—
Dinitak Barjazid, to Keltryn of Sipermit, saying, in that odd formal manner of his, I am returning by way of Alaisor, and I beg you most urgently to be there when I arrive, my dearest one, for we have things of the greatest importance to discuss, and they will be best discussed there. “I beg you most urgently!” That did not sound much like Dinitak, to beg at all, and most urgently at that. “My dearest one.” Yes.
The second message, in the same pouch, was from Fulkari, and what Fulkari said was, He will ask you to meet him at Alaisor. Go to him there, sister. He loves you. He loves you more than you could possibly believe.
She could not repress the instantaneous flare of anger that was her first reaction. How dare he? How dare she? Why fall into the same old trap again? Go all the way to Alaisor, no less, at his behest, for his convenience? Why? Why? Why?
He loves you.
He loves you more than you could possibly believe.
And Dinitak:
I beg you most urgently.
My dearest one. My dearest one. My dearest one.
A knock at her door. “My lady?” It was Ekkamoor, the chamberlain from the Castle who had looked after her on this frantic journey to the continent’s edge. “The ship is about to dock, my lady. Is it your wish to be at the pier when it does?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course!”
It flew the Coronal’s green-and-gold banner, and the Coronal’s starburst emblem was on its prow. But there was a yellow flag of mourning flying from its mast as well, and Keltryn, watching from the waiting-room as the gangplank was fixed in place, stared frowning as a solemn-faced honor guard came from the vessel first, bearing a coffin, by the looks of it a coffin of the most costly make. Walking behind it was a heavy-shouldered, powerfully built man whom she recognized, after a moment, as the Grand Admiral Gialaurys, Septach Melayn’s old friend and companion-in-arms, but a Gialaurys who seemed to have aged a hundred years since she last had seen him at the Castle at the time of Lord Dekkeret’s coronation. His head was bowed, his face was dark and grim. As the procession bearing the coffin went past her, he did not appear to notice her at all. But why should he? If he knew her at all, it was only as one of the innumerable young ladies of the court. And he was obviously so preoccupied with his grief that he could spare no attention for those he passed while coming ashore.
But who is it that is dead? she wondered, looking back at the somber procession as it vanished from view.
And then a familiar voice cried, “Keltryn! Keltryn!”
“Dinitak!”
He had changed, somehow. Not outwardly: he was the same slender, compact man, with the same sun-darkened face and the same look of taut-coiled intensity. But something was different. There was—what?—a kind of grandeur about him now, an almost regal air of attainment and purpose. Keltryn saw it right away. She ran to him, and he opened his arms to her, and she pressed herself tight against him, and the sensation of contact brought warm, good memories to life in her, but there was also, even now, that puzzling sense of changes that had taken place within him.
Of course. He had gone to Zimroel with the Coronal. He had taken part in some kind of terrible struggle against the enemies of the throne.
After a time she stepped back from him and said, “Well, here I am, Dinitak!”
“Here you are, yes. How wonderful that is.”
“And Zimroel—you’ll tell me all about it—?”
“In time. It is a very long story. And there is so much else to tell too.” A curious smile traveled like a flickering flame across his dark features. “I am to be a Power of the Realm, Keltryn. And if you will have me, you will be, like your sister, the consort of a Power.”
The words made no sense at all to her. She stood there, saying them over and over in her mind, and in no way could she draw a meaning from them.
He said, “It is agreed, by Dekkeret and Prestimion and the Lady. I am to wear the helmet, and enter minds as the Lady does, and seek out those who would do harm to others. And with the helmet I am to warn them of the consequences of their actions, and to punish them if they proceed in spite of the warning. The King of Dreams is to be my title; and it will descend to my children, and to my children’s children forever, who will be trained in the helmet’s use. So there will be no more Mandraliscas in the world. You see, then, I am to be a Power. But will you be a Power’s wife, Keltryn?”
“You’re asking me to marry you?” she said, dumfounded.
“If the King of Dreams is to have children who will inherit his tasks, he must have a queen, is that not so?—We will live in Suvrael. That is Prestimion’s decision, not mine, that the new Power must make his home far from those of the other three; but it is not the worst place in the world, Suvrael, and I think you will get used to it much quicker than you think. If you like, we can return to the Castle to be married, or go to the Labyrinth and have Prestimion perform the ceremony, but Dekkeret and I are agreed that it is best for me to go to Suvrael as quickly as I can, in order that I can—”
She was barely listening, and scarcely understanding at all. A Power of the Realm? King of Dreams? Suvrael? It was all whirling madly in her mind.
“Keltryn?” Dinitak said.
“So much—so strange—”
“Tell me this, at least: will you marry me, Keltryn?”
That much she could focus on. There would be time later to comprehend the rest of it, King of Dreams and Suvrael and all of that, and what had happened while he and Dekkeret and the others were over in Zimroel, and whose body it was that Gialaurys had escorted from the ship.
“Yes,” she said, understanding that much. He loves you. He loves you more than you could possibly believe. “Yes, Dinitak, yes, yes, yes, yes!”
Prestimion said, glancing down at the despatch that had just been brought to him, “Gialaurys has come from Alaisor to Sisivondal with the body, and is setting out on his way back to the Mount. So we will have to set out ourselves for the Castle in a day or two also, Varaile.”
She smiled. “I knew you’d have to find some excuse to get yourself away from the Labyrinth before much longer, Prestimion. I don’t think we’ve ever spent as many consecutive months anywhere as we have since we got back here from Stoien.”
“In truth I’ve grown quite accustomed to life in the Labyrinth, my love. Confalume said I would, sooner or later; and he was right in that, as he was in so many things. It’s when you’re Coronal that you’re a rover. The blood is hot in you, then. The Pontifex prefers a quieter life, and the Labyrinth has a way of growing on one, don’t you think?” He gestured about him with one hand and then the other, indicating all the familiar possessions of their Castle household, everything now comfortably installed in the apartments of the Labyrinth that once had been Confalume’s and now were theirs, and looking as though they had been in place for decades rather than months. “—In any case, it wasn’t my decision to bury Septach Melayn at the Castle. It was Dekkeret’s. To which I gladly defer.”
“He was your friend, Prestimion. And High Spokesman to the Pontifex, as well. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for him to be laid to rest her
e at the Labyrinth?”
Prestimion shook his head. “He was never a man of the Labyrinth, was Septach Melayn. He came here only out of loyalty to me. Castle Mount was his place, and there he will lie. I will not overrule Dekkeret on that. He died saving Dekkeret’s life; that act alone gives Dekkeret claim on where to bury him.”
He realized that he was speaking quite calmly of these details of Septach Melayn’s burial, as though it were merely some ordinary piece of business of the realm, and for a moment Prestimion actually thought that the pain of his friend’s death might be starting to heal. But then it all came sweeping back upon him, and he grimaced and turned away. His eyes were stinging. That Septach Melayn, of all men, should have been lost in the struggle against Mandralisca—that he should have given up his own life for the sake of ridding the world of that—that—
“Prestimion—” said Varaile, reaching a hand toward him.
He fought to regain his control, and succeeded. “We needn’t discuss this, Varaile. Shouldn’t. Dekkeret has decreed a Castle funeral and a Castle burial, and Gialaurys is bringing him there, and the monument is already being designed, and I will officiate at the ceremony, and so you and I should start packing for our trip up the Glayge. And so be it.”
“I wonder what sort of burial Dekkeret decreed for Mandralisca.”
“I’ll ask him, if I think of it whenever he returns from his processional. I’d have fed the body to a pack of hungry jakkaboles, myself. Dekkeret’s a kindlier man than I am, but I like to think he’d do the same.”
“He is a kingly man, is Dekkeret.”
“Yes. Yes, that he is,” said Prestimion. “A king among kings. I have left the world in good hands, I think. He told me he would crush Mandralisca without going to war, and he has done that, and pushed those five ghastly brothers back into the box out of which they sprang, and all Zimroel sings Lord Dekkeret’s praises, now, apparently.” Prestimion laughed. The thought of Dekkeret’s deeds in Zimroel had brightened his spirit. “Do you know, Varaile, what it is that I will be famous for, in the years ahead? The great thing that they will remember about me? It will be that I came upon the boy who was to become Lord Dekkeret, one day while I was in Normork, and that I had the good sense to gather him to me and make him my Coronal. Yes. What they will say of me is that I was the king who gave the world Lord Dekkeret.—And now let us get ourselves ready for this journey to the Castle, love, and for the one bit of sad business we must do there, before we enter into the happy times of our reign.”
They had been traveling up the Zimr for weeks and weeks, city upon city, Flegit and Clarischanz, Belka and Larnimisculus and Verf, and now they were in Ni-moya at last, were Dekkeret and Fulkari, installed in the great palace that once had belonged to Dantirya Sambail, wandering in amazement through its multitude of rooms, exclaiming over the splendor of its design.
“He did indeed live like a king,” Fulkari murmured. They had reached the westernmost wing of the building, where a colossal window of a single pane provided a sweeping view that ran from the waterfront on their left to the white towers of the Ni-moyan hills on the right, and the great bosom of the giant river rolling on before them far into the remote regions of the continent. “What will you do with this place now, Dekkeret? You aren’t going to have it torn down, are you?”
“No. Never. I can’t hold this building guilty of the crimes of Dantirya Sambail and his five pitiful nephews. Those crimes will be forgotten, sooner or later. But what a crime against beauty it would be to destroy the Procurator’s palace.”
“Yes. Quite so.”
“I’ll appoint a duke to reign over Ni-moya—I don’t know who it will be, but he’ll be someone without a drop of Sambailid blood in him—and he and his heirs can live here, knowing they do so by grace of the Coronal’s generosity.”
“A duke. Not a procurator.”
“There’ll be no more procurators here, Fulkari. That was Prestimion’s decree, which I will renew. We’ll remake the government of Zimroel to decentralize it again: a single authority here’s too dangerous, too threatening to the imperial government itself. Provincial dukes, loyalty to the crown, frequent grand processionals to underscore the allegiance of Zimroel to the constitution—that’s how it will be, yes.”
“And the Five Lords?” she asked.
“Lords no more, you can be sure of that. But it would be a sin to put such fools to death. When they’ve done enough penance for their little uprising, they can go back to their palaces in the desert, and there they’ll stay forever. I doubt they’ll make any further trouble. And if the thought of it even comes into their minds, the King of Dreams will take care of that.”
“The King of Dreams,” Fulkari said, smiling. “Our brother Dinitak. A brilliant scheme, that was. Although you’ve cost me a sister by sending him off to Suvrael.”
“And cost myself a friend,” said Dekkeret. “It can’t be helped. Prestimion insisted: the King of Dreams must make his headquarters down there. We can’t have three of the four Powers clustered in Alhanroel. He’ll do the job well, I think. He was born for it.—Did you ever think, Fulkari, that your wild tomboy of a sister would marry a Power of the Realm?”
“Did I ever think I would?” she asked, and they laughed, and moved closer to each other by the great window. Dekkeret stared outward. Night was beginning to fall, now. Somewhere out there to the west was a further world of marvels that they were yet to visit: Khyntor of the great steaming geysers, and crystalline Dulorn where the Perpetual Circus offered its carnival of wonders night and day, day and night, and ancient cobblestoned Pidruid beyond it on the coast, and Narabal, Til-omon, Tjangalagala, Cibairil, Brunir, Banduk Marika, all those fabled cities of the distant west.
They would visit them all. He was determined to go everywhere. To stand before the people and say, Here I am, Dekkeret your Coronal Lord, who will devote his life to your service.
“What a beautiful sunset,” Fulkari said softly. “So many colors: gold, purple, red, green, all swirling together.”
“It is. Very beautiful.”
“But it’s still only the middle of the day in Khyntor, isn’t it? And morning in Dulorn. And the middle of the night before, out in Pidruid. Oh, Dekkeret, the world is so very big! The Castle seems so far away, just now!”
“The Castle is far away, my sweet.”
“How long will we be gone on this processional, do you think?”
Dekkeret shrugged. “I don’t know. Five years? Ten? Forever?”
“Seriously, Dekkeret.”
“I tell you, Fulkari: I don’t know. As long as it takes. The Castle will get along without us, if it has to. I am the Coronal Lord wherever I happen to be on Majipoor. And we have an entire world to visit.” The sky was changing as they watched, the colors deepening, red giving way to bronze, purple shading into a dark maroon. Soon it would be night here, and twilight in the west. The stars were beginning to appear. One of the lesser moons came into view and cast a silver strand of light on the waters of the river. Dekkeret’s arm tightened around Fulkari’s shoulders, and they stood silently for a time. “Look you there,” he said then, when at last all the colors had faded to black. “There is Majipoor before us, and the night is as beautiful as the day.”
ROBERT SILVERBERG has won five Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and the prestigious Prix Apollo. He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels—including the bestselling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics Dying Inside and A Time of Changes—and more than sixty nonfiction works. Among the sixty-plus anthologies he has edited are Legends and Far Horizons, which contain original short stories set in the most popular universes of Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy and SF writer today. Mr. Silverberg’s Majipoor Cycle, set on perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one pf the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.
Robert Silverberg, The King of Dreams
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