The King of Dreams Read online

  “They said you had had a stroke.”

  “A little swoon, let’s say.” The Pontifex held up his left hand and clenched it into a fist. The second and fifth fingers would not close; he had to fold them into place with his other hand. “A minor bit of difficulty here, you see? But very minor. And the left leg—” Confalume took a few steps toward him. “A slight drag, you will notice. My dancing days are over. Well, it is not required of me at my age that I move very quickly.—You could call it a stroke, I suppose, but not a very serious one.” And then, noticing Taradath standing behind him: “Your son, is he, Prestimion? Grown almost out of all recognition since last I saw him. When was that, boy, five years ago, seven, when I was at the Castle?”

  “Eight years ago, your majesty,” said Taradath, all too plainly fighting back his awe. “I was seven years old, then.”

  “And now you’re as tall as your father, not that that’s such a difficult thing to achieve. And you’ve got your mother’s dark complexion, too. Well, come in, come in, both of you! Don’t just stand there!”

  There was a quaver in Confalume’s voice, Prestimion observed, and he seemed to have acquired an old man’s garrulity as well. But he appeared to be in phenomenally fine shape. Confalume had always been a man of more than usual vigor and stamina, of course. Even now, his stocky frame was still muscular-looking and his sweeping thatch of hair, though it had long since turned white, was as thick as ever. Only the soft, papery texture of his cheeks betrayed the Pontifex’s great age in any meaningful way. And he did seem to have thrown off all but the most trifling signs of the stroke that had caused such excitement throughout both capitals of the realm.

  He led Prestimion and Taradath within. Few visitors ever ventured into the private Pontifical chambers. Confalume’s famed collection of treasures decorated every sill and alcove and shelf: figurines of spun glass, carvings of dragon-ivory inlaid with porphyry and onyx, jeweled caskets, a whole forest of strange trees fashioned from strands of woven silver, ancient coins and mounted insects, leather-bound volumes of antique lore, and ever so much more, the hoard of a long acquisitive lifetime surrounding him on all sides. Nor had the Pontifex lost his fascination for the arts of wizardry, either: there were his cherished instruments of magic, still, his ammatepalas and veralistias and his armillary spheres, his rohillas and his protospathifars, his powders and potions and ointments. Perhaps, thought Prestimion, the old man had somehow been able to magic himself up out of his deathbed: certainly if faith in occult matters was sufficient to bring it about, Confalume would live forever.

  The Pontifex poured wine for Prestimion and himself, and then for Taradath as well, and showed the boy through some of his rooms of fanciful objects, and engaged them in pleasant superficial conversation about their journey down the Glayge, and current construction projects at the Castle, and the activities of the Lady Varaile, and the like. It was all very charming and not in any way how Prestimion had expected the visit to unfold.

  Taradath was no longer awed. He seemed to see the Pontifex as no more than a kindly old grandfather, now.

  “Were these men all Pontifexes too?” he asked, pointing to the long row of painted medallions along the upper wall of the room.

  “Indeed so,” Confalume replied. “This is Prankipin here—you do remember him, of course, don’t you, Prestimion?—and Gobryas who was just before him—Avinas—Kelimiphon—Amyntilir—” He could put a name to each portrait. “Dizimaule—Kanaba—Sirruth—Vildivar—”

  Listening to Confalume go on and on, reciting the names of his predecessors for thousands of years, Prestimion felt a humbling sense of the immensity of history, that great soaring arch that disappeared at its farther end into the mists of myth, and in which could be found, at the end that was anchored in the present day, none other than his own self.

  Most of these men were little more than names to Prestimion. The achievements of the Pontifexes Kanaba and Sirruth and Vildivar were known only to historians now. More recent ones, Gobryas, Avinas, Kelimiphon, yes, he knew something about them, though from all accounts they had been mediocre rulers. The world had come into hard times under the uninspired rule of such men as Gobryas and Avinas. But Prestimion, looking upward at that long array of faces, had a sudden awareness of himself as part of an extraordinary modern dynasty.

  Prankipin, up there, Coronal for twenty years or so and Pontifex for forty-three, had inherited a weak and troubled world from his predecessor Gobryas and by wise measures and dynamic leadership had returned it to its former grandeur. If toward the end he had given way to the folly of sorcery and allowed the world to swarm with wizards, well, it was a forgivable flaw for a man who had accomplished so much. Then here was Confalume, not yet a portrait on the wall but an actual breathing man, Pontifex these twenty years past and Coronal forty-three more before that, who had built on Prankipin’s glorious foundation and seen to it that prosperity became even more general among Majipoor’s fifteen billion people. He, too, needed to be forgiven for his passion for magic, but that was easy enough, Prestimion thought.

  And now it was the turn of Prestimion of Muldemar, Lord Prestimion now, Prestimion Pontifex one day to be. Would he be deemed a worthy successor to the great Prankipin and the splendid Confalume? Perhaps so. Majipoor was thriving under his guidance. He had made mistakes, yes, but so had Prankipin, so had Confalume. His own greatest achievement was that he had saved the world from misrule under Korsibar; but no one would ever know that. Had he achieved anything else worthwhile? Certainly he hoped that he had; but he of all people was in no position to know. He was still young, though. He would eventually, so he profoundly hoped and believed, be ranked with those other two as architects of a golden age.

  “And is this Stiamot?” Taradath asked.

  “He’s farther down the row, boy. Of course, the artist had to guess at what he really looked like, but there he is. Here—let me show you—”

  Amazingly spry, the damaged left leg dragging only a little, Confalume went shuffling toward the far side of the room. Prestimion watched him going from portrait to portrait with Taradath, calling off the names of the early emperors.

  The boy remained down there, peering up solemnly at the faces of Pontifexes who had ruled this world when Stiamot himself was a thousand years unborn. Confalume, returning to where Prestimion still sat, refilled their wine-bowls and said, in a low, confidential tone, “The true reason you came scurrying down here was that you thought I was dying, wasn’t it? You wanted to check my condition out with your own eyes.”

  “I don’t know what I thought. But the news out of the Labyrinth about you was very worrisome. It seemed appropriate to pay you a visit. A man of your age, suffering a stroke—”

  “I actually thought I was dying myself, as I felt it hit. But only while it was happening. I’m a long way from finished, Prestimion.”

  “May it truly be so.”

  “Are you saying that for my sake, or yours?” the Pontifex asked.

  “Do you know how unkind that sounds?”

  Confalume laughed. “But it’s realistic, yes? You don’t at all want to be Pontifex yet.”

  Prestimion cast a wary glance toward Taradath, who was practically at the end of the hall, now, probably beyond earshot. There was a touch of testiness in his voice as he responded, “All of Majipoor wishes you continued good health and long life, your majesty. I am no exception to that. But I do assure you that if the Divine should choose to gather you in tomorrow, I am in every way ready to do what will be asked of me.”

  “Are you? Well, yes, you say you are, and I must take that at face value, I suppose.” The Pontifex closed his eyes. He seemed to be staring into some infinite recess of time. Prestimion studied the tiny fluttering pulses in the old man’s veined eyelids, and waited, and continued to wait. Had he fallen asleep? But then, abruptly, Confalume was looking straight at him again, and the keen gray eyes were as penetrating as ever. “I do remember sitting down here with you a long while ago, your first vis
it here after becoming Coronal, and telling you that after you’d had the job for forty years or so you’d be quite willing to move on to the Labyrinth. Do you recall that?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “You’re halfway to that forty years, now. So you must be at least half sincere when you tell me you’re ready to take over. But have no fear, Prestimion. There’s still twenty years more to go.” Confalume pointed toward the tabletop that bore his collection of astrological devices. “It happens that I cast my horoscope only last week. Unless there was some serious error in my calculations, I’m going to live to the age of a hundred and ten. I’m going to have the longest reign of any Pontifex in the history of Majipoor. What do you say to that, Prestimion? You are relieved, aren’t you? Confess it! You are! At least right now, you are.—But I can tell you, my young friend, you’ll be utterly sick of being Coronal by the time I make my trip back to the Source. You won’t mind leaving the Castle at all. A time will come when you’ll be eager to be Pontifex, believe me. You’ll be more than ready to retire to the Labyrinth, believe me—more than ready!”

  On the way back up the Glayge Prestimion pondered Confalume’s words. He had to admit that he had been deceiving himself, if nobody else, in claiming that he was fully ready to let the Pontificate descend upon him. His relief at finding Confalume in this unexpected state of well-being was the unanswerable proof of that. It was a reprieve, unquestionably a reprieve; which meant that he still thought of becoming Pontifex as a grim and inexorable sentence, rather than simply a matter of duty. Though he very much doubted the worth of Confalume’s astrological calculations, the evidence seemed to indicate that it still would be a matter of some years before the world had its next change of rulers.

  There was no getting around the fact that his mood was very much lighter now. That told him all he needed to know about his insistent professions of readiness for life in the Labyrinth.

  Before departing for the Castle, he took Taradath on a brief tour of the city. The boy had seen wonders aplenty already in his short life, but the strangeness of the Labyrinth was like nothing else in the world, these vast echoing halls of curious design that lay so far underground. “The Pool of Dreams, this is called,” Prestimion said, gesturing toward the calm greenish water in whose depths mysterious images constantly came and went, some of supernal beauty, some of nightmare repulsiveness, one moment’s scene altogether different from another. “No one knows how it works. Or even which Pontifex put it here.”

  The Place of Masks, where huge bodiless blind-eyed faces rose on marble stalks. The Court of Pyramids, a zone of thousands of close-set white monoliths, purposeless, inexplicable. The Hall of Winds, where cold air emerged in great bursting gusts from stone grids, though they were deep beneath the surface of the world. The Court of Globes—the Cabinet of Floating Swords—the Chamber of Miracles—the Temple of Unknown Gods—

  The next day Prestimion and his son took the swift shaft to the surface and returned to the Mouth of Waters, where the royal barge was waiting to carry them upriver to the Castle. But they had only reached Maurix, three days’ journey north of the Labyrinth, when they were overtaken by a fast-moving rivercraft that flew the Pontifical flag.

  The messenger who came on board had but to speak two words and Prestimion knew what had happened.

  “Your majesty—”

  It was the phrase one used when addressing a Pontifex. The rest of the story followed only too quickly. Confalume was dead, most suddenly, of a second stroke. Prestimion would have to return to the Labyrinth to preside over his final rites and begin the process of taking over the Pontifical duties.

  13

  The resemblance was an astonishing one, Mandralisca thought.

  Venghenar Barjazid, the dead one, he of the devilish mind-controlling machines, had been an evil-looking little man whose eyes were not quite of the same size or color nor even set on a straight line in his head, and whose lips slid away sideways toward the left side to give him a permanent smirk, and whose skin, dark and leathery and thick from a lifetime of exposure to the ferocious Suvrael sunlight, was as wrinkled and folded as a canavong’s hide.

  Mandralisca found this new Barjazid just as charmingly repellent as his elder brother had been. A powerful intuition told him, from his very first glimpse of the man, that he had found a significant ally in the contest for world power that lay ahead.

  This one was every bit as mean and scrawny of form and disagreeable of visage as his late brother. His eyes too were mismated and misaligned and had the same harsh brightness; his lips too were drawn off into a mocking grimace; he too had the folded, blackened skin of one who has lived too long in barren sun-blasted Suvrael. He looked a shade taller than Venghenar had been, perhaps, and just a touch less self-assured. Mandralisca supposed that he was around fifty: older, now, than Venghenar had been when he had brought his pack of devices to Dantirya Sambail.

  And he, too, seemed to have come bearing merchandise. He had brought with him into the room a shapeless, bulging leather-trimmed cloth bag, frayed at the center, which he set down very carefully by his side when he took the seat that Mandralisca offered. Mandralisca gave the bag a quick sidelong glance. The things must be in there, he felt certain: the new collection of useful toys that the Barjazid had brought here to sell to him.

  But Mandralisca was never in a hurry to enter into any sort of negotiation. It is essential, he believed, that one must first determine who is going to have the upper hand. And that one will be the one who has the greater willingness to delay getting down to the heart of the matter.

  “Your grace,” said Barjazid, with a smarmy little bow. “What a pleasure to meet at last. My late brother spoke of you to me with the highest praise.”

  “We worked well together, yes.”

  “It’s my fervent hope that you’ll say the same of me.”

  “Mine as well.—How did you know where to find me? And why did you think I’d have any reason to want to see you?”

  “In truth I thought you had perished long ago, on that same day in the Stoienzar when my brother died. But then word reached me that you had escaped, and were alive and well and living somewhere in this region.”

  “Word of my whereabouts reached as far as Suvrael?” Mandralisca asked. “I find that surprising.”

  “Word travels, your grace. Also I have some knowledge of how to make inquiries. I learned that you were here; that you were in the employ of the five sons of one of the Procurator’s brothers, and that they perhaps had some thought of regaining the power in Zimroel that their famous uncle once had wielded; and I felt that I might be able to assist you in that enterprise. And so I sent you a message to that effect.”

  “And took your sweet time getting here,” Mandralisca said. “Your letter indicated that you’d be here almost a year ago. What happened?”

  “There were delays en route,” said Khaymak Barjazid. The quick reply seemed to Mandralisca to be a shade too glib. “You must understand, your grace, that it’s a long journey from Suvrael to here.”

  “Not that long. I interpreted your letter to mean that you wanted to meet with me right away. Obviously that was incorrect.”

  Barjazid looked at him appraisingly. The tip of his tongue slipped into view for an instant, flickering like a serpent’s. Softly he said, “I came here by way of Alhanroel, your grace. The shipping schedule favored that route. Besides, I have a nephew, my only living kinsman, in the service of the Coronal at Castle Mount. I wanted to see him again before I headed this way.”

  “Castle Mount, as I recall it, lies some thousands of miles distant from the nearest seaport.”

  “The Mount is somewhat out of the way, I admit. But it has been many years since I last had the pleasure of speaking with my brother’s son. If I am to give my allegiance to you here in Zimroel, as is my hope, I will probably never have another chance for that.”

  “I know about that nephew,” Mandralisca said. He also had known about Khaymak Barjazid’s visit to Cas
tle Mount; but it was a point in Barjazid’s favor that the man had volunteered to reveal it himself. Mandralisca steepled his fingers and peered contemplatively at Barjazid over their tips. “Your nephew turned traitor against his own father, is that not so? It was with your nephew’s invaluable assistance that Prestimion was able to weaken Dantirya Sambail and leave him vulnerable to the attack that cost the Procurator his life. One might even say that your brother’s death in the same battle was also your nephew’s direct responsibility. What sort of love can you feel for such a person, kinsman or no? Why would you want to visit him?”

  Barjazid shifted about uneasily. “Dinitak was only a boy when he did those things. He came under Prince Dekkeret’s influence, and let himself be swept up in a flight of youthful enthusiasm for Lord Prestimion, and that led to consequences that I know he could not have foreseen. I wanted to find out whether over the years he had come to see the error of his ways: whether there could be any reconciliation between us.”

  “And—?”

  “It was asinine of me to think that such a thing was possible. He’s still Prestimion’s man through and through, and Dekkeret’s. They own him completely. I should have known better than to expect to find any trace of family feeling in him. He refused even to see me.”

  “How sad.” Mandralisca did not even try to sound compassionate. “You went all the way to the Castle, and your visit was for nought!”

  “Sir, I could get no closer to the Castle than the city of High Morpin. By my nephew’s explicit orders, I was denied permission to approach any nearer than that.”

  A very touching story, Mandralisca thought. But not an entirely convincing one.

  It was easy enough to find a more likely explanation for Khaymak Barjazid’s lengthy detour to Castle Mount. Quite likely the thought had occurred to him, after he had decided to sell his services to the Five Lords, that there might be a better price available elsewhere. There was no question that this man was carrying valuable merchandise in that worn bag. Obviously, too, he was looking to peddle it to the highest bidder; and the world’s deepest pockets belonged to Lord Prestimion.