Lord Prestimion Read online

  That was an odd notion, taking Simbilon Khayf into the Council. But these were new times, and Simbilon Khayf, it seemed, was a new man. Well, we will see, Prestimion thought.

  “His help will be very valuable, I’m sure,” he said.

  “And he’s eager to give it. He has the greatest respect for you, Prestimion.”

  “You must bring him to me in a day or two, Varaile.”

  Then he turned away and stood for a time by the window, peering into the courtyard below. There was a good view from here of much of the Inner Castle, the heart and nucleus of the entire great structure, the high domain of power. This Castle in which he dwelled was called Lord Prestimion’s Castle now, and would be until the end of his reign. The world had been given into his hand to rule; and though he had made an uncertain beginning of things, he was certain now that his mistakes were behind him, that an age of miracles and wonders was about to commence. And for the first time since they had come to him to tell him that the Pontifex Prankipin was dying and he would very likely be selected to take Lord Confalume’s place as Coronal, he felt a sensation of something very much like peace stealing over his heart.

  He let his mind go roaming outward, beyond the Inner Castle and beyond the uncountable multitude of rooms that surrounded the Castle’s core, and on past the Mount at whose summit it stood, and the wondrous multifarious sprawl of the Majipoor lowlands farther on. In a moment’s flicker of his mind he undertook a journey that no man could hope to complete in a lifetime, from one end of the world to the other, and returned just as swiftly to the Mount, to the Castle, to this tower that was his home.

  “Prestimion?” Varaile said, as if from a great distance away.

  He looked around, startled by the intrusion on his reverie. “Yes?”

  “You’re holding the baby upside down.”

  “Ah. Ah, so I am.” He grinned. “Perhaps you’d better take him back, eh?”

  Well, perhaps not all the mistakes were behind him yet.

  He handed the baby to Varaile and leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose. And went back across the room to see if Septach Melayn and Gialaurys and the rest had left any of the best wines for him.

  ROBERT SILVERBERG’s many novels include the bestselling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics Dying Inside and A Time of Changes. He has won more Nebula awards than any other writer, several Hugos, and the prestigious Prix Apollo. His Majipoor Cycle, set on the grandest and greatest world in all science fiction, is considered one of the jewels in speculative fiction’s crown.

  Robert Silverberg is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels and over sixty nonfiction works, as well as the editor of over sixty anthologies, including the much acclaimed Legends, which contains original short stories set in their most popular universes by Stephen King, Robert Jordan, Ursula K. Le Guin, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy writer today.