Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

“The Barjazids, especially Khaymak Barjazid, have built upon that Vroon’s designs and greatly increased their abilities. I was one of the first, you will recall, to feel the force of the helmet, long ago when I was traveling in Suvrael. But what I felt then, strong as it was, was nothing like the power available in the later version of the helmet you used to strike down Venghenar Barjazid in the Stoienzar those many years ago. And the helmet that drove your brother into insanity, and has harmed so many others lately up and down the land, is far stronger yet. It is a formidable weapon indeed.”

Dekkeret leaned forward, his gaze intently focused on Prestimion.

“The world,” he said, “needs more stringent government than it had in years gone by, or else we will have new Mandraliscas all the time. What I propose is this: that we take the helmets into the government, giving them over to Dinitak Barjazid and making it his responsibility to search out malefactors, and to control and punish them by using his helmet to transmit powerful mental sendings. He will monitor the minds of the world, and keep the wicked in check. For this he will require the status and authority of a Power of the Realm. We will call him, let us say, the King of Dreams. His rank will be equal to our own. Dinitak will be the first of that title; and it will descend through the generations to his descendants thereafter.—There you have it, your majesty.”

Astonishing, Prestimion thought. Unbelievable.

“Dinitak, as I understand it, has no descendants at present,” he replied at once. “But that’s the least of the things I see wrong with this scheme of yours.”

“And the others?”

“It’s tyranny, Dekkeret. We rule now by the consent of the people, who freely make us their kings. But if we have a weapon that permits us to control their minds—”

“To guide their minds. Only the wicked need fear it. And the weapon is already loose in the land. Better that we make it exclusively ours, forbidden to anyone else, than to leave it out there for future Mandraliscas. We, at least, can be trusted. Or so I prefer to think.”

“And your Dinitak? Can he? He’s a Barjazid, I remind you.”

“Of the same blood,” said Dekkeret, “but not of the same nature. I saw that in Suvrael, when he urged his father Venghenar to go with me to the Castle and show you the first helmet. Later we saw that again when he came to us at Stoien, bringing a helmet we could use against his father in the rebellion. You were suspicious of him then, do you remember? You said, ‘How can we trust him?’ when he showed up bearing the helmet. You thought it might be all some intricate new scheme of Dantirya Sambail’s. ‘Trust him, my lord,’ is what I said to you then. ‘Trust him!’ And you did. Were we wrong?”

“Not then,” Prestimion said.

“Nor will we be now. He is my closest friend, Prestimion. I know him as I’ve never known anyone else. He’s driven by a set of moral beliefs that make the rest of us seem like pickpockets. You said it yourself at Muldemar, remember, that time when he gave you an answer that was truthful, but a little too blunt? ‘You are no diplomat, Dinitak, but you are an honest man,’ or words to that effect.—Did you notice that although he came with me on this trip, Keltryn didn’t?”

“Keltryn?”

“Fulkari’s younger sister. She and Dinitak have had a little romance—but why would you know that, Prestimion? You were off at the Labyrinth when it started. Anyway, he wouldn’t take Keltryn with him. Said it was improper to be traveling with an unmarried woman. Improper! When did you last hear a word like that?”

“A very holy young man, I agree. Too holy, perhaps.”

“Better that than otherwise. We’ll marry him off to Keltryn sooner or later—if she’ll have him, that is; Fulkari tells me she’s furious with him for leaving her behind—and they’ll begin a tribe of holy young Barjazids who can succeed their great ancestor as Kings of Dreams in the centuries ahead. And fear of the harsh dreams that the King of Dreams can send will maintain peace in the land forever after.”

“A nice fantasy, isn’t it? But it makes me very uneasy, Dekkeret. I once took it upon myself to meddle with the minds of everyone on Majipoor in one great swoop, at Thegomar Edge, when I had my mages wipe out all memory of the Korsibar uprising. I thought then it was a good thing to do, but I was wrong, and I paid a bitter price for it. Now you propose a new kind of mind-meddling, a constant ongoing monitoring.—I won’t allow it, Dekkeret, and that ends it. You would need to have the approval of the Pontifex to establish any such system, and that approval is herewith withheld. Now, if we can return to the problem of Mandralisca—”

“You doom us all to chaos, Prestimion.”

“Do I, now?”

“The world has become too complicated to be governed from the Labyrinth and the Castle any longer. Zimroel has grown wealthy and restless under Prankipin and Confalume and you. And they know how long it takes to ship troops from Alhanroel to deal with any sort of trouble there. The rise of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail as a sort of quasi-king in Zimroel was the beginning of a secessionist movement there. Now it’s gone another step. There’ll be the constant threat of divisiveness and insurrection across the sea unless we have some direct and immediate way of intervening. The whole structure will come apart.”

“And you actually think that using the Barjazid helmet is the only way we have of holding the world government together?”

“I do. The only way short of turning Zimroel into an armed camp with imperial garrisons stationed in every city, that is. Do you think that would be better? Do you, Prestimion?”

Abruptly Prestimion rose and went to the window. He yearned for nothing more than to bring this maddening discussion to an end. Why would Dekkeret not yield, even in the face of a Pontifical refusal? Why would he not see the impossibility of his great idea?

Or am I, Prestimion wondered, the one who refuses to see?

For a long time he stared out silently into the streets of Stoien city. He remembered a time when he had stared out another window of this very building at pillars of smoke rising from the fires set by lunatics at the time of the plague of madness, a plague that he had, however indirectly he had done it, brought upon the world himself.

Did he, he asked himself, want to see fires such as those in the cities of Majipoor again? In Zimroel: in wondrous Ni-moya, and magical crystalline Dulorn, and tropic Narabal of the sweet sea breezes? You doom us all to chaos, Prestimion —A fourth Power of the Realm. A King of Dreams.

Young Barjazid wearing the helmet, roving the night to seek out those who threatened to break the peace, and warning them sternly of the consequences, and punishing them if they disobeyed. Of the same blood but not of the same nature— It would be a mighty transformation. Did he dare? How much less risky it would be simply to apply the Pontifical veto to this wild scheme and put it away, and send Dekkeret off to Zimroel to crush this new uprising and hurl Mandralisca finally into his grave. While he himself returned to the Labyrinth and lived out the rest of his days pleasantly there amid imperial pomp and ceremony, as Confalume had done for so long, never needing to grapple with the hard questions of governance, for he had a Coronal who could grapple with such things for him.

A constant threat of divisiveness and insurrection across the sea. The whole structure will come apart—

From somewhere behind him Dekkeret said, “I want to point out, your majesty, that we have that vision of Maundigand-Klimd’s to take into account here. And also, on my journey here across Alhanroel, there were several occasions when I had visionary experiences of my own, to my great surprise, that seemed to indicate—”