Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

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The years since first be gained the Starburst Crown have been difficult ones for Coronal Lord Prestimion and the vast, unfathoniable 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 helmetthat 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 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.

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Septach Melayn was in the second floater, and Gialaurys in the third, and the others followed close behind. It was a considerable force, hundreds of armed men, and others ready at the pier should any signal of distress go up. If we are riding into ambush, Dekkeret thought, we will make them pay a good price for their treachery.

But all seemed peaceful enough as the floaters entered the great arched gateway of Mereminene Hall. There were crescent-moon banners galore here, and a host of men in the green Sambailid livery, some of them armed, but only in the ordinary way of men-at-arms who guard a great estate. Dekkeret saw no lurking battalions, no cache of waiting weaponry.

A tall thickset red-haired man, strikingly ugly, a preening strutting figure in sweeping maroon cloak and foppish yellow tights that were much too tight, came forward with a clanking of golden spurs. He made a grand excessive bow to Dekkeret and Fulkari, culminating in exaggerated starburst salutes as he straightened up. “My lord—my lady—you do us great honor. I am the Lord Gavahaud, whose pleasure it is to show you to the accommodations that will be yours during this your stay. My lordly brother will be pleased to greet you afterward, when you are installed.”

“What kind of accent is that?” Fulkari asked, under her breath. “He utters everything through his nose. Is that the Ni-moyan way of speech? I’ve never heard the like.”

“False grandeur is what they speak here,” said Dekkeret. “We must be careful not to snicker, whatever the provocation.”

The guest-lodge of Mereminene Hall was a place of shining adamantine floors and vermilion-tiled walls and faceted windows intricately set in lead, easily worthy of housing a visiting Coronal. The main house must surely be even grander, Dekkeret thought. And this was a mere country estate. Old Dantirya Sambail had not been one to stint, it seemed. But why would he? In his time he had been king of Zimroel, effectively, and no doubt had wanted to equal in a single generation all that the Coronals of Castle Mount had built for themselves over thousands of years.

Nor was there any stinting of hospitality by this Gavahaud, either. The lodge swarmed with platoons of bowing servants; rare wines and exotic fruits aplenty were supplied for the delectation of the guests if they cared to refresh themselves upon arrival; their bed-linens were of the finest manufacture, glowing warm-hued silks and satins.

A chamberlain came within an hour with word that there would be a formal dinner that evening, adding that it was the wish of the Lord Gaviral that no discussions of serious matters should be expected until the following day.

The Lord Gaviral—he who styled himself Pontifex of Zimroel—came to the guest-lodge an hour after that, alone, simply dressed, unarmed, and on foot. Dekkeret was surprised at how small a man this Gaviral was, no taller than Prestimion and much less solidly built: flimsy-framed, in fact, with the constantly moving eyes and twitching lips of a man who is uneasy in his spirit. He had heard that these Sambailids were massive hulking ugly men as the old Procurator and his brothers had been, and certainly Gavahaud fit that description, but not this one, who had some of the ugliness but none of the size. Only by his rank plume of orange-red hair and his broad, wide-nostriled nose was his kinship with the tribe of Dantirya Sambail confirmed.

But he was courtly enough, speaking well and making every show of respect for his royal visitor, and behaving not in any way like one who has proclaimed himself to be a lord and even a Pontifex in defiance of all the natural order of things. He inquired merely whether the Coronal found his lodgings suitable, and hoped that his lordship’s appetite would be equal to the feast that awaited him. “I regret that two of my brothers have been unable to join us for this meeting,” said Gaviral. “The Lord Gavinius is unwell, and could not leave Ni-moya. The Lord Gavdat, who practices the study of magery, has remained behind as well, because he is in the midst of important prognosticatory calculations that he feels must not be interrupted even for so important a gathering as this.”

“I regret their absence,” said Dekkeret courteously, although Septach Melayn had already told him that Gavinius was a revolting drunken fool, and the other one, Gavdat, evidently was a fool of a different kind, forever lost in the claptrap of geomantic studies. But courtesy would cost him nothing; and he was only too well aware that it made no difference whether he met with one Sambailid brother, or five, or five hundred. Mandralisca was the force to reckon with. And of Mandralisca nothing at all so far had been said.

It was evening, now. Banquet time.

As Dekkeret had suspected, the late Procurator had indeed lived here on a truly regal scale. The main house was a massive stone pile with some seven or ten great-windowed halls radiating from its core, and the banquet hall was the greatest of all, a tremendous gallery of rugged antique design, with bare red beams of bright thembar-wood, and rough heavy walls of mortared boulders piled to an astounding height. And this at the country estate of a provincial lordling; what was the procuratorial palace at Ni-moya like, Dekkeret wondered, if Dantirya Sambail’s mere country retreat had been a place of this sort?

The big room was full: the entire court of the Five Lords must be here, Dekkeret thought. Protocol was somewhat strained at the high-table seating. Dekkeret, as Coronal, was entitled to the center position, with Fulkari at his side. But the Lord Gaviral claimed at least for the time being to be the Pontifex of this continent, whatever that meant, and the Lord Gavahaud his brother, as the actual owner of Mereminene Hall, was the putative host of the meeting. Which one of them would sit at the Coronal’s right hand? There was much murmuring, and in the end Gavahaud deferred to Gaviral, and let him take the seat of honor beside Dekkeret, but not before some further confusion involving the third brother, the Lord Gavilomarin, who had appeared now also, a blinking, watery-eyed lump of a man with a blithering smile and a general air of witlessness about him. He took the central seat without asking, apparently choosing it at random, and had to be moved along toward the end of the dais, down by Septach Melayn and Gialaurys. Dinitak was seated at the opposite end.

Where, Dekkeret asked himself, was the infamous Mandralisca?

His name had not so much as been mentioned thus far. That seemed very odd. In the awkward first moments after taking his seat Dekkeret said to Gaviral, by way of having anything to say at all, “And your privy counsellor, of whom I’ve heard so much? Surely he is here tonight, but where?”

“He dislikes the prominence of the dais,” said Gaviral. “You will find him over there on the left, against the wall.”

Dekkeret glanced in the direction Gaviral indicated, far across the room to an ordinary table set amidst many others. Though he had never seen Mandralisca, he recognized him at once. He stood out from all those around him like death at a wedding feast: a pallid, somber, harsh-faced, thin-lipped man garbed in a tight-fitting suit of shining black leather that was altogether without ornament except for some large, bright pendant of gold, no doubt an emblem of office, on a chain around his neck. His hard, glittering eyes were trained directly on Dekkeret, nor did he flinch away as the Coronal’s gaze came to rest on him.

So that is Mandralisca, Dekkeret thought. After all this time, he and I are no more than a hundred feet apart.

He found himself fascinated by the man’s chilly, repellent face and sinister aura. There was an unquestionable magnetism about him, a diabolical force. Tremendous demonic power of will was evident in his features. Dekkeret understood now how this man, the embodiment of all that had bedeviled Prestimion throughout the years of his otherwise glorious reign, could have caused so much trouble in the world for so many years. Here was a truly dark soul; here was one whose very existence made one wonder about the Divine’s purpose in creating him.

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