Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

A reprieve indeed is what it was. A respite from the inevitable. They would not have to leave the sun-washed magnificence of the Castle and its lofty Mount and take themselves down into the dark depths of the Labyrinth. Not now, at any rate. Not yet. Not quite yet.

But at the end of the meeting, when they had finished dealing with the host of trifling matters that had managed to make their way this morning to the attention of these great and powerful figures of the world, Septach Melayn lingered in the throne-room after the others had gone. He took Varaile gently by the hand and said in a soft tone, “This is our warning, I fear. Beyond any doubt the end is coming for Confalume. You must prepare yourself for great change, lady. So must we all.”

“Prepare myself I will, Septach Melayn. I know that I must.”

She looked upward at him. Tall as she was, he rose high above her, a great lanky spidery figure of a man, whose arms and legs were extraordinarily thin and whose slender body had, even now when age was beginning to come upon him, wondrous grace and ease of movement.

Here in his later years Septach Melayn had grown even more angular. There seemed to be scarcely an ounce of unneeded flesh anywhere on his spare, attenuated frame; but still he radiated a kind of beauty that was rare among men. Everything about him was elegant: his posture, his way of dress, his tumbling ringlets of artfully arrayed hair, still golden after all these years, his little pointed beard and tightly clipped mustache. He was a master of masters among swordsmen, who had never come close to being bested in a duel and had on only one occasion ever been wounded, while fighting four men at once in some horrendous battle of the Korsibar war. Prestimion long had loved him like a brother for his playful wit and devoted nature; and Varaile had come to feel the same sort of love for him herself.

“Do you think,” she asked him, “that Prestimion is ready in his heart to become Pontifex?”

“Would you not know that better than I, milady?”

“I never speak of it with him.”

“Then let me tell you,” said Septach Melayn, “that he is as ready for it as ever a man could be. All these many decades, living first as Coronal-designate and then as Coronal, he’s known that the Pontificate must lie at the end of his days. He has taken that into account. He fought to become Coronal, remember. It wasn’t simply handed to him. For two full years he battled against Korsibar, and broke him, and took the throne back from him that he had stolen. Would he have striven so fiercely for the starburst crown, if he had not already made his peace with the knowledge that the Labyrinth waited for him beyond his time in the Castle?”

“I hope you are right, Septach Melayn.”

“I know I am, good lady. And you know it too.”

“Perhaps I do.”

“Prestimion would never see becoming Pontifex as a tragedy. It is part of his duty—the duty that was laid upon him in the hour Lord Confalume chose him to be the next Coronal. And you know that he has never shirked duty in any way.”

“Yes, of course. But still—still—”

“I know, lady.”

“The Castle—we have been so happy here—”

“No Coronal likes to leave it. Nor the Coronal’s consort. But it has been this way for thousands of years, that one must be Pontifex after one is Coronal, and go down into the Labyrinth, and live there beneath the ground for the rest of one’s days, and—”

Septach Melayn faltered suddenly. Varaile, startled, saw a mist beginning to form in his keen pale-blue eyes.

He would leave the Castle too, of course, when Prestimion’s time to go arrived. He would follow Prestimion even to the Labyrinth like all the rest of them. There was pain in that realization for him as well; and for a moment, only a moment, it was evident that Septach Melayn had been unable to conceal that pain.

Then the dark moment passed. His bright dandyish smile returned, and he touched the tips of his fingers lightly to the golden curls at his forehead and said, “You must excuse me now, Lady Varaile. It is my hour for the swordsmanship class, and my pupils are expecting me.”

He started to take his leave.

“Wait,” she said. “One more thing. Your talk of your swordsmanship class puts me in mind of it.”

“Milady?”

“Do you have room in that class of yours for one more disciple? Because I have one for you: a certain Keltryn of Sipermit, by name, who is newly come to the Castle.”

Septach Melayn’s expression was one of bafflement. “Keltryn is not generally thought to be a man’s name, milady.”

“Indeed it isn’t. This is the Lady Keltryn of whom I speak, the younger sister of Dekkeret’s Fulkari. Who made application to me the day before yesterday on her sister’s behalf. She’s said to be quite capable at handling weapons, this Keltryn, and wants now to take advantage of the special training you alone can confer.”

“A woman?” Septach Melayn spluttered. “A girl?”

“I’m not asking you to take her as a lover, you know. Only to admit her to your classes.”

“But why would a woman want to learn swordsmanship?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps she thinks it’s a useful skill. I suggest you ask her that yourself.”

“And if she is injured by one of my young men? I have no tyros in my group. The weapons we use have blunted edges, but they can do considerable harm even so.”

“No worse than a bruise or two, I hope. She ought to be able to tolerate that. Surely you don’t mean to turn the girl away out of hand, Septach Melayn. Who knows? You may learn a thing or two about our sex from her that you had not known before. Take her, Septach Melayn. I make a direct request of it.”

“In that case, how can I refuse? Send this Lady Keltryn to me, and I’ll turn her into the most fearsome swordsman this world has ever seen. You have my pledge on that, milady. And now—if I have your leave to withdraw—”

Varaile nodded. He grinned down at her, and turned and bounded away like the long-legged boy he had been so many years ago, leaving her to herself in the now-deserted throne-room.

She stood there alone for a time, letting all thought drain from her mind.

Then, slowly, she went from the room, and down to her left, into the maze of passages that led out to the weird old five-peaked structure known as Lord Arioc’s Watchtower, from which one had such a wondrous view of the whole Inner Castle—the Pinitor Court and the reflecting pool of Lord Siminave with the rotunda of Lord Haspar beyond it, and the lacy, airy balconies that Lord Vildivar of that same impossibly ancient era had built, and everything else.

How beautiful it all was! How marvelously did that the hodgepodge of curious structures, assembled here across seven thousand years, fit together into this immense, unequalled masterpiece of architecture!

Very well, Varaile thought.

Prestimion is still Coronal, and I still reside here at the Castle, at least for the time being.

At last the hour had arrived when inexorable duty would pull them onward to the Labyrinth: that was the rule, and it had not varied since the time of the founding of the world. Every Coronal had had to go through this, and every Coronal’s wife.

May the Divine preserve the Pontifex Confalume, she prayed.

No question, though, that the Pontifex was approaching his end. But let us have a little more time here at the Castle, first. Just a little time more. Some few months. A year. Two, perhaps. Whatever we can have.

They were at the beginning of the Plain of Whips, now. Ahead, a red wall rising against the northern horizon, lay the narrow line of flat-topped sandstone bluffs on which the Five Lords had erected their five palaces, with the mighty eastward-flowing torrent of the River Zimr just beyond.