Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

“I’ll leave you now, my lord,” Falco said. “You’ll want to get back to sleep. It’s still three hours to dawn.”

“Leave me, yes,” said Prestimion.

But he made no attempt to return to his bed. The dream would only be waiting for him there. He took from its bronze case the portfolio of official documents awaiting his signature that went with him everywhere, and set to work. There were always fifty or a hundred things stored up for him to sign, most of them generated by the ever-busy bureaucrats of the Pontificate, some the work of his own governmental departments.

Much of it was trivial stuff, routine proclamations and decrees, trade treaties between one province and another, revisions of the customs code, the sort of workaday business that other Coronals would have sloughed off on aides to read, so that they would merely need to scan a brief appended summary before signing. The papers from the Labyrinth, which had already been approved by the Pontifex or someone acting in his name, did not even require the Coronal’s attention, only his countersignature. In theory the Coronal had the right to reject a Pontifical decree and send it back to the Labyrinth for reconsideration, but no one could remember when any Coronal had last availed himself of the privilege. But Prestimion tried to read as much of this material as he could. In part that was due to an overriding sense of duty; but also he found it oddly comforting, on nights such as these, to immerse himself in such meaningless mind-numbing toil.

Dawn was still an hour or two away when he heard sounds from the courtyard: the gate being opened, the whirring hum of an arriving floater, a deep, commanding voice loudly calling for porters. That was strange, Prestimion thought, someone turning up at the royal lodge at an hour like this, and making so much noise about it at that.

He peered out.

The floater was from the Castle. It bore the royal starburst emblem. A big, heavyset man in a belted ankle-length red tunic had emerged from it. His great chest and shoulders led Prestimion to think at first that this might be Gialaurys; but this man was heftier even than the Grand Admiral, with a jutting gut on him that would make Gialaurys seem almost slender by comparison. And he spoke with the pure accent of Castle Mount, not Gialaurys’s broad, flat, almost comical Piliplok intonation. Prestimion realized after a moment that it must be Navigorn.

Here? Why? What had happened?

“Falco!” Prestimion called. The steward was at the door almost immediately. He looked as though he, too, had not gone back to sleep. “Falco, the Lord Navigorn has just arrived. He’s in the courtyard. See that he’s shown up here right away.”

The three flights of stairs left Navigorn winded and flushed. He swayed alarmingly in the doorway for a moment, a tall ungainly figure confronting the compactly built Prestimion. With difficulty he said, “Prestimion, I’ve—just—come—straight from the—Castle. I set out yesterday afternoon, traveled right on through the night.” Gingerly Navigorn lowered his bulky form into one of the chairs beside the window, a finely wrought thing of golden kamateros-wood that creaked and groaned beneath his weight, but held firm. “You don’t mind if I sit, do you, Prestimion? Sprinting up those stairs—” He grinned. “I’m not exactly in fighting trim these days.”

“Sit. Sit. You take up less space this way.” Navigorn elaborately settled himself into place. Patiently Prestimion said, “Why are you here, Navigorn? Do you come with bad news?”

The big man’s eyes rose to meet his. He seemed to search a moment for the proper way to begin. “The Pontifex may have had a stroke.”

“Ah,” Prestimion said, exhaling the word almost as though he had been punched in the chest. “A stroke. May have had a stroke, you say?”

“There’s no confirmation. I apologize, Prestimion, for awakening you with something like this, but—”

“I was awake, as a matter of fact.” Prestimion indicated the papers strewn about his desk. “Tell me about this stroke. This possible stroke.’’

“A message came from the Labyrinth. Numbness in his hand, stiffness in his leg. Mages have been called in.”

“Is he going to die?”

“Who can say? You know how tough the old man is, Prestimion. He’s made of iron.” A pained expression crossed Navigorn’s fleshy face. He turned and twisted so restively in his chair that it creaked a protest. He scowled and screwed up his face. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, this probably is the beginning of the end for him. Just my guess, you understand. Pure intuition. But the man’s ninety years old, he’s been Pontifex for twenty years and he was Coronal for forty-odd before that—even iron wears out, you know, sooner or later. I’m sorry, Prestimion.”

“Sorry?”

“No Coronal ever wants to go to the Labyrinth.”

“But every Coronal eventually does, Navigorn. Do you think this catches me unprepared?” And then, almost as if to contradict his own words, Prestimion went over to the sideboard, where a flask of Muldemar wine was sitting, and poured some into a bowl. “Do you want any?” he asked.

“At this hour of the morning? Yes, actually. Yes, I do.”

Prestimion handed him the bowl and poured another for himself. They drank in silence. A cascade of troublesome thoughts thundered through Prestimion’s brain.

Pacing about the room, he said, “What do you think I ought to do, Navigorn? Return to the Castle right away and await developments? Or set out for the Labyrinth to pay my respects while his majesty is still alive?”

“Phraatakes Rem doesn’t seem to think Confalume’s death is imminent. I’d go back to the Castle, if I were you. Meet with the Council, discuss things with the Lady Varaile. And then take yourself down to the Labyrinth.” Navigorn looked up. Suddenly there was a broad incongruous smile on his face. “This is good wine, Prestimion! From your family’s vineyards?”

“There’s none better, is there? Some more?”

“Please. Yes.”

Prestimion filled the bowls again and they sat thoughtfully sipping the rich purple wine for a time, neither of them speaking.

He found it strangely moving that it was Navigorn, rather than Septach Melayn or Gialaurys or his brother Teotas, who had brought him this unsettling news. He and Navigorn had been friends a long while, he supposed, but their friendship had never been the same sort of intimacy that he had with the others. Indeed, they had even been enemies, once, though Navigorn had no recollection of that. That had been in the time of the Korsibar usurpation, when Navigorn had unhesitatingly given his loyalty to the false Coronal, and had fought valiantly on Korsibar’s behalf in the civil war.

But of course Navigorn had not regarded Korsibar as a false Coronal. However unlawfully Confalume’s ill-advised son had placed himself upon the throne, however much his seizure of power had violated all custom and convention, he had been duly anointed and crowned, and, so far as the people of Majipoor were concerned, he was the proper Coronal. So of course when Prestimion had challenged Korsibar’s legitimacy as king and had gone to war to overthrow him, Navigorn had staunchly served the man he recognized as his king. It was only in the hour of Korsibar’s defeat, when the world was in chaos and Prestimion’s triumph was assured, that Navigorn had urged Korsibar to surrender and abdicate in order to keep the bloodshed from going on any longer.

But stubborn stupid Korsibar had refused to yield, and had died in the battle of Beldak marsh below Thegomar Edge; and Navigorn, kneeling before Prestimion, had admitted his error and begged forgiveness. Which Prestimion had freely given; and more than that besides. For in the great wiping of the world’s memory Navigorn had lost all recollection of the civil war and his role in it as Prestimion’s enemy, and so he could readily accept Prestimion’s invitation to join his Council, of which he had been a valued member all these years since. Time had turned Navigorn old and gouty and fat, but he had served Prestimion as staunchly as ever he had Korsibar. And here he was now, the one who had volunteered to take on the difficult job of carrying to Prestimion the news that his time as Coronal might nearly be over.