Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

“Do you remember, Prestimion, when we all went to the Labyrinth to wait for Prankipin’s death, and the old man lingered on and on and on and we thought he’d never die? Ah, there was a time!”

“There was a time indeed,” Prestimion said. “How could I forget it?”

His mind leaped back across the decades to that great gathering, that shining array of young lords that had assembled in the underground city in the final days of the long reign of Prankipin Pontifex: the flower of Majipoor’s manhood, the princes of the realm, gathering about the dying old man. Among them, thought Prestimion, so many who were destined to die themselves, a year or three later, fighting on behalf of the usurping Korsibar in the needless, foolish war that he had brought upon the world.

Navigorn, lost now in memories, helped himself to more wine without asking. “You came down from the Castle with Serithorn of Sami-vole, I recall. Septach Melayn was with you, and Gialaurys, and that other friend of yours, that sneaky little man from Suvrael who called himself a duke—what was his name—?”

“Svor.”

“Svor, yes. And then there was good old Kanteverel of Bailemoona, and the Grand Admiral Gonivaul, who had never been to sea, and Duke Oljebbin, and Earl Kamba of Mazadone. Nor should I leave out our vile red-faced friend the Procurator Dantirya Sambail, eh, Prestimion?—and Mandrykarn of Stee—ah, there was a man, that Mandrykarn!—Venta of Haplior, also—” Navigorn shook his head. “And so many of them died young. Wasn’t that strange? Kamba, Mandrykarn, Iram of Normork, Sibellor of Banglecode, and plenty of others besides—dead, all dead, much too soon. More’s the pity, that. Who’d have known, when we were all together at the Labyrinth, that so many of us would be dead so soon afterward?”

It troubled Prestimion that that thought had occurred to Navigorn too. He waited tensely to see if the other man was going to extend the catalog of the dead: to Korsibar, say. Brawny, swaggering Korsibar had been the most conspicuous figure of all at that gathering of lords in the Labyrinth. But Navigorn did not speak Korsibar’s name.

And his reflective mood lifted as quickly as it had come. He smiled, sighed, lifted his wine-bowl in salute. “We had ourselves a time, though—didn’t we, Prestimion? We had ourselves a time!”

Navigorn began to talk now of the games they had held at the Labyrinth while waiting for Prankipin to die: the Pontifical Games, they had called them, the grandest tournament of modern times. “The wrestling between Gialaurys and that ape Farholt—I thought they’d kill each other, do you know? It seems like just yesterday. And the archery—you were in your prime, then, Prestimion, you did tricks with your bow that day that no one had seen before, or since, for that matter. Septach Melayn winning the fencing over Count Farquanor and making him look such a helpless fool in the bargain. And who was it in the saber? A big man, dark hair, very strong. His face is right at the edge of my mind, but his name is gone. Who was that? Do you remember, Prestimion?”

“I may have been elsewhere for the saber matches that day,” Prestimion said, turning away.

“I can still see the rest of the contests so clearly, though. It does seem just like yesterday. Twenty years and more, but just like yesterday!”

Just like yesterday, yes, Prestimion thought.

It had been Korsibar who won the saber contests. He was the big dark-haired man who lurked at the edge of Navigorn’s mind. But all recollection of Korsibar’s identity had long ago been edited from Navigorn’s memory, and that of Thismet, Korsibar’s sister, as well, and Prestimion was relieved to see that no recollection of them had crept back into Navigorn in the intervening years.

Nor did Navigorn seem to remember the final dramatic event of those famous Pontifical Games, the morning when the ninety contestants in the jousting had come together in full armor in the Court of Thrones, from which they were supposed to be transported to the Arena as a group. Prince Korsibar had burst into the room shouting the news that death had come at last to the aged Pontifex. The long wait was over. The time finally had come for the changing of the reign, and now the Coronal Lord Confalume would become Pontifex, and Confalume would name as the new Coronal young Prince Prestimion of Muldemar.

Or so everyone expected; but that was not what happened. For a dark cloud of sorcery fell upon the minds of the lords assembled in the Court of Thrones, and when it lifted an incredible scene was revealed. Prince

Korsibar, the Coronal’s son, had taken the starburst crown from the startled Hjort who held it and placed it on his own brow, and now was sitting in glory in the place where the Coronal was meant to sit, with his father Confalume, appearing bewildered and almost dazed, seated beside him on the Pontifical throne. And the lords who had conspired with Korsibar to do this thing cried out loudly, “All hail the Coronal Lord Korsibar! Korsibar! Korsibar! Lord Korsibar!”

“Thievery!” was the bellowed answer of Gialaurys. “Thievery! Thievery!” And would have rushed forward into the halberds of Korsibar’s guard, but that Prestimion reined him in, for he saw that it was certain death to offer any resistance to the takeover. And thus he and his friends withdrew from the room in astonishment and defeat, and the Coronal’s throne was Korsibar’s, though it had been the tradition on Majipoor since the earliest days that a Coronal’s son might never inherit his father’s office.

No, Navigorn had no recollection of any of that, or of the great war that had followed and had cost the lives of so many men great and small. Korsibar in time had been overthrown, and Prestimion’s sorcerers had sliced his usurpation out of the history of the world. But that day in the Labyrinth blazed as incandescently as ever in Prestimion’s mind, that time when the throne that had been promised to him had been snatched from his grasp by treachery, forcing him to launch that bloody war against his own former friends in order to restore the proper order of things.

Navigorn’s voice broke him from his reverie: “Will there be a new set of Pontifical Games, Prestimion, when we all go down to the Labyrinth to wait for Confalume to die?”

“We don’t know yet that Confalume is dying,” Prestimion said curtly. “But even if he is—more games? No. Not this time, I think.”

He looked toward the window. Dawn was breaking over Fa.

Navigorn was probably right, he thought: Confalume’s stroke was the herald of the old Pontifex’s end, and before very long Majipoor would see yet another change of reign. He would go to the Labyrinth to become Pontifex, and Dekkeret would take his seat atop Castle Mount as Coronal.

Was he ready for that? No, of course not. Navigorn had said it truly: no Coronal ever wants to go to the Labyrinth. But to it he would go, all the same, as was his duty.

Prestimion did wonder how so restless a nature as his was going to abide life in the underground capital. Even the Castle had proven too confining to him; throughout his reign he had roamed constantly about the world, seizing every excuse to visit distant cities. He had made no less than three grand processionals, something that few Coronals before him had done. But his whole reign had been like an unending grand processional for him: he had traveled as no Coronal had ever traveled before.

Of course he would not be required to hide himself away in the Labyrinth once he became Pontifex. It was merely the custom. The Pontifex, the senior monarch, was supposed to remain secluded; the young and glorious Coronal, it was, who went forth among the populace to see and be seen. He meant to abide by that rule, up to a point. But only up to a point.