Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

“To gain, sir? I don’t understand. I wasn’t looking to gain anything. It was a matter of my duty, your grace. The Five Lords are the rightful rulers of Zimroel, by descent from the Procurator Dantirya Sambail.”

“Very prettily spoken, Count Thastain. I admire your devotion to the cause.”

Again the boy headed for the door, as though he could not get himself away from Mandralisca’s presence too soon.

Mandralisca said, halting him once more, “Do you know, I wonder, what work I performed when I first entered the retinue of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail?”

“How could I know that, sir?”

“How could you, indeed. I was his poison-taster. A very old-fashioned position, that. Something out of the time of myth and fable. Dantirya Sambail felt that he needed one. Or perhaps he just wanted one, as a kind of ornamental decoration, a bit of medieval pageantry. Whatever was put before him to eat or drink, I tasted first. A snip of his meat, a sip of his wine. He never let anything enter his mouth without trying it on me first. I made quite an impression, do you know, standing at his shoulder during banquets at the Castle or the Labyrinth.” Mandralisca smiled a second time: close to the quota for the entire morning, he thought. “Go, now. Fetch me my Barjazid.”

“Shall I go with you?” Varaile asked. “I could, you know.”

“Are you that eager to see the Labyrinth again?”

“No more so than you are, Prestimion. But it’s been an age since we traveled together. You aren’t trying to avoid me, are you?”

He looked at her in genuine surprise. “Avoid you? You have to be joking. But I want this to be a brief, uncomplicated visit, quickly down, quickly back. He apparently isn’t as sick as we thought, after all. I’ll meet with him for a couple of days, discuss such important business as there happens to be, offer him my wishes for continued long life and good health, and come home. If I go with you, or Dekkeret, or Septach Melayn or Dembitave, or anybody but a Coronal’s minimal traveling retinue, the trip is bound to become a much more involved sort of thing, with all manner of formal events suddenly necessary. I don’t want to put him under any kind of strain. And I certainly don’t want to show up with so many members of the court that Confalume gets the idea that this is some kind of official farewell visit to a dying man.”

“I don’t remember suggesting that you take the whole court,” Varaile said. “I simply offered to accompany you myself.”

Prestimion took her hands in his and brought his face very close to hers. They were almost exactly of the same height. Smiling, he touched the tip of his nose to hers. “You know that I love you,” he said softly. “I feel that this is a trip I should make alone. If you want to come with me, I’m not going to stop you. But I’d rather just go down there myself and come back as fast as I can. It isn’t as though you and I won’t have plenty of time to be in the Labyrinth together in the years to come.”

“You will come right back, then?”

“This time, yes. The next time I go, it’ll be for a longer stay, I’m afraid.”

He had had much the same kind of conversation with Dekkeret a little while earlier, and not a very different one with Septach Melayn. They were all treating him as though he, and not Confalume, were the invalid. They viewed the probability of the Pontifex’s death as an enormous crisis for him, and wanted to gather around him, to protect and comfort him.

They were right to some degree, of course. It was a big thing he was facing—not this visit to the Labyrinth, but the inescapable transition that lay somewhere not far ahead in his life. Did they think, though, that he was likely to break down and burst into tears the moment he set foot in the subterranean capital? Did they believe he was so incapable of dealing with the prospect of becoming Pontifex that he must have his nearest and dearest beside him at all times? How could he explain to them that Coronals lived every day of their lives, day and night, in the awareness that they might become Pontifex at any moment? That possibility was inherent in the job; anyone who was unable to handle it was by that very fact unqualified to be Coronal.

In the end, the only member of his household who went with him was Prince Taradath. The boy had been disappointed by the abrupt termination of his long-promised trip to Fa, and had never seen the Labyrinth, besides. Meeting his majesty the Pontifex would be a memorable thing for him.

And it would be useful for Taradath to get a glimpse, however brief, of the administrative machinery of the Pontificate. Taradath, at fifteen, showed signs of ripening into a worthwhile young man, for whom some good role in the government no doubt would be found when Dekkeret was Coronal. The sons of Coronals, aware that they could never be Coronals themselves, often turned out to be frivolous idlers, or, what was much worse, vainglorious empty-headed boobies like Korsibar. Prestimion hoped for better things from his own boys.

They took the customary route to the Labyrinth, down the River Glayge aboard the royal barge through the fertile agricultural lowlands. At another time Prestimion might have made a little processional out of it, stopping at important river cities like Mitripond or Palaghat or Grevvin, but he had promised Varaile that this would be a quick trip. He entered the Labyrinth through the Mouth of Waters, the gate that Coronals used, and descended swiftly through the many levels of the underground city, past the warrens and burrows that were the offices of the bureaucrats and the grand architectural marvels below them—the Hall of Winds, the Court of Columns, the Place of Masks, and the others, those strangely beautiful places that would seem like places of wonder to anyone who loved the Labyrinth, as Prestimion doubted he ever could—and arrived at last at the deepest level, the imperial sector, where the Pontifex had his lair.

Protocol called for the High Spokesman to the Pontifex, the Labyrinth’s ranking official, to greet him. That post had been held for the past five years by the venerable Duke Haskelorn of Chorg, a member of a family that traced its descent from the Pontifex Stalvok of ten reigns earlier. Haskelorn was a man nearly as old as Confalume himself, plump and pink-faced, with long drooping cheeks and a thick roll of flesh below his chin. As was the custom here, he wore the tiny mask across his eyes and the bridge of his nose that was a kind of badge of office among the officials of the Pontificate.

“Confalume—” Prestimion began at once.

“—is in fine health, and looks forward to seeing you at once, Lord Prestimion.”

Fine health? What was the High Spokesman’s idea of fine health? Prestimion had no idea what to expect. But he was confounded, upon entering the vestibule of the maze of rooms, a labyrinth within the Labyrinth, that was the residence of the Pontifex of Majipoor. A smiling Confalume, formally clad in the ornate scarlet-and-black Pontifical robes, was standing—standing!—in the arched doorway at the vestibule’s inner end, holding his arms out toward Prestimion in a warm show of welcome.

Prestimion was so thoroughly taken aback that it was a moment before he could speak, and when he found his tongue the best he could do was stammer, “They told me—that you—you were—”

“Dying, Prestimion? Already well on my way back to the Source, eh? Whatever you may have heard, my son, here’s the truth: I am risen from my bed of affliction. As you see, the Pontifex stands on his own two legs. The Pontifex walks. A little stiffly, true, but he walks. He speaks, as well. Not yet dead, Prestimion, not even close to it.—You say nothing. Speechless with joy, are you? Yes, I suppose you are. You are reprieved from the Labyrinth for a little while longer.”