Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

He ran through it all a second time. This time she was, if anything, even more ineffectual, though she knew the direction his moves would be coming from. There was a desperation to her parrying, a frenzied hurry, that pulled her far off form and forced him to stretch to full extension to touch her as he had before. But she did seem also to be trying to comprehend his enigmatic talk about the division of the moment. She appeared to be attempting somehow to slow the flight of time by waiting until the last possible moment to react to his thrusts. Then, of course, she had to rush her parries. Against a swordsman like Septach Melayn that had to be a recipe for disaster; but at least she was trying to understand the method.

Again he touched shoulder, shoulder, breastbone.

Again he halted and pushed back the mask. She did the same. Her face was flushed, and she had a sullen, glowering look.

“Much better that time, milady.”

“How can you say that? I was horrible. Or are you simply trying to mock me… your grace?”

“Ah, no, milady. I’m here to teach, not to mock. You handle yourself well, better, perhaps, than you know. The potential is definitely there. But these skills are not mastered in a single day. I wanted to show you, only, the area within which you must work.” It was an appealing challenge, he thought, making a great swordsman out of a girl like this.

“Now watch while I run through the same maneuvers with someone to whom my theories are more familiar. Observe, if you will, how calm he remains in the midst of the attack, how he appears to be standing still when actually he is in motion.” Septach Melayn glanced toward the middle of the group. “Audhari?”

He was the best of Septach Melayn’s pupils, a Stoienzar boy with red freckles all over his face, the great-grandson of the former High Counsellor Duke Oljebbin of Lord Confalume’s reign and therefore in some way a distant kinsman of Prestimion’s. He was big and strong, with powerful forearms, and the quickest reflexes Septach Melayn had encountered in a long time.

“On your guard,” said Septach Melayn, and went at once to the attack. Audhari stood no more chance than anyone else of besting him, but he was able to make the pauses, anyway, to hold back the tumbling of the moments one upon another. And so he was able to anticipate, to parry, to find the opportunity between one instant and the next for a counterthrust or two, in general to hold his own commendably enough, all things considered, as Septach Melayn went methodically about the task of breaking through his guard again and again and again.

Even as he worked, Septach Melayn was able to steal a glance at the watching Keltryn. She was staring intently, in absolute concentration.

She will learn it, he decided. She could never be as strong as a man, she would probably not be as quick as one, but her eye was good, her will to succeed excellent, her stance quite satisfactory in form. He still could not understand why a young woman would want to take up swordsmanship, but he resolved to treat her with as much seriousness as he did any of his other pupils.

“You are not yet able to see,” he told the girl, “how Audhari goes about severing one moment from the next. It is done within the mind, a technique that requires long practice. But watch, this time, how he turns to meet each thrust. Pay no attention to me whatever. Watch only him.—Again, Audhari. On your guard!”

“Sir?” The voice was that of Polliex. “A messenger has come, your grace.” Septach Melayn became aware that someone had entered the room, one of the Castle pages, evidently. He stepped back from Audhari and cast his mask aside.

The boy was carrying a note, folded in thirds, unsealed. Septach Melayn scanned it hastily from both ends at once, as was his way, taking in the scrawled “V” of the Lady Varaile’s signature at the bottom even while he was reading the body of the text. Then he read it more carefully, as though that might somehow alter the content of the message, but it did not.

He looked up.

“The Pontifex Confalume has died,” Septach Melayn said. “Lord Prestimion, who was on his way back from the Labyrinth, has turned about and returned to it for his majesty’s funeral. As High Counsellor, I am summoned there as well. The class is adjourned. We will, I think, not meet again for some time.”

The class dissolved into a buzzing hubbub. Septach Melayn walked through their midst as though they were invisible and went from the room.

So it has happened at last, he thought, and now everything will change.

Confalume gone; Prestimion Pontifex; a new man on the throne at the Castle. A new High Counsellor would have to be named, also. True, Korsibar had kept Oljebbin on in that post after seizing the crown, but surely would soon have replaced him if his reign had lasted long enough for him to think about such things; and Prestimion, after the end of the usurpation, had lost no time putting his own man in the spot. Dekkeret, in all likelihood, would want to do the same. In any case Septach Melayn knew that he belonged with Prestimion in the Labyrinth. That was expected of him, and he would comply. But still—still—they had said that Confalume would recover, that he was in no imminent danger of dying—

All this was a great deal to have to wrap his mind around, so early in the day.

Turning the corridor that connected the east wing with the Inner Castle, Septach Melayn went past the vaulted gray building that was the new Prestimion Archive and the wildly swooping weirdness of Lord Arioc’s Watchtower. Entering the Pinitor Court, he caught sight of Dekkeret coming toward him from the other direction, with the Lady Fulkari at his side. They were wearing riding clothes, and had a rumpled, sweaty look about them, as though they had been outside the Castle for a ride in the meadows and were just returning.

Now it begins, Septach Melayn thought.

“My lord!” he called.

Dekkeret looked toward him, openmouthed with surprise. “What was that you said, Septach Melayn?”

“Dekkeret! Dekkeret! All hail Lord Dekkeret!” Septach Melayn cried, hands outstretched to make the starburst sign. “Long life to Lord Dekkeret!” And then, in a quieter tone: “I am the first to utter those words, I think.”

They were both staring, Dekkeret and the Lady Fulkari, frozen, astounded. Then Septach Melayn saw them exchange stunned glances. Huskily Dekkeret said, “What is this, Septach Melayn? What are you doing?”

“Offering the proper salutation, my lord. News has come from the Labyrinth, it seems. Prestimion has become Pontifex, and we have a new Coronal to hail. Or will, as soon as the Council can meet. But the thing is as good as done, my lord. You are our king now; and so I salute you.—You seem displeased, my lord. What could I have said to offend you?”

The moist, humid lands beyond the Kinslain Gap were Hjort territory. It was the sort of land where few other people cared to live, but the Hjorts were native to a steamy world of spongy soil and constant torrid fog, and they found conditions here ideal. Besides, they knew that they were not well liked by the other races that inhabited Majipoor, who found their appearance unattractive and their manner abrasive and irritating, and thus they preferred to have a province of their own, where they could live their lives as they pleased.

Their chief center was the small, densely packed city of Santhiskion. It contained two million of them, or perhaps even more. Santhiskion was a breeding-ground for minor bureaucrats, for there was something in the temperament of urban, well-educated Hjorts that inclined them favorably toward becoming customs collectors and census-takers and building-inspectors and the like. Hjorts of a different sort lived in the valley of the Kulit that lay to the west of the city—people who were simpler folk in the main, villagers, farmers, who kept to themselves and patiently went about the business of raising such crops as grayven and ciderberries and garryn that they shipped to the populous cities of western Alhanroel.