Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

The effect was awe-inspiring and somehow preposterous at one and the same time.

“What do you think?” Prestimion asked.

Dekkeret had to fight back more giggles. “It’s extremely—majestic, I’d say. Majestic, that’s the word. Confalume must have loved it. You aren’t really going to use it, are you?”

“I have to,” Prestimion said. “For certain high functions and sacred ceremonies. Haskelorn’s going to draw up a guidebook for me. We have to take these things seriously, Dekkeret.”

“Yes. I suppose we do. I noticed long ago how seriously you take the Confalume Throne. How many times have I seen you sitting in it, over the years—five? Eight?”

Prestimion looked a bit ruffled. “I took the Confalume Throne very seriously indeed. It is the symbol of the Coronal’s grandeur and power. A little too grand for my own private tastes, which is why I preferred to use the old Stiamot throne-room most of the time. I would never have built a thing like the Confalume Throne, Dekkeret. But that doesn’t mean I underestimate its importance in sustaining the power and majesty of the government. Neither should you.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that I would. Only that when I think of you sitting here on this great golden chair, and me up there at the Castle atop old Confalume’s big block of opal—” He shook his head. “By the Divine, Prestimion, we’re just men, men whose bladders ache when we go too long without pissing and whose stomachs growl when we don’t get fed on time.”

Quietly Prestimion said, “Yes, we are that. But also we are Powers of the Realm, two of the three. I am this world’s emperor, and you are its king, and to the fifteen billion people over whom we rule we are the embodiment of all that is sacred here. And so they put us up on these gaudy thrones and bow down to us, and who are we to say no to that, if it makes our job of running this immense planet any easier? Think of them, Dekkeret, whenever you find yourself performing some absurd ritual or clambering up onto some overdecorated seat. We are not provincial justices of the peace, you know. We are the essential mainsprings of the world.” Then, as if realizing that his tone had grown too sharp, Prestimion grinned broadly. “We, and the fifty million unimportant public officials who actually have the job of doing all the things that we in our grandeur command them to do.—Come, let me show you the rest of this place.”

It was an extensive tour. Prestimion led him along quickly. Though Dekkeret’s legs were considerably longer than Prestimion’s, he was hard-pressed to keep up with the older man, who set a pace that was in keeping with the lifelong restlessness and impulsiveness of his nature.

They went first through a concealed door at the rear of the throne-chamber, and then down a long hallway into the vast dark space known as the Court of Thrones, where somber walls of black stone swept together high overhead to meet in pointed arches. The only light within the Court of Thrones was provided by half a dozen wax tapers along the walls, set far apart in sconces shaped like upstretched hands. The two large thrones of red gamba-wood that gave the room its name, not so numbingly grand as the one in the throne-chamber but imposing enough in their own way, rose side by side on stepped platforms at the rear of the room. One bore the starburst symbol of the Coronal, and the other, the greater one, the spiraling maze that was the Pontifical sign.

Shuddering, Dekkeret said, “It appears more fit to be a torture-chamber than a throne-room, if you ask me.”

“In truth I do agree. I have no good memories of this room: it is the place where Korsibar’s sorcerers bamboozled us all, and as we stood stunned by their magic he seized the crown and put it on his own head. I wince even now, whenever I come in here.”

“It never happened, Prestimion. Ask anyone, and that’s what they’ll tell you. The whole episode is gone from everyone’s mind. You should thrust it out of yours.”

“Would that I could. But I find that some painful memories don’t want to fade. For me it’s still quite real.” Prestimion ran his hand uneasily through his thin, soft golden hair. His expression was bleak. He seemed to be wrenching himself by sheer force of will away from that moment of the past.—“Well, there is where we will sit, the two of us, a couple of days from now, and I’ll put the crown on you myself.”

“I should take this opportunity to tell you,” said Dekkeret, “that once I am on the throne I plan to ask your brother Teotas to be my High Counsellor.”

“You say it as if you’re asking my permission. The Coronal chooses whomever he wishes for that post, Dekkeret.” There was a certain brusqueness in Prestimion’s tone.

“You know him better than anyone in the world. If you think there’s some flaw in him that I’ve overlooked—”

“He has a very short temper,” Prestimion said. “But that’s not a flaw anyone who spends five minutes in his company could possibly overlook. Other than that, he’s perfect. A wise choice, Dekkeret. I approve. He’ll serve you well. That is what you wanted me to say, isn’t it?” It was clear from his impatience with this discussion that Prestimion had other things on his mind. Or perhaps merely wanted to conceal the pleasure he felt at having so great an honor descend on his brother.—“Look here, now. There’s something else in here for you to see.”

Dekkeret followed Prestimion through the shadows to an alcove on the left, in which he perceived a sort of altar covered with white damask, and then, as he went closer, a figure lying atop it, facing upward, hands clasped across his breast.

“Confalume,” said Prestimion in the lowest of tones. “Lying in the place where I’ll lie myself, twenty or forty years from now, and you yourself will be, twenty or forty years after that. They’ve embalmed him to last a hundred centuries or more. There’s a secret vault in the Labyrinth where the last fifty Pontifexes are buried—did you know that, Dekkeret? No. Neither did I. A long, long line of imperial tombs, each with its own little marker. Tomorrow we put Confalume in his.”

Prestimion knelt and pressed his forehead reverently against the side of the altar. Dekkeret, after a moment, did the same.

“I met him once when I was a boy: did I ever tell you that?” Dekkeret said, when they had risen. “I was nine. It was in Bombifale. We were there because my father was showing samples of his goods—agricultural machinery, I think, is what he was dealing in then—to the manager of Admiral Gonivaul’s estate, and Lord Confalume was Gonivaul’s guest at the same time. I saw them go out riding together in Gonivaul’s big floater. They went right past me in the road, and I waved, and Confalume smiled and waved back. Just the sight of him made me tremble. He seemed so strong, Prestimion, so radiant—practically godlike. That smile of his: the warmth, the power of it. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. And then, that afternoon, I went with my father to Bombifale Palace, and the Coronal was holding court, and once again he smiled at me—”

He broke off his story and looked toward the still, shrouded figure lying there atop the altar. It was not easy to accept the fact that a monarch of so much force and grandeur could have vanished from the world between one moment and the next, leaving only this husk behind.

Prestimion said, “He may have been the greatest of them all. Flawed, yes. His vanity, his love of luxury, his weakness for wizards and soothsayers. But what trifling faults those were, and how wonderful his accomplishments! Guiding the world for sixty years—the heroic power of him—as you say, almost godlike. History will be very kind to him. Let’s hope we’re remembered half as warmly as he will be, Dekkeret.”