Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

Gopak Semivinvor knew that it could never be otherwise so long as he was in charge of the palace. And such a wild throb of joy ran through him that he feared that his breast would burst.

“Tell me,” he said, laying a royal on the sorcerer’s tray and then, after a moment’s consideration, putting a five-crown piece beside it, “what particular things must I do to ensure the complete comfort of Lord Dekkeret when he is at the Summer Palace?”

Dobranda Thelk mixed the colored powders that he used in divination. He closed his eyes again and murmured the Names. He spoke the Five Words. He sifted the powders through his hands, and said the Names a second time, and then the Three Words that could never be written down. When he looked up at Gopak Semivinvor those potent eyes of his were as hard as auger-bits.

“There is one thing above all else: you must see to it that the Coronal sleeps in proper relationship to the powerful stars Thorius and Xavial. You are able to locate those stars in the sky, are you not?”

“Of course. But how am I to know which position of the palace is the one that provides the proper relationship?”

“That will be revealed to you in dreams,” replied Dobranda Thelk.

“By a sending, do you mean?”

“It could be in that form, yes,” said the magus, and from the coolness of his tone Gopak Semivinvor knew that the consultation was at an end.

Three times in his long life Gopak Semivinvor had experienced sendings of the Lady of the Isle, or so he believed: dreams in which the kindly Lady had come to him and offered him reassurance that his life’s journey followed the correct path. There had been no specific information for him to use in any of those three dreams, only a general feeling of warmth and ease. But that night, as he made ready for bed, he knelt briefly and asked the Lady to grace him with a fourth sending, one that would guide him in his desire to serve the new Coronal in the best possible way.

And indeed, not long after he had given himself over to sleep, Gopak Semivinvor felt the sensation of warmth in his scalp that he regarded as the portent of a sending. He lay perfectly still, suspended in that condition of observant receptivity that everyone learned as a child, in which the sleeper’s mind was simultaneously lost in slumber and vigilantly aware of whatever guidance the dream might bring.

This seemed different from his previous sendings, though. The sensations were not particularly benign. He felt a touch, definitely a touch, from outside, but not a kindly one. The pressure against his scalp was greater than it had been those other times, was even painful, in a way; the air seemed to grow chill around his sleeping body; and there was no trace of that feeling of well-being that one always expected to have from contact with the mind of the Lady of the Isle of Sleep. Yet he maintained his receptivity to what was to come, holding his mind open and allowing it to be flooded with an awareness of—

Of what?

Discontinuity. Disparity. Incongruity. Wrongness.

Wrongness, yes. A powerful sense that the hinges of the world were coming undone, that the joints of the cosmos were loosening, that the gate of terror stood open and a black tide of chaos was pouring through.

He awakened then, sitting up, holding himself tightly in his own arms. Gopak Semivinvor was sweating and trembling so distemperately that he wondered if his last moments might be upon him. But gradually he grew calm. There was still a strange pressure in his brain, that feeling as of something pushing from without—a disturbing feeling, a frightening one, even.

Some moments passed, and then clarity of mind began to return, and a certain degree of ease of soul; and with that came the conviction that he understood the meaning of the oracle’s words.

You must see to it that the Coronal sleeps in proper relationship to the powerful stars Thorius and Xavial. Plainly the present configuration of the bamboo palace was an improper one, unluckily aligned, out of tune with the movements of the cosmos. Very well. The building was designed to be dismantled and reconstructed along a different axis. That was what must be done. The palace needed to be turned on its foundation.

That the palace had not been dismantled and moved in hundreds of years—maybe as much as a thousand—did not trouble the major-domo for more than an instant. Some small prudent voice within him suggested that the project might be more difficult than he suspected, but against that tiny objection came the insistent clamor of his desire to get on with the work. Desperate haste impelled him: the magus had spoken, the troubling dream had somehow provided reinforcement, and now he must make the palace ready, in accordance with the commandment that had been laid upon him, and lose no time about it. Of that he had no doubt. Doubt did not seem an option in this enterprise.

Nor did it concern him that he did not, at the moment, know which orientation of the building would be more desirable than the present one. It had to be moved, that was clear. The Coronal would not come unless it was. And he had every reason to think that the appropriate positioning would be revealed to him as he set about the task. He was the Major-Domo of the Palaces, and had been for nearly fifty years; it had been given into his hands to care for this wonderful building and keep it ready at all times for the use of the anointed Coronal; one might even say that destiny had chosen him to perform that special task. He was confident that he would perform it correctly.

Gopak Semivinvor rushed out into the night—a mild one and warm, Ertsud Grand’s climate being one of almost unending summer—made his way through the game park to the bamboo palace’s front gate, scattering nocturnal mibberils and thassips as he ran, and sending big-eyed black menagungs fluttering up into the treetops. Panting, dizzy with exertion, he leaned against the gatepost of the building and stared upward until he located the brilliant red star Xavial, which marked the midpoint of the sky, the great axis of the universe. Its mighty counterpoise, bright Thorius, lay not far to the left of it.

Now—how to determine the right position for the building, the one that represented the proper relationship to Thorius and Xavial—?

He turned, and turned, and, unsure, turned again, and yet again. His mind began to reel and swirl. It seemed to Gopak Semivinvor after a time that he was standing still, and the whole vault of the sky was whirling furiously about him. East, west, north, south—which direction was the right one? This way, and the Coronal’s bedroom would face the row of great mansions along the eastern shore of the lake; this, and he would be looking toward the pleasure-houses of the western shore; turn like this, and his rooms would yield the sight of the dense forest of furry-leaved kokapas trees that rimmed the lake’s southern edge. Whereas to the north—

To the north, equidistant between the stars Xavial and Thorius, was the blazing white star Trinatha, the sorcerers’ star, the star that rested in the heavens above the city of wizards, Triggoin.

Into the soul of Gopak Semivinvor came flooding the ineluctable certainty that Trinatha was the key to what the magus Dobranda Thelk had meant by the “proper relationship.” He must swing the building around until the Coronal’s bedroom pointed along the line that ran between Thorius and red Xavial to holy Trinatha, the white star of wizardry, Dobranda Thelk’s own guiding star.

Yes. Yes. It was precisely the midnight hour, the Hour of the Coronal. What could be more auspicious? He caught up a sharp stick and began scratching deep gouges in the soft velvet of the lawn that ringed the bamboo palace, ugly brown lines that indicated the precise configuration to which the building must be shifted. He worked with frantic urgency, trying to finish the task of sketching his plan before the stars, as they journeyed through the night sky, had moved on into some other pattern of relationship.