Majipoor Chronicles by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780451464835
Publisher: Roc Trade
Published: 2012-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

10

NOW THE DESERT changed again and the landscape grew violent and rough. Evidently there had been great earthquakes here, and more than one, for the land lay fractured and upheaved, with mighty blocks of the desert floor piled at unlikely angles against others, and huge sprawls of talus at the feet of the low shattered cliffs. Through this chaotic zone of turbulence and disruption there was only a single passable route—the wide, gently curving bed of a long-extinct river whose sandy floor swerved in long easy bends between the cracked and sundered rock-heaps. The large moon was full and there was almost a daylight brilliance to the grotesque scene. After some hours of passing through a terrain so much the same from one mile to the next that it seemed almost as though the floater were not moving at all, Dekkeret turned to Barjazid and said, “And how long will it be before we reach Ghyzyn Kor?”

“This valley marks the boundary between desert and grazing lands.” Barjazid pointed toward the southwest, where the riverbed vanished between two towering craggy peaks that rose like daggers from the desert floor. “Beyond that place—Munnerak Notch—the climate is altogether different. On the far side of the mountain wall sea-fogs enter by night from the west, and the land is green and fit for grazing. We will camp halfway to the Notch tomorrow, and pass through it the day after. By Seaday at the latest you’ll be at your lodgings in Ghyzyn Kor.”

“And you?” Dekkeret asked.

“My son and I have business elsewhere in the 1area. We’ll return to Ghyzyn Kor for you after—three days? Five?”

“Five should be sufficient.”

“Yes. And then the return journey.”

“By the same route?”

“There is no other,” said Barjazid. “They explained to you in Tolaghai, did they not, that access to the rangelands was cut off, except by way of this desert? But why should you fear this route?

The dreams aren’t so awful, are they? And so long as you do no more roaming in your sleep, you’ll not be in any danger here.”

It sounded simple enough. Indeed he felt sure he could survive the trip; but yesterday’s dream had been sufficient torment, and he looked without cheer upon what might yet come. When they made camp the next morning Dekkeret found himself again uneasy about entrusting himself to sleep at all.

For the first hour of the rest-period he kept himself awake, listening to the metallic clangor of the bare tumbled rocks as they stretched and quivered in the midday heat, until at last sleep came up over his mind like a dense black cloud and took him unawares.

And in time a dream possessed him, and it was, he knew at its outset, going to be the most terrible of all.

Pain came first—an ache, a twinge, a pang, then without warning a racking explosion of dazzling light against the walls of his skull, making him grunt and clutch his head. The agonizing spasm passed swiftly, though, and he felt the soft sleep presence of Golator Lasgia about him, soothing him, cradling him against her breasts.

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