King of Dreams by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780575106604
Google: MYfSvPOLQqYC
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

“My lord,” Dekkeret’s chamberlain said, “Prince Dinitak is here.”

“Thank you, Zeldor Luudwid. Ask him to come in.”

It amused him to hear the chamberlain promoting Dinitak to the principate. No such title had ever been conferred on him, and Dekkeret had no particular plan for doing so, nor had Dinitak shown the slightest desire to be raised to the nobility. He was still Venghenar Barjazid’s son, after all, a child of the Suvrael desert who once had collaborated with his disreputable father in swindling and exploiting travelers who had hired them as guides through that forbidding land. The Castle Mount aristocracy had accepted Dinitak as Dekkeret’s friend, because Dekkeret gave them no choice in that. But they would never abide Dekkeret’s thrusting him in among them as a member of their own exalted caste.

“Dinitak,” Dekkeret said, rising to embrace him.

In recent weeks Dekkeret had adopted as his headquarters one of the segments of the Methirasp Long Hall, which was not a hall at all, but rather a series of octagonal chambers within Lord Stiamot’s Library. The library itself was a continuous serpentine passageway that wound back and forth around the summit of Castle Mount to a total length of many miles, and, according to legend, contained every book that had ever been published in any world of the universe. At one point directly beneath the greensward of Vildivar Close it opened out into the twelve chambers of the Methirasp Hall. They were set aside for the use of scholars; but it was a rare day when more than one or two of them were occupied.

Dekkeret, coming upon the rooms in one of his explorations of the Castle, had taken an immediate fancy to them. They were lofty chambers two stories high, their walls covered with mural paintings of sea-dragons and fanciful beasts of the land, knights in tournament, natural wonders, and much else, all rendered in a delightful medieval style. Far overhead, brightly colored ceilings, done in vermilion and yellow and green and blue and covered with a fine, clear varnish that made them gleam like crystal, provided warm reflected light. Connecting corridors lined on both sides with rows of books led to the library proper. Dekkeret found himself coming back again and again to this pleasing sanctuary within the Castle, and eventually had chosen to have the segment of it known as Lord Spurifon’s Study closed off and made into an auxiliary office for himself. It was here that he received Dinitak Barjazid this day.

They talked quietly of idle things for a time—a visit Dinitak had lately made to the great city of Stee, and Dekkeret’s plans for a journey to that city and some of its neighbors on the Mount, and the like. It was not hard for Dekkeret to see that some suppressed inner tension was at work within his friend’s soul, but he let Dinitak set the pace for the conversation; and gradually he came around to the matter that had led him to seek this private audience with the Coronal.

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