The Five Lords knew what risks they were running. But Mandralisca had shown them how difficult it would be for the imperial government to take any kind of serious punitive action against them. An army would have to be raised in Alhanroel and transported somehow to the other continent across the great gulf that was the Inner Sea. Then the imperial troops would have to commandeer virtually the entire fleet of Zimr riverboats to carry them upriver to the rebel-held territory, or else march thousands of miles overland, through one probably hostile district after another.
And even if they succeeded in that, and brought the rebellious farmers of the region back under control, it would not be easy to dislodge the Five Lords themselves from their hilltop eyrie high above the Zimr. There was no possibility at all of scaling those red bluffs from the river side. That left only the desert approach from the south—the very district through which Mandralisca and his party were riding now. And that was a hellish road indeed.
8
In the evening the Justiciar Corde called for Dekkeret and Dinitak at their hostelry and escorted them to the palace of the Count for a formal banquet, the first of several such events planned for Dekkeret’s stay in Normork.
Dekkeret had seen the palace often enough when he was growing up: a blocky building of gray stone, squat and nearly windowless, that clung like some huge limpet to the city wall in a place where the wall made a wide outward curve to get past a jutting spur of Castle Mount. It was a dark, grim-looking place, fortresslike, uninviting. Even the six slim minarets that sprang from its roof, which the architect probably had meant to add a touch of lightness to the palace’s appearance, seemed like nothing so much as an array of barbed spears.
The interior was every bit as somber as the outside. The building seemed twice as big inside as without, and perhaps four times as ugly. Dekkeret and Dinitak were conducted down long stretches of shadowy bewildering corridors lit only by smoldering torches and inadequate glowlights, past radiating clusters of spokelike hallways of unadorned stone walls, through rooms with walls of black brick decorated with nothing more than the occasional preposterous statue of some unknown ancient figure or clumsily designed tapestries portraying forgotten lords and ladies of the city engaged in their lordly amusements; and eventually they arrived at the dark, drafty banqueting-hall of Count Considat, where an assortment of Normork’s notables awaited them.
It was a dreary evening. Considat spoke first, welcoming Normork’s most famous son back to his native city. The Count was young and had succeeded to his title only the year before, and was an amiable and almost diffident man rather more appealing in look and manner than his coarse, ill-bred father had been. But he was a dreadful speaker who droned on and on as though he had no idea of how to bring his speech to an end, unleashing a torrent of fatuous platitudes. At one point Dekkeret dozed off, and only a sharp rap under the table from Dinitak brought him back to the scene.
Then it was Dekkeret’s turn to speak, conveying Lord Prestimion’s greetings and—since that was the official pretext of his visit—congratulating the Count and Countess on the birth of their son. He extended Lord Prestimion’s regret at not being able to be present in person just now. The congratulatory gifts that had been sent by Lord Prestimion were carried in by Dekkeret’s men. Justiciar Corde spoke. Several other high officials of the court, obviously eager to make a powerful impression on the future Coronal, spoke also, effusively and to tiresome effect. Then Count Considat spoke again, no more ably than before, but at least with greater brevity. Dekkeret, caught a bit by surprise, improvised a reply. Then, only then, was food at last served, a sorry sequence of overcooked, feebly spiced meats and flaccid vegetables and prematurely opened wines. After-dinner speeches were to follow. Dekkeret made his way through the interminable ceremony by dint of a mighty summoning of patience and discipline.
He realized only too well that many more such evenings were in store for him in the years ahead. Once, when he was much younger, he had imagined that a Coronal’s life must be an endlessly glamorous affair of tournaments and feasting and revelry, interrupted now and then by the making of grand, dramatic decisions that would alter the fates of many millions of people. He knew better now.
The next day, with no official functions scheduled before nightfall, Dekkeret took Dinitak on a tour of the city, just the two of them—and a dozen or so bodyguards. It was a clear, warm morning, the air soft and fragrant in the eternal springtime of Castle Mount, the sunlight bright and strong. The soaring jagged crags of the Mount, rising beyond the city wall on all sides of Normork, glinted like ruddy bronze in that brilliant light.
Visitors to Normork often commented on the contrast between the glorious beauty of the city’s setting and the dark, hermetic look of the city itself, a tumbled multitude of close-packed gray buildings huddling in the shadow of that colossal black wall. Dekkeret, having been raised here, took the prevailing somberness of Normork for granted without finding anything unusual in it, indeed, without really noticing it at all; but now for the first time he began to see the city through the eyes of its critics. Perhaps, he thought, all the years he had spent dwelling in the airy higher reaches of Castle Mount were starting to alter his outlook toward this place.
The city wall was all but unscalable from without. Everywhere inside the city, though, stone staircases were set flush against its inner face that led to the top. They gave easy access to the broad road, wide enough for ten people to walk abreast on it, that ran along the wall’s rim. Dekkeret and Dinitak, accompanied by their inescapable gaggle of security men, ascended by way of the stairs just opposite their hotel.
In silence they set out westward around the city perimeter. After a time Dekkeret beckoned to his companion to follow him to the wall’s outer border. Leaning far out over it, he said, “Do you see that highway down there below us? The thing that looks like a white ribbon stretching a long way off into the east? That’s the one that comes up from Dundilmir and Stipool and the other cities over yonder on this level of the Mount. That road is the chief route of access to Normork for those cities and everything farther down. But you’ll notice that it doesn’t actually run into Normork anywhere. It can’t, because it comes in on the wrong side of town. You’ve already seen that the only entrance to the city is way around over there, on the side of Normork that faces upslope.”
Dinitak looked and nodded. “Yes. It comes straight up to the wall just below where we’re standing, but there’s no place to enter the city here. So it turns left instead and continues along the outside of the wall, following it all the way around, I suppose, until—until what? Until it reaches that stupid little gate?”
“Exactly. On the other side it joins up with the highway that we came down from the Castle on, and they become a single road that runs into Normork by way of the Eye of Stiamot.”
“And they make travelers from downslope go right around the city in order to enter from the upslope side? What an addlepated arrangement!”
“So it is. But changes are coming.”
“Oh?”
“I told you I had a plan for this city,” said Dekkeret grandly. “We’re standing right above the location where one day I intend to cut a second gateway through this wall.” He made a broad sweeping gesture, taking in a great swath of the titanic rampart of black stone. “Listen to this, Dinitak! The gate that I have in mind to build will be something truly majestic, nothing remotely like the puny little hole by which we entered yesterday. I’m going to make it fifty feet high and forty feet wide, or even more, so that even a Skandar will feel small when he stands under it. I’ll fashion it out of a kind of black wood that I know of from Zimroel, a rare and costly wood that takes a high polish and will shine like a mirror in the morning light, and I’ll bind it with big iron bands and the hinges will be of iron too; and by my most sacred decree it’s going to stand wide open at all times, except when the city is in peril, if ever it is. What do you say to that, eh?”
Dinitak was silent for a moment, frowning.
“I wonder,” he said finally.
“Go on.”
“It sounds very impressive, I agree. But do you think they’d genuinely want a gate like that here, Dekkeret? I’ve been here not even a day and a half, but my clear impression already is that what concerns these Normork folk above all else is safety. They lust for it beyond all reason. They are the most cautious people in the world. And this enormous impregnable black wall of theirs that they cherish so dearly is the symbol of that obsession. Doubtless that’s why the only opening in the wall is such a tiny one, and why they take care to shut that little opening and lock it up tight every evening at sunset. Do you think that the convenience of travelers coming from the downslope cities matters a damn to them, compared with the security of their own precious selves? If you come along and poke a great gaping breach in their wall for them, how likely is it that they’re going to love you for it?”
“I’ll be Coronal then. The first Coronal ever who was born in Normork.”
“Even so—”
“No. They’ll accept my gate, I’m sure of it. They’ll love my gate. Not at first, no, perhaps. I grant you they’ll need some time to get used to it. But it’ll be an utterly splendid gate, the new symbol of the city, something that people will travel from all over Castle Mount to stare at. And the citizens will point to it and say, ‘There it is, there’s the gate that Lord Dekkeret built for us, the most magnificent gate that can be found anywhere in the world.’”
“And the fact that it stands open all the time—?”
“Even that. A sign of municipal confidence. What enemies are there for them to fear, anyway? The world is at peace. No invading army is going to come marching up the side of Castle Mount. No, Dinitak—perhaps they’ll mutter and mumble at first, but in a very short while they’ll all agree that the new gate is the most wondrous thing that’s been built here since the wall itself.”
“No doubt you are correct,” said Dinitak, with just the lightest touch of irony in his tone.
Dekkeret heard it. But he would not let himself be checked. “I know that I am. The gate is going to be my monument. The Dekkeret Gate, is what people will call it in centuries to come. Everyone coming up the Mount from below will pass through it and gape at it in awe, and they’ll tell each other that this great gate, the most famous gate in the world, was built long ago by a Coronal Lord named Dekkeret, who was a man of this very city of Normork.”
He could not help smiling at his own absurdly pretentious words. His monument? Did a Coronal of Majipoor need seriously to worry about whether he would ever be forgotten? All that he had just said began to sound just a bit foolish to him even as the last words of it died away. Dinitak often had that effect on him. The tough little man’s hard-won realism frequently was a useful antidote to some of Dekkeret’s wilder flights of romanticism.
But not this time, he swore. Regardless of Dinitak’s misgivings, the Dekkeret Gate was going to be built. Probably not as his first project after he became Coronal, but he was determined to do it sooner or later. It had been his dream for many years. Nothing Dinitak could say was going to swerve him from it.
They walked onward along the top of the wall.
“That’s the Count’s palace, isn’t it?” Dinitak asked, pointing over the inner parapet. “It looks very different from this angle. But just as hideous.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps.” Dekkeret felt his mood suddenly darkening. A throbbing began in his temples. He walked toward the parapet for a better view, and found two of Count Considat’s black-uniformed security men in his way. He gesticulated at them with such ferocity that they must have thought he meant to fling them over the side. Hastily they moved back.
Dekkeret stared down into the plaza in front of the palace. His face became bleak. His lips were tightly clamped. He pressed the tips of his fingers to the sides of his head and slowly rubbed the area just above his cheekbones.
“What’s wrong?” Dinitak asked, when some little while had gone by without a word from him.
“We would have a perfect view of the assassination attempt from up here,” said Dekkeret quietly. He sketched out the scene for Dinitak with quick movements of his hand. “Lord Prestimion has just arrived in the plaza. There’s his floater, sitting right down there. He steps out of it. Gialaurys walks at his left side. Akbalik is to the right of him. You never knew Akbalik, did you? He died just around the time you were joining us in Stoien city for the final attack on Dantirya Sambail. A wonderful man, Akbalik was. He should be the one about to become Coronal, not me.—And there’s Count Meglis on the palace steps, three or four steps from the bottom. The stupid bastard is simply standing there, waiting for Prestimion to go to him, when it’s supposed to be the other way around. Prestimion isn’t expecting that. He waits for Meglis to finish coming down the steps, but he doesn’t, and for a couple of moments neither of them moves.”
Dekkeret fell silent.
“And where were you standing?” Dinitak asked. “You told me that you were there that day, that you saw the whole thing.”
“Yes. Yes. There was a huge crowd, over there on the left, where the plaza runs into that big boulevard. Thousands of people. Guards holding us back. I’m practically at the front, on that side. The second row.”
Dekkeret sighed. It was followed by another brooding silence.
Dinitak said, “Then what? The assassin bursts out of the crowd, swinging his sickle? Someone yells to warn the Coronal. The guards move in and cut the man down.”
“No. A girl comes out first—”
“A girl?”
“A beautiful girl, very tall, curling reddish-gold hair. Sixteen years old. Sithelle, her name was. My cousin. Standing just in front of me, right against the rope that’s holding the crowd back. She adored Lord Prestimion. We got up at dawn to get a good position up in front. She was carrying a bouquet that she had woven herself, hundreds of flowers. Was planning to throw it toward the Coronal, so I assumed. But no. No.” Dekkeret’s voice had become a dull low monotone. “She bends down and wriggles under the rope and slips past the guards so that she can hand the flowers to Prestimion. A very unwise thing to do. But he’s amused. He signals to the guards to let her approach. He takes the flowers from her. Asks her a question or two. And then—”
“The man with the sickle?”
“Yes. Skinny man with a beard. Crazy look in his eye. He comes charging out of nowhere, heading straight for Prestimion. Sithelle doesn’t see him coming, but she hears footsteps, I guess, and she turns, and he chops at her with the sickle to get her out of his way.” Dekkeret snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Blood everywhere—her throat—”
In a hushed voice Dinitak said, “He kills her, your cousin?”
“She must have died almost instantly.”
“And then the guards kill him.”
“No,” Dekkeret said. “I do.”
“You?”
“The assassin had been standing five or six places to my left. I came running out of the crowd right after him—I don’t know how I got past the restraining rope, don’t remember that part of it at all, only that I was out there, and I could see Sithelle with her hand across her throat trying to hold the cut together as she started to fall, and Prestimion standing there frozen with the man with the sickle raising his arm, and Gialaurys and Akbalik starting to move in from the sides but not fast enough. I grabbed the assassin’s arm and twisted it until it broke. Then I put my arm around his neck and broke that too. And picked up Sithelle—she was dead by then, that I knew—and walked off into the crowd with her, straight down Spurifon Boulevard into Old Town. No one stopped me. People moved away from me as I approached. Her blood was all over me. I took her to her house and told her parents what had happened. It was the most dreadful hour of my life. It has stayed with me ever since.”
“You loved her? You wanted to marry her, did you? You were promised to each other?”
“Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. I loved her, yes, of course, but
not in that way. We were cousins, remember. Raised practically like brother and sister. Our families wanted us to marry, but I never had any serious thought of it.”
“And she?”
Dekkeret managed a thin smile. “She may have had some fantasy of marrying Lord Prestimion. I know she had pictures of him tacked up all over her room. But nothing could ever have come of that, and she probably realized it. Very possibly she may have been in love with me, I suppose. We were so young then—what did either of us know—?”
He looked down again into the plaza. Was that her blood still staining the cobbles of the plaza?
No. No, he told himself, stop being ridiculous!
Dinitak said, “In fact you were in love with her, I think.”
“No. I’m sure I wasn’t, not then. But—the Divine help me, Dinitak!—something has gradually come over me since that time. She won’t leave my mind. I look back across the years and I see her, her face, her eyes, her hair, the way she held herself, the way she would run up and down these stairs, the mischief in her glance—and I think, if only she had lived, if only we had had a chance to grow up a little—” Dekkeret shook his head fiercely. “Never mind. She’s been dead now longer than she ever was alive. She has no more reality now than someone who comes to you in a dream. Come: let’s get ourselves away from this place.”
“I’m sorry all this got stirred up for you again, Dekkeret.”
“No matter. It’s there inside me all the time. Seeing the actual site just made it a little worse for a moment.—That same afternoon, you know, Akbalik found me somehow and took me to see Prestimion, who offered to enroll me as a knight-initiate at the Castle as a reward for saving his life, and everything that’s happened to me since has been the direct outcome of what took place down there that terrible day. I remember Prestimion saying to Akbalik, ‘Who knows? We may have found the next Coronal here today.’ His very words. He was joking then, of course.”
The King of Dreams Page 7
