He covered his face with his outspread hands. After a little while he said again, “My lord—” in a faint, indistinct way. Dekkeret waited, saying nothing. “My lord, do you see how I look? How I conduct myself? Is this the Teotas you remember from earlier times? From six months ago, even? Do I seem to you like a man fit to undertake the duties of the High Counsellor of the Realm? Can’t you see that I’m half out of my mind? More than half. Only a fool would choose an unstable person like me for such an important post. And you are anything but a fool.”
“I do see that you seem ill, Teotas. But illnesses can be cured.—Have you discussed this matter of refusing the post with his majesty your brother?”
“Not at all. I don’t see any need to burden Prestimion with my troubles.”
“If the Divine had granted me a brother,” Dekkeret said, “I think I would be ready and willing to hear of any troubles of his, at any hour of the day or night. And I think it would be the same for Prestimion.”
“Nevertheless, I will not go to him.” This was becoming a torment, now. “In the name of the Divine, Dekkeret! Find yourself some other High Counsellor, and let me be done with it! Surely I’m not indispensable.”
It seemed to occur to the Coronal, finally, that Teotas was in agony. Gently he said, “No one is indispensable, including the Pontifex and the Coronal. And I’ll withdraw the appointment, if you give me no choice about it.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Teotas rose as if to go.
But Dekkeret was not done with him. “I should tell you, though, that Dinitak believes that these dreams of yours, which must truly be appalling, are not the work of your own brain at all. He thinks they’re being sent in by an enemy from outside—a kinsman of his, a Barjazid, he suspects, who is using some version of the thought-control helmet that we once employed against Dantirya Sambail.”
Teotas gasped. “Can that be so?”
“At this moment Dinitak is searching for proof of his theory. And will take the necessary action, if he finds that what he suspects is true.”
“I find myself perplexed at this, my lord. Why would anyone want to be sending me bad dreams? Your friend Dinitak wastes his time, I think.”
“Be that as it may, I’ve authorized him to look into it.”
Teotas felt that he was coming to the limits of his reserve of strength. He had to make an end of this. “Whatever he finds will make no difference to our discussion here,” he said. “The real issue is what has become of my marriage.—You know, I think, that Fiorinda is at the Labyrinth with Varaile?”
“Yes.”
“She is as important to Varaile as you claim that I am to you. But I will not live apart from her indefinitely, my lord. There is no solution, then, other than for one of us to give up the royal appointment, and it has been my rule always to place Fiorinda’s needs and desires above my own. Therefore I will not serve you as High Counsellor.”
“You may think differently about this,” said Dekkeret, “once we have freed you from these dreams. Giving up the High Counsellorship is no light matter. I promise you, I’ll release you if you feel, even after the dreams are gone, that you don’t want the job. But can we hold the decision in abeyance until then?”
“You are inexorable, my lord. But I am adamant. Dreams or no dreams, I want to be with my wife, and she wants to be with Varaile at the Labyrinth.”
He moved again toward the door.
“Give it one more week,” Dekkeret said. “We’ll meet again a week from now, and if you feel the same way, I’ll name someone else to the post. Can we agree on that? One more week?”
Dekkeret’s tenacity was maddening. Teotas could bear it no longer. “Whatever you say, my lord,” he muttered. “One week more, yes. Whatever you say.” He made a hasty starburst salute and rushed from the room before the Coronal could utter another word.
***
That night Teotas lies awake for hours, too tired even to sleep, and he begins to hope that just this once he will be spared, that he will go through the night from midnight to dawn without descending even for a moment into the realm of dreams. Better not to sleep at all, he thinks, than to endure the torture that his dreams have become.
But somehow he passes without knowing it, once again, from wakefulness to sleep. There is no sudden transition, no sense of crossing a boundary. Somehow, though, he has entered yet another strange place, where he knows he will suffer. As he moves forward into it, the power of the place only gradually makes itself known to him, gathering slowly, mounting with each step he takes, oppressing him only a little at first, then more, then much more.
And now Teotas finds himself under the full stress of this place. He is in a region of thick-stemmed gray shrubs, broad-leaved and low. A thick mist hovers. The general tone here is a colorless one: hue has bled away. And there is the awful pull coming from the ground, that clamp of gravity clinging with inexorable force to every part of him. His eyelids are leaden. His cheeks sag. His gut droops. His throat is a loosely hanging sac. His bones bend under the strain. He walks with bent knees. What does he weigh here? Eight hundred pounds? Eight thousand? Eight million? He is unthinkably heavy. Heavy. Heavy.
His weight nails his feet flat to the ground. Each time he pulls one upward to take another step, he hears a reverberating sound as the planet recoils against the separation. He is aware of the blood lying dark and sleepy along the enfeebled arteries of his chest. He feels a monstrous iron hump riding on his shoulders. Yet he walks on. There must be an end to this place somewhere.
But there is no end.
Halting, Teotas kneels, just to regain his breath. Tears of relief burst forth as some of the stress is lifted from his body’s bony framework. Like drops of quicksilver the slow tears roll down his cheek and thump into the ground.
When he feels that he is ready to go on, he attempts to rise.
It takes him five tries. Then he succeeds, rocking himself, levering himself up on his knuckles, rump in air, intestines yanked groundward, spine popping, neck creaking. Up. Up. Another push. He stands. He gasps. He walks. He finds the path he had been following a little while ago: there are his footprints, nearly an inch deep on the sandy soil. He fits his feet into the imprints and moves onward.
The gravitational drag continues to increase. Breathing has become a battle. His rib cage will not lift except under duress; his lungs are stretched like elastic bands. His cheeks hang toward his shoulders. There is a boulder in his chest. And it all keeps getting worse. He knows that if he remains here much longer he will be squeezed flat. He will be squeezed until he is nothing more than a film of dust coating the ground.
The effect continues to worsen. He can no longer remain upright. He has become top-heavy, and the mass of his skull turns his back into a curved bow; his vertebrae slide about, grinding and cracking. He yearns to lie down flat, surrendering to the awful force, but he knows that if he does, he will never be able to rise again.
The sky is being pulled down on top of him. A gray shield presses against his back. His knees are taking root. He crawls. He crawls. He crawls. He crawls.
“Help me!” he cries. “Fiorinda! Prestimion! Abrigant!”
His words are like pellets of lead. They spill from his mouth and plummet into the ground.
He crawls.
There is a ghastly pain in his side. He fears that his intestines are breaking through his skin. His bones are separating at the elbows and knees. He crawls. He crawls.