One night King Krishnadevaraya dreamed of a palace unlike anything on earth. It floated in mid-air among rose-coloured clouds, its walls of crystal, its gardens hanging like green necklaces, with cool fountains that needed no summer and lamps that needed no oil. When he woke, the wonder of it would not leave him.
"I must have that palace," he announced in court. "Let it be built exactly as I dreamed — floating between sky and earth! Whoever builds it may take whatever gold he needs. And let no one tell me it cannot be done!" The courtiers looked at their toes. The royal architects turned pale. Whoever said 'impossible' risked the king's rage; whoever said 'yes' would have to hang a palace on the wind. Days passed, the king grew more impatient, and the treasury doors stood open, waiting.
One morning an old merchant came wailing into the court and threw himself before the throne. "Justice, Your Majesty! I have been robbed of a hundred thousand gold coins!" "Robbed!" cried the king. "By whom?" The old man wiped his eyes. "By Your Majesty's own self, Sire." The court gasped. "Last night," the merchant went on, "I dreamed that Your Majesty came to my humble shop with your whole retinue and borrowed a hundred thousand gold coins, promising to repay me this morning. I have come to collect the debt."
The king burst out, "You foolish man — that was a dream! Does a debt in a dream bind me in the morning?" The merchant bowed low. "If a dream's debt cannot be collected by day, Sire, how shall a dream's palace be built on the earth?" The hall went utterly silent, and every eye slid towards Tenali Rama, who was studying the ceiling with great interest.
The king laughed until the crown shook on his head. "Whose schooling is this, old father?" he asked — and the 'merchant' confessed that the jester had coached him. Krishnadevaraya rewarded them both, and thereafter, whenever a plan grew too fanciful, he would say, "Careful — or Tenali will send me another creditor from my dreams."