Majipoor Chronicles

FOUR Calintane Explains

Hissune is downcast for days after that. He knows, of course, that the voyage failed: no ship has ever crossed the Great Sea, and no ship ever will, for the idea is absurd and realization of it is probably impossible. But to fail in such a way, to go so far and then turn back, not out of cowardice or because of illness or famine but rather from sheer moral despair — Hissune finds that hard to comprehend. He would never turn back. Through the fifteen years of his life he has always gone steadily forward toward whatever he perceived as his goal, and those who faltered along their own routes have always seemed to him idle and weak. But, then, he is not Sinnabor Lavon; and, too, he has never taken life. Such a deed of violence might shake anyone's soul. For Sinnabor Lavon he feels a certain contempt, and a great deal of pity, and then, the more he considers the man, seeing him from within, a kind of admiration replaces the contempt, for he realizes that Sinnabor Lavon was no weakling but in fact a person of enormous moral strength. That is a startling insight, and Hissune's depression lifts the moment he reaches it. My education, he thinks, continues. All the same he has gone to Sinnabor Lavon's records in search of adventure and diversion, not such sober-minded philosophizing. He has not found quite what he sought. But a few years afterward, he knows, there was an event in this very Labyrinth that had diverted everyone most extremely, and that even after more than six thousand years still reverberates through history as one of the strangest events Majipoor has seen. When his duties permit, Hissune takes the time to do a bit of historical research; and then he returns to the Register of Souls to enter the mind of a certain young official at the court of the Pontifex Arioc of bizarre repute.

On the morning after the day when the crisis had reached its climax and the final lunacies had occurred, a strange hush settled over the Labyrinth of Majipoor, as if everyone were too stunned even to speak. The impact of yesterday's extraordinary events was just beginning to be felt, although even those who had witnessed what had taken place could not yet fully believe it. All the ministries were closed that morning, by order of the new Pontifex. The bureaucrats both major and minor had been put to extreme strain by the recent upheavals, and they were set at liberty to sleep it off while the new Pontifex and the new Coronal — each amazed by the unanticipated attainment of kinpship that had struck him with thunderclap force — withdrew to their private chambers to contemplate their astounding transformations. Which gave Calintane at last an opportunity to see his beloved Silitnoor. Apprehensively — for he had treated her shabbily all month, and she was not an easily forgiving sort — he sent her a note that said, I know 1 am guilty of shameful neglect, but perhaps now you begin to understand. Meet me for lunch at the cafe by the Court of Globes at midday and I will explain everything.

She had a quick temper at the best of times. It was virtually her only fault, but it was a severe one, and Calintane feared her wrath. They had been lovers a year; they were nearly betrothed to be betrothed; all the senior officials at the Pontifical court agreed he was making a wise match. Silimoor was lovely and intelligent and knowledgeable in political matters, and of good family, with three Coronals in her ancestry, including no less than the fabled Lord Stiamot himself. Plainly she would be an ideal mate for a young man destined for high places. Though still some distance short of thirty, Calintane had already attained the outer rim of the inner circle about the Pontifex, and had been given responsibilities well beyond his years. Indeed, it was those very responsibilities that had kept him from seeing or even speaking at any length to Silimoor lately. For which he expected her to berate him, and for which he hoped without much conviction that she would eventually pardon him.

All this past sleepless night he had rehearsed in his weary mind a long speech of extenuation that began, "As you know, I've been preoccupied with urgent matters of state these last weeks, too delicate to discuss in detail with you, and so—" And as he made his way up the levels of the Labyrinth to the Court of Globes for his rendezvous with her he continued to roll the phrases about. The ghostly silence of the Labyrinth this morning made him feel all the more edgy. The lowest levels, where the government offices were, seemed wholly deserted, and higher up just a few people could be seen, gathering in little knotted groups in the darkest corners, whispering and muttering as though there had been a coup d'etat, which in a sense was not far wrong. Everyone stared at him. Some pointed. Calintane wondered how they recognized him as an official of the Pontificate, until he remembered that he was still wearing his mask of office. He kept it on anyway, as a kind of shield against the glaring artificial light, so harsh on his aching eyes. Today the Labyrinth seemed stifling and oppressive. He longed to escape its somber subterranean depths, those levels upon levels of great spiralling chambers that coiled down and down. In a single night the place had become loathsome to him.

On the level of the Court of Globes he emerged from the lift and cut diagonally across that intricate vastness, decorated with its thousands of mysteriously suspended spheres, to the little cafe on the far side. The midday hour struck just as he entered it. Silimoor was already there — he knew she would be; she used punctuality to express displeasure — at a small table along the rear wall of polished onyx. She rose and offered him not her lips but her hand, also as he expected. Her smile was precise and cool. Exhausted as he was, he found her beauty almost excessive: the short golden hair arrayed like a crown, the flashing turquoise eyes, the full lips and high cheekbones, an elegance too painful to bear, just now. "I've missed you so," he said hoarsely.

"Of course. So long a separation — it must have been a dreadful burden—"

"As you know, I've been preoccupied with urgent matters of state these last weeks, too delicate to discuss in detail with you, and so—"

The words sounded impossibly idiotic in his own ears. It was a relief when she cut him off, saying smoothly, "There's time for all that, love. Shall we have some wine?"

"Please. Yes."

She signaled. A liveried waiter, a haughty-looking Hjort, came to take the order, and stalked away.

Silimoor said, "And won't you even remove your mask?"

"Ah. Sorry. It's been such a scrambled few days—"

He set aside the bright yellow strip that covered his nose and eyes and marked him as the Pontifex's man. Silimoor's expression changed as she saw him clearly for the first time; the look of serenely self-satisfied fury faded and something close to concern appeared on her face. "Your eyes are so bloodshot — your cheeks are so pale and drawn—"

"I've had no sleep. It's been a crazy time."

"Poor Calintane."

"Do you think I kept away from you because I wanted to? I've been caught up in this insanity, Silimoor."

"I know. I can see how much of a strain it's been." He realized suddenly that she was not mocking him, that she was genuinely sympathetic, that in fact this was possibly going to be easier than he had been imagining.

He said, "The trouble with being ambitious is that you get engulfed in affairs far beyond your control, and you have no choice but to let yourself be swept along. You've heard what the Pontifex Arioc did yesterday?"

She stifled a laugh. "Yes, of course. I mean, I've heard the rumors. Everyone has. Are they true? Did it really happen?"

"Unfortunately, it did."

"How marvelous, how perfectly marvelous! But such a thing turns the world upside down, doesn't it? It affects you in some dreadful way?"

"It affects you, and me, and everyone in the world," said Calintane, with a gesture that reached beyond the Court of Globes, beyond the Labyrinth itself, encompassing the entire planet beyond these claustrophobic depths, from the awesome summit of Castle Mount to the far-off cities of the western continent. "Affects us all to a degree that I hardly understand yet myself. But let me tell you the story from the beginning—"

Perhaps you were not aware that the Pontifex Arioc has been behaving strangely for months. I suppose there's something about the pressures of high office that eventually drives people crazy, or perhaps you have to be at least partly mad in the first place to aspire to high office. But you know that Arioc was Coronal for thirteen years under Dizimaule, and now he's been Pontifex a dozen years more, and that's a long time to hold that sort of power. Especially living here in the Labyrinth. The Pontifex must yearn for the outside world now and then, I'd imagine — to feel the breezes on Castle Mount or hunt gihornas in Zimroel or just to swim in a real river anywhere — and here he is miles and miles underground in this maze, presiding over his rituals and his bureaucrats until the end of his life.

One day about a year ago Arioc suddenly began talking about making a grand processional of Majipoor. I was in attendance at court that day, along with Duke Guadeloom. The Pontifex called for maps and started laying out a journey down the river to Alaisor, over to the Isle of Sleep for a pilgrimage and a visit to the Lady at Inner Temple, then across to Zimroel, with stops at Piliplok, Ni-moya, Pidruid, Narabal, you know, everywhere, a tour that would last at least five years. Guadeloom gave me a funny look and gently pointed out to Arioc that it's the Coronal who makes grand processionals, not the Pontifex, and that Lord Struin had only just come back from one a couple of years ago.

"Then I am forbidden to do so?" the Pontifex asked.

"Not precisely forbidden, your majesty, but custom dictates"

"That I remain a prisoner in the Labyrinth?"

"Not at all a prisoner, your majesty, but—"

"But I am rarely if ever to venture into the upper world?"

And so on. I must say my sympathies were with Arioc; but remember that I am not, like you, a native of the Labyrinth, only one whose government duties have brought him here, and I do find life underground a little unnatural at times. At any rate Guadeloom did convince his majesty that a grand processional was out of the question. But I could see the restlessness in the Pontifex's eyes.

The next thing that happened was that his majesty started slipping out by night to wander around the Labyrinth by himself. No one knows how often he did it before we found out what was going on, but we began to hear odd rumors that a masked figure who looked much like the Pontifex had been seen in the small hours lurking about in the Court of Pyramids or the Hall of Winds. We regarded that as so much nonsense, until the night when some flunky of the bedchamber imagined he had heard the Pontifex ring for service and went in and found the room empty. I think you will remember that night, Silimoor, because I was spending it with you and one of Guadeloom's people hunted me down and made me leave, claiming that an urgent meeting of the high advisers had been convened and my services were needed. You were quite upset — furious, I'd say. Of course what the meeting was about was the disappearance of the Pontifex, though later we covered it up by claiming it was a discussion of the great wave that had devastated so much of Stoienzar.

We found Arioc about four hours past midnight. He was in the Arena — you know, that stupid empty thing that the Pontifex Dizimaule built in one of his crazier moments — sitting crosslegged at the far side, playing a zootibar and singing songs to an audience of five or six ragged little boys. We brought him home. A few weeks later he got out again and managed to get as far up as the Court of Columns. Guadeloom discussed it with him: Arioc insisted that it is important for a monarch to go among his people and hear their grievances, and he cited precedents as far back as the kings of Old Earth. Quietly Guadeloom began posting guards in the royal precincts, supposedly to keep assassins out — but who would assassinate a Pontifex? The guards were put there to keep Arioc in. But though the Pontifex is eccentric he's far from stupid, and despite the guards he slipped out twice more in the next couple of months. It was becoming a critical problem. What if he vanished for a week? What if he got out of the Labyrinth entirely, and went for a stroll in the desert?

"Since we can't seem to prevent him from roaming," I said to Guadeloom, "why don't we give him a companion, someone who'll go on his adventures with him and at the same time see to it that no harm comes to him?"

"An excellent idea," the duke replied. "And I appoint you to the post. The Pontifex is fond of you, Calintane. And you are young enough and agile enough to be able to extricate him from any trouble into which he may stumble."

That was six weeks ago, Silimoor. You will surely recall that I suddenly ceased spending my nights with you at that time, pleading an increase of responsibilities at court, and thus our estrangement began. I could not tell you what duty it was that now occupied my nights, and I could only hope you did not suspect me of having shifted my affections to another. But I can now reveal that I was compelled to take up lodgings close by the bedchamber of the Pontifex and give him attendance every night; that I began to do most of my sleeping at random hours of the day; and that by one stratagem and another I became companion to Arioc on his nocturnal jaunts.

It was taxing work. I was in truth the Pontifex's keeper, and we both knew it, but I had to take care not to underscore the fact by unduly imposing my will on him. And yet I had to guard him from rough playmates and risky excursions. There are rogues, there are brawlers, there are hotheads; no one would knowingly harm the Pontifex but he might easily come by accident between two who meant to harm each other. In my rare moments of sleep I sought the guidance of the Lady of the Isle — may she rest in the bosom of the Divine — and she came to me in a blessed sending, and told me that I must make myself the Pontifex's friend if I meant not to be his jailer. How fortunate we are to have the counsel of so kind a mother in our dreams! And so I dared to initiate more than a few of Arioc's adventures myself. "Come, let us go out tonight," I said to him, which would have frozen Guadeloom's blood, had he known. It was my idea to take the Pontifex up into the public levels of the Labyrinth for a night of taverns and marketplaces — masked, of course, beyond chance of recognition. I led him into mysterious alleyways where gamblers lived, but gamblers known to me, who posed no threats. And it was I who on the boldest night of all actually guided him beyond the walls of the Labyrinth itself. I knew it was what he most desired, and even he feared to attempt it, so I proposed it to him as my secret gift, and he and I took the private royal passageway upward that emerges at the Mouth of Waters. We stood together so close to the River Glayge that we could feel the cool air that blows down from Castle Mount, and we looked up at the blazing stars. "I have not been out here in six years," said the Pontifex. He was trembling and I think he was weeping behind his mask; and I, who had not seen the stars either for much too long, was nearly as deeply moved. He pointed to this one and that, saying it was the star of the world from which the Ghayrog folk came, and this the star of the Hjorts, and that one there, that trifling dot of light, was none other than the sun of Old Earth. Which I doubted, since I had been taught otherwise in school, but he was in such joy that I could not contradict him then. And he turned to me and gripped my arm and said in a low voice, "Calintane, I am the supreme ruler of this whole colossal world, and I am nothing at all, a slave, a prisoner. I would give everything to escape this Labyrinth and spend my last years in freedom under the stars."

"Then why not abdicate?" I suggested, astounded at my audacity.

He smiled. "It would be cowardice. I am the elect of the Divine, and how can I reject that burden? I am destined to be a Power of Majipoor to the end of my days. But there must be some honorable way to free myself from this subterranean misery."

And I saw that the Pontifex was neither mad nor wicked nor capricious, but only lonely for the night and the mountains and the moons and the trees and the streams of the world he had been forced to abandon so that the government might be laid upon him.

Next came word, two weeks ago, that the Lady of the Isle, Lord Struin's mother and the mother of us all, had fallen ill and was not likely to recover. This was an unusual crisis that created major constitutional problems, for of course the Lady is a Power of rank equal to Pontifex and Coronal, and replacing her should hardly be done casually. Lord Struin himself was reported to be on his way from Castle Mount to confer with the Pontifex — foregoing a journey to the Isle of Sleep, for he could not possibly reach it in time to bid his mother farewell. Meanwhile Duke Guadeloom, as high spokesman of the Pontificate and chief officer of the court, had begun to compile a list of candidates for the post, which would be compared with Lord Struin's list to see if any names were on both. The counsel of the Pontifex Arioc was necessary in all of this, and we thought that would be beneficial to him in his present unsettled state by involving him more deeply in imperial matters. In at least a technical sense the dying Lady was his wife, for under the formalities of our succession law he had adopted Lord Struin as his son when choosing him to be Coronal; of course the Lady had a lawful husband of her own somewhere on Castle Mount, but you understand the legalities of the custom, do you not? Guadeloom informed the Pontifex of the impending death of the Lady and a round of governmental conferences began. I did not take part in these, since I am not of that level of authority or responsibility.

I am afraid we assumed that the gravity of the situation might cause Arioc to become less erratic in his behavior, and at least unconsciously we must have relaxed our vigilance. On the very night that the news of the death of the Lady reached the Labyrinth, the Pontifex slipped away alone for the first time since I had been assigned to keep watch over him. Past the guards, past me, past his servants — out into the interminable intricate complexities of the Labyrinth, and no one could find him. We searched all night and half the next day. I was beside myself with terror, both for him and for my career. In the greatest of apprehension I sent officers out each of the seven mouths of the Labyrinth to search that bleak and torrid desert outside; I myself visited all the rakish haunts to which I had introduced him; Guadeloom's staff prowled in places unknown to me; and throughout all this we sought to keep the populace from knowing that the Pontifex was missing. I think we must have succeeded in that.

We found him in mid-afternoon of the day after his disappearance. He was in a house in the district known as Stiamot's Teeth in the first ring of the Labyrinth and he was disguised in women's clothes. We might never have found him at all but for some quarrel over an unpaid bill, which brought proctors to the scene, and when the Pontifex was unable to identify himself satisfactorily and a man's voice was heard coming from a supposed woman the proctors had the sense to summon me, and I hurried to take custody of him. He looked appallingly strange in his robes and his bangles, but he greeted me calmly by name, acting perfectly composed and rational, and said he hoped he had not caused me great inconvenience.

I expected Guadeloom to demote me. But the duke was in a forgiving mood, or else he was too bound up in the larger crisis to care about my lapse, for he said nothing whatever about the fact that I had let the Pontifex get out of his bedchamber. "Lord Struin arrived this morning," Guadeloom told me, looking harried and weary. "Naturally he wanted to meet with the Pontifex at once, but we told him that Arioc was asleep and it was unwise to disturb him — this while half my people were out searching for him. It pains me to lie to the Coronal, Calintane."

"The Pontifex is genuinely asleep in his chambers now," I said.

"Yes. Yes. And there he will stay, I think."

"I will make every effort to see to that."

"That's not what I mean," said Guadeloom. "The Pontifex Arioc is plainly out of his mind. Crawling through laundry chutes, creeping around the city at night, decking himself out in female finery — it goes beyond mere eccentricity, Calintane. Once we have this business of the new Lady out of the way, I'm going to propose that we confine him permanently to his quarters under strong guard — for his own protection, Calintane, his own protection — and hand the Pontifical duties over to a regency. There's precedent for that. I've been through the records. When Barhold was Pontifex he fell ill of swamp fever and it affected his mind, and—"

"Sir," I said, "I don't believe the Pontifex is insane."

Guadeloom frowned. "How else could you characterize one who does what he's been doing?"

"They are the acts of a man who has been king too long, and whose soul rebels against all that he must continue to bear. But I have come to know him well, and I venture to say that what he expresses by these escapades is a torment of the soul, but not any kind of madness."

It was an eloquent speech and, if I have to say it myself, courageous, for I am a junior counsellor and Guadeloom was at that moment the third most powerful figure in the realm, behind only Arioc and Lord Struin. But there comes a time when one must put diplomacy and ambition and guile aside, and simply speak the plain truth; and the idea of confining the unhappy Pontifex like a common lunatic, when he already suffered great pain from his confinement in the Labyrinth alone, was horrifying to me. Guadeloom was silent a long while and I suppose I should have been frightened, speculating whether I would be dismissed altogether from his service or simply sent down to the record-keeping halls to spend the remainder of my life shuffling papers, but I was calm, totally calm, as I awaited his reply.

Then came a knock at the door: a messenger, bearing a note sealed with the great starburst that was the Coronal's personal seal. Duke Guadeloom ripped it open and read the message and read it again, and read it a third time, and I have never seen such a look of incredulity and horror pass over a human face as crossed his then. His hands were shaking; his face was without color.

He looked at me and said in a strangled voice, "This is in the Coronal's own hand, informing me that the Pontifex has left his quarters and has gone to the Place of Masks, where he has issued a decree so stupefying that I cannot bring myself to frame the words with my own lips." He handed me the note. "Come," he said, "I think we should hasten to the Place of Masks."

He ran out, and I followed, trying desperately to glance at the note as I went. But Lord Struin's handwriting is jagged and difficult, and Guadeloom was moving with phenomenal speed, and the corridors were winding and the way poorly lit; so I could only get a snatch of the content here and there, something about a proclamation, a new Lady designated, an abdication. Whose abdication if not that of the Pontifex Arioc? Yet he had said to me out of the depths of his spirit that it would be cowardice to turn his back on the destiny that had chosen him to be a Power of the realm.

Breathless I came to the Place of Masks, a zone of the Labyrinth that I find disturbing at the best of times, for the great slit-eyed faces that rise on those gleaming marble plinths seem to me figures out of nightmare. Guadeloom's footsteps clattered on the stone floor, and mine doubled the sound of his a good way behind, for though he was more than twice my age he was moving like a demon. Up ahead I heard shouts, laughter, applause. And then I saw a gathering of perhaps a hundred fifty citizens, among whom I recognized several of the chief ministers of the Pontificate. Guadeloom and I barged into the group and halted only when we saw figures in the green-and-gold uniform of the Coronal's service, and then the Coronal himself. Lord Struin looked furious and dazed at the same time, a man in shock.

"There is no stopping him," the Coronal said hoarsely. "He goes from hall to hall, repeating his proclamation. Listen: he begins again!"

And I saw the Pontifex Arioc at the head of the group, riding on the shoulders of a colossal Skandar servant. His majesty was dressed in flowing white robes of the female style, with a splendid brocaded border, and on his breast lay a glowing red jewel of wondrous immensity and radiance.

"Whereas a vacancy has developed among the Powers of Majipoor!" cried the Pontifex in a marvelously robust voice. "And whereas it is needful that a new Lady of the Isle of Sleep! Be appointed herewith and swiftly! So that she may minister to the souls of the people! By appearing in their dreams to give aid and comfort! And! Whereas! It is my earnest desire! To yield up the burden of the Pontificate that I have borne these twelve years!

"Therefore—

"I do herewith! Using the supreme powers at my command! Proclaim that I be acclaimed hereafter as a member of the female sex! And as Pontifex I do name as Lady of the Isle the woman Arioc, formerly male!"

"Madness," muttered Duke Guadeloom.

"This is the third time I have heard it, and still I cannot believe it," and the Coronal Lord Struin.

" — and do herewith simultaneously abdicate my Pontifical throne! And call on the dwellers of the Labyrinth! To fetch for the Lady Arioc a chariot! To transport her to the port of Stolen! And thence to the Isle of Sleep so that she may bring her consolations to you all!"

And in that moment the gaze of Arioc turned toward me, and his eyes for an instant held mine. He was flushed with excitement and his forehead gleamed with sweat. He recognized me, and he smiled, and he winked, and undeniable wink, a wink of joy, a wink of triumph. Then he was carried away out of my sight.

"This must be stopped," Guadeloom said.

Lord Struin shook his head. "Listen to the cheering! They love it. The crowd grows larger as he goes from level to level. They'll sweep him up to the top and out the Mouth of Blades and off to Stoien before this day is out."

"You are Coronal," said Guadeloom. "Is there nothing you can do?"

"Overrule the Pontifex, whose every command I have sworn to serve? Commit treason before hundreds of witnesses? No, no, no, Guadeloom, what's done is done, preposterous as it may be, and now we must live with it."

"All hail the Lady Arioc!" a booming voice bellowed,

"All hail! The Lady Arioc! All hail! All hail!"

I watched in utter disbelief as the procession moved on through the Place of Masks, heading for the Hall of Winds or the Court of Pyramids beyond. We did not follow, Guadeloom and the Coronal and I. Numb, silent, we stood motionless as the cheering, gesticulating figures disappeared. I was abashed to be among these great men of our realm at so humiliating a moment. It was absurd and fantastic, this abdication and appointment of a Lady, and they were shattered by it.

At length Guadeloom said thoughtfully, "If you accept the abdication as valid, Lord Struin, then you are Coronal no longer, but must make ready to take up residence here in the Labyrinth, for you are now our Pontifex."

Those words fell upon Lord Struin like mighty boulders. In the frenzy of the moment he had evidently not thought Arioc's deed through even to its first consequence.

His mouth opened but no words came forth. He opened and closed his hands as though making the starburst gesture in his own honor, but I knew it was only an expression of bewilderment. I felt shivers of awe, for it is no small thing to witness a transfer of succession, and Strain was wholly unprepared for it. To give up the joys of Castle Mount in the midst of life, to exchange its brilliant cities and splendid forests for the gloom of the Labyrinth, to put aside the star-burst crown for the senior diadem — no, he was not ready at all, and as the truth of it came home to him his face turned ashen and his eyelids twitched madly.

After a very long while he said, "So be it, then. I am the Pontifex. And who, I ask you, is to be Coronal in my place?"

I suppose it was a rhetorical question. Certainly I gave no answer, and neither did Duke Guadeloom.

Angrily, roughly, Strain said again, "Who is to be Coronal? I ask you!"

His gaze was on Guadeloom.

I tell you, I was near to destroyed by being witness of these events, that will never be forgotten if our civilization lasts another ten thousand years. But how much more of an impact all this must have had on them! Guadeloom fell back, spluttering. Since Arioc and Lord Struin both were relatively young men, little speculation on the succession to their thrones had taken place: and though Guadeloom was a man of power and majesty, I doubt that he had ever expected himself to reach the heights of Castle Mount, and certainly not in any such way as this. He gaped like a gaffed gromwark and could not speak, and in the end it was I who reacted first, going down on my knee, making the starburst to him, crying out in a choked voice, "Guadeloom! Lord Guadeloom! Hail, Lord Guadeloom! Long life to Lord Guadeloom!"

Never again will I see two men so astonished, so confused, so instantly altered, as were the former Lord Struin now Pontifex and the former Duke Guadeloom now Coronal. Strain was stormy-faced with rage and pain, Lord Guadeloom half broken with amazement.

There was another huge silence.

Then Lord Guadeloom said in an oddly quavering voice, "If I am Coronal, custom demands that my mother be named the Lady of the Isle, is that not so?"

"How old is your mother?" Strain asked.

"Quite old. Ancient, one could say."

"Yes. And neither prepared for the tasks of the Ladyship nor strong enough to bear them."

"True," said Lord Guadeloom.

Strain said, "Besides, we have a new Lady this day, and it would not do to select another so soon. Let us see how well her Ladyship Arioc conducts herself in Inner Temple before we seek to put another in her place, eh?"

"Madness," said Lord Guadeloom.

"Madness indeed," said the Pontifex Strain. "Come, let us go to the Lady, and see her safely off to her Isle."

I went with them to the upper reaches of the Labyrinth, where we found ten thousand people hailing Arioc as he or she, barefoot and in splendid robes, made ready to board the chariot that would conduct her or him to the port of Stoien. It was impossible to get close to Arioc, so close was the press of bodies. "Madness," said Lord Guadeloom over and over. "Madness, madness!"

But I knew otherwise, for I had seen Arioc's wink, and I understood it completely. This was no madness at all. The Pontifex Arioc had found his way out of the Labyrinth, which was his heart's desire. Future generations, I am sure, will think of him as a synonym for folly and absurdity; but I know that he was altogether sane, a man to whom the crown had become an agony and whose honor forbade him simply to retire into private life.

And so it is, after yesterday's strange events, that we have a Pontifex and a Coronal and a Lady, and they are none of them the ones we had last month, and now you understand, beloved Silimoor, all that has befallen our world.

Calintane finished speaking and took a long draught of his wine. Silimoor was staring at him with an expression that seemed to him a mixture of pity and contempt and sympathy.

"You are like small children," she said at last, "with your titles and your royal courts and your bonds of honor. Nevertheless I understand, I think, what you have experienced and how it has unsettled you."

"There is one thing more," said Calintane.

"Yes?"

"The Coronal Lord Guadeloom, before he took to his chambers to begin the task of comprehending these transformtions, appointed me his chancellor. He will leave next week for Castle Mount. And I must be at his side, naturally."

"How splendid for you," said Silimoor coolly.

"I ask you therefore to join me there, to share my life at the Castle," he said as measuredly as he could.

Her dazzling turquoise eyes stared frostily into his.

"I am native to the Labyrinth," she answered. "I love dearly to dwell in its precincts."

"Is that my answer, then?"

"No," said Silimoor. "You will have your answer later. Much like your Pontifex and your Coronal, I require time to accustom myself to great changes."

"Then you have answered!"

"Later," she said, and thanked him for the wine and for the tale he had told, and left him at the table. Calintane eventually rose, and wandered like a spectre through the depths of the Labyrinth in an exhaustion beyond all exhaustion, and heard the people buzzing as the news spread — Arioc the Lady now, Strain the Pontifex, Guadeloom the Coronal — and it was to him like the droning of insects in his ears. He went to his chamber and tried to sleep, but no sleep came, and he fell into gloom over the state of his life, fearing that this sour period of separation from Silimoor had done fatal harm to their love, and that despite her oblique hint to the contrary she would reject his suit. But he was wrong. For, a day later, she sent word that she was ready to go with him, and when Calintane took up his new residence at Castle Mount she was at his side, as she still was many years later when he succeeded Lord Guadeloom as Coronal. His reign in that post was short but cheerful, and during his time he accomplished the construction of the great highway at the summit of the Mount that bears his name; and when in old age he returned to the Labyrinth as Pontifex himself it was without the slightest surprise, for he had lost all capacity for surprise that day long ago when the Pontifex Arioc had proclaimed himself to be the Lady of the Isle.