Valentine Pontifex

1

When the royal expeditionary force was some hours yet downriver from Ni-moya, Lord Hissune called Alsimir to him and said, “Find out whether the great house known as Nissimorn Prospect still exists. If it does, I mean to requisition it as my headquarters while I’m in Ni-moya.”

Hissune remembered that house—remembered all of Ni-moya, its white towers and glittering arcades—as vividly as though he had dwelled there half his life. But he had never set foot on the continent of Zimroel at all before this voyage. It was through the eyes of another that he had seen Ni-moya. Now he cast his mind back to that time in his boyhood when he had covertly peered at the memory-readings on file in the Register of Souls in the depths of the Labyrinth. What was her name, the little shopkeeper from Velathys who had married the duke’s brother, and came to inherit Nissimorn Prospect? Inyanna, he thought. Inyanna Forlana. Who had been a thief in the Grand Bazaar, until the course of her life so amazingly changed.

All that had happened at the end of Lord Malibor’s reign—only some twenty or twenty-five years ago. Very likely she was still alive, Hissune thought. Still living in her wondrous mansion overlooking the river. And then I will go to her and I will say, “I know you, Inyanna Forlana. I understand you as well as I understand myself. We are of the same kind, you and I: fortune’s favorites. And we know that the true favorites of fortune are those who know how to make the best use of their own good luck.”

Nissimorn Prospect still stood, rising splendidly on its rocky headland above the harbor, its cantilevered balconies and porticos floating dreamlike in the shimmering air. But Inyanna Forlana no longer lived there. The great house was occupied now by a brawling horde of squatters, packed five and six to a room, who had scrawled their names on the glass wall of the Hall of Windows and built smoky campfires on the verandas facing the garden and left smeary fingerprints on the shining white walls. Most of them fled like morning mists the moment the Coronal’s forces came through the gates; but a few remained, sullenly staring at Hissune as if he were an invader from some other world.

“Shall I clear the last of this rabble out, my lord?” Stimion asked.

Hissune nodded. “But give them some hod and something to drink first, and tell them that the Coronal regrets that he must have their place for his lodging. And ask them if they know of the Lady Inyanna, whose house this once was.”

Grimly he went from room to room, comparing what he beheld to the radiant vision of this place he had had from the memory-reading of Inyanna Forlana. The transformation was a saddening one. There was no part of the house that was not in some way soiled, spoiled, stained, blemished, ravaged. It would take an army of craftsmen years to restore it to what it had been, Hissune thought.

As with Nissimorn Prospect, so too with all of Ni-moya. Hissune, disconsolately wandering the Hall of Windows with its sweeping views of every part of the city, looked out upon a scene of horrifying ruination. This had been the wealthiest and most resplendent city of Zimroel, equal to any of the cities of Castle Mount. The white towers that had housed thirty million people now were blackened with the smoke of scores of great fires. The Ducal Palace was a shattered stump atop its magnificent pedestal. The Gossamer Galleria, a mile-long span of suspended fabric where the finest shops of the city had been, had been cut loose from its moorings at one side and sprawled like a discarded cloak across the avenue below it. The glass domes of the Museum of Worlds were broken, and Hissune did not want to think of what must have become of its treasures. The revolving reflectors of the Crystal Boulevard were dark. He looked toward the harbor and saw what must have been the floating restaurants, where once it had been possible to dine elegantly on the rarest delicacies of Narabal and Stee and Pidruid and other distant cities, capsized and turned bottomside up in the water.

He felt cheated. To have dreamed so long of seeing Ni-moya, and now at last to be here and find it like this, perhaps beyond repair…

How had this happened? he wondered. Why had the people of Ni-moya, in their hunger and panic and madness, turned against their own city? And was it like this all across the heartland of Zimroel, all the beauty that it had taken thousands of years to create tossed away in a single paroxysm of mindless destruction? We have paid a heavy price, Hissune told himself, for all those centuries of smug self-satisfaction.

Stimion came to him to report the news of the Lady Inyanna that he had learned from one of the squatters: she had fled Ni-moya more than a year ago, he said, when one of the false Coronals had demanded her mansion from her to serve as his palace. Where she had gone, whether she was still alive at all—no one knew that. The Duke of Ni-moya and all his family had fled, too, even earlier, and most of the other nobility.

“And the false Coronal?” Hissune asked.

“Gone also, my lord. All of them, for there was more than one, and toward the end there were ten or twelve, squabbling among themselves. But they ran like frightened bilantoons when the Pontifex Valentine reached the city last month. There is only one Coronal in Ni-moya today, my lord, and his name is Hissune.”

Hissune smiled faintly. “And is this my grand processional, then? Where are the musicians, where are the parades? Why all this filth and destruction? This is not what I thought my first visit to Ni-moya would be like, Stimion.”

“You will return in a happier time, my lord, and all will be as it was formerly.”

“Do you think so? Do you truly think so? Ah, I pray you are right, my friend!”

Alsimir appeared. “My lord, the mayor of this place sends his respects and asks leave to call upon you this afternoon.”

“Tell him to come this evening. We have more urgent things to do just now than meet with local mayors.”

“I will tell him, my lord. I think the mayor feels some alarm, my lord, over the size of the army that you intend to quarter here. He said something about the difficulty of supplying provisions, and some problem of sanitation that he—”

“He will supply provisions as required, Alsimir, or we will supply ourselves with a more capable mayor,” said Hissune. “Tell him that also. You might tell him, also, that my lord Divvis will shortly be here with an army nearly as great as this, or perhaps greater, and my lord Tunigorn will be following, and therefore he can consider his present efforts as merely a rehearsal for the real burdens that will be placed upon him soon. But let him know, also, that the overall food requirements of Ni-moya will be somewhat lessened when I leave here, because I will be taking several million of his citizens with me as part of the army of occupation going to Piurifayne, and ask him what method he proposes for choosing the volunteers. And if he balks at anything, Alsimir, point out to him that we have come here not to annoy him but to rescue his province from chaos, though we would much prefer to be jousting atop Castle Mount just now. If you think his attitude is inappropriate after you have said all that, put him in chains and see if there is a deputy mayor who is willing to be more cooperative, and if there is not, find someone who is.” Hissune grinned. “So much for the mayor of Ni-moya. Has there been any news of my lord Divvis?”

“A great deal, my lord. He has left Piliplok and is following us up the Zimr as swiftly as he can, gathering his army as he goes. We have messages from him from Port Saikforge, Stenwamp, Orgeliuse, Impemonde, and Obliorn Vale, and the last word we have is that he is approaching Larnimisculus.”

“Which as I recall is still some thousands of miles east of here, is it not?” said Hissune. “So we have no little while yet to wait for him. Well, he will get here when he gets here, and there can be no hurrying it, nor do I think it wise to set out for Piurifayne until I have met with him.” He smiled ruefully.” Our task would be three times as simple, I think, if this world were half as big. Alsimir, send messages of our highest regard to Divvis at Larnimisculus, and perhaps to Belka and Clarischanz and a few other cities along his route, telling him how eager I am to see him once again.”

“And are you, my lord?” Alsimir asked.

Hissune looked closely at him. “That I am,” he said. “Most genuinely I am, Alsimir!”

He chose for his headquarters the grand study on the third floor of the building. Long ago when this had been the home of Calain, brother to the Duke of Ni-moya—so Hissune recalled out of his acquired memory of the place—the huge room had housed Calain’s library of ancient books bound in the hides of uncommon animals. But the books were gone; the study was a vast empty space with a single scarred desk in its center. There he spread out his maps and contemplated the enterprise that lay before him.

It had not pleased Hissune to be left behind at the Isle of Sleep when Valentine sailed to Piliplok. He had meant to handle the pacification of Piliplok himself, by force of arms; but Valentine had had other ideas, and Valentine had prevailed. Coronal might indeed Hissune be, yes, but it became clear to him at the time of that decision that his situation was for some time going to be an anomalous one, for he would have to contend with the existence of a vigorous and active and highly visible Pontifex who had no intention whatever of retreating to the Labyrinth. Hissune’s historical studies provided him with no precedent for that. Even the strongest and most ambitious of Coronals—Lord Confalume, Lord Prestimion, Lord Dekkeret, Lord Kinniken—had yielded up their place and gone to their subterranean abode at the completion of their time at the Castle.

But there was no precedent, Hissune conceded, for anything that was happening now. And he could not deny that Valentine’s voyage to Piliplok—which to Hissune had seemed to be the maddest sort of folly—had in fact been a brilliant stroke of strategy.

Imagine: the rebellious city meekly hauling down its flags and submitting without a whimper to the Pontifex, precisely as Valentine had predicted! What magic did he have, Hissune wondered, that allowed him to carry off so bold a coup with such self-assurance? But he had won back his throne in the war of restoration with much the same tactics, had he not? His mildness, his gentleness—they concealed a temperament of remarkable strength and determination. And yet, thought Hissune, it was not a mere cloak conveniently put on, that gentleness of Valentine: it was the essential nature of his character, the deepest and truest part of it. An extraordinary being—a great king, in his curious fashion…

And now the Pontifex proceeded westward along the Zimr with his little entourage, traveling from one broken land to another, gently negotiating a return to sanity. From Piliplok he had gone to Ni-moya, arriving some weeks before Hissune. False Coronals had fled at his approach; vandals and bandits had ceased their maraudings; the dazed and impoverished citizens of the great city had turned out by the millions, so went the report, to hail their new Pontifex as if he could with one wave of his hand restore the world to its former state. Which made matters far simpler for Hissune, following in Valentine’s wake: instead of having to expend time and resources bringing Ni-moya under control, he found the city quiet and reasonably willing to cooperate in whatever must be done.

Hissune traced a path with his finger over the map. Valentine had gone on to Khyntor. A tough assignment; that was the stronghold of the false Coronal Sempeturn and his private army, the Knights of Dekkeret. Hissune feared for the Pontifex there. Yet he could take no action to protect him: Valentine would not hear of it. “I will not lead armies into the cities of Majipoor,” he had said when they debated the point on the Isle; and Hissune had had no choice but to yield to his will. The authority of the Pontifex is always supreme.

And after Khyntor, for Valentine? The Rift cities, Hissune assumed. And then perhaps onward toward the cities of the sea, Pidruid, Tilomon, Narabal. No one knew what was happening on that far coast, where so many millions of refugees from the troubled Zimroel heartland had gone. But in the eye of his mind Hissune could see Valentine marching tirelessly on and on and on, bringing chaos into order by the glowing force of his soul alone. It was, in effect, a weird sort of grand processional for the Pontifex. But the Pontifex, Hissune thought uneasily, is not the one who is supposed to be making grand processionals.

He turned his mind away from Valentine and toward his own responsibilities. Wait for Divvis to get here, first. A ticklish business that would be. But Hissune knew that all the future success of his reign would depend on how well he handled that brooding and jealous man. Offer him high authority, yes, make it clear that among the generals of this war he is second only to the Coronal himself. But contain him, control him, at the same time. If it could be done.

Hissune sketched quick lines on the map. One army under Divvis, swinging out west as far as Khyntor or Mazadone to make certain that Valentine had really reestablished order there, and levying troops as it went: then looping back to the south and east to take up a position along the upper reaches of the Metamorph province. The other main army, under Hissune’s own command, cutting down from Ni-moya along the banks of the Steiche to seal Piurifayne’s eastern border.

The pincers tactics: inward then from both sides until the rebels were taken.

And what will those soldiers eat, Hissune wondered, in a world that is starving to death? Feed an army of many millions on roots and nuts and grass? He shook his head. We will eat roots and nuts and grass, if that is all there is. We will eat stones and mud. We will eat the devilish fanged creatures that the rebels hurl against us. We will eat our own dead, if need be. And we will prevail; and then this madness will end.

He rose and went to the window and stared out over ruined Ni-moya, more beautiful now that twilight was descending to hide the worst of the scars. He caught sight of his own reflection in the glass. Mockingly he bowed to it. Good evening, my lord! The Divine be with you, my lord! Lord Hissune: how strange that sounded. Yes, my lord; no, my lord; I will do it at once, my lord. They made the starburst at him. They backed away in awe. They treated him, all of them, as though he really were Coronal. Perhaps he would become used to it before long. It was not as though any of this had come as a surprise, after all. And yet it still felt unreal to him. Possibly that was because he had spent his entire reign thus far journeying about Zimroel in this improvised way. It would not become real, Hissune decided, until he finally returned to Castle Mount—to Lord Hissune’s Castle!—and took up that life of signing decrees and making appointments and presiding over grand ceremonies that was, he imagined, the true occupation of a Coronal in peacetime. But would that day ever come? He shrugged. A foolish question, like most questions. That day would come on the day that it came; in the meantime there was work to do. Hissune returned to his desk and for an hour more continued to annotate his maps.

After a time Alsimir returned. “I have spoken with the mayor, my lord. He promises complete cooperation now. He waits downstairs in the hope that you will allow him to tell you how cooperative he plans to be.”

Hissune smiled. “Send him to me,” he said.

2

When he reached Khyntor at last Valentine directed Asenhart to make his landfall not in the city proper, but across the river in the southern suburb of Hot Khyntor, where the geothermal wonders were, the geysers and fumaroles and simmering lakes. He wanted to enter the city in a slow and measured way, giving the so-called “Coronal” who ruled it full warning that he was coming.

Not that his arrival could be any surprise to the self-styled Lord Sempeturn. During his voyage up the Zimr from Ni-moya Valentine had made no secret of his identity, nor of his destination. He had halted again and again at the larger river towns along the way, meeting with whatever municipal leadership still survived in them, and obtaining pledges of backing for the armies that were being recruited to meet the Metamorph threat. And all along the river, even at towns where he did not stop, the populace turned out to see the imperial fleet pass by on its way to Khyntor, and to wave and shout, “Valentine Pontifex! Valentine Pontifex!”

A dismal journey that had been, too, for it was apparent even from the river that those towns, once so lively and prosperous, were mere ghosts of themselves, their dockside warehouses empty and windowless, their bazaars deserted, their waterfront promenades choked with weeds. And wherever he went ashore he saw that the people who remained in these places, for all their shouting and waving, were utterly without hope: their eyes dull and downcast, their shoulders slumped, their faces forlorn.

But when he had landed in that fantastic place of booming geysers and hissing, gurgling thermal lakes and boiling clouds of pale green gas that was Hot Khyntor, Valentine saw something else on the faces of the crowds that had gathered at the quay: an alert, curious, eager look, as though they were anticipating some sort of sporting event.

They were waiting, Valentine knew, to see what sort of reception he would receive at the hands of Lord Sempeturn.

“We’ll be ready to go in just a couple of minutes, your majesty,” Shanamir called. “The floaters are coming down the ramp right now.”

“No floaters,” said Valentine. “We’ll enter Khyntor on foot.”

He heard Sleet’s familiar gasp of horror, saw the familiar exasperated look on Sleet’s face. Lisamon Hultin was red-faced with annoyance; Zalzan Kavol wore a brooding scowl; Carabella too was showing alarm. But no one dared to remonstrate with him. No one had for some time now. It was not so much that he was Pontifex now, he thought: the exchange of one gaudy title for another was really a trivial matter. It was, rather, as though they regarded him as moving deeper and deeper each day into a realm they could not enter. He was becoming incomprehensible to them. As for himself, he felt beyond all trifling concern with security: invulnerable, invincible.

Deliamber said, “Which bridge shall we take, your majesty?”

There were four in view: one of brick, one of stone arches, one that was slender and gleaming and transparent, as though it had been made of glass, and one, the closest at hand, that was an airy thing of light swaying cables. Valentine looked from one to another, and at the distant square-topped towers of Khyntor far across the river. The bridge of stone arches, he observed, seemed to be shattered in midspan. One more task for the Pontifex, he thought, remembering that the title he bore had meant, in ancient times, “builder of bridges.”

He said, “I knew the names of these bridges once, good Deliamber, but I have forgotten them. Tell them to me again.”

“That is the Bridge of Dreams to our right, your majesty. Nearer to us is the Bridge of the Pontifex, and next to it is Khyntor Bridge, which appears to be damaged beyond use. The one upstream is the Bridge of the Coronal.”

“Why, then, let us take the Bridge of the Pontifex!” said Valentine.

Zalzan Kavol and several of his fellow Skandars led the way. Behind them marched Lisamon Hultin; then Valentine, at an unhurried pace, with Carabella by his side, Deliamber and Sleet and Tisana walked just behind them, with the rest of the small party bringing up the rear. The crowd, growing larger all the time, followed alongside, keeping back of its own accord.

As Valentine was nearing the threshold of the bridge, a thin, dark-haired woman in a faded orange gown detached herself from the onlookers and came rushing toward him, crying, “Majesty! Majesty!” She managed to get within a dozen feet of him before Lisamon Hultin stopped her, catching her by one arm and swinging her off her feet as though she were a child’s doll. “No—wait—” the woman murmured, as Lisamon seemed about to hurl her back into the throng. “I mean no harm—I have a gift for the Pontifex—”

“Put her down, Lisamon,” Valentine said calmly.

Frowning suspiciously, Lisamon released her, but remained close beside the Pontifex, poised at her readiest. The woman was trembling so that she could barely keep her footing. Her lips moved, but for a moment she did not speak. Then she said, “You are truly Lord Valentine?”

“I was Lord Valentine, yes. I am Valentine Pontifex now.”

“Of course. Of course. I knew that. They said you were dead, but I never believed that. Never!” She bowed. “Your majesty!” She was still trembling. She seemed fairly young, though it was hard to be certain, for hunger and hardship had etched deep lines in her face, and her skin was even paler than Sleet’s. She held forth her hand. “I am Millilain,” she said. “I wanted to give you this.”

What looked like a dagger of bone, long, slender, tapering to a sharp point, lay in her palm.

“An assassin, see!” Lisamon roared, and moved as if to pounce once again.

Valentine held up his hand. “Wait,” he said. “What do you have there, Millilain?”

“A tooth—a holy tooth—a tooth of the water-king Maazmoorn—”

“Ah.”

“To guard you. To guide you. He is the greatest of the water-kings. This tooth is precious, your majesty.” She was shaking now. “I thought at first it was wrong to worship them, that it was blasphemy, that it was criminal. But then I returned, I listened, I learned. They are not evil, the water-kings, your majesty! They are the true masters! We belong to them, we and all others who live on Majipoor. And I bring you the tooth of Maazmoorn, your majesty, the greatest of them, the high Power—”

Softly Carabella said, “We should be moving onward, Valentine.”

“Yes,” he said. He put forth his hand and gently took the tooth from the woman. It was perhaps ten inches long, strangely chilly to the touch, gleaming as though with an inner fire. As he wrapped his hand about it he thought, only for a moment, that he heard the sound of far-off bells, or what might have been bells, though their melody was like that of no bells he had ever heard. Gravely he said, “Thank you, Millilain. I will treasure this.”

“Your majesty,” she whispered, and went stumbling away, back into the crowd.

He continued on, slowly across the bridge into Khyntor.

The crossing took an hour or more. Long before he reached the far side Valentine could see that a crowd had gathered over there to await him: and it was no mere mob, he realized, for those who stood in the vanguard were dressed identically, in uniforms of green and gold, the colors of the Coronal. This was an army, then—the army of the Coronal Lord Sempeturn.

Zalzan Kavol looked back, frowning. “Your majesty?” he said.

“Keep going,” said Valentine. “When you reach the front row of them, step back and let me through, and remain at my side.”

He felt Carabella’s hand closing in fear on his wrist.

“Do you remember,” he said, “early in the war of restoration, when we were coming into Pendiwane, and found a militia of ten thousand waiting for us at the gate, and there were just a few dozen of us?”

“This is not Pendiwane. Pendiwane was not in rebellion against you. There was no false Coronal waiting at the gate for you, but only a fat terrified provincial mayor.”

“It is all the same,” Valentine said.

He came to the bridge’s end. The way was blocked there by the troops in green and gold. An officer in the front line whose eyes were glittering with fear called out hoarsely, “Who are you that would enter Khyntor without leave of Lord Sempeturn?”

“I am the Pontifex Valentine, and I need no one’s leave to enter a city of Majipoor.”

“The Coronal Lord Sempeturn will not have you come further on this bridge, stranger!”

Valentine smiled. “How can the Coronal, if Coronal he be, gainsay the word of the Pontifex? Come, fellow, stand aside!”

“That I will not do. For you are no more Pontifex than I.”

“Do you deny me? I think your Coronal must do that with his own voice,” said Valentine quietly.

He began to walk forward, flanked by Zalzan Kavol and Lisamon Hultin. The officer who had challenged him threw uncertain glances at the soldiers to his right and left in the front line; he drew himself up rigidly, and so did they; their hands went ostentatiously to the butts of the weapons they carried. Valentine continued to advance. They stepped back half a pace, and then half a pace more, while continuing to glare sternly at him. Valentine did not halt. The front line was melting away to this side and that, now, as he marched steadfastly into it.

Then the ranks opened and a short stocky man with rough reddish cheeks emerged to face Valentine. He was clad in a Coronal’s white robe over a green doublet, and he wore the starburst crown, or a reasonable likeness of it, in his great wild tuft of black hair.

He held up both hands with his palms outstretched and cried loudly, “Enough! No further, impostor!”

“And by whose authority do you issue such orders?” Valentine asked amiably.

“My own, for I am the Coronal Lord Sempeturn!”

“Ah, you are the Coronal, and I am an impostor? I had not understood that. And by whose will are you Coronal, then, Lord Sempeturn?”

“By the will of the Divine, who has appointed me to rule in this time of a vacancy on Castle Mount!”

“I see,” said Valentine. “But I know of no such vacancy. There is a Coronal, Lord Hissune by name, who holds office by legitimate appointment.”

“An impostor can make no legitimate appointments,” Sempeturn rejoined.

“But I am Valentine who was Coronal before him, and who now is Pontifex—by will of the Divine also, so it is generally believed.”

Sempeturn grinned darkly. “You were an impostor when you claimed to be Coronal, and you are an impostor now!”

“Can that be so? Was I acclaimed wrongly, then, by all the princes and lords of the Mount, and by the Pontifex Tyeveras, may he rest always at the Source, and by my own mother the Lady?”

“I say you deceived them all, and the curse that has descended on Majipoor is best proof of that. For the Valentine who was made Coronal was a dark-complected man, and look at you—your hair is bright as gold!”

Valentine laughed. “But that is an old story, friend! Surely you know of the witchery that deprived me of my body and put me into this one!”

“So you say.”

“And so the Powers of the realm agreed.”

“Then you are a master of deceit,” said Sempeturn. “But I will waste no more time with you, for I have urgent tasks. Go: get you back into Hot Khyntor, and board your ship and sail yourself off down the river. If you are found in this province by this hour tomorrow you will regret it most sorely.”

“I will leave soon enough, Lord Sempeturn. But first I must ask a service of you. These soldiers of yours—the Knights of Dekkeret, do you call them?—we have need of them to the east, on the borders of Piurifayne, where the Coronal Lord Hissune is assembling an army. Go to him, Lord Sempeturn. Place yourself under his command. Do what he asks of you. We are aware of what you have accomplished in gathering these troops, and we would not deprive you of leadership over them: but you must make yourself part of the greater effort.”

“You must be a madman,” Sempeturn said.

“I think otherwise.”

“Leave my city unguarded? March off thousands of miles to surrender my authority to some usurper?”

“It is necessary, Lord Sempeturn.”

“In Khyntor I alone decide what is necessary!”

“That must change,” said Valentine. He slipped easily into the waking trance, and sent forth the merest tendril of his mind toward Sempeturn, and played with him, and brought a frown of confusion from the red-faced man. He sent into Sempeturn’s mind the image of Dominin Barjazid, wearing the body that once had been his own, and said, “Do you recognize that man, Lord Sempeturn?”

“He—he—he is the former Lord Valentine!”

“No,” said Valentine, and hurled a full jolt of his mental force at the false Coronal of Khyntor.

Sempeturn lurched and nearly fell, and clutched at the men in green and gold about him, and the color of his cheeks deepened until it was the purple of overripe grapes.

“Who is that man?” Valentine asked.

“He is the brother of the King of Dreams,” whispered Sempeturn.

“And why does he wear the features of the former Lord Valentine?”

“Because—because—”

“Tell me.”

Sempeturn sagged until his knees were bent and his quivering hands hung almost to the ground.

“Because he stole the Coronal’s body during the time of the usurpation, and wears it yet—by the mercy and dispensation of the man he would have overthrown—”

“Ah. And who am I, then?”

“You are Lord Valentine,” Sempeturn said miserably.

“Wrong. Who am I, Sempeturn?”

“Valentine—Pontifex—Pontifex of Majipoor—”

“Indeed. At last. And if I am Pontifex, who is Coronal?”

“Whoever—you—say, your majesty.”

“I say he is Lord Hissune, who waits for you in Ni-moya, Sempeturn. Go: gather your knights, take your army east, serve your Coronal as he wishes. Go, Sempeturn! Go!”

He sent one last thrust of force toward Sempeturn, who reeled and swayed and shook, and at last fell to his knees. “Majesty—majesty—forgive me—”

“I will spend a night or two in Khyntor,” said Valentine, “and see to it that all is in order here. And then I think I must move on toward the west, where more work awaits me.” He turned and saw Carabella staring at him as though he had sprouted wings or horns. He smiled at her and lightly blew her a kiss. This is thirsty work, he thought. A good bowl or two of wine, now, if they have any in Khyntor, eh?

He glanced down at the dragon-tooth that he had held in his hands all this time and ran his fingers lightly over it, and heard once more the sound of bells, and thought that he felt the stirring of mighty wings within his soul. Carefully he wrapped the tooth in a piece of colored silk that he took from Carabella, and handed it to her, saying, “Guard this well, my lady, until I ask you for it again. I will have some great use for it, I think.” He looked into the crowd and caught sight of the woman Millilain who had given the tooth to him. Her eyes were fixed on his; and they blazed with a frightening intensity, as though she were staring with awe and rapture at some godlike being.

3

What sounded like a loud argument seemed to be going on just outside the door of his bedchamber, Hissune realized. He sat up, scowled, blinked groggily. Through the great window to his left he saw the red daybreak glow of the sun low on the eastern horizon. He had been awake far into the night preparing for the arrival this day of Divvis, and he was hardly pleased to be roused from sleep so soon after sunrise.

“Who’s out there?” he growled. “What in the name of the Divine is all that racket?”

“My lord, I have to see you at once!” Alsimir’s voice. “Your guards say you must not be awakened under any circumstances, but I absolutely must speak with you!”

Hissune sighed. “I seem to be awake,” he said. “You may as well come in.”

There was the sound of unbolting of the doors. After a moment Alsimir entered, looking greatly agitated.

“My lord—”

“What’s going on?”

“The city is under attack, my lord!”

Suddenly Hissune was fully awake. “Attack? By whom?”

“Strange monstrous birds,” Alsimir said. “With wings like those of sea dragons, and beaks like scythes, and claws that drip poison.”

“There are no birds of such a kind.”

“These must be some evil new creatures of the Shape-shifters that began entering Ni-moya shortly before dawn from the south, a great hideous flock, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. Already they have taken fifty lives or more, and it will get much worse as the day goes on.” Alsimir went to the window. “See, my lord, there are some of them now, circling above the old palace of the duke—”

Hissune stared. A swarm of ghastly shapes soared and hovered in the clear morning sky: huge birds, bigger than gihornas, bigger even than miluftas and far more ugly. Their wings were not bird-wings but rather the sort of black leathery things, supported on outstretched fingerlike bones, that sea dragons had. Their beaks, wickedly sharp and curved, were flaming red, and their long outstretched claws were bright green. Fiercely they dived in quest of prey, swooping and rising and swooping again, while in the streets below people ran desperately for cover. Hissune watched one unwary boy of ten or twelve years, with schoolbooks under his arm, emerge from a building directly into the path of one of the creatures: it swept downward until it was no more than nine or ten feet above the ground, and its claws flicked out in a quick powerful assault that slashed through his tunic and ripped a bloody track up his back. As the bird swung swiftly upward again the boy went sprawling, hands slapping the pavement in wild convulsions. Then, almost at once, he was still, and three or four of the birds plummeted like stones from the sky, falling upon him and at once beginning to devour him.

Hissune muttered a curse. “You did well to awaken me. Have any countermeasures been taken yet?”

“We have some five hundred archers heading for the rooftops already, my lord. And we’re mobilizing the long-range energy-throwers as fast as we can.”

“Not enough. Not nearly enough. What we have to avoid is a general panic in the city—twenty million frightened civilians running around trampling each other to death. It’s vital to show them that we’re bringing the situation under control right away. Put five thousand archers up on the roofs. Ten thousand, if we have them. I want everybody who knows how to draw a bow up there taking part in this—all over the city, highly visible, highly reassuring.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And issue a general command to the citizens to stay indoors until further orders. No one is to go outside: no one, regardless of how urgent he thinks his business is, while the birds are still a menace. Also: have Stimion send word downriver to Divvis that we’re having a little trouble here and he’d better be on guard if he’s still planning to enter Ni-moya this morning. And I want you to send for that old man who runs that rare-animal zoo in the hills, the one I spoke with last week—Ghitain, Khitain, something like that. Tell him what’s been going on this morning, if he doesn’t already know, and bring him here under careful guard, and have someone collect a few of the dead birds and bring them here too, for him to examine.” Hissune turned to the window again, glowering. The boy’s body was wholly hidden by the birds, nine or ten of them now, that fluttered greedily about it. His schoolbooks lay scattered in a pathetic sprawl nearby. “Shapeshifters!” he exclaimed bitterly. “Sending monsters to make war on children! Ah, but we’ll have them pay dearly for this, Alsimir! We’ll feed Faraataa to his own birds, eh? Go, now: there’s much that needs doing.”

More detailed reports arrived in a steady stream as Hissune had his hasty breakfast. More than a hundred deaths now were attributed to the aerial onslaught, and the number was mounting rapidly. And at least two more flocks of the birds had entered the city, making, so far as anyone had been able to reckon, at least fifteen hundred of the creatures so far.

But already the rooftop counterattack was producing results: the birds, on account of their great size, were slow and graceless fliers and made conspicuous targets for the archers—of whom they showed virtually no fear. So they were being picked off fairly easily, and eliminating them seemed mainly a matter of time, even if new hordes of them were still en route from Piurifayne. The streets of the city had largely been cleared of civilians, for word of the attack and of the Coronal’s orders to stay indoors had by now spread to the farthest suburbs. The birds circled morosely over a silent, deserted Ni-moya.

In midmorning word came that Yarmuz Khitain, the curator of the Park of Fabulous Beasts, had been brought to Nissmorn Prospect and was presently at work in the courtyard dissecting one of the dead birds. Hissune had met with him some days earlier, for Ni-moya was infested with all sorts of strange and lethal creatures spawned by the Metamorph rebels, and the zoologist had had valuable advice to offer on coping with them. Going downstairs now, Hissune found Khitain, a somber-eyed, hollow-chested man of late middle years, crouching over the remains of a bird so huge that at first Hissune thought there must be several of them outspread on the pavement.

“Have you ever seen such a thing as this?” Hissune asked.

Khitain looked up. He was pale, tense, trembling. “Never, my lord. It is a creature out of nightmares.”

“Metamorph nightmares, do you think?”

“Beyond doubt, my lord. Plainly it is no natural bird.”

“Some kind of synthetic creature, you mean?”

Khitain shook his head. “Not quite, my lord. I think these are produced by genetic manipulation from existing life-forms. The basic shape is that of a milufta, that much seems clear—do you know of it? The largest carrion-feeding bird of Zimroel. But they have made it even larger, and turned it into a raptorial bird, a predator, instead of a scavenger. These venom glands, at the base of the claws—no bird of Majipoor has those, but there is a reptile of Piurifayne known as the ammazoar that is armed in such a way, and they seem to have modeled them after those.”

“And the wings?” Hissune said. “Borrowed from sea dragons, are they?”

“Of similar design. That is, they are not typical bird-wings, but rather the kind of expanded fingerwebs that mammals sometimes evolve—dhiims, for instance, or bats, or sea-dragons. The sea dragons, my lord, are mammals, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Hissune drily. “But dragons don’t use their wings for flying. What purpose is served, would you say, by putting dragon wings on a bird?”

Khitain shrugged. “No aerodynamic purpose, so far as I can tell. It may have been done merely to make the birds seem more terrifying. When one is designing a life-form to use as an instrument of war—”

“Yes. Yes. So it is your opinion without any question that these birds are yet one more Metamorph weapon.”

“Without question, my lord. As I have said, this is no natural life-form of Majipoor, nothing that has ever existed in the wild. A creature this large and dangerous could certainly not have gone undiscovered for fourteen thousand years.”

“Then it is one more crime we must add to their score. Who could have supposed, Khitain, that the Shapeshifters were such ingenious scientists?”

“They are a very ancient race, my lord. They may have many secrets of this sort.”

“Let us hope,” Hissune said, shuddering, “that they have nothing nastier than this ready to launch at us.”

But by early afternoon the assault seemed all but over. Hundreds of the birds had been shot down—the bodies of all that could be recovered were dumped in the great plaza outside the main gate of the Grand Bazaar, where they made an enormous foul-smelling mound—and those that survived, at last comprehending that nothing better than arrows awaited them in Ni-moya, had mainly flown off into the hills to the north, leaving only a scattered few behind in the city. Five archers had perished in the defense of Ni-moya, Hissune was dismayed to learn—struck from behind as they searched the skies for the birds. A heavy price, he thought; but he knew it had been a necessary one. The greatest city of Majipoor could not be allowed to be held hostage by a flock of birds.

For an hour or more Hissune toured the city by floater to assure himself that it was safe to lift the restrictions on going out of doors. Then he returned to Nissimorn Prospect, just in time to learn from Stimion that the forces under the command of Divvis had begun to arrive at the docks of Strand Vista.

Through all the months since Valentine had given him the crown at Inner Temple, Hissune had looked forward apprehensively to his first encounter as Coronal with the man he had defeated for the office. Show any sign of weakness, he knew, and Divvis would see it as an invitation to shove him aside, once this war was won, and take from him the throne he coveted. Though he had never once heard an overt hint of such treason from Divvis, Hissune had no reason to place much faith in his good will.

Yet as he made ready to go down to Strand Vista to greet the older prince, Hissune felt a strange calmness settling over himself. He was, after all, Coronal by true succession, the free choice of the man who was now Pontifex: like it or not, Divvis must accept that, and Divvis would.

When he reached the riverfront at Strand Vista Hissune was astounded by the vastness of the armada that Divvis had gathered. He seemed to have commandeered every rivergoing vessel between Piliplok and Ni-moya, and the Zimr was choked with ships as far as Hissune could see, an enormous fleet stretching halfway out toward the distant confluence—a colossal freshwater sea—where the River Steich flowed south from the Zimr.

The only vessel that had tied up thus far at its pier, Stimion said, was Divvis’s flagship. And Divvis himself waited aboard it for Lord Hissune’s arrival.

“Shall I tell him to come ashore and greet you here, my lord?” Stimion asked.

Hissune smiled. “I will go to him,” he said.

Dismounting from his floater, he walked solemnly toward the arcade at the end of the passenger terminal, and out onto the pier itself. He was in his full regalia of office, and his counsellors also were bedecked at their most formal, as were the members of his guard; and a dozen archers flanked him on either side, in case the deadly birds should choose this moment to reappear. Though Hissune had elected to go to Divvis, which perhaps was in violation of protocol, he knew that the image he projected was a lordly one, that of a king deigning to confer an unusual honor upon a loyal subject.

Divvis stood at the head of his ship’s entranceway. He too had taken care to make himself look majestic, for he was clad—despite the heat of the day—in a great black robe of fine haigus hides and a splendid gleaming helmet that seemed almost to be a crown. As Hissune went upward onto the deck, Divvis loomed above him like a giant.

But then at last they were face to face, and though Divvis was by far the bigger man, Hissune regarded him with a steadiness and coolness that did much to minimize the difference in their size. For a long moment neither spoke.

Then Divvis—as Hissune knew he must do, or be in open defiance—made the starburst gesture and went down to one knee, and offered his first homage to the new Coronal:

“Hissune! Lord Hissune! Long life to Lord Hissune!”

“And long life to you, Divvis—for we will have need of your bravery in the struggle that lies before us. Get up, man. Get up!”

Divvis rose. His eyes unhesitatingly met Hissune’s; and across his features there played such a succession of emotions that Hissune could hardly interpret them all, though it seemed to him that he saw envy there, and anger, and bitterness—but also a certain degree of respect, and even a grudging admiration, and something like a tinge of amusement, as if Divvis could not resist smiling at the strange — permutations of fate that had brought them together in this place in these new roles.

Waving a hand behind him at the river, Divvis said, “Have I brought you sufficient troops, my lord?”

“An immense force, yes; a brilliant accomplishment, recruiting an army of such size. But who knows what will be sufficient, Divvis, in lighting an army of phantoms? The Shapeshifters will have many ugly surprises for us yet.”

With a light laugh Divvis said, “I heard, my lord, of the birds they sent you this morning.”

“No laughing matter, my lord Divvis. These were dread monsters of a most frightful sort that struck down people in the streets and fed upon their bodies before they were cold. I saw that done to a child, myself, from the window of my own bedroom. But I think we have slain them all, or nearly. And in due course we will slay their makers, too.”

“It surprises me to hear you so vengeful, my lord.”

“Am I vengeful?” Hissune said. “Why, then, if you say it, I suppose it must be so. Living here for weeks in this shattered city makes one vengeful, perhaps. Seeing monstrous vermin turned loose upon innocent citizens by our enemies makes one vengeful. Piurifayne is like some loathsome boil, from which all manner of putrescence comes spilling out into the civilized lands. I intend to lance that boil and cauterize it entirely. And I tell you this, Divvis: with your help I will impose a terrible vengeance upon those who have made this war on us.”

“You sound very little like Lord Valentine, my lord, when you speak of vengeance that way. I think I never knew him to use the word.”

“And is there any reason why I should sound like Lord Valentine, Divvis? I am Hissune.”

“You are his chosen successor.”

“Yes, and Valentine is no longer Coronal, by that very choice. It may be that my way of dealing with our enemies will not be much like Lord Valentine’s way.”

“Then you must tell me what your way is.”

“I think you already know it. I mean to march down into Piurifayne by way of the Steiche, while you go around from the western side, and we will squeeze the rebels between us, and take this Faraataa and bring a halt to his loosing of monsters and plagues against us. And afterward the Pontifex can summon the surviving rebels, and in his more loving way negotiate some resolution of the Shapeshifters’ valid grievances against us. But first we must show force, I think. And if we must shed the blood of those who would shed ours, why, then we must shed their blood. What do you say to that, Divvis?”

“I say that I have not heard greater sense from the lips of a Coronal since my father held the throne. But the Pontifex, I think, would answer otherwise, if he had heard you speaking so belligerently. Is he aware of your plans?”

“We have not yet discussed them in great detail.”

“And will you, then?”

“The Pontifex is currently in Khyntor, or west of there,” said Hissune. “His work will occupy him there some time; and then it will take him a very long while to come this far east again, and I will be deep into Piurifayne, I think, by that time, and we will have little opportunity for consultation.”

A certain slyness entered Divvis’s eyes. “Ah, I see how you deal with your problem, my lord.”

“And what problem is that?”

“Of being Coronal, while your Pontifex remains at large, marching about the countryside, instead of hiding himself decently out of sight in the Labyrinth. I think that could be a great embarrassment to a new young Coronal, and I would like it very little if I faced such a situation myself. But if you take care to keep a great distance between the Pontifex and yourself, and you credit any differences between your policies and his to that great distance, why, then, you could manage to function almost as though you had a completely free hand, eh, my lord?”

“I think we tread now on dangerous ground, Divvis.”

“Ah. Do we?”

“We do indeed. And you overestimate the differences between my outlook and Valentine’s. He is not himself a man of war, as we all well understand; but perhaps that is why he has removed himself from the Confalume Throne in my favor. I believe we understand each other, the Pontifex and I, and let us not carry this discussion any further in that direction. Come, now, Divvis: it would be proper, I think, to invite me to your cabin to share a bowl or two of wine, and then you must come with me to Nissimorn Prospect to share another. And then we should sit down to plan the conduct of our war. What do you say to that, my lord Divvis? What do you say to that?”

4

The rain was beginning again, washing away the outlines of the map Faraataa had drawn in the damp mud of the river-bank. But that made little difference to him. He had been drawing and redrawing the same map all day, and no need for doing any of that, for every detail of it was engraved in the recesses and contours of his brain. Ilirivoyne here, Avendroyne there, New Velalisier over here. The rivers, the mountains. The positions of the two invading armies—

The positions of the two invading armies—

Faraataa had not anticipated that. It was the one great flaw in his planning, that the Unchanging Ones should have invaded Piurifayne. The coward weakling Lord Valentine would never have done anything like that; no, Valentine would rather have come groveling with his nose in the mud to the Danipiur and begged humbly for a treaty of friendship. But Valentine was no longer the king—or, rather, he had become the other king, now, the one with the greater rank but the weaker powers—how could anyone understand the mad arrangements of the Unchanging Ones?—and there was a new king now, the young one, Lord Hissune, who appeared to be a very different sort of man. …

“Aarisiim!” Faraataa called. “What news is there?”

“Very little, O King That Is. We are awaiting reports from the western front, but it will be some while.”

“And from the Steiche battle?”

“I am told that the forest-brethren are still being uncooperative, but that we are at last succeeding in compelling their assistance in laying the birdnet vine.”

“Good. Good. But will it be laid in time to stop Lord Hissune’s advance?”

“That is most likely, O King That Is.”

“And do you say that,” Faraataa demanded, “because it is true, or because it is what you think I prefer to hear?”

Aarisiim stared, and gaped, and in his embarrassment his shape began to alter, so that for a moment he became a frail structure of wavy ropes that blew in the breeze, and then a tangle of elongated rigid rods swollen at both ends; and then he was Aarisiim once again. In a quiet voice he said, “You do me great injustice, O Faraataa!”

“Perhaps I do.”

“I tell you no untruths.”

“If that is true, then all else is, and I will accept it that that is true,” said Faraataa bleakly. Overhead the rain grew more clamorous, battering against the jungle canopy. “Go, and come back when you have the news from the west.”

Aarisiim vanished amidst the darkness of the trees. Faraataa, scowling, restless, began drawing his map once again.

There was an army in the west, uncountable millions of the Unchanging Ones, led by the hairy-faced lord whose name was Divvis, that was a son of the former Coronal Lord Voriax. We slew your father while he hunted in the forest, did you know that, Divvis? The huntsman who fired the fatal bolt was a Piurivar, though he wore the face of a Castle lord. See, the pitiful Shapeshifters can kill a Coronal! We can kill you also, Divvis. We will kill you also, if you are careless, as your father was.

But Divvis—who surely had no knowledge of how his father had died; there was no secret more closely guarded than that among the Piurivar folk—was not being at all careless, Faraataa thought gloomily. His headquarters was tightly protected by devoted knights, and there was no possibility of slipping an assassin through that line, no matter how shrewdly disguised. With angry stabbing gestures of his keenly honed wooden dirk Faraataa dug the lines of Divvis’s march deeper and deeper into the riverbank. Down from Khyntor, and along the inside wall of the great western mountains, making roads through wild country that had been roadless since the beginning of time—sweeping everything before him, filling Piurifayne with his innumerable troops, closing off the countryside, polluting the sacred streams, trampling the sacred groves.…

Against that horde of troops Faraataa had been compelled to unleash his army of pilligrigorms. He regretted that, for they were very nearly the nastiest of his biological weapons, and he had been hoarding them to dump into Ni-moya or Khyntor at some later phase of the war: land-dwelling crustaceans the size of a fingertip, they were, with armored shells that could not be crushed with a hammer, and a myriad busy fast-moving legs that Faraataa’s genetic artists had altered so that they were as sharp as saws. The appetite of a pilligrigorm was insatiable—it demanded fifty times its own weight in meat each day—and its method of satisfying that appetite was to carve openings in any sort of warmblooded animal life that lay in its path, and devour its flesh from the inside out.

Fifty thousand of them, Faraataa had thought, could bring a city the size of Khyntor into total turmoil in five days. But now, because the Unchanging Ones had chosen to invade Piurifayne, he had had to release the pilligrigorms not within a city, but on Piurifayne’s own soil, in the hope that they would drive Divvis’s immense army into confusion and retreat. No reports had come in yet, though, on the success of that tactic.

On the other side of the jungle, where the Coronal Lord Hissune was leading a second army southward on another impossible route along the west bank of the Steiche, it was Faraataa’s plan to string a net of the infinitely sticky and impenetrable birdnet vine for hundreds of miles in their path, so that they were forced to take wider and ever wider detours until they were hopelessly lost. The difficulty with that stratagem was only that no one could handle birdnet vine effectively except the forest-brethren, those maddening little apes who secreted in their perspiration an enzyme that rendered them immune to the vine’s stickiness. But the forest-brethren had little reason to love the Piurivars, who had hunted them for centuries for the rich flavor of their flesh, and gaining their assistance in this maneuver was apparently not proving easy.

Faraataa felt the rage rising and boiling over within him.

It had all gone so well, at first. Releasing the blights and plagues into the farming districts—bringing agriculture into collapse over such a wide region—the famine, the panic, the mass migrations—yes, all according to plan. And setting loose the specially bred animals had worked nicely too, on a smaller scale: that had intensified the fears of the populace, and made life more complicated for the city-dwellers…

But the impact had not been as strong as Faraataa had hoped. He had imagined that the blood-hungry giant miluftas would terrorize Ni-moya, which had already been in a state of chaos—but he had not expected that Lord Hissune’s army would be in Ni-moya when the miluftas reached the city, or that his archers could dispose of the deadly birds so easily.

And now Faraataa had no more miluftas, and it would take five years to breed enough to make any impact…

But there were pilligrigorms. There were gannigogs by the millions in the holding tanks, ready to be set loose. There were quexes; there were vriigs; there were zambinaxes; there were malamolas. There were new plagues: a cloud of red dust that would sweep over a city in the night and leave its water supply poisonous for weeks, and a purple spore from which came a maggot that attacked all grazing animals, and even worse. Faraataa hesitated to let some of these loose, for his scientists had told him it might not be so simple to bring them under control after the defeat of the Unchanging Ones. But if it seemed that the war would go against his people, if there appeared to be no hope—why, then, Faraataa would not hesitate to release whatever could do harm to the enemy, regardless of the consequences.

Aarisiim returned, approaching timidly.

“There is news, O King That Is.”

“From which front?”

“Both, O King.”

Faraataa stared. “Well, how bad is it?”

Aarisiim hesitated. “In the west they are destroying the pilligrigorms. They have a kind of fire that they throw from metal tubes, which melts their shells. And the enemy is advancing rapidly through the zone where we have let the pilligrigorms loose.”

“And in the east?” said Faraataa stonily.

“They have broken through the forest, and we were not able to erect the birdnet vines in time. They are searching for Ilirivoyne, so the scouts report.”

“To find the Danipiur. To make an alliance with her against us.” Faraataa’s eyes blazed. “It is bad, Aarisiim, but we are far from finished! Call Benuuiab here, and Siimii, and some of the others. We will go to Ilirivoyne ourselves, and seize the Danipiur before they can reach her. And we will put her to death, if need be, and then who will they make their alliance with? If they seek a Piurivar with the authority to govern, there will be only Faraataa, and Faraataa will not sign treaties with Unchanging Ones.”

“Seize the Danipiur?” said Aarisiim doubtfully. “Put the Danipiur to death?”

“If I must,” Faraataa said, “I will put all this world to death, before I give it back to them!”

5

In early afternoon they halted at a place in the eastern Rift called Prestimion Vale, which Valentine understood had once been an important farming center. His journey across tormented Zimroel had taken him through scenes of almost unrelieved grimness—abandoned farms, depopulated cities, signs of the most terrifying struggles for survival—but this Prestimion Vale was surely one of the most disheartening places of all.

Its fields were charred and blackened, its people silent, stoic, stunned. “We were growers of lusavender and rice,” said Valentine’s host, a planter named Nitikkimal, who seemed to be the district mayor. “Then came the lusavender smut, and everything died, and we had to burn the fields. And it will be two years more, at least, before it is safe to plant again. But we have remained. Not one of us from Prestimion Vale has fled, your majesty. We have little to eat—and we Ghayrogs need very little, you understand, but even we do not have enough—and there is no work for us to do, which makes us restless, and it is sad to look at the land with these ashes upon it. But it is our land, and so we stay. Will we ever plant here again, your majesty?”

“I know that you will,” said Valentine. And wondered if he were giving these people false comfort.

Nitikkimal’s house was a great manor at the head of the valley, with lofty beams of black ghannimor wood, and a roof of green slate. But it was damp and drafty within, as though the planter no longer had the heart to make repairs as they became necessary in Prestimion Vale’s rainy and humid climate.

That afternoon Valentine rested alone for a while in the huge master suite that Nitikkimal had turned over to him, before going to the municipal meeting-hall to speak with the citizens of the district. A thick packet of dispatches from the east had caught up with him here. Hissune, he learned, was deep within Metamorph country, somewhere in the vicinity of the Steiche, searching for New Velalisier, as the rebel capital was known. Valentine wondered if Hissune would have better luck than he himself had had in his quest for the wandering city of Ilirivoyne. And Divvis had assembled a second and even greater army to raid the Piurivar lands from the other side. The thought of a warlike man like Divvis in those jungles troubled Valentine. This is not what I had intended, he thought—sending armies marching into Piurifayne. This was what I had hoped to avoid. But of course it had become unavoidable, he knew. And the times called for Divvises and Hissunes, not for Valentines: he would play his proper role, and they would play theirs, and—the Divine willing—the wounds of the world would someday begin to heal.

He looked through the other dispatches. News from Castle Mount: Stasilaine was Regent now, toiling over the routine tasks of government. Valentine pitied him. Stasilaine the splendid, Stasilaine the agile, sitting now at that desk scribbling his name on pieces of paper—how time undoes us all! Valentine thought. We who thought life on Castle Mount was all hunting and frolic, bowed now under responsibilities, holding up the poor tottering world with our backs. How far away the Castle seemed, how far away all the joys of that time when the world apparently governed itself, and it was springtime all the year round!

Dispatches from Tunigorn, too—moving through Zimroel not far behind Valentine, handling the day-by-day chores of relief activities: the distribution of food, the conservation of remaining resources, the burial of the dead, and all the other various anti-famine and anti-plague measures. Tunigorn the archer, Tunigorn the famous slayer of game—now did he justify, now do we all justify, Valentine thought, the ease and comfort of our playful boyhoods on the Mount!

He shoved the dispatches away. From the case in which he kept it, now, he drew forth the dragon’s tooth that the woman Millilain had so strangely put into his hand as he entered Khyntor. From his first moment of contact with it he had known that it was something more than a mere bizarre trinket, an amulet for the blindly superstitious. But it was only as the days unfolded, as he devoted time to comprehending its meaning and uses—secretly, always secretly, not letting even Carabella see what he was doing—that Valentine had come to realize what kind of thing it was that Millilain had given him.

Lightly he touched its shining surface. It was a delicate-looking thing, so thin as to be nearly translucent. But it was as hard as the hardest stone, and its tapered edges were sharp as fine-honed steel. It was cool in his hand, but yet it seemed to him there was a core of fire within it.

The music of the bells began to resound in his mind.

A solemn tolling, slow, almost funereal, and then a more rapid cascade of sound, a quickening of rhythm that swiftly became a breathless mixing of melodies, one rushing forth so hastily that it covered the last notes of the one that preceded it, and then all the melodies at once, a complex mind-baffling symphony of changes: yes, he knew that music now, understood it for what it was, the music of the water-king Maazmoorn, the creature that land dwellers knew as Lord Kinniken’s dragon, that was the mightiest of all this huge planet’s inhabitants.

It had taken Valentine a great while to realize that he had heard the music of Maazmoorn long before this talisman had come into his possession. Lying asleep aboard the Lady Thinn, so many voyages ago, as he was first crossing from Alhanroel to the Isle of Sleep, he had dreamed a dream of a pilgrimage, white-robed worshipers rushing toward the sea, and he had been among them, and in the sea had loomed the great dragon known as Lord Kinniken’s, with its mouth yawning open so that it might engulf the pilgrims as they were drawn toward him. And from that dragon as it came near the land and clambered even onto the shore had emanated the pealing of terrible bells, a sound so heavy it crushed the air itself.

From this tooth came the same sound of bells. And with this tooth as his guide, he could, if he drew himself to the center of his soul and sent himself forth across the world, bring himself into contact with the awesome mind of the great water-king Maazmoorn, that the ignorant had called Lord Kinniken’s dragon. That was Millilain’s gift to him. How had she known what use he and he alone could make of it? Or had she known at all? Perhaps she had given it to him only because it was holy to her—perhaps she had no idea he could use it in this special way, as a focus of concentration.…

—Maazmoorn. Maazmoorn.

He probed. He sought. He called, Day after day he had come closer and closer to actual communication with the water-king, to a true conversation, a meeting of individual identities. He was almost there now. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow or the day after that…

—Answer me, Maazmoorn. It is Valentine Pontifex who calls you now.

He no longer feared that vast terrifying mind. He was beginning to learn, in these secret voyages of the soul, how greatly the land-dwellers of Majipoor had misunderstood these huge creatures of the sea. The water-kings were fearsome, yes; but they were not to be feared.

—Maazmoorn. Maazmoorn.

Almost there, he thought.

“Valentine?”

Carabella’s voice, outside the door. Startled, he broke from his trance with a jump that nearly threw him from his seat. Then, regaining control, he slipped the tooth into its case, calmed himself, went to her.

“We should be at the town hall now,” she said.

“Yes. Of course. Of course.”

The sound of those mysterious bells still tolled in his spirit.

But he had other responsibilities now. The tooth of Maazmoorn must wait a little while longer.

At the municipal meeting-hall an hour later Valentine sat upon a high platform and the farmers filed slowly before him, making their obeisance and bringing him their tools to be blessed—scythes, hoes, humble things like that—as though the Pontifex could by the mere laying on of hands restore the prosperity that this blight-stricken valley formerly had known. He wondered if that were some ancient belief of these rural folk, nearly all of them Ghayrogs. Probably not, he decided: no reigning Pontifex had ever visited Prestimion Vale or any other part of Zimroel before, and there was no reason why any would have been expected to. Most likely this was a tradition that these people had invented on the spur of the moment, when they had learned that he would pass their way.

But that did not trouble him. They brought him their tools, and he touched the handle of this one and the blade of that one and the shaft of another, and smiled his warmest smile, and offered them words of heartfelt hope that sent them away glowing.

Toward the end of the evening there was a stirring in the hall and Valentine, glancing up, saw a strange procession coming toward him. A Ghayrog woman who, judging by her almost colorless scales and the drooping serpents of her hair, must have been of the most extreme old age, was walking up the aisle slowly between two younger women of her race. She appeared to be blind and quite feeble, but yet she stood fiercely erect, and advanced step by step as though cutting her way through walls of stone.

“It is Aximaan Threysz!” whispered the planter Nitikkimal. “You know of her, your majesty?”

“Alas, no.”

“She is the most famous lusavender planter of them all—a fount of knowledge, a woman of the highest wisdom. Near to death, so they say, but she insisted on seeing you tonight.”

“Lord Valentine!” she called out in a clear ringing tone.

“Lord Valentine no longer,” he replied, “but Valentine Pontifex now. And you do me great honor by this visit, Aximaan Threysz. Your fame precedes you.”

“Valentine—Pontifex—”

“Come, give me your hand,” said Valentine.

He took her withered, ancient claws in his, and held them tightly. Her eyes met his, staring straight into them, although he could tell from the clearness of her pupils that she saw nothing.

“They said you were a usurper,” she declared. “A little red-faced man came here, and told us you were not the true Coronal. But I would not listen to him, and went away from this place. I did not know if you were true or false, but I thought he was not the one to speak of such things, that red-faced man.”

“Sempeturn, yes. I have met him,” Valentine said. “He believes now that I was the true Coronal, and am the true Pontifex these days.”

“And will you make the world whole again, true Pontifex?” said Aximaan Threysz in a voice of amazing vigor and clarity.

“We will all of us make it whole together, Aximaan Threysz.”

“No. Not I, Pontifex Valentine. I will die, next week, the week after, and none too soon, either. But I want a promise from you that the world will be what it formerly was: for my children, for my children’s children. And if you will promise me that I will go on my knees to you, and if you promise it falsely may the Divine scourge you as we have been scourged, Pontifex Valentine!”

“I promise you, Aximaan Threysz, that the world will be entirely restored, and finer than it was, and I tell you that this is no false promise. But I will not have you go on your knees to me.”

“I have said I would, and I will do it!” And, amazingly, brushing aside the two younger women as if they were gnats, she dropped herself down in deep homage, although her body seemed as rigid as a slab of leather that has been left in the sun a hundred years. Valentine reached down to lift her, but one of the women—her daughter, certainly her daughter—caught his hand and pulled it back, and then stared at her own hand in horror, for having dared to touch a Pontifex. Slowly but unaided she stood again, and said, “Do you know how old I am? I was born when Ossier was Pontifex. I think I am the oldest person in the world. And I will die when Valentine is Pontifex: and you will restore the world.”

It was probably meant as a prophecy, Valentine thought. But it sounded more like a command.

He said, “It will be done, Aximaan Threysz, and you will live to see it done.”

“No. No. Second sight comes upon us when first sight goes. My life is almost over. But the course of yours unfolds clearly before me. You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. And then you will seal your deed by doing that which you desire least to do. And though you do the impossible and then you do the undesirable, you will know that what you have done is right, and you will rejoice in it, Pontifex Valentine. Now go, Pontifex, and heal us.” Her forked tongue flickered with tremendous force and energy. “Heal us, Pontifex Valentine! Heal us!”

She turned and proceeded slowly back the way she had come, disdaining the help of the two women beside her.

It was an hour more before Valentine was able to disengage himself from the last of the Prestimion Vale folk—they crowded round him in a pathetically hopeful way, as though some Pontifical emanation alone would transform their lives, and magically return them to the condition of the years prior to the coming of the lusavender blight—but at last Carabella, pleading fatigue on his behalf, got them out of there. The image of Aximaan Threysz continued to glow in his mind on the journey back to Nitikkimal’s manor. The dry hissing of her voice still resonated in his mind. You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. And then you will seal your deed by doing that which you desire least to do. Go, Pontifex, and heal us. Yes. Yes. Heal us, Pontifex Valentine! Heal us!

But also within him there resounded the music of the water-king Maazmoorn. He had been so close, this time, to the ultimate breakthrough, to the true contact with that inconceivably gigantic creature of the sea. Now—tonight—

Carabella remained awake for a while to talk. That ancient Ghayrog woman haunted her, too, and she dwelled almost obsessively on the power of Aximaan Threysz’s words, the eerie compelling force of her sightless eyes, the mysteries of her prophecy. Then finally she kissed Valentine lightly on the lips and burrowed down into the darkness of the enormous bed they shared.

He waited a few endless minutes. Then he took forth the tooth of the sea dragon.

—Maazmoorn?

He held the tooth so tightly its edges dug deep into the flesh of his hand. Urgently he centered all the power of his mind on the bridging of the gulf of thousands of miles between Prestimion Vale and the waters—where? At the Pole?—where the sea-king lay hidden.

—Maazmoorn?

—I hear you, land brother, Valentine-brother, king-brother.

At last!

—You know who I am?

—I know you. I knew your father. I knew many before you.

—You spoke with them?

—No. You are the first for that. But I knew them. They did not know me, but I knew them. I have lived many circlings of the ocean, Valentine-brother. And I have watched all that has occurred upon the land.

—You know what is occurring now?

—I know.

—We are being destroyed. And you are a party to our destruction.

—No.

—You guide the Piurivar rebels in their war against us. We know that. They worship you as gods, and you teach them how to ruin us.

—No, Valentine-brother.

—I know they worship you.

—Yes, that they do, for we are gods. But we do not support them in their rebellion. We give them only what we would give anyone who comes to us for nourishment, but it is not our purpose to see you driven from the world.

—Surely you must hate us!

—No, Valentine-brother.

—We hunt you. We kill you. We eat your flesh and drink your blood and use your bones for trinkets.

—Yes, that is true. But why should we hate you, Valentine-brother? Why?

Valentine did not for the moment reply. He lay cold and trembling with awe beside the sleeping Carabella, pondering all that he had heard, the calm admission by the water-king that the dragons were gods—what could that mean?—and the denial of complicity in the rebellion, and now this astounding insistence that the dragons bore the Majipoori folk no anger for all that had been committed against them. It was too much all at once, a turbulent inrush of knowledge where before there had been only the sound of bells and a sense of a distant looming presence.

—Are you incapable of anger, then, Maazmoorn?

—We understand anger.

—But do not feel it?

—Anger is beside the point, Valentine-brother. What your hunters do to us is a natural thing. It is a part of life; it is an aspect of That Which Is. As am I, as are you. We give praise to That Which Is in all its manifestations. You slay us as we pass the coast of what you call Zimroel, and you make your uses of us; sometimes we slay you in your ships, if it seems to be what must be done at that moment, and so we make our uses of you; and all that is That Which Is. Once the Piurivar folk slew some of us, in their stone city that is now dead, and they thought they were committing a monstrous crime, and to atone for that crime they destroyed their own city. But they did not understand. None of you land-children understand. All is merely That Which Is.

—And if we resist now, when the Piurivar folk hurl chaos at us? Are we wrong to resist? Must we calmly accept our doom, because that too is That Which Is?

—Your resistance is also That Which Is, Valentine-brother.

—Then your philosophy makes no sense to me, Maazmoorn.

—It does not have to, Valentine-brother. But that too is That Which Is.

Valentine was silent once again, for an even longer time than before, but he took care to maintain the contact.

Then he said:

—I want this time of destruction to end. I mean to preserve the thing that we of Majipoor have understood as That Which Is.

—Of course you do.

—I want you to help me.

6

“We have captured a Shapeshifter, my lord,” Alsimir said, “who claims he bears an urgent message for you, and you alone.”

Hissune frowned. “A spy, do you think?”

“Very likely, my lord.”

“Or even an assassin.”

“That possibility must never be overlooked, of course. But I think that is not why he is here. I know that he is a Shapeshifter, my lord, and our judgments are all risky ones, but nevertheless: I was among those who interrogated him. He seems sincere. Seems.”

“Shapeshifter sincerity!” said Hissune, laughing. “They sent a spy to travel in Lord Valentine’s entourage, did they not?”

“So have I been told. What shall I do with him, then?”

“Bring him to me, I suppose.”

“And if he plans some Shapeshifter trick?”

“Then we will have to move faster than he does, Alsimir. But bring him here.”

There were risks, Hissune knew. But one could not simply turn away someone who maintains he is a messenger from the enemy, or put him to death out of hand on mere suspicion of treachery. And to himself he confessed it would be an interesting diversion to lay eyes on a Metamorph at last, after so many weeks of tramping through this sodden jungle. In all this time they had not encountered one: not one.

His camp lay just at the edge, of a grove of giant dwikka-trees, somewhere along Piurifayne’s eastern border not far from the banks of the River Steiche. The dwikkas were impressive indeed—great astounding things with trunks as wide as a large house, and bark of a blazing bright red hue riven by immense deep cracks, and leaves so broad that one of them could keep twenty men dry in a soaking downpour, and colossal rough-skinned fruits as big around as a floater, with an intoxicating pulp within. But botanical wonders alone were small recompense for the dreariness of this interminable forced march in the Metamorph rain-forest. The rain was constant; mildew and rot afflicted everything, including, Hissune sometimes thought, one’s brain; and although the army now was deployed along a line more than a hundred miles in length, and the secondary Metamorph city of Avendroyne was supposedly close by the midpoint of that line, they had seen no cities, no signs of former cities, no traces of evacuation routes, and no Metamorphs at all. It was as if they were mythological beings, and this jungle were uninhabited.

Divvis, Hissune knew, was having the same difficulty over on the far side of Piurifayne. The Metamorphs were not numerous and their cities appeared to be portable. They must flit from place to place like the filmy-winged insects of the night. Or else they disguised themselves as trees and bushes and stood silently by, choking down their laughter, as the armies of the Coronal marched past them. These great dwikkas, for all I know, might be Metamorph scouts, thought Hissune. Let us speak with the spy, or messenger, or assassin, or whatever he may be: we may learn something from him, or at the very least we may be entertained by him.

Alsimir returned in moments with the prisoner, who was under heavy guard.

He was, like those few Piurivars whom Hissune had seen before, a strangely disturbing-looking figure, extremely tall, slender to the point of frailness, naked but for a strip of leather about his loins. His skin and the thin rubbery strands of his hair were an odd pale greenish color, and his face was almost devoid of features, the lips mere slits, the nose only a bump, the eyes slanted sharply and barely visible beneath the lids. He seemed uneasy, and not particularly dangerous. All the same, Hissune wished he had someone with the gift of seeing into minds about him now, a Deliamber or a Tisana or Valentine himself, to whom the secrets of others seemed often to be no secrets at all. This Metamorph might yet have some disagreeable surprise in mind.

“Who are you?” Hissune asked.

“My name is Aarisiim. I serve the King That Is, whom you know as Faraataa.”

“Did he send you to me?”

“No, Lord Hissune. He does not know I am here.” The Metamorph trembled suddenly, quivering in an odd convulsive way, and for an instant the shape of his body seemed to change and flow. The Coronal’s guards at once moved forward, interposing themselves between the Metamorph and Hissune in case these movements were the prelude to an attack; but in a moment Aarisiim was under control and restored to his form. In a low voice he said, “I have come here to betray Faraataa.”

In astonishment Hissune said, “Do you mean to lead us to his hiding place?”

“I will, yes.”

This is much too good to be true, Hissune thought, and stared about the circle, at Alsimir, at Stimion, at his other close advisers. Obviously they felt the same way: they looked skeptical, guarded, hostile, wary.

He said, “Why are you willing to do this?”

“He has done something unlawful.”

“Only now does that occur to you, when this rebellion has been going on since—”

“I mean, my lord, unlawful by our beliefs, not by yours.”

“Ah. And what is that, then?”

Aarisiim said, “He has gone to Ilirivoyne and taken the Danipiur captive, and he means to have her slain. It is not lawful to seize the person of the Danipiur. It is not lawful to deprive her of her life. He would listen to no advice. He has seized her. To my shame, I was among those who was with him. I thought he only wanted her a prisoner, so that she could not strike up an alliance against us with you Unchanging Ones. That was what he said, that he would not kill her unless he thought the war was entirely lost.”

“And does he think that now?” Hissune asked.

“No, Lord Hissune. He thinks the war is far from lost: he is about to release new creatures against you, and new diseases, and he feels he is on the threshold of victory.”

“Then why kill the Danipiur?”

“To ensure his victory.”

“Madness!”

“I think so too, my lord.” Aarisiim’s eyes were open wide, now, and burned with a strange harsh gleam. “He sees her, of course, as a dangerous rival, one whose inclinations are more toward peace than war. If she is removed, that risk to his power is gone. But there is more than that. He means to sacrifice her on the altar—to offer her blood to the water-kings, for their continued support. He has built a temple after the design of the one that was at Old Velalisier; and he will put her upon the stone himself, and take her life with his own hands.”

“And when is this supposed to happen?”

“Tonight, my lord. At the Hour of the Haigus.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, my lord. I came as quickly as I could, but your army was so large, and I feared I would be slain if I did not find your own guards before your soldiers found me—I would have come to you yesterday, or the day before, but it was not possible, I could not do it—”

“And how many days’ journey from here is New Velalisier?”

“Four, perhaps. Perhaps three, if we do it very swiftly.”

“Then the Danipiur is lost!” Hissune cried angrily.

“If he does not sacrifice her tonight—”

“You said tonight was the night.”

“Yes, the moons are right tonight, the stars are right tonight—but if he loses his resolve, if at the last moment he changes his mind—”

“And does Faraataa lose his resolve often?” Hissune asked.

“Never, my lord.”

“Then there is no way we can get there in time.”

“No, my lord,” said Aarisiim darkly.

Hissune stared off toward the dwikka grove, scowling. The Danipiur dead? That left no hope of coming to any accommodation with the Shapeshifters: she alone, so he understood it, might soften the fury of the rebels and allow some sort of compromise to be negotiated. Without her it must be a battle to the end.

To Alsimir he said, “Where is the Pontifex today?”

“He is west of Khyntor, perhaps as far west as Dulorn, certainly somewhere in the Rift.”

“And can we send word to him there?”

“The communications channels linking us to that region are very uncertain, my lord.”

“I know that. I want you to get this news through to him somehow, and within the next two hours. Try anything that might work. Use wizards. Use prayers. Send word to the Lady, and let her try dreams. Every imaginable channel, Alsimir, do you understand that? He must know that Faraataa means to slay the Danipiur tonight. Get that information to him. Somehow. Somehow. And tell him that he alone can save her. Somehow.”

7

For this, Valentine thought, he would need the circlet of the Lady as well as the tooth of Maazmoorn. There must be no failures of transmission, no distortions of the message: he would make use of every capacity at his command.

“Stand close beside me,” he said to Carabella. And to Deliamber, to Tisana, to Sleet, he said the same thing. “Surround me. When I reach toward you, take hold of my hand. Say nothing: only take hold.”

The day was bright and clear. The morning air was crisp, fresh, sweet as alabandina nectar. But in Piurifayne, far to the east, night was already descending.

He donned the circlet. He grasped the tooth of the water-king. He drew the fresh sweet air deep into his lungs, until he was all but dizzied with it.

—Maazmoorn?

The summons leaped from Valentine with such power that those about him must have felt a backlash from it: Sleet flinched, Carabella put her hands to her ears, Deliamber’s tentacles writhed in a sudden flurry.

—Maazmoorn? Maazmoorn?

The sound of bells. The slow heavy turnings of a giant body lying at rest in cold northern waters. The faint rustlings of great black wings.

—I hear, Valentine-brother.

—Help me, Maazmoorn.

—Help? How shall I help?

—Let me ride on your spirit across the world.

—Then come upon me, king-brother, Valentine-brother.

It was wondrously easy. He felt himself grow light, and glided up, and floated, and soared, and flew. Below him lay the great curving arc of the planet, sweeping off eastward into night. The water-king carried him effortlessly, serenely, as a giant might carry a kitten in the palm of his hand. Onward, onward over the world, which was altogether open to him as he coursed above it. He felt that he and the planet were one, that he embodied in himself the twenty billion people of Majipoor, humans and Skandars and Hjorts and Metamorphs and all the rest, moving within him like the corpuscles of his blood. He was everywhere at once; he was all the sorrow in the world, and all the joy, and all the yearning, and all the need. He was everything. He was a boiling universe of contradictions and conflicts. He felt the heat of the desert and the warm rain of the tropics and the chill of the high peaks. He laughed and wept and died and made love and ate and drank and danced and fought and rode wildly through unknown hills and toiled in the fields and cut a path through thick vine-webbed jungles. In the oceans of his soul vast sea dragons breached the surface and let forth monstrous bleating roars and dived again, to the uttermost depths. He looked down and saw the broken places of the world, the wounded and shattered places where the land had risen and crashed against itself, and he saw how it all could be healed, how it could be made whole and serene again. For everything tended to return to serenity. Everything enfolded itself into That Which Is. Everything was part of a vast seamless harmony.

But in that great harmony he felt a single dissonance.

It screeched and yawped and shrieked and screamed. It slashed across the fabric of the world like a knife, leaving behind a track of blood. It ripped apart the wholeness.

Even that dissonance, Valentine knew, was an aspect of That Which Is. Yet it was—far across the world, roiling and churning and roaring in its madness—the one aspect of That Which Is that would not itself accept That Which Is. It was a force that cried a mighty no! to all else. It rose up against those who would restore the harmony, who would repair the fabric, who would make whole the wholeness.

—Faraataa?

—Who are you?

—I am Valentine the Pontifex.

—Valentine the fool. Valentine the child.

—No, Faraataa. Valentine the Pontifex.

—That means nothing to me. I am the King That Is!

Valentine laughed, and his laughter showered across the world like a rainfall of drops of golden honey. Soaring on the wings of the great dragon-king, he rose almost to the edge of the sky, where he could look across the darkness and see the tip of Castle Mount piercing the heavens on the far side of the world, and the Great Sea beyond it. And he looked down into the jungle of Piurifayne, and laughed again, and watched the furious Faraataa writhing and struggling beneath the torrent of that laughter.

—Faraataa?

—What do you want?

—You may not kill her, Faraataa.

—Who are you to tell me what I may not do?

—I am Majipoor.

—You are the fool Valentine. And I am the King That Is!

—No, Faraataa.

—No?

—I see the old tale glistening in your mind. The Prince To Come, the King That Is: how can you lay such a claim for yourself? You are not that Prince. You can never be that King.

—You clutter my mind with your nonsense. Leave me or I will drive you out.

Valentine felt the thrust, the push. He warded it off.

—The Prince To Come is a being absolutely without hatred. Can you deny that, Faraataa? It is part of your own people’s legend. He is without the hunger for vengeance. He is without the lust for destruction. You are nothing except hatred and vengeance and destruction, Faraataa. If those things were emptied from you, you would be a shell, a husk.

—Fool.

—Your claim is a false one.

—Fool.

—Let me take the anger and the hatred from you, Faraataa, if you would be the king you claim you are.

—You talk a fool’s foolishness.

—Come, Faraataa. Release the Danipiur. Give your soul over to me for healing.

—The Danipiur will die within the hour.

—No, Faraataa.

—Look!

The interwoven crowns of the jungle trees parted, and Valentine beheld New Velalisier by the gleam of torchlight. The temples of interwoven logs, the banners, the altar, the pyre already blazing. The Metamorph woman, silent, dignified, chained to the block of stone. The faces surrounding her, blank, alien. The night, the trees, the sounds, the smells. The music. The chanting.

—Release her, Faraataa. And then come to me, you and she together, and let us establish what must be established.

—Never. I will give her to the god with my own hands. And with her sacrifice atone for the crime of the Defilement, when we slew our gods and were laden with you as our penance.

—You are wrong even about that, Faraataa.

—What?

—The gods gave themselves willingly, that day in Velalisier. It was their sacrifice, which you misunderstand. You have invented a myth of a Defilement, but it is the wrong myth. Faraataa, it is a mistake, it is a total error. The water-king Niznorn and the water-king Domsitor gave themselves as sacrifices that day long ago, just as the water-kings give themselves yet to our hunters as they round the curve of Zimroel. And you do not understand. You understand nothing at all.

—Foolishness. Madness.

—Set her free, Faraataa. Sacrifice your hatred as the water-kings sacrificed themselves.

—I will slay her now with my own hands.

—You may not do it, Faraataa. Release her.

—NO.

The terrible force of that no was unexpected: it rose like the ocean in its greatest wrath and swept upward toward Valentine and struck him with stunning impact, buffeting him, swaying him, sweeping him for a moment into chaos. As he struggled to right himself Faraataa hurled a second such bolt, and a third, and a fourth, and they hit him with the same hammerblow power. But then Valentine felt the power of the water-king underlying his own, and he caught his breath, he regained his balance, he found his strength once more.

He reached out toward the rebel chieftain.

He remembered how it had been that other time years ago, in the final hour of the war of restoration, when he had gone alone into the judgment hall of the Castle and found the usurper Dominin Barjazid there, seething with fury. And Valentine had sent love to him, friendship, sadness for all that had come between them. He had sent the hope of an amicable settlement of differences, of pardon for sins committed, of safe conduct out of the Castle. To which the Barjazid had replied with defiance, hatred, anger, contempt, belligerence, a declaration of perpetual war. Valentine had not forgotten any of that. And it was the same all over again now, the desperate hatred-filled enemy, the fiery resistance, the bitter refusal to swerve from the path of death and destruction, loathing and abomination, scorn and contempt.

He expected no more of Faraataa than he had of Dominin Barjazid. But he was Valentine still, and still he believed in the possibility of the triumph of love.

—Faraataa?

—You are a child, Valentine.

—Give yourself over to me in peace. Put aside your hatred, if you would be who you claim to be.

—Leave me, Valentine.

—I reach to you.

—No. No. No. No.

This time Valentine was prepared for the blasts of negation that came rolling like boulders toward him. He took the full force of Faraataa’s hatred and turned it aside, and offered in its place love, trust, faith, and had more hatred in return, implacable, unchanging, immovable.

—You give me no choice, Faraataa.

With a shrug Faraataa moved toward the altar on which the Metamorph queen lay bound. He raised high his dirk of polished wood.

“Deliamber?” Valentine said. “Carabella? Tisana? Sleet?”

They took hold of him, grasping his hands, his arms, his shoulders. He felt their strength pouring into him. But even that was not enough. He called out across the world and found the Lady on her Isle, the new Lady, the mother of Hissune, and drew strength from her, and from his own mother the former Lady. And even that was not enough. But in that instant he went elsewhere. “Tunigorn! Stasilaine! Help me!” They joined him. He found Zalzan Kavol. He found Asenhart. He found Ermanar. He found Lisamon. Not enough. Not enough. One more: “Hissune? Come, you also, Hissune. Give me your strength. Give me your boldness.”

—I am here, your majesty.

Yes. Yes. It would be possible now. He heard once more the words of old Aximaan Threysz:You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. Yes. It would be possible now.

Faraataa!

A single blast like the sound of a great trumpet traveled out from Valentine across the world to Piurifayne. It made the journey in the smallest part of a moment and found its target, which was not Faraataa but rather the hatred within Faraataa, the blind, wrathful, unyielding passion to avenge, destroy, obliterate, expunge. It found it and expunged it, draining it from Faraataa in one irresistible draught. Valentine drank all that blazing rage into himself, and absorbed it, and took from it its power, and discarded it. And Faraataa was left empty.

For a moment his arm still rose high above his head, the muscles still tense and poised, the weapon still aimed at the Danipiur’s heart. Then from Faraataa came the sound of a silent scream, a sound without substance, an emptiness, a void. Still he stood upright, motionless, frozen. But he was empty: a shell, a husk. The dirk dropped from his lifeless fingers.

—Go, said Valentine. In the name of the Divine, go. Go! And Faraataa fell forward and did not move again.

All was silent. The world was terribly still. You will save us, said Aximaan Threysz, by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. And he had not hesitated.

The voice of the water-king Maazmoorn came to him from far away:

—Have you made your journey, Valentine-brother?

—Yes. I have made my journey now.

Valentine opened his eyes. He put down the tooth, he took the circlet from his brow. He looked about him and saw the strange pale faces, the frightened eyes: Sleet, Carabella, Deliamber, Tisana.

“It is done now,” he said quietly. “The Danipiur will not be slain. No more monsters will be loosed upon us.”

“Valentine—”

He looked toward Carabella. “What is it, love?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m all right.” He felt very tired, he felt very strange. But—yes, he was all right. He had done what had to be done. There had been no choice. And it was done now.

To Sleet he said, “We are finished here. Make my farewells to Nitikkimal for me, and to the others of this place, and tell them that all will be well, that I promise it most solemnly. And then let us be on our way.”

“Onward to Dulorn?” Sleet asked.

The Pontifex smiled and shook his head. “No. Eastward. To Piurifayne, first, to meet with the Danipiur and Lord Hissune, and bring into being the new order of the world, now that this hatred has been thrust from it. And then it will be time to go home, Sleet. It will be time to go home!”

8

They held the coronation ceremony outdoors, in the great grassy courtyard by Vildivar Close, where there was a fine view of the Ninety-Nine Steps and the uppermost reaches of the Castle. It was not usual to hold the ceremony anywhere but in the Confalume throne-room, but it was a long while since anyone had given much heed to what was usual; and the Pontifex Valentine had insisted that the ceremony take place outdoors. Who could gainsay the express wish of a Pontifex?

So they all had gathered, by the express wish of the Pontifex, under the sweet springtime sky of Castle Mount. The courtyard was lavishly decorated with flowering plants—the gardeners had brought in halatinga trees in bloom, miraculously potting them into huge tubs without disturbing their buds, and down both sides of the courtyard their crimson-and-gold flowers cast an almost luminescent glow. There were tanigales and alabandinas, caramangs and sefitongals, eldirons, pinninas, and dozens more, everything in full bloom. Valentine had given orders that there be flowers on all sides; and so there were flowers on all sides.

It was the custom, at a coronation ceremony, to arrange the Powers of the realm in a diamond-shaped pattern, if all four of them had been able to attend: the new Coronal at the head of the diamond, and the Pontifex facing him, and the Lady of the Isle to one side, and the King of Dreams to the other. But this coronation was different from all other coronation ceremonies that Majipoor had ever known, for this time there were five Powers, and a new configuration had had to be devised.

And so it was. Pontifex and Coronal stood side by side. To the right of the Coronal Lord Hissune there stood, some distance away, his mother Elsinome the Lady of the Isle. To the left of the Pontifex Valentine, at an equal distance, stood Minax Barjazid, the King of Dreams. And at the farthest end of the group, facing the other four, stood the Danipiur of Piurifayne, fifth and newest of the Powers of Majipoor.

All about them were their closest aides and counsellors, the high spokesman Sleet on one side of the Pontifex and the lady Carabella on the other, and Alsimir and Stimion flanking the Coronal, and a little cluster of hierarchs, Lorivade and Talinot Esulde and some others, about the Lady. The King of Dreams had brought his brothers Cristoph and Dominin, and the Danipiur was surrounded by a dozen Piurivars in shining silken robes, who clung close together as though they could not quite believe they were honored guests at a ceremony atop Castle Mount.

Farther out in the group were the princes and dukes, Tunigorn and Stasilaine and Divvis, Mirigant and Elzandir and all the rest, and delegates from the far lands, from Alaisor and Stoien and Pililplok and Ni-moya and Pidruid. And certain special guests, Nitikkimal of Prestimion Vale and Millilain of Khyntor and others like them whose lives had intersected that of the Pontifex in his journey across the world; and even that little red-faced man Sempeturn, pardoned now for his treason by his valor in the campaign in Piurifayne, who stared about in awe and wonder and again and again made the sign of the starburst toward Lord Hissune and the sign of the Pontifex toward Valentine, acts of homage that appeared to be uncontrollable in their frequency. And also there were certain people of the Labyrinth, childhood friends of the new Coronal, Vanimoon who had been almost a brother to the Coronal when they were boys, and Vanimoon’s slender almond-eyed sister Shulaire, and Heulan, and Heulan’s three brothers, and some more, and they too stood stiffly, eyes wide, mouths agape.

There was the usual abundance of wine. There were the usual prayers. There were the usual hymns. There were the traditional speeches. But the ceremony was by no means even at its halfway point when the Pontifex Valentine held up his hand to indicate that he meant to speak.

“Friends—” he began.

At once there were whispers of astonishment. A Pontifex addressing others—even Powers, even princes—as “friends”? How strange—how Valentine-like…

“Friends,” he said again, “Let me have just a few words now, and then I think you will very rarely hear from me thereafter, for this is Lord Hissune’s time, and this is Lord Hissune’s Castle, and I am not to be conspicuous here after today. I want only to give you my thanks for attending us here this day”—whispers again: did a Pontifex give thanks?—“and to bid you be joyful, not only today, but in all the time of reconciliation that now we enter. For on this day we confirm in office a Coronal who will govern you with wisdom and mercy for many years to come as our time of rebuilding this world goes forth; and we hail also as a new Power of the realm another monarch who was of late our enemy, and who will be our enemy no longer, the Divine willing, for now she and her people are welcomed into the mainstream of Majipoori life as equal partners. With good will on all sides, perhaps ancient wrongs can be redeemed and atonement can begin.”

He paused and took from a bearer a bowl brimming with glistening wine, and held it high.

“I am almost done. All that remains now is to ask the blessing of the Divine upon this festivity—and to ask, also, the blessing of our great brothers of the sea, with whom we share this world—at whose sufferance, perhaps, we inhabit a small part of this huge world—and with whom, at long last, we have entered into communion. They have been our salvation, in this time of making of peace and binding of wounds; they will be our guides, let us hope, in the time to come.

“And now—friends—we approach the moment in the coronation ceremony when the newly anointed Coronal dons the starburst crown and ascends the Confalume Throne. But of course we are not in the throne-room now. By my request: by my command. For I wished one last time this afternoon to breathe the good air of Castle Mount, and to feel the warm sun upon my skin. I leave this place tonight—my lady Carabella and I, and all these my good companions who have stayed by my side through so many years and so many strange adventures—we leave for the Labyrinth, where I mean to make my home. A wise old woman who is now dead said to me, when I was in a place far away called Prestimion Vale, that I must do that which I think is impossible for me to do, if we are to be saved—and so I did, because it was necessary for me to do it—and then I would have to do that which I least desired to do. And what is it I least desire to do? Why, I suppose it is to leave this place, and go down into the Labyrinth where a Pontifex must dwell. But I will do it.

And not bitterly, not angrily. I do it and I rejoice in it: for I am Pontifex, and this Castle is mine no longer, and I will move onward, as was the intent of the Divine.”

The Pontifex smiled, and gestured with the wine-bowl toward the Coronal, and toward the Lady, and toward the King of Dreams, and toward the Danipiur. And sipped the wine, and gave it to the lady Carabella to sip.

And said, “There are the Ninety-Nine Steps. Beyond them lies the innermost sanctuary of the Castle, where we must complete today’s rite; and then we will have our feast, and then my people and I will take our leave, for the journey to the Labyrinth is a lengthy one and I am eager to reach my home at last. Lord Hissune, will you lead us within? Will you lead us, Lord Hissune?”