The Seventh Shrine m-4 Read online

  The Seventh Shrine

  ( Majipoor - 4 )

  Robert Silverberg

  After the War of the Rebellion Coronal Valentine visits archaeological digs of Velalisier—long-lost sacred city of Piurivars—when there occurs a murder that may cause great political upheaval.

  The Seventh Shrine

  by Robert Silverberg

  One last steep ridge of the rough, boulder-strewn road lay between the royal party and the descent into Velalisier Plain. Valentine, who was leading the way, rode up over it and came to a halt, looking down with amazement into the valley. The land that lay before him seemed to have undergone a bewildering transformation since his last visit. “Look there,” the Pontifex said, bemused. “This place is always full of surprises, and here is ours.”

  The broad shallow bowl of the arid plain spread out below them. From this vantage point, a little way east of the entrance to the archaeological site, they should easily have been able to see a huge field of sand-swept ruins. There had been a mighty city here once, that notorious Shapeshifter city where, in ancient times, so much dark history had been enacted, such monstrous sacrilege and blasphemy. But—surely it was just an illusion?—the sprawling zone of fallen buildings at the centre of the plain was almost completely hidden now by a wondrous rippling body of water, pale pink along its rim and pearly grey at its middle: a great lake where no lake ever had been.

  Evidently the other members of the royal party saw it too. But did they understand that it was simply a trick? Some fleeting combination of sunlight and dusty haze and the stifling midday heat must have created a momentary mirage above dead Velalisier, so that it seemed as if a sizable lagoon, of all improbable things, had sprung up in the midst of this harsh desert to engulf the dead city.

  It began just a short distance beyond their vantage point and extended as far as the distant grey-blue wall of great stone monoliths that marked the city’s western boundary. Nothing of Velalisier could be seen. None of the shattered and time-worn temples and palaces and basilicas, nor the red basalt blocks of the arena, the great expanses of blue stone that had been the sacrificial platforms, the tents of the archaeologists who had been at work here at Valentine’s behest since late last year. Only the six steep and narrow pyramids that were the tallest surviving structures of the prehistoric Metamorph capital were visible—their tips, at least, jutting out of the grey heart of the ostensible lake like a line of daggers fixed point-upward in its depths.

  “Magic,” murmured Tunigorn, the oldest of Valentine’s boyhood friends, who held the post now of Minister of External Affairs at the Pontifical court. He drew a holy symbol in the air. Tunigorn had grown very superstitious, here in his later years.

  “I think not,” said Valentine, smiling. “Just an oddity of the light, I’d say,”

  And, just as though the Pontifex had conjured it up with some counter-magic of his own, a lusty gust of wind came up from the north and swiftly peeled the haze away. The lake went with it vanishing like the phantom it had been. Valentine and his companions found themselves now beneath a bare and merciless iron-blue sky, gazing down at the true Velalisier—that immense dreary field of stony rubble, that barren and incoherent tumble of dun-coloured fragments and drab threadbare shards lying in gritty beds of wind-strewn sand, which was all that remained of the abandoned Metamorph metropolis of long ago.

  “Well, now,” said Tunigorn, “perhaps you were right, majesty. Magic or no, though, I liked it better the other way. It was a pretty lake, and these are ugly stones.”

  “There’s nothing here to like at all, one way or another,” said Duke Nascimonte of Ebersinul. He had come all the way from his great estate on the far side of the Labyrinth to take part in this expedition. This is a sorry place and always has been. If I were Pontifex in your stead, your majesty, I’d throw a dam across the River Glayge and send a raging torrent this way, that would bury this accursed city and its whole history of abominations under two miles of water for all time to come.”

  Some part of Valentine could almost see the merit of that. It was easy enough to believe that the sombre spells of antiquity still hovered here, that this was a territory where ominous enchantments held sway.

  But of course Valentine could hardly take Nascimonte’s suggestion seriously. “Drown the Metamorphs’ sacred city, yes! By all means, let’s do that,” he said lightly. “Very fine diplomacy, Nascimonte. What a splendid way of furthering harmony between the races that would be!”

  Nascimonte, a lean and hard-bitten man of eighty years, with keen sapphire eyes that blazed like fiery gems in his broad furrowed forehead, said pleasantly, “Your words tell us what we already know, majesty: that it’s just as well for the world that you are Pontifex, not I. I lack your benign and merciful nature—especially, I must say, when it comes to the filthy Shapeshifters. I know you love them and would bring them up out of their degradation. But to me, Valentine, they are vermin and nothing but vermin. Dangerous vermin at that.”

  “Hush,” said Valentine. He was still smiling, but he let a little annoyance show as well, “The Rebellion’s long over. It’s high time we put these old hatreds to rest for ever.”

  Nascimonte’s only response was a shrug.

  Valentine turned away, looking again towards the ruins. Greater mysteries than that mirage awaited them down there. An event as grim and terrible as anything out of Velalisier’s doleful past had lately occurred in this city of long-dead stones: a murder, no less.

  Violent death at another’s hands was no common thing on Majipoor. It was to investigate that murder that Valentine and his friends had journeyed to ancient Valalisier this day.

  “Come,” he said. “Let’s be on our way.”

  He spurred his mount forward, and the others followed him down the stony road into the haunted city.

  * * *

  The ruins appeared much less dismal at close range than they had on either of Valentine’s previous two visits. This winter’s rains must have been heavier than usual, for wildflowers were blooming everywhere amidst the dark, dingy waste of ashen dunes and overturned building-blocks. They dappled the grey gloominess with startling little bursts of yellow and red and blue and white that were almost musical in their emphatic effect. A host of fragile bright-winged kelebekkos flitted about amongst the blossoms, sipping at their nectar, and multitudes of tiny gnat-like ferushas moved about in thick swarms, forming broad misty patches in the air that glistened like silvery dust.

  But more was happening here than the unfolding of flowers and the dancing of insects. As he made his descent into Velalisier, Valentine’s imagination began to teem suddenly with strangenesses, fantasies, marvels. It seemed to him that inexplicable flickers of sorcery and wonder were arising just beyond the periphery of his vision. Sprites and visitations, singing wordlessly to him of Majipoor’s infinite past, drifted upward from the broken edge-tilted slabs and capered temptingly about him, leaping to and fro over the porous, limy soil of the site’s surface with frantic energy. A subtle shimmer of delicate jade-green iridescence that had not been apparent at a distance rose above everything, tinting the air: some effect of the hot noontime light striking a luminescent mineral in the rocks, he supposed. It was a wondrous sight all the same, whatever its cause.

  These unexpected touches of beauty lifted the Pontifex’s mood. Which, ever since the news had reached him the week before of the savage and perplexing death of the distinguished Metamorph archaeologist Huukaminaan amidst these very ruins, had been uncharacteristically bleak. Valentine had had such high hopes for the work that was being done here to uncover and restore the old Shapeshifter capital; and this murder had stained everything.

  The tents of his archaeologists came into view now, lofty ones gaily woven from broad strips of green, maroon, and scarlet cloth, billowing atop a low sandy plateau in the distance. Some of the excavators themselves, he saw, were riding towards him down the long rock-ribbed avenues on fat plodding mounts: about half a dozen of them, with chief archaeologist Magadone Sambisa at the head of the group.

  “Majesty,” she said, dismounting, making the elaborate sign of respect that one would make before a Pontifex. “Welcome to Velalisier.”

  Valentine hardly recognized her. It was only about a year since Magadone Sambisa had come before him in his chambers at the Labyrinth. He remembered a dynamic, confident, bright-eyed woman, sturdy and strapping, with rounded cheeks florid with life and vigour and glossy cascades of curling red hair tumbling down her back. She seemed oddly diminished now, haggard with fatigue, her shoulders slumped, her eyes dull and sunken, her face sallow and newly-lined and no longer full. That great mass of hair had lost its sheen and bounce. He let his amazement show, only for an instant, but long enough for her to see it. She pulled herself upright immediately, trying, it seemed, to project some of her former vigour.

  Valentine had intended to introduce her to Duke Nascimonte and Prince Mirigant and the rest of the visiting group. But before he could do it, Tunigorn came officially forward to handle the task.

  There had been a time when citizens of Majipoor could not have any sort of direct conversation with the Pontifex. They were required then to channel all intercourse through the court official known as the High Spokesman. Valentine had quickly abolished that custom, and many another stifling bit of imperial etiquette. But Tunigorn, by nature conservative, had never been comfortable with those changes. He did whatever he could to preserve the traditional aura of sanctity in which Pontifexes once had been swathe
d. Valentine found that amusing and charming and only occasionally irritating.

  The welcoming party included none of the Metamorph archaeologists connected with the expedition. Magadone Sambisa had brought just five human archaeologists and a Ghayrog with her. That seemed odd, to have left the Metamorphs elsewhere. Tunigorn formally repeated the archaeologists’ names to Valentine, getting nearly every one garbled in the process. Then, and only then, did he step back and allow the Pontifex to have a word with her.

  “The excavations,” he said. “Tell me, have they been going well?”

  “Quite well, majesty. Splendidly, in fact, until—until—” She made a despairing gesture: grief, shock, incomprehension, helplessness, all in a single poignant movement of her head and hands.

  The murder must have been like a death in the family for her, for all of them here. A sudden and horrifying loss. “Until, yes. I understand.”

  Valentine questioned her gently but firmly. Had there, he asked, been any important new developments in the investigation? Any clues discovered? Claims of responsibility for the killing? Were there any suspects at all? Had the archaeological party received any threats of further attacks? But there was nothing new at all. Huukaminaan’s murder had been an isolated event, a sudden, jarring, and unfathomable intrusion into the serene progress of work at the site. The slain Metamorph’s body had been turned over to his own people for interment, she told him, and a shudder that she made an ineffectual effort to hide ran through the entire upper : half of her body as she said it. The excavators were attempting now to put aside their distress over the killing and get on with their tasks.

  The whole subject was plainly an uncomfortable one for her. She escaped from it as quickly as she could. “You must be tired from your journey, your majesty. Shall I show you to your quarters?”

  Three new tents had been erected to house the Pontifex and his entourage. They had to pass through the excavation zone itself to reach them. Valentine was pleased to see how much progress had been made in clearing away the clusters of pernicious little ropy-stemmed weeds and tangles of woody vines that for so many centuries had been patiently at work pulling the blocks of stone one from another.

  Along the way Magadone Sambisa poured forth voluminous streams of information about the city’s most conspicuous features as though Valentine were a tourist and she his guide. Over here, the broken but still awesome aqueduct. There, the substantial jagged-sided oval bowl of the arena. And there, the grand ceremonial boulevard, paved with sleek greenish flagstones.

  Shapeshifter glyphs were visible on those flagstones even after the lapse of twenty thousand years, mysterious swirling symbols, carved deep into the stone. Not even the Shapeshifters themselves were able to decipher them now.

  The rush of archaeological and mythological minutiae came gushing from her with scarcely a pause for breath. There was a certain frantic, even desperate, quality about it all, a sign of the uneasiness she must feel in the presence of the Pontifex of Majipoor. Valentine was accustomed enough to that sort of thing. But this was not his first visit to Velalisier and he was already familiar with much of what she was telling him. And she looked so weary, so depleted, that it troubled him to see her expending her energy in such needless outpourings.

  But she would not stop. They were passing, now, a huge and very dilapidated edifice of grey stone that appeared ready to fall down if anyone should sneeze in its vicinity. This is called the Palace of the Final King,” she said. “Probably an erroneous name, but that’s what the Piurivars call it, and for lack of a better one we do too.”

  Valentine noted her careful use of the Metamorphs’ own name for themselves. Piurivars, yes. University people tended to be very formal about that, always referring to the aboriginal folk of Majipoor that way, never speaking of them as Metamorphs or Shapeshifters, as ordinary people tended to do. He would try to remember that.

  As they came to the ruins of the royal palace she offered a disquisition on the legend of the mythical Final King of Piurivar antiquity, he who had presided over the atrocious act of defilement that had brought about the Metamorphs’ ancient abandonment of their city. It was a story with which all of them were familiar. Who did not know that dreadful tale?

  But they listened politely as she told of how, those many thousands of years ago, long before the first human settlers had come to live on Majipoor, the Metamorphs of Velalisier had in some fit of blind madness hauled two living sea-dragons from the ocean: intelligent beings of mighty size and extraordinary mental powers, whom the Metamorphs themselves had thought of as gods. Had dumped them down on these platforms, had cut them to pieces with long knives, had burned their flesh on a pyre before the Seventh Pyramid as a crazed offering to some even greater gods in whom the King and his subjects had come to believe.

  When the simple folk of the outlying provinces heard of that orgy of horrendous massacre, so the legend ran, they rushed upon Velalisier and demolished the temple at which the sacrificial offering had been made. They put to death the Final King and wrecked his palace, and drove the wicked citizens of the city forth into the wilderness, and smashed its aqueduct and put dams across the rivers that had supplied it with water, so that Velalisier would be thenceforth a deserted and accursed place, abandoned through all eternity to the lizards and spiders and jakkaboles of the fields.

  Valentine and his companions moved on in silence when Magadone Sambisa was done with her narrative. The six sharply tapering pyramids that were Velalisier’s best-known monuments came now into view, the nearest rising just beyond the courtyard of the Final King’s palace, the other five set close together in a straight line stretching to the east. “There was a seventh, once,” Magadone Sambisa said. “But the Piurivars themselves destroyed it just before they left here for the last time. Nothing was left but scattered rubble. We were about to start work there early last week, but that was when—when—” She faltered and looked away.

  “Yes,” said Valentine softly. “Of course.”

  The road now took them between the two colossal platforms fashioned from gigantic slabs of blue stone that were known to the modern-day Metamorphs as the Tables of the Gods. Even though they were abutted by the accumulated debris of two hundred centuries, they still rose nearly ten feet above the surrounding plain, and the area of their flat-topped surfaces would have been great enough to hold hundreds of people at a time.

  * * *

  In a low sepulchral tone Magadone Sambisa said, “Do you know what these are, your majesty?”

  Valentine nodded. “The sacrificial altars, yes. Where the Defilement was carried out.”

  Magadone Sambisa said, “Indeed. It was also at this site that the murder of Huukaminaan happened. I could show you the place. It would take only a moment.”

  She indicated a staircase a little way down the road, made of big square blocks of the same blue stone as the platforms themselves. It gave access to the top of the western platform. Magadone Sambisa dismounted and scrambled swiftly up. She paused on the highest step to extend a hand to Valentine as though the Pontifex might be having difficulty in making the ascent, which was not the case. He was still almost as agile as he had been in his younger days. But he reached for her hand for courtesy’s sake, just as she—deciding, maybe, that it would be impermissible for a commoner to make contact with the flesh of a Pontifex—began to pull it anxiously back. Valentine, grinning, leaned forward and took the hand anyway, and levered himself upwards.

  Old Nascimonte came bounding swiftly up just behind him, followed by Valentine’s cousin and close counsellor, Prince Mirigant, who had the little Vroonish wizard Autifon Deliamber riding on his shoulder. Tunigorn remained below. Evidently this place of ancient sacrilege and infamous slaughter was not for him.

  The surface of the altar, roughened by time and pockmarked everywhere by clumps of scruffy weeds and incrustations of red and green lichen, stretched on and on before them, a stupendous expanse. It was hard to imagine how even a great multitude of Shapeshifters, those slender and seemingly boneless people, could ever have hauled so many tremendous blocks of stone into place.