Valentine Pontifex m-3 Read online

  “No,” Carabella said. “And we talk as though the present Pontifex is already dead, or at death’s door. But Tyeveras still lives.”

  “He does, yes,” said Valentine. “At least in certain senses of the word. Let him continue to live some while longer, I pray.”

  “And when Hissune is ready—?”

  “Then I’ll let Tyeveras rest at last.”

  “I find it hard to imagine you as Pontifex, Valentine.”

  “I find it even harder, love. But I will do it, because I must. Only not soon: not soon, is what I ask!”

  After a pause Carabella said, “You will unsettle Castle Mount for certain, if you do this thing. Isn’t Elidath supposed to be the next Coronal!”

  “He is very dear to me.”

  “You’ve called him the heir presumptive yourself, many times.”

  “So I have,” Valentine said. “But Elidath has changed, since we first had our training together. You know, love, anyone who desperately wants to be Coronal is plainly unfit for the throne. But one must at least be willing. One must have a sense of calling, an inner fire of a sort. I think that fire has gone out, in Elidath.”

  “You thought it had gone out in yourself, when you were juggling and first were told you had a higher destiny.”

  “But it returned, Carabella, as my old self reentered my mind! And it remains. I often weary of my crown—but I think I’ve never regretted having it.”

  “And Elidath would?”

  “So I suspect. He’s playing at being Coronal now, while I’m away. My guess is that he doesn’t like it much. Besides, he’s past forty. The Coronal should be a young man.”

  “Forty is still young, Valentine,” said Carabella with a grin.

  He shrugged. “I hope it is, love. But I remind you that if I have my way, there’ll be no cause to name a new Coronal for a long time. And by then, I think, Hissune will be prepared and Elidath will step gracefully aside.”

  “Will the other lords of the Mount be as graceful, though?”

  “They will have to be,” said Valentine. He offered her his arm. “Come: Nascimonte is waiting for us.”

  13

  Because it was the fifth day of the fifth week of the fifth month, which was the holy day that commemorated the exodus from the ancient capital beyond the sea, there was an important obeisance to perform before Faraataa could begin the task of making contact with his agents in the outlying provinces.

  It was the time of the year in Piurifayne when the rains came twice daily, once at the hour before dawn, once at twilight. It was necessary to make the Velalisier ritual in darkness but also in dryness, and so Faraataa had instructed himself to awaken at the hour of the night that is known as the Hour of the Jackal, when the sun still rests upon Alhanroel in the east.

  Without disturbing those who slept near him, he made his way out of the flimsy wicker cottage that they had constructed the day before—Faraataa and his followers kept constantly on the move; it was safest that way—and slipped into the forest. The air was moist and thick, as always, but there was no scent yet of the morning rains.

  He saw, by the glitter of starlight coming through rifts in the clouds, other figures moving also toward the jungle depths. But he did not acknowledge them, nor they him. The Velalisier obeisance was performed alone: a private ritual for a public grief. One never spoke of it; one simply did it, on the fifth day of the fifth week of the fifth month, and when one’s children were of age one instructed them in the manner of doing it, but always with shame, always with sorrow. That was the Way.

  He walked into the forest for the prescribed three hundred strides. That brought him to a grove of slender towering gibaroons; but he could not pray properly here, because aerial clumps of gleam-bells dangled from every crotch and pucker of their trunks, casting a sharp orange glow. Not far away he spied a majestic old dwikka tree, standing by itself, that had been gouged by lightning some ages ago: a great cavernous charred scar, covered along its edges by regrown red bark, offered itself to him as a temple. The light of the gleam-bells would not penetrate there.

  Standing naked in the shelter of the dwikka’s huge scar, he performed first the Five Changes.

  His bones and muscles flowed, his skin cells modified themselves, and he became the Red Woman; and after her, the Blind Giant; and then the Flayed Man; and in the fourth of the Changes he took on the form of the Final King; and then, drawing breath deeply and calling upon all his power, he became the Prince To Come. For Faraataa, the Fifth Change was the deepest struggle: it required him to alter not only the outer lineaments of his body but the contours of the soul itself, from which he had to purge all hatred, all hunger for vengeance, all lust for destruction. The Prince To Come had transcended those things. Faraataa had no hope of achieving that. He knew that in his soul there dwelled nothing but hatred, hunger for vengeance, lust for destruction; to become the Prince To Come, he must empty himself to a husk, and that he could not do. But there were ways of approaching the desired state. He dreamed of a time when all that he had been working for was accomplished: the enemy destroyed, the forsaken lands reclaimed, the rites reestablished, the world born anew. He journeyed forth into that era and let its joy possess him. He forced from his soul all recollection of defeat, exile, loss. He saw the tabernacles of the dead city come alive. In the grip of such a vision, what need for vengeance? What enemy was there to hate and destroy? A strange and wondrous peace spread through his spirit. The day of rebirth had arrived; all was well in the world; his pain was gone forever, and he was at rest.

  In that moment he took on the form of the Prince To Come.

  Maintaining that form with a discipline that grew less effortful by the moment, he knelt and arranged the stones and feathers to make the altar. He captured two lizards and a night-crawling bruul and used them for the offering. He passed the Three Waters, spittle, urine, and tears. He gathered pebbles and laid them out in the shape of the Velalisier rampart. He uttered the Four Sorrows and the Five Griefs. He knelt and ate earth. A vision of the lost city entered his mind: the blue stone rampart, the dwelling of the king, the Place of Unchangingness, the Tables of the Gods, the six high temples, the seventh that was defiled, the Shrine of the Downfall, the Road of the Departure. Still maintaining, with an effort, the form of the Prince To Come, he told himself the tale of the downfall of Velalisier, experiencing that dark tragedy while feeling the grace and aura of the Prince upon him, so that he could comprehend the loss of the great capital not with pain but with actual love, seeing it as a necessary stage in the journey of his people, unavoidable, inevitable. When he knew he had come to accept the truth of that he allowed himself to shift form, reverting to the shapes of the Final King, the Flayed Man, the Blind Giant, the Red Woman, and then at last to that of Faraataa of Avendroyne.

  It was done.

  He lay sprawled face down on the soft mossy soil as the first rains of morning began to fall.

  After a time he rose, gathered the stones and feathers of the little altar, and walked back toward the cottage. The peace of the Prince To Come still lay upon his soul, but he strived now to put that benign aura from him: the time had come to commence the work of the day. Such things as hatred, destruction, and vengeance might be alien to the spirit of the Prince To Come, but they were necessary tools in the task of bringing the kingdom of the Prince into being.

  He waited outside the cottage until enough of the others had returned from their own obeisances to allow him to enter upon the calling of the water-kings. One by one, they took up their positions about him, Aarisiim with his hand to Faraataa’s right shoulder, Benuuiab to the left, Siimii touching his forehead, Miisiim his loins, and the rest arranged in concentric circles about those four, linked arm to arm.

  “Now,” Faraataa said. And their minds joined and thrust outward.

  —Brother in the sea!

  The effort was so great that Faraataa felt his shape flowing and shifting of its own accord, like that of a child just learning how to b
ring the power into play. He sprouted feathers, talons, six terrible beaks; he became a bilantoon, a sigimoin, a snorting raging bidlak. Those about him gripped him all the more tightly, although the intensity of his signal held such force that some of them too fluttered as he did from form to form.

  —Brother! Hear me! Help me!

  And from the vastness of the depths came the image of huge dark wings slowly opening and closing over titanic bodies. And then a voice like a hundred bells tolling at once:

  —I hear, little land-brother.

  It was the water-king Maazmoorn who spoke. Faraataa knew them all by the music of their minds: Maazmoorn the bells, Girouz the singing thunder, Sheitoon the slow sad drums. There were dozens of the great kings, and the voice of each was unmistakable.

  —Carry me, O King Maazmoorn!

  —Come upon me, O land-brother.

  Faraataa felt the pull, and yielded himself to it, and was lifted upward and out, leaving his body behind. In an instant he was at the sea, an instant more and he entered it; and then he and Maazmoorn were one. Ecstasy overwhelmed him: that joining, that communion, was so potent that it could easily be an end in itself, a delight that fulfilled all yearnings, if he would allow it. But he never would allow it.

  The seat of the water-king’s towering intelligence was itself like an ocean—limitless, all-enfolding, infinitely deep. Faraataa, sinking down and down and down, lost himself in it. But never did he lose awareness of his task. Through the strength of the water-king he would achieve what he never could have done unaided. Gathering himself, he brought his powerful mind to its finest focus and from his place at the core of that warm cradling vastness he sent forth the messages he had come here to transmit:

  —Saarekkin?

  —I am here.

  —What is the report?

  —The lusavender is altogether destroyed throughout the eastern Rift. We have established the fungus beyond hope of eradication, and it is spreading on its own.

  —What action is the government taking?

  —The burning of infected crops. It will be futile.

  —Victory is ours, Saarekkin!

  —Victory is ours, Faraataa!

  —Tii-haanimak?

  —I hear you, Faraataa.

  —What news?

  —The poison traveled upon the rain, and the niyk-trees are destroyed in all Dulorn. It leaches now through the soil, and will ruin the glein and the stajja. We are preparing the next attack. Victory is ours, Faraataa!

  —Victory is ours! Iniriis?

  —I am Iniriis. The root-weevils thrive and spread in the fields of Zimroel. They will devour the ricca and the milaile.

  —When will the effects be visible?

  —They are visible now. Victory is ours, Faraataa!

  —We have won Zimroel. The battle now must shift to Alhanroel, Iniriis. Begin shipping your weevils across the Inner Sea.

  —It will be done.

  —Victory is ours, Iniriis! Y-Uulisaan?

  —This is Y-Uulisaan, Faraataa.

  —You follow the Coronal still?

  —I do. He has left Ebersinul and makes for Treymone.

  —Does he know what is happening in Zimroel?

  —He knows nothing. The grand processional absorbs his energies completely.

  —Bring him the report, then. Tell him of weevils in the valley of the Zimr, of lusavender blight in the Rift, of the death of niyk and glein and stajja west of Dulorn.

  —I, Faraataa?

  —We must get even closer to him. The news must reach him sooner or later through legitimate channels. Let it come from us first, and let that be our way of approach to him. You will be his adviser on the diseases of plants, Y-Uulisaan. Tell him the news; and aid him in the struggle against these blights. We should know what counterattacks are planned. Victory is ours, Y-Uulisaan.

  —Victory is ours, Faraataa!

  14

  The message was more than an hour old when it finally reached the high spokesman Hornkast in his private lair far uplevel, just outside the Sphere of Triple Shadows:

  Meet me in the throne room right away.

  —Sepulthrove

  The high spokesman glared at the messengers. They knew he was never to be disturbed in this chamber except for a matter of the greatest urgency.

  “What is it? Is he dying? Dead already?”

  “We were not told, sir.”

  “Did Sepulthrove seem unusually disturbed?”

  “He seemed uneasy, sir, but I have no idea—”

  “All right. Never mind. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Hastily Hornkast cleansed himself and dressed. If it has truly come, he thought sourly, it comes at a most inconvenient moment. Tyeveras has waited at least a dozen decades for his dying; could he not have held off another hour or two? If it has truly come.

  The golden-haired woman who had been visiting him said, “Shall I stay here until you come back?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no telling how long this will take. If the Pontifex has died—”

  The woman made the Labyrinth sign. “The Divine forbid!”

  “Indeed,” said Hornkast drily.

  He went out. The Sphere of Triple Shadows, rising high above the gleaming obsidian walls of the plaza, was in its brightest phase, casting an eerie blue-white light that obliterated all sensations of dimensionality or depth: the passersby looked like mere paper dolls, floating on a gentle breeze. With the messengers beside him and hard pressed to keep up with his pace, Hornkast hastened across the plaza to the private lift, moving, as always, with a vigor that belied his eighty years.

  The descent to the imperial zone was interminable.

  Dead? Dying? Inconceivable. Hornkast realized that he had never taken into account the contingency of an unexpected natural death for Tyeveras. Sepulthrove had assured him that the machinery would not fail, that the Pontifex could be kept alive, if need be, another twenty or thirty years, perhaps as much as fifty. And the high spokesman had assumed that his death, when it came, would be the outcome of a carefully arrived at political decision, not something awkwardly happening without warning in the middle of an otherwise ordinary morning.

  And if it had? Lord Valentine must be summoned at once from the westlands. Ah, how he would hate that, dragged into the Labyrinth before he had fairly begun his processional! I will have to resign, of course, Hornkast told himself.

  Valentine will want his own high spokesman: that little scar-faced man Sleet, no doubt, or even the Vroon. Hornkast considered what it would be like to train one of them in the duties of the office he had held so long. Sleet full of contempt and condescension, or the wizardy little Vroon, those huge glittering eyes, that beak, those tentacles—

  That would be his last responsibility, to instruct the new high spokesman. And then I will go away, he thought, and I suspect I will not long survive the loss of my office. Elidath, I suppose, will become Coronal. They say he is a good man, very dear to Lord Valentine, almost like a brother. How strange it will be, after all these years, to have a real Pontifex again, actively working with his Coronal! But I will not see it, Hornkast told himself. I will not be here.

  In that mood of foreboding and resignation he arrived at the ornately embellished door to the imperial throne room. He slipped his hand into the recognition glove and squeezed the cool yielding sphere within; and at his touch the door slid back to reveal the great globe of the imperial chamber, the lofty throne upon the three broad steps, the elaborate mechanisms of the Pontifex’s life-support systems, and, within the bubble of pale blue glass that had held him for so many years, the long-limbed figure of the Pontifex himself, fleshless and parched like his own mummy, upright in his seat, jaws clenched, eyes bright, bright, bright still with inextinguishable life.

  A familiar crew of grotesques stood beside the throne: ancient Dilifon, the withered and trembling private secretary; the Pontifical dream-speaker; the witch Narrameer; and Sepulthrove the physician, hawk-nosed, skin the
color of dried mud. From then, even from Narrameer, who kept herself young and implausibly beautiful by her sorceries, came a pulsing aura of age, decay, death. Hornkast, who had seen these people every day for forty years, had never before perceived with such intensity how frightful they were: and, he knew, he must be just as frightful himself. Perhaps the time has come, he thought, to clear us all away.

  “I came as soon as the messengers could reach me,” he said. He glanced toward the Pontifex. “Well? He’s dying, is he? He looks just the same to me.”

  “He is very far from dying,” said Sepulthrove.

  “Then what’s going on?”

  “Listen,” the physician said. “He’s starting again.”

  The creature in the life-support globe stirred and swayed from side to side in minute oscillations. A low whining sound came from the Pontifex, and then a kind of half-whistled snore, and a thick bubbling gurgle that went on and on.

  Hornkast had heard all these sounds many times before. They were the private language the Pontifex in his terrible senility had invented, and which the high spokesman alone had mastered. Some were almost words, or the ghosts of words, and within their blurred outlines the original meanings were still apparent. Others had evolved from words over the years into mere noise, but Hornkast, because he had observed those evolutions in their various stages, knew what meanings were intended. Some were nothing but moans and sighs and weepings without a verbal content. And some seemed to have a certain complexity of form that might represent concepts that had been perceived by Tyeveras in his long mad sleepless isolation, and were known to him alone.

  “I hear the usual,” said Hornkast.

  “Wait.”

  He listened. He heard the string of syllables that meant Lord Malibor—the Pontifex had forgotten Malibor’s two successors, and thought Malibor was Coronal still—and then a skein of other royal names, Prestimion, Confalume, Dekkeret. Malibor again. The word for sleep. The name of Ossier, who had been Pontifex before Tyeveras. The name of Kinniken, who had preceded Ossier.