Valentine Pontifex m-3 Read online

  So in her eagerness to make him perfect for the Coronal’s banquet she helped to make him late. She spent what felt to him like a good twenty minutes simply fiddling with his emblem of office, the little golden starburst epaulet that he was supposed to wear on his left shoulder within the loop of the chain. She moved it endlessly a fraction of an inch this way or that to center it more exactly, until at last she said, “All right. That’ll do. Here, see if you like it.”

  She snatched up her old hand-mirror, speckled and rusty where the backing was wearing away, and held it before him. Hissune caught a faint distorted glimpse of himself, looking very unfamiliar, all pomp and splendor, as though decked out for a pageant. The costume felt theatrical, stagy, unreal. And yet he was aware of a new kind of poise and authority seeping inward to his soul from his clothing. How odd, he thought, that a hasty fitting at a fancy Place of Masks tailor could produce such an instant transformation of personality—no longer Hissune the ragged hustling street-boy, no longer Hissune the restless and uncertain young clerk, but now Hissune the popinjay, Hissune the peacock, Hissune the proud companion of the Coronal.

  And Hissune the unpunctual. If he hurried, though, he might still reach the Great Hall of the Pontifex on time.

  But just then his mother Elsinome returned from work, and there was another small delay. She came into his room, a slight, dark-haired woman, pale and weary-looking, and stared at him in awe and wonder, as though someone had captured a comet and set it loose to whirl about her dismal flat. Her eyes were glowing, her features had a radiance he had never seen before.

  “How magnificent you look, Hissune! How splendid!”

  He grinned and spun about, better to show off his imperial finery. “It’s almost absurd, isn’t it? I look like a knight just down from Castle Mount!”

  “You look like a prince! You look like a Coronal!”

  “Ah, yes, Lord Hissune. But I’d need an ermine robe for that, I think, and a fine green doublet, and perhaps a great gaudy starburst pendant on my chest. Yet this is good enough for the moment, eh, mother?”

  They laughed; and, for all her weariness, she seized him and swung him about in a wild little three-step dance. Then she released him and said, “But it grows late. You should have been off to the feast by this time!”

  “I should have been, yes.” He moved toward the door. “How strange all this is, eh, mother? To be going off to dine at the Coronal’s table—to sit at his elbow—to journey with him on the grand processional—to dwell on Castle Mount—”

  “So very strange, yes,” said Elsinome quietly.

  They all lined up—Elsinome, Ailimoor, his younger sister Maraune—and solemnly Hissune kissed them, and squeezed their hands, and sidestepped them when they tried to hug him, fearing they would rumple his robes; and he saw them staring at him again as though he were some godlike being, or at the very least the Coronal himself. It was quite as if he were no longer one of this family, or as if he never had been, but had descended from the sky to strut about these dreary rooms for a little while this afternoon. At times he almost felt that way himself—that he had not spent these eighteen years of his life in a few dingy rooms in the first ring of the Labyrinth, but indeed was and always had been Hissune of the Castle, knight and initiate, frequenter of the royal court, connoisseur of all its pleasures.

  Folly, Madness. You must always remember who you are, he told himself, and where you started from.

  But it was hard not to keep dwelling on the transformation that had come over their lives, he thought, while he was making his way down the endless spiraling staircase to the street. So much had changed. Once he and his mother both had worked the streets of the Labyrinth, she begging crowns from passing gentry for her hungry children, he rushing up to tourists and insistently offering to guide them, for half a royal or so, through the scenic wonders of the underground city. And now he was the Coronal’s young protege, and she, through his new connections, was steward of wines at the cafe of the Court of Globes. All achieved by luck, by extraordinary and improbable luck.

  Or was it only luck? he wondered. That time so many years back, when he was ten and had thrust his services as a guide upon that tall fair-haired man, it had been convenient indeed for him that the stranger was none other than the Coronal Lord Valentine, overthrown and exiled and in the Labyrinth to win the support of the Pontifex in his reconquest of the throne.

  But that in itself might not have led anywhere. Hissune often asked himself what it was about him that had caught Lord Valentine’s fancy, that caused the Coronal to remember him and have him located after the restoration, and be taken from the streets to work in the House of Records, and now to be summoned into the innermost sphere of his administration. His irreverence, perhaps. His quips, his cool, casual manner, his lack of awe for coronals and pontifexes, his ability, even at ten, to look out for himself. That must have impressed Lord Valentine. Those Castle Mount knights, Hissune thought, are all so polite, so dainty-mannered: I must have seemed more alien than a Ghayrog to him. And yet the Labyrinth is full of tough little boys. Any of them might have been the one who tugged at the Coronal’s sleeve. But I was the one. Luck. Luck.

  He emerged into the dusty little plaza in front of his house. Before him lay the narrow curving streets of the Guadeloom Court district where he had spent all the days of his life; above him rose the decrepit buildings, thousands of years old and lopsided with age, that formed the boundary palisade of his world. Under the harsh white lights, much too bright, almost crackling in their electric intensity—all this ring of the Labyrinth was bathed in that same fierce light, so little like that of the gentle golden-green sun whose rays never reached this city—the flaking gray masonry of the old buildings emanated a terrible weariness, a mineral fatigue. Hissune wondered if he had ever noticed before just how bleak and shabby this place was.

  The plaza was crowded. Not many of the people of Guadeloom Court cared to spend their evenings penned up in their dim little flats, and so they flocked down here to mill aimlessly about in a kind of random patternless promenade. And as Hissune in his shimmering new clothes made his way through that promenade, it seemed that everyone that he had ever known was out there glaring at him, glowering, snickering, scowling. He saw Vanimoon, who was his own age to the hour and had once seemed almost like a brother to him, and Vanimoon’s slender almond-eyed little sister, not so little anymore, and Heulan, and Heulan’s three great hulking brothers, and Nikkilone, and tiny squinch-faced Ghisnet, and the beady-eyed Vroon who sold candied ghumba root, and Confalume the pickpocket, and the old Ghayrog sisters that everyone thought were really Metamorphs, which Hissune had never believed, and this one and that one and more. All staring, all silently asking him, Why are you putting on such airs, Hissune, why this pomp, why this splendor?

  He moved uneasily across the plaza, miserably aware that the banquet must be almost about to begin and he had an enormous distance downlevel to traverse. And everyone he had ever known stood in his way, staring at him.

  Vanimoon was the first to cry out. “Where are you going, Hissune? To a costume ball?”

  “He’s off to the Isle, to play ninesticks with the Lady!”

  “No, he’s going to hunt sea-dragons with the Pontifex!”

  “Let me by,” Hissune said quietly, for they were pressing close upon him now.

  “Let him by! Let him by!” they chorused gaily, but they did not move back.

  “Where’d you get the fancy clothes, Hissune?” Ghisnet asked.

  “Rented them,” Heulan said.

  “Stole them, you mean,” said one of Heulan’s brothers.

  “Found a drunken knight in an alleyway and stripped him bare!”

  “Get out of my way,” said Hissune, holding his temper in check with more than a little effort. “I have something important to do.”

  “Something important! Something important!”

  “He has an audience with the Pontifex!”

  “The Pontifex is going to m
ake Hissune a Duke!”

  “Duke Hissune! Prince Hissune!”

  “Why not Lord Hissune?”

  “Lord Hissune! Lord Hissune!”

  There was an ugly edge to their voices. Ten or twelve of them ringed him, pushing inward. Resentment and jealousy ruled them now. This flamboyant outfit of his, the shoulder chain, the epaulet, the boots, the cloak—it was too much for them, an arrogant way of underscoring the gulf that had opened between him and them. In another moment they’d be plucking at his tunic, tugging at the chain. Hissune felt the beginnings of panic. It was folly to try to reason with a mob, worse folly to attempt to force his way through. And of course it was hopeless to expect imperial proctors to be patrolling a neighborhood like this. He was on his own.

  Vanimoon, who was the closest, reached toward Hissune’s shoulder as though to give him a shove. Hissune backed away, but not before Vanimoon had left a grimy track along the pale green fabric of his cloak. Sudden astonishing fury surged through him. “Don’t touch me again!” he yelled, angrily making the sign of the sea dragon at Vanimoon. “Don’t any of you touch me!”

  With a mocking laugh Vanimoon clawed for him a second time. Swiftly Hissune caught him by the wrist, clamping down with crushing force.

  “Hoy! Let go!” Vanimoon grunted.

  Instead Hissune pulled Vanimoon’s arm upward and back, and spun him roughly around. Hissune had never been much of a fighter—he was too small and lithe for that, and preferred to rely on speed and wits—but he could be strong enough when anger kindled him. Now he felt himself throbbing with violent energy. In a low tense voice he said, “If I have to, Vanimoon, I’ll break it. I don’t want you or anybody else touching me.”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Will you keep your hands to yourself?”

  “Man can’t even stand to be teased—”

  Hissune twisted Vanimoon’s arm as far up as it would go. “I’ll pull it right off you if I have to.”

  “Let—go—”

  “If you’ll keep your distance.”

  “All right. All right!”

  Hissune released him and caught his breath. His heart was pounding and he was soaked with sweat: he did not dare to wonder how he must look. After all of Ailimoor’s endless fussing over him, too.

  Vanimoon, stepping back, sullenly rubbed his wrist. “Afraid I’ll soil his fancy clothes. Doesn’t want common people’s dirt on them.”

  “That’s right. Now get out of my way. I’m late enough already.”

  “For the Coronal’s banquet, I suppose?”

  “Exactly. I’m late for the Coronal’s banquet.”

  Vanimoon and the others gaped at him, their expressions hovering midway between scorn and awe. Hissune pushed his way past them and strode across the plaza.

  The evening, he thought, was off to a very bad start.

  3

  On a day in high summer when the sun hung all but motionless over Castle Mount, the Coronal Lord Valentine rode out joyously into the flower-shimmering meadows below the Castle’s southern wing.

  He went alone, not even taking with him his consort the Lady Carabella. The members of his council objected strongly to his going anywhere unguarded, even within the Castle, let alone venturing outside the sprawling perimeter of the royal domain. Whenever the issue arose, Elidath pounded hand against fist and Tunigorn rose up tall as though prepared to block Valentine’s departure with his own body, and little Sleet turned positively black in the face with fury and reminded the Coronal that his enemies had succeeded in overthrowing him once, and might yet again.

  “Ah, surely I’d be safe anywhere on Castle Mount!” Valentine insisted.

  But always they had had their way, until today. The safety of the Coronal of Majipoor, they insisted, was paramount. And so whenever Lord Valentine went riding, Elidath or Tunigorn or perhaps Stasilaine rode always beside him, as they had since they were boys together, and half a dozen members of the Coronal’s guard lurked a respectful distance behind.

  This time, though, Valentine had somehow eluded them all. He was unsure how he had managed it: but when the overpowering urge to ride had come upon him in midmorning he simply strode into the south-wing stables, saddled his mount without the help of a groom, and set out across the green porcelain cobblestones of a strangely empty Dizimaule Plaza, passing swiftly under the great arch and into the lovely fields that flanked the Grand Calintane Highway. No one stopped him. No one called out to him. It was as though some wizardry had rendered him, invisible.

  Free, if only for an hour or two! The Coronal threw his head back and laughed as he had not laughed in a long while, and slapped his mount’s flank, and sped across the meadows, moving so swiftly that the hooves of his great purple beast seemed scarcely to touch the myriad blossoms all about.

  Ah, this was the life!

  He glanced over his shoulder. The fantastic bewildering pile of the Castle was diminishing rapidly behind him, though it still seemed immense at this distance, stretching over half the horizon, an incomprehensibly huge edifice of some forty thousand rooms that clung like some vast monster to the summit of the Mount. He could not remember any occasion since his restoration to the throne when he had been out of that castle without his bodyguard. Not even once.

  Well, he was out of it now. Valentine looked off to his left, where the thirty-mile-high crag that was Castle Mount sloped away at a dizzying angle, and saw the pleasure-city of High Morpin gleaming below, a webwork of airy golden threads. Ride down there, spend a day at the games? Why not? He was free! Ride on beyond, if he chose, and stroll in the gardens of Tolingar Barrier, among the halatingas and tanigales and sithereels, and come back with a yellow alabandina flower in his cap as a cockade? Why not? The day was his. Ride to Furible in time for the feeding-time of the stone birds, ride to Stee and sip golden wine atop Thimin Tower, ride to Bombifale or Peritole or Banglecode—

  His mount seemed equal to any such labor. It carried him hour after hour without fatigue. When he came to High Morpin he tethered it at Confalume Fountain, where shafts of tinted water slender as spears shot hundreds of feet into the air while maintaining, by some ancient magic, their rigid shapes, and on foot he strode along the streets of closely woven golden cable until he came to the place of the mirror slides, where he and Voriax had tested their skills so often when they were boys. But when he went out on the glittering slides no one took any notice of him, as though they felt it rude to stare at a Coronal doing the slides, or as though he were still somehow cloaked by that strange invisibility. That seemed odd, but he was not greatly troubled by it. When he was done with the slides he thought he might go on to the power tunnels or the juggernauts, but then it seemed just as pleasing to continue his journey, and a moment later he was upon his mount once more, and riding on to Bombifale. In that ancient and most lovely of cities, where curving walls of the deepest burnt-orange sandstone were topped with pale towers tapering to elegant points, they had come to him one day long ago when he had been on holiday alone, five of them, his friends, and found him in a tavern of vaulted onyx and polished alabaster, and when he greeted them with surprise and laughter they responded by kneeling to him and making the starburst sign and crying, “Valentine! Lord Valentine! Hail, Lord Valentine!” To which his first thought was that he was being mocked, for he was not the king but the king’s younger brother, and he knew he never would be king, and did not want to be. And though he was a man who did not get angry easily, he grew angry then, that his friends should intrude on him with this cruel nonsense. But then he saw how pale their faces were, how strange their eyes, and his anger left him, and grief and fear entered his soul: and that was how he learned that Voriax his brother was dead and he had been named Coronal in his place. In Bombifale this day ten years later, it seemed to Valentine that every third man he met had the face of Voriax, black-bearded and hard-eyed and ruddy-faced, and that troubled him, so he left Bombifale quickly.

  He did not stop again, for there was so much to s
ee, so many hundreds of miles to traverse. He went on, past one city and another in a serene untroubled way, as if he were floating, as if he were flying. Now and again he had an astounding view from the brink of some precipice of all the Mount spread out below him, its Fifty Cities somehow visible every one at once, and the innumerable foothill towns too, and the Six Rivers, and the broad plain of Alhanroel sweeping off to the faraway Inner Sea—such splendor, such immensity. Majipoor! Surely it was the most beautiful of all the worlds to which mankind had spread in the thousands of years of the great movement outward from Old Earth. And all given into his hand, all placed in his charge, a responsibility from which he would never shrink.

  But as he rode onward an unexpected mystery began to impinge upon his soul. The air grew dark and cold, which was strange, for on Castle Mount the climate was forever controlled to yield an eternal balmy springtime. Then something like chill spittle struck him on the cheek, and he searched about for a challenger, and saw none, and was struck again, and again: snow, he realized finally, sweeping hard against him on the breast of the frosty wind. Snow, on Castle Mount? Harsh winds?

  And worse: the earth was groaning like a monster in labor. His mount, which had never disobeyed him, now reared back in fear, made a weird whinnying sound, shook its heavy head in slow, ponderous dismay. Valentine heard the booming of distant thunder, and closer at hand a strange cracking noise, and he saw giant furrows appearing in the ground. Everything was madly heaving and churning. An earthquake? The entire Mount was whipping about like a dragon-ship’s mast when the hot dry winds blew from the south. The sky itself, black and leaden, took on sudden weight.