Valentine Pontifex Read online

  Pontifical officials in formal masks were waiting for him at the edge of the outer ring. With great solicitousness they greeted Hissune and took him at once to the liftshaft reserved for Powers and their emissaries, which carried him swiftly down to the deep imperial levels of the Labyrinth.

  In short order he was installed in a suite nearly as ostentatious as the one perpetually set aside for the Coronal’s own use. Alsimir and Stimion and Hissune’s other aides were given elegant rooms of their own adjoining his. When the Pontifical liaison officials were done bustling about seeing to Hissune’s comfort, their chief announced to him, “The high spokesman Hornkast will be deeply pleased to dine with you this evening, my lord.”

  Despite himself, Hissune felt a little shiver of wonder. Deeply pleased. He still had enough of the Labyrinth in him to regard Hornkast with veneration bordering on fear: the real master of the Labyrinth, the puppeteer who pulled the Pontifex’s strings. Deeply pleased to dine with you this evening, my lord. Really? Hornkast? It was hard to imagine old Hornkast deeply pleased about anything, Hissune thought. My lord, no less. Well, well, well.

  But he could not allow himself to be awed by Hornkast, not a vestige, not a trace. He contrived to be unready when the high spokesman’s envoys came calling for him, and was ten minutes late setting out. When he entered the high spokesman’s private dining chamber—a hall of such glittering magnificence that even a Pontifex might have found its grandeur excessive—Hissune restrained himself from offering any sort of salute or obeisance, though the impulse fluttered quickly through him. This is Hornkast! he thought, and wanted to drop to his knees. But you are Hissune! he told himself angrily, and remained standing, dignified, faintly aloof. Hornkast was, Hissune compelled himself to keep in mind, merely a civil servant; whereas he himself was a person of rank, a prince of the Mount, and a member of the Council of Regency as well.

  It was difficult, though, not to be swayed by Hornkast’s formidable presence and power. He was old—ancient, even—yet he looked robust and energetic and alert, as though a witchery had stripped thirty or forty of his years from him. His eyes were shrewd and implacable, his smile was unsettlingly intricate, his voice deep and strong. With the greatest of courtesy he conducted Hissune to the table and offered him some rare glistening wine, a deep scarlet in hue, of which Hissune prudently took only the most shallow and widely spaced of sips. The conversation, amiable and general at first, then more serious, remained totally in Hornkast’s control, and Hissune did not resist that. They spoke at first of the disturbances in Zimroel and western Alhanroel—Hissune had the impression that Hornkast, for all his sober mien as he talked of these things, was no more deeply troubled by anything that took place outside the Labyrinth than he would be by events on some other world—and then the high spokesman came round to the matter of Elidath’s death, for which he hoped Hissune would convey full condolences when he returned to the Mount; and Hornkast stared keenly at Hissune as though to say, I know that the passing of Elidath has worked great changes in the succession, and that you have emerged into a most powerful position, and therefore, O child of this Labyrinth, I am watching you very carefully. Hissune expected that Hornkast, having heard enough of the news from overseas to be aware that Elidath was dead, would go on now to inquire after the safety of Lord Valentine; but to his amazement the high spokesman chose to speak next of other matters entirely, having to do with certain shortages now manifesting themselves in the granaries of the Labyrinth. No doubt that problem was much on Hornkast’s mind, Hissune thought; but it was not primarily to discuss such things that he had undertaken this journey. When the high spokesman paused for a moment Hissune, seizing the initiative at last, said, “But perhaps it is time for us to consider what I think is the most critical event of all, which is the disappearance of Lord Valentine.”

  For once Hornkast’s invincible serenity seemed shaken: his eyes flashed, his nostrils flared, his lips quirked quickly in surprise.

  “Disappearance?”

  “While Lord Valentine was traveling in Piurifayne we lost contact with him, and we have not been able to reestablish it.”

  “May I ask what the Coronal was doing in Piurifayne?”

  Hissune offered a light shrug. “A mission of great delicacy, I am given to understand. He was separated from his party in the same storm that took Elidath’s life. We have heard nothing since.”

  “And is the Coronal dead, do you think?”

  “I have no idea, and guesses are without value. You can be sure we are making every effort to resume contact with him. But I think we must at least allow for the possibility that Lord Valentine is dead, yes. We have had discussions to that effect at the Castle. A plan of succession is emerging.”

  “Ah.”

  “And of course the health of the Pontifex is something that must figure prominently in our planning,” said Hissune.

  “Ah. Yes. I quite understand.”

  “The Pontifex, I take it, remains as he has been?” Hornkast made no immediate reply, but stared at Hissune with mysterious and discomforting intensity a long while, as if engaged in the most intricate of political calculations.

  Then at length he said, “Would you like to pay a call on his majesty?”

  If not the last thing Hissune would have expected the high spokesman to say, it was close to it. A visit to the Pontifex? He had never dreamed of such a thing! It took him a moment to master his astonishment and regain his poise. Then he said, as coolly as he could manage it, “It would be a great privilege.”

  “Let us go, then.”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” said Hornkast.

  The high spokesman signaled; servitors appeared and began clearing away the remnants of the meal; moments later Hissune found himself aboard a small snub-nosed floater, with Hornkast beside him, traveling down a narrow tunnel until they came to a place where they could go only on foot, and where one bronze door after another sealed the passageway at fifty-pace intervals. Hornkast opened each of these by sliding his hand into a hidden panel, and eventually one final door, inscribed with a gold-chased Labyrinth symbol and the imperial monogram over it, yielded to the high spokesman’s touch and admitted them to the imperial throne-chamber.

  Hissune’s heart pounded with terrifying force. The Pontifex! Old mad Tyeveras! Throughout all his life he had scarcely believed that any such person truly existed. Child of the Labyrinth that he was, he had regarded the Pontifex always as some sort of supernatural being, hidden away here in the depths, the reclusive master of the world; and even now, for all Hissune’s recent familiarity with princes and dukes and the household of the Coronal and the Coronal himself, he regarded the Pontifex as a being apart, dwelling in a realm of his own, invisible, unknowable, unreal, inconceivably remote from the world of ordinary beings.

  But there he was.

  It was exactly as the legend had it. The sphere of blue glass, the pipes and tubes and wires and clamps, the colored fluids bubbling in and out of their life-support chamber, and the old, old man within, sitting weirdly upright on the high-backed throne atop its three shallow steps. The eyes of the Pontifex were open. But did they see? Was he alive at all?

  “He no longer speaks,” Hornkast said. “It is the latest of the changes. But the physician Sepulthrove says that his mind is still active, that his body retains its vitality. Go forward another step or two. You may look closely at him. See? See? He breathes. He blinks. He is alive. He is most definitely alive.” Hissune felt as though he had stumbled into the presence of something of a former epoch, some prehistoric creature miraculously preserved. Tyeveras! Coronal to the Pontifex Ossier, how many generations ago? Survivor out of history. This man had seen Lord Kinniken with his own eyes. He had been old already when Lord Malibor came to the Castle. And here he still was: alive, yes, if this was in fact life.

  Hornkast said, “You may greet him.”

  Hissune knew the convention: one pretended not to speak directly to the Pontifex, but addressed one’
s words to the high spokesman, pretending that the high spokesman would relay them to the monarch; but that was not actually done.

  He said, “I pray you offer his majesty the greeting of his subject Prince Hissune son of Elsinome, who most humbly expresses his reverence and obedience.

  The Pontifex made no reply. The Pontifex showed no sign of having heard anything.

  “Once,” said Hornkast, “he would make sounds that I learned to interpret, in response to what was said to him. No longer. He has not spoken in months. But we speak to him still, even so.”

  Hissune said, “Tell the Pontifex, then, that he is beloved by all the world, and his name is constantly in our prayers.”

  Silence. The Pontifex was motionless.

  “Tell the Pontifex also,” Hissune said, “that the world turns on its course, that troubles come and go, that the greatness of Majipoor will be preserved.”

  Silence. No response whatever.

  “Are you done?” Hornkast asked.

  Hissune stared across the room at the enigmatic figure within the glass cage. He longed to see Tyeveras stretch forth his hand in blessing, longed to hear him speak words of prophesy. But that would not happen, Hissune knew.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m done.”

  “Come, then.”

  The high spokesman led Hissune from the throne chamber. Outside, Hissune realized that his fine robes were soaked with sweat, that his knees were quivering. Tyeveras! If I live to be as old as he is, Hissune thought, I will never forget that face, those eyes, that blue sphere of glass.

  Hornkast said, “It is a new phase, this silence. Sepulthrove maintains that he is still strong, and perhaps so. But possibly this is the beginning of the end. There must be some limit, even with all this machinery.”

  “Do you think it will be soon?”

  “I pray it is, but I have no way of knowing. We do nothing to hasten the end. That decision is in Lord Valentine’s hands—or in the hands of his successor, if Valentine no longer lives.”

  “If Lord Valentine is dead,” said Hissune, “then the new Coronal might immediately ascend to Pontifex. Unless he too chooses to sustain the life of Tyeveras.”

  “Indeed. And if Lord Valentine is dead, who then, do you think, will be that new Coronal?”

  Hornkast’s stare was overwhelming and merciless. Hissune felt himself sizzling in the fire of that stare, and all his hard-won shrewdness, all his sense of who he was and what he meant to achieve melted from him, leaving him vulnerable and muddled. He had a sudden wild dizzying image of himself catapulted upward through the Powers, becoming Coronal one morning, giving the orders to disconnect this tubing and machinery at noon, becoming Pontifex by nightfall. But of course that was absurd, he told himself in panic. Pontifex? Me? Next month? It was a joke. It was altogether preposterous. He struggled for balance and succeeded after a moment in drawing himself back to the strategy that had seemed so obvious to him at the Castle; if Lord Valentine is dead, Divvis must become Coronal, and then Tyeveras at last must die, and Divvis goes to the Labyrinth. It must be that way. It must.

  Hissune said, “The succession cannot, of course, be voted upon until we are certain of the Coronal’s death, and daily we offer our prayers for his safety. But if in fact some tragic fate has befallen Lord Valentine, I think it will be the pleasure of the Castle princes to invite the son of Lord Voriax to ascend the throne.”

  “Ah.”

  “And if that should come to pass, there are those of us who think it would be desirable then to allow the Pontifex Tyeveras at last to return to the Source.”

  “Ah,” said Hornkast. “Ah, yes. You make your meaning quite clear, do you not?” His eyes met Hissune’s one final time: cold, penetrating, all-seeing. Then they grew milder, as though a veil had been drawn over them, and suddenly the high spokesman seemed to be nothing more than a weary old man at the end of a long and fatiguing day. Hornkast turned away and walked slowly toward the waiting floater. “Come,” he said. “It grows late, Prince Hissune.”

  Late it was indeed, but Hissune found it all but impossible to sleep. I have seen the Pontifex, he thought again and again. I have seen the Pontifex. He lay awake and tossing half the night, with the image of the ancient Tyeveras blazing in his mind; nor did that image relent when sleep did come, but burned even brighter, Pontifex on throne within sphere of glass. And was the Pontifex weeping? Hissune wondered. And if he wept, for whom did he weep?

  At midday the next day Hissune, accompanied by an official escort, made the journey uplevel to the outer ring of the Labyrinth, to Guadeloom Court, to the drab little flat where he had lived so long.

  Elsinome had insisted that it was wrong for him to come, that it was a grave breach of protocol for a Prince of the Castle to visit so shabby a place as Guadeloom Court even for the sake of seeing his own mother. But Hissune had brushed her objections aside. “I will come to you,” he said. “You must not come to me, mother.”

  She seemed not greatly altered by the years since they last had met. If anything, she looked stronger, taller, more vigorous. But there was an unfamiliar wariness about her, he thought. He held out his arms to her and she held back, uneasy, almost as if she did not recognize him as her son.

  “Mother?” he said. “You know me, don’t you, mother?”

  “I want to think I do.”

  “I am no different, mother.”

  “The way you hold yourself, now—the look in your eye—the robes you wear—”

  “I am still Hissune.”

  “Prince Regent Hissune. And you say you are no different?”

  “Everything is different now, mother. But some things remain the same.” She appeared to soften a little at that, to relax, to accept him. He went to her and embraced her.

  Then she stepped back., “What will happen to the world, Hissune? We hear such terrible things! They say whole provinces have starved. New Coronals have proclaimed themselves. And Lord Valentine—where is Lord Valentine? We know so little down here of what goes on outside. What will happen to the world, Hissune?”

  Hissune shook his head. “It is all in the hands of the Divine, mother. But I tell you this: if there is a way to save the world from this disaster, we will save it.”

  “I feel myself beginning to shiver, when I hear you say we. Sometimes in dreams I see you on Castle Mount, among the great lords and princes—I see them looking to you, I see them asking your advice. But can it be true? I am coming to understand certain things—the Lady visits me often when I sleep, do you know that?—but even so, there is so much to understand—so much that I must absorb—”

  “The Lady visits you often, you say?”

  “Sometimes two or three times a week. I am greatly privileged by that. Although it troubles me, also: to see her so tired, to feel the weight that presses on her soul. She comes to me to help me, you know, but yet I feel sometimes that I should help her, that I should lend my strength to her and let her lean on me—”

  “You will, mother.”

  “Do I understand you rightly, Hissune?”

  For a long moment he did not reply. He glanced about the ugly little room at all the old familiar things of his childhood, the tattered curtains, the weary furniture, and he thought of the suite where he had passed the night, and of the apartments that were his on Castle Mount.

  He said, “You will not remain in this place much longer, mother.”

  “Where am I to go, then?”

  Again he hesitated.

  Quietly he said, “I think they will make me Coronal, mother. And when they do, you must go to the Isle, and take up a new and difficult task. Do you comprehend what I say?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And are you prepared, mother?”

  “I will do what I must,” she told him, and she smiled, and shook her head as though in disbelief. And shook the disbelief away, and reached forth to take him into her arms.

  “NOW LET THE WORD GO FORTH,” Faraataa said.

  It was the Hour of
the Flame, the midday hour, and the sun stood high over Piurifayne. There would be no rain today: rain was impermissible today, for this was the day of the going forth of the word, and that was a thing that must be accomplished under a rainless sky.

  He stood atop a towering wicker scaffold, looking out over the vast clearing in the jungle that his followers had made. Thousands of trees felled, a great slash upon the breast of the land; and in that huge open space his people stood, shoulder to shoulder, as far as he could see. To each side of him rose the steep pyramidal forms of the new temples, nearly as lofty as his scaffold. They were built of crossed logs, interwoven in the ancient patterns, and from their summits flew the two banners of redemption, the red and the yellow. This was New Velalisier, here in the jungle. Next year at this time, Faraataa was resolved, these rites would be celebrated at the true Velalisier across the sea, reconsecrated at last.