Valentine Pontifex m-3 Read online

  One of those stars, perhaps, was the one from which their ancestors had come. They had no idea which star that might be. No one did. Seven thousand years had passed since the first Liiman migrants had come to Majipoor, and in that time much knowledge had been lost. During their wanderings over this giant planet, going wherever there might be simple menial jobs to perform, the Liimen had long since forgotten the place that was their starting point. But someday they would know it again.

  The eldest male lit the fire. The youngest brought forth the skewers and arranged the meat on them. The two women silently took the skewers and held them in the flames until they could hear the song of the dripping fat. In silence then they handed the chunks of meat around, and in silence the Liimen ate what would be their only meal of the day.

  Silent still, they filed from the tent, eldest male, then the women, then the other two males: five slender, wide-shouldered beings with flat broad heads and fierce bright eyes arrayed in a triple set across their expressionless faces. Down to the edge of the sea they walked, and took up positions on a narrow snub of a headland, just out of reach of the surf, as they had done every morning for weeks.

  There they waited, in silence, each hoping that this day would bring the coming of the dragons.

  * * *

  The southeastern coast of Zimroel—the huge province known as Gihorna—is one of Majipoor’s most obscure regions: a land without cities, a forgotten place of thin gray sandy soil and moist blustery breezes, subject at unpredictable intervals to colossal, vastly destructive sandstorms. There is no natural harbor for hundreds of miles along that unhappy coast, only an endless ridge of low shabby hills sloping down to a sodden strand against which the surf of the Inner Sea crashes with a sad dull sound. In the early years of the settlement of Majipoor, explorers who ventured into that forlorn quarter of the western continent reported that there was nothing there worth a second look, and on a planet otherwise so full of miracles and wonders that was the most damning dismissal imaginable.

  So Gihorna was bypassed as the development of the new continent got under way. Settlement after settlement was established—Piliplok first, midway up the eastern coast at the mouth of the broad River Zimr, and then Pidruid in the distant northwest, and Ni-moya on the great bend of the Zimr far inland, and Til-omon, and Narabal, and Velathys, and the shining Ghayrog city of Dulorn, and many more. Outposts turned into towns, and towns into cities, and cities into great cities that sent forth tendrils of expansion creeping outward across the astonishing immensities of Zimroel; but still there was no reason to go into Gihorna, and no one did. Not even the Shapeshifters, when Lord Stiamot had finally subjugated them and dumped them down in a forest reservation just across the River Steiche from the western reaches of Gihorna, had cared to cross the river into the dismal lands beyond.

  Much later—thousands of years later, when most of Zimroel had begun to seem as tame as Alhanroel—a few settlers at last did filter into Gihorna. Nearly all were Liimen, simple and undemanding people who had never woven themselves deeply into the fabric of Majipoori life. By choice, it seemed they held themselves apart, earning a few weights here and there as sellers of grilled sausages, as fishermen, as itinerant laborers. It was easy for these drifting folk, whose lives seemed bleak and colorless to the other races of Majipoor, to drift on into bleak and colorless Gihorna. There they settled in tiny villages, and strung nets just beyond the surf to catch the swarming silvery-gray fishes, and dug pits in which to trap the big glossy octagonal-shelled black crabs that scuttled along the beaches in packs numbering many hundreds, and for a feast went out to hunt the sluggish tender-fleshed dhumkars that lived half-buried in the dunes.

  Most of the year the Liimen had Gihorna to themselves. But not in summer, for summer was dragon time.

  In early summer, the tents of curiosity-seekers began to sprout like yellow calimbots after a warm rain, all along the coast of Zimroel from a point just south of Piliplok to the edge of the impassable Zimr Marsh. This was the season when the sea-dragon herds made their annual journey up the eastern side of the continent, heading out into the waters between Piliplok and the Isle of Sleep, where they would bear their young.

  The coast below Piliplok was the only place on Majipoor where it was possible to get a good view of the dragons without going to sea, for here the pregnant cows liked to come close to shore, and feed on the small creatures that lived in the dense thatches of golden seaweed so widespread in those waters. So each year at dragon-passage time the dragon watchers arrived by the thousands, from all over the world, and set up their tents. Some were magnificent airy structures, virtual palaces of soaring slender poles and shimmering fabric, that were occupied by touring members of the nobility. Some were the sturdy and efficient tents of prosperous merchants and their families. And some were the simple lean-tos of ordinary folk who had saved for years to make this journey.

  The aristocrats came to Gihorna in dragon time because they found it entertaining to watch the enormous sea dragons gliding through the water, and because it was agreeably unusual to spend a holiday in such a hideously ugly place. The rich merchants came because the undertaking of such a costly trip would surely enhance their position in their communities, and because their children would learn something useful about the natural history of Majipoor that might do them some good in school. The ordinary people came because they believed that it brought a lifetime of good luck to observe the passage of the dragons, though nobody was quite sure why that should be the case.

  And then there were the Liimen, to whom the time of the dragons was a matter neither of amusement nor of prestige nor of the hope of fortune’s kindness, but of the most profound significance: a matter of redemption, a matter of salvation.

  No one could predict exactly when the dragons would turn up along the Gihorna coast. Though they always came in summer, sometimes they came early and sometimes they came late; and this year they were late. The five Liimen, taking up their positions on the little headland each morning, saw nothing day after day but gray sea, white foam, dark masses of seaweed. But they were not impatient people. Sooner or later the dragons would arrive.

  The day when they finally came into view was warm and close, with a hot humid wind blowing out of the west. All that morning crabs in platoons and phalanxes and regiments marched restlessly up and down the beach, as though they were drilling to repel invaders. That was always a sign.

  Toward noon came a second sign: up from the heaving surf tumbled a great fat pudding of a rip-toad, all belly and mouth and saw-edged teeth. It staggered a few yards ashore and hunkered down in the sand, panting, shivering, blinking its vast milky-hued eyes. A second toad emerged a moment later not far away and sat staring malevolently at the first. Then came a little procession of big-leg lobsters, a dozen or more gaudy blue and purple creatures with swollen orange haunches, that marched from the water with great determination and quickly began to dig themselves into the mud. They were followed by red-eyed scallops dancing on wiry little yellow legs, and little angular white-faced hatchet-eels, and even some fish, that lay helplessly flopping about as the crabs of the shore fell upon them.

  The Liimen nodded to each other in rising excitement. Only one thing could cause the creatures of the offshore shallows to stray up onto the land this way. The musky smell of the sea dragons, preceding the dragons themselves by a little while, must have begun to pervade the water.

  “Look now,” the eldest male said shortly.

  Out of the south came the vanguard of the dragons, two or three dozen immense beasts holding their black leathery wings spread high and wide and their long massive necks curving upward and out like great bows. Serenely they moved into the groves of seaweed and began to harvest them: slapping their wings against the surface of the water, stirring turmoil among the creatures of the seaweed, striking with sudden ferocity, gulping weed and lobsters and rip-toads and everything else, indiscriminately. These giants were males. Behind them swam a little group of females, roll
ing from side to side in the manner of pregnant cows to display their bulging flanks; and after them, by himself, the king of the herd, a dragon so big he looked like the upturned hull of some great capsized vessel, and that was only the half of him, for he let his haunches and tail dangle out of sight below the surface.

  “Down and give praise,” said the eldest male, and fell to his knees.

  With the seven long bony fingers of his outstretched left hand he made the sign of the sea dragon again and again: the fluttering wings, the swooping neck. He bent forward and rubbed his cheek against the cool moist sand. He lifted his head and looked toward the sea-dragon king, who now was no more than two hundred yards off shore, and tried by sheer force of will to urge the great beast toward the land.

  —Come to us … come … come …

  —Now is the time. We have waited so long. Come …save us … lead us … save us …

  —Come!

  10

  With a mechanical flourish he signed his name to what seemed like the ten thousandth official document of the day: Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and Regent. He scribbled the date next to his name, and one of Valentine’s secretaries selected another sheaf of papers and put it down in front of him.

  This was Elidath’s day for signing things. It seemed to be a necessary weekly ordeal. Every Twoday afternoon since Lord Valentine’s departure he left his own headquarters in the Pinitor Court and came over to the Coronal’s official suite here in the inner Castle, and sat himself down at Lord Valentine’s magnificent desk, a great polished slab of deep red palisander with a vivid grain that resembled the starburst emblem, and for hours the secretaries took their turns handing him papers that had come up from the various branches of the government for final approval. Even with the Coronal off on his grand processional, the wheels continued to turn, the unending spew of decrees and revisions of decrees and abrogations of decrees poured forth. And everything had to be signed by the Coronal or his designated regent, the Divine only knew why. One more: Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and Regent. And the date. There.

  “Give me the next,” Elidath said.

  In the beginning he had conscientiously tried to read, or at least to skim, every document before affixing his signature. Then he had settled for reading the little summary, eight or ten lines long, that each document bore clipped to its cover. But he had given up even that, long ago, Did Valentine read them all? he wondered. Impossible. Even if he read only the summaries, he would spend all his days and nights at it, with no time left to eat or sleep, let alone to carry out the real responsibilities of his office. By now Elidath signed most without even glancing at them. For all he knew or cared, he might be signing a proclamation forbidding the eating of sausages on Winterday, or one that made rainfall illegal in Stoienzar Province, or even a decree confiscating all his own lands and turning them over to the retirement fund for administrative secretaries. He signed anyway. A king—or a king’s understudy—must have faith in the competence of his staff, or the job becomes not merely overwhelming but downright unthinkable.

  He signed. Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and—

  “Next!”

  He still felt a little guilty not reading them anymore. But did the Coronal really need to know that a treaty had been reached between the cities of Muldemar and Tidias, concerning the joint management of certain vineyards the title to which had been in dispute since the seventh year of the Pontifex Thimin and the Coronal Lord Kinniken? No. No. Sign and move on to other things, Elidath thought, and let Muldemar and Tidias rejoice in their new amity without troubling the king about it.

  Elidath of Morvole—

  As he reached for the next and began to search for the place to sign, a secretary said, “Sir, the lords Mirigant and Divvis are here.”

  “Have them come in,” he replied without looking up.

  Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and Regent—

  The lords Mirigant and Divvis, counsellors of the inner circle, cousin and nephew respectively of Lord Valentine, met him every afternoon about this time, so that he could go running with them through the streets of the Castle, and thereby purge his taut-nerved body of some of the tension that this regency was engendering in him. He had scarcely any other opportunity for exercise these days: the daily jaunt with them was an invaluable safety valve for him.

  He managed to sign two more documents during the time that they were entering the huge room, so splendidly paneled with strips of bannikop and semotan and other rare woods, and making their way toward him with a clatter of booted feet against the elaborately inlaid floor. He picked up a third, telling himself that it would be the last one he’d do this day. It was merely a single sheet, and somehow Elidath found himself idly scanning it as he signed: a patent of nobility, no less, raising some fortunate commoner to the rank of Initiate Knight of Castle Mount, in recognition of his high merit and greatly valued services and this and that—

  “What are you signing now?” Divvis asked, leaning across the desk and penciling at the paper in front of Elidath. He was a big, heavy-shouldered, dark-bearded man, who as he came into his middle years was taking on an eerie resemblance to his father, the former Coronal. “Is Valentine lowering taxes again? Or has he decided to make Carabella’s birthday a holiday?”

  Accustomed though he was to Divvis’s brand of wit, Elidath had no taste for it after a day of such dreary meaningless work. Sudden anger flared in him. “Do you mean the Lady Carabella?” he snapped.

  Divvis seemed startled. “Oh, are we so formal today, High Counsellor Elidath?”

  “If I happened to refer to your late father simply as Voriax, I can imagine what you—”

  “My father was Coronal,” said Divvis in a cold, tight voice, “and deserves the respect we give a departed king. Whereas the Lady Carabella is merely—”

  “The Lady Carabella, cousin, is the consort of your present king,” said Mirigant sharply, turning on Divvis with more anger than Elidath had ever seen that kindly man display. “And also, I remind you, she is the wife of your father’s brother. For two reasons, then—”

  “All right,” Elidath said wearily. “Enough of this foolishness. Are we going to run this afternoon?”

  Divvis laughed. “If you’re not too tired from all this Coronaling you’ve been doing.”

  “I’d like nothing better,” said Elidath, “to run down the Mount from here to Morvole, taking maybe five months of good easy striding to get there, and then to spend the next three years pruning my orchards and—ah! Yes, I’ll come running with you. Let me finish just this one last paper—”

  “The Lady Carabella’s birthday holiday,” said Divvis, smiling.

  “A patent of nobility,” Elidath said. “Which will, if you’ll keep quiet long enough, give us a new Knight-Initiate, a certain Hissune son of Elsinome, it says here, resident of the Pontifical Labyrinth, in recognition of his high merit and—”

  “Hissune son of Elsinome?” Divvis whooped. “Do you know who that is, Elidath?”

  “Why should I be expected to know any such thing?”

  “Think back to Valentine’s restoration ceremony, when he insisted on having all those unlikely people with us in the Confalume throne room—his jugglers and the Skandar sea-captain with the missing arm and the Hjort with orange whiskers and the rest. Do you remember a boy there too?”

  “Shanamir, you mean?”

  “No, an even younger boy! A small skinny boy, ten or eleven years old, with no respect for anybody, a boy with the eyes of a thief, who went around asking embarrassing questions, and wheedling people into letting him have their medals and decorations, and pinning them all over his tunic and staring at himself endlessly in mirrors? That boy’s name was Hissune!”

  “The little Labyrinth boy,” said Mirigant, “who made everyone promise to hire him as a guide if they ever came to the Labyrinth. I remember him, yes. A very clever rascal, I’d say.”

  “That rascal is now a Knight-Initiate,” Divvis said.
“Or will be, if Elidath doesn’t tear up that sheet of paper that he’s staring at so blankly. You aren’t going to approve this, are you, Elidath?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “A Knight-Initiate who comes from the Labyrinth?”

  Elidath shrugged. “Wouldn’t matter to me if he was a Shapeshifter out of Ilirivoyne. I’m not here to overrule the Coronal’s decisions. If Valentine says Knight-Initiate, Knight-Initiate he is, whether he be rascal, fisherman, sausage peddler, Metamorph, dung sweeper—”

  Quickly he inscribed the date beside his signature. “There. Done! Now the boy’s as noble as you are, Divvis.”

  Divvis drew himself up pompously. “My father was the Coronal Lord Voriax. My grandfather was the High Counsellor Damiandane. My great-grandfather was—”

  “Yes. We know all that. And I say, the boy is just as noble as you are now, Divvis. This paper says so. As some similar paper said for some ancestor of yours, I know not how long ago and certainly not why. Or do you think being noble is something innate, like Skandars having four arms and dark fur?”

  “Your temper is short today, Elidath.”

  “So it is. Therefore make allowances for me, and try not to be so tiresome.”

  “Forgive me, then,” said Divvis, not very contritely.

  Elidath stood and stretched and peered out the great curving window before the Coronal’s desk. It afforded a stupendous view into the open abyss of air that dropped away from the summit of Castle Mount on this side of the royal complex. Two mighty black raptors, wholly at home in these dizzying altitudes, flew in great arrogant arcs about one another out there, sunlight rebounding dazzlingly from the crest of glassy feathers on their golden heads, and Elidath, watching the easy unfettered movements of the huge birds, found himself envying their freedom to soar in those infinite spaces. He shook his head slowly. The day’s toil had left him groggy. Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and Regent—