Valentine Pontifex Read online

  Hissune had not expected that. A great surge of excitement arose in him. Zimroel too! That unimaginably distant place of forests and vast rivers and great cities, more than half legendary to him—magical cities with magical names—

  “Ah, if that is the new plan, how splendid it sounds, my lord!” he said, smiling broadly. “I had thought never to see that land, except in dreams! Will we go to Ni-moya? And Pidruid, Til-omon, Narabal—”

  “Quite likely I will,” said the Coronal in an oddly flat voice that fell upon Hissune’s ears like a cudgel.

  “I, my lord?” said Hissune with sudden alarm.

  Softly Lord Valentine said, “Another of the changes of plan. You will not be accompanying me on the grand processional.”

  A terrible chill swept through Hissune then, as if the wind that blows between the stars had descended and was scouring out the deepest chambers of the Labyrinth. He trembled, and his soul shriveled under that cold blast, and he felt himself withering away to a husk.

  “Am I then dismissed from your service, lordship?”

  “Dismissed? Not at all! Surely you understand that I have important plans for you!”

  “So you have said, several times, my lord. But the processional—”

  “Is not the right preparation for the tasks you someday will be called upon to perform. No, Hissune, I can’t afford to let you spend the next year or two bounding around from province to province at my side. You’re to leave for Castle Mount as soon as possible.”

  “Castle Mount, my lord?”

  “To begin the training appropriate to a knight-initiate.”

  “My lord?” said Hissune in amazement.

  “You are—what, eighteen? So you’re years behind the others. But you’re quick: you’ll make up for the lost time, you’ll rise to your true level soon enough. You must, Hissune. We have no idea what evil is about to come upon our world, but I know now that I must expect the worst, and prepare for it by preparing others to stand beside me when the worst arrives. So there will be no grand processional for you, Hissune.”

  “I understand, my lord.”

  “Do you? Yes, I think you do. There’ll be time later for you to see Piliplok and Ni-moya and Pidruid, won’t there? But now—now—”

  Hissune nodded, though in truth he hardly dared to think that he comprehended what Lord Valentine appeared to be telling him. For a long moment the Coronal stared at him; and Hissune met the gaze of those weary blue eyes steadily and evenly, though he was beginning to feel an exhaustion beyond anything he had ever known. The audience, he realized, had come to its end, though no word of dismissal had been uttered. In silence he made the starburst gesture and backed from the room.

  He wanted nothing more than sleep now, a week of it, a month. This bewildering night had drained him of all his strength. Only two days ago this same Lord Valentine had summoned him to this very room, and told him to make ready at once to leave the Labyrinth, for he was to set forth as part of the royal entourage that was making the grand processional through Alhanroel; and yesterday he had been named one of the Coronal’s aides, and given a seat at the high table of tonight’s banquet; and now the banquet had come and gone in mysterious chaos, and he had beheld the Coronal haggard and all too human in his confusion, and the gift of the grand processional had been snatched back, and now—Castle Mount? A knight-initiate? Making up for lost time? Making up what? Life has become a dream, Hissune thought. And there is no one who can speak it for me.

  In the hallway outside the Coronal’s suite, Sleet caught him suddenly by the wrist and pulled him close. Hissune sensed the strange power of the man, the taut energies coiled within him.

  “Just to tell you, boy—I meant no personal enmity, when I spoke so harshly to you in there.”

  “I never took it that way.”

  “Good. Good. I want no enmity with you.”

  “Nor I with you, Sleet.”

  “I think we’ll have much work to do together, you and I, when the war comes.”

  “If the war comes.”

  Sleet smiled bleakly. “There’s no doubt of it. But I won’t fight that battle with you all over again just now. You’ll come over to my way of thinking soon enough. Valentine can’t see trouble until trouble’s biting at his boots—it’s his nature, he’s too sweet, has too much faith in the good will of others, I think—but you’re different, eh, boy? You walk with your eyes open. I think that’s what the Coronal prizes the most in you. Do you follow what I say?”

  “It’s been a long night, Sleet.”

  “So it has. Get some sleep, boy. If you can.”

  THE FIRST RAYS OF morning sun touched the ragged gray muddy shore of southeastern Zimroel and lit that somber coast with a pale green glow. The coming of dawn brought instant wakefulness to the five Liimen camped in a torn, many-times-patched tent on the flank of a dune a few hundred yards from the sea. Without a word they rose, scooped handfuls of damp sand, rubbed it over the rough, pockmarked gray-black skin of their chests and arms to make the morning ablution. When they left the tent, they turned toward the west, where a few faint stars still glowed in the dark sky, and offered their salute.

  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 sand-storms. 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 into 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-to’s 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, rolling 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!

  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.