Lord Valentine's Castle

by Robert Silverberg

  “Thoughtful! Primitive gasbags, no cleverer than a sponge!”

  “But look carefully at them, Carabella. They want to fly, to soar—they look up at the sky, at the whole world of the air, and long to encounter it, but all they can do is hang below the waves, and sway, and fill themselves with invisible organisms. Just in front of their face lies another world, and it would be death to them to enter it. Are you untouched by that?”

  “Silly,” Carabella said.

  On the second day in the channel the Rodamaunt Queen came upon five fishing-boats that had uprooted a volevant, brought it to the surface, and slit it into gores; they clustered about the huge outspread skin of it, cutting it into smaller sections and stacking them like hides on their decks. Valentine was appalled. When I am Coronal again, he thought, I will prohibit the killing of these creatures, and then he looked at the thought in amazement, asking himself if it was his intention to promulgate laws on the basis of sympathies alone, without study of the facts. He asked Namurinta what use was made of volevant-skin.

  “Medicinal,” she replied. “For the comfort of the very old, when their blood flows sluggishly. One of them provides enough of the drug for all the islands for a year or more: what you see is a rare event.”

  When I am Coronal again, Valentine resolved, I will reserve judgment until I am in full possession of the truth, if such a thing is ever possible.

  Nevertheless, the imagined solemn profundity of the volevants haunted him with strange emotions, and he was relieved to pass beyond their zone, and into the cool blue waters that bordered the Isle of Sleep.

  7

  The Isle now lay clearly in view to the east, growing perceptibly larger every hour. Valentine had seen it only in dreams and fantasies, and those based on nothing but his own imaginings and whatever residue of remembered reality still encrusted his mind; and he was not at all prepared for the actuality of the place.

  It was immense. That should not have been surprising on a planet itself gigantic, and where so many things were on a scale with the planetary dimensions. But Valentine had misled himself into thinking an island necessarily was something of convenient and accessible scope. He had expected something perhaps two or three times as big as Rodamaunt Graun, which was foolishness: the Isle of Sleep, he saw now, spanned the entire horizon and looked as large from this distance as had the coast of Zimroel when they were a day or two out of Piliplok. An island it was, but by that token so too were Zimroel and Alhanroel and Suvrael; and the only reason the Isle was not called a continent, as were they, was that they were colossal, and the Isle merely very big.

  And the Isle was dazzling. Like the promontory across the mouth of the river from Piliplok, it was ramparted by cliffs of pure white chalk that blazed brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight. They formed a wall hundreds of feet high and perhaps hundreds of miles in length across the western face of the Isle. Atop that wall spread a dark green crown of forest, and, so it seemed, there was a second wall of chalk inland at a higher elevation, topped also by forest, and then a third yet farther from the sea, so that the Isle from this side gave an appearance of tier upon tier of brightness, rising to some unknown and perhaps inaccessible central fastness. He had heard of the terraces of the Isle, which he gathered were artificial constructs of great age, symbolic markers of the ascent toward initiation. But the island itself seemed a place of terraces, natural ones, that enhanced its mystery. Small wonder that this place had become the abode of the sacred on Majipoor.

  Namurinta said, pointing, “That notch in the cliff is Taleis, where the pilgrim-ships land. It’s one of the Isle’s two harbors; the other’s Numinor, over around Alhanroel side. But you must know all this, being pilgrims.”

  “We have had little time to study,” said Valentine. “This pilgrimage came on us suddenly.”

  “Will you pass the rest of your lives here in the service of the Lady?” she asked.

  “In the service of the Lady, yes,” Valentine said. “But I think not here. The Isle is only a way station for some of us on a much greater journey.”

  Namurinta looked puzzled at that, but she asked no further questions.

  The wind blew briskly from the southwest here, and carried the Rodamaunt Queen easily and swiftly toward Taleis. Soon the great chalk wall altogether filled the view, and the opening in it was revealed as no mere notch, but a harbor of heroic size, a huge gouge in the whiteness. With sails full, the trimaran entered. Valentine, in the bow, hair streaming in the breeze, was awestruck by the scope of the place, for within the sharp-angled V that was Taleis the cliffs descended almost vertically toward the water from a height of a mile or more, and at their base was a flat strip of land bordered by a broad white beach. At one side were wharfs and piers and docks, everything dwarfed by the scale of this gigantic amphitheater. It was hard to imagine how one could get from this port at the foot of the cliffs to the interior of the island: the place was a natural fortress.

  And it was silent. There were no vessels in the harbor and an eerie echoing quietness prevailed, against which the sound of the wind or the screeching of an occasional gull took on magnified significance.

  “Is there anyone here?” Sleet asked. “Who will greet us?”

  Carabella closed her eyes. “To have to go around to the Numinor side now—worse, to return to the Archipelago—”

  “No,” Deliamber said. “We will be met. Fear nothing.”

  The trimaran glided toward the shore and came to rest at a vacant pier. The grandeur of the surroundings was overwhelming here, deep in the V of the harbor, with the cliffs rising so high they seemed to be on the verge of toppling. A crewman made the boat fast and they stepped forth.

  Deliamber’s confidence seemed misplaced. There was no one here. Everything remained still, a silence so mighty that Valentine wanted to put his hands to his ears to shut it out. They waited. They exchanged uncertain glances.

  “Let’s explore,” he said finally. “Lisamon, Khun, Zalzan Kavol—examine the buildings to our left. Sleet, Deliamber, Vinorkis, Shanamir—down that way. You, Pandelon, Thesme, Rovorn—to that curve of the beach, and look beyond it. Gorzval, Erfon—”

  Valentine, with Carabella and the sailmender Cordeine, went straight ahead, to the foot of the titanic chalk cliffs. Some sort of pathway began there, and angled upward at an impossible slope, close to vertical, toward the upper reaches of the cliff, where it vanished between two white spires. Climbing that path would require the agility of a forest-brother and the gall of a tandy-prancer, Valentine decided. Yet no other place of exit from the beach was apparent. He peered into the small wooden shack at the base of the path and found nothing but a few floater-sleds, presumably used in riding the path. He hauled one out, set it on the thrusting-pad at ground level, and mounted it; but he saw no way of activating it.

  Baffled, he returned to the pier. Most of the others had come back already. “The place is deserted,” said Sleet.

  Valentine looked toward Namurinta. “How long would it take you to carry us around to the Alhanroel side?”

  “To Numinor? Weeks. But I would not go there.”

  “We have money,” said Zalzan Kavol.

  She looked indifferent. “My trade is fishing. The time of harvest for the thorn-fish is at hand. If I take you to Numinor, I will miss it, and half the gissoon season as well. You could not recompense me for that.”

  The Skandar produced a five-royal piece, as though by its glitter alone he could change the captain’s mind. But she shook it away.

  “For half of what you paid me to bring you from Rodamaunt Graun to here, I’ll return you to Rodamaunt Graun, but that’s the best I can do for you. In a few months the pilgrim-ships will be sailing again and this harbor will come to life, and then, if you wish, I’ll bring you here again for the same half fee. However you decide, I am at your service. But I will sail from this place before it grows dark, and not for Numinor.”

  Valentine considered the situation. This was a greater nuisance than bei
ng swallowed by the sea-dragon; for he had quickly enough been set free from that, but this unexpected obstacle threatened to delay him well into winter, or even beyond, and all this while Dominin Barjazid ruled at Castle Mount, new laws went forth, history was altered, the usurper consolidated his position. But what, then? He glanced at Deliamber, but the wizard, though he looked bland and untroubled, offered no suggestions. They could not climb this wall. They could not fly it. They could not leap in mighty bounds to the unreachable, infinitely desirable forest groves that cloaked its shoulders. Back to Rodamaunt Graun, then?

  “Will you wait with us here a day?” Valentine asked. “For an additional fee, that is? Possibly in the morning we’ll find someone who—”

  “I am far from Rodamaunt Graun,” Namurinta replied. “I yearn to see its shores again. Waiting here another hour, even, would gain you nothing and me even less. The season is wrong; the people of the Lady expect no one to arrive at Taleis, and will not be here.”

  Shanamir tugged lightly at Valentine’s sleeve. “You are Coronal of Majipoor,” the boy whispered. “Command her to wait! Reveal yourself and force her to her knees!”

  Smiling, Valentine said softly, “I think the trick might not work. I’ve left my crown elsewhere.”

  “Then have Deliamber witch her into yielding!”

  That was a possibility. But Valentine disliked it: Namurinta had taken them on in good faith, and by rights was free to leave, and probably was correct that waiting here another day or two or three was pointless. Compelling her to yield by Deliamber’s powers was distasteful to him. On the other hand—

  “Lord Valentine!” a woman’s voice called, far away. “Here! Come!”

  He looked toward the far end of the harbor. It was Pandelon, Gorzval’s carpenter, who had gone with Thesme and Rovorn to inspect what lay around the curve. She was waving, beckoning. He sprinted down toward her, the others following after a moment.

  When he reached her she led him through the shallow water around a jutting fold of rock that concealed a much smaller beach. There he saw a single-story structure of pink sandstone that bore the triangle-within-triangle emblem of the Lady and was perhaps some sort of shrine. In front of it was a garden of flowering shrubs arranged in symmetrical patterns of red, blue, orange, and yellow blossoms. Two gardeners, a man and a woman, were tending it. They looked up without interest as Valentine approached. Awkwardly he made the sign of the Lady at them, and they returned it more adeptly.

  He said, “We are pilgrims, and need to be told the way to the terraces.”

  “You come out of season,” the woman said. Her face was wide and pale, with a sprinkling of pale freckles on it. There was nothing friendly in her voice.

  “Because of our eagerness to enter into the Lady’s service.”

  The woman shrugged and returned to her weeding. The man, a thick-muscled, short-statured person with thinning gray hair, said, “You should have gone to Numinor at this time of year.”

  “We came from Zimroel.”

  That produced a minor flicker of attention. “Through the dragon-winds? You must have had a difficult crossing.”

  “There were some troublesome moments,” Valentine said, “but they lie behind us now. We feel only joy at having reached this Isle at last.”

  “The Lady will comfort you,” said the man indifferently, and he began to work with a pruning-shears.

  After a moment of silence that grew swiftly dismaying, Valentine said, “And the way to the terraces?”

  The freckled woman said, “You won’t be able to operate it.”

  “But will you help us?”

  Silence again.

  Valentine said, “It would be only a moment, and then we’d disturb you no more. Show us the way.”

  “We have our duties here,” said the balding man.

  Valentine moistened his lips. This was leading nowhere; and for all he knew, Namurinta had left the other beach five minutes ago and was on her way back to Rodamaunt Graun, marooning them. He looked to Deliamber. Some wizardly compulsion might be in order. Deliamber ignored the hint. Valentine moved toward him and murmured, “Touch your tentacles to them and inspire them to cooperate.”

  “I think my sorceries are of little value on this holy Isle,” said Deliamber. “Try wizardries of your own.”

  “I have none!”

  “Try,” said the Vroon.

  Valentine confronted the gardeners once again. I am Coronal of Majipoor, he told himself, and I am the son of the Lady whom these two worship and serve. It was impossible to say any of that to the gardeners, but he could transmit it, perhaps, through sheer force of soul. He stood tall and moved toward the center of his being, as he would have done if he were preparing to juggle before the most critical of audiences, and he smiled a smile so warm it might have opened buds on the branches of the flowering shrubs, and after a moment the gardeners, looking up from their work, saw it and showed an unmistakable response, a reaction of surprise, bewilderment, and—submission. He bathed them in glowing love. “We have come thousands of miles,” he said gently, “to give ourselves up to the peace of the Lady, and we beg you, in the name of the Divine that we both serve, to assist us on our pathway; for our need is great and we are weary of wandering.”

  They blinked, as if the sun had emerged from behind a gray cloud.

  “We have our tasks,” said the woman lamely.

  “We are not supposed to ascend until the garden is cared for,” the man said, almost in a mumble.

  “The garden thrives,” said Valentine, “and will thrive without your aid for a few hours today. Help us, before the darkness comes. We ask only that you point us on our way, and I tell you that the Lady will reward you for it.”

  The gardeners looked troubled. They glanced at one another, and then toward the sky, as though to see how late it was. Frowning, they rose and brushed the sandy soil from their knees, and, like sleepwalkers, moved to the water’s edge, and out into the light surf, and around the point to the greater beach, and down toward the foot of the cliff where that vertical path began its skyward climb.

  Namurinta was still there, but she was nearly ready for departure. Valentine went to her.

  “For your aid we thank you deeply,” he said.

  “You are staying?”

  “We have found a way to the terraces.”

  She smiled in unfeigned pleasure. “I was not eager to abandon you, but Rodamaunt Graun was calling me. I wish you well as you make your pilgrimage.”

  “And I wish you a safe voyage home.”

  He turned away.

  “One thing,” the captain said.

  “Yes?”

  “When the woman called to you from down there,” she said, “she hailed you as Lord Valentine. What was the meaning of that?”

  “A joke,” said Valentine. “Only a joke.”

  “Lord Valentine is how the new Coronal is named, so I have been told, the one that rules since a year or two past.”

  “Yes,” Valentine said. “But he is a dark-haired man. It was only a joke, a play on names, for I am Valentine too. A safe journey, Namurinta.”

  “A fruitful pilgrimage, Valentine.”

  He walked toward the cliff. The gardeners had taken several of the floater-sleds from the shack, and had placed them in riding sequence on the thrusting-pad. Silently they gestured the travelers aboard. Valentine mounted the first sled, with Carabella, Deliamber, Shanamir, and Khun. The female gardener went into the shack, where, it seemed, the controls of the floaters must be located, for an instant afterward the sled drifted free of the pad and began the dizzying, terrifying ascent of the towering white cliff.

  8

  “You have come,” said the acolyte Talinot Esulde, “to the Terrace of Assessment. Here you will be weighed in the balance. When it is time to move onward, your path takes you to the Terrace of Inception, and then to the Terrace of Mirrors, where you will confront yourself. If what you see is satisfactory to you and your guides, you move inward to
Second Cliff, where another group of terraces awaits you. And so you proceed until the Terrace of Adoration. There, if the favor of the Lady is upon you, you will receive your summons to Inner Temple. But I would not expect that to happen quickly. I would not expect that to happen at all. Those who expect to attain the Lady are the least likely to reach her.”

  Valentine’s mood darkened at that, for not only did he expect to attain the Lady, it was absolutely vital that he do so; and yet he understood what the acolyte was saying. In this holy place one made no demands on the fabric of existence. One surrendered; one gave up demands and needs and desires; one yielded, if one hoped to find peace. This was no place for a Coronal. The essence of a Coronal’s being was the wielding of power, wisely if he was capable of wisdom, but in any event steadfastly; the essence of a pilgrim was surrender. In that contradiction he might easily be lost. Yet he had no choice but to go to the Lady.

  He had, at least, reached the outer fringes of the Lady’s domain. At the top of the cliff they had been greeted by unsurprised acolytes, plainly aware that out-of-season pilgrims were floating toward them. And now, looking pious and faintly absurd in the soft pale robes of pilgrims, they were gathered in a low long building of smooth pink stone near the crest of the cliff. Flags of the same pink stone formed a massive semicircular promenade that stretched for what appeared to be a great distance along the edge of the forest that topped the cliff: this was the Terrace of Assessment. Beyond it lay more forest; the other terraces were farther beyond; and deeper in, not visible from where they were now, rose the second chalk cliff atop the plateau that the outer one formed. A third cliff yet, Valentine knew, rose above the second somewhere hundreds of miles inland, and this was the holiest precinct, where Inner Temple was, where the Lady dwelled. For all that he had traveled so far, it seemed impossible that he would ever complete those last few hundreds of miles.