The Labyrinth grew darker and more intricate as they went downward. Only the outermost level was well lit. The circles within it were shadowy and sinister, with dim corridors radiating in unlikely directions from the main ones, and hints of strange statuary and architectural ornamentation vaguely visible in the musty, dismal corners. Valentine found the place disturbing. It reeked of mildew and history; it had the chill clamminess of unimaginable antiquity; it was sunless and airless and joyless, a giant cavern of forlorn dreary gloom, through which scowling harsh-eyed figures moved on errands as mysterious as their own somber selves.
Down—down—down—
The boy maintained a constant flow of chatter. He was marvelously articulate, lively and funny, somehow not at all a proper product of this morbid place. He told of tourists from Ni-moya who had been lost between the Hall of Winds and Place of Masks for a month, living on scraps provided by lower-level dwellers, but too proud to admit they were unable to find their way out. He told of the architect of the Court of Globes who had aligned every spheroid in that elaborate chamber with regard to some monumentally complex numerological system, only to find that the workmen, having lost the key to his charts, had installed everything according to an improvised system of their own: he had bankrupted himself to rebuild the whole thing in the right deployment at his own expense, discovering in the end that his computations were wrong and the pattern was impossible. “They buried him right where he fell,” said Hissune. And the boy told the tale of the Pontifex Arioc, he who had, when a vacancy developed in the Ladyship, proclaimed himself female, appointed himself to the Isle, and abdicated his throne: barefoot and clad in loose flowing robes, the boy said, Arioc marched publicly out of the depths of the Labyrinth, followed by a cluster of his highest ministers, who frantically tried to dissuade him from his course. “On this spot,” said Hissune, “he called the people together and told them he was now their Lady, and ordered up a chariot to take him to Stoien. And the ministers could do nothing. Nothing! I wish I had seen their faces.”
Down—
All day the caravan descended. They passed through the Court of Columns, where thousands of huge gray pillars sprouted like titanic toadstools, and sluggish pools of oily black water covered the stone floor to a depth of three or four feet. They crossed the Hall of Winds, a terrifying place where cold gusts of air streamed inexplicably from finely carved stone grids in the walls. They saw the Place of Masks, a twisting corridor in which giant bodiless faces, with blind empty slits for eyes, stood mounted on marble plinths. They viewed the Court of Pyramids, a forest of stark white polyhedral figures set so close together that it was impossible to move between them, a spiky-tipped maze of monoliths, some perfectly tetrahedral but most weirdly elongated, spindly, ominous. A level below it they wandered in the celebrated Court of Globes, an even more complex structure a mile and a half long, where spherical objects, some no larger than a fist and others as big as great sea-dragons, hung eerily and invisibly suspended, illuminated from below. Hissune took care to point out the architect’s grave—unmarked, a slab of black stone beneath the greatest of the globes.
Down—down—
Valentine had seen nothing of this on his earlier visit. From the Mouth of Waters one descended swiftly, through passageways used only by the Coronal and Pontifex, to the imperial lair at the heart of the Labyrinth.
Someday, thought Valentine, if I am Coronal again, it will happen that I must succeed Tyeveras as Pontifex. And when that day comes I will let the people know that I do not choose to live in the Labyrinth, but will build a palace for myself in some more cheering place.
He smiled. He wondered how many Coronals before him, seeing the hideous enormity of the Labyrinth, had vowed the same vow. And yet somehow they all, sooner or later, withdrew from the world and took up residence down here. It was easy enough now, when he was young and full of vitality, to make such resolutions—easy enough to think of taking the Pontificate out of Alhanroel altogether, off to some congenial spot on the younger continent, Ni-moya, perhaps, or Dulorn, and live among beauty and delight. He found it hard to imagine himself voluntarily walling himself up in this fantastic and repellent Labyrinth. But yet, but yet, they had all done it before him, Dekkeret and Confalume and Prestimion and Stiamot and Kinniken and the others of times gone by, they had moved from Castle Mount to this dark hole when their moment came. Perhaps it was not as bad as it seemed. Perhaps when one is Coronal long enough one is glad to retire from the heights of Castle Mount. I will think more of these matters, Valentine told himself, when the appropriate time is at hand.
The caravan of floater-cars executed a hairpin turn and entered yet a lower level.
“The Arena,” Hissune announced grandly.
Valentine stared into a huge hollow chamber, so great in length and width that he was unable to see its walls, only the twinkling of distant lights in the shadowed corners. There were no visible supports to its ceiling. It was astonishing to think of the massive weight of the upper levels, those millions of people, those endless winding streets and alleyways, those buildings and statues and vehicles and all, pressing down on the roof of the Arena, and this vast nothingness resisting the colossal pressure.
“Listen,” said Hissune. He scrambled out of the car, put his hands to his mouth, and unleashed a piercing cry. And echoes returned, sharp stabbing sounds bouncing from this wall and that, the first few magnified in sound, the rest diminished until they were no more than the twittering chirping sounds of droles. He sent forth another cry, and another on its heels, so that sounds crashed and reverberated all about them for more than a minute. Then, with a self-satisfied smirk, the boy returned to the car.
“What purpose does this place serve?” Valentine asked.
“None.”
“None? None at all?”
“It’s just an emptiness. The Pontifex Dizimaule wanted a large empty space here. Nothing ever happens in it. No one’s allowed to build in it, not that anyone would want to. It just sits. It makes good echoes, don’t you think? That’s the only use it has. Go on, Valentine, make an echo.”
Valentine smiled and shook his head. “Another time,” he said.
Crossing the Arena seemed to take all day. On and on they went, never once seeing a wall or a column; it was like traversing an open plain, except for the vaguely visible ceiling far above. Nor was Valentine able to discern the moment when they began to leave the Arena. He realized after a time that the floor of the place had turned somehow into a ramp, and that they had made an imperceptible transition to a lower level that returned to the familiar claustrophobic closeness of the Labyrinth’s coils. As they proceeded down this new semicircular corridor it grew gradually more brightly lit, until soon it was nearly as well illuminated as that level close to the mouth where the shops and markets were. Ahead, rising to an extraordinary height directly before them, was a screen of some sort on which inscriptions in brilliant luminous colors could be seen.
Hissune said, “We are coming to the House of Records. I can go with you no farther.”
Indeed the road terminated in a five-sided plaza in front of the great screen—which, Valentine now saw, was a kind of chronicle of Majipoor. Down its left-hand side were the names of the Coronals, a list so long that he could scarcely read its upper reaches. Down the right was the corresponding list of Pontifexes. Beside each name was the date of reign.
His eyes searched the lists. Hundreds, hundreds of names, some the familiar ones, the great resonant names of the planet’s history, Stiamot, Thimin, Confalume, Dekkeret, Prestimion, and some that were only meaningless arrangements of letters, names that Valentine had seen when as a boy he had whiled away rainy afternoons reading the lists of the Powers, but that had no significance other than that they were on the list—Prankipin and Hunzimar and Meyk and Struin and Scaul and Spurifon, men who had held power on Castle Mount and then in the Labyrinth a thousand years ago, three thousand, five, had been the center of all conversation, the object of all homage
, had danced across the imperial stage and done their little show and vanished into history. Lord Spurifon, he thought. Lord Scaul. Who were they? What color was their hair, what games did they enjoy, what laws had they decreed, how calmly and bravely had they met their deaths? What impact had they had on the lives of the billions of Majipoor, or had they none? Some, Valentine saw, had ruled only a few years as Coronal, carried off quickly to the Labyrinth by the death of a Pontifex. And some had occupied the summit of Castle Mount for a generation. This Lord Meyk, Coronal for thirty years, and Pontifex for—Valentine scanned the dizzying lists—Pontifex for twenty more. Fifty years of supreme power, and who knew anything of Lord Meyk and Meyk the Pontifex today?
He looked toward the bottom of the lists, where they trailed off into blankness. Lord Tyeveras—Lord Malibor—Lord Voriax—Lord Valentine—
That was where the left-hand list ended, of course. Lord Valentine, reign three years old and unfinished—
Lord Valentine, at least, would be remembered. Not for him the oblivion of the Spurifons and Scauls; for they would tell the tale on Majipoor, for generations to come, of the dark-haired young Coronal who was cast by treachery into a fair-haired body, and lost his throne to the son of the King of Dreams. But what would they say of him? That he was a guileless fool, as comic a figure as Arioc who made himself Lady of the Isle? That he was a weakling who had failed to guard himself against evil? That he had suffered an astounding fall, and had valiantly regained his place? How would the history of Lord Valentine be told, a thousand years hence? One thing he prayed, as he stood before the great list of the House of Records: let it not be said of Lord Valentine that he regained his throne with magnificent heroism, and then ruled feebly and aimlessly for fifty years. Better to abandon the Castle to the Barjazid than to be known for that.
Hissune tugged at his hand.
“Valentine?”
He looked down, startled.
The boy said, “I leave you here. The people of the Pontifex will come for you soon.”
“Thank you, Hissune, for all you’ve done. But how will you get back by yourself?”
Hissune winked. “It won’t be by walking, I promise you that.” He peered solemnly up and said, after a pause, “Valentine?”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you supposed to have dark hair and a beard?”
Valentine laughed. “You think I’m the Coronal?”
“Oh, I know you are! It’s written all over your face. Only—only your face is wrong.”
“It’s not a bad face,” said Valentine lightly. “A little more kindly than my old one, and maybe more handsome. I think I’m going to keep it. I suppose whoever had it first has no more need for it now.”
The boy’s eyes were wide. “Are you in disguise, then?”
“You might say that.”
“I thought so.” He put his small hand in Valentine’s. “Well, good luck, Valentine. If you ever come back to the Labyrinth, ask for me and I’ll be your guide again, and the next time for free. Remember my name: Hissune.”
“Good-bye, Hissune.”
The boy winked again, and was gone.
Valentine looked toward the great screen of history.
Lord Tyeveras—Lord Malibor—Lord Voriax—Lord Valentine—
And perhaps someday Lord Hissune, he thought. Why not? The boy seemed at least as qualified as many who had ruled, and probably would have had sense enough not to drink Dominin Barjazid’s drugged wine. I must remember him, he told himself, I must remember him.
6
From a gateway at the far side of the plaza of the House of Records now came three figures, a Hjort and two humans, in the masks of Labyrinthine officialdom. Unhurriedly they advanced toward the place where Valentine stood with Deliamber, Sleet, and a few others.
The Hjort gave Valentine careful scrutiny and did not seem awed.
“Your business here?” she asked.
“To apply for an audience with the Pontifex.”
“An audience with the Pontifex,” the Hjort repeated in wonder, as if Valentine had said, To apply for a pair of wings, To apply for permission to drink the ocean dry. “An audience with the Pontifex!” She laughed. “The Pontifex grants no audiences.”
“Are you his chief ministers?”
The laughter was louder. “This is the House of Records, not the Court of Thrones. There are no ministers of state here.”
The three officials turned and started back toward the gateway.
“Wait!” Valentine called.
He slipped into the dream-state and sent an urgent vision toward them. There was no specific content to it, only a broad and general sense that the stability of things was in peril, that the bureaucracy itself was sorely threatened, and that only they could stave off the forces of chaos. They walked on, and Valentine redoubled the intensity of his sending, until he began to sweat and tremble with the effort of it. They halted. The Hjort looked around.
“What do you want here?” she asked.
“Admit us to the ministers of the Pontifex.”
There was a whispered conference.
“What do we do?” Valentine asked Deliamber. “Juggle for them?”
“Try to be patient,” the Vroon murmured.
Valentine found that difficult; but he held his tongue, and after some moments the officials returned to say that he could enter, and five of his companions. The others must take lodgings on an upper level. Valentine scowled. But there seemed no arguing with these masked ones. He chose Deliamber, Carabella, Sleet, Asenhart, and Zalzan Kavol to continue on with him.
“How will the rest find lodgings?” he asked.
The Hjort shrugged. That was none of her affair.
From the shadows to Valentine’s left came a high clear voice. “Does someone need a guide to the upper levels?”
Valentine chuckled. “Hissune? Still here?”
“I thought I might be needed.”
“You are. Find a decent place for my people to stay, in the outer ring, near the Mouth of Waters, where they can wait for me until I’ve finished down here.”
Hissune nodded. “I ask only three crowns.”
“What? You need a ride up to the top anyway! And five minutes ago you said that the next time you were my guide, you wouldn’t charge anything!”
“That’s next time,” replied Hissune gravely. “This is still this time. Would you deprive a poor boy of his livelihood?”
Sighing, Valentine said to Zalzan Kavol, “Give him three crowns.”
The boy hopped into the first car. Shortly the entire caravan swung around and departed. Valentine and his five companions passed through the gateway of the House of Records.
Corridors went in all directions. In poorly lit cubicles clerks bent low over mounds of documents. The air was musty and dry here; the general feel of the place was even more repellent than that of the earlier levels. This, Valentine realized, was the administrative core of Majipoor, the place where the real business of governing twenty billion beings was carried on. The awareness that these scurrying gnomes, these burrowers in the earth, held the actual power of the world chilled him.
He had tended to think it was the Coronal who was the true king, and the Pontifex a mere figurehead, since it was the Coronal who was seen actively commanding the forces of order whenever chaos threatened, the vigorous dynamic Coronal, whereas the Pontifex remained immured down below, emerging from the Labyrinth only on the highest occasions of state.
But now he was not so certain.
The Pontifex himself might be merely a crazy old man, but the minions of the Pontifex, these hundreds of thousands of drab bureaucrats in their odd little masks, might collectively wield more authority on Majipoor than the dashing Coronal and all his princely aides. Down here the tax rolls were determined, here the balances of trade between province and province were adjusted, here the maintenance of highways and parks and educational establishments and all the other functions under provincial control were coordinated.
Valentine was not at all convinced that true central government was possible on a world as big as Majipoor, but at least the basic forms of it existed, the structural outlines, and he saw, as he moved through the inner maze of the Labyrinth, that government on Majipoor was not altogether a matter of grand processionals and dream-sendings. The mighty hidden bureaucracy down here did most of the work.
And he was caught in its toils. There were lodgings several levels down from the House of Records for provincial officials who were visiting the Labyrinth on governmental business; there he was given a suite of modest rooms, and there he stayed, ignored, for the next few days. There seemed to be no way to move beyond this point. As Coronal he would have the right of immediate access to the Pontifex, of course; but he was not Coronal, not in any effective sense, and to claim that he was would probably make it impossible for him to proceed at all.
He recalled, after some rooting about in his memory, the names of the chief ministers of the Pontifex. Unless things had changed lately, Tyeveras kept five plenipotentiary officials close by him—Hornkast, his high spokesman; Dilifon, his private secretary; Shinaam, a Ghayrog, his minister of external affairs; Sepulthrove, his minister of scientific matters and personal physician; and Narrameer, his dream-speaker, who was rumored to be the most powerful of all, the adviser who had chosen Voriax and then Valentine to be Coronal.
But to reach any of these five seemed as hard as to reach the Pontifex himself. Like Tyeveras they were buried in the depths, remote, inaccessible. Valentine’s skill with the circlet his mother had given him did not extend to making contact with the mind of someone unknown to him, at an unknown distance.
Lord Valentine's Castle Page 42
