“At least cancel the Zimroel part of it, then. One continent is more than enough. It’ll take you months simply to return to Castle Mount from here, if you stop at every major city along the way. And then Zimroel? Piliplok, Nimoya, Til-omon, Narabal, Pidruid—it’ll take years, Valentine!”
He shook his head slowly. “I have an obligation to all the people, not only the ones who live in Alhanroel, Carabella.”
Taking his hand, she said, “That much I understand. But you may be demanding too much of yourself. I ask you again: consider eliminating Zimroel from the tour. Will you do that? Will you at least give it some thought?”
“I’d return to Castle Mount this very evening, if I could. But I must go on. I must.”
“Tonight at the temple you hope to speak in dreams with your mother the Lady, is that not so?”
“Yes,” he said. “But—”
“Promise me this, then. If you reach her mind with yours, ask her if you should go to Zimroel. Let her advice guide you in this, as it has so well in so many other things. Will you?”
“Carabella—”
“Will you ask her? Only ask!”
“Very well,” he said. “I will ask. That much do I promise.”
She looked at him mischievously. “Do I seem a shrewish wife, Valentine? Chivvying and pressing you this way? I do this out of love, you know.”
“That I know,” said he, and drew her close and held her.
They said no more, for it was time then to make ready for the journey up Alaisor Heights to the temple of the Lady. Twilight was descending as they set out up the narrow winding road, and the lights of Alaisor sparkled behind them like millions of bright gems scattered carelessly over the plain.
The hierarch Ambargarde, a tall, regal-looking woman with keen eyes and lustrous white hair, waited at the gateway of the temple to receive the Coronal. While awed acolytes looked on gaping, she offered him a brief and warm welcome—he was, she said, the first Coronal to visit the temple since Lord Tyeveras had come, on his second processional—and led him through the lovely grounds until the temple itself came into view: a long building a single story in height, built of white stone, unornamented, even stark, situated in a spacious and open garden of great simplicity and beauty. Its western face curved in a crescent arc along the edge of the cliff, looking outward to the sea; and, on its inner side, wings set apart from one another at narrow angles radiated toward the east.
Valentine passed through an airy loggia to a small portico beyond that seemed to be suspended in space on the cliff’s outermost rim. There he stood a long while in silence, with Carabella and the hierarch beside him, and Sleet and Tunigorn close by. It was wondrously quiet here: he heard nothing but the rush of the cool clear wind that blew without pause from the northwest, and the faint fluttering of Carabella’s scarlet cloak. He looked down toward Alaisor. The great seaport lay like a giant outspread fan at the base of the cliff, ranging so far to the north and south that he could not see its limits. The dark spokes of colossal avenues ran its entire length, converging on a distant, barely visible circle of grand boulevards where six giant obelisks rose skyward: the tomb of Lord Stiamot, conqueror of the Metamorphs. Beyond lay only the sea, dark green, shrouded in the low-lying haze.
“Come, my lord,” said Ambargarde. “The last light of the day is going. May I show you to your chamber?”
He would sleep alone that night, in an austere little room close by the tabernacle. Nor would he eat, or drink anything except the wine of the dream-speakers that would open his mind and make it accessible to the Lady. When Ambargarde had gone, he turned to Carabella and said, “I have not forgotten my promise, love.”
“That I know. Oh, Valentine, I pray she tells you to turn back to the Mount!”
“Will you abide by it if she does not?”
“How can I not abide by whatever you decide? You are the Coronal. But I pray she tells you turn back. Dream well, Valentine.”
“Dream well, Carabella.”
She left him. He stood for some time at the window, watching as night engulfed the shoreline and the sea. Somewhere due west of here, he knew, lay the Isle of Sleep that was his mother’s domain, far below the horizon, the home of that sweet and blessed Lady who brought wisdom to the world as it dreamed. Valentine stared intently seaward, searching in the mists and the gathering darkness as if he could see, if only he peered hard enough, the brilliant white ramparts of chalk on which the Isle rested.
Then he undressed and lay down on the simple cot that was the room’s only furniture, and lifted the goblet that held the dark red dream-wine. He took a deep draft of the sweet thick stuff, and then another, and lay back and put himself into the trance state that opened his mind to impulses from afar, and waited for sleep.
—Come to me, mother. This is Valentine.
Drowsiness came over him, and he slipped downward into slumber.
—Mother—
—Lady—
—Mother—
Phantoms danced through his brain. Tenuous elongated figures burst like bubbles from vents in the ground, and spiraled upward to the roof of the sky. Disembodied hands sprouted from the trunks of trees, and boulders opened yellow eyes, and rivers grew hair. He watched and waited, letting himself glide downward and yet deeper downward into the realm of dreams, and all the while sending forth his soul to the Lady.
Then he had a glimpse of her seated by the eight-sided pool in her chamber of fine white stone at Inner Temple on the Isle. She was bending forward, as though studying her reflection. He floated toward her and hovered just behind her, and looked down and saw the familiar face glimmering in the pool, the dark shining hair, the full lips and warm loving eyes, the flower as always behind one ear, the silver band about her forehead. He said softly, “Mother? It’s Valentine.”
She turned to face him. But the face he saw was the face of a stranger: a pale, haggard, frowning, puzzled face.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“Why, you know me! I am the Lady of the Isle!”
“No—no—”
“Most certainly I am.”
“No.”
“Why have you come to me here? You should not have done that, for you are Pontifex, and it is more fitting for me to journey toward you than you toward me.”
“Pontifex? Coronal, you mean.”
“Ah, did I say that? Then I was mistaken.”
“And my mother? Where is she?”
“I am she, Valentine.”
And indeed the haggard pale face was but a mask, which grew thin and peeled away like a sheath of old skin, to reveal his mother’s wondrous smile, his mother’s comforting eyes. And that in turn peeled away to show the other face once more, and then the true Lady’s beneath that, but this time she was weeping. He reached for her and his hands passed through her, and he found himself alone. She did not return to him that night, though he pursued her through vision after vision, into realms of such strangeness that he would gladly have retreated if he could; and at last he abandoned the quest and gave himself over to the deepest and most dreamless of sleeps.
When he awakened it was midmorning. He bathed and stepped from his chamber and found Carabella outside, face drawn and tense, eyes reddened as though she had not slept at all.
“How is my lord?” she asked at once.
“I learned nothing last night. My dreams were hollow, and the Lady did not speak with me.”
“Oh, love, how sorry I am!”
“I’ll attempt it again tonight. Perhaps I had too little dream-wine, or too much. The hierarch will advise me. Have you eaten, Carabella?”
“Long since. But I’ll breakfast again with you now, if you wish. And Sleet wants to see you. Some urgent message arrived in the night, and he would have gone right in to you, but I forbade it.”
“What message is that?”
“He said nothing to me. Shall I send for him now?”
Valentine nodded. “I’ll wait out there,” he said, indicating
with a wave of his arm the little portico overlooking the outer face of the cliff.
Sleet had a stranger with him when he appeared: a slender smooth-skinned man with a wide-browed triangular face and large somber eyes, who made a quick starburst gesture and stood staring at Valentine as though the Coronal were a creature from some other world. “Lordship, this is Y-Uulisaan, who came last night from Zimroel.”
“An unusual name,” Valentine said.
“It has been in our family many generations, my lord. I am associated with the office of agricultural affairs in Nimoya, and it is my mission to carry unhappy tidings to you from Zimroel.”
Valentine felt a tightening in his chest.
Y-Uulisaan held forth a sheaf of folders. “It is all described in here—the full details of each of the plagues, the area it affects, the extent of the damage—”
“Plagues? What plagues?”
“In the agricultural zones, my lord. In Dulorn the lusavender smut has reappeared, and also there has been a—dying of niyk trees to the west of the Rift, and also the stajja and glein are affected, and root weevils have attacked the ricca and milaile in—”
“My lord!” Carabella cried suddenly. “Look, look there!” He whirled to face her. She was pointing skyward.
“What are those?”
Startled, Valentine looked up. On the bosom of the brisk breeze there journeyed a strange army of large glossy transparent floating creatures, unlike anything he had ever seen, appearing suddenly out of the west. They had bodies perhaps a man’s length in diameter, shaped like shining cups upcurved to give them buoyancy, and long hairy legs that they held straight out on all sides. Their eyes, running in double rows across their heads, were like black beads the size of a man’s fists, shining dazzlingly in the sunlight. Hundreds, even thousands, of the spiders were passing overhead, a migratory procession, a river of weird wraiths in the sky.
Carabella said, shuddering, “What monstrous-looking things! Like something out of the worst sending of the King of Dreams.”
Valentine watched in astonishment and horror as they drifted past, dipping and soaring on the wind. Shouts of alarm now came from the courtyard of the temple. Valentine, beckoning Sleet to follow him, ran inward, and saw the old hierarch standing in the center of the lawn, waving an energy-thrower about. The air was thick with the floating things, some of which were drifting toward the ground, and she and half a dozen acolytes were attempting to destroy them before they landed, but several score had already reached ground. Wherever they touched down they remained motionless; but the rich green lawn was instantly burned yellow over an area perhaps twice the creatures’ size.
Within minutes the onslaught was over. The floating things had passed by and were disappearing to the east, but the grounds and garden of the temple looked as if they had been attacked with blowtorches. The hierarch Ambargarde, seeing Valentine, put down her energy-thrower and walked slowly toward him.
“What were those things?” he asked.
“Wind-spiders, my lord.”
“I’ve not heard of them. Are they native to this region?”
“The Divine be thanked, my lord, they are not! They come from Zimroel, from the mountains beyond Khyntor. Every year, when it is their mating season, they cast themselves into the stream of the high winds, and while they are aloft they couple, and let loose their fertile eggs, which are blown eastward by the contrary lower winds of the mountains until they land in the hatching-places. But the adults are caught by the currents of the air and carried out to sea, and sometimes they are swept all the way to the coast of Alhanroel.”
Sleet, with a grimace of disgust, walked toward one last wind-spider that had fallen nearby. It lay quietly, making only the faintest movements, feeble twitchings of its thick shaggy legs.
“Keep back from it!” called Ambargarde. “Every part of it is poisonous!” She summoned an acolyte, who destroyed it with a burst from her energy-thrower. To Valentine the hierarch said, “Before they mate they are harmless enough things, eaters of leaves and soft twigs, and such. But once they have let loose their eggs they change, and become dangerous. You see what they have done to the grass. We will have to dig that all out, or nothing will ever grow there again.”
“And this happens every year?” Valentine asked.
“Oh, no, no, thanks be to the Divine! Most of them perish out at sea. Only once in many years do they get this far. But when they do—ah, my lord, it is always a year of evil omen!”
“When did they last come?” the Coronal asked.
Ambargarde seemed to hesitate. At length she said, “In the year of the death of your brother Lord Voriax, my lord.”
“And before that?”
Her lips trembled. “I cannot remember. Perhaps ten years before, perhaps fifteen.”
“Not in the year of the death of Lord Malibor, by any chance?”
“My lord—forgive me—”
“There is nothing that needs forgiveness,” Valentine said quietly. He walked away from the group and stood staring at the burned places in the devastated lawn. In the Labyrinth, he thought, the Coronal is smitten with dark visions at the feasting table. In Zimroel there are plagues upon the crops. In Alhanroel the wind-spiders come, bearing evil omens. And when I call upon my mother in my dreams I see a stranger’s face. The message is very clear, is it not? Yes. The message is very clear.
“Sleet!” he called.
“Lordship?”
“Find Asenhart, and have him make ready the fleet. We sail as soon as possible.”
“For Zimroel, my lord?”
“For the Isle, first, so I may confer with the Lady. And then to Zimroel, yes.”
“Valentine?” a small voice said.
It was Carabella. Her eyes were fixed and strange and her face was pale. She looked almost like a child now—a small frightened child whose soul has been brushed in the night by the King of Dreams.
“What evil is loose in our land, my lord?” she asked in a voice he could scarcely hear. “What will happen to us, my lord? Tell me: what will happen to us?”
The Book of the Water-Kings
“YOUR TASK IS to reach Ertsud Grand,” the instructor had said. “Your route is the open country south of the Pinitor Highway. Your weapons are cudgel and dagger. Your obstacles are seven tracker beasts: vourhain, malorn, zeil, kassai, min-mollitor, weyhant, and zytoon. They are dangerous and will injure you if you allow them to take you by surprise.”
Hissune concealed himself behind a thick-trunked ghazan tree so gnarled and twisted that it could well have been ten thousand years old, and peered cautiously down the long narrow valley ahead of him. All was still. He saw none of his fellow trainees, nor any of the tracker beasts.
This was his third day on the trail and he still had twelve miles to go. But what lay immediately before him was dismaying: a bleak slope of loose broken granite that probably would begin to slide the moment he stepped out onto it, sending him crashing onto the rocks of the distant valley floor. Even if this was only a training exercise, he knew that he could get quite authentically killed out here if he blundered.
But going back the way he had come and trying some other route of descent was even less appealing. Once more to risk that narrow ledge of a trail winding in miserable switchbacks over the face of the cliff, the thousand-foot drop that a single false step would bring, those ghastly overhangs that. had forced him to crawl forward with his nose to the ground and barely half a foot’s clearance above the back of his head—no. Better to trust himself to that field of rubble in front of him than to try to turn back. Besides, there was that creature prowling still up there the vourhain, one of the seven trackers. Having come past those sickle tusks and great curving claws once, he had no appetite for confronting them a second time.
Using his cudgel as a walking-stick, he edged warily out onto the gravel field.
The sun was bright and penetrating, this far down Castle Mount, well below the perpetual band of clouds that sheathed the gre
at mountain in its upper middle reaches. Its brilliant light struck fragments of mica embedded in the shattered sharp-edged granite of the slope and rebounded into his eyes, dazzling him.
He put one foot carefully forward, leaned into his step, found the rubble firm beneath his weight. He took another step. Another. A few small chunks of rock came loose and went skittering down the slope, flashing like little mirrors as they turned over and over in their fall.
There seemed no danger yet that the entire slope would give way. He continued downward. His ankles and knees, sore from yesterday’s difficult crossing of a high windswept pass, protested the steep downhill angle. The straps of his backpack sliced into him. He was thirsty and his head ached slightly: the air was thin in this stretch of Castle Mount. There were moments when he found himself wishing he was safely back at the Castle, poring over the texts on constitutional law and ancient history that he had been condemned to study for the past six months. He had to smile at that, remembering how in the weariest days of his tutoring he had been desperately counting the days until he was released from his books and could move on to the excitement of the survival test. Just now, though, his days in the library of the Castle did not seem nearly so burdensome, nor this journey anything but a grueling ordeal.
He looked up. The sun seemed to fill half the sky. He raised his hand before his eyes as a shield.
It was almost a year, now, since Hissune had left the Labyrinth, and he still was not wholly used to the sight of that fiery thing in the sky, or to the touch of its rays on his skin. There were times when he reveled in its unfamiliar warmth—he had long since exchanged the Labyrinth pallor for a deep golden tan—and yet at other times it kindled fear in him, and he wanted to turn from it and bury himself a thousand feet below the surface of the earth, where it could not reach him.
Idiot. Simpleton. The sun’s not your enemy! Keep moving. Keep moving.
Valentine Pontifex Page 13
