“Don’t you ever get tired?” Stimion said.
“Of course I do. But why stop just because you’re tired?” He took his stance again, waiting for them. Another fifteen minutes of this, he thought. Then a swim, and then to the Pinitor Court to get some work done, and then—
“Well? Come at me,” he said.
Alsimir shook his head. “There’s no sense in it. You’re getting too good for us.”
“Come,” Hissune said again. “Ready!”
Somewhat reluctantly Alsimir moved into dueling position, and gestured Stimion to do the same. But as the three men stood poised, bringing their minds and bodies to the degree of balance the match required, a gymnasium attendant stepped out on the balcony above them and called Hissune’s name. A message for the prince, he said, from the Regent Elidath: Prince Hissune is asked to report at once to the Regent at the office of the Coronal.
“Another day, then?” Hissune said to Alsimir and Stimion.
He dressed quickly and made his way upward and through the intricate coils and tangles of the Castle, cutting across courtyards and avenues, past Lord Ossier’s parapet and its amazing view of Castle Mount’s vast slope, on beyond the Kinniken Observatory and the music room of Lord Prankipin and Lord Confalume’s garden-house and the dozens of other structures and outbuildings that clung like barnacles to the core of the Castle. At last he reached the central sector, where the offices of government were, and had himself admitted to the spacious suite in which the Coronal worked, now occupied during Lord Valentine’s prolonged absence by the High Counsellor Elidath.
He found the Regent pacing back and forth like a restless bear in front of the relief map of the world opposite Lord Valentine’s desk. Stasilaine was with him, seated at the council table. He looked grim, and acknowledged Hissune’s arrival only with the merest of nods. In an offhand, preoccupied way Elidath gestured to Hissune to take a seat beside him. A moment later Divvis arrived, formally dressed in eye-jewels and feather-mask, as though the summons had interrupted him on his way to a high state ceremony.
Hissune felt a great uneasiness growing in him. What reason could Elidath possibly have for calling a meeting like this so suddenly, in such an irregular way? And why just these few of us, out of all the princes? Elidath, Stasilaine, Divvis—surely those were the three prime candidates to succeed Lord Valentine, the innermost of the inner circle. Something major has happened, Hissune thought. The old Pontifex has died at last, perhaps. Or perhaps the Coronal—
Let it be Tyeveras, Hissune prayed. Oh, please, let it be Tyeveras!
Elidath said, “All right. Everyone’s here: we can begin.”
With a sour grin Divvis said, “What is it, Elidath? Has someone seen a two-headed milufta flying north?”
“If you mean, Is this a time of evil omen, then the answer is that it is,” said Elidath somberly.
“What has happened?” Stasilaine asked.
Elidath tapped a sheaf of papers on the desk. “Two important developments. First, fresh reports have come in from western Zimroel, and the situation is far more serious than we’ve realized. The entire Rift sector of the continent is disrupted, apparently, from Mazadone or thereabouts to a point somewhere west of Dulorn, and the trouble is spreading. Crops continue to die of mysterious blights, there’s a tremendous shortage of basic foods, and hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, have begun migrating toward the coast. Local officials are doing their best to requisition emergency food supplies from regions still unaffected—apparently there’s been no trouble yet around Til-omon or Narabal, and Ni-moya and Khyntor are still relatively untouched by the farming troubles—but the distances are so great and the situation so sudden that very little’s been accomplished so far. There is also the question of some peculiar new religious cult that has sprung up out there, something involving sea-dragon worship—”
“What?” said Stasilaine, astonishment bringing color to his face.
“It sounds insane, I know,” Elidath said. “But the report is that the word is spreading that the dragons are gods of some sort, and that they’ve decreed that the world is going to end, or some such idiocy, and—”
“It’s not a new cult,” said Hissune quietly.
The other three all turned to face him. “You know something about this?” Divvis asked.
Hissune nodded. “I used to hear of it sometimes when I lived in the Labyrinth. It’s always been a secret shadowy sort of thing, very vague, never taken too seriously so far as I ever knew. And strictly lower class, something to whisper about behind the backs of the gentry. Some of my friends knew a little about it, or maybe more than a little, though I was never mixed up in it. I remember mentioning it once to my mother long ago, and she told me it was dangerous nonsense and I should keep away from it, and I did. I think it got started among the Liimen, a long time ago, and has gradually been spreading across the bottom levels of society in an underground sort of way, and I suppose now is surfacing because of all the troubles that have begun.”
“And what’s the main belief?” Stasilaine asked.
“More or less as Elidath said: that the dragons will come ashore some day and take command of the government and end all misery and suffering.”
“What misery and suffering?” Divvis said. “I know of no great misery and suffering anywhere in the world, unless you refer to the whining and muttering of the Shapeshifters, and they—”
“You think everyone lives as we do on Castle Mount?” Hissune demanded.
“I think no one is left in need, that all are provided for, that we are happy and prosperous, that—”
“All this is true, Divvis. Nevertheless there are some who live in castles and some who sweep the dung of mounts from the highways. There are those who own great estates and those who beg for coins in the streets. There are—”
“Spare me. I need no lectures from you on social injustice.”
“Forgive me then for boring you,” Hissune snapped. “I thought you wanted to know why there were people who wait for water-kings to deliver them from hardship and pain.”
“Water-kings?” Elidath said.
“Sea dragons. So they are called by those who worship them.”
“Very well,” said Stasilaine. “There’s famine in Zimroel, and a troublesome cult is spreading among the lower classes. You said there were two important new developments. Are those the two you meant?”
Elidath shook his head. “Those are both parts of the same thing. The other important matter concerns Lord Valentine. I have heard from Tunigorn, who is greatly distressed. The Coronal, he says, has had some sort of revelation during his visit with his mother on the Isle, and has entered a mood of high elevation, a very strange mood indeed, in which he appears almost totally unpredictable.”
“What sort of revelation?” Stasilaine asked. “Do you know?”
“While in a trance guided by the Lady,” said Elidath, “he had a vision that showed him that the agricultural troubles in Zimroel indicate the displeasure of the Divine.”
“Who could possibly think otherwise?” Stasilaine cried. “But what does that have to—”
“According to Tunigorn, Valentine thinks now that the blights and the food shortages—which as we now know are much more serious than our own first reports made them seem—have a specifically supernatural origin—” Divvis, shaking his head slowly, let out his breath in a derisive snort.
“—a specifically supernatural origin,” Elidath continued, “and are, in fact, a punishment imposed upon us by the Divine for our mistreatment of the Metamorphs down through the centuries.”
“But this is nothing new,” said Stasilaine. “He’s been talking that way for years.”
“Evidently it is something new,” Elidath replied. “Tunigorn says that since the day of the revelation, he’s been keeping mainly to himself, seeing only the Lady and Carabella, and sometimes Deliamber or the dream-speaker Tisana. Both Sleet and Tunigorn have had difficulty gaining access to him, and w
hen they do it’s to discuss only the most routine matters. He seems inflamed, Tunigorn says, with some grandiose new idea, some really startling project, which he will not discuss with them.”
“This does not sound like the Valentine I know,” said Stasilaine darkly. “Whatever else he may be, irrational he is not. It sounds almost as though some fever has come over him.”
“Or that he’s been made a changeling again,” Divvis said.
“What does Tunigorn fear?” Hissune asked. Elidath shrugged. “He doesn’t know. He thinks Valentine may be hatching some very bizarre idea indeed, one that he and Sleet would be likely to oppose. But he’s giving no clues.” Elidath went to the world globe, and tapped the bright red sphere that marked the Coronal’s whereabouts. “Valentine is still on the Isle, but he’ll sail shortly for the mainland. He’ll land in Piliplok, and he’s scheduled to head up the Zimr to Ni-moya and then keep going into the famine-stricken regions out west. But Tunigorn suspects that he’s changed his mind about that, that he’s obsessed with this notion that we’re suffering the vengeance of the Divine and might be planning some spiritual event, a fast, a pilgrimage, a restructuring of society in a direction away from purely secular values—”
“What if he’s involved with this sea-dragon cult?” Stasilaine said.
“I don’t know,” said Elidath. “It could be anything. I tell you only that Tunigorn seemed deeply troubled, and urged me to join the Coronal on the processional as quickly as I could, in the hope that I’ll be able to prevent him from doing something rash. I think I could succeed where others, even Tunigorn, would fail.”
“What?” Divvis cried. “He’s thousands of miles from here! How can you possibly—”
“I leave in two hours,” Elidath answered. “A relay of fast floaters will carry me westward through the Glayge Valley to Treymone, where I’ve requisitioned a cruiser to take me to Zimroel via the southern route and the Rodamaunt Archipelago. Tunigorn, meanwhile, will attempt to delay Valentine’s departure from the Isle as long as he can, and if he can get any cooperation from Admiral Asenhart he’ll see to it that the voyage from the Isle to Piliplok is a slow one. With any luck, I might reach Piliplok only a week or so after Valentine does, and perhaps it won’t be too late to bring him back to his senses.”
“You’ll never make it in time,” said Divvis. “He’ll be halfway to Ni-moya before you can cross the Inner Sea.”
“I must attempt it,” Elidath said. “I have no choice. If you knew how concerned Tunigorn is, how fearful that Valentine is about to commit himself to some mad and perilous course of action—”
“And the government?” Stasilaine said softly. “What of that? You are the regent, Elidath. We have no Pontifex, you tell us that the Coronal has become some sort of visionary madman, and now you propose to leave the Castle leaderless?”
“In the event that a regent is called away from the Castle,” said Elidath, “it’s within his powers to appoint a Council of Regency to deal with all business that would fall within the Coronal’s jurisdiction. This is what I intend.”
“And the members of this council?” Divvis asked.
“There will be three. You are one, Divvis. Stasilaine, you also. And you, Hissune.”
Hissune, astounded, sat bolt upright. “I?”
Elidath smiled. “I confess I couldn’t understand, at first, why Lord Valentine had chosen to advance someone of the Labyrinth, and such a young man at that, so quickly toward the center of power. But gradually his design has come clear to me, as this crisis has fallen upon us. We’ve lost touch, here on Castle Mount, with the realities of Majipoor. We’ve stayed up here on our mountaintop and mysteries have sprung up around us, without our knowing. I heard you say, Divvis, that you think everyone in the world is happy except perhaps the Metamorphs, and I confess I thought the same. And yet an entire religion, it seems, has taken root out there among the discontented, and we knew nothing of it, and now an army of hungry people marches toward Pidruid to worship strange gods.” He looked toward Hissune. “There are things you know, Hissune, that we need to learn. In the months of my absence, you’ll sit beside Divvis and Stasilaine in the place of judgment—and I believe you’ll offer valuable guidance. What do you say, Stasilaine?”
“I think you’ve chosen wisely.”
“And you, Divvis?”
Divvis’s face was blazing with barely controlled fury. “What can I say? The power’s yours. You’ve made your appointment. I must abide by it, must I not?” He rose stiffly and held forth his hand to Hissune. “My congratulations, prince. You’ve done very well for yourself in a very short time.”
Hissune met Divvis’s cold gaze evenly. “I look forward to serving in the council with you, my lord Divvis,” said Hissune with great formality. “Your wisdom will be an example for me.” And he took Divvis’s hand.
Whatever reply Divvis intended to make seemed to choke in his throat. Slowly he withdrew his hand from Hissune’s grasp, glared, and stalked from the room.
THE WIND WAS OUT OF THE SOUTH, and hot and hard, the kind of wind that the dragon-hunting captains called “the Sending,” because it blew up from the barren continent of Suvrael where the King of Dreams had his lair. It was a wind that parched the soul and withered the heart, but Valentine paid no heed to it: his spirit was elsewhere, dreaming of the tasks that lay before him, and these days he stood for hours at a time on the royal deck of the Lady Thiin, looking to the horizon for the first sign of the mainland and giving no thought to the torrid, sharp-edged gusts that whistled about him.
The voyage from the Isle to Zimroel was beginning to seem interminable. Asenhart had spoken of a sluggish sea and contrary winds, of the need to shorten sail and take a more southerly route, and other such problems. Valentine, who was no sailor, could not quarrel with these decisions, but he grew fiercely impatient as the days went by and the western continent grew no closer. More than once they were compelled to change course to avoid sea-dragon herds, for on this side of the Isle the waters were thick with them. Some of the Skandar crewmen claimed that this was the greatest migration in five thousand years. Whether or not that was true, certainly they were abundant, and terrifying: Valentine had seen nothing like this on his last crossing of these waters many years ago, in that ill-fated journey when the giant dragon stove in the hull of Captain Gorzval’s Brangalyn.
Generally the dragons moved in groups of thirty to fifty, at several days’ distance from one another. But occasionally a single huge dragon, a veritable dragon-king, was seen swimming steadfastly by itself, moving unhurriedly, as though deep in weighty meditations. Then after a time no more dragons, great or small, were seen, and the wind strengthened, and the fleet made haste toward the port of Piliplok.
And one morning came shouts from the top deck: “Piliplok ho! Piliplok!”
The great seaport loomed up suddenly, dazzling and splendid in its forbidding, intense way, on its high promontory overlooking the southern shore of the mouth of the Zimr. Here, where the river was enormously wide and stained the sea dark for hundreds of miles with the silt it had swept from the heart of the continent, stood a city of eleven million people, rigidly laid out according to a complex and unyielding master design, spread out along with precise arcs intersected by the spokes of grand boulevards that radiated from the waterfront. It was, Valentine thought, a difficult city to love, for all the beauty of its broad welcoming harbor. Yet as he stood staring at it he caught sight of his Skandar companion Zalzan Kavol, who was native to Piliplok, gazing out upon it with a tender expression of wonder and delight on his harsh, dour face.
“The dragon-ships are coming!” someone cried, when the Lady Thiin was somewhat nearer to the shore. “Look, there, it must be the whole fleet!”
“Oh, Valentine, how lovely!” Carabella said softly, close beside him.
Lovely indeed. Until this moment, Valentine had never thought that the vessels in which the seafarers of Piliplok went forth to hunt the dragons were beautiful in any way. They
were sinister things, swollen of hull, grotesquely decorated with hideous figureheads and threatening spiky tails and gaudy, painted rows of white teeth and scarlet-and-yellow eyes along their flanks; and taken one by one they seemed merely barbaric, repellent. Yet somehow in a flotilla this huge—and it looked as though every dragonship in Piliplok was on its way out to sea to greet the arriving Coronal—they took on a bizarre kind of glory. Along the line of the horizon their sails, black striped with crimson, bellied out in the breeze like festive flags.
When they drew near, they spread out about the royal fleet in what surely was a carefully planned formation, and hoisted great Coronal ensigns in green and gold into their riggings, and shouted raucously into the wind, “Valentine! Lord Valentine! Hail, Lord Valentine!” The music of drums and trumpets and sistirons and galistanes drifted across the water, blurred and muddled but nonetheless jubilant and touching.
A very different reception, thought Valentine wryly, from the one he had had on his last visit to Piliplok, when he and Zalzan Kavol and the rest of the jugglers had gone pitifully from one dragon-captain to the next, trying in vain to hire one to carry them toward the Isle of Sleep, until finally they had managed to buy passage aboard the smallest and shabbiest and unluckiest vessel of all. But many things had altered since then.
The grandest of the dragon-ships now approached the Lady Thiin, and put forth a boat bearing a Skandar and two humans. When they came alongside, a floater-basket was lowered to draw them up on deck, but the humans remained at their oars, and only the Skandar came aboard.
She was old and weatherbeaten and tough-looking, with two of her powerful incisor teeth missing and fur of a dull grayish color. “I am Guidrag,” she said, and after a moment Valentine remembered her: the oldest and most revered of the dragon-captains, and one of those who had refused to take the jugglers on as passengers on her own ship; but she had refused in a kindly way, and had sent them on to Captain Gorzval and his Brangalyn. He wondered if she remembered him: very likely not. When one wears the Coronal’s robes, Valentine had long ago discovered, the man within the robes tends to become invisible.
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