“Deliamber detected it in the night: the Vroon felt a strangeness somewhere, and prowled about until he found Y-Uulisaan holding mind-speech with someone far away. He instructed your Skandar and the Amazon to seize him, and when they did, Y-Uulisaan began changing forms like a trapped demon.”
Valentine spat in fury. “It goes beyond belief! All these weeks, carrying a spy with us, confiding in him all our plans for overcoming the blights and plagues of the farm provinces—no! No! What have they done with him?”
“They would have brought him to you this night for interrogation,” said Tunigorn. “But then the storm came, and Deliamber thought it wisest to wait it out at the camp.”
“My lord!” Sleet called from the riverbank. “We are ready to attempt the crossing!”
“There is more,” Tunigorn said.
“Come. Tell me about it as we ride across.”
They hurried toward the floaters. The wind now was without mercy, and the trees leaned halfway to the ground under its brunt. Carabella, beside Valentine, stumbled and would have gone sprawling if he had not caught her. He wrapped one arm tightly about her: she was so slight, so buoyant, that any gust might carry her away.
Tunigorn said, “Word of new chaos reached Piliplok just as I set forth. In Khyntor a man named Sempeturn, an itinerant preacher, has proclaimed himself Coronal, and some of the people have acclaimed him.”
“Ah,” Valentine said softly, as though struck in the middle.
“That is not all. Another Coronal has arisen in Dulorn, they say: A Ghayrog named Ristimaar. And we have word of still another in Ni-moya, though his name did not come to me; and it is reported also that at least one false Pontifex has come forth in Velathys, or possibly Narabal. We are not sure, my lord, because the channels of communications have become so disturbed.”
“It is as I thought,” said Valentine in a tone of deadly quiet. “The Divine has in all truth turned against us. The commonwealth is shattered. The sky itself has broken and will fall upon us.”
“Into the floater, my lord!” Sleet shouted.
“Too late,” Valentine murmured. “There will be no forgiveness for us now.”
As they scrambled into the vehicles the full fury of the storm broke upon them. First there was an odd moment of silence, as though the atmosphere itself had fled from this place in terror of the onrushing winds, taking with it all capacity for the transmission of sound; but in the next instant came something like a thunderclap, but dull and without resonance, like a short swift unechoing thud. And on the heels of that arrived the storm, screaming and snarling and turning the air opaque with churning whirlwinds of sand.
Valentine was in the floater by then, with Carabella close beside him and Elidath not far away. The vehicle, clumsily swaying and lumbering like some great amorfibot rousted unwilling from the dune where it had been dozing, drifted riverward and moved out over the water.
Darkness now had come, and within the darkness lay a weird, glowing core of purplish-green light that seemed almost to have been kindled by the force of air flowing over air. The river had turned altogether black and its surface was rippling and swelling alarmingly as sudden calamitous changes in the air pressure above it tugged or thrust against it. Sand pelted down in wild cyclonic sprays, etching pock-marked craters on the heaving water. Carabella gagged and choked; Valentine fought back an overwhelming dizziness; the floater bucked and reared in a berserk, unruly way, nose rising and slapping down against the water and rising again, and again, slapping down, thwack thwack thwack. The cascading sand etched patterns of a curious loveliness in the windows, but rapidly it became all but impossible to see through them, though Valentine had the hazy impression that the floater just to the left of his was standing on its tail, balanced immobile in an impossible position for a frozen moment before starting to slip down into the river.
Then everything outside the floater was invisible, and the only sounds that could be heard were the booming of the wind and the steady, abrasive drum-beat of the sand against the floater’s hull.
An odd tranquilizing giddiness began to possess Valentine. It seemed to him that the floater was pivoting rhythmically now along its longitudinal axis, jerking from side to side in ever more abrupt yawing shrugs. Very likely, he realized, the ground-effect rotors were losing whatever little purchase they had had on the river’s wildly unstable surface, and in another few moments the vehicle would surely flip over.
“This river is accursed,” said Carabella.
Yes, Valentine thought. So it did seem. The river was under some dark spell, or else the Steiche was itself some malevolent spirit that sought his doom. And now we will all drown, he thought. But he was curiously calm.
The river, which nearly had me once but somehow allowed me to be cast forth to safety, he told himself, has waited all this while for a second chance. And now that chance has come.
It did not matter. In the final analysis nothing really mattered. Life, death, peace, war, joy, sadness: they were all one and the same, words without meaning, mere noises, empty husks. Valentine felt no regret for anything. They had asked him to serve, and he had served. Surely he had done his best. He had shirked no task, betrayed no trust, forsworn no oath. Now would he return to the Source, for the winds had driven the river wild, and the river would devour them all, and so be it: it did not matter. It did not matter.
“Valentine!”
A face, inches from his own. Eyes looking into his. A voice, crying a name that he thought he knew, and crying it again.
“Valentine! Valentine!”
A hand gripping his arm. Shaking him, pushing him.
Whose face? Whose eyes? Whose voice? Whose hand?
“He seems in a trance, Elidath.”
Another voice. Lighter, clearer, close by his side. Carabella? Yes. Carabella. Who was Carabella?
“There’s not enough air in here. Vents choked by sand—we’ll smother if we don’t drown!”
“Can we get out?”
“Through the safety hatch. But we’ve got to snap him out of this. Valentine! Valentine!”
“Who is it?”
“Elidath. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“You seem half asleep. Here, let me get that safety belt loose. Get up, Valentine! Get up. The floater’s going to sink in another five minutes.”
“Ah.”
“Valentine, please, listen to him!” It was the other voice, the light one, the Carabella voice. “We’re turning over and over. We have to get out of here and swim to shore. It’s the only hope we have. One of the floaters has already gone down, and we can’t see the other one, and—oh, Valentine, please! Stand up! Take a deep breath! That’s it. Another. Another. Here, give me your hand—hold his other one, Elidath; we’ll lead him to the hatch—there—there—just keep moving, Valentine—”
Yes. Just keep moving. Valentine became aware of tiny currents of air flowing past his face. He heard the faint spattering of sand as it fell from above. Yes. Yes. Crawl up here, wriggle past this, put your foot here, the other one here—step-—step—hold this—pull—pull—
He clambered upward like an automaton, still only vaguely comprehending what was taking place, until he reached the top of the emergency ladder and poked his head out through the safety hatch.
A sudden blast of fresh air—hot, dry, thick with sand—swept brutally across his face. He gasped, breathed sand, swallowed sand, gagged, spat. But he was awake again. Clinging to the flange that rimmed the hatch, he stared out into the storm-riven night. The darkness was intense; the weird glow had greatly diminished; sprays of sand still whipped unrelentingly through the air, one howling vortex after another, battering against his eyes, his nostrils, his lips.
It was almost impossible to see. They were somewhere in midriver, but neither the eastern nor western bank was visible. The floater was tipped high on end, in an awkward and precarious way, rising half its length out of the savage chaos of the river. There was no sign of
the other floaters. Valentine thought he saw heads bobbing about in the water, but it was hard to be sure: the sand veiled everything and merely to keep his eyes open was an agony.
“Down here! Jump, Valentine!” Elidath’s voice.
“Wait,” he called. He looked back. Carabella stood below him on the ladder, pale, frightened, almost dazed. He reached for her and she smiled when she saw that he had returned to himself; and he pulled her up beside him. She came in one quick bound and balanced beside him on the rim of the hatch, agile as an acrobat, no less trim and sturdy than she had been in her juggling days.
The sand choking the air was unendurable. They locked their arms together and jumped.
Hitting the water was like striking a solid surface. For a moment he clung to Carabella, but as they landed she was ripped from him. Valentine felt himself pushing down through the water until he was all but engulfed in it; then he kicked downward and recoiled and forced his way to the top. He called out for Carabella, Elidath, Sleet, but he saw no one, and even down here there was no place to hide from the sand, which fell like a burdensome rain and thickened the river to a diabolical turbidity.
I could almost walk to shore on this, Valentine thought.
He made out the dim hugeness of the floater to his left, sliding slowly downward into the water: there was still enough air in it to give it some buoyancy, and the bizarre, puddinglike consistency of the sand-glutted river provided some slight resistance to its entry, but yet the floater was plainly sinking, and Valentine knew that when it went under entirely it would kick up a perilous backlash nearby. He struggled to get away, looking about all the while for his companions.
The floater vanished. A great wave rose and struck him.
He was thrust under, came up briefly, went down again as a second wave hit him and then an eddying whirlpool sucked at his legs. He felt himself being swept downstream. His lungs were afire: full of water, full of sand? The apathy that had come over him aboard the doomed floater was altogether gone from him now; he kicked, wriggled, fought to stay afloat. He collided with someone in the darkness, clutched at him, lost hold, went under again. This time nausea overwhelmed him, and he thought he would never come up; but he felt strong arms seize him and begin to tow him, and he let himself go limp, for he understood that this frantic resistance to the river was an error. He breathed more easily, and drifted easily at the surface. His rescuer released him, disappearing into the night, but Valentine saw now that he was close to one of the river’s banks, and in a stunned, weary way he pulled himself forward until he felt his waterlogged boots touching bottom. Slowly, as if he were marching through a river of syrup, he plodded shoreward, emerged on the muddy bank, and dropped down face first. He wished he could burrow like the gromwark into the wet earth and hide until the storm had passed by.
After a time, when he had caught his breath, he sat up and looked about. The air was still gritty with sand, but not so much so that he needed to cover his face, and the wind definitely seemed to be subsiding. A few dozen yards downstream from him lay one of the floaters, beached at the river’s edge; he saw nothing of the other two. Three or four limp figures were sprawled nearby; alive or dead, he could not say. Voices, faint and dim, resounded in the distance. Valentine was unable to tell whether he was on the Piurifayne side of the river or the Gihorna, though he suspected he was in Piurifayne, for it seemed to him that a wall of all but impenetrable foliage rose just behind him.
He got to his feet.
“Lordship! Lordship!”
“Sleet? Here!”
The small, lithe figure of Sleet appeared out of the darkness. Carabella was with him, and Tunigorn not far behind. Solemnly Valentine embraced each of them. Carabella was shivering uncontrollably, though the night was warm, and had grown humid now that the parched wind had blown itself out. He drew her against him, and tried to brush away the patches of wet sand that clung to her clothes, as to his, like a thick constricting crust.
Sleet said, “My lord, two of the floaters are lost, and I think a good many of their passengers with them.” Valentine nodded grimly. “So I fear. But surely not all!”
“There are some survivors, yes. As I came to you I heard their voices. Some—I have no idea how many—scattered along both banks. But you must prepare yourself, my lord, for losses. Tunigorn and I saw several bodies along the shore, and very likely there are others who were swept downstream and drowned far away. When morning comes we’ll know more.”
“Indeed,” Valentine said, and fell silent awhile. He sat crosslegged on the ground, more like a tailor than a king, and fell into a long silence, drawing his hand idly through the sand that lay heaped as though it were some strange kind of snow to a depth of some inches on the ground. There was one question he dared not ask; but after a time he could no longer keep it within himself. He glanced up at Sleet and Tunigorn and said, “What news is there of Elidath?”
“None, my lord,” said Sleet gently.
“None? None at all? Has he not been seen, or heard?”
Carabella said, “He was beside us in the water, Valentine, before our floater went down.”
“Yes. I remember that. But since then?”
“Nothing,” said Tunigorn.
Valentine gave him a quizzical look. “Has his body been found, and are you not telling me?”
“By the Lady, Valentine, you know as much as I about what has happened to Elidath!” Tunigorn blurted.
“Yes. Yes. I do believe you. This frightens me, not knowing what has become of him. You know he means much to me, Tunigorn.”
“You think you need to inform me of that?” Valentine smiled sadly. “Forgive me, old friend. This night has unsettled my mind some, I do believe.” Carabella put her hand, cool and damp, over his; and he put his other on hers. Quietly he said again, “Forgive me, Tunigorn. And you, Sleet, and you, Carabella.”
“Forgive you, my lord?” Carabella asked, amazed. “For what?”
He shook his head. “Let it pass, love.”
“Do you blame yourself for what has happened tonight?”
“I blame myself for a great deal,” said Valentine, “of which what has happened tonight is but a small part, though to me it is a vast catastrophe. The world was given into my stewardship, and I have led it to disaster.”
“Valentine, no!” Carabella cried.
“My lord,” said Sleet, “you are much too harsh on yourself!”
“Am I?” He laughed. “Famine in half of Zimroel, and three false Coronals proclaiming themselves, or is it four, and the Metamorphs coming around to collect their overdue reckoning, and here we sit at the edge of Piurifayne with sand in our craws and half our people drowned and who knows what dread fate overtaking the other half, and—and—” His voice was beginning to crack. With an effort he brought it under control, and himself, and said more calmly, “This has been a monstrous night, and I am very weary, and it worries me that Elidath has not appeared. But I will not find him by talking this way, will I? Will I? Come, let us rest, and wait for morning, and when morning comes we will begin to repair all that can yet be repaired. Eh?”
“Yes,” said Carabella. “That sounds wise, Valentine.”
There was no hope of sleep. He and Carabella and Sleet and Tunigorn lay close by one another, sprawled out in the sand, and the night passed in wakefulness amid a welter of forest sounds and the steady rumble of the river. Gradually dawn crept upon them out of Gihorna, and by that early gray light Valentine saw what horrendous destruction the storm had wrought. On the Gihorna side of the river, and for a short distance into Piurifayne, every tree had been stripped of its leaves, as if the wind had breathed fire, leaving only pitiful naked trunks. The ground was heaped with sand, strewn thinly in some places, piled high into miniature dunes in others. The floater in which Tunigorn and Elidath had arrived still sat upright on the far side of the river, but its metal skin had been scoured and pitted to a dull matte finish. The one floater that remained of Valentine’s own caravan lay on
its side like a dead sea dragon cast up by the waves.
One group of survivors, four or five of them, sat together on the opposite bank; half a dozen more, mainly Skandars of the Coronal’s personal bodyguard, were camped just downslope from Valentine; some others could be seen walking about a hundred yards or so to the north, evidently searching for bodies. A few of the dead had been laid out neatly in parallel rows beside the overturned floater. Valentine did not see Elidath among them. But he had little hope for his old friend, and he felt no emotion, only a chill numb sensation beneath his breastbone, when shortly after dawn one of the Skandars appeared, carrying Elidath’s burly body in his four arms as easily as though he held a child.
“Where was he?” Valentine asked.
“Half a mile downstream, my lord, or a little farther.”
“Put him down, and begin seeing about graves.
We will bury all our dead this morning, on that little rise overlooking the river.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Valentine peered down at Elidath. His eyes were closed, and his lips, slightly parted, seemed almost to turn upward in a smile, though it might just as easily be a grimace, Valentine thought. “He looked old last night,” he said to Carabella. And to Tunigorn he said, “Did you not think also that he had aged greatly this past year? But now he seems young again. The lines are gone from his face: he might be no more than twenty-four. Does it not seem that way to you?”
“I blame myself for his death,” Tunigorn said in a flat empty voice.
“How so?” Valentine asked sharply.
“It was I who called him down off Castle Mount. Come, I said, hurry to Zimroel: Valentine is contemplating strange deeds, though I know not what they are, and you alone can discourage him from them. And he came: and now see him. If he had stayed at the Castle—”
“No, Tunigorn. No more of this.”
But in a stunned dreamlike way Tunigorn went on, apparently uncontrollably, “He would have been Coronal when you went on to the Labyrinth, and he would have lived long and happily at the Castle, and ruled wisely, and now—instead—instead—”
Valentine Pontifex Page 25
