Indeed she was right. A little effort, and he began to feel once more the old sense that the union of hand and eye could carry him to a place where time had no meaning and all of space became a single infinite point. The Skandars, though they must surely have known that juggling had once been Valentine’s profession, were plainly astounded at seeing a Coronal do any such thing, and gaped in undisguised curiosity and awe as Valentine and Carabella tossed a motley galaxy of objects back and forth to one another.
“Hoy!” she cried, and “Hoy!” and “Hoy!” as she led him on to ever more complex feats. They were nothing compared with the tricks she had routinely performed in the old days, for her skill had been great indeed, and they were trivial even in comparison with the level of technique that Valentine, never Carabella’s equal as a juggler, once had mastered. But it was fair going, he thought, for someone who had not juggled seriously in close to a decade. Within an hour, rain soaked and sweat soaked though he was, he felt better than he had in months.
Sleet appeared and, watching them, seemed to draw out of his anxiety and gloom; after a while he moved closer, and Carabella tossed a knife and a club and a hatchet to him, and he caught them casually and began to weave them into a lofty playful cascade to which he added three more things that Valentine sent his way. There was perhaps a shade of strain visible on Sleet’s face that would not have been there a decade ago—except when he was doing his famous routine of juggling blindfolded, maybe—but in no other way did he betray any lessening of his great skill. “Hoy!” he cried, sending the club and the hatchet back toward Valentine, and remorselessly sending other things Valentine’s way before the Coronal had caught the first. Then he and Valentine and Carabella went at it with very great seriousness indeed, as though they were wandering jugglers once more, and were rehearsing for a performance before the royal court.
Sleet’s display of virtuosity inspired Carabella to some intricate feats of her own, which led Sleet to call for some even more difficult maneuvers, and before long Valentine was totally out of his depth. All the same he attempted to keep up with them as long as he could, and did a creditable job at it, only dropping an occasional thing—until he found himself bombarded from both sides at once by a laughing Carabella and a cool, intense Sleet: and he found himself suddenly all elbows and no fingers, and allowed everything to go tumbling from his grasp.
“Ah, my lord, that’s no way to do it!” boomed a harsh and wonderfully familiar voice.
“Zalzan Kavol?” Valentine cried in amazement and glee.
The huge Skandar came bounding toward him, quickly making the starburst salute and then scooping up all the things that Valentine had dropped; and with a manic delight he began to toss them at Sleet and Carabella in that wild four-armed way of his that could push any human juggler, no matter how skilled, to the limits of his ability.
Valentine looked deeper into the jungle and saw the others running through the rain: Lisamon Hultin, with the Vroon perched on her shoulder, Tunigorn, Tisana, Ermanar, Shanamir, and still more, erupting one after another from a battered and mud-splattered floater parked not far away. All of them had come, Valentine realized—everyone whom he had left behind in Gihorna, the entire party reunited at last. “Get out the wine!” he cried. “This calls for celebration!” He rushed among them, embracing this one and that, straining upward to throw his arms about the giantess, pummeling Shanamir joyfully, clasping hands solemnly with the dignified Ermanar, seizing Tunigorn in a hug that might have throttled a weaker man.
“My lord,” shouted Lisamon, “you will never go off by yourself again, so long as I live! With all respects, my lord. Never again! Never!”
“If I had known, my lord,” said Zalzan Kavol, “that when you said you would travel a day’s journey ahead of us to the Steiche, that there was going to be a storm of such force, and that we would not see you again for this many weeks—ah, my lord, what kind of guardians do you think we are, to let you escape from us this way? When Tunigorn said you had survived the storm, but had gone chasing off into Piurifayne without waiting for us—ah, my lord, my lord, if you were not my lord I would have wanted to commit treason upon you when I caught up with you again, believe me, my lord!”
“And will you forgive me this escapade?” Valentine asked.
“My lord, my lord!”
“You know it was never my intention to separate myself from you this long. That was why I sent Tunigorn back, to find you and have you come after me. And each night I sent messages to you—I put the circlet on, I strived with all my mind’s strength to reach out and touch you—you, Deliamber, and you, Tisana—”
“Those messages reached us, my lord,” said Deliamber.
“They did?”
“Night after night. It gave us much joy, knowing that you were alive.”
“And you made no reply?” Valentine asked.
“Ah, my lord, we replied every time,” the Vroon said. “But we knew we were not getting through, that my power was not strong enough over such a distance. We longed to tell you to stay where you were, and let us come to you; but every day you were farther into the jungle, and there was no holding you back, and we were unable to overtake you, and I could not reach your mind, my lord. I could not reach your mind.”
“But finally you did get through.”
“With the help of your mother the Lady,” said Deliamber. “Tisana went to her in sleep, and won from her a sending, and the Lady understood; and she made of her own mind the courier for mine, carrying me where I could not go myself. And that was how we spoke to you at last. My lord, there is so much to tell you, now!”
“Indeed,” said Tunigorn. “You’ll be astonished, Valentine. I pledge you that.”
“Astonish me, then,” Valentine said.
Deliamber said, “Tunigorn has told you, I think, that we discovered the agricultural expert Y-Uulisaan to be a Shapeshifter spy?”
“So he has told me, yes. But how was this discovered?”
“The day you set out for the Steiche, my lord, we came upon Y-Uulisaan deep in the communion of minds with some far-off person. I felt his mind reaching forth; I felt the force of the communion. And immediately I asked Zalzan Kavol and Lisamon to apprehend him.”
Valentine blinked. “How could Y-Uulisaan possibly have had such a power?”
“Because he was a Shapeshifter, my lord,” said Tisana, “and the Shapeshifters have a way of linking mind to mind using the great sea-dragon kings as their joining-place.”
Like a man who has been attacked from two sides at once, Valentine glanced from Tisana to Deliamber, and back at the old dream-speaker again. He struggled to absorb the meaning of the things they had said, but there was so much in them that was strange, that was entirely bewildering, that he could at first grasp very little. “It baffles me,” he said, “to hear of Metamorphs speaking to one another through sea dragons. Who could have supposed the dragons had any such power of mind?”
“Water-kings, my lord, is what they call them,” Tisana said. “And it appears that the water-kings have very powerful minds indeed. Which enabled the spy to file his reports with great ease.”
“Reports on what?” said Valentine uneasily. “And to whom?”
“When we found Y-Uulisaan in this communion,” said Deliamber, “Lisamon and Zalzan Kavol seized him, and he at once began to change his shape. We would have brought him to you for interrogation, but you had gone ahead to the river, and then the storm began and we could not follow. So we interrogated him ourselves. He admitted that he was a spy, my lord, who would help you to formulate the government’s response to the plagues and blights, and then immediately send word of what that response would be. Which was of great aid to the Metamorphs as they went about the business of causing and spreading those plagues.”
Valentine gasped. “The Metamorphs—causing the plagues—spreading the plagues—?”
“Yes, my lord. Y-Uulisaan told us all We were—ah—not gentle with him. In secret laboratories here in Piur
ifayne the Metamorphs have for years developed cultures of every enemy of our crops that has ever afflicted them. And when they were ready, they went forth in a thousand disguises—some of them, my lord, actually went to farmers masquerading as provincial agricultural agents, pretending to offer new ways of increasing farm yield, and secretly scattered their poisons over the fields while inspecting them. And also certain creatures were let loose by air, carried by birds that the Metamorphs released. Or things were sprayed, and became drifting clouds—” Stunned, Valentine looked toward Sleet and said, “Then we have been at war, and did not know it!”
“We know it now, my lord,” said Tunigorn.
“And I have been traveling through the kingdom of my enemy, thinking in my foolishness that all I needed to do was speak soft words, and open my arms in love, and the Danipiur would smile and the Divine would bless us once again. But in truth the Danipiur and her people have been waging a terrible war against us all the while, and—”
“No, my lord,” Deliamber said. “Not the Danipiur. Not so far as we know.”
“What do you say?”
“The one whom Y-Uulisaan served is named Faraataa, a being consumed with hate, a wild man, who could not get the Danipiur to give her backing to his program, and therefore went off with his followers to launch it himself. There are two factions among the Metamorphs, do you see, my lord? This Faraataa leads the radical ones, the war-hungry ones. It is their plan to starve us into chaos and compel us to leave Majipoor. Whereas the Danipiur appears to be more moderate, or at least less fierce.”
“Then I must continue toward Ilirivoyne and speak with her.”
“You will never find Ilirivoyne, my lord,” said Deliamber.
“And why is that?”
“They have taken the city apart, and they carry it on their backs through the jungle. I feel its presence when I cast my spells—but it is a presence that moves. The Danipiur flees you, my lord. She does not want to meet with you. Perhaps it is too dangerous politically—perhaps she is unable to control her own people any longer, and fears they will all go over to the faction of Faraataa if she shows any favor toward you. I am only guessing, my lord. But I tell you, you will never find her, even if you search in this jungle a thousand years.”
Valentine nodded. “Probably you are right, Deliamber. Certainly you are right.” He closed his eyes and sought desperately to quell the turmoil in his mind. How badly he had misjudged things; how little he had understood! “This communication between Metamorphs through the minds of sea dragons—how long has that been going on?”
“Perhaps quite some time, my lord. The sea dragons appear to be more intelligent than we have thought—and there seems to be some kind of alliance between them and the Metamorphs, or at least with some Metamorphs. It is very unclear.”
“And Y-Uulisaan? Where is he? We should question him further on these things.”
“Dead, my lord,” said Lisamon Hultin.
“How is that?”
“When the storm struck, all was confusion, and he attempted to escape. We recaptured him for a moment, but then the wind tore him from my grasp and it was impossible to find him again. We discovered his body the next day.”
“A small loss, my lord,” Deliamber said. “We could have extracted little else from him.”
“I would have liked the chance to speak with him, all the same,” Valentine replied. “Well, it will not happen. Nor will I speak with the Danipiur either, I suppose. But it is hard for me to abandon that idea. Is there utterly no hope of finding Ilirivoyne, Deliamber?”
“None, I think, my lord.”
“I see her as an ally: does that sound strange to you? The Metamorph queen and the Coronal, joined in league against those who wage biological warfare against us. Folly, eh, Tunigorn? Come, speak openly: you think it’s folly.”
Tunigorn shrugged. “On that score I can say very little, Valentine. I know only that I believe Deliamber is right: the Danipiur wants no meeting with you, and will not allow herself to be found. And I think that to spend further time in quest of her now—”
“Would be foolish. Yes. Folly indeed, while there’s so much for me to do elsewhere.” Valentine fell silent. Absentmindedly he took a couple of the juggling implements from Zalzan Kavol and began to toss them from hand to hand. Plagues, famines, false Coronals, he thought. Madness. Chaos. Biological warfare. The anger of the Divine made manifest. And the Coronal trekking endlessly through the Metamorph jungle on a fool’s mission? No. No.
To Deliamber he said, “Do you have any idea where we are now?”
“As best I can calculate, some nineteen hundred miles southwest of Piliplok, my lord.”
“How long, then, do you think it would take us to get there?” Tunigorn said, “I wouldn’t go to Piliplok at all just now, Valentine.”
Frowning, Valentine said, “Why so?”
“The danger.”
“Danger? For a Coronal? I was there just a month or two ago, Tunigorn, and I saw no danger!”
“Things have changed. Piliplok has proclaimed itself a free republic, so the word reaches us. The citizens of Piliplok, still having ample food supplies in storage, were fearful of having those supplies requisitioned for use in Khyntor and Ni-moya; and so Piliplok has seceded from the commonwealth.”
Valentine stared as though into an infinite abyss. “Seceded? A free republic? These words have no meaning!”
“Nevertheless, they seem to have meaning for the citizens of Piliplok. We have no idea what sort of reception they would give you these days. I think it might be wise to go elsewhere until the situation becomes clearer,” Tunigorn said.
Angrily, Valentine responded, “How can I permit myself to fear entering one of my own cities? Piliplok would return to its allegiance the moment I arrived!”
Carabella said, “Can you be certain of that? Here is Piliplok, puffed up with pride and selfishness: and here comes the Coronal, arriving in a worn-out floater, wearing mildewed rags. And will they hail you, do you think? They have committed treason, and they know it. They might compound that treason rather than risk yielding themselves mildly up to your authority. Best not to enter Piliplok except at the head of an army, I say!”
“And I,” Tunigorn added.
Valentine looked in dismay toward Deliamber, toward Sleet, toward Ermanar. They met his gaze silently, solemnly, sadly, bleakly.
“Then am I overthrown again?” Valentine asked, of no one in particular. “A ragged wanderer once more, am I? I dare not enter Piliplok? I dare not? And false Coronals in Khyntor and Ni-moya: they have armies, I suppose, and I have none, so I dare not go there either. What shall I do, become a juggler a second time?” He laughed. “No, I think not. Coronal is what I am: Coronal is what I shall remain. I thought I was done with this business of making repairs to my place in the world, but evidently not. Get me out of this jungle, Deliamber. Find me my way to the coast, to some port city that still gives me homage. And then we’ll go forth in search of allies, and set things to rights all over again, eh?”
“And where shall we find those allies, my lord?” Sleet asked.
“Wherever we can,” said Valentine with a shrug.
THROUGHOUT THE JOURNEY down from Castle Mount through the valley of the Glayge to the Labyrinth, Hissune had seen signs, wherever he looked, of the turmoil that lay upon the land. Although in this gentle and fertile region of Alhanroel the situation had not yet grown as troubled as it was farther west, or in Zimroel, there was nevertheless a visible and virtually tangible tension everywhere: locked gates, frightened eyes, clenched faces. But in the Labyrinth itself, he thought, nothing seemed greatly to have changed, perhaps because the Labyrinth had always been a place of locked gates, frightened eyes, clenched faces.
Though the Labyrinth might not have changed, Hissune had; and the change was evident to him from the moment he entered the Mouth of Waters, that grand and opulent ceremonial gateway traditionally used by the Powers of Majipoor when coming into the city of the Po
ntifex. Behind him lay the warm hazy afternoon of the Glayge Valley, fragrant breezes, green hills, the joyous throbbing glow of rich sunlight. Ahead lay the eternal night of the Labyrinth’s secretive hermetic coils, the hard glitter of artificial lighting, the strange lifelessness of air that has never known the touch of wind or rain. And as he passed from the one realm to the other, Hissune imagined for just a flickering instant that a massive gate was clanging shut behind him, that some horrific barrier now separated him from all that was beautiful in the world; and he felt a chill of fear.
It surprised him that a mere year or two on Castle Mount could have worked such a transformation in him—that the Labyrinth, which he doubted he had ever loved, but where he had certainly felt at ease, should have become so repellent to him. And it seemed to him that he had not really understood, until this moment, the dread that Lord Valentine felt for the place: but Hissune had had a taste of it now, the merest tincture of it, enough to let him see for the first time what kind of terror it was that invaded the Coronal’s soul when he undertook this downward journey.
Hissune had changed in another way. When he had taken his leave of the Labyrinth he had been nobody in particular—a knight-initiate, to be sure, but that was no very important thing, especially to Labyrinth dwellers, not easily impressed by such matters of worldly pomp. Now he was returning just a few years later as Prince Hissune of the Council of Regency. Labyrinth dwellers might not be impressed by pomp, but they were by power, especially when it was one of their own that had attained it. Thousands of them lined the road that led from the Mouth of Blades to the Labyrinth’s outer ring, and they jostled and shoved to get a better look at him as he came riding through the great gateway aboard a royal floater that bore the Coronal’s own colors, and with a retinue of his own as if he were Coronal himself. They did not cheer or scream or call out his name. Labyrinth people were not known to do such things. But they stared. Silent, plainly awe-smitten, very likely envious, they watched him with a sullen fascination as he passed by. He imagined that he saw his old playmate Vanimoon in the crowd, and Vanimoon’s pretty sister, and Ghisnet and Heulan and half a dozen others of the old Guadeloom Court bunch. Perhaps not: perhaps it was only a trick of his mind that put them there. He realized that he wanted them to be there, wanted them to see him in his princely robes and his grand floater, scrappy little Hissune of Guadeloom Court transformed now into the Regent Prince Hissune, with the aura of the Castle crackling about him like the light of another sun. It’s all right to indulge in such petty pride once in a while, isn’t it? he asked himself. And he replied, Yes, yes, why not? You can allow yourself a little bit of small-mindedness once in a while. Even saints sometimes must feel smug, and you’ve never been accused of saintliness. But allow it, and be done with it, and move along to your tasks. A steady diet of self-congratulation bloats the soul.
Valentine Pontifex Page 29
