Sepulthrove stood beside the intricate life-support globe that housed the Pontifex.
“It is very strange,” the physician said. “After this long silence, he speaks again. Listen: he stirs now.”
And from within the sphere of blue glass came the whistling and gurgling sounds of the voice of Tyeveras; and then, plainly, as be had once before done, he could be heard to say, “Come. Rise. Walk.”
“The same words,” said Sepulthrove.
“Life! Pain! Death!”
“I think he knows,” Hornkast said. “I think he must.”
Sepulthrove frowned. “Knows what?”
Hornkast indicated the decree. “This is Lord Valentine’s proclamation of grief upon the loss of Majipoor’s great emperor.”
“I see,” said the physician, and his hawk-featured face turned dark with congested blood. “So it finally must come.”
“Indeed.”
“Now?” Sepulthrove asked. His hands trembled. He held them poised above a bank of controls.
From the Pontifex came one last burst of words:
“Life, Majesty. Death. Valentine Pontifex of Majipoor!”
There was a terrible silence.
“Now,” Hornkast said.
ENDLESSLY BACK AND FORTH across the sea, now sailing once more from the Isle to Zimroel: it was beginning to seem to Valentine that in one of his former lives he must have been that legendary ancient captain Sinnabor Lavon, who had set out to make the first crossing of the Great Sea and given up the voyage after five years, and who perhaps for that had been condemned to be reborn and sail from land to land without ever halting for rest. But Valentine felt no weariness now, and no yearning to give up this life of wandering that he had undertaken. In a way—a strange and unexpected way—he was still making his grand processional.
The fleet, sped westward by favorable winds, was nearing Piliplok. There had been no dragons in the sea this time to menace or delay the journey, and the crossing had been swift.
From the masts the banners stood out straight toward Zimroel ahead: no longer the green-and-gold colors of the Coronal, for now Lord Hissune sailed under those as he made his separate voyage to Zimroel. Valentine’s ships bore the red-and-black of the Pontifex, with the Labyrinth symbol blazoned upon them.
He had not yet grown accustomed to those colors, nor to that symbol, nor to those other alterations that had come. They did not make the starburst sign to him any longer when they approached him. Well, so be it; he had always thought that such salutes were foolishness, anyway. They did not address him as “my lord” now when they spoke with him, for a Pontifex must be called “your majesty.” Which made little difference to Valentine except that his ear had long since grown accustomed to that oft-repeated “my lord” as a kind of punctuation, a way of marking the rhythm of a sentence, and it was odd not to hear it. It was with difficulty that he got people to speak to him at all, now: for everyone knew that the custom since ancient times had been to address one’s words to the high spokesman of the Pontifex, never to the Pontifex himself, though the Pontifex was right there and perfectly capable of hearing. And when the Pontifex replied, why, he must do it by indirect discourse also, through his spokesman. That was the first of the Pontifical customs that Valentine had discarded; but it was not easy to get others to abide by the change. He had named Sleet his high spokesman—it seemed a natural enough appointment—but Sleet was forbidden to indulge in any of that antique mummery of pretending to be the Pontifex’s ears.
For that matter no one could comprehend the presence of a Pontifex aboard a ship, exposed to the brisk winds and the bright warm sunlight. The Pontifex was an emperor shrouded in mystery. The Pontifex belonged out of sight. The Pontifex, as everyone knew, should be in the Labyrinth.
I will not go, Valentine thought.
I have passed along my crown, and someone else now has the privilege of putting “Lord” before his name, and the Castle now will be Lord Hissune’s Castle, if ever he has the chance to return to it. But I will not bury myself in the ground.
Carabella, emerging on deck, said, “Asenhart asks me to tell you, my lord, that we will be within range of Piliplok in twelve hours, if the wind holds true.”
“Not ‘my lord,’” Valentine said.
She grinned. “I find that so hard to remember, your majesty.”
“As do I. But the change has been made.”
“May I not call you ‘my lord’ even so, when we are in private? For that is what you are to me, my lord.”
“Am I? Do I order you about, and have you pour my wine for me, and bring me my slippers like a servant?”
“You know I mean otherwise, Valentine.”
“Then call me Valentine, and not ‘my lord.’ I was your king, and I am your emperor now, but I am not your master. That has always been understood between us, so I thought.”
“I think perhaps it has—your majesty.” She laughed, and he laughed with her, and drew her close and held her against him. After a moment he said, “I have often told you I feel a certain regret, or even guilt, for having taken you away from a juggler’s free life, and given you in its place all the heavy responsibilities of Castle Mount. And often you have told me, No, no, nonsense, there is nothing to regret, I came of my own will to live by your side.”
“As in all truth I did, my lord.”
“But now I am Pontifex—by the Lady, I say those words, and they sound like another language in my mouth!—I am Pontifex, I am indeed Pontifex, and now I feel once more that I must rob you of the joys of life.”
“Why, Valentine? Must a Pontifex give up his wife, then? I’ve heard nothing of that custom!”
“A Pontifex must live in the Labyrinth, Carabella.”
“You come back to that again!”
“It never leaves me. And if I am to live in the Labyrinth, why, then you must live there also, and how can I ask that of you?”
“Do you ask it of me?”
“You know I have no wish to part from you.”
“Nor I from you, my lord. But we are not in the Labyrinth now, and it was my belief you had no plan for going there.”
“What if I must, Carabella?”
“Who says must to a Pontifex?”
He shook his head. “But what if I must? You know as well as I how little love I have for that place. But if I must—if for reasons of state I must—if the absolute necessity of it is forced upon me, which I pray the Divine will not happen, but if indeed there comes a time when I am compelled by the logic of government to go down into that maze—”
“Why, then I will go with you, my lord.”
“And give up all fair winds, and bright sunny days, and the sea and the forest and the mountains?”
“Surely you would find a pretext for coming forth now and then, even if you found it necessary to take up residence down there.”
“And if I can’t?”
“You pursue problems too far beyond the horizon, my lord. The world is in peril; mighty tasks await you, and no one will shove you into the Labyrinth while those tasks are undone; there is time later to worry about where we will live and how we will like it. Is that not so, my lord?”
Valentine nodded. “Indeed. I foolishly multiply my woes.”
“But I tell you this, and then let us talk no further of it: if you find some honorable way of escaping the Labyrinth forever, I will rejoice, but if you must go down into it I will go with you and never give it a second thought. When as Coronal you took me as consort, do you imagine I failed to see that Lord Valentine must one day become Valentine Pontifex? When I accepted you, I accepted the Labyrinth: just as you, my lord, accepted the Labyrinth when you accepted the crown your brother had worn. So let us say no more on these matters, my lord.”
“‘Your majesty,’” said Valentine. He slipped his arm again about her shoulders, and touched his lips lightly to hers. “I will promise to do no more brooding about the Labyrinth,” he said. “And you must promise to call me by my proper t
itle.”
“Yes, your majesty. Yes, your majesty. Yes, your majesty!” And she made a wondrous sweeping salutation, swinging her arms round and round in a flamboyantly exaggerated mockery of the Labyrinth symbol.
After a time Carabella went below. Valentine remained on deck, studying the horizon through a seeing-tube.
What kind of reception, he wondered, would he have in the free republic of Piliplok?
There was hardly anyone who had not opposed his decision to go there. Sleet, Tunigorn, Carabella, Hissune—they all spoke of the risk, the uncertainty. Piliplok, in its madness, might do anything—seize him, even, and hold him hostage to guarantee its independence. “Whoever enters Piliplok,” Carabella said, as she had said months before in Piurifayne, “must do so at the head of an army, and you have no army, my lord!”
From Hissune had come the same argument. “It was agreed on Castle Mount,” he said, “that when the new armies are organized, it is the Coronal who should lead troops against Piliplok—while the Pontifex directs the strategy at a safer remove.”
“It will not be necessary to lead troops against Piliplok,” said Valentine.
“Your majesty?”
Valentine said, “I had much experience during the war of restoration in pacifying rebellious subjects without bloodshed. If you were to go to Piliplok—a new Coronal, untried, unknown, with soldiers at his back—it would be sure to stir armed resistance in them. But if the Pontifex himself appears—who can remember a time when a Pontifex was seen in Piliplok?—they will be awed, they will be cowed, they will not dare to raise a hand against him even if he enter the city alone.”
Though Hissune had continued to voice strong doubts, in the end Valentine overruled him. There could have been no other outcome, Valentine knew: this early in his Pontificate, having only just handed over the temporal power of the Coronal to the younger man, he could not yet relegate himself wholly to the kind of figurehead position that a Pontifex might be expected to assume. Power, Valentine was discovering, was not easily relinquished, not even by those who once thought they had little love for it.
But it was not wholly a matter of contending for power, Valentine realized. It was a matter of preventing bloodshed where bloodshed was needless. Hissune plainly did not believe that Piliplok could be retaken peacefully; Valentine intended to demonstrate that it could be. Call it part of the new Coronal’s education in the arts of government, Valentine thought. And if I fail, he thought—well, then, call it part of mine.
In the morning, as Piliplok burst into view high above the dark mouth of the great river Zimr, Valentine ordered his fleet to form two wings, with his flagship, the Lady Thiin, at their apex. And he placed himself, clad in the richly hued Pontifical robes of scarlet and black that he had had made for himself before departing from the Isle, at the prow of his vessel, so that all of Piliplok might see him clearly as the royal fleet approached.
“Again they send the dragon-ships to us,” Sleet said.
Yes. As had been done the last time, when Valentine as Coronal had come to Piliplok on what was to have been the beginning of his grand processional through Zimroel, the fleet of dragon-hunters was sailing forth to meet him. But that other time they had had bright Coronal-ensigns of green and gold fluttering in their riggings, and they had greeted him with the joyous sounds of trumpets and drums. Now, Valentine saw, the dragon-ships flew a different flag, a yellow one with a great crimson slash across it, as somber and sinister as the spike-tailed vessels themselves. It was surely the flag of the free republic that Piliplok now deemed itself to be; nor was this fleet coming to hail him in any friendly way.
Grand Admiral Asenhart looked uneasily toward Valentine. He indicated the speaking-tube he held, and said, “Shall I order them to yield and escort us into port, majesty?” But the Pontifex only smiled, and signaled to him to be calm.
Now the mightiest of the Piliplok vessels, a monstrous thing with a horrifying fanged figurehead and bizarrely elaborate three-pronged masts, moved forward from the line and took up a position close by the Lady Thiin. Valentine recognized it as the ship of old Guidrag, the senior among the dragon-captains and yes, there she was, the fierce old Skandar woman herself on the deck, calling out through a speaking tube, “In the name of the free republic of Piliplok, stand forth and identify yourselves!”
“Give me the tube,” Valentine said to Asenhart. Putting it to his lips, he cried, “This is the Lady Thiin, and I am Valentine. Come aboard and speak with me, Guidrag.”
“I may not do that, my lord.”
“I did not say Lord Valentine, but Valentine,” he responded. “Do you take my meaning? And if you will not come to me, why, then I will go to you! Prepare to take me on board.”
“Majesty!” said Sleet in horror.
Valentine turned to Asenhart. “Make ready a floater-basket for us. Sleet, you are the high spokesman: you will accompany me. And you, Deliamber.”
Carabella said urgently, “My lord, I beg you—”
“If they mean to seize us,” he said, “they will seize us whether I am aboard their ship or mine. They have twenty ships for each of ours, and well-armed ones at that. Come, Sleet—Deliamber—”
“Majesty,” said Lisamon Hultin sternly, “you may not go unless I accompany you!”
With a smile Valentine said, “Ah, well done! You give commands to the Pontifex! I admire your spirit: but no, I will take no bodyguards this time, no weapons, no protection of any sort except these robes. Is the floater ready, Asenhart?”
The basket was rigged and suspended from the foremast. Valentine clambered in, and beckoned to Sleet, grim-faced and bleak, and to the Vroon. He looked back at the others gathered on the deck of the flagship, Carabella, Tunigorn, Asenhart, Zalzan Kavol, Lisamon, Shanamir, all staring at him as though he had at last taken complete leave of his wits. “You should know me better by this time,” he said softly, and ordered the basket lifted over the side.
Out over the water it drifted, skimming lightly above the waves, and climbing the side of the dragon-ship until snared by the hook that Guidrag lowered for it. A moment later Valentine stepped out onto the deck of the other vessel, the timbers of which were dark with the ineradicable stains of sea-dragon blood. A dozen towering Skandars, the least of whom was half again Valentine’s size, confronted him, and at their head was old Guidrag, even more gap-toothed than before, her thick matted fur even more faded. Her yellow eyes gleamed with force and authority, but Valentine detected some uncertainty in her features as well.
He said, “What is this, Guidrag, that you offer me so unkind a welcome on this visit?”
“My lord, I had no idea it was you returning to us.”
“Yet it seems I have returned once again. And am I not to be greeted with more joy than this?”
“My lord—things have changed here,” she said, faltering a little.
“Changed? The free republic?” He glanced about the deck, and at the other dragon-ships arrayed on all sides. “What is a free republic, Guidrag? I think I have not heard the term before. I ask you: what does it mean?”
“I am only a dragon-captain, my lord. These political things—they are not for me to speak of—”
“Forgive me, then. But tell me this, at least: why were you sent forth to meet my fleet, if not to welcome us and guide us to port?”
Guidrag said, “I was sent not to welcome you but to turn you away. Though I tell you again that we had no idea it was you, my lord—that we knew only it was a fleet of imperial ships—”
“And imperial ships are no longer welcome in Piliplok?”
There was a long pause.
“No, my lord,” said the Skandar woman lamely. “They are not, my lord. We have—how do I say this?—we have withdrawn from the empire, my lord. That is what a free republic is. It is a territory that rules itself, and is not governed from without.”
Valentine lifted his eyebrows delicately. “Ah, and why is that? Is the rule of the imperial government so burdensome, do
you think?”
“You play with me, my lord. These matters are beyond my understanding. I know only that these are difficult times, that changes have been made, that Piliplok now chooses to decide its own destinies.”
“Because Piliplok still has food, and other cities have none, and the burden of feeding the hungry is too heavy for Piliplok? Is that it, Guidrag?”
“My lord—”
“And you must stop calling me ‘my lord,’ ”said Valentine. “You must call me ‘your majesty’ now.”
The dragon-captain, looking more troubled than ever, replied, “But are you no longer Coronal, my lord—your majesty—?”
“The changes in Piliplok are not the only changes that have occurred,” he said. “I will show you, Guidrag. And then I will return to my ship, and you will lead me to the harbor, and I will speak with the masters of this free republic of yours, so that they can explain it to me more thoroughly. Eh, Guidrag? Let me show you who I am.”
And he took Sleet’s hand in one of his, and a tentacle of Deliamber’s in the other, and moved easily and smoothly into the waking sleep, the trance-state that allowed him to speak mind to mind as though he were issuing sendings. And from his soul to Guidrag’s there flowed a current of vitality and power so great that it caused the air between them to glow; for he drew now not only on the strength that had been growing in himself throughout this time of trial and turmoil, but on that which was lent him by Sleet and the Vroon, and by his comrades aboard the Lady Thiin, and by Lord Hissune and Hissune’s mother the Lady, and by his own mother the former Lady, and by all others who loved Majipoor as it had been and as they wished it would be again. And he reached forth to Guidrag and then beyond her to the Skandar dragon-hunters at her side, and then to the crews of the other ships, and then to the citizens of the free republic of Piliplok across the waters; and the message that he sent them was a simple one, that he had come to them to forgive them for their errors and to receive from them their renewed loyalty to the great commonwealth that was Majipoor. And he told them also that Majipoor was indivisible and that the strong must aid the weak or all would perish together, for the world stood at the brink of doom and nothing but a single mighty effort would save it. And lastly he told them that the beginning of the end of the time of chaos was at hand, for Pontifex and Coronal and Lady and King of Dreams were striding forth together to set things to rights, and all would be made whole again, if only they had faith in the justice of the Divine, in whose name he reigned now as supreme monarch.
Valentine Pontifex Page 37
