Valentine Pontifex

by Robert Silverberg

  —Are you incapable of anger, then, Maazmoorn?

  —We understand anger.

  —But do not feel it?

  —Anger is beside the point, Valentine-brother. What your hunters do to us is a natural thing. It is a part of life; it is an aspect of That Which Is. As am I, as are you. We give praise to That Which Is in all its manifestations. You slay us as we pass the coast of what you call Zimroel, and you make your uses of us; sometimes we slay you in your ships, if it seems to be what must be done at that moment, and so we make our uses of you; and all that is That Which Is. Once the Piurivar folk slew some of us, in their stone city that is now dead, and they thought they were committing a monstrous crime, and to atone for that crime they destroyed their own city. But they did not understand. None of you land-children understand. All is merely That Which Is.

  —And if we resist now, when the Piurivar folk hurl chaos at us? Are we wrong to resist? Must we calmly accept our doom, because that too is That Which Is?

  —Your resistance is also That Which Is, Valentine-brother.

  —Then your philosophy makes no sense to me, Maazmoorn.

  —It does not have to, Valentine-brother. But that too is That Which Is.

  Valentine was silent once again, for an even longer time than before, but he took care to maintain the contact. Then he said:

  —I want this time of destruction to end. I mean to preserve the thing that we of Majipoor have understood as That Which Is.

  —Of course you do.

  —I want you to help me.

  “WE HAVE CAPTURED a Shapeshifter, my lord,” Alsimir said, “who claims he bears an urgent message for you, and you alone.”

  Hissune frowned. “A spy, do you think?”

  “Very likely, my lord.”

  “Or even an assassin.”

  “That possibility must never be overlooked, of course. But I think that is not why he is here. I know that he is a Shapeshifter, my lord, and our judgments are all risky ones, but nevertheless: I was among those who interrogated him. He seems sincere. Seems.”

  “Shapeshifter sincerity!” said Hissune, laughing. “They sent a spy to travel in Lord Valentine’s entourage, did they not?”

  “So have I been told. What shall I do with him, then?”

  “Bring him to me, I suppose.”

  “And if he plans some Shapeshifter trick?”

  “Then we will have to move faster than he does, Alsimir. But bring him here.” There were risks, Hissune knew. But one could not simply turn away someone who maintains he is a messenger from the enemy, or put him to death out of hand on mere suspicion of treachery. And to himself he confessed it would be an interesting diversion to lay eyes on a Metamorph at last, after so many weeks of tramping through this sodden jungle. In all this time they had not encountered one: not one.

  His camp lay just at the edge of a grove of giant dwikka-trees, somewhere along Piurifayne’s eastern border not far from the banks of the River Steiche. The dwikkas were impressive indeed—great astounding things with trunks as wide as a large house, and bark of a blazing bright red hue riven by immense deep cracks, and leaves so broad that one of them could keep twenty men dry in a soaking downpour, and colossal rough-skinned fruits as big around as a floater, with an intoxicating pulp within. But botanical wonders alone were small recompense for the dreariness of this interminable forced march in the Metamorph rain-forest. The rain was constant; mildew and rot afflicted everything, including, Hissune sometimes thought, one’s brain; and although the army now was deployed along a line more than a hundred miles in length, and the secondary Metamorph city of Avendroyne was supposedly close by the midpoint of that line, they had seen no cities, no signs of former cities, no traces of evacuation routes, and no Metamorphs at all. It was as if they were mythological beings, and this jungle were uninhabited.

  Divvis, Hissune knew, was having the same difficulty over on the far side of Piurifayne. The Metamorphs were not numerous and their cities appeared to be portable. They must flit from place to place like the filmy-winged insects of the night. Or else they disguised themselves as trees and bushes and stood silently by, choking down their laughter, as the armies of the Coronal marched past them. These great dwikkas, for all I know, might be Metamorph scouts, thought Hissune. Let us speak with the spy, or messenger, or assassin, or whatever he may be: we may learn something from him, or at the very least we may be entertained by him.

  Alsimir returned in moments with the prisoner, who was under heavy guard.

  He was, like those few Piurivars whom Hissune had seen before, a strangely disturbing-looking figure, extremely tall, slender to the point of frailness, naked but for a strip of leather about his loins. His skin and the thin rubbery strands of his hair were an odd pale greenish color, and his face was almost devoid of features, the lips mere slits, the nose only a bump, the eyes slanted sharply and barely visible beneath the lids. He seemed uneasy, and not particularly dangerous. All the same, Hissune wished he had someone with the gift of seeing into minds about him now, a Deliamber or a Tisana or Valentine himself, to whom the secrets of others seemed often to be no secrets at all. This Metamorph might yet have some disagreeable surprise in mind.

  “Who are you?” Hissune asked.

  “My name is Aarisiim. I serve the King That Is, whom you know as Faraataa.”

  “Did he send you to me?”

  “No, Lord Hissune. He does not know I am here.” The Metamorph trembled suddenly, quivering in an odd convulsive way, and for an instant the shape of his body seemed to change and flow. The Coronal’s guards at once moved forward, interposing themselves between the Metamorph and Hissune in case these movements were the prelude to an attack; but in a moment Aarisiim was under control and restored to his form. In a low voice he said, “I have come here to betray Faraataa.”

  In astonishment Hissune said, “Do you mean to lead us to his hiding place?”

  “I will, yes.” This is much too good to be true, Hissune thought, and stared about the circle, at Alsimir, at Stimion, at his other close advisers. Obviously they felt the same way: they looked skeptical, guarded, hostile, wary.

  He said, “Why are you willing to do this?”

  “He has done something unlawful.”

  “Only now does that occur to you, when this rebellion has been going on since—”

  “I mean, my lord, unlawful by our beliefs, not by yours.”

  “Ah. And what is that, then?”

  Aarisiim said, “He has gone to Ilirivoyne and taken the Danipiur captive, and he means to have her slain. It is not lawful to seize the person of the Danipiur. It is not lawful to deprive her of her life. He would listen to no advice. He has seized her. To my shame, I was among those who was with him. I thought he only wanted her a prisoner, so that she could not strike up an alliance against us with you Unchanging Ones. That was what he said, that he would not kill her unless he thought the war was entirely lost.”

  “And does he think that now?” Hissune asked.

  “No, Lord Hissune. He thinks the war is far from lost: he is about to release new creatures against you, and new diseases, and he feels he is on the threshold of victory.”

  “Then why kill the Danipiur?”

  “To ensure his victory.”

  “Madness!”

  “I think so too, my lord.” Aarisiim’s eyes were open wide, now, and burned with a strange harsh gleam. “He sees her, of course, as a dangerous rival, one whose inclinations are more toward peace than war. If she is removed, that risk to his power is gone. But there is more than that. He means to sacrifice her on the altar—to offer her blood to the water-kings, for their continued support. He has built a temple after the design of the one that was at Old Velalisier; and he will put her upon the stone himself, and take her life with his own hands.”

  “And when is this supposed to happen?”

  “Tonight, my lord. At the Hour of the Haigus.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, my lord. I came a
s quickly as I could, but your army was so large, and I feared I would be slain if I did not find your own guards before your soldiers found me—I would have come to you yesterday, or the day before, but it was not possible, I could not do it—”

  “And how many days’ journey from here is New Velalisier?”

  “Four, perhaps. Perhaps three, if we do it very swiftly.”

  “Then the Danipiur is lost!” Hissune cried angrily.

  “If he does not sacrifice her tonight—”

  “You said tonight was the night.”

  “Yes, the moons are right tonight, the stars are right tonight—but if he loses his resolve, if at the last moment he changes his mind—”

  “And does Faraataa lose his resolve often?” Hissune asked.

  “Never, my lord.”

  “Then there is no way we can get there in time.”

  “No, my lord,” said Aarisiim darkly.

  Hissune stared off toward the dwikka grove, scowling. The Danipiur dead? That left no hope of coming to any accommodation with the Shapeshifters: she alone, so he understood it, might soften the fury of the rebels and allow some sort of compromise to be negotiated. Without her it must be a battle to the end.

  To Alsimir he said, “Where is the Pontifex today?”

  “He is west of Khyntor, perhaps as far west as Dulorn, certainly somewhere in the Rift.”

  “And can we send word to him there?”

  “The communications channels linking us to that region are very uncertain, my lord.”

  “I know that. I want you to get this news through to him somehow, and within the next two hours. Try anything that might work. Use wizards. Use prayers. Send word to the Lady, and let her try dreams. Every imaginable channel, Alsimir, do you understand that? He must know that Faraataa means to slay the Danipiur tonight. Get that information to him. Somehow. Somehow. And tell him that he alone can save her. Somehow.”

  FOR THIS, VALENTINE THOUGHT, he would need the circlet of the Lady as well as the tooth of Maazmoorn. There must be no failures of transmission, no distortions of the message: he would make use of every capacity at his command.

  “Stand close beside me,” he said to Carabella. And to Deliamber, to Tisana, to Sleet, he said the same thing. “Surround me. When I reach toward you, take hold of my hand. Say nothing: only take hold.”

  The day was bright and clear. The morning air was crisp, fresh, sweet as alabandina nectar. But in Piurifayne, far to the east, night was already descending.

  He donned the circlet. He grasped the tooth of the water-king. He drew the fresh sweet air deep into his lungs, until he was all but dizzied with it.

  —Maazmoorn?

  The summons leaped from Valentine with such power that those about him must have felt a backlash from it: Sleet flinched, Carabella put her hands to her ears, Deliamber’s tentacles writhed in a sudden flurry.

  —Maazmoorn? Maazmoorn?

  The sound of bells. The slow heavy turnings of a giant body lying at rest in cold northern waters. The faint rustlings of great black wings.

  —I hear, Valentine-brother.

  —Help me, Maazmoorn.

  —Help? How shall I help?

  —Let me ride on your spirit across the world.

  —Then come upon me, king-brother, Valentine-brother.

  It was wondrously easy. He felt himself grow light, and glided up, and floated, and soared, and flew. Below him lay the great curving arc of the planet, sweeping off eastward into night. The water-king carried him effortlessly, serenely, as a giant might carry a kitten in the palm of his hand. Onward, onward over the world, which was altogether open to him as he coursed above it. He felt that he and the planet were one, that he embodied in himself the twenty billion people of Majipoor, humans and Skandars and Hjorts and Metamorphs and all the rest, moving within him like the corpuscles of his blood. He was everywhere at once; he was all the sorrow in the world, and all the joy, and all the yearning, and all the need. He was everything. He was a boiling universe of contradictions and conflicts. He felt the heat of the desert and the warm rain of the tropics and the chill of the high peaks. He laughed and wept and died and made love and ate and drank and danced and fought and rode wildly through unknown hills and toiled in the fields and cut a path through thick vine-webbed jungles. In the oceans of his soul vast sea dragons breached the surface and let forth monstrous bleating roars and dived again, to the uttermost depths. He looked down and saw the broken places of the world, the wounded and shattered places where the land had risen and crashed against itself, and he saw how it all could be healed, how it could be made whole and serene again. For everything tended to return to serenity. Everything enfolded itself into That Which Is. Everything was part of a vast seamless harmony.

  But in that great harmony he felt a single dissonance.

  It screeched and yawped and shrieked and screamed. It slashed across the fabric of the world like a knife, leaving behind a track of blood. It ripped apart the wholeness.

  Even that dissonance, Valentine knew, was an aspect of That Which Is. Yet it was far across the world, roiling and churning and roaring in its madness—the one aspect of That Which Is that would not itself accept That Which Is. It was a force that cried a mighty no! to all else. It rose up against those who would restore the harmony, who would repair the fabric, who would make whole the wholeness.

  —Faraataa?

  —Who are you?

  —I am Valentine the Pontifex.

  —Valentine the fool. Valentine the child.

  —No, Faraataa. Valentine the Pontifex.

  —That means nothing to me. I am the King That Is!

  Valentine laughed, and his laughter showered across the world like a rainfall of drops of golden honey. Soaring on the wings of the great dragon-king, he rose almost to the edge of the sky, where he could look across the darkness and see the tip of Castle Mount piercing the heavens on the far side of the world, and the Great Sea beyond it. And he looked down into the jungle of Piurifayne, and laughed again, and watched the furious Faraataa writhing and struggling beneath the torrent of that laughter.

  —Faraataa?

  —What do you want?

  —You may not kill her, Faraataa.

  —Who are you to tell me what I may not do?

  —I am Majipoor.

  —You are the fool Valentine. And I am the King That Is!

  —No, Faraataa.

  —No?

  —I see the old tale glistening in your mind. The Prince To Come, the King That Is: how can you lay such a claim for yourself? You are not that Prince. You can never be that King.

  —You clutter my mind with your nonsense. Leave me or I will drive you out.

  Valentine felt the thrust, the push. He warded it off.

  —The Prince To Come is a being absolutely without hatred. Can you deny that, Faraataa? It is part of your own people’s legend. He is without the hunger for vengeance. He is without the lust for destruction. You are nothing except hatred and vengeance and destruction, Faraataa. If those things were emptied from you, you would be a shell, a husk.

  —Fool.

  —Your claim is a false one.

  —Fool.

  —Let me take the anger and the hatred from you, Faraataa, if you would be the king you claim you are.

  —You talk a fool’s foolishness.

  —Come, Faraataa. Release the Danipiur. Give your soul over to me for healing.

  —The Danipiur will die within the hour.

  —No, Faraataa.

  —Look!

  The interwoven crowns of the jungle trees parted, and Valentine beheld New Velalisier by the gleam of torchlight. The temples of interwoven logs, the banners, the altar, the pyre already blazing. The Metamorph woman, silent, dignified, chained to the block of stone. The faces surrounding her, blank, alien. The night, the trees, the sounds, the smells. The music. The chanting.

  —Release her, Faraataa. And then come to me, you and she together, and let us establish what must
be established.

  —Never. I will give her to the god with my own hands. And with her sacrifice atone for the crime of the Defilement, when we slew our gods and were laden with you as our penance.

  —You are wrong even about that, Faraataa.

  —What?

  —The gods gave themselves willingly, that day in Velalisier. It was their sacrifice, which you misunderstand. You have invented a myth of a Defilement, but it is the wrong myth. Faraataa, it is a mistake, it is a total error. The water-king Niznorn and the water-king Domsitor gave themselves as sacrifices that day long ago, just as the water-kings give themselves yet to our hunters as they round the curve of Zimroel. And you do not understand. You understand nothing at all.

  —Foolishness. Madness.

  —Set her free, Faraataa. Sacrifice your hatred as the water-kings sacrificed themselves.

  —I will slay her now with my own hands.

  —You may not do it, Faraataa. Release her.

  —NO.

  The terrible force of that no was unexpected: it rose like the ocean in its greatest wrath and swept upward toward Valentine and struck him with stunning impact, buffeting him, swaying him, sweeping him for a moment into chaos. As he struggled to right himself Faraafaa hurled a second such bolt, and a third, and a fourth, and they hit him with the same hammerblow power. But then Valentine felt the power of the water-king underlying his own, and he caught his breath, he regained his balance, he found his strength once more.

  He reached out toward the rebel chieftain.

  He remembered how it had been that other time years ago, in the final hour of the war of restoration, when he had gone alone into the judgment hail of the Castle and found the usurper Dominin Baijazid there, seething with fury. And Valentine had sent love to him, friendship, sadness for all that had come between them. He had sent the hope of an amicable settlement of differences, of pardon for sins committed, of safe conduct out of the Castle. To which the Barjazid had replied with defiance, hatred, anger, contempt, belligerence, a declaration of perpetual war. Valentine had not forgotten any of that. And it was the same all over again now, the desperate hatred-filled enemy, the fiery resistance, the bitter refusal to swerve from the path of death and destruction, loathing and abomination, scorn and contempt.