Valentine Pontifex m-3

by Robert Silverberg

  “He rambles in the remote past, as he often does. For this you called me down here with such urgent—”

  “Wait.”

  In growing irritation Hornkast turned his attention again to the inchoate monolog of the Pontifex, and was stunned to hear, for the first time in many years, a perfectly enunciated, completely recognizable word:

  “Life.”

  “You heard?” Sepulthrove asked.

  Hornkast nodded. “When did this start?”

  “Two hours ago, two and a half.”

  “Majesty.”

  “We have made a record of all of this,” said Dilifon.

  “What else has he said that you can understand?”

  “Seven or eight words,” Sepulthrove replied. “Perhaps there are others that only you can recognize.”

  Hornkast looked toward Narrameer. “Is he awake or dreaming?”

  “I think it is wrong to use either of those terms in connection with the Pontifex,” she said. “He lives in both states at once.”

  “Come. Rise. Walk.”

  “He’s said those before, several times,” Dilifon murmured.

  There was silence. The Pontifex seemed to have lapsed into sleep, though his eyes were still open. Hornkast stared grimly. When Tyeveras first had become ill, early in the reign of Lord Valentine, it had seemed only logical to sustain the old Pontifex’s life in this way, and Hornkast had been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the scheme that Sepulthrove had proposed. It had never happened before that a Pontifex had outlived two Coronals, so that the third Coronal of the reign came into power when the Pontifex was already in extreme old age. That had distorted the dynamics of the imperial system. Hornkast himself had pointed out at that time that Lord Valentine, young and untried, barely in command of the duties of the Coronal, could not be sent on to the Labyrinth so soon. By general agreement it was essential that the Pontifex remain on his throne a few more years, if he could be kept alive. Sepulthrove had found the means to keep him alive, though quickly it was apparent that Tyeveras had lapsed into senility and dwelled in hopeless lunatic death-in-life.

  But then had come the episode of the usurpation, and then the difficult years of restoration, when all the Coronal’s energies were needed to repair the chaos of the upheaval. Tyeveras had had to remain in his cage year after year. Though the continued life of the Pontifex meant Hornkast’s own continuance in power, and the power he had amassed by default of the Pontifex by now was extraordinary, nevertheless it was a repellent thing to watch, this cruel suspension of a life long since deserving of a termination. Yet Lord Valentine asked for time, and more time, and yet more time still, to finish his work as Coronal. Eight years, now: was that not time enough? With surprise Hornkast found himself almost ready now to pray for Tyeveras’s deliverance from this captivity. If only it were possible to let him sleep!

  “Va—Va— ”

  “What’s that?” Sepulthrove asked.

  “Something new!” whispered Dilifon.

  Hornkast gestured to them to be quiet.

  “Va—Valentine —”

  “This is new indeed!” said Narrameer.

  “Valentine Pontifex—Valentine Pontifex of Majipoor—”

  Followed by silence. Those words, plainly enunciated, free of all ambiguities, hovered in the air like exploding suns.

  “I thought he had forgotten Valentine’s name,” Hornkast said. “He thinks Lord Malibor is Coronal.”

  “Evidently he does not,” said Dilifon.

  “Sometimes toward the end,” Sepulthrove said quietly, “the mind repairs itself. I think his sanity is returning.”

  “He is as mad as ever!” cried Dilifon. “The Divine forbid that he should regain his understanding, and know what we have done to him!”

  “I think,” said Hornkast, “that he has always known what we have done to him, and that he is regaining not his understanding but his ability to communicate with us in words. You heard him: Valentine Pontifex. He is hailing his successor, and he knows who his successor ought to be. Sepulthrove, is he dying?”

  “The instruments indicate no physical change in him. I think he could continue this way for some long while.”

  “We must not allow it,” said Dilifon.

  “What are you suggesting?” Hornkast asked.

  “That this has gone on long enough. I know what it is to be old, Hornkast—and perhaps you do also, though you show little outer sign of it. This man is half again as old as any of us. He suffers things we can scarcely imagine. I say make an end. Now. This very day.”

  “We have no right,” said Hornkast. “I tell you, I feel for his sufferings even as you. But it is not our decision.”

  “Make an end, nevertheless.”

  “Lord Valentine must take responsibility for that.”

  “Lord Valentine never will,” Dilifon muttered. “He’ll keep this farce running for fifty more years!”

  “It is his choice,” said Hornkast firmly.

  “Are we his servants, or the servants of the Pontifex?” asked Dilifon.

  “It is one government, with two monarchs, and only one of them now is competent. We serve the Pontifex by serving the Coronal. And—”

  From the life-support cage came a bellow of rage, and then an eerie indrawn whistling sound, and then three harsh growls. And then the words, even more clearly than before:

  “Valentine—Pontifex of Majipoor—hail!”

  “He hears what we say, and it angers him. He begs for death,” said Dilifon.

  “Or perhaps he thinks he has already reached it,” Narrameer suggested.

  “No. No. Dilifon is right,” said Hornkast. “He’s overheard us. He knows we won’t give him what he wants.”

  “Come. Rise. Walk” Howlings. Babblings. “Death! Death! Death!”

  In a despair deeper than anything he had felt in decades, the high spokesman rushed toward the life-support globe, half intending to rip the cables and tubes from their mountings and bring an end to this now. But of course that would be insanity. Hornkast halted; he peered in; his eyes met those of Tyeveras, and he compelled himself not to flinch as that great sadness poured out upon him. The Pontifex was sane again. That was unarguable. The Pontifex understood that death was being withheld from him for reasons of state.

  “Your majesty?” Hornkast asked, speaking in his richest, fullest tone. “Your majesty, do you hear me? Close one eye if you hear me.”

  There was no response.

  “I think, nevertheless, that you hear me, majesty. And I tell you this: we know what you suffer. We will not allow you much longer to endure it. That we pledge to you, majesty.”

  Silence. Stillness. Then:

  “Life! Pain! Death!”

  And then a moaning and a babbling and a whistling and a shrieking that was like a song from beyond the grave.

  15

  “—and that is the temple of the Lady,” said Lord Mayor Sambigel, pointing far up the face of the astonishing vertical cliff that rose just east of his city. “The holiest of her shrines in the world, saving only the Isle itself, of course.”

  Valentine stared. The temple gleamed like a solitary white eye set in the dark forehead of the cliff.

  It was the fourth month of the grand processional now, or the fifth, or perhaps the sixth: days and weeks, cities and provinces, everything had begun to blur and merge. This day he had arrived at the great port of Alaisor, far up the northwestern coast of Alhanroel. Behind him lay Treymone, Stoienzar, Vilimong, Estotilaup, Kimoise: city upon city, all flowing together in his mind into one vast metropolis that spread like some sluggish many-armed monster across the face of Majipoor.

  Sambigel, a short swarthy man with a fringe of dense black beard around the edge of his face, droned on and on, bidding the Coronal welcome with his most sonorous platitudes. Valentine’s eyes felt glazed; his mind wandered. He had heard all this before, in Kikil, in Steenorp, in Klai: never-to-be-forgotten occasion, love and gratitude of all the people, prou
d of this, honored by that. Yes. Yes. He found himself wondering which city it was that had shown him its famous vanishing lake. Was it Simbilfant? And the aerial ballet, that was Montepulsiane, or had it been Ghrav? The golden bees were surely Beilemoona, but the sky-chain? Arkilon? Sennamole?

  Once more he looked toward the temple on the cliff. It beckoned powerfully to him. He yearned to be there at this very moment: to be caught on the fingertip of a gale; and swept like a dry leaf to that lofty summit.

  —Mother, let me rest with you awhile!

  There came a pause in the lord mayor’s speech, or perhaps he was done. Valentine turned to Tunigorn and said, “Make arrangements for me to sleep at that temple tonight.”

  Sambigel seemed nonplussed. “It was my understanding, my lord, that you were to see the Tomb of Lord Stiamot this afternoon, and then to go to the Hall of Topaz for a reception, followed by a dinner at—”

  “Lord Stiamot has waited eight thousand years for me to pay homage to him. He can wait one day more.”

  “Of course, my lord. So be it, my lord.” Sambigel made a hasty flurry of starbursts. “I will notify the hierarch Ambargarde that you will be her guest tonight. And now, if you will permit, my lord, we have an entertainment to offer you—”

  An orchestra struck up some jubilant anthem. From hundreds of thousands of throats came what he did not doubt were stirring verses, though he could not make out a syllable of them. He stood impassively, gazing out over that vast throng, nodding occasionally, smiling, making contact now and then with the eyes of some awed citizen who would never forget this day. A sense of his own unreality came over him. He did not need to be a living man, he thought, to be playing this part. A statue would do just as well, some cunning marionette, or even one of those waxworks things that he had once seen in Pidruid on a festival night long ago. How useful it would be to send an imitation Coronal of some such sort out to these events, capable of listening gravely and smiling appreciatively and waving heartily and perhaps even of delivering a few heartfelt words of gratitude—

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Carabella watching him worriedly. He made a little gesture with two fingers of his right hand, a private sign they had between them, to tell her he was all right. But the troubled look did not leave her face. And it seemed to him that Tunigorn and Lisamon Hultin had edged forward until they stood oddly close to him. To catch him if he fell? Confalume’s whiskers, did they think he was going to collapse the way he had in the Labyrinth?

  He held himself all the more erect: wave, smile, nod, wave, smile, nod. Nothing was going to go wrong. Nothing. Nothing. But would this ceremony ever end?

  There was half an hour more. But at last it was over, and the royal party, leaving by way of an underground passage, quickly made its way toward the quarters set aside for the Coronal in the lord mayor’s palace on the far side of the square. When they were alone Carabella said, “It seemed to me you were growing ill up there, Valentine.”

  He said as lightly as he could, “If boredom is a malady, then I was growing ill, yes.”

  She was silent a moment. Then she said, “Is it absolutely essential to continue with this processional?”

  “You know I have no choice.”

  “I fear for you.”

  “Why, Carabella?”

  “There are times I scarcely know you any longer. Who is this brooding fretful person who shares my bed? What has become of the man called Valentine I knew once in Pidruid”

  “He is still here.”

  “So I would believe. But hidden, as the sun is hidden when the shadow of a moon falls upon it. What shadow is on you, Valentine? What shadow is on the world? Something strange befell you in the Labyrinth. What was it? Why?”

  “The Labyrinth is a place of no joy for me, Carabella. Perhaps I felt enclosed there, buried, smothered—” He shook his head. “It was strange, yes. But the Labyrinth is far behind me. Once we began to travel in happier lands I felt my old self returning, I knew joy again, love, I—”

  “You deceive yourself, perhaps, but not me. There’s no joy in it for you, not now. At the beginning you drank in everything as if you couldn’t possibly get enough of it—you wanted to go everywhere, behold everything, taste all that is to be tasted—but not anymore. I see it in your eyes, I see it on your face. You move about like a sleepwalker. Do you deny it?”

  “I do grow weary, yes. I admit that.”

  “Then abandon the processional! Return to the Mount, which you love, where you always have been truly happy!”

  “I am the Coronal. The Coronal has a sacred duty to present himself to the people he governs. I owe them that.”

  “And what do you owe to yourself, then?”

  He shrugged. “I beg you, sweet lady! Even if I grow bored, and I do—I won’t deny it, I hear speeches in my sleep now, I see endless parades of jugglers and acrobats—nevertheless, no one has ever died of boredom. The processional is my obligation. I must continue.”

  “At least cancel the Zimroel part of it, then. One continent is more than enough. It’ll take you months simply to return to Castle Mount from here, if you stop at every major city along the way. And then Zimroel? Piliplok, Ni-moya, Til-omon, Narabal, Pidruid—it’ll take years, Valentine!”

  He shook his head slowly. “I have an obligation to all the people, not only the ones who live in Alhanroel, Carabella.”

  Taking his hand, she said, “That much I understand. But you may be demanding too much of yourself. I ask you again: consider eliminating Zimroel from the tour. Will you do that? Will you at least give it some thought?”

  “I’d return to Castle Mount this very evening, if I could. But I must go on. I must.”

  “Tonight at the temple you hope to speak in dreams with your mother the Lady, is that not so?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But—”

  “Promise me this, then. If you reach her mind with yours, ask her if you should go to Zimroel. Let her advice guide you in this, as it has so well in so many other things. Will you?”

  “Carabella—”

  “Will you ask her? Only ask!”

  “Very well,” he said. “I will ask. That much do I promise.”

  She looked at him mischievously. “Do I seem a shrewish wife, Valentine? Chivvying and pressing you this way? I do this out of love, you know.”

  “That I know,” said he, and drew her close and held her.

  They said no more, for it was time then to make ready for the journey up Alaisor Heights to the temple of the Lady. Twilight was descending as they set out up the narrow winding road, and the lights of Alaisor sparkled behind them like millions of bright gems scattered carelessly over the plain.

  The hierarch Ambargarde, a tall, regal-looking woman with keen eyes and lustrous white hair, waited at the gateway of the temple to receive the Coronal. While awed acolytes looked on gaping, she offered him a brief and warm welcome—he was, she said, the first Coronal to visit the temple since Lord Tyeveras had come, on his second processional—and led him through the lovely grounds until the temple itself came into view: a long building a single story in height, built of white stone, unornamented, even stark, situated in a spacious and open garden of great simplicity and beauty. Its western face curved in a crescent arc along the edge of the cliff, looking outward to the sea; and, on its inner side, wings set apart from one another at narrow angles radiated toward the east.

  Valentine passed through an airy loggia to a small portico beyond that seemed to be suspended in space on the cliff’s outermost rim. There he stood a long while in silence, with Carabella and the hierarch beside him, and Sleet and Tunigorn close by. It was wondrously quiet here: he heard nothing but the rush of the cool clear wind that blew without pause from the northwest, and the faint fluttering of Carabella’s scarlet cloak. He looked down toward Alaisor. The great seaport lay like a giant outspread fan at the base of the cliff, ranging so far to the north and south that he could not see its limits. The dark spokes of colossal avenues ran its ent
ire length, converging on a distant, barely visible circle of grand boulevards where six giant obelisks rose skyward: the tomb of Lord Stiamot, conqueror of the Metamorphs. Beyond lay only the sea, dark green, shrouded in the low-lying haze.

  “Come, my lord,” said Ambargarde. “The last light of the day is going. May I show you to your chamber?”

  He would sleep alone that night, in an austere little room close by the tabernacle. Nor would he eat, or drink anything except the wine of the dream-speakers that would open his mind and make it accessible to the Lady. When Ambargarde had gone, he turned to Carabella and said, “I have not forgotten my promise, love.”

  “That I know. Oh, Valentine, I pray she tells you to turn back to the Mount!”

  “Will you abide by it if she does not?”

  “How can I not abide by whatever you decide? You are the Coronal. But I pray she tells you turn back. Dream well, Valentine.”

  “Dream well, Carabella.”

  She left him. He stood for some time at the window, watching as night engulfed the shoreline and the sea. Somewhere due west of here, he knew, lay the Isle of Sleep that was his mother’s domain, far below the horizon, the home of that sweet and blessed Lady who brought wisdom to the world as it dreamed. Valentine stared intently seaward, searching in the mists and the gathering darkness as if he could see, if only he peered hard enough, the brilliant white ramparts of chalk on which the Isle rested.

  Then he undressed and lay down on the simple cot that was the room’s only furniture, and lifted the goblet that held the dark red dream-wine. He took a deep draft of the sweet thick stuff, and then another, and lay back and put himself into the trance state that opened his mind to impulses from afar, and waited for sleep.

  —Come to me, mother. This is Valentine.

  Drowsiness came over him, and he slipped downward into slumber.