She said tenderly, “You take blame on yourself without proper cause. If a curse hangs over this world, and I think that that is the case, it lies not on the noble and virtuous Coronal, but upon us all. You have no reason for guilt: you least of all, Valentine. You are not the bearer of the curse, but rather the one who is most capable of lifting it from us. But to do that you must act, and act quickly.”
“And what curse is this, then?”
Putting her hand to her brow, she said, “You have a silver circlet that is the mate to mine. Did you carry it with you on this journey?”
“It goes everywhere with me.”
“Fetch it here, then.”
Valentine went from the room and spoke with Sleet, who waited outside; and shortly an attendant came, bearing the jeweled case in which the circlet resided. The Lady had given it to him when first he went to the Isle as a pilgrim, during his years of exile. Through it, in communion with his mother’s mind, he had received the final confirmation that the simple juggler of Pidruid and Lord Valentine of Majipoor were one and the same person, for with its aid and hers his lost memories had come flooding back. And afterward the hierarch Lorivade had taught him how, by virtue of the circlet, he could enter the trance by which he might have access to the minds of others. He had used it little since his restoration to the throne, for the circlet was an adjunct of the Lady, not of the Coronal, and it was unfitting for one Power of Majipoor to transgress on the domain of another. Now he donned the fine metal band again, while the Lady poured for him, as she had done long ago on this Isle, a flask of the dark, sweet, spicy dream-wine that was used in the opening of mind to mind.
He drank it off in a single draught, and she drank down a flask of her own, and they waited a moment for the wine to take effect. He put himself into the state of trance that gave him the fullest receptivity. Then she took his hands and slipped her fingers tightly between his to complete the contact, and into his mind came such a rush of images and sensations as to daze and stun him, though he had known what sort of impact there would be.
This now was what the Lady had for many years experienced each day as she and her acolytes sent their spirits roving through the world to those in need of aid.
He saw no individual minds: the world was far too huge and crowded to permit precision of that sort except with the most strenuous of concentration. What he detected, as he soared like a gust of hot wind riding the thermal waves of the sky, were pockets of sensation: apprehension here, fear, shame, guilt, a sudden sharp stabbing zone of madness, a gray sprawling blanket of despair. He dipped low and saw the textures of souls, the black ridges shot through with ribbons of scarlet, the harsh jagged spikes, the roiling turbulent roadways of bristling tight-woven fabric. He soared high into tranquil realms of nonbeing; he swooped across dismal deserts that emanated a numbing throb of isolation; he whirled over glittering snowfields of the spirit, and meadows whose every blade of glass glistened with an unbearable beauty. And he saw the places of blight, and the places of hunger, and the places where chaos was king. And he felt terrors rising like hot dry winds from the great cities; and he felt some force beating in the seas like an irresistible booming drum; and he felt a powerful sense of gathering menace, of oncoming disaster. An intolerable weight had fallen upon the world, Valentine saw, and was crushing it by slow increments of intensity, like a gradually closing fist.
Through all of this his guide was the blessed Lady his mother, without whom he might well have sizzled and charred in the intensity of the passion that radiated from the well of the world-mind. But she stayed at his side, lifting him easily through the darker places, and carrying him on toward the threshold of understanding, which loomed before him the way the immense Dekkeret Gate of Normork, that greatest of gates, which is closed only at times when the world is in peril, looms and dwarfs all those who approach it. But when he came to that threshold he was alone, and he passed through unaided.
On the far side there was only music, music made visible, a tremulous quavering tone that stretched across the abyss like the weakest of woven bridges, and he stepped out upon that bridge and saw the splashes of bright sound that stained the flow of substance below, and the dagger-keen spurts of rhythmic pulsation overhead, and the line of infinitely regressing red and purple and green arcs that sang to him from the horizon. Then all of these gave way to a single formidable sound, of a weight beyond any bearing, a black juggernaut of sound that embraced all tones into itself, and rolled forward upon the universe and pressed upon it mercilessly. And Valentine understood.
He opened his eyes. The Lady his mother stood calmly between the potted tanigales, watching him, smiling as she might have smiled down on him when he was a sleeping babe. She took the circlet from his brow and returned it to the jeweled case.
“You saw?” she asked.
“It is as I have long believed,” said Valentine. “What is happening in Zimroel is no random event. There is a curse, yes, and it is on us all, and has been for thousands of years. My Vroon wizard Deliamber said to me once that we have gone a long way, here on Majipoor, without paying any sort of price for the original sin of the conquerors. The account, he said, accumulates interest. And now the note is being presented for collection. What has begun is our punishment, our humbling, the settling of the reckoning.”
“So it is,” said the Lady.
“Was what we saw the Divine Itself, mother? Holding the world in a tight grasp, and making the grasp tighter? And that sound I heard, of such terrible weight: was that the Divine also?”
“The images you saw were your own, Valentine. I saw other things. Nor can the Divine be reduced to anything so concrete as an image. But I think you saw the essence of the matter, yes.”
“I saw that the grace of the Divine has been withdrawn from us.”
“Yes. But not irredeemably.”
“Are you sure it isn’t already too late?”
“I am sure of it, Valentine.”
He was silent a moment. Then he said, “So be it. I see what must be done, and I will do it. How appropriate that I should have come to the understanding of these things in the Seven Walls, which the Lady Thiin built to honor her son after he had crushed the Metamorphs! Ah, mother, mother, will you build a building like this for me, when I succeed in undoing Lord Stiamot’s work?”
10
“Again,” Hissune said, swinging about to face Alsimir and the other knight-initiate. “Come at me again. Both of you at once this time.”
“Both?” said Alsimir.
“Both. And if I catch you going easy on me, I promise you I’ll have you assigned to sweep the stables for a month.”
“How can you withstand us both, Hissune?”
“I don’t know that I can. That’s what I need to learn. Come at me, and we’ll see.”
He was slick with sweat and his heart was hammering, but his body felt loose and well tuned. He came here, to the cavernous gymnasium in the Castle’s east wing, for at least an hour every day, no matter how pressing his other responsibilities.
It was essential, Hissune believed, that he strengthen and develop his body, build up his physical endurance, increase his already considerable agility. Otherwise, so it plainly seemed, he would be under a heavy handicap pursuing his ambitions here. The princes of Castle Mount tended to be athletes and to make a cult of athleticism, constantly testing themselves: riding, jousting, racing, wrestling, hunting, all those ancient simpleminded pastimes that Hissune, in his Labyrinth days, had never had the opportunity or the inclination to pursue. Now Lord Valentine had thrust him among these burly, energetic men, and he knew he must meet them on their own ground if he meant to win a lasting place in their company.
Of course there was no way he could transform his slight, slender frame into something to equal the robust muscularity of a Stasilaine, an Elidath, a Divvis. They were big men, and he would never be that. But he could excel in his own way. This game of baton, for example: a year ago he had not even heard of it, and no
w, after many hours of practice, he was coming close to mastery. It called for quickness of eye and foot, not for overwhelming physical power, and so in a sense it served as a metaphor for his entire approach to the problem of life.
“Ready,” he called.
He stood in a balanced partial crouch, alert, pliant, with his arms partly extended and his baton, a light, slender wand of nightflower wood with a cup-shaped hilt of basketwork at one end, resting across them. His eyes flickered from one opponent to the other. They both were taller than he was, Alsimir by two or three inches, and his friend Stimion even more. But he was quicker. Neither of them had come close to putting a baton on him all morning. Two at once, though—that might be a different matter—
“Challenge!” Alsimir called. “Post! Entry!”
They came toward him, and as they moved in they raised their batons into attack position.
Hissune drew a deep breath and concentrated on constructing a spherical zone of defense about himself, impermeable, impenetrable, a volume of space enclosed in armor. It was purely imaginary, but that made no difference. Thani, his baton-master, had shown him that: maintain your defensive zone as though it is a wall of steel, and nothing would get through it. The secret lay in the intensity of your concentration.
Alsimir reached him a fraction of a second ahead of Stimion, as Hissune had expected. Alsimir’s baton went high, probed the northwest quadrant of Hissune’s defense, then feinted for a lower entry. As it neared the perimeter of Hissune’s defended area Hissune brought his baton up with a whip-like action of his wrist, parried Alsimir’s thrust solidly, and in the same motion—for he had already calculated it, though in no conscious way—he continued around to his right, meeting the thrust from Stimion that was coming in a shade late out of the northeast.
There was the whickering sound of wood sliding against wood as Hissune let his baton ride halfway up the length of Stimion’s; then he pivoted, leaving Stimion only empty space to plunge through as the force of his thrust carried him forward. All that took only a moment. Stimion, grunting in surprise, lurched through the place where Hissune had been. Hissune tapped him lightly on the back with his baton and swung around again on Alsimir. Up came Alsimir’s baton; inward came the second thrust. Hissune blocked it easily and answered with one of his own that Alsimir handled well, parrying so firmly that the shock of the impact went rattling up Hissune’s arm to the elbow. But Hissune recovered quickly, sidestepped Alsimir’s next attempt, and danced off to one side to elude Stimion’s baton.
Now they found themselves in a new configuration, Stimion and Alsimir standing to either side of Hissune rather than facing him. They surely would attempt simultaneous thrusts, Hissune thought. He could not allow that.
Thani had taught him: Time must always be your servant, never your master. If there is not enough time for you to make your move, divide each moment into smaller moments, and then you will have enough time for anything.
Yes. Nothing is truly simultaneous, Hissune knew.
As he had for many months been training himself to do, he shifted into the time-splitting mode of perception that Thani had instilled in him: viewing each second as the sum of ten tenths of itself, he allowed himself to dwell in each of those tenths in turn, the way one might dwell in each of ten caves on successive nights during the crossing of a desert. His perspective now was profoundly altered. He saw Stimion moving in jerky discontinuous bursts, struggling like some sort of crude automaton to bring his baton up and jab it toward him. With the greatest simplicity of effort Hissune slipped himself into the interval between two slices of a moment and knocked Stimion’s baton aside. The thrust from Alsimir was already on its way, but Hissune had ample time to withdraw himself from Alsimir’s reach, and as Alsimir’s arm came to full extension Hissune gave it a light touch with his own weapon, just above the elbow.
Returning now to the normal perception mode, Hissune confronted Stimion, who was coming round for another thrust. Instead of making ready to parry, Hissune chose to move forward, stepping inside the startled Stimion’s guard. From that position he brought his baton upward, touching Alsimir again and swinging round to catch Stimion with the tip as he whirled in confusion.
“Touch and double touch,” Hissune called. “Match.”
“How did you do that?” asked Alsimir, tossing down his baton.
Hissune laughed. “I have no idea. But I wish Thani had been here to see it!” He dropped to a kneeling position and let sweat drip freely from his forehead onto the mats. It had been, he knew, an amazing display of skill. Never had he fought that well before. An accident, a moment of luck? Or had he truly reached a new level of accomplishment? He recalled Lord Valentine speaking of his juggling, which he had taken up in the most casual of ways, merely to earn a livelihood, when he was wandering lost and bewildered in Zimroel. Juggling, the Coronal had said, had shown him the key to the proper focusing of his mental abilities. Lord Valentine had gone so far as to suggest that he might not have been able to regain his throne, but for the disciplines of spirit that his mastery of juggling had imposed on him. Hissune knew he could hardly take up juggling himself—it would be too blatant a flattery of the Coronal, too open a gesture of imitation—but he was beginning to see that he might attain much of the same discipline through wielding the baton. Certainly his performance just now had carried him into extraordinary realms of perception and achievement. He wondered if he was capable of repeating it. He looked up and said, “Well, shall we go another, one on two?”
“Don’t you ever get tired?” Stimion said.
“Of course I do. But why stop just because you’re tired?”
He took his stance again, waiting for them. Another fifteen minutes of this, he thought. Then a swim, and then to the Pinitor Court to get some work done, and then—
“Well? Come at me,” he said.
Alsimir shook his head. “There’s no sense in it. You’re getting too good for us.”
“Come,” Hissune said again. “Ready!”
Somewhat reluctantly Alsimir moved into dueling position, and gestured Stimion to do the same. But as the three men stood poised, bringing their minds and bodies to the degree of balance the match required, a gymnasium attendant stepped out on the balcony above them and called Hissune’s name. A message for the prince, he said, from the Regent Elidath: Prince Hissune is asked to report at once to the Regent at the office of the Coronal.
“Another day, then?” Hissune said to Alsimir and Stimion.
He dressed quickly and made his way upward and through the intricate coils and tangles of the Castle, cutting across courtyards and avenues, past Lord Ossier’s parapet and its amazing view of Castle Mount’s vast slope, on beyond the Kinniken Observatory and the music room of Lord Prankipin and Lord Confalume’s garden-house and the dozens of other structures and outbuildings that clung like barnacles to the core of the Castle. At last he reached the central sector, where the offices of government were, and had himself admitted to the spacious suite in which the Coronal worked, now occupied during Lord Valentine’s prolonged absence by the High Counsellor Elidath.
He found the Regent pacing back and forth like a restless bear in front of the relief map of the world opposite Lord Valentine’s desk. Stasilaine was with him, seated at the council table. He looked grim, and acknowledged Hissune’s arrival only with the merest of nods. In an offhand, preoccupied way Elidath gestured to Hissune to take a seat beside him. A moment later Divvis arrived, formally dressed in eye-jewels and feather-mask, as though the summons had interrupted him on his way to a high state ceremony.
Hissune felt a great uneasiness growing in him. What reason could Elidath possibly have for calling a meeting like this so suddenly, in such an irregular way? And why just these few of us, out of all the princes? Elidath, Stasilaine, Divvis—surely those were the three prime candidates to succeed Lord Valentine, the innermost of the inner circle. Something major has happened, Hissune thought. The old Pontifex has died at last, perhaps. Or per
haps the Coronal—
Let it be Tyeveras, Hissune prayed. Oh, please, let it be Tyeveras!
Elidath said, “All right. Everyone’s here: we can begin.”
With a sour grin Divvis said, “What is it, Elidath? Has someone seen a two-headed milufta flying north?”
“If you mean, Is this a time of evil omen, then the answer is that it is,” said Elidath somberly.
“What has happened?” Stasilaine asked.
Elidath tapped a sheaf of papers on the desk. “Two important developments. First, fresh reports have come in from western Zimroel, and the situation is far more serious than we’ve realized. The entire Rift sector of the continent is disrupted, apparently, from Mazadone or thereabouts to a point somewhere west of Dulorn, and the trouble is spreading. Crops continue to die of mysterious blights, there’s a tremendous shortage of basic foods, and hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, have begun migrating toward the coast. Local officials are doing their best to requisition emergency food supplies from regions still unaffected—apparently there’s been no trouble yet around Tilomon or Narabal, and Ni-moya and Khyntor are still relatively untouched by the farming troubles—but the distances are so great and the situation so sudden that very little’s been accomplished so far. There is also the question of some peculiar new religious cult that has sprung up out there, something involving sea-dragon worship—”
“What?” said Stasilaine, astonishment bringing color to his face.
“It sounds insane, I know,” Elidath said. “But the report is that the word is spreading that the dragons are gods of some sort, and that they’ve decreed that the world is going to end, or some such idiocy, and—”
“It’s not a new cult,” said Hissune quietly.
The other three all turned to face him. “You know something about this?” Divvis asked.
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