“Shall I clear the last of this rabble out, my lord?” Stimion asked.
Hissune nodded. “But give them some hod and something to drink first, and tell them that the Coronal regrets that he must have their place for his lodging. And ask them if they know of the Lady Inyanna, whose house this once was.”
Grimly he went from room to room, comparing what he beheld to the radiant vision of this place he had had from the memory-reading of Inyanna Forlana. The transformation was a saddening one. There was no part of the house that was not in some way soiled, spoiled, stained, blemished, ravaged. It would take an army of craftsmen years to restore it to what it had been, Hissune thought.
As with Nissimorn Prospect, so too with all of Ni-moya. Hissune, disconsolately wandering the Hall of Windows with its sweeping views of every part of the city, looked out upon a scene of horrifying ruination. This had been the wealthiest and most resplendent city of Zimroel, equal to any of the cities of Castle Mount. The white towers that had housed thirty million people now were blackened with the smoke of scores of great fires. The Ducal Palace was a shattered stump atop its magnificent pedestal. The Gossamer Galleria, a mile-long span of suspended fabric where the finest shops of the city had been, had been cut loose from its moorings at one side and sprawled like a discarded cloak across the avenue below it. The glass domes of the Museum of Worlds were broken, and Hissune did not want to think of what must have become of its treasures. The revolving reflectors of the Crystal Boulevard were dark. He looked toward the harbor and saw what must have been the floating restaurants, where once it had been possible to dine elegantly on the rarest delicacies of Narabal and Stee and Pidruid and other distant cities, capsized and turned bottomside up in the water.
He felt cheated. To have dreamed so long of seeing Ni-moya, and now at last to be here and find it like this, perhaps beyond repair…
How had this happened? he wondered. Why had the people of Ni-moya, in their hunger and panic and madness, turned against their own city? And was it like this all across the heartland of Zimroel, all the beauty that it had taken thousands of years to create tossed away in a single paroxysm of mindless destruction? We have paid a heavy price, Hissune told himself, for all those centuries of smug self-satisfaction.
Stimion came to him to report the news of the Lady Inyanna that he had learned from one of the squatters: she had fled Ni-moya more than a year ago, he said, when one of the false Coronals had demanded her mansion from her to serve as his palace. Where she had gone, whether she was still alive at all—no one knew that. The Duke of Ni-moya and all his family had fled, too, even earlier, and most of the other nobility.
“And the false Coronal?” Hissune asked.
“Gone also, my lord. All of them, for there was more than one, and toward the end there were ten or twelve, squabbling among themselves. But they ran like frightened bilantoons when the Pontifex Valentine reached the city last month. There is only one Coronal in Ni-moya today, my lord, and his name is Hissune.”
Hissune smiled faintly. “And is this my grand processional, then? Where are the musicians, where are the parades? Why all this filth and destruction? This is not what I thought my first visit to Ni-moya would be like, Stimion.”
“You will return in a happier time, my lord, and all will be as it was formerly.”
“Do you think so? Do you truly think so? Ah, I pray you are right, my friend!”
Alsimir appeared. “My lord, the mayor of this place sends his respects and asks leave to call upon you this afternoon.”
“Tell him to come this evening. We have more urgent things to do just now than meet with local mayors.”
“I will tell him, my lord. I think the mayor feels some alarm, my lord, over the size of the army that you intend to quarter here. He said something about the difficulty of supplying provisions, and some problem of sanitation that he—”
“He will supply provisions as required, Alsimir, or we will supply ourselves with a more capable mayor,” said Hissune. “Tell him that also. You might tell him, also, that my lord Divvis will shortly be here with an army nearly as great as this, or perhaps greater, and my lord Tunigorn will be following, and therefore he can consider his present efforts as merely a rehearsal for the real burdens that will be placed upon him soon. But let him know, also, that the overall food requirements of Ni-moya will be somewhat lessened when I leave here, because I will be taking several million of his citizens with me as part of the army of occupation going to Piurifayne, and ask him what method he proposes for choosing the volunteers. And if he balks at anything, Alsimir, point out to him that we have come here not to annoy him but to rescue his province from chaos, though we would much prefer to be jousting atop Castle Mount just now. If you think his attitude is inappropriate after you have said all that, put him in chains and see if there is a deputy mayor who is willing to be more cooperative, and if there is not, find someone who is.” Hissune grinned. “So much for the mayor of Ni-moya. Has there been any news of my lord Divvis?”
“A great deal, my lord. He has left Piliplok and is following us up the Zimr as swiftly as he can, gathering his army as he goes. We have messages from him from Port Saikforge, Stenwamp, Orgeliuse, Impemonde, and Obliorn Vale, and the last word we have is that he is approaching Larnimisculus.”
“Which as I recall is still some thousands of miles east of here, is it not?” said Hissune. “So we have no little while yet to wait for him. Well, he will get here when he gets here, and there can be no hurrying it, nor do I think it wise to set out for Piurifayne until I have met with him.” He smiled ruefully.” Our task would be three times as simple, I think, if this world were half as big. Alsimir, send messages of our highest regard to Divvis at Larnimisculus, and perhaps to Belka and Clarischanz and a few other cities along his route, telling him how eager I am to see him once again.”
“And are you, my lord?” Alsimir asked.
Hissune looked closely at him. “That I am,” he said. “Most genuinely I am, Alsimir!”
He chose for his headquarters the grand study on the third floor of the building. Long ago when this had been the home of Calain, brother to the Duke of Ni-moya—so Hissune recalled out of his acquired memory of the place—the huge room had housed Calain’s library of ancient books bound in the hides of uncommon animals. But the books were gone; the study was a vast empty space with a single scarred desk in its center. There he spread out his maps and contemplated the enterprise that lay before him.
It had not pleased Hissune to be left behind at the Isle of Sleep when Valentine sailed to Piliplok. He had meant to handle the pacification of Piliplok himself, by force of arms; but Valentine had had other ideas, and Valentine had prevailed. Coronal might indeed Hissune be, yes, but it became clear to him at the time of that decision that his situation was for some time going to be an anomalous one, for he would have to contend with the existence of a vigorous and active and highly visible Pontifex who had no intention whatever of retreating to the Labyrinth. Hissune’s historical studies provided him with no precedent for that. Even the strongest and most ambitious of Coronals—Lord Confalume, Lord Prestimion, Lord Dekkeret, Lord Kinniken—had yielded up their place and gone to their subterranean abode at the completion of their time at the Castle.
But there was no precedent, Hissune conceded, for anything that was happening now. And he could not deny that Valentine’s voyage to Piliplok—which to Hissune had seemed to be the maddest sort of folly—had in fact been a brilliant stroke of strategy.
Imagine: the rebellious city meekly hauling down its flags and submitting without a whimper to the Pontifex, precisely as Valentine had predicted! What magic did he have, Hissune wondered, that allowed him to carry off so bold a coup with such self-assurance? But he had won back his throne in the war of restoration with much the same tactics, had he not? His mildness, his gentleness—they concealed a temperament of remarkable strength and determination. And yet, thought Hissune, it was not a mere cloak conveniently put on, that
gentleness of Valentine: it was the essential nature of his character, the deepest and truest part of it. An extraordinary being—a great king, in his curious fashion…
And now the Pontifex proceeded westward along the Zimr with his little entourage, traveling from one broken land to another, gently negotiating a return to sanity. From Piliplok he had gone to Ni-moya, arriving some weeks before Hissune. False Coronals had fled at his approach; vandals and bandits had ceased their maraudings; the dazed and impoverished citizens of the great city had turned out by the millions, so went the report, to hail their new Pontifex as if he could with one wave of his hand restore the world to its former state. Which made matters far simpler for Hissune, following in Valentine’s wake: instead of having to expend time and resources bringing Ni-moya under control, he found the city quiet and reasonably willing to cooperate in whatever must be done.
Hissune traced a path with his finger over the map. Valentine had gone on to Khyntor. A tough assignment; that was the stronghold of the false Coronal Sempeturn and his private army, the Knights of Dekkeret. Hissune feared for the Pontifex there. Yet he could take no action to protect him: Valentine would not hear of it. “I will not lead armies into the cities of Majipoor,” he had said when they debated the point on the Isle; and Hissune had had no choice but to yield to his will. The authority of the Pontifex is always supreme.
And after Khyntor, for Valentine? The Rift cities, Hissune assumed. And then perhaps onward toward the cities of the sea, Pidruid, Tilomon, Narabal. No one knew what was happening on that far coast, where so many millions of refugees from the troubled Zimroel heartland had gone. But in the eye of his mind Hissune could see Valentine marching tirelessly on and on and on, bringing chaos into order by the glowing force of his soul alone. It was, in effect, a weird sort of grand processional for the Pontifex. But the Pontifex, Hissune thought uneasily, is not the one who is supposed to be making grand processionals.
He turned his mind away from Valentine and toward his own responsibilities. Wait for Divvis to get here, first. A ticklish business that would be. But Hissune knew that all the future success of his reign would depend on how well he handled that brooding and jealous man. Offer him high authority, yes, make it clear that among the generals of this war he is second only to the Coronal himself. But contain him, control him, at the same time. If it could be done.
Hissune sketched quick lines on the map. One army under Divvis, swinging out west as far as Khyntor or Mazadone to make certain that Valentine had really reestablished order there, and levying troops as it went: then looping back to the south and east to take up a position along the upper reaches of the Metamorph province. The other main army, under Hissune’s own command, cutting down from Ni-moya along the banks of the Steiche to seal Piurifayne’s eastern border.
The pincers tactics: inward then from both sides until the rebels were taken.
And what will those soldiers eat, Hissune wondered, in a world that is starving to death? Feed an army of many millions on roots and nuts and grass? He shook his head. We will eat roots and nuts and grass, if that is all there is. We will eat stones and mud. We will eat the devilish fanged creatures that the rebels hurl against us. We will eat our own dead, if need be. And we will prevail; and then this madness will end.
He rose and went to the window and stared out over ruined Ni-moya, more beautiful now that twilight was descending to hide the worst of the scars. He caught sight of his own reflection in the glass. Mockingly he bowed to it. Good evening, my lord! The Divine be with you, my lord! Lord Hissune: how strange that sounded. Yes, my lord; no, my lord; I will do it at once, my lord. They made the starburst at him. They backed away in awe. They treated him, all of them, as though he really were Coronal. Perhaps he would become used to it before long. It was not as though any of this had come as a surprise, after all. And yet it still felt unreal to him. Possibly that was because he had spent his entire reign thus far journeying about Zimroel in this improvised way. It would not become real, Hissune decided, until he finally returned to Castle Mount—to Lord Hissune’s Castle!—and took up that life of signing decrees and making appointments and presiding over grand ceremonies that was, he imagined, the true occupation of a Coronal in peacetime. But would that day ever come? He shrugged. A foolish question, like most questions. That day would come on the day that it came; in the meantime there was work to do. Hissune returned to his desk and for an hour more continued to annotate his maps.
After a time Alsimir returned. “I have spoken with the mayor, my lord. He promises complete cooperation now. He waits downstairs in the hope that you will allow him to tell you how cooperative he plans to be.”
Hissune smiled. “Send him to me,” he said.
2
When he reached Khyntor at last Valentine directed Asenhart to make his landfall not in the city proper, but across the river in the southern suburb of Hot Khyntor, where the geothermal wonders were, the geysers and fumaroles and simmering lakes. He wanted to enter the city in a slow and measured way, giving the so-called “Coronal” who ruled it full warning that he was coming.
Not that his arrival could be any surprise to the self-styled Lord Sempeturn. During his voyage up the Zimr from Ni-moya Valentine had made no secret of his identity, nor of his destination. He had halted again and again at the larger river towns along the way, meeting with whatever municipal leadership still survived in them, and obtaining pledges of backing for the armies that were being recruited to meet the Metamorph threat. And all along the river, even at towns where he did not stop, the populace turned out to see the imperial fleet pass by on its way to Khyntor, and to wave and shout, “Valentine Pontifex! Valentine Pontifex!”
A dismal journey that had been, too, for it was apparent even from the river that those towns, once so lively and prosperous, were mere ghosts of themselves, their dockside warehouses empty and windowless, their bazaars deserted, their waterfront promenades choked with weeds. And wherever he went ashore he saw that the people who remained in these places, for all their shouting and waving, were utterly without hope: their eyes dull and downcast, their shoulders slumped, their faces forlorn.
But when he had landed in that fantastic place of booming geysers and hissing, gurgling thermal lakes and boiling clouds of pale green gas that was Hot Khyntor, Valentine saw something else on the faces of the crowds that had gathered at the quay: an alert, curious, eager look, as though they were anticipating some sort of sporting event.
They were waiting, Valentine knew, to see what sort of reception he would receive at the hands of Lord Sempeturn.
“We’ll be ready to go in just a couple of minutes, your majesty,” Shanamir called. “The floaters are coming down the ramp right now.”
“No floaters,” said Valentine. “We’ll enter Khyntor on foot.”
He heard Sleet’s familiar gasp of horror, saw the familiar exasperated look on Sleet’s face. Lisamon Hultin was red-faced with annoyance; Zalzan Kavol wore a brooding scowl; Carabella too was showing alarm. But no one dared to remonstrate with him. No one had for some time now. It was not so much that he was Pontifex now, he thought: the exchange of one gaudy title for another was really a trivial matter. It was, rather, as though they regarded him as moving deeper and deeper each day into a realm they could not enter. He was becoming incomprehensible to them. As for himself, he felt beyond all trifling concern with security: invulnerable, invincible.
Deliamber said, “Which bridge shall we take, your majesty?”
There were four in view: one of brick, one of stone arches, one that was slender and gleaming and transparent, as though it had been made of glass, and one, the closest at hand, that was an airy thing of light swaying cables. Valentine looked from one to another, and at the distant square-topped towers of Khyntor far across the river. The bridge of stone arches, he observed, seemed to be shattered in midspan. One more task for the Pontifex, he thought, remembering that the title he bore had meant, in ancient times, “builder of bridges.”
“That is the Bridge of Dreams to our right, your majesty. Nearer to us is the Bridge of the Pontifex, and next to it is Khyntor Bridge, which appears to be damaged beyond use. The one upstream is the Bridge of the Coronal.”
“Why, then, let us take the Bridge of the Pontifex!” said Valentine.
Zalzan Kavol and several of his fellow Skandars led the way. Behind them marched Lisamon Hultin; then Valentine, at an unhurried pace, with Carabella by his side, Deliamber and Sleet and Tisana walked just behind them, with the rest of the small party bringing up the rear. The crowd, growing larger all the time, followed alongside, keeping back of its own accord.
As Valentine was nearing the threshold of the bridge, a thin, dark-haired woman in a faded orange gown detached herself from the onlookers and came rushing toward him, crying, “Majesty! Majesty!” She managed to get within a dozen feet of him before Lisamon Hultin stopped her, catching her by one arm and swinging her off her feet as though she were a child’s doll. “No—wait—” the woman murmured, as Lisamon seemed about to hurl her back into the throng. “I mean no harm—I have a gift for the Pontifex—”
“Put her down, Lisamon,” Valentine said calmly.
Frowning suspiciously, Lisamon released her, but remained close beside the Pontifex, poised at her readiest. The woman was trembling so that she could barely keep her footing. Her lips moved, but for a moment she did not speak. Then she said, “You are truly Lord Valentine?”
“I was Lord Valentine, yes. I am Valentine Pontifex now.”
“Of course. Of course. I knew that. They said you were dead, but I never believed that. Never!” She bowed. “Your majesty!” She was still trembling. She seemed fairly young, though it was hard to be certain, for hunger and hardship had etched deep lines in her face, and her skin was even paler than Sleet’s. She held forth her hand. “I am Millilain,” she said. “I wanted to give you this.”
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