Valentine Pontifex

by Robert Silverberg

  He sipped his wine and felt a warm glow spread through his soul. What did the evening’s earlier troubles matter? He was here now, and welcome. Let Vanimoon and Heulan and Ghisnet eat their hearts out with envy! He was here, among the great ones, beginning his ascent toward the summit of the world, and soon he would be attaining heights from which the Vanimoons of his childhood would be altogether invisible.

  In moments, though, that sense of well-being was completely gone from him, and he found himself tumbling back into confusion and dismay.

  The first thing that went wrong was nothing more than a minor blunder, absurd but forgivable, scarcely his fault at all. Sleet had remarked on the obvious anxiety the Pontifical officials displayed every time they looked toward the Coronal’s table: plainly they were madly fearful that Lord Valentine was not sufficiently enjoying himself. And Hissune, newly radiant with wine and gloriously happy to be at the banquet at last, had brashly blurted out, “They ought to be worried! They know they’d better make a good impression, or they’ll be out in the cold when Lord Valentine becomes Pontifex!”

  There were gasps all around the table. Everyone stared at him as though he had uttered some monstrous blasphemy—all but the Coronal, who clamped his lips together in the manner of one who has unexpectedly found a toad in his soup, and turned away.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Hissune asked.

  “Hush!” Lisamon Hultin whispered fiercely, and the mountainous Amazon woman nudged him urgently in the ribs.

  “But is it not so that one day Lord Valentine will be Pontifex? And when that happens, won’t he want to install a staff of his own?”

  Lisamon nudged him again, so emphatically that she all but knocked him from his seat. Sleet glared belligerently at him, and Shanamir said in a sharp whisper, “Enough! You’re only making it worse for yourself.”

  Hissune shook his head. With a trace of anger showing beneath his confusion he said, “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” said Shanamir.

  Stubbornly Hissune said, “But what have I done? To say that Lord Valentine is going to be Pontifex some day, and—”

  With deep frost in his voice Shanamir said, “Lord Valentine does not wish to contemplate the necessity of becoming Pontifex at this time. He particularly does not wish to contemplate it during his dinner. It is something not spoken of in his presence. Do you understand now? Do you?”

  “Ah, I do now,” said Hissune miserably.

  In his shame he wanted to crawl under the table and hide. But how was he supposed to have known that the Coronal was touchy about having to become Pontifex some day? It was only to be expected, wasn’t it? When a Pontifex died, the Coronal automatically took his place, and named a new Coronal who would himself eventually go on to dwell in the Labyrinth. That was the system: that was the way it had been for thousands of years. If Lord Valentine disliked the idea of being Pontifex so much, he might better have served himself by declining to become Coronal; but it didn’t make sense for him to close his eyes to the succession law in the hope it would go away.

  Though the Coronal himself had maintained a cool silence, great damage surely had been done. To show up late, then to say the wrongest possible thing the first time he opened his mouth—what a woeful beginning! Could it ever be undone? Hissune brooded about it all through the performance of some terrible jugglers, and during the dreary speeches that followed, and he might have gone on agonizing over it all evening, if something far worse had not happened.

  It was Lord Valentine’s turn to make a speech. But the Coronal seemed strangely remote and preoccupied as he got to his feet. He appeared almost to be sleepwalking—his eyes distant and vague, his gestures uncertain. At the high table people began to murmur. After an awful moment of silence he started to speak, but apparently it was the wrong speech, and very muddled besides. Was the Coronal sick? Drunk? Under some sudden malign spell? It troubled Hissune to see Lord Valentine so bewildered. Old Hornkast had just finished saying that the Coronal not only governed Majipoor but in some sense was Majipoor: and there was the Coronal a moment later, tottering, incoherent, looking as though he was about to topple—

  Someone should take him by the arm, Hissune thought, and help him to sit down before he falls. But no one moved. No one dared. Please, Hissune begged silently, staring at Sleet, at Tunigorn, at Ermanar. Stop him, someone. Stop him. And still no one moved.

  “Lordship!” a voice cried hoarsely.

  Hissune realized it was his own. And he went rushing forward to seize the Coronal as he dropped headlong toward the gleaming wooden floor.

  THIS IS THE DREAM of the Pontifex Tyeveras:

  Here in the realm that I inhabit now, nothing has color and nothing has sound and nothing has motion. The alabandina blossoms are black and the shining fronds of the semotan trees are white, and from the bird that does not fly comes a song that cannot be heard. I lie on a bed of soft gentle rubber-moss, staring upward at drops of rain that do not fall. When the wind blows in the glade, not a leaf flutters. The name of this realm is death, and the alabandinas and semotans are dead, and the bird is dead, and the wind and the rain are dead. And I too am dead.

  They come and stand about me and they say, “Are you Tyeveras that was Coronal of Majipoor and Pontifex of Majipoor?”

  And I say, “I am dead.”

  “Are you Tyeveras?” they say again.

  And I say, “I am dead Tyeveras, that was your king and that was your emperor. See, I have no color? See, I make no sound? I am dead.”

  “You are not dead.”

  “Here on my right hand is Lord Malibor that was my first Coronal. He is dead, is he not? Here on my left hand is Lord Voriax that was my second Coronal. Is he not dead? I lie between two dead men. I also am dead.”

  “Come and rise and walk, Tyeveras that was Coronal, Tyeveras that is Pontifex.”

  “I need not do that. I am excused, for I am dead.”

  “Listen to our voices.”

  “Your voices make no sound.”

  “Listen, Tyeveras, listen, listen, listen!”

  “The alabandinas are black. The sky is white. This is the realm of death.”

  “Come and rise and walk, Emperor of Majipoor.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Valentine that is your third Coronal.”

  “I hail you, Valentine, Pontifex of Majipoor!”

  “That title is not yet mine. Come and rise and walk.”

  And I say, “It is not required of me, for I am dead,” but they say, “We do not hear you, king that was, emperor that is,” and then the voice that says it is the voice of Valentine tells me once more, “Come and rise and walk,” and the hand of Valentine is on my hand in this realm where nothing moves, and it pulls me upward, and I drift, light as air floating on air, and I go forth, moving without motion, breathing without drawing breath. Together we cross a bridge that curves like the rainbow’s arc across an abyss as deep as the world is broad, and its shimmering metal skin rings with a sound like the singing of young girls with each step I take. On the far side all is flooded with color: amber, turquoise, coral, lilac, emerald, auburn, indigo, crimson. The vault of the sky is jade and the sharp strands of sunlight that pierce the air are bronze. Everything flows, everything billows: there is no firmness, there is no stability. The voices say, “This is life, Tyeveras! This is your proper realm!” To which I make no reply, for after all I am dead and merely dreaming that I live: but I begin to weep, and my tears are all the colors of the stars.

  And this too is the dream of the Pontifex Tyeveras:

  I sit enthroned on a machine within a machine, and about me is a wall of blue glass. I hear bubbling sounds, and the soft ticking of intricate mechanisms. My heart beats slowly: I am aware of each heavy surge of fluid through its chambers, but that fluid, I think, is probably not blood. Whatever it is, though, it moves in me, and I am aware of it. Therefore I must surely be alive. How can that be? I am so old: have I then outlived
death itself? I am Tyeveras that was Coronal to Ossier, and I touched once the hand of Lord Kinniken when the Castle was his, and Ossier only a prince, and the second Pontifex Thimin had the Labyrinth. If that is so, I think I must be the only man of Thimin’s time who is yet alive, if I am alive, and I think I am alive. But I sleep. I dream. A great stillness enfolds me. Color seeps from the world. All is black, all is white, nothing moves, there is no sound. This is how I imagine the realm of death to be. Look, there is the Pontifex Confalume, and there is Prestimion, and there is Dekkeret! All those great emperors lie staring upward toward rain that does not fall, and in words without sound they say, Welcome, Tyeveras that was, welcome, weary old king, come lie beside us, now that you are dead like us. Yes. Yes. Ah, how beautiful it is here! Look, there is Lord Malibor, that man of the city of Bombifale in whom I hoped so much, so wrongly, and he is dead, and that is Lord Voriax of the black beard and the ruddy cheeks, but his cheeks are not ruddy now. And at last am I permitted to join them. Everything is silent. Everything is still. At last, at last, at last! At last they let me die, even if it is only when I dream.

  And so the Pontifex Tyeveras floats midway between worlds, neither dead nor alive, dreaming of the world of the living when he thinks that he is dead, dreaming of the realm of death when he remembers that he is alive.

  “A LITTLE WINE, if you will,” Valentine said. Sleet put the bowl in his hand, and the Coronal drank deeply. “I was just dozing,” he muttered. “A quick nap, before the banquet—and that dream, Sleet! That dream! Get me Tisana, will you? I have to have a speaking of that dream.”

  “With respect, lordship, there’s no time for that now,” said Sleet.

  “We’ve come to fetch you,” Tunigorn put in. “The banquet’s about to begin. Protocol requires that you be at the dais when the Pontifical officials—”

  “Protocol! Protocol! That dream was almost like a sending, don’t you understand! Such a vision of disaster—”

  “The Coronal does not receive sendings, lordship,” Sleet said quietly. “And the banquet will start in minutes, and we must robe you and convey you. You’ll have Tisana and her potions afterward, if you like, my lord. But for now—”

  “I must explore that dream!”

  “I understand. But there lacks the time. Come, my lord.”

  He knew that Sleet and Tunigorn were right: like it or not, he must get himself to the banquet at once. It was more than just a social event; it was a rite of courtesy, the showing of honor by the senior monarch to the younger king who was his adopted son and anointed successor, and even though the Pontifex might be senile or altogether mad the Coronal did not have the option of taking the event lightly. He must go, and the dream must wait. No dream so potent, so rife with omen, could simply be ignored—he would need a dream-speaking, and probably a conference with the wizard Deliamber also—but there would be time to deal with all that afterward.

  “Come, lordship,” Sleet said again, holding his ermine robe of office out to him.

  The heavy spell of that vision still clung to Valentine’s spirit when he entered the Great Hall of the Pontifex ten minutes later. But it would not do for the Coronal of Majipoor to seem dour or preoccupied at such an event, and so he put upon his face the most affable expression he could manage, as he made his way toward the high table.

  Which was, indeed, the way he had conducted himself all throughout the interminable week of this official visit; the forced smile, the studied amiability. Of all the cities of giant Majipoor, the Labyrinth was the one Lord Valentine loved least. It was to him a grim, oppressive place that he entered only when the unavoidable responsibilities of office required it. Just as he felt most keenly alive under the warm summer sun and the great vault of the open sky, riding in some forest in heavy leaf, a fair fresh wind tossing his golden hair about, so did he feel buried before his time whenever he entered this cheerless sunken city. He loathed its dismal descending coils, its infinity of shadowy underground levels, its claustrophobic atmosphere.

  And most of all he loathed the knowledge of the inevitable destiny that awaited him here, when he must succeed to the title of Pontifex at last, and give up the sweet joys of life on Castle Mount, and take up residence for the rest of his days in this dreadful living tomb.

  Tonight in particular, this banquet in the Great Hall, on the deepest level of the gloomy subterranean city—how he had dreaded that! The hideous hall itself, all harsh angles and glaring lights and weird ricocheting reflections, and the pompous officials of the Pontifical staff in their preposterous little traditional masks, and the windy speechmaking, and the boredom, and above all the burdensome sense of the entire Labyrinth pressing down upon him like a colossal mass of stone—merely to think of it had filled him with horror. Perhaps that ugly dream, he thought, had been a mere foreshadowing of the uneasiness he felt about what he must endure tonight.

  Yet to his surprise he found himself unwinding, relaxing—not precisely enjoying himself at the banquet, no, hardly that, but at least finding it within his endurance.

  They had redecorated the hall. That helped. Brilliant banners in green and gold, the colors emblematic of the Coronal, had been hung everywhere, blurring and disguising the strangely disquieting outlines of the enormous room. The lighting too had been changed since his last visit: gentle glowfloats now drifted pleasantly through the air.

  And plainly the officials of the Pontifex had spared neither cost nor effort in making the occasion a festive one. From the legendary Pontifical wine cellars came an astounding procession of the planet’s finest vintages: the golden fireshower wine of Pidruid, and the dry white of Amblemorn, and then the delicate red of Ni-moya, followed by a rich, robust purple wine of Muldemar that had been laid down years ago, in the reign of Lord Malibor. With each wine, of course, an appropriate delicacy: chilled thokkaberries, smoked sea dragon, calimbots in Narabal style, roast haunch of bilantoon. And an unending flow of entertainment: singers, mimes, harpists, jugglers. From time to time one of the Pontifex’s minions would glance warily toward the high table where Lord Valentine and his companions sat, as though to ask, Is it sufficient? Is your lordship content?

  And Valentine met each of those worried glances with a warm smile, a friendly nod, a lifting of his wine-bowl, by way of telling his uneasy hosts, Yes, yes, I am well pleased with all you have done for us.

  “What edgy little jackals they all are!” Sleet cried. “You can smell the worry-sweat on them from six tables away.”

  Which led to a foolish and painful remark from young Hissune about the likelihood that they were trying to curry favor with Lord Valentine against the day when he became Pontifex. The unexpected tactlessness stung Valentine with whiplash effect, and he turned away, heart racing, throat suddenly dry. He forced himself to remain calm: smiled across the tables to the high spokesman Hornkast, nodded to the Pontifical majordomo, beamed at this one and that, while behind him he could hear Shanamir explaining irately to Hissune the nature of his blunder.

  In a moment Valentine’s anger had ebbed. Why should the boy have known, after all, that that was a forbidden topic of discussion? But there was nothing he could do to put an end to Hissune’s obvious humiliation without acknowledging the depth of his sensitivity on that score; so he let himself glide back into conversation as though nothing untoward had happened.

  Then five jugglers appeared, three humans, a Skandar, and a Hjort, to cause a blessed distraction. They commenced a wild and frenzied hurling of torches, sickles, and knives that brought cheers and applause from the Coronal.

  Of course, they were mere flashy third-raters whose flaws and insufficiencies and evasions were evident enough to Valentine’s expert eye. No matter: jugglers always gave him delight. Inevitably they recalled to his mind that strange and blissful time years before, when he had been a juggler himself, wandering from town to town with an itinerant raggle-taggle troupe. He had been innocent then, untroubled by the burdens of power, a truly happy man.

  Valentine’s e
nthusiasm for the jugglers drew a scowl from Sleet, who said sourly, “Ah, lordship, do you truly think they’re as good as all that?”

  “They show great zeal, Sleet.”

  “So do cattle that forage for fodder in a dry season. But they are cattle nonetheless. And these zealous jugglers of yours are little more than amateurs, my lord.”

  “Oh, Sleet, Sleet, show more mercy!”

  “There are certain standards in this craft, my lord. As you should still remember.”

  Valentine chuckled. “The joy these people give me has little to do with their skills, Sleet. Seeing them stirs recollections in me of other days, a simpler life, bygone companions.”

  “Ah, then,” Sleet said. “That’s another matter, my lord! That is sentiment. But I speak of craft.”

  “We speak of different things, then.”

  The jugglers took their leave in a flurry of furious throws and bungled catches, and Valentine sat back, smiling, cheerful. But the fun’s over, he thought. Time for the speeches now.

  Even those proved surprisingly tolerable, though. Shinaam delivered the first: the Pontifical minister of internal affairs, a man of the Ghayrog race, with glistening reptilian scales and a flickering forked red tongue. Gracefully and swiftly he offered formal welcome to Lord Valentine and his entourage.

  The adjutant Ermanar made reply on behalf of the Coronal. When he was done, it was the turn of ancient shriveled Dilifon, private secretary to the Pontifex, who conveyed the personal greetings of the high monarch. Which was mere fraud, Valentine knew, since it was common knowledge that old Tyeveras had not spoken a rational word to anyone close upon a decade. But he accepted Dilifon’s quavering fabrications politely and delegated Tunigorn to offer the response.