Valentine Pontifex

  “Mother. At last.”

  “Such a long while, Valentine! So many years!”

  She touched his face gently, his shoulders, his arms. The brush of her lingers over him was feather-light, but it left him tingling, so great was the power within this woman. He had to remind himself that she was no goddess, but only mortal flesh and daughter of mortal flesh, that upon a time long ago she had been wife to the High Counsellor Damiandane, that two sons had sprung from her and he was one of them, that once he had nestled at her breast and listened happily to her soft song, that it was she who had wiped the mud from his cheeks when he came home from play, that in the tempests of childhood he had wept in her arms and drawn comfort and wisdom from her. Long ago, all that: it seemed almost to be in another life. When the sceptor of the Divine had descended upon the family of the High Counsellor Damiandane and raised Voriax to the Confalume Throne it had by the same stroke transformed the mother of Voriax into the Lady of the Isle, and neither one could ever again be regarded even within the family as merely mortal. Valentine found himself then and always after unable to think of her simply as his mother, for she had donned the silver circlet and had gone to the Isle, and dwelled there in majesty as Lady, and the comfort and wisdom that formerly she had dispensed to him she shared now with the entire world, who looked to her with reverence and need. Even when another stroke of that same scepter had elevated Valentine to Voriax’s place, and he too passed in some way beyond the realm of the ordinary and became larger than life, virtually a figure of myth, he had retained his awe of her, for he had no awe of himself, Coronal or no, and could not through his own inner vision see himself with the awe that others held for him, or he for this Lady.

  Yet they talked of family things before they turned to higher questions. He told her such details as he knew of the doings of her sister Galiara and her brother Sait of Stee, and of Divvis and Mirigant and the daughters of Voriax. She asked him whether he returned often to the old family lands at Halanx, and if he found the Castle a happy place, and whether he and Carabella were still so loving and close. The tensions within him eased, and he felt almost as though he were a real person, some minor lordling of the Mount, visiting amiably with his mother, who had settled in a different clime but still was avid for news of home. But it was impossible to escape the truths of their position for long, and when the conversation began to grow forced and strained he said, in somewhat another tone, “You should have let me come to you in the proper way, mother. This is not right, the Lady descending from Inner Temple to visit the Seven Walls.”

  “Such formality is unwise now. Events crowd us: the actions must be taken.”

  “Then you’ve had the news from Zimroel?”

  “Of course.” She touched her circlet. “This brings me news from everywhere, with the swiftness of the speed of thought. Oh, Valentine, such an unhappy time for our reunion! I had imagined that when you made your processional you would come here in joy, and now you are here and I feel only pain in you, and doubt, and fear of what is to come.”

  “What do you see, mother? What is to come?”

  “Do you think I have some way of knowing the future?”

  “You see the present with great clarity. As you say, you receive news from everywhere.”

  “What I see is dark and clouded. Things stir in the world that are beyond my understanding. Once again the order of society is threatened. And the Coronal is in despair. That is what I see. Why do you despair, Valentine? Why is there so much fear in you? You are the son of Damiandane and the brother of Voriax, and they were not men who knew despair, and despair is not native to my soul either, or to yours, so I thought.”

  “There is great trouble in the world, as I have learned since my arrival here, and that trouble increases.”

  “And is that cause for despair? It should only increase your desire to set things right, as once you did before.”

  “For the second time, though, I see Majipoor overtaken by calamity during my reign. What I see,” said Valentine, “is that my reign has been an unlucky one, and will be unluckier yet, if these plagues and famines and panicky migrations grow more severe. I fear that some curse lies on me.”

  He saw anger briefly flare in her eyes, and he was reminded again of the formidable strength of her soul, of the icy discipline and devotion to duty that lay below her warm and gentle appearance. In her way she was as fierce a warrior as the famed Lady Thiin of ancient times, who had gone out upon the barricades to drive back the invading Metamorphs. This Lady too might be capable of such valor, if there were need. She had no tolerance, he knew, for weakness in her sons, or self-pity, or despondency, because she had none for those things in herself. And, remembering that, he felt some of the bleakness of his mood begin to go from him.

  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 flash 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 be 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 disast
er. 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?”

  “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 now, 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 o
f 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?”