Valentine Pontifex

  —And how does he plan to cross it?

  —That I do not know. But—

  “Now! Grab him!”

  At the sudden outcry all contact with Faraataa was lost. Two huge forms loomed in the darkness and pounced. Y-Uulisaan, astonished, unprepared, gasped in surprise.

  He perceived that it was the vast warrior-woman Lisamon Hultin and the fierce shaggy Skandar Zalzan Kavol who gripped him. The Vroon Deliamber hovered somewhere at a safe distance, tentacles coiling in intricate patterns.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Y-Uulisaan demanded. “This is an outrage!”

  “Ah, that it is,” replied the Amazon cheerfully. “Most certainly it is.”

  “Let go of me at once!”

  “Very small chance of that, spy!” the Skandar rumbled.

  Desperately Y-Uulisaan tried to free himself from the grasp of his assailants, but he was like a mere doll in their hands. Panic seized him, and he felt his form-control begin to break down. He could do nothing to reassert it, though the loss of it revealed him for what he truly was. They held him as he writhed and twisted and frantically ran through a host of shapechanges, becoming now this creature or that, this mass of spines and knobs or that length of sinuous serpent. Unable to free himself, his energies so depleted by the contact with Faraataa that he could not generate any of his defensive abilities, the electric shocks and the like, he screamed and roared in frustration until, abruptly, the Vroon slipped a tentacle against his forehead and administered a short stunning jolt. Y-Uulisaan went limp and lay half conscious.

  “Take him to the Coronal,” Deliamber said. “We will interrogate him in Lord Valentine’s presence.”

  AS HE RODE WESTWARD toward the Steiche all that day with the vanguard of the royal caravan, Valentine saw the landscape hourly undergoing dramatic change: drab Gihorna was giving way to the mysterious lushness of the Piurifayne rain forest. Behind him lay a scruffy seacoast of dunes and sand drifts, of sparse shaggy tufts of saw-edged grass and small stunted trees with limp yellow leaves. Now the soil was no longer so sandy, but grew ever darker, ever more rich, and supported a riotous lushness of growth; the air no longer carried the acrid flavor of the sea, but had taken on the sweet, musky aroma of a jungle. Yet this was mere transitional country, Valentine knew. The true jungle lay ahead, beyond the Steiche, a realm of mists and strangeness, dense dark greenery, fog-swept hills and mountains: the kingdom of the Shapeshifters.

  An hour or so before twilight they reached the river. Valentine’s floater was the first to arrive at it, the other two appearing a few minutes later. He signaled to their captains to pull the vehicles into parallel formation along the bank. Then he left his floater and walked to the water’s edge.

  Valentine had reason to remember this river well. He had come to it in his years of exile; that time when he and his fellow jugglers were fleeing the wrath of the Metamorphs of Ilirivoyne. Now, standing beside its swift waters, his mind journeyed back across time to glimpse again that wild ride across rain-soaked Piurifayne, and the bloody battle with Shapeshifter ambushers in the depths of the jungle, and the little apelike forest brethren who had saved them afterward by leading them to the Steiche. And then the terrifying and ill-fated raft ride down the turbulent river, among its menacing boulders and whirlpools and rapids, in the hope of reaching the safety of Ni-moya—

  But here there were no rapids, no fanged rocks splitting the swirling surface, no high rocky walls flanking the channel. The river here was fast of flow, but broad and smooth and manageable.

  “Can this really be the Steiche?” Carabella asked. “It hardly seems to be the same river that gave us such pain.”

  Valentine nodded. “All that lies north of here. This stretch of the river seems more civil.”

  “But hardly gentle. Can we get across?”

  “We must,” said Valentine, staring at the distant western bank and Piurifayne beyond it.

  Dusk was beginning to descend now, and in the gathering darkness the Metamorph province seemed impenetrable, unfathomable, hermetic. The Coronal’s mood began to turn somber once more. Was it folly, he wondered, this wild expedition into the jungle? Was this enterprise absurd, naive, foredoomed? Perhaps so. Perhaps the only outcome of his rash quest for the Shapeshifter queen’s forgiveness would be mockery and shame. And perhaps then he would do well to resign this crown that he had never truly coveted, and turn the government into the hands of some more brutal and decisive man.

  Perhaps. Perhaps.

  He noticed that some strange sluggish creature had emerged from the water on the other shore and was moving slowly about over there at the river’s edge—a long, baggy-bodied thing with pale blue skin and a single huge sad eye at the top of its blunt, bulbous head. As Valentine watched, bemused by the ugliness and clumsiness of the animal, it put its face to the muddy soil of the bank and began rocking from side to side, as though trying to excavate a pit with its chin.

  Sleet approached. Valentine, entirely caught up in observing the odd beast across the way, allowed him to wait in silence a moment before turning to him.

  It seemed to Valentine that Sleet’s expression was pensive, even troubled. He said, “We’re going to pitch camp here for the night, is that right, lordship? And wait until morning before we try to see if the floaters will travel over water that moves as fast as this?”

  “So I intend, yes.”

  “With all respect, my lord, you might consider crossing the river tonight, if it’s possible.”

  Valentine frowned. He felt curiously detached: Sleet’s words appeared to be reaching him from a great distance. “As I recall, our plan was to spend tomorrow morning experimenting with the floaters, but to wait on this side of the river until the other half of the caravan had caught up with us before making the actual crossing into Piurifayne. Is that not so?”

  “Yes, my lord, but—”

  Valentine cut him off. “Then the order should be given to pitch camp before it’s dark, eh, Sleet?” The Coronal put the issue from his mind and turned back toward the river. “Do you see that peculiar animal on the far bank?”

  “The gromwark, you mean?”

  “Is that what it is? What do you think it’s up to, rubbing its face in the ground like that?”

  “Digging a burrow, I’d say. To hunker down in when the storm strikes. They live in the water, you know, but I suppose it figures the river will be too badly stirred up, and—”

  “Storm?” Valentine asked.

  “Yes, my lord. I was trying to tell you, my lord. Look at the sky, my lord!”

  “The sky darkens. Night’s coming on.”

  “Look to the east, I mean,” said Sleet.

  Valentine swung around and stared into Gihorna. The sun should already be nearly down, back there; he would have expected the sky to have turned gray or even black by this time of day. But instead a weird kind of sunset seemed to be going on in the east, against all nature: a strange pastel glow streaked the sky, pink tinged with yellow, and pale green at the horizon. The colors had an odd throbbing intensity, as though the sky were pulsating. The world seemed extraordinarily still: Valentine heard the rushing of the river, but no other sound, not even the nightfall song of birds or the insistent high-pitched notes of the little scarlet tree-frogs that dwelled here by the thousands. And there was a desert dryness to the air, a combustible quality.

  “Sandstorm, my lord,” Sleet said quietly.

  “Are you certain?”

  “It must be blowing up just now, on the coast. The wind was out of the east all day, and that’s where the Gihorna storms come from, off the ocean. A dry wind off the ocean, lordship, can you reckon that? I can’t.”

  “I hate a dry wind,” Carabella murmured. “Like the wind the dragon hunters call ‘the sending.’ It makes my nerves ache.”

  “You know of these storms, my lord?” Sleet asked.

  Valentine nodded tensely. A Coronal’s education is rich in the details of geography. The sandstorms of Gihorna oc
curred infrequently but were widely notorious: fierce winds that skinned the dunes like knives, and scooped up tons of sand, and carried them with resistless ferocity toward the inland regions. They came but twice or thrice in a generation, but they were long remembered when they did.

  “What will happen to our people back there?” Valentine asked.

  Sleet said, “The storm’s sure to pass right over them. It may be upon them already, or if not, it’ll be there before long. Gihorna storms are swift. Listen, lordship: listen!” A wind was rising.

  Valentine heard it, still far away, a low hissing sound that had just now begun to intrude itself upon the unnatural silence. It was like the first quiet whisper of an awakening giant’s slowly mounting fury that plainly was soon to give way to some awesome devastating roaring.

  “And what of us?” Carabella said. “Will it reach this far, Sleet?”

  “The gromwark thinks so, my lady. It seeks to wait things out underground.” To Valentine Sleet said, “Shall I advise you, my lord?”

  “If you will.”

  “We should cross the river now, while we still can. If the storm comes over us, it may destroy the floaters, or so badly disable them that they will be unable to travel on water.”

  “More than half my people are still in Gihorna!”

  “If they still live, yes.”

  “Deliamber—Tisana—Shanamir—!”

  “I know, my lord. But we can do nothing for them now. If we are to continue this expedition at all, we must cross the river, and later that may be impossible. On the far side we can hide in the jungle, and camp there until the others rejoin us, if ever they do. But if we stay here we may be pinned down forever, unable to go forward, unable to retreat.”

  A grim prospect, Valentine thought; and a plausible one. But nevertheless he hesitated, still reluctant to go on into Piurifayne while so many of his closest and dearest ones faced an uncertain fate under the lash of the wind-driven Gihorna sands. For an instant he felt the wild urge to order the floaters back toward the east, in order to search for the rest of the royal party. A moment’s reflection told him of the folly of that. There was nothing he could achieve by going back at this moment except to put even more lives in jeopardy. The storm might yet not reach this far west; in that case it would be best to wait until its rage was spent, and then reenter Gihorna to pick up the survivors.

  He stood still and silent, bleakly looking eastward into that realm of darkness now so strangely illuminated by the frightening glow of the sandstorm’s destructive energies.

  The wind continued to gain in force. The storm will reach us, Valentine realized. It will sweep over us and perhaps plunge on deep into the Piurifayne jungles as well, before its power is dissipated.

  Then he narrowed his eyes and blinked in surprise and pointed. “Do you see lights approaching? Floater lights?”

  “By the Lady!” Sleet muttered hoarsely.

  “Are they here?” Carabella asked. “Do you think they’ve escaped the storm?”

  “Only one floater, my lord,” said Sleet quietly. “And not one from the royal caravan, I think.” Valentine had arrived at that conclusion at the same moment. The royal floaters were huge vehicles, capable of holding many people and much equipment. What was coming toward them now out of Gihorna appeared to be more like a small private floater, a two- or four-passenger model: it had only two lights in front, casting no very powerful beam, where the larger ones had three, of great brilliance.

  The floater pulled to a halt no more than thirty feet from the Coronal. At once Lord Valentine’s guards rushed forward to surround it, holding their energy-throwers at the ready. The doors of the floater swung open and two men, haggard, exhausted, came stumbling out.

  Valentine gasped in astonishment. “Tunigorn? Elidath?” It seemed impossible: a dream, a fantasy. Tunigorn at this moment should still have been in Piliplok, dealing with routine administrative chores. And Elidath? How could this be Elidath? Elidath belonged thousands of miles away, atop Castle Mount. Valentine no more expected to encounter him in this dark forest on Piurifayne’s border than he would his own mother the Lady.

  Yet that tall man with the heavy brows and the deep-cleft chin was surely Tunigorn; and that other, taller still, he of the piercing eyes and the strong, broad-boned face, was surely Elidath. Unless—unless—

  The wind grew more powerful. It seemed to Valentine that thin gritty pennons of sand now rode upon it.

  “Are you real?” he demanded of Elidath and Tunigorn. “Or just a pair of cunning Shapeshifter imitations?”

  “Real, Valentine, real, altogether real!” cried Elidath, and held forth his arms toward the Coronal.

  “By the Divine, it is the truth,” Tunigorn said. “We are no counterfeits, and we have traveled day and night, my lord, to overtake you in this place.”

  “Yes,” Valentine said, “I think you are real.” He would have gone toward Elidath’s outstretched arms, but his own guards uncertainly interposed themselves. Angrily Valentine waved them aside and pulled Elidath into a close embrace. Then, releasing him, he stepped back to survey his oldest and closest friend. It was well over a year since last they had met; but Elidath seemed to have aged ten years for one. He looked frayed, worn, eroded. Was it the cares of the regency that had ground him down in this way, Valentine wondered, or the fatigue of his long journey to Zimroel? Once he had seemed to Valentine like a brother, for they were of an age with one another and of much the same cast of soul; and now Elidath was suddenly transformed into a weary old man.

  “My lord, the storm—” Sleet began.

  “A moment,” Valentine said, brusquely gesturing him away. “There’s much I must learn.” To Elidath he said, “How can it be that you are here?”

  “I came, my lord, to beg you not to go further into peril.”

  “What gave you to think I was in peril, or entering more deeply into it?”

  “The word came to me that you were planning to cross into Piurifayne and speak with the Metamorphs,” said Elidath.

  “That decision was only lately taken. You must have left the Mount weeks or even months before the idea came into my mind.” In some irritation Valentine said, “Is this your way of serving me, Elidath? To abandon your place at the Castle, and journey unbidden halfway round the world to interfere with my policies?”

  “My place is with you, Valentine.”

  Valentine scowled. “Out of love for you I bid you greeting and offer my embrace. But I wish you were not here.”

  “And I the same,” said Elidath.

  “My lord,” said Sleet insistently. “The storm is coming upon us now! I beg you—”

  “Yes, the storm,” Tunigorn said. “A Gihorna sandstorm, terrible to behold. We heard it raging along the coast as we set out after you, and it has followed us all the way. An hour, half an hour, perhaps less, and it will be here, my lord!”

  Valentine felt a tight band of tension encase his chest. The storm, the storm, the storm! Yes, Sleet was right: they must take some action. But he had so many questions—there was so much he must know—

  To Tunigorn he said, “You must have come by way of the other camp. Lisamon, Deliamber, Tisana—are they safe?”

  “They will try to protect themselves as best they can. And we must do the same. Head west, try to take cover in the depths of the jungle before the worst of it reaches here—”

  “My counsel exactly,” Sleet said.

  “Very well,” said Valentine. He looked to Sleet and said, “Have our floaters made ready for the crossing.”

  “I will, my lord.” He rushed away.

  To Elidath Valentine said, “If you are here, who rules at the Castle?”

  “I chose three to serve as a Council of Regency: Stasilaine, Divvis, and Hissune.”

  “Hissune?”

  Color came to Elidath’s cheeks. “It was my belief you wished him to move rapidly forward in the government.”

  “So I do. You did well, Elidath. But I suspect that the
re were some who were less than totally pleased with the choice.”

  “Indeed. Prince Manganot of Banglecode, and the Duke of Halanx, and—”

  “Never mind the names. I know who they are,” Valentine said. “They’ll change their minds in time, I think.”

  “As do I. The boy is astonishing, Valentine. Nothing escapes his notice. He learns amazingly swiftly. He moves surely. And when he makes a mistake, he knows how to gain from an understanding of his error. He reminds me somewhat of you, when you were his age.”

  Valentine shook his head. “No, Elidath. He’s not at all like me. That’s the thing I most value about him, I think. We see the same things, but we see them with very different eyes.” He smiled and caught Elidath by the forearm, and held him a moment. Softly he said, “You understand what I intend for him?”

  “I think I do.”

  “And are you troubled by it?”

  Elidath’s gaze was steady. “You know that I am not, Valentine.”

  “Yes. I do know that,” the Coronal said.

  He dug his fingers hard into Elidath’s arm, and released him, and turned away before Elidath could see the sudden glistening in his eyes.

  The wind, now thick with sand and howling eerily, came ripping through the grove of slender-stemmed trees that lay just to the east, cutting their broad leaves to tatters like a host of invisible knives. Valentine felt light showers of sand striking his face with stinging impact, and he turned from it, pulling his cloak up to protect himself. The others were doing the same. At the edge of the river, where Sleet was supervising the conversion of the floaters’ ground-effect mechanisms for use on water, there was a great bustle of activity.

  Tunigorn said, “There is much strange news, Valentine.”

  “Speak it, then!”

  “The agricultural expert who has been traveling with us since Alaisor—”

  “Y-Uulisaan? What of him? Has something happened to him?”

  “He is a Shapeshifter spy, my lord.” The words reached Valentine like blows.

  “What?”