Lord Valentine's Castle

  In tension and distress Valentine watched as Ermanar swung his forces about and guided them toward Elidath’s camp. Simple enough to order that Elidath not be harmed; but how could that be controlled, in the heat of battle? This was what Valentine had feared most of all, that some beloved companion of his would lead the opposing troops—but to know that it was Elidath, that Elidath was in jeopardy on the field, that Elidath must fall if the army of liberation was to go forward—what agony that was!

  Valentine stood up. Deliamber said, “You must not—”

  “I must,” he said, and rushed from the wagon before the Vroon could place some wizardry on him.

  Out here in the midst of things all was incomprehensible: figures rushing to and fro, enemies indistinguishable from friends, all noise, tumult, shouting, alarms, dust, and insanity. The patterns of battle that Valentine had been able to discern from his floater-car were not visible here. He thought he perceived Ermanar’s troops closing in on one side, and a muddled and chaotic struggle going on somewhere in the direction of Elidath’s camp.

  “My lord,” Shanamir called to him, “you should not be in plain view! You—”

  Valentine waved him off and moved toward the thickest part of the battle.

  The tide had shifted again, so it seemed, with Ermanar’s concerted attack on Elidath’s camp. The invaders were breaking through and once more casting the enemy into disorder. They were falling back, knights and citizens alike, running in random circles, trying to flee the merciless oncoming attackers, while somewhere far ahead a knot of defenders held firm round Elidath, a single sturdy rock in the raging torrent.

  Let Elidath not be harmed, Valentine prayed. Let him be taken, and taken swiftly, but let him not be harmed.

  He pressed forward, all but unnoticed on the battlefield. Once again victory seemed to be within his grasp: but at too high a cost, much too high, if bought with the death of Elidath.

  Valentine saw Lisamon Hultin and Khun of Kianimot just ahead, side by side, hacking a path through which the others could follow, and they were driving all before them. Khun was laughing, as if he had waited all his life for this moment of fierce commitment.

  Then an enemy bolt struck the blue-skinned alien in the chest. Khun staggered and swung around. Lisamon Hultin, seeing him beginning to fall, caught him and steadied him, and lowered him gently to the ground.

  “Khun!” Valentine cried, and rushed toward him.

  Even from twenty yards away he could see that the alien had been terribly wounded. Khun was gasping; his lean, sharp-featured face looked mottled, almost gray; his eyes were dull. At the sight of Valentine he brightened a little and tried to sit up.

  “My lord,” the giantess said, “this is no place for you.”

  He ignored her and bent to the alien. “Khun? Khun?” he whispered urgently.

  “It’s all right, my lord. I knew—there was a reason—why I had come to your world—”

  “Khun!”

  “Too bad—I’ll miss the victory banquet—”

  Helpless, Valentine grasped the alien’s sharp-boned shoulders and held him, but Khun’s life slipped swiftly and quietly away. His long strange journey was at its end. He had found purpose at last, and peace.

  Valentine rose and looked about, perceiving the madness of the battlefield as though in a dream. A cordon of his people surrounded him, and someone—Sleet, he realized—was pulling at him, trying to get him to a safer place.

  “No,” Valentine muttered. “Let me fight—”

  “Not out here, my lord. Would you share Khun’s fate? What of all of us, if you perish? The enemy troops are streaming toward us from Peritole Pass. Soon the fighting will grow even more furious. You should not be on the field.”

  Valentine understood that. Dominin Barjazid was nowhere on the scene, after all, and probably neither should he be. But how could he sit snug in a floater-car, when others were dying for him, when Khun, who was not even a creature of this world, had already given his life for him, when his beloved Elidath, just beyond that rise in the plain, was perhaps in grave peril from Valentine’s own troops? He swayed in indecision. Sleet, bleak-faced, released him, but only to summon Zalzan Kavol: the giant Skandar, swinging swords in three arms and wielding an energy-thrower with the fourth, was not far away. Valentine saw Sleet conferring sternly with him, and Zalzan Kavol, holding defenders at bay almost disdainfully, began to fight his way toward Valentine. In a moment, Valentine suspected, the Skandar might haul him forcibly, crowned Power or not, from the field.

  “Wait,” Valentine said. “The heir presumptive is in danger. I command you to follow me!”

  Sleet and Zalzan Kavol looked baffled by the unfamiliar title.

  “The heir presumptive?” Sleet repeated. “Who’s—”

  “Come with me,” Valentine said. “An order.”

  Zalzan Kavol rumbled, “Your safety, my lord, is—”

  “—not the only important thing. Sleet, at my left! Zalzan Kavol, at my right!”

  They were too bewildered to disobey. Valentine summoned Lisamon Hultin also; and, guarded by his friends, he moved rapidly over the rise toward the front line of the enemy.

  “Elidath!” Valentine cried, bellowing it with all his strength.

  His voice carried across half a league, so it seemed, and the sound of that mighty roar caused all action about him to cease for an instant. Past an avenue of motionless warriors Valentine looked toward Elidath, and as their eyes met he saw the dark-haired man pause, return the look, frown, shrug.

  To Sleet and Zalzan Kavol Valentine shouted, “Capture that man! Bring him to me—unharmed!”

  The instant of stasis ended; with redoubled intensity the tumult of battle resumed. Valentine’s forces swarmed once more toward the hard-pressed and yielding enemy, and for a second he caught sight of Elidath, surrounded by a shield of his own people, fiercely holding his ground. Then he could see no more, for everything became chaotic again. Someone was tugging at him—Sleet, perhaps? Carabella?—urging him again to return to the safety of his car, but he grunted and pulled himself free.

  “Elidath of Morvole!” Valentine called. “Elidath, come to parley!”

  “Who calls my name?” was the reply.

  Again the surging mob opened between him and Elidath. Valentine stretched his arms toward the frowning figure and began to make answer. But words would be too slow, too clumsy, Valentine knew. Abruptly he dropped into the trance-state, putting all his strength of will into his mother’s silver circlet, and casting forth across the space that separated him from Elidath of Morvole the full intensity of his soul in a single compressed fraction of an instant of dream-images, dream-force—

  —two young men, boys really, riding sleek fast mounts through a forest of stunted dwarfish trees—

  —a thick twisted root rising like a serpent out of the ground across the path, a mount stumbling, a boy flung headlong—

  —a terrible cracking sound, a white shaft of jagged bone jutting horridly through torn skin—

  —the other boy reining in, riding back, whistling in astonishment and fright as he saw the extent of the injury—

  Valentine could sustain the dream-pictures no longer. The moment of contact ended. Drained, exhausted, he slipped back into waking reality.

  Elidath stared at him, bewildered. It was as though the two of them alone were on the battlefield, and all that was going on about them was mere noise and vapor.

  “Yes,” Valentine said. “You know me, Elidath. But not by this face I wear today.”

  “Valentine?”

  “No other.”

  They moved toward each other. A ring of troops of both armies surrounded them, silent, mystified. When they were a few feet apart they halted and squared off uncertainly, as if they were about to launch into a duel. Elidath studied Valentine’s features in a stunned, astounded way.

  “Can it be?” he asked finally. “Such a witchery—is it possible?”

  “We rode together in the pyg
my forest under Amblemorn,” said Valentine. “I never felt such pain as on that day. Remember, when you moved the bone with your hands, putting it in its place, and you cried out as if the leg were your own?”

  “How could you know such things?”

  “And then the months I spent sitting and fuming, while you and Tunigorn and Stasilaine roamed the Mount without me? And the limp I had, that stayed with me even after I was healed?” Valentine laughed. “Dominin Barjazid stole that limp when he took my body from me! Who would have expected such a favor from the likes of him?”

  Elidath seemed like one who walked in dreams. He shook his head, as though to rid it of cobwebs.

  “This is witchery,” he said.

  “Yes. And I am Valentine!”

  “Valentine is in the Castle. I saw him but yesterday, and he wished me well, and spoke of the old times, the pleasures we shared—”

  “Stolen memories, Elidath. He fishes in my brain, and finds the old scenes embedded there. Have you noticed nothing strange about him, this past year?” Valentine’s eyes looked deep into Elidath’s and the other man flinched, as if fearing sorcery. “Have you not thought your Valentine oddly withdrawn and brooding and mysterious lately, Elidath?”

  “Yes, but I thought—it was the cares of the throne that made him so.”

  “You noticed a difference, then! A change!”

  “A slight one, yes. A certain coldness—a distance, a chill about him—”

  “And still you deny me?”

  Elidath stared. “Valentine?” he murmured, not yet believing. “You, really you, in that strange guise?”

  “None other. And he up there in the Castle has deceived you, you and all the world.”

  “This is so strange.”

  “Come, give me your embrace, and cease your mumbling, Elidath!” Smiling broadly, Valentine seized the other man and pulled him close, and held him as friend holds friend. Elidath stiffened. His body was as rigid as wood. After a moment be pushed Valentine away and stepped back a pace, shivering.

  “You need not fear me, Elidath.”

  “You ask too much of me. To believe such—”

  “Believe it.”

  “I do, at least by half. The warmth of your eyes—the smile—the things you remember—”

  “Believe the other half,” Valentine urged passionately. “The Lady my mother sends you her love, Elidath. You will see her again, at the Castle, the day we hold festival to mark my restoration. Turn your troops around, dear friend, and join us as we march up the Mount.”

  There was warfare on Elidath’s face. His lips moved, a muscle in his cheek twitched violently. In silence he confronted Valentine.

  Then at last he said, “This may be madness, but I accept you as what you claim.”

  “Elidath!”

  “And I will join you, and may the Divine help you if I am misled.”

  “I promise you there will be no regretting this.”

  Elidath nodded. “I’ll send messengers to Tunigorn—”

  “Where is he?”

  “He holds Peritole Pass against the thrust we expected from you. Stasilaine is there too. I was bitter, being left in command here in the plain, for I thought I’d miss all the action. Oh, Valentine, is it really you? With golden hair, and that sweet innocent look to your face?”

  “The true Valentine, yes. I who slipped off with you to High Morpin when we were ten, borrowing the chariot of Voriax, and rode the juggernaut all day and half the night, and afterward had the same punishment as you—”

  “—crusts of old stajja-bread for three days, indeed—”

  “—and Stasilaine brought us a platter of meat secretly, and was caught, and he ate crusts with us too the next day—”

  “—I had forgotten that part. And do you remember Voriax making us polish every part of the chariot where we had muddied it—”

  “Elidath!”

  “Valentine!”

  They laughed and pounded each other joyously with their fists.

  Then Elidath grew somber and said, “But where have you been? What has befallen you all this year? Have you suffered, Valentine? Have you—”

  “It is a very long story,” Valentine said gravely, “and this is not the place to tell it. We must halt this battle, Elidath. Innocent citizens are dying for Dominin Barjazid’s sake, and we cannot allow that. Rally your troops, turn them around.”

  “In this madhouse it won’t be easy.”

  “Give the orders. Get the word to the other commanders. The killing has to stop. And then ride with us, Elidath, onward to Bombifale, and then past High Morpin to the Castle.”

  11

  Valentine returned to his car, and Elidath vanished into the confused and ragged line of the defenders. During the parley, Valentine discovered now from Ermanar, his people had made strong advances, keeping their wedge tight and pushing deep into the plain, throwing the vast but formless army of the false Coronal into nearly complete disarray. Now that relentless wedge continued to roll on, through helpless troops that had neither the will nor the desire to hold them back. With Elidath’s leadership and formidable battlefield presence negated, the defenders were spiritless and disorganized.

  But it was that very pandemonium and tumult among the defenders that made halting the wasteful battle almost impossible. With hundreds of thousands of warriors moving in patternless streams over Bombifale Plain, and thousands more rushing in from the pass as news spread of Valentine’s attack, there was no way of exercising command over the entire mass. Valentine saw Elidath’s starburst banner flying in the midst of the madness, halfway across the field, and knew that he was striving to make contact with his fellow officers and tell them of the switch in loyalties; but the army was out of control, and soldiers were dying needlessly. Every casualty brought a stab of pain to Valentine.

  He could do nothing about that. He signaled Ermanar to keep pressing forward.

  Over the next hour a bizarre transformation of the battle began. Valentine’s wedge sliced forward almost without opposition, and a second phalanx now moved parallel to his, off to the east, led by Elidath, advancing with equal ease. The rest of the gigantic army that had occupied the plain was divided and confounded, and in a muddled way was fighting against itself, breaking into small groups that clung vociferously to tiny sectors of the plain and beat off anyone who approached.

  Soon these feckless hordes lay far to Valentine’s rear, and the double column of invaders was entering the upper half of the plain, where the land began to curve bowl-fashion toward the crest on which Bombifale, oldest and most beautiful of the Inner Cities, stood. It was early afternoon, and as they ascended the slope, the sky grew ever more clear and bright and the air warmer, for they were beginning to leave the Mount-girdling cloud-belt behind and emerge into the lower flanks of the summit zone, which lay bathed forever in shimmering sunlight.

  And now Bombifale came into view, rising above them like a vision of antique splendor: great scalloped walls of burnt-orange sandstone set with huge diamond-shaped slabs of blue seaspar fetched from the shores of the Great Sea in Lord Pinitor’s time, and lofty needle-sharp towers sprouting on the battlements at meticulously regular intervals, slender and graceful, casting long shadows into the plain.

  Valentine’s spirit throbbed with gathering joy and delight. Hundreds of miles of Castle Mount lay behind him, ring after ring of grand bustling cities, Slope Cities and Free Cities and Guardian Cities far below. The Castle itself was less than a day’s journey above, and the army that would have thwarted his climb had crumbled into pathetic turmoil behind him. And though he still felt the distant threatening twinges of the King of Dreams’ sendings at night, they were becoming only the merest tickle at the edges of his soul, and his beloved friend Elidath was ascending the Mount by his side, with Stasilaine and Tunigorn riding now to join him.

  How good it was to behold the spires of Bombifale, and know what lay beyond! These hills, that towered city ahead, the dark thick grass of the m
eadows, the red stones of the mountain road from Bombifale to High Morpin, the dazzling flower-strewn fields that linked the Grand Calintane Highway from High Morpin to the southern wing of the Castle—he knew these places better than the sturdy but still somewhat unfamiliar body he now wore. He was almost home.

  And then?

  Deal with the usurper, yes, and set things to order—but the task was so awesome he scarcely knew where he would begin. He had been absent from Castle Mount almost two years, and deprived of power most of that time. The laws promulgated by Dominin Barjazid would have to be examined, and very likely repealed by blanket ordinance. And there was also the problem, which he had barely considered before this moment, of integrating the companions of his long wanderings into the former imperial officialdom, for surely he must find posts of power for Deliamber and Sleet and Zalzan Kavol and the rest, but there was Elidath to think of, and the others who had been central in his court. He could hardly discard them merely because he was coming home from exile with new favorites. That was perplexing, but he hoped he would find some way of handling it that would breed no resentments and would cause no—

  Deliamber said abruptly, “I fear new troubles heading in our direction, and not small ones.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you see any changes in the sky?”

  “Yes,” Valentine said. “It grows brighter and a deeper blue as we escape from the cloud-belt.”

  “Look more closely,” said Deliamber.

  Valentine peered upslope. Indeed he had spoken carelessly and too soon, for the brightening of the sky that he had noticed a short while ago was altered now, in a strange manner: there was a faint tinge of darkness overhead, as though a storm were coming on. No clouds were in sight, but an odd and sinister gray tint was moving in behind the blue. And the banners mounted on the floater-cars, which had been fluttering in a mild western breeze, had shifted and stood out stiffly to the south, blown by winds of sudden strength coming down from the summit.

  “A change in the weather,” Valentine said. “Rain, perhaps? But why are you concerned?”