Lord Valentine's Castle: Book One of the Majipoor Cycle

  He had tended to think it was the Coronal who was the true king, and the Pontifex a mere figurehead, since it was the Coronal who was seen actively commanding the forces of order whenever chaos threatened, the vigorous dynamic Coronal, whereas the Pontifex remained immured down below, emerging from the Labyrinth only on the highest occasions of state.

  But now he was not so certain.

  The Pontifex himself might be merely a crazy old man, but the minions of the Pontifex, these hundreds of thousands of drab bureaucrats in their odd little masks, might collectively wield more authority on Majipoor than the dashing Coronal and all his princely aides. Down here the tax rolls were determined, here the balances of trade between province and province were adjusted, here the maintenance of highways and parks and educational establishments and all the other functions under provincial control were coordinated. Valentine was not at all convinced that true central government was possible on a world as big as Majipoor, but at least the basic forms of it existed, the structural outlines, and he saw, as he moved through the inner maze of the Labyrinth, that government on Majipoor was not altogether a matter of grand processionals and dream-sendings. The mighty hidden bureaucracy down here did most of the work.

  And he was caught in its toils. There were lodgings several levels down from the House of Records for provincial officials who were visiting the Labyrinth on governmental business; there he was given a suite of modest rooms, and there he stayed, ignored, for the next few days. There seemed to be no way to move beyond this point. As Coronal he would have the right of immediate access to the Pontifex, of course; but he was not Coronal, not in any effective sense, and to claim that he was would probably make it impossible for him to proceed at all.

  He recalled, after some rooting about in his memory, the names of the chief ministers of the Pontifex. Unless things had changed lately, Tyeveras kept five plenipotentiary officials close by him—Hornkast, his high spokesman; Dilifon, his private secretary; Shinaam, a Ghayrog, his minister of external affairs; Sepulthrove, his minister of scientific matters and personal physician; and Narrameer, his dream-speaker, who was rumored to be the most powerful of all, the adviser who had chosen Voriax and then Valentine to be Coronal.

  But to reach any of these five seemed as hard as to reach the Pontifex himself. Like Tyeveras they were buried in the depths, remote, inaccessible. Valentine’s skill with the circlet his mother had given him did not extend to making contact with the mind of someone unknown to him, at an unknown distance.

  He learned shortly that two lesser, but still significant, officials served as the guardians of the central levels of the Labyrinth. These were the imperial major-domos, Dondak-Sajamir of the Su-Suheris stock and Gitamorn Suul, a human. “But,” said Sleet, who had been talking with the keepers of the hostelry, “these two have been feuding for a year or more. They cooperate with one another as little as possible. And you must have the approval of both in order to see the higher ministers.”

  Carabella snorted in annoyance. “We’ll spend the rest of our lives gathering dust down here! Valentine, why are we bothering with the Labyrinth at all? Why not clear out of here and march straight for Castle Mount?”

  “My idea exactly,” said Sleet.

  Valentine shook his head. “The support of the Pontifex is essential. So the Lady told me, and I agree.”

  “Essential for what?” Sleet demanded. “The Pontifex sleeps far below the ground. He knows nothing of anything. Does the Pontifex have any army to lend you? Does the Pontifex even exist?”

  “The Pontifex has an army of petty clerks and officials,” Deliamber pointed out mildly. “We will find them extremely useful. They, not warriors, control the balance of power in our world.”

  Sleet was unconvinced. “I say hoist the starburst banner and sound the trumpets and bang the drums and set out across Alhanroel, proclaiming you as Coronal and letting the whole world know of Dominin Barjazid’s little trick. In each city along the way, you meet with the key people and win their support with your warmth and sincerity, and maybe a little help from the Lady’s circlet. By the time you’re at Castle Mount, ten million people are marching behind you, and the Barjazid will surrender without a fight!”

  “A pretty vision,” said Valentine. “But I think we still must have the instrumentalities of the Pontifex working for us before we try to make any open challenge. I will pay calls on these two major-domos.”

  In the afternoon he was conducted to the headquarters of Dondak-Sajamir—a surprisingly bleak little office deep in a tangle of tiny clerkish cubicles. For more than an hour Valentine was kept waiting in a cramped and cluttered vestibule, before at last being admitted to the major-domo’s presence.

  Valentine was not entirely sure how to manage things with a Su-Suheris. Was one head Dondak and the other Sajamir? Did you address both at once, or speak only to the head that spoke to you? Was it proper to keep your attention moving from one head to the other while talking?

  Dondak-Sajamir regarded Valentine as though from a great height. There was tense silence in the office as the four cool green eyes of the alien dispassionately surveyed the visitor. The Su-Suheris was a slender, elongated creature, hairless and smooth-skinned, tubular and shoulderless in form, with a rod-shaped neck that rose like a pedestal to a height of ten or twelve inches and forked to provide support for the two narrow spindle-shaped heads. He bore himself with such an air of superiority that one could easily think that the office of major-domo to the Pontifex was far more important than that of the Pontifex himself. But some of that frosty hauteur, Valentine knew, was simply a function of the major-domo’s race: a Su-Suheris could not help looking naturally imperious and disdainful.

  Eventually Dondak-Sajamir’s left-hand head said, “Why have you come here?”

  “To apply for an audience with the chief ministers of the Pontifex.”

  “So it says in your letter. But what business do you have with them?”

  “A matter of the greatest urgency, an affair of state.”

  “Yes?”

  “You hardly expect me to discuss it with anyone below the highest levels of authority, surely.”

  Dondak-Sajamir considered that point interminably. When he spoke again, it was from the right-hand head. The second voice was much deeper than the first. “If I waste the time of the chief ministers, it will go hard for me.”

  “If you place obstacles between me and my seeing them, it will also go hard for you, ultimately.”

  “A threat?”

  “Not at all. I can tell you only that the consequences of their not receiving the information I bear will be very serious for all of us—and no doubt they will be distressed to learn that it was you who kept that information from reaching them.”

  “Not I alone,” said the Su-Suheris. “There is a second major-domo, and we must act jointly in approving applications of this sort. You have not spoken to my colleague yet.”

  “No.”

  “She is insane. She has deliberately and malevolently withheld her cooperation from me for many months.” Now Dondak-Sajamir spoke from both heads simultaneously, in tones not quite an octave apart. The effect was weirdly disconcerting. “Even if I gave you approval, she would refuse. You will never get to see the chief ministers.”

  “But this is impossible! Can’t we go around her somehow?”

  “It would be illegal.”

  “If she blocks all legitimate business, though—”

  The Su-Suheris looked indifferent. “The responsibility is hers.”

  “No,” Valentine said. “You both share it! You can’t simply say that because she won’t cooperate, I can’t go forward, when the survival of the government itself is at stake!”

  “Do you think so?” asked Dondak-Sajamir.

  The question left Valentine baffled. Was it the idea of a threat to the realm that he was challenging, or merely the notion that he bore equal responsibilty for blocking Valentine?

  Valentine said, after a moment, “W
hat do you suggest I do?”

  “Return to your home,” said the major-domo, “and live a fruitful and happy life, and leave the problems of government to those of us whose fate it is to wrestle with them.”

  7

  He had no better satisfaction from Gitamorn Suul. The other major-domo was less supercilious than the Su-Suheris, but hardly more cooperative.

  She was a woman ten or twelve years older than Valentine, tall and dark-haired, with a businesslike, competent air about her. She did not appear at all insane. On her desk, in an office notably more cheerful and attractive, though no larger, than Dondak-Sajamir’s, was a file containing Valentine’s application. She tapped it several times and said, “You can’t see them, you know.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  “Because no one sees them.”

  “No one?”

  “No one from outside. It is no longer done.”

  “Is that because of the friction between you and Dondak-Sajamir?”

  Gitamorn Suul’s lips quirked testily. “That idiot! But no—even if he were performing his duties properly, it still wouldn’t be possible for you to reach the ministers. They don’t want to be bothered. They have heavy responsibilities. The Pontifex is old, you know. He gives little time to matters of government, and therefore the burdens on those about him have increased. Do you understand?”

  “I must see them,” said Valentine.

  “I can’t help that. Not even for the most urgent reason can they be disturbed.”

  “Suppose,” Valentine said slowly, “the Coronal had been overthrown, and a false ruler held possession of the Castle?”

  She pushed up her mask and looked at him in astonishment. “Is that what you want to tell them? Here. Application dismissed.” Rising, she made brisk shooing gestures at him. “We have madmen enough in the Labyrinth already, without new ones coming down out of—”

  “Wait,” said Valentine.

  He let the trance-state possess him, and summoned the power of the circlet. Desperately he reached toward her soul with his, touched it, enfolded it. It had not been part of his plan to reveal much to these minor officials, but there seemed no alternative but to take her into his confidence. He sustained the contact until he felt himself growing dizzy and weak; then he broke it off and returned hurriedly to full wakefulness. She was staring at him, dazed; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were wild, her breasts heaved in agitation. It was a moment before she could speak.

  Finally she said, “What kind of trick is that?”

  “No trick. I am the Lady’s son, and she herself taught me the art of sendings.”

  “Lord Valentine is a dark-haired man.”

  “So he was. Not any longer.”

  “You ask me to believe—”

  “Please,” he said. He threw all the intensity of his spirit into the word. “Please. Believe me. Everything depends on my telling the Pontifex what has happened.”

  But her suspicions ran deep. From Gitamorn Suul came no kneelings, no homages, no starburst gesticulations, only a kind of sullen bewilderment, as if she might be inclined to think his bizarre story was true, but wished he had inflicted it on some other functionary.

  She said, “The Su-Suheris would veto anything I proposed.”

  “Even if I showed him what I’ve shown you?”

  She shrugged. “His obstinacy is legendary. Not even to save the life of the Pontifex would he approve one of my recommendations.”

  “But this is madness!”

  “Exactly so. You’ve talked to him?”

  “Yes,” Valentine said. “He seemed unfriendly and puffed up with pride. But not mad.”

  “Deal with him a little longer,” Gitamorn Suul advised, “before you form your final judgment of him.”

  “What if we were to forge his approval, so that I could go in without his knowing?”

  She looked shocked. “You want me to commit a crime?”

  Valentine struggled to maintain his even temper. “A crime has already been committed, and not a trifling one,” he said in a low, steady voice. “I am Coronal of Majipoor, deposed through treachery. Your help is vital to my restoration. Doesn’t that override all these petty regulations? Can’t you see that I have the power to pardon you for breaking those regulations?” He leaned toward her. “Time is wasting. Castle Mount houses a usurper. I run back and forth between subordinates of the Pontifex, when I should be leading an army of liberation across Alhanroel. Give me your approval, and let me be on my way, and there’ll be rewards for you when everything’s again as it should be on Majipoor.”

  Her eyes were cold and suddenly bleak. “Your story makes great demands on my powers of belief. What if it is all false? What if you are in the pay of Dondak-Sajamir?”

  Valentine groaned. “I beg you—”

  “No. It’s entirely likely. This is a trap, perhaps. You, your fantastic story, some sort of hypnosis, all designed to destroy me, to leave the Su-Suheris unchallenged here, to give him the supreme power he has long desired—”

  “I swear by the Lady my mother I have not lied to you.”

  “A true criminal would swear by anybody’s mother, but what is that?”

  Valentine hesitated, then boldly reached forth and took Gitamorn Suul’s hands in his. Intently he stared into her eyes. What he was about to do was disagreeable to him, but so was all that these petty bureaucrats had been doing to him. The time had come for a little shamelessness, or he would be forever entangled down here.

  He said, peering close, “Even if I were in Dondak-Sajamir’s pay, I could never betray a woman as beautiful as you.”

  She looked scornful. But color flared again in her cheeks.

  He went on, “Trust me. Believe me. I am Lord Valentine, and you will be one of the heroes of my return. I know the thing you want most in the world, and it will be yours when I have regained the Castle.”

  “You know it?”

  “Yes,” he whispered, gently stroking the hands that now lay limply in his. “To have sole authority over the inner Labyrinth; is that not it? To be the only major-domo?”

  She nodded as though in a dream.

  “It will be done,” he said. “Ally yourself with me, and Dondak-Sajamir will be stripped of his rank, for making himself an obstacle to me. Will you do that? Will you help me reach the chief ministers, Gitamorn Suul?”

  “It will be—difficult—”

  “But it can be done! Anything can be done! And when I am Coronal again, the Su-Suheris loses his post! I promise you that.”

  “Swear it!”

  “I swear it,” Valentine said passionately, feeling foul and depraved. “I swear it on my mother’s name. I swear it by all that’s holy. Is it agreed?”

  “Agreed,” she said in a small faltering voice. “But how is it to be done? You need both signatures on the pass, and if mine is on it, he’ll refuse to add his.”

  Valentine said, “Write me out a pass and sign it. I’ll go back to him and talk him into countersigning it.”

  “He will never do it.”

  “Let me work on him. I can be persuasive. Once I have his signature, I can enter the inner Labyrinth and achieve what I must achieve. When I emerge, it will be with the full authority of the Coronal—and I will have Dondak-Sajamir removed from office, that I promise you.”

  “But how will you get his signature? He’s refused all countersignatures for months!”

  “Leave that to me,” said Valentine.

  She drew from her desk a dark green cube of some sleek glistening material and placed it briefly in a machine that cast an incandescent yellow glow over it. When she removed it, the surface of the cube was infused with a new brightness. “Here. This is your pass. But I warn you that without his counter-signature it is worthless.”

  “I’ll get it,” Valentine said.

  He returned to Dondak-Sajamir. The Su-Suheris was reluctant to see him, but Valentine persevered.

  “I understand now your loathing of Gitamorn Suul,??
? he said.

  Dondak-Sajamir smiled coolly. “Is she not hateful? I suppose she refused your application.”

  “Oh, no,” said Valentine, taking the cube from his cloak and placing it before the major-domo. “She granted that willingly enough, knowing that you had refused me and her permission would be worthless. It was her other rejection that wounded me so deeply.”

  “And which was that?”

  Serenely Valentine said, “This may sound foolish to you, or even repellent, but I was powerfully overcome by her beauty. To human eyes, I must tell you, that woman has extraordinarily physical presence, a nobility of bearing, a luminous erotic force, that—well, no matter. I threw myself before her in an embarrassingly naïve way. I made myself open and vulnerable. And she mocked me cruelly. She scorned me in a way that was like a blade twisting in my vitals. Can you understand that, that she would be so merciless, so contemptuous, toward a stranger who had only the warmest and most profoundly passionate feelings for her?”

  “Her beauty escapes me,” said Dondak-Sajamir. “But I know her coldness and arrogance quite well.”

  “Now I share your enmity for her,” Valentine said. “If you will have me, I offer myself to your service, so that we can work together to destroy her.”

  Dondak-Sajamir said thoughtfully, “Yes, this would be a fine moment to bring about her downfall. But how?”

  Valentine tapped the cube that rested on the major-domo’s desk. “Add your countersignature to this pass. I’ll then be free to enter the inner Labyrinth. While I’m there, you launch an official inquiry into the circumstances under which I was admitted, claiming that you gave no such permission. When I’ve returned from my business with the Pontifex, summon me to testify. I’ll say you rejected my application, and that I got the pass, already fully countersigned, from Gitamorn Suul, never suspecting it might be forged by someone meaning to spite you by admitting me. Your accusation of forgery, coupled with my testimony that you had declined to approve my application, will be her ruination. What do you say?”