“That could never succeed,” Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp said unhesitatingly. “The supply-line distances are too great. It would take every crown in the imperial treasury to cover the cost of sending an army here big enough to do the job.”
“Precisely,” said Mandralisca. “And even if they tried it anyway, that army would find itself confronting the angry opposition of the billions of patriotic citizens of Zimroel. Who are loyal to the family of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail and unalterably hostile to the exploitative rule of the Pontifex. The armies of Prestimion would have to battle every step of the way, from the moment of their landing on our coast onward.”
“Ah,” said the Metamorph reflectively. “So the traditional allegiance of the people of Zimroel to the Pontifical government will melt away overnight, then. You are certain of that, Count Mandralisca?”
“Completely.”
“Perhaps you are correct.” The Metamorph indicated by his tone that such things as the loyalties of the people of Zimroel were a matter of complete indifference to him. “But in what way, I must ask, does all this concern the Danipiur and her subjects?”
“In this way,” replied Mandralisca. He leaned forward intently and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “What is the most likely place for an invading force from Alhanroel to land here? Piliplok, of course: the main port on our eastern coast. It’s the gateway to all of Zimroel, as everyone is well aware. Therefore Prestimion and Dekkeret will expect us to fortify it against an attack. And for the same reason, they’ll not choose to make their landfall at Piliplok at all.”
“There is no other place for an army to come ashore,” said the Metamorph.
“There is Gihorna.”
An inflection that Thastain interpreted as surprise entered Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp’s voice. “Gihorna? There are no first-class ports anywhere along the whole Gihorna coast.”
“But there are some third-class ones,” said Mandralisca. “Prestimion has never been known for doing things the easy way, or the expected way. I think they’ll land at five or six places in Gihorna at once, and begin marching toward Ni-moya. They will have two possible routes. One lies straight up the coast, via Piliplok, and up the Zimr from there to the capital. But that will bring them into confrontation with the armies that they must know will be waiting there to defend against just such a Piliplok landing. The only other route, as you surely already see, is by way of the River Steiche and its surrounding valley. Which would bring them up against the borders of the province of Piurifayne.”
Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp received that statement with the same show of indifference as before. The slitted eyes displayed a look of what could almost have been boredom.
“I ask you again, what is that to us?” said the Shapeshifter. “Not even Prestimion would dare cross into Piurifayne for the sake of making war against Ni-moya.”
“Who knows what Prestimion would or would not do? But this I do know: that any incursion into the jungles of Piurifayne, a difficult proposition at best for any army no matter how well equipped, would be made fifty times harder if the Piurivars were to engage in a campaign of guerilla warfare to keep the imperial forces away from their villages. Indeed a line of Piurivar warriors positioned up and down the Steiche itself would quite probably be able to succeed in preventing the imperial army from entering Piurifayne at all. Eh, my friend? What do you think.”
Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp responded with a silence so long and intense that Thastain, listening to the colloquy in mounting disbelief, felt his ears ringing with it. Was Mandralisca serious? Was the Count actually telling an ambassador from the Danipiur that he wanted Metamorphs to go into battle in the service of the Five Lords against the Alhanroel government? Thastain’s mind was reeling. This was all like some very strange dream.
Then at last the Shapeshifter said calmly, “If Prestimion or Dekkeret were to send an army marching through our province, that would, of course, concern us greatly. But I tell you once more, I think that they would not do that. And for us to fortify our Steiche boundary for the sake of preventing them from coming across it would be an act of war against the imperial government that would have serious consequences for my people. Why should we risk it? What interest do we have in taking sides in a struggle between the Pontifex of Alhanroel and the Pontifex of Zimroel? They are equally detestable to us. Let them fight it out to their hearts’ content. We will go on living our own lives in Piurifayne, which your Lord Stiamot kindly granted to us long ago as our little sanctuary.”
“Piurifayne is in Zimroel, my friend. An independent government of Zimroel, grateful for Piurivar assistance in the war of liberation, might show its gratitude in interesting ways.”
“Such as?”
“Full citizenship for your people? The right to move freely wherever you please, to hold property outside Piurifayne, to engage in any form of commerce?—An end to all forms of discrimination against your race, is what I’m offering. Complete equality throughout the continent. Does that interest you, Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp? Would it be worth putting troops along the Steiche for?”
“It would be if we could trust your promise, Count Mandralisca. But can we? Ah, can we, Count Mandralisca?”
“You will have my oath on it,” said Mandralisca piously. “And as my good friends here will testify, my oath is my sacred bond. Is that not so, Jacomin? Khaymak? Duke Thastain, I call upon you to speak on my behalf. I am a man of honor. Is that not so, my friends?”
10
At Kesmakuran, a neat little city of perhaps half a million souls five hundred miles deeper into the west-country, with row upon row of low square-roofed houses built mainly of a handsome pinkish-gold stone, Dekkeret halted to perform an act of homage at the tomb of Dvorn, the first Pontifex. Visiting the tomb was Zeldor Luudwid’s idea. “Dvorn is greatly venerated in these parts,” the chamberlain said. “It might well be taken as sacrilege, or at the very least a serious insult, if the Coronal were to come this way and not lay a wreath on his tomb.”
“The tomb of Dvorn,” Dekkeret repeated in wonder. “Can it really be? I’ve always thought of Dvorn as a purely mythical character.”
“Someone had to be the first Pontifex,” Fulkari pointed out.
“I grant you that. He may even have been named Dvorn, I suppose. That still doesn’t mean that anything we think we know about him has any foundation in reality, though. Not after thirteen thousand years. We’re talking about someone who lived almost as long before Lord Stiamot’s time as Stiamot is before ours.”
But Zeldor Luudwid was a persuasive person in his quiet, self-effacing way, and Dekkeret knew better than to ignore his advice. As the prime carryover from Lord Prestimion’s administration, he was better versed in the minutiae of the realm than anyone else in the new Coronal’s entourage.
And, according to Zeldor Luudwid, the Pontifex Dvorn was worshipped practically as a god in this region, the alleged place of his birth. The cult of Dvorn had adherents for a thousand miles in all directions. It was right here in Kesmakuran, so it was claimed, that Dvorn had launched his uprising against whatever chaotic pre-Pontifical government had existed in the earliest days of the occupation of Majipoor by human settlers; and here he had been buried after a distinguished reign of nearly a hundred years. Pilgrims came constantly to his tomb, said Zeldor Luudwid, and knelt before the sacred vessels in which some of his hair and even one of his teeth were preserved, and begged the great Pontifex to intercede with the Divine for the continued welfare and security of the citizens of Majipoor.
Dekkeret had heard nothing about any of that before. But it was impossible for any Coronal to make himself familiar with all the multitudinous cults that had sprung up in the world since Prankipin had first begun his policy of encouraging superstitions of every variety.
What Dekkeret did know were the legendary tales: how in a troubled time, five or six hundred years after the first human colonists had arrived on Majipoor, a provincial leader n
amed Dvorn had assembled an army somewhere in the west-country and marched across province after province, preaching a gospel of world unity and stability and gaining the allegiance of all those who had wearied of the strife between one district and another, until he was the master of the entire continent of Alhanroel. He had given himself the title of Pontifex, using a word that had meant “bridge-builder” in one of the languages of Old Earth, and had chosen Barhold, a young army officer, to govern the world in association with him, with the title of Coronal Lord. It was Dvorn who had decreed that upon the death of each Pontifex the Coronal Lord would succeed to that title and would select a new Coronal to take his own place. Thus he saw to it that the monarchy would never become hereditary: each Pontifex would pick the best qualified member of his staff as his successor, ensuring that the world would remain in capable hands from generation to generation.
All of that was told in the third canto of the vast epic poem that was every schoolchild’s bane, Aithin Furvain’s The Book of Changes. But it was significant that Dvorn was merely a name even to Furvain. Nowhere in the third canto or anywhere else did the poet make the slightest attempt to depict him as a person. He provided no hint of what Dvorn might have looked like; he told no anecdotes that gave insight into Dvorn’s character; Dvorn existed in the poem only in his function as founder of the government and primordial giver of laws.
So far as Dekkeret was concerned, Dvorn was entirely mythical, a traditional culture-hero, a symbolic figure that someone had invented to explain the origins of the Pontifical system. Dekkeret suspected that the medieval historians, feeling a need to attach a name to that otherwise unknown warrior who had helped to bring that system into being, and whose life and deeds and even identity had long since been lost in the mists of early history, had chosen to call him Dvorn.
As Fulkari had suggested, someone had to be the first Pontifex. Let him, then, be called Dvorn. It would never have occurred to Dekkeret that an actual tomb of Dvorn might exist in some remote part of west-central Alhanroel, complete with actual physical relics of the first Pontifex (several of his teeth, they said, a knucklebone or two, and also—after thirteen thousand years!—some of his hair), or that he was worshipped in a quasi-godlike fashion by the people of the area.
Yet here was the Coronal Lord Dekkeret in Kesmakuran, standing just outside the veritable tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn, making ready to present himself before the statue of the ancient monarch and humbly ask for Dvorn’s blessing on his reign.
He felt incredibly foolish. Prestimion had never warned him that being Coronal might involve his traveling around the land kneeling before provincial idols and sacred oracular trees and all manner of other fantastic idiocies, begging for the mercy of inanimate things. He was annoyed with Zeldor Luudwid for having pushed him into this thing. But there was no backing out of it now: it was his duty as Coronal, he supposed, to participate in the beliefs and observances of his people whenever he chose to leave the tranquility of Castle Mount and come out here among them; and it did not matter how inane those beliefs and observances might be.
The tomb was a deep artificial cave that had been carved, no one seemed to know how long ago, into the side of a good-sized mountain of black basalt just outside town. A pair of odd wooden structures that looked very much like cages were affixed to the cave wall on either side of the entrance to the tomb, high off the ground and reachable only by a narrow ladder of wooden struts connected by ropes. Each cage contained a vertically mounted wooden wheel, much like the water-wheel that a miller might use.
Two young women wearing only loincloths were marching constantly upward on the paddles of these wheels, causing them to revolve without cease. Their slender naked bodies gleamed with perspiration, but they moved tirelessly, keeping a steady rhythmic pace, as though they were mere parts of the machinery about them. Their faces showed the fixed expressions of sleepwalkers; their eyes stared far off into other worlds.
Two other women dressed just as skimpily stood below, near the rope-ladders, looking up vigilantly at the pair toiling on the wheels. Dekkeret had been told earlier that a corps of consecrated women, numbering eight all told, labored here day and night to keep these wheels eternally in motion. Each of the operators of the wheel walked a shift that was many hours in length, never pausing for meals or even a sip of water. The two at the ladders were the women of the next team, waiting here ready to jump into service ahead of time in case one of the women in the cages should tire and falter even for a moment.
Dekkeret understood that it was a matter of the highest honor in Kesmakuran to serve on the wheel. Every young woman of the city aspired to be one of those chosen for a one-year term inside the wooden cages. The rite was, so he had learned, an ongoing prayer to the Pontifex Dvorn, imploring him to maintain the continuing tranquility of the commonwealth that he had created. Even the smallest interruption in their unending climb, the most trivial alteration in the rhythm of their steps, might jeopardize the survival of the world.
Dekkeret could not linger long to observe this remarkable performance, though. The time had come for him to enter the tomb. The six Guardians of the Tomb—they did not call themselves priests—stood flanking him, three to his right, three to his left. The Guardians were big men, nearly as big as Dekkeret himself, who wore black robes with scarlet trim, the Pontifical colors. They were brothers, apparently, ranging from fifty to sixty years in age, resembling one another so closely that Dekkeret had trouble remembering which one was which. He was able to tell the Chief Guardian from the others only because he was the one holding the ornately woven wreath that Dekkeret was going to place before the statue of Dvorn.
He himself had donned his robes of office for the occasion, and he was wearing the little golden circlet that was serving him in lieu of the full version of the starburst crown on this journey. Fulkari and Dinitak would not be accompanying him into the tomb; he gave them each a glance as he made ready to enter, and was grateful to them both for keeping their faces frozen in expressions of the highest seriousness. One sly little wink from Fulkari, or a quick grimace of skepticism from Dinitak, would instantly destroy the high solemnity of bearing that Dekkeret was working so hard to sustain.
He entered the tomb by way of an imposing rectangular entranceway some twenty feet high and at least thirty feet wide. A thick carpet of sweet-smelling red petals had been laid down underfoot. Dozens of glowfloats drifting overhead provided a gentle greenish light that illuminated the elaborate pictorial reliefs that had been cut into the walls from floor to ceiling. Scenes from Dvorn’s life, Dekkeret guessed: depictions of the great monarch’s military triumphs, of his coronation as Pontifex, of his raising of Barhold to the rank of Coronal. They seemed quite well done and Dekkeret wished he could get a closer look at them. But the six Guardians were marching in a steady lockstep alongside him, faces turned rigidly forward, and it seemed best to him to do the same, so that all he saw of the reliefs was what he could glimpse out of the corners of his eyes.
And then Dvorn himself in all his grandeur and royal magnificence rose before him, a colossal figure of mellow cream-colored marble set in a great niche at the back of the cave.
The seated image of the Pontifex was ten feet high, or even more, a noble statue with its left hand resting on its knee and the right hand raised and extended toward the mouth of the cave. The expression on Dvorn’s carved face was one of great placidity and benevolence: not merely a regal face but a downright godlike one, the serene smiling features perfectly composed, calm, reassuring, all-consoling.
It was, thought Dekkeret, an utterly magnificent piece of sculpture. He was surprised that such a masterpiece was so little known beyond its own district.
This was the way one might portray the face of the Divine, he told himself—provided some artist had decided to regard the Divine as a human being rather than as the abstract and forever unknowable spirit of creation. But no one ever attempted to depict the Divine in such a literal guise. Was something like that wh
at the unknown maker of this great work had had in mind—to show Dvorn as an actual deity? Certainly there was something almost sacrilegious about the godlike serenity with which the sculptor had endowed the face of the Pontifex Dvorn.
To the right and left of the immense statue were two smaller niches, set high on the wall of the cave, that contained large round mirror-bright bowls of polished agate. These, Dekkeret suspected, were the vessels in which the relics of the Pontifex Dvorn were kept, the hair and the teeth and the knucklebones and the rest. He did not propose to inquire about those things, though.
The Chief Guardian handed Dekkeret the wreath. It was fashioned of dried reeds of several colors and textures, braided together in a bewilderingly complex pattern that must have taken the weaver many hours to achieve, and bound every four inches or so by thin metal bands inscribed with lettering of an antique kind that was unintelligible to Dekkeret. He was supposed to place the wreath in a shallow pit that had been carved in the cave floor directly in front of the statue and set fire to it with a torch that the Chief Guardian would hand him. Then, while it smoldered, he was instructed to kneel, enter a state of contemplation, and place his soul in the care of the great founding Pontifex.
That would be an odd thing for him to do, a man who put no faith in supernatural things. But Prestimion’s words of months ago, as the two of them stood together in the vastness of the Pontifical throne-chamber in the depths of the Labyrinth, came drifting back to him now: