Robert Silverberg - Valentine Pontifex

Then he turned to the Coronal.

“My lord,” he whispered.

Hissune was astonished and dismayed by the alteration in Lord Valentine’s appearance since he last had seen the Coronal, so very long ago in the Labyrinth, at the beginning of his ill-starred grand processional. Then Lord Valentine had been in the grip of terrible fatigue, but even so his features had displayed an inner light, a certain irrepressible joyousness, that no weariness could altogether dispel. Not now. The cruel sun of Suvrael had darkened his skin and bleached his hair, giving him a strangely fierce, almost barbaric look. His eyes were deep and hooded, his face was gaunt and lined, there was no trace whatever of that amiable sunniness of spirit that was his most visible trait of character. He seemed altogether unfamiliar: somber, tense, remote.

Hissune began to offer the starburst sign. But Lord Valentine brushed it away impatiently and, reaching forward, seized Hissune’s hand, gripping it tightly a moment. That too was unsettling. One did not shake hands with Coronals. And at the contact of their hands Hissune again felt a current flowing into him: but this energy, unlike that which had come from the Lady, left him disturbed, jangled, ill at ease.

When the Coronal released him Hissune stepped back and beckoned to Elsinome, who was standing immobile by the threshold as though she had been turned to stone by the sight of two Powers of Majipoor in the same room. In a thick, hoarse voice he said, “My lord—good Lady—I pray you welcome my mother, the lady Elsinome—”

“A worthy mother for so worthy a son,” said the Lady: the first words she had spoken, and her voice seemed to Hissune to be the finest he had ever heard: rich, calm, musical. “Come to me, Elsinome.”

Breaking from her trancelike state, Elsinome advanced across the smooth marble floor, and the Lady advanced also toward her, so that they met by the eight-sided pool at the room’s center. There the Lady took Elsinome in her arms, and embraced her closely and with great warmth; and when finally the two women parted, Hissune saw that his mother seemed like one who has for a long while been in darkness, and who now has emerged into the full brightness of the sun. Her eyes were shining, her face was flushed, there was no sign of timidity or awe about her.

She looked now toward Lord Valentine and began to make the starburst sign, only to have the Coronal reject it as he had from Hissune, holding out the palm of his hand to her and saying, “That is not necessary, good lady Elsinome.”

“My lord, it is my duty!” she replied in a firm voice.

“No. No longer.” The Coronal smiled for the first time that morning. “All that gesturing and bowing is stuff designed for public show. There’s no need of such pomp in here.”

To Hissune then he said, “I would not have recognized you, I think, had I not known it was you who was coming here today. We have been apart such a long time that we have become strangers, or so it feels to me.”

“Several years, my lord, and not easy years,” Hissune replied. “Time always works changes, and years like these work great changes.”

“So they do.” Leaning forward, Lord Valentine studied Hissune with an intensity that he found disconcerting. At length the Coronal said, “Once I thought that I knew you well. But the Hissune I knew was a boy who hid shyness behind slyness. The one who stands here today has become a man—a prince, even—and there is a little shyness left in him, but not much, and the slyness, I think, has turned into something deeper—craftiness, perhaps. Or even statesmanship, if the reports I have of you are true, and I would believe that they are. I think I still can see the boy I once knew, somewhere within you. But recognizing him is far from easy.”

“And it is hard for me, my lord, to see in you the man who hired me once to be his guide through the Labyrinth.”

“Am I changed that much, then, Hissune?”

“You are, my lord. I fear for you.”

“Fear for Majipoor, if you must fear. Waste none on me.”

“I do fear for Majipoor, and greatly. But how can you ask me not to fear for you? You are my benefactor, my lord. All I am I owe to you. And when I see you grown so bleak, so wintry—”

“These are wintry times, Hissune. The weather of the world is reflected on my face. But perhaps there is a springtime ahead for us all. Tell me: what is the news from Castle Mount? I know the lords and princes have been hatching great plans there.”

“Indeed, my lord.”

“Speak, then!”

“You understand, my lord, that these schemes are put forth subject to your ratification, that the Council of Regency would not presume to undertake—”

“So I assume. Tell me what the Council proposes.”

Hissune drew his breath in deeply. “First,” he said, “we would situate an army encircling all borders of Piurifayne, so that we may prevent the Metamorphs from exporting any further plagues and other horrors.”

“To encircle Piurifayne, did you say, or to invade it?” asked Lord Valentine.

“Primarily to encircle it, my lord.”

“Primarily?”

“Once we have established control of the borders, the plan is to enter the province in search of the rebel Faraataa and his followers.”

“Ah. To capture Faraataa and his followers! And what will be done to them if they are captured, which I very much doubt they will be, considering my own experiences when I wandered in that jungle?”

“They will be confined.”

“Nothing more? No execution of ringleaders?”

“My lord, we are not savages!”

“Of course. Of course. And the aim of this invasion will be strictly to take Faraataa?”

“No more than that, my lord.”

“No attempt to overthrow the Danipiur? No campaign of general extermination of the Metamorphs?”

“Those ideas were never suggested.”

“I see.” His voice was curiously controlled, almost mocking: much unlike any tone Hissune had ever heard him use before. “And what other plans does the Council propose?”

“An army of pacification to occupy Piliplok—without bloodshed, if bloodshed can be avoided—and to take control of any other cities or provinces that may have seceded from the government. Also, neutralization of the various private armies established by the false Coronals now infesting many areas, and, if possible, the turning of those armies toward the service of the government. Finally, military occupation of any provinces that refuse to take part in a newly instituted program for sharing food supplies with afflicted zones.”

“Quite a comprehensive scheme,” Lord Valentine said, in that same odd detached tone. “And who will lead all these armies?”

“The Council has suggested dividing the command between my lord Divvis, my lord Tunigorn, and myself,” replied Hissune.

“And I?”

“You will of course have supreme command over all our forces, my lord.”

“Of course. Of course.” Lord Valentine’s gaze turned within, and for a long span of silence he appeared to be contemplating all that Hissune had said. Hissune watched him closely. There was something deeply troublesome about the Coronal’s austere, restrained manner of questioning him: it seemed clear that Lord Valentine knew as well as Hissune himself where the conversation was heading, and Hissune found himself dreading the moment when it must get there. But that moment, Hissune realized, was already at hand. The Coronal’s eyes brightened strangely as his attention turned once again toward Hissune, and he said, “Was anything else proposed by the Council of Regency, Prince Hissune?”

“One thing more, my lord.”

“Which is?”

“That the commander of the army that will occupy Piliplok and other rebellious cities should be one who bears the title of Coronal.”