Robert Silverberg - Valentine Pontifex

Hissune smiled. “Send him to me,” he said.

When he reached Khyntor at last Valentine directed Asenhart to make his landfall not in the city proper, but across the river in the southern suburb of Hot Khyntor, where the geothermal wonders were, the geysers and fumaroles and simmering lakes. He wanted to enter the city in a slow and measured way, giving the so-called “Coronal” who ruled it full warning that he was coming.

Not that his arrival could be any surprise to the self-styled Lord Sempeturn. During his voyage up the Zimr from Ni-moya Valentine had made no secret of his identity, nor of his destination. He had halted again and again at the larger river towns along the way, meeting with whatever municipal leadership still survived in them, and obtaining pledges of backing for the armies that were being recruited to meet the Metamorph threat. And all along the river, even at towns where he did not stop, the populace turned out to see the imperial fleet pass by on its way to Khyntor, and to wave and shout, “Valentine Pontifex! Valentine Pontifex!”

A dismal journey that had been, too, for it was apparent even from the river that those towns, once so lively and prosperous, were mere ghosts of themselves, their dockside warehouses empty and windowless, their bazaars deserted, their waterfront promenades choked with weeds. And wherever he went ashore he saw that the people who remained in these places, for all their shouting and waving, were utterly without hope: their eyes dull and downcast, their shoulders slumped, their faces forlorn.

But when he had landed in that fantastic place of booming geysers and hissing, gurgling thermal lakes and boiling clouds of pale green gas that was Hot Khyntor, Valentine saw something else on the faces of the crowds that had gathered at the quay: an alert, curious, eager look, as though they were anticipating some sort of sporting event.

They were waiting, Valentine knew, to see what sort of reception he would receive at the hands of Lord Sempeturn.

“We’ll be ready to go in just a couple of minutes, your majesty,” Shanamir called. “The floaters are coming down the ramp right now.”

“No floaters,” said Valentine. “We’ll enter Khyntor on foot.”

He heard Sleet’s familiar gasp of horror, saw the familiar exasperated look on Sleet’s face. Lisamon Hultin was red-faced with annoyance; Zalzan Kavol wore a brooding scowl; Carabella too was showing alarm. But no one dared to remonstrate with him. No one had for some time now. It was not so much that he was Pontifex now, he thought: the exchange of one gaudy title for another was really a trivial matter. It was, rather, as though they regarded him as moving deeper and deeper each day into a realm they could not enter. He was becoming incomprehensible to them. As for himself, he felt beyond all trifling concern with security: invulnerable, invincible.

Deliamber said, “Which bridge shall we take, your majesty?”

There were four in view: one of brick, one of stone arches, one that was slender and gleaming and transparent, as though it had been made of glass, and one, the closest at hand, that was an airy thing of light swaying cables. Valentine looked from one to another, and at the distant square-topped towers of Khyntor far across the river. The bridge of stone arches, he observed, seemed to be shattered in midspan. One more task for the Pontifex, he thought, remembering that the title he bore had meant, in ancient times, “builder of bridges.”

He said, “I knew the names of these bridges once, good Deliamber, but I have forgotten them. Tell them to me again.”

“That is the Bridge of Dreams to our right, your majesty. Nearer to us is the Bridge of the Pontifex, and next to it is Khyntor Bridge, which appears to be damaged beyond use. The one upstream is the Bridge of the Coronal.”

“Why, then, let us take the Bridge of the Pontifex!” said Valentine.

Zalzan Kavol and several of his fellow Skandars led the way. Behind them marched Lisamon Hultin; then Valentine, at an unhurried pace, with Carabella by his side, Deliamber and Sleet and Tisana walked just behind them, with the rest of the small party bringing up the rear. The crowd, growing larger all the time, followed alongside, keeping back of its own accord.

As Valentine was nearing the threshold of the bridge, a thin, dark-haired woman in a faded orange gown detached herself from the onlookers and came rushing toward him, crying, “Majesty! Majesty!” She managed to get within a dozen feet of him before Lisamon Hultin stopped her, catching her by one arm and swinging her off her feet as though she were a child’s doll. “No—wait—” the woman murmured, as Lisamon seemed about to hurl her back into the throng. “I mean no harm—I have a gift for the Pontifex—”

“Put her down, Lisamon,” Valentine said calmly.

Frowning suspiciously, Lisamon released her, but remained close beside the Pontifex, poised at her readiest. The woman was trembling so that she could barely keep her footing. Her lips moved, but for a moment she did not speak. Then she said, “You are truly Lord Valentine?”

“I was Lord Valentine, yes. I am Valentine Pontifex now.”

“Of course. Of course. I knew that. They said you were dead, but I never believed that. Never!” She bowed. “Your majesty!” She was still trembling. She seemed fairly young, though it was hard to be certain, for hunger and hardship had etched deep lines in her face, and her skin was even paler than Sleet’s. She held forth her hand. “I am Millilain,” she said. “I wanted to give you this.”

What looked like a dagger of bone, long, slender, tapering to a sharp point, lay in her palm.

“An assassin, see!” Lisamon roared, and moved as if to pounce once again.

Valentine held up his hand. “Wait,” he said. “What do you have there, Millilain?”

“A tooth—a holy tooth—a tooth of the water-king Maazmoorn—”

“Ah.”

“To guard you. To guide you. He is the greatest of the water-kings. This tooth is precious, your majesty.” She was shaking now. “I thought at first it was wrong to worship them, that it was blasphemy, that it was criminal. But then I returned, I listened, I learned. They are not evil, the water-kings, your majesty! They are the true masters! We belong to them, we and all others who live on Majipoor. And I bring you the tooth of Maazmoorn, your majesty, the greatest of them, the high Power—”

Softly Carabella said, “We should be moving onward, Valentine.”

“Yes,” he said. He put forth his hand and gently took the tooth from the woman. It was perhaps ten inches long, strangely chilly to the touch, gleaming as though with an inner fire. As he wrapped his hand about it he thought, only for a moment, that he heard the sound of far-off bells, or what might have been bells, though their melody was like that of no bells he had ever heard. Gravely he said, “Thank you, Millilain. I will treasure this.”

“Your majesty,” she whispered, and went stumbling away, back into the crowd.

He continued on, slowly across the bridge into Khyntor.

The crossing took an hour or more. Long before he reached the far side Valentine could see that a crowd had gathered over there to await him: and it was no mere mob, he realized, for those who stood in the vanguard were dressed identically, in uniforms of green and gold, the colors of the Coronal. This was an army, then—the army of the Coronal Lord Sempeturn.

Zalzan Kavol looked back, frowning. “Your majesty?” he said.

“Keep going,” said Valentine. “When you reach the front row of them, step back and let me through, and remain at my side.”

He felt Carabella’s hand closing in fear on his wrist.

“Do you remember,” he said, “early in the war of restoration, when we were coming into Pendiwane, and found a militia of ten thousand waiting for us at the gate, and there were just a few dozen of us?”