Robert Silverberg: Valentine Pontifex

It had taken Valentine a great while to realize that he had heard the music of Maazmoorn long before this talisman had come into his possession. Lying asleep aboard the Lady Thinn, so many voyages ago, as he was first crossing from Alhanroel to the Isle of Sleep, he had dreamed a dream of a pilgrimage, white-robed worshipers rushing toward the sea, and he had been among them, and in the sea had loomed the great dragon known as Lord Kinniken’s, with its mouth yawning open so that it might engulf the pilgrims as they were drawn toward him. And from that dragon as it came near the land and clambered even onto the shore had emanated the pealing of terrible bells, a sound so heavy it crushed the air itself.

From this tooth came the same sound of bells. And with this tooth as his guide, he could, if he drew himself to the center of his soul and sent himself forth across the world, bring himself into contact with the awesome mind of the great water-king Maazmoorn, that the ignorant had called Lord Kinniken’s dragon. That was Millilain’s gift to him. How had she known what use he and he alone could make of it? Or had she known at all? Perhaps she had given it to him only because it was holy to her—perhaps she had no idea he could use it in this special way, as a focus of concentration.…

— Maazmoorn. Maazmoorn.

He probed. He sought. He called, Day after day he had come closer and closer to actual communication with the water-king, to a true conversation, a meeting of individual identities. He was almost there now. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow or the day after that…

— Answer me, Maazmoorn. It is Valentine Pontifex who calls you now.

He no longer feared that vast terrifying mind. He was beginning to learn, in these secret voyages of the soul, how greatly the land-dwellers of Majipoor had misunderstood these huge creatures of the sea. The water-kings were fearsome, yes; but they were not to be feared.

— Maazmoorn. Maazmoorn.

Almost there, he thought.

“Valentine?”

Carabella’s voice, outside the door. Startled, he broke from his trance with a jump that nearly threw him from his seat. Then, regaining control, he slipped the tooth into its case, calmed himself, went to her.

“We should be at the town hall now,” she said.

“Yes. Of course. Of course.”

The sound of those mysterious bells still tolled in his spirit.

But he had other responsibilities now. The tooth of Maazmoorn must wait a little while longer.

At the municipal meeting-hall an hour later Valentine sat upon a high platform and the farmers filed slowly before him, making their obeisance and bringing him their tools to be blessed—scythes, hoes, humble things like that—as though the Pontifex could by the mere laying on of hands restore the prosperity that this blight-stricken valley formerly had known. He wondered if that were some ancient belief of these rural folk, nearly all of them Ghayrogs. Probably not, he decided: no reigning Pontifex had ever visited Prestimion Vale or any other part of Zimroel before, and there was no reason why any would have been expected to. Most likely this was a tradition that these people had invented on the spur of the moment, when they had learned that he would pass their way.

But that did not trouble him. They brought him their tools, and he touched the handle of this one and the blade of that one and the shaft of another, and smiled his warmest smile, and offered them words of heartfelt hope that sent them away glowing.

Toward the end of the evening there was a stirring in the hall and Valentine, glancing up, saw a strange procession coming toward him. A Ghayrog woman who, judging by her almost colorless scales and the drooping serpents of her hair, must have been of the most extreme old age, was walking up the aisle slowly between two younger women of her race. She appeared to be blind and quite feeble, but yet she stood fiercely erect, and advanced step by step as though cutting her way through walls of stone.

“It is Aximaan Threysz!” whispered the planter Nitikkimal. “You know of her, your majesty?”

“Alas, no.”

“She is the most famous lusavender planter of them all—a fount of knowledge, a woman of the highest wisdom. Near to death, so they say, but she insisted on seeing you tonight.”

“Lord Valentine!” she called out in a clear ringing tone.

“Lord Valentine no longer,” he replied, “but Valentine Pontifex now. And you do me great honor by this visit, Aximaan Threysz. Your fame precedes you.”

“Valentine—Pontifex—”

“Come, give me your hand,” said Valentine.

He took her withered, ancient claws in his, and held them tightly. Her eyes met his, staring straight into them, although he could tell from the clearness of her pupils that she saw nothing.

“They said you were a usurper,” she declared. “A little red-faced man came here, and told us you were not the true Coronal. But I would not listen to him, and went away from this place. I did not know if you were true or false, but I thought he was not the one to speak of such things, that red-faced man.”

“Sempeturn, yes. I have met him,” Valentine said. “He believes now that I was the true Coronal, and am the true Pontifex these days.”

“And will you make the world whole again, true Pontifex?” said Aximaan Threysz in a voice of amazing vigor and clarity.

“We will all of us make it whole together, Aximaan Threysz.”

“No. Not I, Pontifex Valentine. I will die, next week, the week after, and none too soon, either. But I want a promise from you that the world will be what it formerly was: for my children, for my children’s children. And if you will promise me that I will go on my knees to you, and if you promise it falsely may the Divine scourge you as we have been scourged, Pontifex Valentine!”

“I promise you, Aximaan Threysz, that the world will be entirely restored, and finer than it was, and I tell you that this is no false promise. But I will not have you go on your knees to me.”

“I have said I would, and I will do it!” And, amazingly, brushing aside the two younger women as if they were gnats, she dropped herself down in deep homage, although her body seemed as rigid as a slab of leather that has been left in the sun a hundred years. Valentine reached down to lift her, but one of the women—her daughter, certainly her daughter—caught his hand and pulled it back, and then stared at her own hand in horror, for having dared to touch a Pontifex. Slowly but unaided she stood again, and said, “Do you know how old I am? I was born when Ossier was Pontifex. I think I am the oldest person in the world. And I will die when Valentine is Pontifex: and you will restore the world.”

It was probably meant as a prophecy, Valentine thought. But it sounded more like a command.

He said, “It will be done, Aximaan Threysz, and you will live to see it done.”

“No. No. Second sight comes upon us when first sight goes. My life is almost over. But the course of yours unfolds clearly before me. You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. And then you will seal your deed by doing that which you desire least to do. And though you do the impossible and then you do the undesirable, you will know that what you have done is right, and you will rejoice in it, Pontifex Valentine. Now go, Pontifex, and heal us.” Her forked tongue flickered with tremendous force and energy. “Heal us, Pontifex Valentine! Heal us!”

She turned and proceeded slowly back the way she had come, disdaining the help of the two women beside her.

It was an hour more before Valentine was able to disengage himself from the last of the Prestimion Vale folk—they crowded round him in a pathetically hopeful way, as though some Pontifical emanation alone would transform their lives, and magically return them to the condition of the years prior to the coming of the lusavender blight—but at last Carabella, pleading fatigue on his behalf, got them out of there. The image of Aximaan Threysz continued to glow in his mind on the journey back to Nitikkimal’s manor. The dry hissing of her voice still resonated in his mind. You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. And then you will seal your deed by doing that which you desire least to do. Go, Pontifex, and heal us. Yes. Yes. Heal us, Pontifex Valentine! Heal us!