Robert Silverberg: Valentine Pontifex

“Who are you?” Hissune asked.

“My name is Aarisiim. I serve the King That Is, whom you know as Faraataa.”

“Did he send you to me?”

“No, Lord Hissune. He does not know I am here.” The Metamorph trembled suddenly, quivering in an odd convulsive way, and for an instant the shape of his body seemed to change and flow. The Coronal’s guards at once moved forward, interposing themselves between the Metamorph and Hissune in case these movements were the prelude to an attack; but in a moment Aarisiim was under control and restored to his form. In a low voice he said, “I have come here to betray Faraataa.”

In astonishment Hissune said, “Do you mean to lead us to his hiding place?”

“I will, yes.”

This is much too good to be true, Hissune thought, and stared about the circle, at Alsimir, at Stimion, at his other close advisers. Obviously they felt the same way: they looked skeptical, guarded, hostile, wary.

He said, “Why are you willing to do this?”

“He has done something unlawful.”

“Only now does that occur to you, when this rebellion has been going on since—”

“I mean, my lord, unlawful by our beliefs, not by yours.”

“Ah. And what is that, then?”

Aarisiim said, “He has gone to Ilirivoyne and taken the Danipiur captive, and he means to have her slain. It is not lawful to seize the person of the Danipiur. It is not lawful to deprive her of her life. He would listen to no advice. He has seized her. To my shame, I was among those who was with him. I thought he only wanted her a prisoner, so that she could not strike up an alliance against us with you Unchanging Ones. That was what he said, that he would not kill her unless he thought the war was entirely lost.”

“And does he think that now?” Hissune asked.

“No, Lord Hissune. He thinks the war is far from lost: he is about to release new creatures against you, and new diseases, and he feels he is on the threshold of victory.”

“Then why kill the Danipiur?”

“To ensure his victory.”

“Madness!”

“I think so too, my lord.” Aarisiim’s eyes were open wide, now, and burned with a strange harsh gleam. “He sees her, of course, as a dangerous rival, one whose inclinations are more toward peace than war. If she is removed, that risk to his power is gone. But there is more than that. He means to sacrifice her on the altar—to offer her blood to the water-kings, for their continued support. He has built a temple after the design of the one that was at Old Velalisier; and he will put her upon the stone himself, and take her life with his own hands.”

“And when is this supposed to happen?”

“Tonight, my lord. At the Hour of the Haigus.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, my lord. I came as quickly as I could, but your army was so large, and I feared I would be slain if I did not find your own guards before your soldiers found me—I would have come to you yesterday, or the day before, but it was not possible, I could not do it—”

“And how many days’ journey from here is New Velalisier?”

“Four, perhaps. Perhaps three, if we do it very swiftly.”

“Then the Danipiur is lost!” Hissune cried angrily.

“If he does not sacrifice her tonight—”

“You said tonight was the night.”

“Yes, the moons are right tonight, the stars are right tonight—but if he loses his resolve, if at the last moment he changes his mind—”

“And does Faraataa lose his resolve often?” Hissune asked.

“Never, my lord.”

“Then there is no way we can get there in time.”

“No, my lord,” said Aarisiim darkly.

Hissune stared off toward the dwikka grove, scowling. The Danipiur dead? That left no hope of coming to any accommodation with the Shapeshifters: she alone, so he understood it, might soften the fury of the rebels and allow some sort of compromise to be negotiated. Without her it must be a battle to the end.

To Alsimir he said, “Where is the Pontifex today?”

“He is west of Khyntor, perhaps as far west as Dulorn, certainly somewhere in the Rift.”

“And can we send word to him there?”

“The communications channels linking us to that region are very uncertain, my lord.”

“I know that. I want you to get this news through to him somehow, and within the next two hours. Try anything that might work. Use wizards. Use prayers. Send word to the Lady, and let her try dreams. Every imaginable channel, Alsimir, do you understand that? He must know that Faraataa means to slay the Danipiur tonight. Get that information to him. Somehow. Somehow. And tell him that he alone can save her. Somehow.”

For this, Valentine thought, he would need the circlet of the Lady as well as the tooth of Maazmoorn. There must be no failures of transmission, no distortions of the message: he would make use of every capacity at his command.

“Stand close beside me,” he said to Carabella. And to Deliamber, to Tisana, to Sleet, he said the same thing. “Surround me. When I reach toward you, take hold of my hand. Say nothing: only take hold.”

The day was bright and clear. The morning air was crisp, fresh, sweet as alabandina nectar. But in Piurifayne, far to the east, night was already descending.

He donned the circlet. He grasped the tooth of the water-king. He drew the fresh sweet air deep into his lungs, until he was all but dizzied with it.

— Maazmoorn?

The summons leaped from Valentine with such power that those about him must have felt a backlash from it: Sleet flinched, Carabella put her hands to her ears, Deliamber’s tentacles writhed in a sudden flurry.

— Maazmoorn? Maazmoorn?

The sound of bells. The slow heavy turnings of a giant body lying at rest in cold northern waters. The faint rustlings of great black wings.

— I hear, Valentine-brother.

— Help me, Maazmoorn.

—Help? How shall I help?

— Let me ride on your spirit across the world.

— Then come upon me, king-brother, Valentine-brother.

It was wondrously easy. He felt himself grow light, and glided up, and floated, and soared, and flew. Below him lay the great curving arc of the planet, sweeping off eastward into night. The water-king carried him effortlessly, serenely, as a giant might carry a kitten in the palm of his hand. Onward, onward over the world, which was altogether open to him as he coursed above it. He felt that he and the planet were one, that he embodied in himself the twenty billion people of Majipoor, humans and Skandars and Hjorts and Metamorphs and all the rest, moving within him like the corpuscles of his blood. He was everywhere at once; he was all the sorrow in the world, and all the joy, and all the yearning, and all the need. He was everything. He was a boiling universe of contradictions and conflicts. He felt the heat of the desert and the warm rain of the tropics and the chill of the high peaks. He laughed and wept and died and made love and ate and drank and danced and fought and rode wildly through unknown hills and toiled in the fields and cut a path through thick vine-webbed jungles. In the oceans of his soul vast sea dragons breached the surface and let forth monstrous bleating roars and dived again, to the uttermost depths. He looked down and saw the broken places of the world, the wounded and shattered places where the land had risen and crashed against itself, and he saw how it all could be healed, how it could be made whole and serene again. For everything tended to return to serenity. Everything enfolded itself into That Which Is. Everything was part of a vast seamless harmony.

But in that great harmony he felt a single dissonance.

It screeched and yawped and shrieked and screamed. It slashed across the fabric of the world like a knife, leaving behind a track of blood. It ripped apart the wholeness.