Robert Silverberg: Valentine Pontifex

Even that dissonance, Valentine knew, was an aspect of That Which Is. Yet it was—far across the world, roiling and churning and roaring in its madness—the one aspect of That Which Is that would not itself accept That Which Is. It was a force that cried a mighty no! to all else. It rose up against those who would restore the harmony, who would repair the fabric, who would make whole the wholeness.

— Faraataa?

— Who are you?

— I am Valentine the Pontifex.

— Valentine the fool. Valentine the child.

— No, Faraataa. Valentine the Pontifex.

— That means nothing to me. I am the King That Is!

Valentine laughed, and his laughter showered across the world like a rainfall of drops of golden honey. Soaring on the wings of the great dragon-king, he rose almost to the edge of the sky, where he could look across the darkness and see the tip of Castle Mount piercing the heavens on the far side of the world, and the Great Sea beyond it. And he looked down into the jungle of Piurifayne, and laughed again, and watched the furious Faraataa writhing and struggling beneath the torrent of that laughter.

— Faraataa?

— What do you want?

— You may not kill her, Faraataa.

— Who are you to tell me what I may not do?

— I am Majipoor.

— You are the fool Valentine. And I am the King That Is!

— No, Faraataa.

—No?

— I see the old tale glistening in your mind. The Prince To Come, the King That Is: how can you lay such a claim for yourself? You are not that Prince. You can never be that King.

— You clutter my mind with your nonsense. Leave me or I will drive you out.

Valentine felt the thrust, the push. He warded it off.

— The Prince To Come is a being absolutely without hatred. Can you deny that, Faraataa? It is part of your own people’s legend. He is without the hunger for vengeance. He is without the lust for destruction. You are nothing except hatred and vengeance and destruction, Faraataa. If those things were emptied from you, you would be a shell, a husk.

—Fool.

— Your claim is a false one.

— Fool.

— Let me take the anger and the hatred from you, Faraataa, if you would be the king you claim you are.

— You talk a fool’s foolishness.

— Come, Faraataa. Release the Danipiur. Give your soul over to me for healing.

— The Danipiur will die within the hour.

— No, Faraataa.

—Look!

The interwoven crowns of the jungle trees parted, and Valentine beheld New Velalisier by the gleam of torchlight. The temples of interwoven logs, the banners, the altar, the pyre already blazing. The Metamorph woman, silent, dignified, chained to the block of stone. The faces surrounding her, blank, alien. The night, the trees, the sounds, the smells. The music. The chanting.

— Release her, Faraataa. And then come to me, you and she together, and let us establish what must be established.

— Never. I will give her to the god with my own hands. And with her sacrifice atone for the crime of the Defilement, when we slew our gods and were laden with you as our penance.

— You are wrong even about that, Faraataa.

—What?

— The gods gave themselves willingly, that day in Velalisier. It was their sacrifice, which you misunderstand. You have invented a myth of a Defilement, but it is the wrong myth. Faraataa, it is a mistake, it is a total error. The water-king Niznorn and the water-king Domsitor gave themselves as sacrifices that day long ago, just as the water-kings give themselves yet to our hunters as they round the curve of Zimroel. And you do not understand. You understand nothing at all.

— Foolishness. Madness.

—Set her free, Faraataa. Sacrifice your hatred as the water-kings sacrificed themselves.

— I will slay her now with my own hands.

— You may not do it, Faraataa. Release her.

—NO.

The terrible force of that no was unexpected: it rose like the ocean in its greatest wrath and swept upward toward Valentine and struck him with stunning impact, buffeting him, swaying him, sweeping him for a moment into chaos. As he struggled to right himself Faraataa hurled a second such bolt, and a third, and a fourth, and they hit him with the same hammerblow power. But then Valentine felt the power of the water-king underlying his own, and he caught his breath, he regained his balance, he found his strength once more.

He reached out toward the rebel chieftain.

He remembered how it had been that other time years ago, in the final hour of the war of restoration, when he had gone alone into the judgment hall of the Castle and found the usurper Dominin Barjazid there, seething with fury. And Valentine had sent love to him, friendship, sadness for all that had come between them. He had sent the hope of an amicable settlement of differences, of pardon for sins committed, of safe conduct out of the Castle. To which the Barjazid had replied with defiance, hatred, anger, contempt, belligerence, a declaration of perpetual war. Valentine had not forgotten any of that. And it was the same all over again now, the desperate hatred-filled enemy, the fiery resistance, the bitter refusal to swerve from the path of death and destruction, loathing and abomination, scorn and contempt.

He expected no more of Faraataa than he had of Dominin Barjazid. But he was Valentine still, and still he believed in the possibility of the triumph of love.

— Faraataa?

— You are a child, Valentine.

— Give yourself over to me in peace. Put aside your hatred, if you would be who you claim to be.

— Leave me, Valentine.

— I reach to you.

— No. No. No. No.

This time Valentine was prepared for the blasts of negation that came rolling like boulders toward him. He took the full force of Faraataa’s hatred and turned it aside, and offered in its place love, trust, faith, and had more hatred in return, implacable, unchanging, immovable.

— You give me no choice, Faraataa.

With a shrug Faraataa moved toward the altar on which the Metamorph queen lay bound. He raised high his dirk of polished wood.

“Deliamber?” Valentine said. “Carabella? Tisana? Sleet?”

They took hold of him, grasping his hands, his arms, his shoulders. He felt their strength pouring into him. But even that was not enough. He called out across the world and found the Lady on her Isle, the new Lady, the mother of Hissune, and drew strength from her, and from his own mother the former Lady. And even that was not enough. But in that instant he went elsewhere. “Tunigorn! Stasilaine! Help me!” They joined him. He found Zalzan Kavol. He found Asenhart. He found Ermanar. He found Lisamon. Not enough. Not enough. One more: “Hissune? Come, you also, Hissune. Give me your strength. Give me your boldness.”

— I am here, your majesty.

Yes. Yes. It would be possible now. He heard once more the words of old Aximaan Threysz: You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. Yes. It would be possible now.

Faraataa!

A single blast like the sound of a great trumpet traveled out from Valentine across the world to Piurifayne. It made the journey in the smallest part of a moment and found its target, which was not Faraataa but rather the hatred within Faraataa, the blind, wrathful, unyielding passion to avenge, destroy, obliterate, expunge. It found it and expunged it, draining it from Faraataa in one irresistible draught. Valentine drank all that blazing rage into himself, and absorbed it, and took from it its power, and discarded it. And Faraataa was left empty.