Robert Silverberg - Lord Valentine's Castle

Valentine nodded. Better that than standing about idly here. To an aide-de-camp he said, "Tell Elidath I’m going back up. He has full authority to reach the weather-machines any way he can."

But Valentine was only a short distance up the passageways when Gorzval’s aide arrived, to say that the usurper was rumored to be in the Pinitor Court. And a few minutes later came word from Lisamon Hultin, that she was pursuing him swiftly down a spiraling passageway leading to Lord Siminave’s reflecting-pool.

In the main concourse Valentine found Deliamber, watching the action with a look of bemused fascination. Telling the Vroon of the conflicting reports, he asked, "Can he be in all three places?"

"None, more likely," the wizard replied. "Unless there are three of him. Which I doubt, though I feel his presence in this place, dark and strong."

"In any particular area?"

"Hard to tell. Your enemy’s vitality is such that he radiates himself from every stone of the Castle, and the echoes confuse me. But I will not be confused much longer, I think."

"Lord Valentine?"

A new messenger — and a familiar face, deep coarse brows meeting in the center, a jutting chin, an easy confident smile. Another unit of the vanished past fitting itself back into place, for this man was Tunigorn, second closest of all Valentine’s boyhood friends, now one of the high ministers of the realm, and now looking at the stranger before him with bright penetrating eyes, as if trying to find the Valentine behind the strangeness. Shanamir was with him.

"Tunigorn!" Valentine cried.

"My lord! Elidath said you were altered, but I had no idea—"

"Am I too strange to you with this face?"

Tunigorn smiled. "It will take some getting used to, my lord. But that can come in time. I bring you good news."

"Seeing you again is good news enough."

"But I bring you better. The traitor has been found."

"I have been told already three times in half an hour that he is in three different places."

"I know nothing of those reports. We have him."

"Where?"

"Barricaded in the inner chambers. The last to see him was his valet, old Kanzimar, loyal to the end, who finally saw him gibbering with terror and understood at last that this was no Coronal before him. He has locked off the entire suite, from the throne-room to the robing-halls, and is alone in there."

"Good news indeed!" To Deliamber Valentine said, "Do your wizardries confirm any of this?"

Deliamber’s tentacles stirred. "I feel a sour, malign presence in that lofty building."

"The imperial chambers," said Valentine. "Good." He turned to Shanamir and said, "Send out the word to Sleet, Carabella, Zalzan Kavol, Lisamon Hultin. I want them with me as we close in."

"Yes, my lord!" The boy’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

Tunigorn said, "Who are those people you named?"

"Companions of my wanderings, old friend. In my time of exile they became very dear to me."

"Then they will be dear to me as well, my lord. Whoever they may be, those who love you are those I love." Tunigorn drew his cloak close about him. "But what of this chill? When will it begin to lift? I heard from Elidath that the weather-machines—"

"Yes."

"And can they be repaired?"

"Elidath has gone to them. Who knows what damage the Barjazid has done? But have faith in Elidath." Valentine looked toward the inner palace high above him, narrowing his eyes as though he could in that manner see through the noble stone walls to the frightened shameless creature hiding behind them. "This coldness gives me great grief, Tunigorn," he said somberly. "But curing it now is in the hands of the Divine — and Elidath. Come. Let’s see if we can pluck that insect from its nest."

THE MOMENT OF FINAL RECKONING with Dominin Barjazid was close at hand now. Valentine moved swiftly, onward and inward and upward through all the familiar wonderful places.

This vaulted building was the archive of Lord Prestimion, where that great Coronal had assembled a museum of the history of Majipoor. Valentine smiled at the thought of installing his juggling clubs alongside the sword of Lord Stiamot and the jewel-studded cape of Lord Confalume. There, rising in amazing swoops, was the slender, fragile-looking watchtower built by Lord Arioc, a strange construction indeed, giving indication perhaps of the greater strangeness that Arioc would perpetrate when he moved on to the Pontificate. That, a double atrium with an elevated pool in its center, was the chapel of Lord Kinniken, adjoining the lovely white-tiled hall that was the residence of the Lady whenever she came to visit her son. And there, sloping glass roofs gleaming in the starlight, was Lord Confalume’s garden-house, the cherished private indulgence of that grandeur-loving pompous monarch, a place where tender plants from every part of Majipoor had been collected. Valentine prayed they would survive this night of wintry blasts, for he longed to go among them soon, with eyes made wiser by his travels, and revisit the wonders he had seen in the forests of Zimroel and on the Stoienzar shores. Upward—

Through a seemingly endless maze of hallways and staircases and galleries and tunnels and outbuildings, onward, onward. "We will die of old age, not cold, before we reach the Barjazid!" Valentine muttered.

"It will not be long now, my lord," Shanamir said.

"Not soon enough to please me."

"How will you punish him, my lord?"

Valentine glanced at the boy. "Punish? Punish? What punishment can there be for what he’s done? A whipping? Three days on stajja-crusts? Might as well punish the Steiche for having jostled us on the rocks."

Shanamir looked puzzled. "No punishment at all?"

"Not as you understand punishment, no."

"Turn him loose to do more mischief?"

"Not that either," said Valentine. "But first we must catch him, and then we can talk about what to do with him."

Half an hour more — it seemed forever — and Valentine stood before the core of the Castle, the walled imperial chambers, not nearly the oldest but by far the most sacrosanct of all its precincts. Early Coronals had had their governing-halls here, but they had long since been replaced by the finer and more awesome rooms of the great rulers of the past thousand years, and now constituted a glittering palatial seat of power, apart from all the other tangled intricacies of the Castle. The highest ceremonies of state took place in those high-vaulted splendid chambers; but now one single miserable being lurked in there, behind the ancient massive doors, protected by heavy ornate bolts of enormous size and weighty symbolic significance.

"Poison gas," Lisamon Hultin said. "Pump one canister of gas through the walls and drop him wherever he is."

Zalzan Kavol nodded vehemently. "Yes! Yes! See, a thin pipe slipped through these cracks — there is a gas they use in Piliplok for killing fish, that would do the job in—"

"No," Valentine said. "He will be brought out alive."

"Can it be done, my lord?" Carabella asked.

"We could smash the doors," rumbled Zalzan Kavol.

"Ruin Lord Prestimion’s doors, that were thirty years making, to fetch one rascal out of hiding?" Tunigorn asked. "My lord, this talk of a poison gas does not seem so foolish to me. We should not waste time—"

Valentine said, "We must take care not to act like barbarians. There will be no poisonings here." He caught Carabella’s hand, and Sleet’s, and raised them. "You are jugglers, with quick fingers. And you, Zalzan Kavol. Have you no experience at using those fingers for other things?"

"Picking locks, my lord?" Sleet asked.

"And things of that order, yes. There are many entrances to these chambers, and perhaps not all are secured by bolts. Go, try to find a way past the barriers. And while you do that I’ll seek another way."