Robert Silverberg - Lord Valentine's Castle

AND THEN, AFTER WALKING all day through a golden haze of humid warmth that gathered about him like fine wet fleece, Valentine came to a great ridge of outcropping white stone overlooking the city of Pidruid. It was the provincial capital, sprawling and splendid, the biggest city he had come upon since — since? — the biggest in a long while of wandering, at any rate.

There he halted, finding a seat at the edge of the soft, crumbling white ridge, digging his booted feet into the flaking ragged stone, and he sat there staring down at Pidruid, blinking as though newly out of sleep. On this summer day twilight was still some hours away, and the sun hung high to the southwest beyond Pidruid, out over the Great Sea. I will rest here for a while, Valentine thought, and then I will go down into Pidruid and find lodging for the night.

As he rested he heard pebbles tumbling past him from a higher point on the ridge. Unhurriedly he looked back the way he had come. A young herdsman had appeared, a boy with straw-colored hair and a freckled face, leading a train of fifteen or twenty mounts down the hill road. They were fat sleek purple-skinned beasts, obviously well looked after. The boy’s own mount looked older and less plump, a wise and toughened creature.

"Hoy!" he called down to Valentine. "Where are you bound?"

"Pidruid. And you?"

"The same. Bringing these mounts to market. Thirsty work it is, too. Do you have wine?"

"Some," Valentine said. He tapped the flask at his hip, where a fiercer man might wear a weapon. "Good red mid-country wine. I’ll be sorry to see the last of it."

"Give me a drink and I’ll let you ride into town with me."

"Done," said Valentine.

He got to his feet as the boy dismounted and scrambled down the ridge toward him. Valentine offered him the flask. The boy was no more than fourteen or fifteen, he guessed, and small for his age, though deep through the chest and brawny. He came hardly elbow-high to Valentine, who was tall but not unusually so, a sturdy man just above middle height, with wide flat shoulders and big capable hands.

The boy swirled the wine in the flask, inhaled in a knowing way, nodded his approval, took a deep gulp, sighed. "I’ve been eating dust all the way from Falkynkip! And this sticky heat — it chokes you! Another dry hour and I’d have been a dead one." He returned the wine to Valentine. "You live in town?"

Valentine frowned. "No."

"Here for the festival, then?"

"Festival?"

"You don’t know?"

Valentine shook his head. He felt the pressure of the boy’s bright, mocking eyes, and was confused. "I’ve been traveling. I haven’t followed the news. Is this festival time in Pidruid?"

"This week it is," said the boy. "Beginning on Starday. The grand parade, the circus, the royal celebration. Look down there. Don’t you see him entering the city even now?"

He pointed. Valentine sighted along the boy’s outstretched arm and squinted, peering at Pidruid’s southern corner, but all he saw was a jumble of green-tiled rooftops and a tangle of ancient streets following no rational plan. Again he shook his head. "There," the boy said impatiently. "Down by the harbor. See? The ships? The five tremendous ones, with his banner flying from the rigging? And there’s the procession, coming through Dragon Gate, just beginning to march Black Highway. I think that’s his chariot, coming up now by the Arch of Dreams. Don’t you see? Is there something wrong with your eyes?"

"I don’t know the city," said Valentine mildly. "But yes, I see the harbor, the five ships."

"Good. Now follow along inland a little way — the big stone gate? And the wide highway running through it? And that ceremonial arch, just this side of—"

"I see it now, yes."

"And his banner over the chariot?"

"Whose banner? If I sound dim, forgive me, but—"

"Whose? Whose? Lord Valentine’s banner! Lord Valentine’s chariot! Lord Valentine’s bodyguard marching through the streets of Pidruid! Don’t you know the Coronal has arrived?"

"I didn’t."

"And the festival! Why do you think there’s a festival at this time of summer, if not to welcome the Coronal?"

Valentine smiled. "I’ve been traveling and I haven’t followed the news. Would you like more wine?"

"There’s not much left," the boy said.

"Go on. Finish it. I’ll buy more in Pidruid."

He handed over the flask and turned toward the city again, letting his gaze travel down the slope and across the woodsy suburbs to the dense and teeming city, and outward toward the waterfront, and to the great ships, the banners, the marching warriors, the chariot of the Coronal. This must be a great moment in the history of Pidruid, for the Coronal ruled from far-off Castle Mount, all the way on the other side of the world, so distant that he and it were almost legendary, distances being what they were on this world of Majipoor. Coronals of Majipoor did not come often to the western continent. But Valentine was oddly unmoved by the knowledge of the presence of his glittering namesake down below there. I am here and the Coronal is here, he thought, and he will sleep tonight in some splendid palace of the masters of Pidruid, and I will sleep in some pile of hay, and then there will be a grand festival, and what is that to me? He felt almost apologetic, being so placid in the face of the boy’s excitement. It was a discourtesy.

He said, "Forgive me. I know so little of what’s been happening in the world these past months. Why is the Coronal here?"

"He makes the grand processional," said the boy. "To every part of the realm, to mark his coming to power. This is the new one, you know. Lord Valentine, only two years on his throne. The brother to Lord Voriax who died. You knew that, that Lord Voriax was dead, that Lord Valentine was our Coronal?"

"I had heard," said Valentine vaguely.

"Well, that’s he, down there in Pidruid. Touring the realm for the first time since he got the Castle. He’s been down south all month, in the jungle provinces, and yesterday he sailed up the coast to Pidruid, and tonight he enters the city, and in a few days there’ll be the festival, and food and drink for everyone, games, dancing, delights, a great market too, where I’ll sell these animals for a fortune. Afterward he travels overland through the whole continent of Zimroel, from capital to capital, a journey of so many thousands of miles it makes my head ache to think of it, and from the eastern shore he’ll sail back to Alhanroel and Castle Mount, and none of us in Zimroel will see him again for twenty years or more. A fine thing it must be to be Coronal!" The boy laughed. "That was good wine. My name’s Shanamir. What’s yours?"

"Valentine."

"Valentine? Valentine ? An auspicious name!"

"A common one, I’m afraid."

"Put Lord in front of it and you’d be the Coronal!"

"It’s not as easy as that. Besides, why would I want to be Coronal?"

"The power," said Shanamir, wide-eyed. "The fine clothes, the food, the wine, the jewels, the palaces, the women—"

"The responsibility," Valentine said somberly. "The burden. Do you think a Coronal does nothing but drink golden wine and march in grand processions? Do you think he’s put there just to enjoy himself?"

The boy considered. "Perhaps not."

"He rules over billions upon billions of people, across territories so huge we can’t comprehend them. Everything falls on his shoulders. To carry out the decrees of the Pontifex, to sustain order, to support justice in every land — it tires me to think of it, boy. He keeps the world from collapsing into chaos. I don’t envy him. Let him have the job."