Two other women dressed just as skimpily stood below, near the rope-ladders, looking up vigilantly at the pair toiling on the wheels. Dekkeret had been told earlier that a corps of consecrated women, numbering eight all told, labored here day and night to keep these wheels eternally in motion. Each of the operators of the wheel walked a shift that was many hours in length, never pausing for meals or even a sip of water. The two at the ladders were the women of the next team, waiting here ready to jump into service ahead of time in case one of the women in the cages should tire and falter even for a moment.
Dekkeret understood that it was a matter of the highest honor in Kesmakuran to serve on the wheel. Every young woman of the city aspired to be one of those chosen for a one-year term inside the wooden cages. The rite was, so he had learned, an ongoing prayer to the Pontifex Dvorn, imploring him to maintain the continuing tranquility of the commonwealth that he had created. Even the smallest interruption in their unending climb, the most trivial alteration in the rhythm of their steps, might jeopardize the survival of the world.
Dekkeret could not linger long to observe this remarkable performance, though. The time had come for him to enter the tomb. The six Guardians of the Tomb—they did not call themselves priests—stood flanking him, three to his right, three to his left. The Guardians were big men, nearly as big as Dekkeret himself, who wore black robes with scarlet trim, the Pontifical colors. They were brothers, apparently, ranging from fifty to sixty years in age, resembling one another so closely that Dekkeret had trouble remembering which one was which. He was able to tell the Chief Guardian from the others only because he was the one holding the ornately woven wreath that Dekkeret was going to place before the statue of Dvorn.
He himself had donned his robes of office for the occasion, and he was wearing the little golden circlet that was serving him in lieu of the full version of the starburst crown on this journey. Fulkari and Dinitak would not be accompanying him into the tomb; he gave them each a glance as he made ready to enter, and was grateful to them both for keeping their faces frozen in expressions of the highest seriousness. One sly little wink from Fulkari, or a quick grimace of skepticism from Dinitak, would instantly destroy the high solemnity of bearing that Dekkeret was working so hard to sustain.
He entered the tomb by way of an imposing rectangular entrance-way some twenty feet high and at least thirty feet wide. A thick carpet of sweet-smelling red petals had been laid down underfoot. Dozens of glowfloats drifting overhead provided a gentle greenish light that illuminated the elaborate pictorial reliefs that had been cut into the walls from floor to ceiling. Scenes from Dvorn’s life, Dekkeret guessed: depictions of the great monarch’s military triumphs, of his coronation as Pontifex, of his raising of Barhold to the rank of Coronal. They seemed quite well done and Dekkeret wished he could get a closer look at them. But the six Guardians were marching in a steady lockstep alongside him, faces turned rigidly forward, and it seemed best to him to do the same, so that all he saw of the reliefs was what he could glimpse out of the corners of his eyes.
And then Dvorn himself in all his grandeur and royal magnificence rose before him, a colossal figure of mellow cream-colored marble set in a great niche at the back of the cave.
The seated image of the Pontifex was ten feet high, or even more, a noble statue with its left hand resting on its knee and the right hand raised and extended toward the mouth of the cave. The expression on Dvorn’s carved face was one of great placidity and benevolence: not merely a regal face but a downright godlike one, the serene smiling features perfectly composed, calm, reassuring, all-consoling.
It was, thought Dekkeret, an utterly magnificent piece of sculpture. He was surprised that such a masterpiece was so little known beyond its own district.
This was the way one might portray the face of the Divine, he told himself—provided some artist had decided to regard the Divine as a human being rather than as the abstract and forever unknowable spirit of creation. But no one ever attempted to depict the Divine in such a literal guise. Was something like that what the unknown maker of this great work had had in mind—to show Dvorn as an actual deity? Certainly there was something almost sacrilegious about the godlike serenity with which the sculptor had endowed the face of the Pontifex Dvorn.
To the right and left of the immense statue were two smaller niches, set high on the wall of the cave, that contained large round mirror-bright bowls of polished agate. These, Dekkeret suspected, were the vessels in which the relics of the Pontifex Dvorn were kept, the hair and the teeth and the knucklebones and the rest. He did not propose to inquire about those things, though.
The Chief Guardian handed Dekkeret the wreath. It was fashioned of dried reeds of several colors and textures, braided together in a bewilderingly complex pattern that must have taken the weaver many hours to achieve, and bound every four inches or so by thin metal bands inscribed with lettering of an antique kind that was unintelligible to Dekkeret. He was supposed to place the wreath in a shallow pit that had been carved in the cave floor directly in front of the statue and set fire to it with a torch that the Chief Guardian would hand him. Then, while it smoldered, he was instructed to kneel, enter a state of contemplation, and place his soul in the care of the great founding Pontifex.
That would be an odd thing for him to do, a man who put no faith in supernatural things. But Prestimion’s words of months ago, as the two of them stood together in the vastness of the Pontifical throne-chamber in the depths of the Labyrinth, came drifting back to him now:
To the fifteen billion people over whom we rule we are the embodiment of all that is sacred here. And so they put us up on these thrones and bow down to us, and who are we to say no to that, if it makes our job of running this immense planet any easier? Think of them, Dekkeret, whenever you find yourself performing some absurd ritual or clambering up onto some over decorated seat. We are not provincial justices of the peace, you know. We are the essential mainsprings of the world.
So be it, Dekkeret thought. This was the task that faced the Coronal Lord of Majipoor today. He would not question it.
He laid the wreath in its pit, accepted the torch from the Chief Guardian, and touched the tip of the flame to the edge of the reeds.
Knelt, then. Bowed his head before the statue.
The Guardians stepped back, disappearing into the shadows behind him. Quickly Dekkeret lost all awareness of their presence. Even the endless click-clack of the turning prayer-wheels outside the cave, which he still had been noticing only moments before, faded from the screen of his perceptions.
He was alone with the Pontifex Dvorn.
Now what, though? Pray to Dvorn? How could he do that? Dvorn was a myth, a creature of fable, a vague figure out of the early cantos of The Book of Changes. Even in the privacy of his own thoughts Dekkeret was unable to bring himself to pray to a myth. He was not really accustomed to prayer at all.
He had faith in the Divine, yes. How could he not? He was his mother’s son. But it was not a faith that ran very deep. Like everyone else—even Mandralisca, perhaps—he would make small requests of the Divine in casual conversation, and give thanks to the Divine for this or that favor granted. But all of that was just in the ordinary manner of speaking. To Dekkeret the Divine was the great creative force of the universe, a distant and incomprehensible power, hardly likely to pay attention to the trifling individual requests of any one creature of that universe. Neither the urgent prayers of the Coronal Lord of Majipoor nor the panicky cries of a frightened bilantoon pursued by a ravening haigus in the forests would stir the special mercy of the Divine, who had brought all creatures into being for purposes beyond the knowing of mortal beings, and had left them to make their own way throughout their lives, until the hour had come for them to be recalled to the Source.