He closed his eyes when they grew raw and began to ache, though he did not sleep. A single image revolved endlessly in his mind: the Coronal beginning to fall, and he and Lisamon Hultin springing from their seats at the same moment to catch him. He was unable to shake from his mind the horror of that sudden astonishing climax to the banquet: the Coronal bemused, pathetic, groping for words and failing to find the right ones, swaying, teetering, falling—
Of course a Coronal was just as capable of getting himself drunk and behaving foolishly as anyone else. One of the many things that Hissune’s illicit explorations of the memory-readings in the Register of Souls during the years he worked in the House of Records had taught him was that there was nothing superhuman about the men who wore the starburst crown. So it was altogether possible that this evening Lord Valentine, who seemed so intensely to dislike being in the Labyrinth, had allowed the free-flowing wine to ease that dislike, until, when it was his turn to speak, he was in a drunken muddle.
But somehow Hissune doubted that it was wine that had muddled the Coronal, even though Lord Valentine had said as much himself. He had been watching the Coronal closely all during the speechmaking, and he hadn’t seemed at all drunk then, only convivial, joyous, relaxed. And afterward, when the little Vroonish wizard had brought Lord Valentine back from his swoon by touching his tentacles to him, the Coronal had seemed a trifle shaky, as anyone who had fainted might be, but nevertheless quite clearheaded. Nobody could sober up that fast. No, Hissune thought, more likely it had been something other than drunkenness, some sorcery, some deep sending that had seized Lord Valentine’s spirit just at that moment. And that was terrifying.
He rose now and went down the winding corridor to the Coronal’s chambers. As he approached the intricately carved door, gleaming with brilliant golden starbursts and royal monograms, it opened and Tunigorn and Ermanar emerged, looking drawn and somber. They nodded to him and Tunigorn, with a quick gesture of his finger, ordered the guards at the door to let him go in.
Lord Valentine sat at a broad desk of some rare and highly polished blood-colored wood. The Coronal’s big heavy-knuckled hands were spread out before him against the surface of the desk, as though he were supporting himself with them. His face was pale, his eyes seemed to be having difficulty focusing, his shoulders were slumped.
“My lord—” Hissune began uncertainly, and faltered into silence.
He remained just within the doorway, feeling awkward, out of place, keenly uncomfortable. Lord Valentine did not seem to have noticed him. The old dream-speaker Tisana was in the room, and Sleet, and the Vroon, but no one said a thing. Hissune was baffled. He had no idea what the etiquette of approaching a tired and obviously ill Coronal might be. Was one supposed to offer one’s kind sympathies, or to pretend that the monarch was in the finest of health? Hissune made the starburst gesture, and, getting no response, made it again. He felt his cheeks blazing.
He searched for some shred of his former youthful self-assurance, and found nothing. Strangely, he seemed to be growing more ill at ease with Lord Valentine, rather than less, the more often he saw the Coronal. That was hard to understand.
Sleet rescued him at last, saying loudly, “My lord, it is the Initiate Hissune.”
The Coronal raised his head and stared at Hissune. The depth of fatigue that his fixed and glassy eyes revealed was terrifying. And yet, as Hissune watched in amazement, Lord Valentine drew himself back from the brink of exhaustion the way a man who has caught a vine after slipping over the edge of a precipice pulls himself to safety: with a desperate show of unanswerable strength. It was astonishing to see some color come to his cheeks, some animation to his expression. He managed even to project a distinct kingliness, a feeling of command. Hissune, awed, wondered if it might be some trick they learn on Castle Mount, when they are in training to become Coronals—
“Come closer,” Lord Valentine said.
Hissune took a couple of steps deeper into the room.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“My lord—”
“I can’t allow you to waste time fearing me, Hissune. I have too much work to do. And so do you. Once I believed that you felt absolutely no awe of me at all. Was I wrong?”
“My lord, it’s only that you look so tired—and I’m tired myself, I suppose—this night has been so strange, for me, for you, for everyone—”
The Coronal nodded. “A night full of great strangenesses, yes. Is it morning yet? I never know the time, when I’m in this place.”
“A little past midnight, my lord.”
“Only a little past midnight? I thought it was almost morning. How long this night has been!” Lord Valentine laughed softly. “But it’s always a little past midnight in the Labyrinth, isn’t it, Hissune? By the Divine, if you could know how I yearn to see the sun again!”
“My lord—” Deliamber murmured tactfully. “It does indeed grow late, and there is still much to do—”
“Indeed.” For an instant the Coronal’s eyes flickered into glassiness again. Then, recovering once more, he said, “To business, then. The first item of which is the giving of my thanks. I’d have been badly hurt but for your being there to catch me. You must have been on your way toward me before I went over, eh? Was it that obvious I was about to keel over?”
Reddening a little, Hissune said, “It was, lordship. At least to me.”
“Ah.”
“But I may have been watching you more closely than the others were.”
“Yes. I dare say you may have been.”
“I hope your lordship won’t greatly suffer the ill effects of—of—”
A faint smile appeared on the Coronal’s lips. “I wasn’t drunk, Hissune.”
“I didn’t mean to imply—I mean—but that is to say—”
“Not drunk, no. A spell, a sending—who knows? Wine is one thing, and sorcery’s another, and I think I still can tell the difference. It was a dark vision, boy: not the first I’ve had lately. The omens are troublesome. War’s on the wind.”
“War?” Hissune blurted. The word was unfamiliar, alien, ugly: it hovered in the air like some foul droning insect looking for prey. War? War? Into Hissune’s mind leaped an image eight thousand years old, springing from the cache of memories he had stolen in the Register of Souls: the dry hills of the far northwest ablaze, the sky black with thick coils of rising smoke, in the final awful convulsion of Lord Stiamot’s long war against the Metamorphs. But that was ancient history. There had been no war in all the centuries since, other than the war of restoration. And scarce any lives had been lost in that, by design of Lord Valentine, to whom violence was an abomination. “How can there be war?” Hissune demanded. “We have no wars on Majipoor!”
“War’s coming, boy!” said Sleet roughly. “And when it does, by the Lady, there’ll be no hiding from it!”
“But war with whom? This is the most peaceful of worlds. What enemy could there be?”
“There is one,” Sleet said. “Are you Labyrinth people so sheltered from the real world that you fail to comprehend that?”
Hissune frowned. “The Metamorphs, you mean?”
“Aye, the Metamorphs!” Sleet cried. “The filthy Shapeshifters, boy! Did you think we could keep them penned up forever? By the Lady, there’ll be a rampage soon enough!”