“You wish you were with him, don’t you?” Divvis asked.
“Or that you were making the trip in his place, eh?” said Mirigant.
Elidath whirled on the older man. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Flustered, Mirigant said, “It should be obvious.”
“You accuse me, I think, of an unlawful ambition.”
“Unlawful? Tyeveras has outlived his time by twenty years. He’s kept alive only by grace of some sort of magic—”
“By the finest of medical care, you mean,” Elidath said.
With a shrug Mirigant said, “It’s the same thing. In the natural order of things Tyeveras should long ago have been dead, and Valentine our Pontifex. And a new Coronal should be off undertaking his first grand processional.”
“These are not decisions for us to make,” Elidath grumbled.
Divvis said, “They are Valentine’s decisions, yes. And he will not make them.”
“He will, at the proper time.”
“When? Five more years? Ten? Forty?”
“Would you coerce the Coronal, Divvis?”
“I would advise the Coronal. It is our duty—yours, mine, Mirigant’s, Tunigorn’s, all of us who were in the government before the overthrow. We must tell him: it is time for him to move on to the Labyrinth.”
“I think it is time for us to have our run,” said Elidath stiffly.
“Listen to me, Elidath! Am I an innocent? My father was a Coronal; my grandfather held the post you hold now; I have spent all my life close to the heart of power. I understand things as well as most. We have no Pontifex. For eight or ten years we’ve merely had a thing more dead than alive, floating in that glass cage in the Labyrinth. Hornkast speaks to him, or pretends to, and receives decrees from him, or pretends to, but in effect there’s no Pontifex at all. How long can the government function that way? I think Valentine is trying to be Pontifex and Coronal both, which is impossible for any man to carry off, and so the whole structure is suffering, everything is paralyzed—”
“Enough,” Mirigant said.
“—and he will not move along to his proper office, because he’s young and hates the Labyrinth, and because he has come back from his exile with his new retinue of jugglers and herdboys, who are so captivated by the splendors of the Mount that they will not allow him to see that his true responsibility lies—”
“Enough!”
“One moment more,” said Divvis earnestly. “Are you blind, Elidath? Only eight years back we experienced something altogether unique in our history, when a lawful Coronal was overthrown without our knowing it, and an unanointed king put in his place. And what kind of man was that? A Metamorph puppet, Elidath! And the King of Dreams himself an actual Metamorph! Two of the four Powers of the Realm usurped, and this very Castle filled with Metamorph impostors—”
“All of them discovered and destroyed. And the throne bravely regained by its rightful holder, Divvis.”
“Indeed. Indeed. And do you think the Metamorphs have gone politely back to their jungles? I tell you, they are scheming right this instant to destroy Majipoor and take back for themselves whatever is left, which we have known since the moment of Valentine’s restoration, and what has he done about it? What has he done about it, Elidath? Stretched out his arms to them in love. Promised them that he will right ancient wrongs and remedy old injustices. Yes, and still they scheme against us!”
“I will run without you,” said Elidath. “Stay here, sit at the Coronal’s desk, sign those mounds of decrees. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Divvis? To sit at that desk?” He swung about angrily and started from the room.
“Wait,” Divvis said. “We’re coming.” He sprinted after Elidath, came up alongside him, caught him by the elbow. In a low intense tone quite different from his usual mocking drawl he declared, “I said nothing of the succession, except that it is necessary for Valentine to move on to the Pontificate. Do you think I would challenge you for the crown?”
“I am not a candidate for the crown,” said Elidath.
“No one is ever a candidate for the crown,” Divvis answered. “But even a child knows you are the heir presumptive. Elidath, Elidath—!”
“Let him be,” said Mirigant. “We are here to run, I thought.”
“Yes. Let us run, and no more of this talk for now,” said Divvis.
“The Divine be praised,” Elidath muttered.
He led the way down the flights of broad stone stairs, worn smooth by centuries of use, and out past the guardposts into Vildivar Close, the boulevard of pink granite blocks that linked the inner Castle, the Coronal’s primary working quarters, to the all but incomprehensible maze of outer buildings that surrounded it at the summit of the Mount. He felt as though a band of hot steel had been wrapped about his forehead. First to be signing a myriad foolish documents, then to have to listen to Divvis’s treasonous harangue—
Yet he knew Divvis to be right. The world could not much longer continue this way. When great actions needed to be undertaken, Pontifex and Coronal must consult with one another, and let their shared wisdom check all folly. But there was no Pontifex, in any real sense. And Valentine, attempting to operate alone, was failing. Not even the greatest of Coronals, not Confalume, not Prestimion, not Dekkeret, had presumed to try to rule Majipoor alone. And the challenges they had faced were as nothing compared with the one confronting Valentine. Who could have imagined, in Lord Confalume’s day, that the humble subjugated Metamorphs would ever rise again to seek redress for the loss of their world? Yet that uprising was well under way in secret places. Elidath was not likely ever to forget the last hours of the war of restoration, when he had fought his way into the vaults where the machines that controlled the climate of Castle Mount were kept, and to save those machines had had to slay troops clad in the uniform of the Coronal’s own guard—who as they died changed form and became slit-mouthed, noseless, slope-eyed Shapeshifters. That was eight years ago: and Valentine still hoped to reach that nation of malcontents with his love, and find some honorable peaceful way of healing their anger. But after eight years there were no concrete achievements to show; and who knew what new infiltration the Metamorphs had effected by now?
Elidath pulled breath deep into his lungs and broke into a furious pounding gallop, that left Mirigant and Divvis far behind within moments.
“Hoy!” Divvis called. “Is that your idea of jogging?”
He paid no attention. The pain within him could be burned away only by another kind of pain, and so he ran, in a frenzy, pushing himself to the limits of his strength. On, on, on, past the delicate five-peaked tower of Lord Arioc, past Lord Kinniken’s chapel, past the Pontifical guest-house. Down the Guadeloom Cascade, and around the squat black mass of Lord Prankipin’s treasury, and up the Ninety-Nine Steps, heart beginning to thunder in his breast, toward the vestibule of the Pinitor Court—on, on, through precincts he had traversed every day for thirty years, since as a child he had come here from Morvole at the foot of the Mount to be taught the arts of government. How many times he and Valentine had run like this, or Stasilaine or Tunigorn—they were close as brothers, the four of them, four wild boys roaring through Lord Malibor’s Castle, as it was known in those days—ah, how joyous life had been for them then! They had assumed they would be counsellors under Voriax when he became Coronal, as everyone knew would happen, but not for many years; and then Lord Malibor died much too early, and also Voriax who followed him, and to Valentine went the crown and nothing had ever been the same for any of them again.