“I hear the usual,” said Hornkast.
“Wait.”
He listened. He heard the string of syllables that meant Lord Malibor—the Pontifex had forgotten Malibor’s two successors, and thought Malibor was Coronal still—and then a skein of other royal names, Prestimion, Confalume, Dekkeret. Malibor again. The word for sleep. The name of Ossier, who had been Pontifex before Tyeveras. The name of Kinniken, who had preceded Ossier.
“He rambles in the remote past, as he often does. For this you called me down here with such urgent—”
“Wait.”
In growing irritation Hornkast turned his attention again to the inchoate monolog of the Pontifex, and was stunned to hear, for the first time in many years, a perfectly enunciated, completely recognizable word:
“Life.”
“You heard?” Sepulthrove asked.
Hornkast nodded. “When did this start?”
“Two hours ago, two and a half.”
“Majesty.”
“We have made a record of all of this,” said Dilifon.
“What else has he said that you can understand?”
“Seven or eight words,” Sepulthrove replied. “Perhaps there are others that only you can recognize.”
Hornkast looked toward Narrameer. “Is he awake or dreaming?”
“I think it is wrong to use either of those terms in connection with the Pontifex,” she said. “He lives in both states at once.”
“Come. Rise. Walk.”
“He’s said those before, several times,” Dilifon murmured.
There was silence. The Pontifex seemed to have lapsed into sleep, though his eyes were still open. Hornkast stared grimly. When Tyeveras first had become ill, early in the reign of Lord Valentine, it had seemed only logical to sustain the old Pontifex’s life in this way, and Hornkast had been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the scheme that Sepulthrove had proposed. It had never happened before that a Pontifex had outlived two Coronals, so that the third Coronal of the reign came into power when the Pontifex was already in extreme old age. That had distorted the dynamics of the imperial system. Hornkast himself had pointed out at that time that Lord Valentine, young and untried, barely in command of the duties of the Coronal, could not be sent on to the Labyrinth so soon. By general agreement it was essential that the Pontifex remain on his throne a few more years, if he could be kept alive. Sepulthrove had found the means to keep him alive, though quickly it was apparent that Tyeveras had lapsed into senility and dwelled in hopeless lunatic death-in-life.
But then had come the episode of the usurpation, and then the difficult years of restoration, when all the Coronal’s energies were needed to repair the chaos of the upheaval. Tyeveras had had to remain in his cage year after year. Though the continued life of the Pontifex meant Hornkast’s own continuance in power, and the power he had amassed by default of the Pontifex by now was extraordinary, nevertheless it was a repellent thing to watch, this cruel suspension of a life long since deserving of a termination. Yet Lord Valentine asked for time, and more time, and yet more time still, to finish his work as Coronal. Eight years, now: was that not time enough? With surprise Hornkast found himself almost ready now to pray for Tyeveras’s deliverance from this captivity. If only it were possible to let him sleep!
“Va—Va— ”
“What’s that?” Sepulthrove asked.
“Something new!” whispered Dilifon.
Hornkast gestured to them to be quiet.
“Va—Valentine —”
“This is new indeed!” said Narrameer.
“Valentine Pontifex—Valentine Pontifex of Majipoor—”
Followed by silence. Those words, plainly enunciated, free of all ambiguities, hovered in the air like exploding suns.
“I thought he had forgotten Valentine’s name,” Hornkast said. “He thinks Lord Malibor is Coronal.”
“Evidently he does not,” said Dilifon.
“Sometimes toward the end,” Sepulthrove said quietly, “the mind repairs itself. I think his sanity is returning.”
“He is as mad as ever!” cried Dilifon. “The Divine forbid that he should regain his understanding, and know what we have done to him!”
“I think,” said Hornkast, “that he has always known what we have done to him, and that he is regaining not his understanding but his ability to communicate with us in words. You heard him: Valentine Pontifex. He is hailing his successor, and he knows who his successor ought to be. Sepulthrove, is he dying?”
“The instruments indicate no physical change in him. I think he could continue this way for some long while.”
“We must not allow it,” said Dilifon.
“What are you suggesting?” Hornkast asked.
“That this has gone on long enough. I know what it is to be old, Hornkast—and perhaps you do also, though you show little outer sign of it. This man is half again as old as any of us. He suffers things we can scarcely imagine. I say make an end. Now. This very day.”
“We have no right,” said Hornkast. “I tell you, I feel for his sufferings even as you. But it is not our decision.”
“Make an end, nevertheless.”
“Lord Valentine must take responsibility for that.”
“Lord Valentine never will,” Dilifon muttered. “He’ll keep this farce running for fifty more years!”
“It is his choice,” said Hornkast firmly.
“Are we his servants, or the servants of the Pontifex?” asked Dilifon.
“It is one government, with two monarchs, and only one of them now is competent. We serve the Pontifex by serving the Coronal. And—”
From the life-support cage came a bellow of rage, and then an eerie indrawn whistling sound, and then three harsh growls. And then the words, even more clearly than before:
“Valentine—Pontifex of Majipoor—hail!”
“He hears what we say, and it angers him. He begs for death,” said Dilifon.
“Or perhaps he thinks he has already reached it,” Narrameer suggested.
“No. No. Dilifon is right,” said Hornkast. “He’s overheard us. He knows we won’t give him what he wants.”
“Come. Rise. Walk” Howlings. Babblings. “Death! Death! Death!”
In a despair deeper than anything he had felt in decades, the high spokesman rushed toward the life-support globe, half intending to rip the cables and tubes from their mountings and bring an end to this now. But of course that would be insanity. Hornkast halted; he peered in; his eyes met those of Tyeveras, and he compelled himself not to flinch as that great sadness poured out upon him. The Pontifex was sane again. That was unarguable. The Pontifex understood that death was being withheld from him for reasons of state.
“Your majesty?” Hornkast asked, speaking in his richest, fullest tone. “Your majesty, do you hear me? Close one eye if you hear me.”
There was no response.
“I think, nevertheless, that you hear me, majesty. And I tell you this: we know what you suffer. We will not allow you much longer to endure it. That we pledge to you, majesty.”
Silence. Stillness. Then:
“Life! Pain! Death!”
And then a moaning and a babbling and a whistling and a shrieking that was like a song from beyond the grave.
15
“—and that is the temple of the Lady,” said Lord Mayor Sambigel, pointing far up the face of the astonishing vertical cliff that rose just east of his city. “The holiest of her shrines in the world, saving only the Isle itself, of course.”