Valentine passed through an airy loggia to a small portico beyond that seemed to be suspended in space on the cliff’s outermost rim. There he stood a long while in silence, with Carabella and the hierarch beside him, and Sleet and Tunigorn close by. It was wondrously quiet here: he heard nothing but the rush of the cool clear wind that blew without pause from the northwest, and the faint fluttering of Carabella’s scarlet cloak. He looked down toward Alaisor. The great seaport lay like a giant outspread fan at the base of the cliff, ranging so far to the north and south that he could not see its limits. The dark spokes of colossal avenues ran its entire length, converging on a distant, barely visible circle of grand boulevards where six giant obelisks rose skyward: the tomb of Lord Stiamot, conqueror of the Metamorphs. Beyond lay only the sea, dark green, shrouded in the low-lying haze.
“Come, my lord,” said Ambargarde. “The last light of the day is going. May I show you to your chamber?”
He would sleep alone that night, in an austere little room close by the tabernacle. Nor would he eat, or drink anything except the wine of the dream-speakers that would open his mind and make it accessible to the Lady. When Ambargarde had gone, he turned to Carabella and said, “I have not forgotten my promise, love.”
“That I know. Oh, Valentine, I pray she tells you to turn back to the Mount!”
“Will you abide by it if she does not?”
“How can I not abide by whatever you decide? You are the Coronal. But I pray she tells you turn back. Dream well, Valentine.”
“Dream well, Carabella.”
She left him. He stood for some time at the window, watching as night engulfed the shoreline and the sea. Somewhere due west of here, he knew, lay the Isle of Sleep that was his mother’s domain, far below the horizon, the home of that sweet and blessed Lady who brought wisdom to the world as it dreamed. Valentine stared intently seaward, searching in the mists and the gathering darkness as if he could see, if only he peered hard enough, the brilliant white ramparts of chalk on which the Isle rested.
Then he undressed and lay down on the simple cot that was the room’s only furniture, and lifted the goblet that held the dark red dream-wine. He took a deep draft of the sweet thick stuff, and then another, and lay back and put himself into the trance state that opened his mind to impulses from afar, and waited for sleep.
—Come to me, mother. This is Valentine.
Drowsiness came over him, and he slipped downward into slumber.
—Mother —
—Lady—
—Mother—
Phantoms danced through his brain. Tenuous elongated figures burst like bubbles from vents in the ground, and spiraled upward to the roof of the sky. Disembodied hands sprouted from the trunks of trees, and boulders opened yellow eyes, and rivers grew hair. He watched and waited, letting himself glide downward and yet deeper downward into the realm of dreams, and all the while sending forth his soul to the Lady.
Then he had a glimpse of her seated by the eight-sided pool in her chamber of fine white stone at Inner Temple on the Isle. She was bending forward, as though studying her reflection. He floated toward her and hovered just behind her, and looked down and saw the familiar face glimmering in the pool, the dark shining hair, the full lips and warm loving eyes, the flower as always behind one ear, the silver band about her forehead. He said softly, “Mother? It’s Valentine.”
She turned to face him. But the face he saw was the face of a stranger: a pale, haggard, frowning, puzzled face.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“Why, you know me! I am the Lady of the Isle!”
“Most certainly I am.”
“No.”
“Why have you come to me here? You should not have done that, for you are Pontifex, and it is more fitting for me to journey toward you than you toward me.”
“Pontifex? Coronal, you mean.”
“Ah, did I say that? Then I was mistaken.”
“And my mother? Where is she?”
“I am she, Valentine.”
And indeed the haggard pale face was but a mask, which grew thin and peeled away like a sheath of old skin, to reveal his mother’s wondrous smile, his mother’s comforting eyes. And that in turn peeled away to show the other face once more, and then the true Lady’s beneath that, but this time she was weeping. He reached for her and his hands passed through her, and he found himself alone. She did not return to him that night, though he pursued her through vision after vision, into realms of such strangeness that he would gladly have retreated if he could; and at last he abandoned the quest and gave himself over to the deepest and most dreamless of sleeps.
When he awakened it was midmorning. He bathed and stepped from his chamber and found Carabella outside, face drawn and tense, eyes reddened as though she had not slept at all.
“How is my lord?” she asked at once.
“I learned nothing last night. My dreams were hollow, and the Lady did not speak with me.”
“Oh, love, how sorry I am!”
“I’ll attempt it again tonight. Perhaps I had too little dream-wine, or too much. The hierarch will advise me. Have you eaten, Carabella?”
“Long since. But I’ll breakfast again with you now, if you wish. And Sleet wants to see you. Some urgent message arrived in the night, and he would have gone right in to you, but I forbade it.”
“What message is that?”
“He said nothing to me. Shall I send for him now?”
Valentine nodded. “I’ll wait out there,” he said, indicating with a wave of his arm the little portico overlooking the outer face of the cliff.
Sleet had a stranger with him when he appeared: a slender smooth-skinned man with a wide-browed triangular face and large somber eyes, who made a quick starburst gesture and stood staring at Valentine as though the Coronal were a creature from some other world. “Lordship, this is Y-Uulisaan, who came last night from Zimroel.”
“An unusual name,” Valentine said.
“It has been in our family many generations, my lord. I am associated with the office of agricultural affairs in Ni-moya, and it is my mission to carry unhappy tidings to you from Zimroel.”
Valentine felt a tightening in his chest.
Y-Uulisaan held forth a sheaf of folders. “It is all described in here—the full details of each of the plagues, the area it affects, the extent of the damage—”
“Plagues? What plagues?”
“In the agricultural zones, my lord. In Dulorn the lusavender smut has reappeared, and also there has been a dying of niyk trees to the west of the Rift, and also the stajja and glein are affected, and root weevils have attacked the ricca and milaile in—”
“My lord!” Carabella cried suddenly. “Look, look there!”
He whirled to face her. She was pointing skyward.
“What are those?”
Startled, Valentine looked up. On the bosom of the brisk breeze there journeyed a strange army of large glossy transparent floating creatures, unlike anything he had ever seen, appearing suddenly out of the west. They had bodies perhaps a man’s length in diameter, shaped like shining cups upcurved to give them buoyancy, and long hairy legs that they held straight out on all sides. Their eyes, running in double rows across their heads, were like black beads the size of a man’s fists, shining dazzlingly in the sunlight. Hundreds, even thousands, of the spiders were passing overhead, a migratory procession, a river of weird wraiths in the sky.