Now the first light of day gleams in the east. It crosses the city and strikes the moon-crescent mounted on its high pole atop the stump of the Seventh Temple. The Prince To Come lifts his arm and gives the signal. The procession advances. As they march, Those Who Return shift form from moment to moment, in accordance with the teachings of the Book of the Water-Kings. They take on in turn the guises known as the Flame, the Flow, the Falling Leaf, the Blade, the Sands, the Wind. And as they pass the Place of Unchangingness they return themselves to the true Piurivar form, and maintain it thenceforth.
The Prince To Come embraces each of the four prisoners. Then they are led to the altars atop the Tables of the Gods. The Red Woman and the Flayed Man take the younger king and his mother to the east Table, where long ago the water-king Niznorn perished on the night of blasphemy. The Blind Giant and the Final King conduct the older king and the one who comes by night in dreams to the west Table, where the water-king Domsitor was given into death by the Defilers.
The Prince To Come stands alone atop the Seventh Temple. His aura now is scarlet. Faraataa descends and joins him and becomes him: they are one.
“In the beginning was the Defilement, when a madness came over us and we sinned against our brothers of the sea,” he cries. “And when we awakened and beheld what we had done, for that sin did we destroy our great city and go forth across the land. But even that was not sufficient, and enemies from afar were sent down upon us, and took from us all that we had, and drove us into the wilderness, which was our penance, for we had sinned against our brothers of the sea. And our ways were lost and our suffering was great and the face of the Most High was averted from us, until the time of the end of the penance came, and we found the strength to drive our oppressors from us and reclaim that which we had lost through our ancient sin. And so it was prophesied, that a prince would come among us and lead us out of exile at the time of the end of penance.”
“This is the time of the end of penance!” the people reply. “This is the time of the Prince To Come!”
“The Prince To Come has arrived!”
“And you are the Prince To Come!”
“I am the Prince To Come,” he cries. “Now all is forgiven. Now all debts have been paid. We have done our penance and are cleansed. The instruments of the penance have been driven from our land. The water-kings have had their recompense. Velalisier is rebuilt. Our life begins anew.”
“Our life begins anew! This is the time of the Prince To Come!”
Faraataa lifts his staff, which flashes like fire in the morning light, and signals to those who wait upon the two Tables of the Gods. The four prisoners are thrust forward.
The long knives flash. The dead kings fall, and crowns roll in the dust. In the blood of the invaders are the Tables washed clean, The last act has been played. Faraataa holds high his hands.
“Come, now, and rebuild with me the Seventh Temple!”
The Piurivar folk rush forward. They gather the fallen blocks of the temple and at Faraataa’s direction they place them where they once had been.
When it is complete, Faraataa stands at its highest point, and looks out across hundreds of miles to the sea, where the water-kings have gathered. He sees them beating the surface of the water with their great wings. He sees them lift their huge heads high and snort.
“Brothers! Brothers!” Faraataa calls to them.
“We hear you, land-brother.”
“The enemy is destroyed. The city is reconsecrated. The Seventh Temple has risen again. Is our penance done, O brothers?”
And they reply: “It is done. The world is cleansed and a new age begins.”
“Are we forgiven?”
“You are forgiven, O land-brothers.”
“We are forgiven,” cries the Prince To Come.
And the people hold up their hands to him, and change their shapes, and become in turn the Star, the Mist, the Darkness, the Gleam, the Cavern.
And only one thing remains, which is to forgive those who committed the first sin, and who have remained in bondage here amidst the ruins ever since. The Prince To Come stretches forth his hands, and reaches out to them, and tells them that the curse that was upon them is lifted and they are free.
And the stones of fallen Velalisier give up their dead, and the spirits emerge, pale and transparent; and they take on life and color; and they dance and shift their shapes, and cry out in joy.
And what they cry is:
“All hail the Prince To Come, who is the King That Is!”
That was the dream of the Piurivar Faraataa, as he lay on a couch of bubblebush leaves under a great dwikka-tree in the province of Piurifayne, with a light rain falling.
3
The Coronal said, “Ask Y-Uulisaan to come in here.”
Maps and charts of the blighted zones of Zimroel, heavily marked and annotated, were spread out all over the desk in Lord Valentine’s cabin aboard his flagship, the Lady Thiin. This was the third day of the voyage. He had departed from Alaisor with a fleet of five vessels under the command of the Grand Admiral Asenhart, bound for the port of Numinor on the Isle of Sleep’s northeastern coast. The crossing would be a journey of many weeks, even under the most favorable of winds, and just now the winds were contrary.
While he waited for the agricultural expert to arrive, Valentine scanned once more the documents Y-Uulisaan had prepared for him and those that he had called up out of the historical archives. It was perhaps the fiftieth time he had looked them over since leaving Alaisor, and the story they told grew no less melancholy with repetition.
Blights and pestilences, he knew, were as old as agriculture itself. There was no reason why Majipoor, fortunate world though it was, should be entirely exempt from such ills, and indeed the archives showed ample precedent for the present troubles. There had been serious disruptions of crops through disease or drought or insect attack in a dozen reigns or more, and major ones in at least five: that of Setiphon and Lord Stanidor, that of Thraym and Lord Vildivar, that of Struin and Lord Guadeloom, that of Kanaba and Lord Sirruth, and in the time of Signor and Lord Melikand, deep in the misty recesses of the past.
But what was happening now seemed far more threatening than any of those, Valentine thought, and not merely because it was a present crisis rather than something safely entombed in the archives. The population of Majipoor was immensely greater than it had been during any of the earlier pestilences: twenty billion, where in Struin’s time, say, it had been scarcely a sixth as much, and in Signor’s only a relative handful. A population so huge could fall easily into famine if its agricultural base were disrupted. The structure of society itself might collapse. Valentine was well aware that the stability of the Majipoori way over so many thousands of years—so contrary to the experience of most civilizations—was founded on the extraordinarily benign nature of life on the giant planet. Because no one was ever in real need, there was nearly universal acquiescence in the order of things and even in the inequalities of the social order. But take away the certainty of a full belly and all the rest might fall apart overnight.