She said tenderly, “You take blame on yourself without proper cause. If a curse hangs over this world, and I think that that is the case, it lies not on the noble and virtuous Coronal, but upon us all. You have no reason for guilt: you least of all, Valentine. You are not the bearer of the curse, but rather the one who is most capable of lifting it from us. But to do that you must act, and act quickly.”
“And what curse is this, then?”
Putting her hand to her brow, she said, “You have a silver circlet that is the mate to mine. Did you carry it with you on this journey?”
“It goes everywhere with me.”
“Fetch it here, then.”
Valentine went from the room and spoke with Sleet, who waited outside; and shortly an attendant came, bearing the jeweled case in which the circlet resided. The Lady had given it to him when first he went to the Isle as a pilgrim, during his years of exile. Through it, in communion with his mother’s mind, he had received the final confirmation that the simple juggler of Pidruid and Lord Valentine of Majipoor were one and the same person, for with its aid and hers his lost memories had come flooding back. And afterward the hierarch Lorivade had taught him how, by virtue of the circlet, he could enter the trance by which he might have access to the minds of others. He had used it little since his restoration to the throne, for the circlet was an adjunct of the Lady, not of the Coronal, and it was unfitting for one Power of Majipoor to transgress on the domain of another. Now he donned the fine metal band again, while the Lady poured for him, as she had done long ago on this Isle, a flask of the dark, sweet, spicy dream-wine that was used in the opening of mind to mind.
He drank it off in a single draught, and she drank down a flask of her own, and they waited a moment for the wine to take effect. He put himself into the state of trance that gave him the fullest receptivity. Then she took his hands and slipped her fingers tightly between his to complete the contact, and into his mind came such a rush of images and sensations as to daze and stun him, though he had known what sort of impact there would be.
This now was what the Lady had for many years experienced each day as she and her acolytes sent their spirits roving through the world to those in need of aid.
He saw no individual minds: the world was far too huge and crowded to permit precision of that sort except with the most strenuous of concentration. What he detected, as he soared like a gust of hot wind riding the thermal waves of the sky, were pockets of sensation: apprehension here, fear, shame, guilt, a sudden sharp stabbing zone of madness, a gray sprawling blanket of despair. He dipped low and saw the textures of souls, the black ridges shot through with ribbons of scarlet, the harsh jagged spikes, the roiling turbulent roadways of bristling tight-woven fabric. He soared high into tranquil realms of nonbeing; he swooped across dismal deserts that emanated a numbing throb of isolation; he whirled over glittering snowfields of the spirit, and meadows whose every blade of glass glistened with an unbearable beauty. And he saw the places of blight, and the places of hunger, and the places where chaos was king. And he felt terrors rising like hot dry winds from the great cities; and he felt some force beating in the seas like an irresistible booming drum; and he felt a powerful sense of gathering menace, of oncoming disaster. An intolerable weight had fallen upon the world, Valentine saw, and was crushing it by slow increments of intensity, like a gradually closing fist.
Through all of this his guide was the blessed Lady his mother, without whom he might well have sizzled and charred in the intensity of the passion that radiated from the well of the world-mind. But she stayed at his side, lifting him easily through the darker places, and carrying him on toward the threshold of understanding, which loomed before him the way the immense Dekkeret Gate of Normork, that greatest of gates, which is closed only at times when the world is in peril, looms and dwarfs all those who approach it. But when he came to that threshold he was alone, and he passed through unaided.
On the far side there was only music, music made visible, a tremulous quavering tone that stretched across the abyss like the weakest of woven bridges, and he stepped out upon that bridge and saw the splashes of bright sound that stained the flow of substance below, and the dagger-keen spurts of rhythmic pulsation overhead, and the line of infinitely regressing red and purple and green arcs that sang to him from the horizon. Then all of these gave way to a single formidable sound, of a weight beyond any bearing, a black juggernaut of sound that embraced all tones into itself, and rolled forward upon the universe and pressed upon it mercilessly. And Valentine understood.
He opened his eyes. The Lady his mother stood calmly between the potted tanigales, watching him, smiling as she might have smiled down on him when he was a sleeping babe. She took the circlet from his brow and returned it to the jeweled case.
“You saw?” she asked.
“It is as I have long believed,” said Valentine. “What is happening in Zimroel is no random event. There is a curse, yes, and it is on us all, and has been for thousands of years. My Vroon wizard Deliamber said to me once that we have gone a long way, here on Majipoor, without paying any sort of price for the original sin of the conquerors. The account, he said, accumulates interest. And now the note is being presented for collection. What has begun is our punishment, our humbling, the settling of the reckoning.”
“So it is,” said the Lady.
“Was what we saw the Divine Itself, mother? Holding the world in a tight grasp, and making the grasp tighter? And that sound I heard, of such terrible weight: was that the Divine also?”
“The images you saw were your own, Valentine. I saw other things. Nor can the Divine be reduced to anything so concrete as an image. But I think you saw the essence of the matter, yes.”
“I saw that the grace of the Divine has been withdrawn from us.”
“Yes. But not irredeemably.”
“Are you sure it isn’t already too late?”
“I am sure of it, Valentine.”
He was silent a moment. Then he said, “So be it. I see what must be done, and I will do it. How appropriate that I should have come to the understanding of these things in the Seven Walls, which the Lady Thiin built to honor her son after he had crushed the Metamorphs! Ah, mother, mother, will you build a building like this for me, when I succeed in undoing Lord Stiamot’s work?”
10
“Again,” Hissune said, swinging about to face Alsimir and the other knight-initiate. “Come at me again. Both of you at once this time.”
“Both?” said Alsimir.
“Both. And if I catch you going easy on me, I promise you I’ll have you assigned to sweep the stables for a month.”
“How can you withstand us both, Hissune?”
“I don’t know that I can. That’s what I need to learn. Come at me, and we’ll see.”
He was slick with sweat and his heart was hammering, but his body felt loose and well tuned. He came here, to the cavernous gymnasium in the Castle’s east wing, for at least an hour every day, no matter how pressing his other responsibilities.
It was essential, Hissune believed, that he strengthen and develop his body, build up his physical endurance, increase his already considerable agility. Otherwise, so it plainly seemed, he would be under a heavy handicap pursuing his ambitions here. The princes of Castle Mount tended to be athletes and to make a cult of athleticism, constantly testing themselves: riding, jousting, racing, wrestling, hunting, all those ancient simpleminded pastimes that Hissune, in his Labyrinth days, had never had the opportunity or the inclination to pursue. Now Lord Valentine had thrust him among these burly, energetic men, and he knew he must meet them on their own ground if he meant to win a lasting place in their company.