“Ah.”
“And if that should come to pass, there are those of us who think it would be desirable then to allow the Pontifex Tyeveras at last to return to the Source.”
“Ah,” said Hornkast. “Ah, yes. You make your meaning quite clear, do you not?” His eyes met Hissune’s one final time: cold, penetrating, all-seeing. Then they grew milder, as though a veil had been drawn over them, and suddenly the high spokesman seemed to be nothing more than a weary old man at the end of a long and fatiguing day. Hornkast turned away and walked slowly toward the waiting floater. “Come,” he said. “It grows late, Prince Hissune.”
Late it was indeed, but Hissune found it all but impossible to sleep. I have seen the Pontifex, he thought again and again. I have seen the Pontifex. He lay awake and tossing half the night, with the image of the ancient Tyeveras blazing in his mind; nor did that image relent when sleep did come, but burned even brighter, Pontifex on throne within sphere of glass. And was the Pontifex weeping? Hissune wondered. And if he wept, for whom did he weep?
At midday the next day Hissune, accompanied by an official escort, made the journey uplevel to the outer ring of the Labyrinth, to Guadeloom Court, to the drab little flat where he had lived so long.
Elsinome had insisted that it was wrong for him to come, that it was a grave breach of protocol for a Prince of the Castle to visit so shabby a place as Guadeloom Court even for the sake of seeing his own mother. But Hissune had brushed her objections aside. “I will come to you,” he said. “You must not come to me, mother.”
She seemed not greatly altered by the years since they last had met. If anything, she looked stronger, taller, more vigorous. But there was an unfamiliar wariness about her, he thought. He held out his arms to her and she held back, uneasy, almost as if she did not recognize him as her son.
“Mother?” he said. “You know me, don’t you, mother?”
“I want to think I do.”
“I am no different, mother.”
“The way you hold yourself, now—the look in your eye—the robes you wear—”
“I am still Hissune.”
“Prince Regent Hissune. And you say you are no different?”
“Everything is different now, mother. But some things remain the same.” She appeared to soften a little at that, to relax, to accept him. He went to her and embraced her.
Then she stepped back. “What will happen to the world, Hissune? We hear such terrible things! They say whole provinces have starved. New Coronals have proclaimed themselves. And Lord Valentine—where is Lord Valentine? We know so little down here of what goes on outside. What will happen to the world, Hissune?”
Hissune shook his head. “It is all in the hands of the Divine, mother. But I tell you this: if there is a way to save the world from this disaster, we will save it.”
“I feel myself beginning to shiver, when I hear you say we. Sometimes in dreams I see you on Castle Mount, among the great lords and princes—I see them looking to you, I see them asking your advice. But can it be true? I am coming to understand certain things—the Lady visits me often when I sleep, do you know that?—but even so, there is so much to understand—so much that I must absorb—”
“The Lady visits you often, you say?”
“Sometimes two or three times a week. I am greatly privileged by that. Although it troubles me, also: to see her so tired, to feel the weight that presses on her soul. She comes to me to help me, you know, but yet I feel sometimes that I should help her, that I should lend my strength to her and let her lean on me—”
“You will, mother.”
“Do I understand you rightly, Hissune?”
For a long moment he did not reply. He glanced about the ugly little room at all the old familiar things of his childhood, the tattered curtains, the weary furniture, and he thought of the suite where he had passed the night, and of the apartments that were his on Castle Mount.
He said, “You will not remain in this place much longer, mother.”
“Where am I to go, then?”
Again he hesitated.
Quietly he said, “I think they will make me Coronal, mother. And when they do, you must go to the Isle, and take up a new and difficult task. Do you comprehend what I say?”
“Indeed.”
“And are you prepared, mother?”
“I will do what I must,” she told him, and she smiled, and shook her head as though in disbelief. And shook the disbelief away, and reached forth to take him into her arms.
9
“Now let the word go forth,” Faraataa said.
It was the Hour of the Flame, the midday hour, and the sun stood high over Piurifayne. There would be no rain today: rain was impermissible today, for this was the day of the going forth of the word, and that was a thing that must be accomplished under a rainless sky.
He stood atop a towering wicker scaffold, looking out over the vast clearing in the jungle that his followers had made. Thousands of trees felled, a great slash upon the breast of the land; and in that huge open space his people stood, shoulder to shoulder, as far as he could see. To each side of him rose the steep pyramidal forms of the new temples, nearly as lofty as his scaffold. They were built of crossed logs, interwoven in the ancient patterns, and from their summits flew the two banners of redemption, the red and the yellow. This was New Velalisier, here in the jungle. Next year at this time, Faraataa was resolved, these rites would be celebrated at the true Velalisier across the sea, reconsecrated at last.
He performed now the Five Changes, easily and serenely journeying from form to form: the Red Woman, the Blind Giant, the Flayed Man, the Final King, each Change punctuated by a hissing outcry from those who looked on, and when he underwent the fifth of the Changes, and stood forth in the form of the Prince To Come, the sound was overwhelming. They were crying out his name now in mounting crescendos: “Faraataa! Faraataa! FARAATAA!”
“I am the Prince To Come and the King That Is,” he cried, as he had so often cried in his dreams.
And they replied: “All hail the Prince To Come, who is the King That Is!”
And he said, “Join your hands together, and your spirits, and let us call the water-kings.”
And they joined hands and spirits, and he felt the strength of them surging into him, and he sent out his calclass="underline"
—Brothers in the sea!
He heard their music. He felt their great bodies stirring in the depths. All the kings responded: Maazmoorn, Girouz, Sheitoon, Diis, Narain, and more. And joined, and gave of their strength, and made from themselves a trumpet for his words.
And his words went forth, to every land, to all who had the capacity to hear.
—You who are our enemy, listen! Know that the war is proclaimed against you, and you are already defeated. The time of reckoning has come. You cannot withstand us. You cannot withstand us. You have begun to perish, and there is no saving you now.
And the voices of his people rose about him: “Faraataa! Faraataa! Faraataa!”
His skin began to gleam. His eyes emitted a radiance. He had become the Prince To Come; he had become the King That Is.
—For fourteen thousand years this world has been yours, and now we have regained it. Go from it, all you strangers! Get into your ships and take yourselves to the stars from which you came, for this world now is ours. Go!
“Faraataa! Faraataa!”
—Go, or feel our heavy wrath! Go, or be driven into the sea! Go, or we will spare none of you!
“Faraataa!”
He spread wide his arms. He opened himself to the surging energies of all those whose souls were linked before him, and of the water-kings who were his sustenance and his comfort. The time of exile and sorrow, he knew, was ending. The holy war was nearly won. Those who had stolen the world and spread themselves across it like a swarm of marauding insects now would be crushed.