But once the ships had passed the tip of the Stoienzar and entered into the waters between Alhanroel and the Isle, Valentine’s malaise began to lift. The bombardment of anguish from every part of the world did not cease; but here the power of the Lady was paramount and grew daily stronger, and Valentine felt her beside him in his mind, aiding, guiding, comforting. In Suvrael, confronted with the pessimism of the King of Dreams, he had spoken eloquently of his conviction that the world could be restored. “There is no hope,” said Minax Barjazid, to which Valentine replied, “There is, if only we reach out to seize it. I see the way.” And the Barjazid said, “There is no way, and all is lost,” to which Valentine replied, “Only follow me, and I will show the way.” And eventually he had pulled Minax from his bleakness and won his grudging support. That shard of hope that Valentine had found in Suvrael had somehow slipped from his grasp during this voyage north; but again it seemed to be returning.
Now the Isle was very close. Now each day it stood higher above the horizon, and every morning, as the rising sun struck its eastern face, its chalky ramparts offered a brilliant display, pale pink in the first light, then a stunning scarlet that gave way imperceptibly to gold, and then at last, when the sun was fully aloft, the splendor of total whiteness, a whiteness that rang out across the waters like the clashing of giant cymbals and the upsurge of a vast sustained melody.
In Numinor port the Lady was waiting for him at the house known as the Seven Walls. Once more the hierarch Talinot Esulde conducted Valentine to her in the Emerald Room; once more he found her standing between the potted tanigale trees, smiling, her arms outstretched to him.
But startling and dismaying changes had occurred in her, he saw, since that other time, not a year ago, when they had met in this room. Her dark hair was shot through, now, with strands of white; the warm gleam of her eyes had turned dull and almost chilly; and time was making inroads now even on her regal bearing, rounding her shoulders, pulling her head down closer to them and thrusting it forward. She had seemed to him a goddess once; now she seemed a goddess being transformed gradually into an old woman, very much mortal.
They embraced. She seemed to have grown so light that the merest vagrant gust would carry her away. They drank a cool golden wine together, and he told her of his wanderings in Piurifayne, of his voyage to Suvrael, of his meeting with Dominin Barjazid, and of the pleasure it had given him to see his old enemy restored to his right mind and proper allegiance.
“And the King of Dreams?” she asked. “Was he cordial?”
“To the utmost. There was great warmth between us, which surprised me.”
“The Barjazids are rarely lovable. The nature of their life in that land, and of their dread responsibilities, prevents it, I suppose. But they are not the monsters that they are popularly thought to be. This Minax is a fierce man—I feel it in his soul, when our minds meet, which is not often—but a strong and virtuous one.”
“He views the future bleakly, but he has pledged his fullest support to all that we must do. At this moment he lashes the world with his most potent sendings, in the hope of bringing the madness into check.”
“So I am aware,” said the Lady. “These weeks past I have felt the power of him flooding out of Suvrael, as it has never come before. He has launched a mighty effort. As have I, in my quieter way. But it will not be enough. The world has gone mad, Valentine. Our enemies’ star ascends, and ours wanes, and hunger and fear rule the world now, not Pontifex and Coronal. You know that. You feel the madness pressing upon you, engulfing you, threatening to sweep everything away.”
“Then we will fail, mother? Is that what you’re saying? You, the fountain of hope, the bringer of comfort?”
Some of the old steely mettle returned to her eyes. “I said nothing of failure. I said only that the King of Dreams and Lady of the Isle are not of themselves able to stem the torrent of insanity.”
“There is a third power, mother. Or do you think I am incapable of waging this war?”
“You are capable of anything you wish to achieve, Valentine. But even three Powers are not enough. A lame government cannot meet a crisis such as afflicts us now.”
“Lame?”
“It stands on three legs. There should be four. It is time for old Tyeveras to sleep.”
“Mother—”
“How long can you evade your responsibility?”
“I evade nothing, mother! But if I bottle myself up in the Labyrinth, what purpose will that achieve?”
“Do you think a Pontifex is useless? How strange a view of our commonwealth you must have, if you think that.”
“I understand the value of the Pontifex.”
“Yet you have ruled without one throughout your whole reign.”
“It was not my fault that Tyeveras was senile when I came to the throne. What was I to do, go on to the Labyrinth immediately upon becoming Coronal? I had no Pontifex because I was not given one. And the time was not right for me to take Tyeveras’s place. I had work of a more visible kind to do. I still have.”
“You owe Majipoor a Pontifex, Valentine.”
“Not yet. Not yet.”
“How long will you say that?”
“I must remain in sight. I mean to make contact with the Danipiur somehow, mother, and bring her into a league with me against this Faraataa, our enemy, who will wreck all the world in the name of regaining it for his people. If I am in the Labyrinth, how can I—”
“Do you mean you will go to Piurifayne a second time?”
“That would only fail a second time. All the same, I see it as essential that I negotiate with the Metamorphs. The Danipiur must comprehend that I am not like the kings of the past, that I recognize new truths. That I believe we can no longer repress the Metamorph in the soul of Majipoor, but must recognize it, and admit it to our midst, and incorporate it in us all.”
“And this can only be done while you are Coronal?”
“So I am convinced, mother.”
“Examine your convictions again, then,” said the Lady, in an inexorable voice. “If indeed they are convictions, and not merely a loathing for the Labyrinth.”
“I detest the Labyrinth, and make no secret of it. But I will go to it, obediently if not gladly, when the time comes. I say the time is not yet at hand. It may be close, but it is not yet here.”
“May it not be long in coming, then. Let Tyeveras sleep at last, Valentine. And let it be soon.”
5
It was a small triumph, Faraataa thought, but one well worth savoring, this summons to meet with the Danipiur. So many years an outcast, flitting miserably through the jungle, so many years of being mocked when he was not being ignored; and now the Danipiur had with the greatest of diplomatic courtesy invited him to attend her at the House of Offices in Ilirivoyne.
He had been tempted at first to reverse the invitation, and tell her loftily to come to him in New Velalisier. After all, she was a mere tribal functionary whose title had no pre-Exile pedigree, and he, by the acclamation of multitudes, was the Prince To Come and the King That Is, who spoke daily with water-kings and commanded loyalties far more intense than any the Danipiur could claim. But then he reconsidered: how much more effective it would be, he told himself, to march at the head of his thousands into Ilirivoyne, and let the Danipiur and all her flunkeys see what power he held! So be it, he thought. He agreed to go to Ilirivoyne.