“Lord Valentine!” she called out in a clear ringing tone.
“Lord Valentine no longer,” he replied, “but Valentine Pontifex now. And you do me great honor by this visit, Aximaan Threysz. Your fame precedes you.”
“Valentine—Pontifex—”
“Come, give me your hand,” said Valentine.
He took her withered, ancient claws in his, and held them tightly. Her eyes met his, staring straight into them, although he could tell from the clearness of her pupils that she saw nothing.
“They said you were a usurper,” she declared. “A little red-faced man came here, and told us you were not the true Coronal. But I would not listen to him, and went away from this place. I did not know if you were true or false, but I thought he was not the one to speak of such things, that red-faced man.”
“Sempeturn, yes. I have met him,” Valentine said. “He believes now that I was the true Coronal, and am the true Pontifex these days.”
“And will you make the world whole again, true Pontifex?” said Aximaan Threysz in a voice of amazing vigor and clarity.
“We will all of us make it whole together, Aximaan Threysz.”
“No. Not I, Pontifex Valentine. I will die, next week, the week after, and none too soon, either. But I want a promise from you that the world will be what it formerly was: for my children, for my children’s children. And if you will promise me that I will go on my knees to you, and if you promise it falsely may the Divine scourge you as we have been scourged, Pontifex Valentine!”
“I promise you, Aximaan Threysz, that the world will be entirely restored, and finer than it was, and I tell you that this is no false promise. But I will not have you go on your knees to me.”
“I have said I would, and I will do it!” And, amazingly, brushing aside the two younger women as if they were gnats, she dropped herself down in deep homage, although her body seemed as rigid as a slab of leather that has been left in the sun a hundred years. Valentine reached down to lift her, but one of the women—her daughter, certainly her daughter—caught his hand and pulled it back, and then stared at her own hand in horror, for having dared to touch a Pontifex. Slowly but unaided she stood again, and said, “Do you know how old I am? I was born when Ossier was Pontifex. I think I am the oldest person in the world. And I will die when Valentine is Pontifex: and you will restore the world.”
It was probably meant as a prophecy, Valentine thought. But it sounded more like a command.
He said, “It will be done, Aximaan Threysz, and you will live to see it done.”
“No. No. Second sight comes upon us when first sight goes. My life is almost over. But the course of yours unfolds clearly before me. You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. And then you will seal your deed by doing that which you desire least to do. And though you do the impossible and then you do the undesirable, you will know that what you have done is right, and you will rejoice in it, Pontifex Valentine. Now go, Pontifex, and heal us.” Her forked tongue flickered with tremendous force and energy. “Heal us, Pontifex Valentine! Heal us!”
She turned and proceeded slowly back the way she had come, disdaining the help of the two women beside her.
It was an hour more before Valentine was able to disengage himself from the last of the Prestimion Vale folk—they crowded round him in a pathetically hopeful way, as though some Pontifical emanation alone would transform their lives, and magically return them to the condition of the years prior to the coming of the lusavender blight—but at last Carabella, pleading fatigue on his behalf, got them out of there. The image of Aximaan Threysz continued to glow in his mind on the journey back to Nitikkimal’s manor. The dry hissing of her voice still resonated in his mind. You will save us by doing that which you think is impossible for you to do. And then you will seal your deed by doing that which you desire least to do. Go, Pontifex, and heal us. Yes. Yes. Heal us, Pontifex Valentine! Heal us!
But also within him there resounded the music of the water-king Maazmoorn. He had been so close, this time, to the ultimate breakthrough, to the true contact with that inconceivably gigantic creature of the sea. Now—tonight—
Carabella remained awake for a while to talk. That ancient Ghayrog woman haunted her, too, and she dwelled almost obsessively on the power of Aximaan Threysz’s words, the eerie compelling force of her sightless eyes, the mysteries of her prophecy. Then finally she kissed Valentine lightly on the lips and burrowed down into the darkness of the enormous bed they shared.
He waited a few endless minutes. Then he took forth the tooth of the sea dragon.
—Maazmoorn?
He held the tooth so tightly its edges dug deep into the flesh of his hand. Urgently he centered all the power of his mind on the bridging of the gulf of thousands of miles between Prestimion Vale and the waters—where? At the Pole?—where the sea-king lay hidden.
—Maazmoorn?
—I hear you, land brother, Valentine-brother, king-brother.
At last!
—You know who I am?
—I know you. I knew your father. I knew many before you.
—You spoke with them?
—No. You are the first for that. But I knew them. They did not know me, but I knew them. I have lived many circlings of the ocean, Valentine-brother. And I have watched all that has occurred upon the land.
—You know what is occurring now?
—I know.
—We are being destroyed. And you are a party to our destruction.
—No.
—You guide the Piurivar rebels in their war against us. We know that. They worship you as gods, and you teach them how to ruin us.
—No, Valentine-brother.
—I know they worship you.
—Yes, that they do, for we are gods. But we do not support them in their rebellion. We give them only what we would give anyone who comes to us for nourishment, but it is not our purpose to see you driven from the world.
—Surely you must hate us!
—No, Valentine-brother.
—We hunt you. We kill you. We eat your flesh and drink your blood and use your bones for trinkets.
—Yes, that is true. But why should we hate you, Valentine-brother? Why?
Valentine did not for the moment reply. He lay cold and trembling with awe beside the sleeping Carabella, pondering all that he had heard, the calm admission by the water-king that the dragons were gods—what could that mean?—and the denial of complicity in the rebellion, and now this astounding insistence that the dragons bore the Majipoori folk no anger for all that had been committed against them. It was too much all at once, a turbulent inrush of knowledge where before there had been only the sound of bells and a sense of a distant looming presence.
—Are you incapable of anger, then, Maazmoorn?
—We understand anger.
—But do not feel it?
—Anger is beside the point, Valentine-brother. What your hunters do to us is a natural thing. It is a part of life; it is an aspect of That Which Is. As am I, as are you. We give praise to That Which Is in all its manifestations. You slay us as we pass the coast of what you call Zimroel, and you make your uses of us; sometimes we slay you in your ships, if it seems to be what must be done at that moment, and so we make our uses of you; and all that is That Which Is. Once the Piurivar folk slew some of us, in their stone city that is now dead, and they thought they were committing a monstrous crime, and to atone for that crime they destroyed their own city. But they did not understand. None of you land-children understand. All is merely That Which Is.