Lord Valentine's Castle

'But will you help us?'

Silence again.

Valentine said, 'It would be only a moment, and then we’d disturb you no more. Show us the way.'

'We have our duties here,' said the balding man. Valentine moistened his lips. This was leading nowhere; and for all he knew, Namurinta had left the other beach five minutes ago and was on her way back to Rodamaunt Graun, marooning them. He looked to Deliamber. Some wizardly compulsion might be in order. Deliamber ignored the hint. Valentine moved toward him and murmured, 'Touch your tentacles to them and inspire them to cooperate.'

'I think my sorceries are of little value on this holy Isle,' said Deliamber. 'Try wizardries of your own.'

'I have none!'

'Try,' said the Vroon.

Valentine confronted the gardeners once again. I am Coronal of Majipoor, he told himself, and I am the son of the Lady whom these two worship and serve. It was impossible to say any of that to the gardeners, but he could transmit it, perhaps, through sheer force of soul. He stood tall and moved toward the center of his being, as he would have done if he were preparing to juggle before the most critical of audiences, and he smiled a smile so warm it might have opened buds on the branches of the flowering shrubs, and after a moment the gardeners, looking up from their work, saw it and showed an unmistakable response, a reaction of surprise, bewilderment, and — submission. He bathed them in glowing love. 'We have come thousands of miles,' he said gently, 'to give ourselves up to the peace of the Lady, and we beg you, in the name of the Divine that we both serve, to assist us on our pathway; for our need is great and we are weary of wandering.'

They blinked, as if the sun had emerged from behind a gray cloud.

'We have our tasks,' said the woman lamely.

'We are not supposed to ascend until the garden is cared for,' the man said, almost in a mumble.

'The garden thrives,' said Valentine, 'and will thrive without your aid for a few hours today. Help us, before the darkness comes. We ask only that you point us on our way, and I tell you that the Lady will reward you for it.'

The gardeners looked troubled. They glanced at one another, and then toward the sky, as though to see how late it was. Frowning, they rose and brushed the sandy soil from their knees, and, like sleepwalkers, moved to the water’s edge, and out into the light surf, and around the point to the greater beach, and down toward the foot of the cliff where that vertical path began its skyward climb.

Namurinta was still there, but she was nearly ready for departure. Valentine went to her.

'For your aid we thank you deeply,' he said.

'You are staying?'

'We have found a way to the terraces.'

She smiled in unfeigned pleasure. 'I was not eager to abandon you, but Rodamaunt Graun was calling me. I wish you well as you make your pilgrimage.'

'And I wish you a safe voyage home.'

He turned away.

'One thing,' the captain said.

'Yes?'

'When the woman called to you from down there,' she said, 'she hailed you as Lord Valentine. What was the meaning of that?'

'A joke,' said Valentine. 'Only a joke.'

'Lord Valentine is how the new Coronal is named, so I have been told, the one that rules since a year or two past.'

'Yes,' Valentine said. 'But he is a dark-haired man. It was only a joke, a play on names, for I am Valentine too. A safe journey, Namurinta.'

'A fruitful pilgrimage, Valentine.'

He walked toward the cliff. The gardeners had taken several of the floater-sleds from the shack, and had placed them in riding sequence on the thrusting-pad. Silently they gestured the travelers aboard. Valentine mounted the first sled, with Carabella, Deliamber, Shanamir, and Khun. The female gardener went into the shack, where, it seemed, the controls of the floaters must be located, for an instant afterward the sled drifted free of the pad and began the dizzying, terrifying ascent of the towering white cliff.

—8—

'You HAVE COME,' said the acolyte Talinot Esulde, 'to the Terrace of Assessment. Here you will be weighed in the balance. When it is time to move onward, your path takes you to the Terrace of Inception, and then to the Terrace of Mirrors, where you will confront yourself. If what you see is satisfactory to you and to your guides, you move inward to Second Cliff, where another group of terraces awaits you. And so you proceed until the Terrace of Adoration. There, if the favor of the Lady is upon you, you will receive your summons to Inner Temple. But I would not expect that to happen quickly. I would not expect that to happen at all. Those who expect to attain the Lady are the least likely to reach her.'

Valentine’s mood darkened at that, for not only did he expect to attain the Lady, it was absolutely vital that he do so; and yet he understood what the acolyte was saying. In this holy place one made no demands on the fabric of existence. One surrendered; one gave up demands and needs and desires; one yielded, if one hoped to find peace. This was no place for a Coronal. The essence of a Coronal’s being was the wielding of power, wisely if he was capable of wisdom, but in any event steadfastly; the essence of a pilgrim was surrender. In that contradiction he might easily be lost. Yet he had no choice but to go to the Lady.

He had, at least, reached the outer fringes of the Lady’s domain. At the top of the cliff they had been greeted by unsurprised acolytes, plainly aware that out-of- season pilgrims were floating toward them. And now, looking pious and faintly absurd in the soft pale robes of pilgrims, they were gathered in a low long building of smooth pink stone near the crest of the cliff. Flags of the same pink stone formed a massive semicircular promenade that stretched for what appeared to be a great distance along the edge of the forest that topped the cliff: this was the Terrace of Assessment. Beyond it lay more forest; the other terraces were farther beyond; and deeper in, not visible from where they were now, rose the second chalk cliff atop the plateau that the outer one formed. A third cliff yet, Valentine knew, rose above the second somewhere hundreds of miles inland, and this was the holiest precinct, where Inner Temple was, where the Lady dwelled. For all that he had traveled so far, it seemed impossible that he would ever complete those last hundreds of miles.

Night was falling swiftly. He could look back through the circular window behind him and see the darkening sky and the broad dark bosom of the sea, lit only by the purpling light of the vanishing sun as it fled toward Piliplok. There was a speck out there, a scratch on the smooth surface of the water, that he thought and hoped was the trimaran Rodamaunt Queen, heading homeward, and out there too were the volevants dreaming their endless dream, and the sea- dragons making their way toward a greater sea, and beyond all that was Zimroel, its teeming cities, its forest preserves and park-lands, its festivals, its billions of souls. There was much for him to look back on; but now he must look forward. He stared intently at Talinot Esulde, their first guide in this place, a tall slender person with milk-white skin and a shaven skull, who might be of either sex. Male was Valentine’s guess — the height and something about the breadth of shoulders argued that, though not absolutely — but the delicacy of Talinot Esulde’s facial bones, notably the fragile curve of the light ridges above the strange blue eyes, argued otherwise.

Talinot Esulde was explaining things: the daily routine of prayer and work and meditation, the system of dream-speaking, the arrangement of living-quarters, the dietary restrictions, which excluded all wines and certain spices, and much else. Valentine tried to master it all, but there were so many regulations and requirements and obligations and customs that they tangled in his mind, and he ceased making the effort after a time, hoping that daily practice would instill the rules in him.

As darkness came Talinot Esulde led them from the indoctrination hall, past the sparkling spring-fed rock pool where they had been bathed before being given their robes and where they would bathe twice each day until they left this terrace, and to the dining-hall, farther from the cliffs rim. Here they were served a simple meal of soup and fish, flavorless and unappealing even though they were furiously hungry. Their servitors were novices like themselves, in robes of light green. The hall, a large one, was only partly full — the hour for dining was almost past, Talinot Esulde pointed out. Valentine looked at his fellow pilgrims. They were of all sorts, perhaps half of human stock, but also a great many Vroons and Ghayrogs, a sprinkling of Skandars, some Liimen, some Hjorts though not very many, and, far across the way, a little insular Su-Suheris group. The net of the Lady caught all the races of Majipoor, it would seem. All but one. 'Do Metamorphs ever seek the Lady?' Valentine asked.

Talinot Esulde smiled seraphically. 'If a Piurivar came to us, we would accept it. But they take no part in our rites. They live to themselves as though they were alone on all of Majipoor.'

'Perhaps some have come here disguised in other forms,' Sleet suggested.

'We would know that,' said Talinot Esulde calmly. After dinner they were taken to their rooms — individual chambers, hardly bigger than closets, in a hivelike lodge. A couch, a sink, a place for clothes, and nothing more. Lisamon Hultin glowered at hers. 'No wine,' she said, 'and I give up my sword, and now I sleep in this box? I think I’m going to be a failure as a pilgrim, Valentine.'

'Peace, and make the effort. We’ll travel through the Isle as swiftly as we can.'

He entered his room, which was between the warrior-woman’s and Carabella’s. Immediately the lightglobe dimmed, and when he settled in on his couch he found himself disappearing instantly into slumber, though the hour was still early. As consciousness left him a new light glowed softly in his mind, and he beheld the Lady, the unmistakable, unquestionable Lady of the Isle.

Valentine had seen her in dreams many times before since Pidruid, the gentle eyes, the dark hair, the flower at her ear, the olive-hued skin, but now the image was sharper, the vision more detailed, and he noticed the small lines in the corners of her eyes and the tiny green jewels set in her earlobes and the thin silver band that encircled her brow. In his dream he held his hands to her and said, 'Mother, here I am. Call me to you, mother.'

She smiled at him, but she made no answer.

They were in a garden, with alabandinas in bloom all about them. She nipped at the plants with a small golden implement, clipping away flowerbuds so the remaining ones would yield larger blossoms. He stood beside her, waiting for her to turn to him, but the work of nipping went on and on, and finally she said, still not looking his way, 'One must give constant attention to one’s task if it is to be done properly.'

'Mother, I am Valentine your son!'

'See, each branch has five buds? Let them be and they all will open, but I take two away here, one here, one here, and the blooms are glorious.' And as she