under unfamiliar frigid blasts and the balmy afternoon turned into mysterious night. Did they understand the doom that was rushing upon them? What of the Castle folk — were they frantically trying to reach the weather-machines that their mad Coronal had shut down, or did the usurper have them barricaded and guarded, so that death might strike everyone impartially?
Bombifale now was close at hand. Valentine regretted passing it by, for his people had fought hard and were weary; but if they rested now in Bombifale they would rest there forever.
So it was upward and upward through the gathering night. However fast they moved, it was too slow for Valentine, who imagined the terrified crowds gathering in the grand plazas of the cities — vast chaotic hordes of the frightened, weeping, turning to one another, staring at the sky, crying out, 'Lord Valentine, save us!' and not even knowing that the dark man to whom they sent their prayers was the instrument of their destruction. In his mind’s eye he saw the people of Castle Mount streaming out by the millions into the roads, beginning a dreadful panicky migration to the lower levels, hopeless, doomed, a frantic useless effort to outrace death. Valentine imagined, too, tongues of piercing wintry air sliding down the slopes, licking at the flawless plants of Tolingar Barrier, chilling the stone birds of Furible, blackening the elegant gardens of Stee and Minimool, turning the canals of Hoikmar to sheets of ice. Eight thousand years in the making, this miracle that was Castle Mount, and it might be destroyed in the twinkling of an eye by the folly of one cold and treacherous soul.
Valentine could reach out and touch Bombifale, so it seemed. Its walls and towers, perfect and heartachingly beautiful even in this strange failing light, beckoned to him. But he went on, and on and on, hastening now on the steep mountain road paved with ancient blocks of red stone. That was Elidath’s car close beside his on the left, and Carabella’s on the right, and not far away rode Sleet, Zalzan Kavol, Ermanar, Lisamon Hultin, and all the hordes of troops he had accumulated on his long journey. All hurried after their lord, not understanding the doom that was coming upon the world but aware that this was a moment of apocalypse when monumental evil stood near to triumph, and only courage, courage and haste, could block its victory.
Onward. Valentine clenched his fists and through sheer power of will tried to force the car higher. Deliamber, beside him, urged him to be calm, to be patient. But how? How, when the very air of Castle Mount was being stripped away molecule by molecule, and the darkest of nights was taking hold?
'Look,' Valentine said. 'Those trees that flank the road — the ones that bear the crimson-and-gold flowers? Those are halatingas, planted four hundred years ago. A festival is held at High Morpin when they come into bloom, and thousands of people dance down the road beneath them. And see, see? The leaves are shriveling already, turning black at the edges. They have never known temperatures so low, and the cold has only begun. What will happen to them in eight more hours? And what will happen to the people who loved to dance beneath them? If a mere chill withers the leaves, Deliamber, what will true frost do, and snow? Snow, on Castle Mount! Snow, and worse than snow, when the air is gone, when everything stands naked to the stars, Deliamber—'
'We are not yet lost, my lord. What city is that, now, above us?'
Valentine peered through the deepening shadows. 'High Morpin — the pleasure-city, where the games are held.'
'Think of the games that will be held there next month, my lord, to celebrate your restoration.'
Valentine nodded. 'Yes,' he said, without irony. 'Yes. I will think of the games next month, the laughter, the wine, the flowers on the trees, the songs of the birds. Is there no way to make this thing go faster, Deliamber?'
'It floats,' said the Vroon, 'but it will not fly. Be patient. The Castle is near.'
'Hours, yet,' Valentine said sullenly.
He struggled to regain his balance of soul. He reminded himself of Valentine the juggler, that innocent young man buried somewhere within him, standing in the stadium at Pidruid and reducing himself to nothing more than hand and eye, hand and eye, to perform the tricks he had only just learned. Steady, steady, steady, keep to the center of your soul, remember that life is merely a game, a voyage, a brief amusement, that Coronals can be gobbled by sea-dragons and tumbled about in rivers and mocked by pantomiming Metamorphs in a drizzly forest, and what of it? But those were poor consolations now. This was not a matter of one man’s misfortunes, which under the eye of the Divine were trivial enough, though that man had been a king. A billion innocent lives were threatened here, and a work of splendid art, this Mount, that might be unique in all the cosmos. Valentine stared at the deep reaches of the darkening sky, where, he feared, the stars would soon be shining through in afternoon. Stars out there, multitudes of worlds, and in all those worlds was there anything to compare with Castle Mount and the Fifty Cities? And would it all perish in an afternoon?
'High Morpin,' said Valentine. 'I had hoped my return to it would be happier.'
'Peace,' Deliamber whispered. 'Today we pass it by. Another day you’ll come to it in joy.'
Yes. The shining airy webwork that was High Morpin rose to view on the right, that fantasy-city, that city of play, all wonder and dream, a city spun from wires of gold, or so Valentine had often thought as a boy, looking at its marvelous buildings. He glanced at it now and quickly away. It was ten miles from High Morpin to the perimeter of the Castle — a moment, an eye-blink.
'Does this road have a name?' asked Deliamber.
'The Grand Calintane Highway,' Valentine replied. 'A thousand times I traveled it, Deliamber, back and forth to the pleasure-city. The fields beside it are so arranged that something is in bloom on every day of the year, and always in pleasing patterns of color, the yellows beside the blues, the reds far from the oranges, the whites and pinks in the borders, and look now, look at the flowers turning away from us, drooping on their stems—'
'They can be planted again, if the cold destroys them,' said Deliamber. 'But there’s time yet. These plants may not be as tender as you think.'
'I feel the cold on them as though it were on my own skin.'
Now they were in the highest reaches of Castle Mount, so far above the plains of Alhanroel that it was almost as though they had attained some other world, or some moon that hovered motionless in the sky of Majipoor.
Everything came to an end here in a fantastic upsweep of sharp-tipped peaks and crags. The summit aimed itself at the stars like a hundred spears, and in the midst of those strangely delicate stony spikes rose the odd rounded hump of the highest place of all, where Lord Stiamot had boldly planted his imperial residence eight thousand years ago in celebration of his conquest of the Metamorphs, and where, ever since, Coronal after Coronal had commemorated his own reign by adding rooms and outbuildings and spires and battlements and parapets. The Castle sprawled incomprehensibly over thousands of acres, a city in itself, a labyrinth more bewildering even than the lair of the Pontifex. And the Castle lay just ahead.
It was dark now. The cold pitiless splendor of the stars blazed overhead.
'The air must be gone,' Valentine murmured. 'The death will come soon, will it not?'
'This is true night, not the calamity,' Deliamber answered. 'We have journeyed all day without rest, and you’ve had no sense of the passing of time. The hour is late, Valentine.'
'And the air?'
'Growing colder. Growing thinner. But not yet gone.'
'And there is time?'
'There is time.'
They came around the last stupefying turn in the Calintane Highway. Valentine remembered it well: the turn that whipped at a sharp curve around the neck of the mountain and presented stunned travelers with their first view of the Castle.
Valentine had never seen Deliamber amazed before.
In a hushed voice the wizard said, 'What are those buildings, Valentine?'
'The Castle,' he replied.
The Castle, yes. Lord Malibor’s Castle, Lord Voriax’ Castle, Lord Valentine’s Castle. Nowhere could one see the whole structure, or even any significant part of it, but from here, at least, one beheld an awesome segment of it, a great pile of masonry and brick rising in level upon level, in maze upon maze, spiraling round and round upon itself, dancing up the peak in eye-dazzling fashion, sparkling with the glow of a million lights.
Valentine’s fears dissolved, his morbid gloom lifted. At Lord Valentine’s Castle, Lord Valentine could feel no sorrow. He was coming home, and whatever wound had been inflicted upon the world would soon be healed.
The Calintane Highway reached its end at the Dizimaule Plaza, which lay before the Castle’s southern wing, a huge open space paved with cobblestones of green porcelain, with a golden starburst at its center. Here Valentine halted and descended from his car to assemble his officers.
A cold bleak wind was blowing, biting and brisk.
Carabella said, 'Are there gates? Will we have to lay siege?'
Valentine smiled and shook his head. 'No gates. Who would ever invade the Castle of the Coronal? We simply ride in, through the Dizimaule Arch yonder. But once we’re inside, we may face enemy troops again.'
'The guards of the Castle are in my command,' said Elidath. 'I’ll deal with them.'
'Good. Keep moving, keep in touch, trust in the Divine. By morning we’ll gather to celebrate our victory, I swear you that.'
'Long life to Lord Valentine!' Sleet called out.
'Long life! Long life!'
Valentine lifted his arms, both as an acknowledgement and to silence their uproar.
'We celebrate tomorrow,' he said. 'Tonight we give battle, and may it be the last!'
—13—
HOW STRANGE IT FELT, finally to be passing under the Dizimaule Arch, and to see the baffling myriad splendors of the Castle before him!
As a boy he had played in these boulevards and avenues, had lost himself in the wonders of the endlessly intertangling passageways and corridors, had stared in awe at the mighty walls and towers and enclosures and vaults. As a young man in the service of Lord Voriax his brother he had dwelled within the Castle, over yonder in the Pinitor Court, where high officials had their residences, and many a time he had strolled on the parapet of Lord Ossier, with its stupendous view of the Morpin Plunge and the High Cities. And as Coronal, that brief time he had occupied the innermost zones of the Castle, he had with delight touched the ancient weather-beaten stones of Stiamot Keep, and walked alone through the vast echoing chamber of the Confalume throne-room, and studied the patterns of the stars from Lord Kinniken’s Observatory, and pondered what additions he would make to the Castle himself in years to come. Now that he was back, he realized how much he loved this place, and
