Majipoor Chronicles

'You are high-born men,' she said. 'But that could be seen from the way you carry yourselves. The seeds tell me much more. I see great perils ahead for both of you.'

Voriax looked away, scowling, and spat.

'You are skeptical, yes,' she said. 'But you each face dangers. You—' she indicated Voriax—'must be wary of forests, and you—' a glance at Valentine—'of water, of oceans.' She frowned. 'And of much else, I think, for your destiny is a mysterious one and I am unable to read it clearly. Your line is broken — not by death, but by something stranger, some change, a great transformation—' She shook her head. 'It is puzzling to me. I can be of no other help.'

Voriax said, 'Beware of forests, beware of oceans — beware of nonsense!'

'You will be king,' said Tanunda.

Voriax caught his breath sharply. The anger fled his face and he gaped at her.

Valentine smiled and clapped his brother's back and said, 'You see? You see?'

'And you also will be king,' the witch said.

'What?' Valentine was bewildered. 'What foolishness is this? Your seeds deceive you!'

'If they do, it is for the first time,' said Tanunda. She gathered the fallen seeds and flung them quickly into the stream, and wrapped her strips of leather about her body. 'A king and a king, and I have enjoyed my night's sport with you both, your majesties-to-be. Shall you go on to Ghiseldorn today?'

'I think not,' said Voriax, without looking at her.

'Then we will not meet again. Farewell!'

She moved swiftly toward the forest. Valentine stretched out a hand toward her, but said nothing, only squeezed the air helplessly with his trembling fingers, and then she was gone. He turned toward Voriax, who was scuffing angrily at the embers of the fire. All the joy of the night's revelry had fled.

'You were right,' Valentine said. 'We should not have let her dabble in prophecy at our expense. Forests! Oceans! And this madness of our both being kings!'

'What does she mean?' asked Voriax. 'That we will share the throne as we shared her body this night past?'

'It will not be,' said Valentine.

'Never has there been joint rule in Majipoor. It makes no sense! It is unthinkable! If I am to be king, Valentine, how are you also to be king?'

'You are not listening to me. I tell you, pay no attention to it, brother. She was a wild woman who gave us a night of drunken pleasure. There's no truth in prophecy.'

'She said I was to be king.'

'And so you probably shall be. But it was only a lucky guess.'

'And if not? And if she is a genuine seer?'

'Why, then, you will be king!'

'And you? If she spoke truly about me, then you too must be Coronal, and how—'

'No,' Valentine said. 'Prophets often speak in riddles and ambiguities. She means something other than the literal. You are to be Coronal, Voriax, it is the common knowledge — and there is some other meaning to the thing she predicted for me, or else there is no meaning at all.'

'This frightens me, Valentine.'

'If you are to be Coronal there is nothing to fear. Why do you grimace like that?'

'To share the throne with one's brother—' He worried at the idea as at a sore tooth, refusing to move away from it.

'It will not be,' said Valentine. He scooped up a fallen garment, found it to belong to Voriax, and tossed it to him. 'You heard me speak yesterday. It goes beyond my understanding why anyone would covet the throne. Certainly I am no threat to you in that regard.' He seized his brother's wrist. 'Voriax, Voriax, you look so dire! Can the words of a forest-witch affect you so? I swear this to you: when you are Coronal, I will be your servant, and never your rival. By our mother who is to be the Lady of the Isle do I swear it. And I tell you that what passed here this night is not to be taken seriously.'

'Perhaps not,' Voriax said.

'Certainly not,' said Valentine. 'Shall we leave this place now, brother?'

'I think so.'

'She used her body well, do you not agree?'

Voriax laughed. 'That she did. It saddens me a little to think I'll never embrace her again. But no, I would not care to hear more of her lunatic soothsaying, however wondrous the movements of her hips may be. I've had my fill of her, and of this place, I think. Shall we pass Ghiseldorn by?'

'I think so,' Valentine said. 'What cities lie along the Glayge near here?'

'Jerrik is next, where many Vroons are settled, and Mitripond, and a place called Gayles. I think we should take lodging in Jerrik, and amuse ourselves with some gambling for a few days.'

'To Jerrik, then.'

'Yes, to Jerrik. And say no more concerning the kingship to me, Valentine.'

'Not a word, I promise.' He laughed and threw his arms around Voriax. 'Brother! I thought several times on this journey that I had lost you altogether, but I see that all is well, that I have found you again!'

'We were never lost to one another,' said Voriax, 'not for an instant. Come, now: pack your things, and onward to Jerrik!'

They never spoke again of their night with the witch and of the things she had foretold. Five years later, when Lord Malibor perished while hunting sea-dragons, Voriax was chosen as Coronal, to no one's surprise, and Valentine was the first to kneel in homage before his brother. By then Valentine had virtually forgotten the troublesome prophecy of Tanunda, though not the taste of her kisses and the feel of her flesh. Both of them kings? How, after all, could that be, since only one man could be Coronal at a time? Valentine rejoiced for his brother Lord Voriax and was content to be what he was. And by the time he understood the full meaning of the prophecy, which was not that he would rule jointly with Voriax but that he would succeed him on the throne, though never before on Majipoor had brother followed brother in such a way, it was impossible for him to embrace Voriax and reassure him of his love, for Voriax was lost to him forever, struck down by a hunter's stray bolt in the forest, and Valentine was brotherless and alone as in awe and amazement he mounted the steps of the Confalume Throne.

ELEVEN

Those final moments, that epilogue that some scribe had appended to the young Valentine's soul-record, leave Hissune dazed. He sits motionless a long while; then he rises as if in a dream and begins to leave the cubicle. Images out of that frenzied night in the forest revolve in his stunned mind: the rival brothers, the bright- eyed witch, the bare grappling bodies, the prophecy of kingship. Yes, two kings! And Hissune has spied on them in the most vulnerable moment of their lives! He feels abashed, a rare emotion for him. Perhaps the time has come for a holiday from the Register of Souls, he thinks: the power of these experiences sometimes is overwhelming, and he may well require some months of recuperation. His hands shake as he steps through the doorway.

One of the usual functionaries of the Register admitted him an hour earlier, a plump and wall-eyed man named Penagorn, and he is still at his desk; but another person stands beside him, a tall, straight-backed individual in the green-and-gold uniform of the Coronal's staff, who studies Hissune severely and says, 'May I see your identification, please?'

So this is the moment he has dreaded. They have found him out — unauthorized use of the archives — and he is to be arrested. Hissune offers his card. Probably they have known of his illegal intrusions here for a long time, but have simply been waiting for him to commit the ultimate atrocity, the playing of the Coronal's own recording. Very likely that one bears an alarm, Hissune thinks, that silently summons the minions of the Coronal, and now—

'You are the one we seek,' says the man in green and gold. 'Please come with me.'

Silently Hissune follows — out of the House of Records and across the great plaza to the entrance to the lowest levels of the Labyrinth, and past a checkpoint to a waiting floater-car, and then downward, downward, into mysterious realms Hissune has never entered. He sits motionless, numb. All the world presses down on this place; layer upon layer of the Labyrinth spirals over his head. Where are they now? Is this place the Court of Thrones, where the high ministers hold sway? Hissune does not dare ask, and his escort says not a word. Through gate after gate, passage upon passage; then the floater-car halts; six more in the uniforms of Lord Valentine's staff emerge; they conduct him into a brightly lit room and stand flanking him.

A door opens, sliding into a recess, and a golden-haired man, wide-shouldered and tall, clad in a simple white robe, enters the room. Hissune gasps.

'Your lordship—'

'Please. Please. We can do without all that bowing, Hissune. You are Hissune, aren't you?'

'I am, my lord. Somewhat older.'

'Eight years ago, was that it? Yes, eight. You were this high. And now a man. Well, I suppose I'm foolish to be surprised, but I suspected a boy even now. You're eighteen?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'How old were you when you started poking about in the Register of Souls?'

'You know of that, then, my lord?' Hissune whispers, turning crimson, staring at his feet.

'Fourteen, were you? I think that's what they told me. I've had you watched, you know. It was three or four years ago that they sent word to me that you had bluffed your way into the Register. Fourteen, pretending to be a scholar. I imagine you saw a great many things that boys of fourteen don't ordinarily see.'

Hissune's cheeks blaze. Through his mind rolls the thought, An hour ago, my lord, I saw you and your brother coupling with a long-haired witch of Ghiseldorn. He would let himself be swallowed in the depths of the world before he says such a thing aloud. But he is certain that Lord Valentine knows it anyway, and that awareness is crashing to Hissune. He cannot look up. This golden-haired man is not the Valentine of the soul-record, for that had been the dark- haired Valentine, later magicked out of his body in the way that everyone now has heard, and these days the Coronal wears other flesh; but the person within is the same, and Hissune has spied on him, and there is no hiding the truth of that.

Hissune is silent.