“This is madness,” Valentine murmured. “Let go. Back off. I mean you no harm.”
Farssal only tightened his grip.
“Who sent you?” Valentine asked. “What do you want with me?”
Silence. The mighty arms, Skandar-strong, continued inexorably pressing inward. Valentine fought for breath. Pain dazed him. He tried to force his elbows outward and snap the hold. No. Farssal’s face was ugly and distorted with effort, his eyes fierce, his lips tightly set. And slowly but measurably he was pushing Valentine to the ground.
Resisting that terrible grip was impossible. Valentine abruptly ceased trying, and let himself go limp as a bundle of rags. Farssal, surprised, twisted him to one side; Valentine allowed his knees to buckle, and offered no resistance as Farssal hurled him down. But he landed lightly, on his back with his legs coiled above him, and as Farssal lunged furiously for him, Valentine brought his feet up with all his force into the other man’s gut. Farssal gasped and grunted and staggered back, stunned. Valentine, springing to his feet, seized Farssal with arms made greatly muscular by months of juggling, and pushed him down roughly to the ground, and held him pinned there, knees against Farssal’s outspread arms, hands gripping his shoulders.
How strange this is, Valentine thought, to be fighting hand-to-hand with another being, as though we were unruly children! It had the quality of a dream.
Farssal glared at him in rage, slammed his feet angrily against the ground, tried in vain to push Valentine off.
“Talk to me now,” Valentine said. “Tell me what this means. Did you come here to kill me?”
“I will say nothing.”
“You who talked so much when we were juggling?”
“That was before.”
“What am I to do with you?” Valentine asked. “If I let you up, you’ll be at me again. But if I hold you here, I hold myself as well!”
“You can’t hold me long this way.”
Once more Farssal heaved. His strength was enormous. But Valentine’s grip on him was firm. Farssal’s face was scarlet; thick cords stood out on his throat; his eyes blazed with fury and frustration. For a long moment he lay still. Then he appeared to gather all his strength, going tense and thrusting upward. Valentine could not withstand that awesome push. There was a wild moment when neither man was in control of the situation, Valentine half flung aside, Farssal writhing and flexing as he tried to roll over. Valentine grabbed Farssal’s thick shoulders and attempted to force him back to the ground. Farssal shook him away and his fingers clawed for Valentine’s eyes. Valentine ducked below the clutching fingers. Then, without pausing to think about it, he seized Farssal by his coarse black beard and pulled him to one side, slamming his head into a rock that jutted from the moist soil close beside him.
Farssal made a heavy grunting sound and lay still.
Springing to his feet, Valentine seized the fallen dagger and stood above the other. He was trembling, not out of fear but from the release of tension, like a bowstring after the arrow has been let go. His ribs ached from that awful hug, and the muscles of his arms and shoulders were twitching and throbbing in fifty different rhythms.
“Farssal?” he said, nudging him with one foot.
No response. Dead? No. The great barrel of a chest was slowly rising and falling, and Valentine heard the sound of hoarse, ragged breathing.
Valentine hefted the knife. What now? Sleet might say, finish the fallen man off before he came to. Impossible. One did not kill, except in self-defense. One certainly did not kill an unconscious man, would-be assassin though he might be. To kill another intelligent being meant a lifetime of punishing dreams, the vengeance of the murdered. But he could scarcely just walk away, leaving Farssal to recover and come after him. Some birdnet-vine would be a useful thing to have just now. Valentine did see another sort of vine, a sturdy-looking liana with green-and-yellow stems as thick as his fingers, scrambling far up the side of the tree; and with some fierce tugging he pulled down five huge strands of it. These he wound tightly around Farssal, who stirred and moaned but did not regain consciousness. In ten minutes Valentine had him securely trussed, bound like a mummy from chest to ankles. He tested the vines and they held tight at his pull.
Valentine gathered his few possessions and hurried away.
The savage encounter in the forest had shaken him badly. Not only the fighting, though that was barbaric enough, and would disturb him a long while; but also the idea that his enemy no longer was content merely to spy on him, but was sending murderers to him. And if that is so, he thought, can I doubt any longer the truth of the visions that tell me I am Lord Valentine?
Valentine barely comprehended the concept of deliberate murder. One absolutely did not take the lives of others. In the world he knew, that was basic. Not even the usurper, overthrowing him, had dared to kill him, for fear of the dark dreams that would come; but evidently now he was willing to accept that dread risk. Unless, Valentine thought, Farssal had resolved on the assassination attempt by himself, as a ghastly way of winning the favor of his employers, when he discovered Valentine slipping away toward the inner zone of the Isle.
A somber business. Valentine shuddered. More than once, as he strode along the forest trails, he looked tensely behind him, half expecting to see the black-bearded man pursuing him again.
But no pursuers came. By mid-afternoon Valentine saw the Terrace of Surrender in the distance, and the flat white face of Third Cliff far beyond it.
No one was likely to notice an unauthorized pilgrim quietly moving about among all these millions. He entered the Terrace of Surrender with what he hoped was an innocent expression, as if he had every right to be there. It was an opulent, spacious place, with a row of lofty buildings of dark blue stone at its eastern end and a grove of bassa-trees in fruit closer at hand. Valentine added half a dozen of the tender, succulent bassa-fruits to his pack and continued to the terrace baths, where he rid himself of the grime of his first day’s trek. Growing even bolder, he found the dining-hall and helped himself to soup and stewed meat. And as casually as he had come, he slipped out the far end of the terrace just as night was descending.
Again he slept in an improvised forest bed, dozing and waking often to thoughts of Farssal, and when there was light enough he rose and went onward. The stupefying white wall of Third Cliff loomed high above the forest before him.
All day he walked, and all the next, and still he seemed no closer to the cliff. Traveling on foot through these woods, he was covering, he guessed, no more than fifteen or eighteen miles a day; might it be fifty or eighty to Third Cliff? And then, how far from there to Inner Temple? This journey might take weeks. He walked on. His stride grew ever more springy; this forest life was agreeing with him.
On the fourth day Valentine reached the Terrace of Ascent. He paused briefly to refresh himself, slept in a quiet grove, and in the morning went onward until he arrived at the base of Third Cliff.
He knew nothing of the mechanism that transported the floater-sleds up the cliff walls. From here he could see the small settlement at the floater station, a few cottages, some acolytes working in a field, sleds stacked by the foot of the cliff. He considered waiting until darkness and then trying to run the sleds, but decided against it: climbing that giddy height unaided, using equipment he did not understand, seemed too risky. Forcing the acolytes to aid him was even less to his liking.
One option remained. He tidied his travel-stained robes, donned an air of supreme authority, and advanced at a dignified pace toward the floater station.
The acolytes—there were three of them—regarded him coolly.
He said, “Are the floaters ready for operation?”
“Have you business on Third Cliff?”
“I do.” Valentine turned on them his most dazzling smile, letting them see, also, an underlying aspect of confidence, strength, total self-assurance. He said crisply, “I am Valentine of Alhanroel, under special summons to the Lady. They wait for me above to escort me
to Inner Temple.”
“Why were we not told of this?”
Valentine shrugged. “How would I know? Someone’s error, obviously. Shall I wait here until the papers arrive for you? Shall the Lady wait for me? Come, get your floaters floating!”
“Valentine of Alhanroel—special summons to the Lady—” The acolytes frowned, shook their heads, peered uncomfortably at one another. “This is all very irregular. Who did you say is to be your escort up there?”
Valentine took a deep breath. “The High Speaker Tisana of Falkynkip herself has been sent to fetch me!” he announced resonantly. “She, too, will be kept waiting while you fidget and fumble! Will you answer to her for this delay? You know what sort of temper the High Speaker has!”
“True, true,” the acolytes agreed nervously, nodding to one another as though such a person actually existed and her wrath were something greatly to be dreaded.
Valentine saw that he had won. With brisk impatient gestures he mobilized them to their tasks, and in a moment he was aboard a sled and floating serenely toward the highest and most sacred of the three cliffs of the Isle of Sleep.
10
The air atop Third Cliff was clear and pure and cool, for this level of the Isle lay thousands of feet above sea level, and up here in the eyrie of the Lady the environment was quite different from that of the two lower steps. The trees were tall and slim, with needlelike leaves and open, symmetrical boughs, and the shrubs and plants about them had a subtropical hardiness to them, thick glossy leaves and sturdy rubbery stems. Looking back, Valentine could not see the ocean from here, only the forested sprawl of Second Cliff and a hint of First Cliff far beyond.
A pathway of elegantly joined stone blocks led from the rim of Third Cliff toward the forest. Unhesitatingly Valentine set out upon it. He had no idea of the topography of this level, only that there were many terraces, and the last of them was the Terrace of Adoration, where one awaited the call to the Lady. He did not expect to get all the way to the threshold of Inner Temple unintercepted: but he would go as far as he could, and when they seized him as a trespasser he would give them his name and ask that it be conveyed to the Lady, and the rest would be subject to her mercy, her grace.
He was halted before he reached the outermost of Third Cliff’s terraces.
Five acolytes in the robes of the inner hierarchy, gold with red trim, emerged from the forest and arrayed themselves coolly across his path. There were three men, two women, all of considerable age, and they showed no fear of him at all.
One of the women, white-haired, with thin lips and dark, intense eyes, said, “I am Lorivade of the Terrace of Shadows and I ask you in the Lady’s name how you come to be here.”
“I am Valentine of Alhanroel,” he replied evenly, “and I am of the Lady’s own flesh and would have you take me to her.”
The brazen statement produced no smiles among the hierarchs.
Lorivade said, “You claim kinship with the Lady?”
“I am her son.”
“Her son’s name is Valentine, and he is Coronal on Castle Mount. What madness is this?”
“Bring to the Lady the news that her son Valentine has come to her across the Inner Sea and all of Zimroel, and that he is a fair-haired man, and I ask no more than that.”
One of the men at Lorivade’s side said, “You wear the robes of Second Cliff. It is forbidden for you to have made this ascent.”
With a sigh Valentine said, “I understand that. My ascent was unauthorized, illegal, and presumptuous. But I claim the highest reasons of state. If my message is delayed in reaching the Lady, you will answer for it.”
“We are not accustomed to threats here,” Lorivade declared.
“I make no threat. I speak only of inevitable consequences.”
A woman to the right of Lorivade said, “He’s a lunatic. We’ll have to confine him and treat him.”
“And censure the crew below,” said another man.
“And discover which terrace he’s from, and how he was allowed to wander away from it,” said a third.
“I ask only that you send my message to the Lady,” Valentine said quietly.
They surrounded him and, moving in formation, walked him briskly along the forest path to a place where three floaters were parked and a number of younger acolytes waited. Evidently they had been prepared for serious trouble. Lorivade gestured to one of the acolytes and issued brief orders; then the five hierarchs boarded one of the floaters and were borne away.
Acolytes moved toward Valentine. None too gently they caught him and propelled him toward a floater. He smiled and indicated he would make no resistance, but they held him firmly and pushed him roughly into a seat. The floater rose to full hover and, at a signal, the mounts tethered to it began to trot toward the nearby terrace.
It was a place of wide, low buildings and great stone plazas, this Terrace of Shadows, and the shadows that gave it its name were black as the darkest ink, mysterious all-engulfing pools of night that stretched in strangely significant patterns over the abstract stone statuary. But Valentine’s tour of the terrace was brief. His captors halted outside a squat stark building without windows; a cunningly fashioned door slid open on silent hinges at the lightest of touches; he was ushered inside.
The door closed and left no trace in the wall.
He was a prisoner.
The room was square, low-ceilinged, and bleak. A single dim glow-float cast a mellow greenish light. There was a cleanser, a sink, a commode, a mattress. Beyond that, nothing.
Would they send his message to the Lady?
Or would they leave him here to grow dusty, while they investigated the irregularities of his advent on Third Cliff, rummaging for weeks in the island bureaucracy?
An hour passed, two, three. Let them send an interrogator, he prayed, an inquisitor, anyone, only not this silence, this boredom, this solitude. He counted paces. The room was not precisely square: one pair of walls was a pace and a half longer than the other pair. He searched for the outlines of the doorway, and could not find them. The fit was seamless, a marvel of design that gave him little cheer. He invented dialogues and silently embellished them: Valentine and Deliamber, Valentine and the Lady, Valentine and Carabella, Valentine and Lord Valentine. But it was an amusement that soon palled.
He heard a faint whining sound and whirled to see a slot open in the wall and a tray come sliding into his cell. They had given him baked fish, a cluster of ivory-colored grapes, a beaker of cool red juice. “For this repast I thank you kindly,” he said out loud. His fingers probed the wall, seeking the places where the tray had entered: no trace.
He ate. He invented more dialogues, conversing in his mind with Sleet, with the old dream-speaker Tisana, with Zalzan Kavol, with Captain Gorzval. He asked them about their childhoods, their hopes and dreams, their political opinions, their tastes in food and drink and clothing. Again the game wore thin after a while, and he stretched out to sleep.
Sleep was thin too, a shallow doze, broken half a dozen times by white dreary spells of wakefulness. His dreams were patchy ones; through them drifted the Lady, Farssal, the King of Dreams, the Metamorph chieftain, and the hierarch Lorivade, but they offered only muddled and murky words. When he woke, finally, a tray of breakfast had appeared in the room.
A long day passed.
He had never known a day so interminable. There was nothing at all to do, nothing, nothing whatever, an endless stretch of gray nothingness. He would have juggled his dishes, but they were light and flimsy things and it would have been like juggling feathers. He tried to juggle his boots, but he had only two of those and juggling things in twos was a fool’s sport. He juggled memories instead, reliving all that had befallen him since Pidruid, but the prospect of an infinity of hours doing that dismayed him. He meditated until there was a dull buzz of fatigue between his ears. He crouched in the center of the room, trying to anticipate the moment when the next meal would arrive, but the tension he generated out of that yield
ed only feeble entertainment.
On the second night Valentine made an attempt to communicate with the Lady. He prepared himself for sleep, but as his mind began to release itself from consciousness he endeavored to slip into an intermediate place between waking and sleeping, a trance-state of sorts. It was a ticklish business, for if he concentrated too intently he would tip himself back into full wakefulness, and if he relaxed too thoroughly he would fall asleep; he balanced there a long time, at the floating-point, wishing he had taken the opportunity in some quiet part of his Zimroel journey to have Deliamber train him in these matters.
At last he sent forth his spirit.
—Mother?
He imagined his soul coursing high over the Terrace of Shadows and drifting inward, past terrace after terrace, to the core of Third Cliff, to Inner Temple, to the chamber where the Lady of the Isle rested.
—Mother, it’s Valentine. It’s your son Valentine. I have so much to tell you, Mother, and so much to ask! But you have to help me reach you.
Valentine lay still. He was wholly calm. A pure white radiance seemed to glow in his mind.
—Mother, I’m on Third Cliff, in a prison cell in the Terrace of Shadows. I’ve come so far, mother. But now I’m stopped. Send for me, mother!
—Mother—
—Lady—
—Mother—
He slept.
The radiance still glowed. He perceived the first tingling music of the dream-state, the overture, the initial sensations of contact. Visions came. No longer was he imprisoned. He lay beneath the cool white stars on a great circular platform of finely polished stone, as though an altar, and to him came a white-robed woman with lustrous dark hair, who knelt beside him and touched him lightly, saying in a tender voice, “You are my son Valentine, and I do acknowledge you before all Majipoor to be my son, and I summon you now to my side.”
That was all. When he woke he could recall nothing of the dream but that.
There was no breakfast tray for him that morning. Was it truly morning, then, or had he awakened in the middle of the night? Hours passed. No tray. Had they forgotten him? Did they plan to starve him to death? He felt a twinge of terror: was that an improvement over boredom? He thought he preferred boredom to terror, but not by much. He called out, but he knew it was useless. This place was sealed like a tomb. Like a tomb. Glumly Valentine looked at the accumulation of old trays, stacked against the far walls. He remembered the wonders and joys of food, the sausages of the Liimen, the fish that Khun and Sleet had grilled on the banks of the Steiche, the flavor of dwikka-fruit, the potent tang of fireshower wine in Pidruid. His hunger was growing intense. And he was frightened. Not bored at all now, but frightened. They had held a meeting, perhaps, and condemned him to death for overwhelming folly.