As Valentine was nearing the threshold of the bridge, a thin, dark-haired woman in a faded orange gown detached herself from the onlookers and came rushing toward him, crying, “Majesty! Majesty!” She managed to get within a dozen feet of him before Lisamon Hultin stopped her, catching her by one arm and swinging her off her feet as though she were a child’s doll. “No—wait—” the woman murmured, as Lisamon seemed about to hurl her back into the throng. “I mean no harm—I have a gift for the Pontifex—”
“Put her down, Lisamon,” Valentine said calmly.
Frowning suspiciously, Lisamon released her, but remained close beside the Pontifex, poised at her readiest. The woman was trembling so that she could barely keep her footing. Her lips moved, but for a moment she did not speak. Then she said, “You are truly Lord Valentine?”
“I was Lord Valentine, yes. I am Valentine Pontifex now.”
“Of course. Of course. I knew that. They said you were dead, but I never believed that. Never!” She bowed. “Your majesty!” She was still trembling. She seemed fairly young, though it was hard to be certain, for hunger and hardship had etched deep lines in her face, and her skin was even paler than Sleet’s. She held forth her hand. “I am Millilain,” she said. “I wanted to give you this.”
What looked like a dagger of bone, long, slender, tapering to a sharp point, lay in her palm.
“An assassin, see!” Lisamon roared, and moved as if to pounce once again.
Valentine held up his hand. “Wait,” he said. “What do you have there, Millilain?”
“A tooth—a holy tooth—a tooth of the water-king Maazmoorn—”
“Ah.”
“To guard you. To guide you. He is the greatest of the water-kings. This tooth is precious, your majesty.” She was shaking now. “I thought at first it was wrong to worship them, that it was blasphemy, that it was criminal. But then I returned, I listened, I learned. They are not evil, the water-kings, your majesty! They are the true masters! We belong to them, we and all others who live on Majipoor. And I bring you the tooth of Maazmoorn, your majesty, the greatest of them, the high Power—”
Softly Carabella said, “We should be moving onward, Valentine.”
“Yes,” he said. He put forth his hand and gently took the tooth from the woman. It was perhaps ten inches long, strangely chilly to the touch, gleaming as though with an inner fire. As he wrapped his hand about it he thought, only for a moment, that he heard the sound of far-off bells, or what might have been bells, though their melody was like that of no bells he had ever heard. Gravely he said, “Thank you, Millilain. I will treasure this.”
“Your majesty,” she whispered, and went stumbling away, back into the crowd.
He continued on, slowly across the bridge into Khyntor.
The crossing took an hour or more. Long before he reached the far side Valentine could see that a crowd had gathered over there to await him: and it was no mere mob, he realized, for those who stood in the vanguard were dressed identically, in uniforms of green and gold, the colors of the Coronal. This was an army, then—the army of the Coronal Lord Sempeturn.
Zalzan Kavol looked back, frowning. “Your majesty?” he said.
“Keep going,” said Valentine. “When you reach the front row of them, step back and let me through, and remain at my side.”
He felt Carabella’s hand closing in fear on his wrist.
“Do you remember,” he said, “early in the war of restoration, when we were coming into Pendiwane, and found a militia of ten thousand waiting for us at the gate, and there were just a few dozen of us?”
“This is not Pendiwane. Pendiwane was not in rebellion against you. There was no false Coronal waiting at the gate for you, but only a fat terrified provincial mayor.”
“It is all the same,” Valentine said.
He came to the bridge’s end. The way was blocked there by the troops in green and gold. An officer in the front line whose eyes were glittering with fear called out hoarsely, “Who are you that would enter Khyntor without leave of Lord Sempeturn?”
“I am the Pontifex Valentine, and I need no one’s leave to enter a city of Majipoor.”
“The Coronal Lord Sempeturn will not have you come further on this bridge, stranger!”
Valentine smiled. “How can the Coronal, if Coronal he be, gainsay the word of the Pontifex? Come, fellow, stand aside!”
“That I will not do. For you are no more Pontifex than I.”
“Do you deny me? I think your Coronal must do that with his own voice,” said Valentine quietly.
He began to walk forward, flanked by Zalzan Kavol and Lisamon Hultin. The officer who had challenged him threw uncertain glances at the soldiers to his right and left in the front line; he drew himself up rigidly, and so did they; their hands went ostentatiously to the butts of the weapons they carried. Valentine continued to advance. They stepped back half a pace, and then half a pace more, while continuing to glare sternly at him. Valentine did not halt. The front line was melting away to this side and that, now, as he marched steadfastly into it.
Then the ranks opened and a short stocky man with rough reddish cheeks emerged to face Valentine. He was clad in a Coronal’s white robe over a green doublet, and he wore the starburst crown, or a reasonable likeness of it, in his great wild tuft of black hair.
He held up both hands with his palms outstretched and cried loudly, “Enough! No further, impostor!”
“And by whose authority do you issue such orders?” Valentine asked amiably.
“My own, for I am the Coronal Lord Sempeturn!”
“Ah, you are the Coronal, and I am an impostor? I had not understood that. And by whose will are you Coronal, then, Lord Sempeturn?”
“By the will of the Divine, who has appointed me to rule in this time of a vacancy on Castle Mount!”
“I see,” said Valentine. “But I know of no such vacancy. There is a Coronal, Lord Hissune by name, who holds office by legitimate appointment.”
“An impostor can make no legitimate appointments,” Sempeturn rejoined.
“But I am Valentine who was Coronal before him, and who now is Pontifex—by will of the Divine also, so it is generally believed.”
Sempeturn grinned darkly. “You were an impostor when you claimed to be Coronal, and you are an impostor now!”
“Can that be so? Was I acclaimed wrongly, then, by all the princes and lords of the Mount, and by the Pontifex Tyeveras, may he rest always at the Source, and by my own mother the Lady?”
“I say you deceived them all, and the curse that has descended on Majipoor is best proof of that. For the Valentine who was made Coronal was a dark-complected man, and look at you—your hair is bright as gold!”
Valentine laughed. “But that is an old story, friend! Surely you know of the witchery that deprived me of my body and put me into this one!”
“So you say.”
“And so the Powers of the realm agreed.”
“Then you are a master of deceit,” said Sempeturn. “But I will waste no more time with you, for I have urgent tasks. Go: get you back into Hot Khyntor, and board your ship and sail yourself off down the river. If you are found in this province by this hour tomorrow you will regret it most sorely.”
“I will leave soon enough, Lord Sempeturn. But first I must ask a service of you. These soldiers of yours—the Knights of Dekkeret, do you call them?—we have need of them to the east, on the borders of Piurifayne, where the Coronal Lord Hissune is assembling an army. Go to him, Lord Sempeturn. Place yourself under his command. Do what he asks of you. We are aware of what you have accomplished in gathering these troops, and we would not deprive you of leadership over them: but you must make yourself part of the greater effort.”