"I evade nothing, mother! But if I bottle myself up in the Labyrinth, what purpose will that achieve?"

"Do you think a Pontifex is useless? How strange a view of our commonwealth you must have, if you think that."

"I understand the value of the Pontifex."

"Yet you have ruled without one throughout your whole reign."

"It was not my fault that Tyeveras was senile when I came to the throne. What was I to do, go on to the Labyrinth immediately upon becoming Coronal? I had no Pontifex because I was not given one. And the time was not right for me to take Tyeveras's place. I had work of a more visible kind to do. I still have."

"You owe Majipoor a Pontifex, Valentine."

"Not yet. Not yet."

"How long will you say that?"

"I must remain in sight. I mean to make contact with the Danipiur somehow, mother, and bring her into a league with me against this Faraataa, our enemy, who will wreck all the world in the name of regaining it for his people. If I am in the Labyrinth, how can I—"

"Do you mean you will go to Piurifayne a second time?"

"That would only fail a second time. All the same, I see it as essential that I negotiate with the Metamorphs. The Danipiur must comprehend that I am not like the kings of the past, that I recognize new truths. That I believe we can no longer repress the Metamorph in the soul of Majipoor, but must recognize it, and admit it to our midst, and incorporate it in us all."

"And this can only be done while you are Coronal?"

"So I am convinced, mother."

"Examine your convictions again, then," said the Lady, in an inexorable voice. "If indeed they are convictions, and not merely a loathing for the Labyrinth."

"I detest the Labyrinth, and make no secret of it. But I will go to it, obediently if not gladly, when the time comes. I say the time is not yet at hand. It may be close, but it is not yet here."

"May it not be long in coming, then. Let Tyeveras sleep at last, Valentine. And let it be soon."

5

It was a small triumph, Faraataa thought, but one well worth savoring, this summons to meet with the Danipiur. So many years an outcast, flitting miserably through the jungle, so many years of being mocked when he was not being ignored; and now the Danipiur had with the greatest of diplomatic courtesy invited him to attend her at the House of Offices in Ilirivoyne.

He had been tempted at first to reverse the invitation, and tell her loftily to come to him in New Velalisier. After all, she was a mere tribal functionary whose title had no pre-Exile pedigree, and he, by the acclamation of multitudes, was the Prince To Come and the King That Is, who spoke daily with water-kings and commanded loyalties far more intense than any the Danipiur could claim. But then he reconsidered: how much more effective it would be, he told himself, to march at the head of his thousands into Ilirivoyne, and let the Danipiur and all her flunkeys see what power he held! So be it, he thought. He agreed to go to Ilirivoyne.