The big pentagonal plaza in front of the House of Records marked the lower limit of the public zone of the Labyrinth. Below, all was reserved for government officials. Hissune passed beneath the great green-glowing screen on the wall of the House of Records that listed all the Pontifexes, all the Coronals—the two rows of inscriptions stretching up virtually beyond the reach of the keenest eye, somewhere far up there the names of Dvorn and Melikand and Barhold and Stiamot of thousands of years ago, and down here the entries for Kinniken and Ossier and Tyeveras, Malibor and Voriax and Valentine—and on the far side of the imperial roster Hissune presented his credentials to the puffy-faced masked Hjorts who kept the gateway, and down he went into the deepest realm of the Labyrinth. Past the warrens and burrows of the middle bureaucracy, past the courts of the high ministers, past the tunnels that led to the great ventilating systems on which all this depended. Again and again he was stopped at checkpoints and asked to identify himself. Here in the imperial sector they took matters of security very seriously. Somewhere in these depths the Pontifex himself had his lair—a huge spherical glass globe, so it was said, in which the crazy old monarch sat enthroned amidst the network of life-support mechanisms that had kept him alive far past his time. Did they fear assassins? Hissune wondered. If what he had heard was true, it would be merely the Divine's own mercy to pull the plug on the old Pontifex and let poor Tyeveras return at last to the Source: Hissune could not understand what possible reason there could be to keep him living on like that, decade after decade, in such madness, in such senility.
At last, breathless and frayed, Hissune arrived at the threshold of the Great Hall in the uttermost depths of the Labyrinth. He was hideously late, perhaps an hour.
Three colossal shaggy Skandars in the uniform of the Coronal's guard barred his way. Hissune, shriveling under the fierce supercilious stares of the gigantic four-armed beings, had to fight back the impulse to drop to his knees and beg their forgiveness. Somehow he regained a shred or two of his self-respect, and, trying his best to stare back just as superciliously—no easy chore, when he had to meet the gaze of creatures nine feet high—he announced himself as a member of Lord Valentine's staff, and an invited guest.
He half expected them to burst into guffaws and swat him away like some little buzzing insect. But no: gravely they examined his epaulet, and consulted some documents they held, and favored him with great sweeping bows, and sent him onward through the huge brass-bound doorway.
Finally! The Coronal's banquet!
Just within the door stood a resplendently garbed Hjort with great goggling golden eyes and bizarre orange-daubed whiskers sprouting from his rough-skinned grayish face. This astonishing-looking individual was Vinorkis, the Coronal's majordomo, who saluted now with a great flourish and cried, "Ah! The Initiate Hissune!"