"We should be at the town hall now," she said.

"Yes. Of course. Of course."

The sound of those mysterious bells still tolled in his spirit.

But he had other responsibilities now. The tooth of Maazmoorn must wait a little while longer.

At the municipal meeting-hall an hour later Valentine sat upon a high platform and the farmers filed slowly before him, making their obeisance and bringing him their tools to be blessed—scythes, hoes, humble things like that—as though the Pontifex could by the mere laying on of hands restore the prosperity that this blight-stricken valley formerly had known. He wondered if that were some ancient belief of these rural folk, nearly all of them Ghayrogs. Probably not, he decided: no reigning Pontifex had ever visited Prestimion Vale or any other part of Zimroel before, and there was no reason why any would have been expected to.

Most likely this was a tradition that these people had invented on the spur of the moment, when they had learned that he would pass their way.

But that did not trouble him. They brought him their tools, and he touched the handle of this one and the blade of that one and the shaft of another, and smiled his warmest smile, and offered them words of heartfelt hope that sent them away glowing.

Toward the end of the evening there was a stirring in the hall and Valentine, glancing up, saw a strange procession coming toward him. A Ghayrog woman who, judging by her almost colorless scales and the drooping serpents of her hair, must have been of the most extreme old age, was walking up the aisle slowly between two younger women of her race. She appeared to be blind and quite feeble, but yet she stood fiercely erect, and advanced step by step as though cutting her way through walls of stone.

"It is Aximaan Threysz!" whispered the planter Nitikkimal. "You know of her, your majesty?"

"Alas, no."

"She is the most famous lusavender planter of them all—a fount of knowledge, a woman of the highest wisdom. Near to death, so they say, but she insisted on seeing you tonight."

"Lord Valentine!" she called out in a clear ringing tone.

"Lord Valentine no longer," he replied, "but Valentine Pontifex now. And you do me great honor by this visit, Aximaan Threysz. Your fame precedes you."

"Valentine—Pontifex—"

"Come, give me your hand," said Valentine.

He took her withered, ancient claws in his, and held them tightly. Her eyes met his, staring straight into them, although he could tell from the clearness of her pupils that she saw nothing.

"They said you were a usurper," she declared. "A little red-faced man came here, and told us you were not the true Coronal. But I would not listen to him, and went away from this place. I did not know if you were true or false, but I thought he was not the one to speak of such things, that red-faced man."

"Sempeturn, yes. I have met him," Valentine said. "He believes now that I was the true Coronal, and am the true Pontifex these days."