— I, Faraataa?

— We must get even closer to him. The news must reach him sooner or later through legitimate channels. Let it come from us first, and let that be our way of approach to him . You will be his adviser on the diseases of plants, Y-Uulisaan. Tell him the news; and aid him in the struggle against these blights. We should know what counterattacks are planned. Victory is ours, Y-Uulisaan.

— Victory is ours, Faraataa!

14

The message was more than an hour old when it finally reached the high spokesman Hornkast in his private lair far uplevel, just outside the Sphere of Triple Shadows: Meet me in the throne room right away.

— Sepulthrove

The high spokesman glared at the messengers. They knew he was never to be disturbed in this chamber except for a matter of the greatest urgency.

"What is it? Is he dying? Dead already?"

"We were not told, sir."

"Did Sepulthrove seem unusually disturbed?"

"He seemed uneasy, sir, but I have no idea—"

"All right. Never mind. I'll be with you in a moment."

Hastily Hornkast cleansed himself and dressed. If it has truly come, he thought sourly, it comes at a most inconvenient moment. Tyeveras has waited at least a dozen decades for his dying; could he not have held off another hour or two? If it has truly come.

The golden-haired woman who had been visiting him said, "Shall I stay here until you come back?"

He shook his head. "There's no telling how long this will take. If the Pontifex has died—"

The woman made the Labyrinth sign. "The Divine forbid!"

"Indeed," said Hornkast drily.

He went out. The Sphere of Triple Shadows, rising high above the gleaming obsidian walls of the plaza, was in its brightest phase, casting an eerie blue-white light that obliterated all sensations of dimensionality or depth: the passersby looked like mere paper dolls, floating on a gentle breeze. With the messengers beside him and hard pressed to keep up with his pace, Hornkast hastened across the plaza to the private lift, moving, as always, with a vigor that belied his eighty years.

The descent to the imperial zone was interminable.

Dead? Dying? Inconceivable. Hornkast realized that he had never taken into account the contingency of an unexpected natural death for Tyeveras. Sepulthrove had assured him that the machinery would not fail, that the Pontifex could be kept alive, if need be, another twenty or thirty years, perhaps as much as fifty.

And the high spokesman had assumed that his death, when it came, would be the outcome of a carefully arrived at political decision, not something awkwardly happening without warning in the middle of an otherwise ordinary morning.

And if it had? Lord Valentine must be summoned at once from the westlands. Ah, how he would hate that, dragged into the Labyrinth before he had fairly begun his processional! I will have to resign, of course, Hornkast told himself.

Valentine will want his own high spokesman: that little scar-faced man Sleet, no doubt, or even the Vroon. Hornkast considered what it would be like to train one of them in the duties of the office he had held so long. Sleet full of contempt and condescension, or the wizardy little Vroon, those huge glittering eyes, that beak, those tentacles—