"Then why not abdicate?" I suggested, astounded at my audacity.

He smiled. "It would be cowardice. I am the elect of the Divine, and how can I reject that burden? I am destined to be a Power of Majipoor to the end of my days. But there must be some honorable way to free myself from this subterranean misery."

And I saw that the Pontifex was neither mad nor wicked nor capricious, but only lonely for the night and the mountains and the moons and the trees and the streams of the world he had been forced to abandon so that the government might be laid upon him.

Next came word, two weeks ago, that the Lady of the Isle, Lord Struin's mother and the mother of us all, had fallen ill and was not likely to recover. This was an unusual crisis that created major constitutional problems, for of course the Lady is a Power of rank equal to Pontifex and Coronal, and replacing her should hardly be done casually. Lord Struin himself was reported to be on his way from Castle Mount to confer with the Pontifex — foregoing a journey to the Isle of Sleep, for he could not possibly reach it in time to bid his mother farewell. Meanwhile Duke Guadeloom, as high spokesman of the Pontificate and chief officer of the court, had begun to compile a list of candidates for the post, which would be compared with Lord Struin's list to see if any names were on both. The counsel of the Pontifex Arioc was necessary in all of this, and we thought that would be beneficial to him in his present unsettled state by involving him more deeply in imperial matters. In at least a technical sense the dying Lady was his wife, for under the formalities of our succession law he had adopted Lord Struin as his son when choosing him to be Coronal; of course the Lady had a lawful husband of her own somewhere on Castle Mount, but you understand the legalities of the custom, do you not? Guadeloom informed the Pontifex of the impending death of the Lady and a round of governmental conferences began. I did not take part in these, since I am not of that level of authority or responsibility.

I am afraid we assumed that the gravity of the situation might cause Arioc to become less erratic in his behavior, and at least unconsciously we must have relaxed our vigilance. On the very night that the news of the death of the Lady reached the Labyrinth, the Pontifex slipped away alone for the first time since I had been assigned to keep watch over him. Past the guards, past me, past his servants — out into the interminable intricate complexities of the Labyrinth, and no one could find him. We searched all night and half the next day. I was beside myself with terror, both for him and for my career. In the greatest of apprehension I sent officers out each of the seven mouths of the Labyrinth to search that bleak and torrid desert outside; I myself visited all the rakish haunts to which I had introduced him; Guadeloom's staff prowled in places unknown to me; and throughout all this we sought to keep the populace from knowing that the Pontifex was missing. I think we must have succeeded in that.

We found him in mid-afternoon of the day after his disappearance. He was in a house in the district known as Stiamot's Teeth in the first ring of the Labyrinth and he was disguised in women's clothes. We might never have found him at all but for some quarrel over an unpaid bill, which brought proctors to the scene, and when the Pontifex was unable to identify himself satisfactorily and a man's voice was heard coming from a supposed woman the proctors had the sense to summon me, and I hurried to take custody of him. He looked appallingly strange in his robes and his bangles, but he greeted me calmly by name, acting perfectly composed and rational, and said he hoped he had not caused me great inconvenience.

I expected Guadeloom to demote me. But the duke was in a forgiving mood, or else he was too bound up in the larger crisis to care about my lapse, for he said nothing whatever about the fact that I had let the Pontifex get out of his bedchamber. "Lord Struin arrived this morning," Guadeloom told me, looking harried and weary. "Naturally he wanted to meet with the Pontifex at once, but we told him that Arioc was asleep and it was unwise to disturb him — this while half my people were out searching for him. It pains me to lie to the Coronal, Calintane."

"The Pontifex is genuinely asleep in his chambers now," I said.

"Yes. Yes. And there he will stay, I think."

"I will make every effort to see to that."

"That's not what I mean," said Guadeloom. "The Pontifex Arioc is plainly out of his mind. Crawling through laundry chutes, creeping around the city at night, decking himself out in female finery — it goes beyond mere eccentricity, Calintane. Once we have this business of the new Lady out of the way, I'm going to propose that we confine him permanently to his quarters under strong guard — for his own protection, Calintane, his own protection — and hand the Pontifical duties over to a regency. There's precedent for that. I've been through the records. When Barhold was Pontifex he fell ill of swamp fever and it affected his mind, and—"

"Sir," I said, "I don't believe the Pontifex is insane."

Guadeloom frowned. "How else could you characterize one who does what he's been doing?"

"They are the acts of a man who has been king too long, and whose soul rebels against all that he must continue to bear. But I have come to know him well, and I venture to say that what he expresses by these escapades is a torment of the soul, but not any kind of madness."

It was an eloquent speech and, if I have to say it myself, courageous, for I am a junior counsellor and Guadeloom was at that moment the third most powerful figure in the realm, behind only Arioc and Lord Struin. But there comes a time when one must put diplomacy and ambition and guile aside, and simply speak the plain truth; and the idea of confining the unhappy Pontifex like a common lunatic, when he already suffered great pain from his confinement in the Labyrinth alone, was horrifying to me. Guadeloom was silent a long while and I suppose I should have been frightened, speculating whether I would be dismissed altogether from his service or simply sent down to the record-keeping halls to spend the remainder of my life shuffling papers, but I was calm, totally calm, as I awaited his reply.

Then came a knock at the door: a messenger, bearing a note sealed with the great starburst that was the Coronal's personal seal. Duke Guadeloom ripped it open and read the message and read it again, and read it a third time, and I have never seen such a look of incredulity and horror pass over a human face as crossed his then. His hands were shaking; his face was without color.

He looked at me and said in a strangled voice, "This is in the Coronal's own hand, informing me that the Pontifex has left his quarters and has gone to the Place of Masks, where he has issued a decree so stupefying that I cannot bring myself to frame the words with my own lips." He handed me the note. "Come," he said, "I think we should hasten to the Place of Masks."

He ran out, and I followed, trying desperately to glance at the note as I went. But Lord Struin's handwriting is jagged and difficult, and Guadeloom was moving with phenomenal speed, and the corridors were winding and the way poorly lit; so I could only get a snatch of the content here and there, something about a proclamation, a new Lady designated, an abdication. Whose abdication if not that of the Pontifex Arioc? Yet he had said to me out of the depths of his spirit that it would be cowardice to turn his back on the destiny that had chosen him to be a Power of the realm.

Breathless I came to the Place of Masks, a zone of the Labyrinth that I find disturbing at the best of times, for the great slit-eyed faces that rise on those gleaming marble plinths seem to me figures out of nightmare. Guadeloom's footsteps clattered on the stone floor, and mine doubled the sound of his a good way behind, for though he was more than twice my age he was moving like a demon. Up ahead I heard shouts, laughter, applause. And then I saw a gathering of perhaps a hundred fifty citizens, among whom I recognized several of the chief ministers of the Pontificate. Guadeloom and I barged into the group and halted only when we saw figures in the green-and-gold uniform of the Coronal's service, and then the Coronal himself. Lord Struin looked furious and dazed at the same time, a man in shock.