Suddenly the rear end of the wagon was ablaze. Those within came scrambling out, Lisamon Hultin leading the way with her vibration-sword high. Valentine found himself attacked by a Metamorph wearing his own face; he kicked the creature away, pivoted, slashed a second one with the knife that was his only weapon. That was strange, to inflict a wound. In weird fascination, he watched the bronze-hued fluid begin to flow.
The Valentine Metamorph came at him again. Claws went for his eyes, Valentine dodged, twisted, stabbed. The blade sank deep and the Metamorph reeled back, clutching at its chest. Valentine trembled in shock, but only for an instant. He turned to confront the next.
This was a new experience for him, this fighting and killing, and it made his soul ache. But to be gentle now was to invite a quick death. He thrust and cut, thrust and cut. From behind him he heard Carabella call, “How are you doing?”
“Holding—my—own—” he grunted.
Zalzan Kavol, seeing his magnificent wagon on fire, howled and caught a Metamorph by the waist and hurled it into the pyre; two more rushed at him, but another Skandar seized them and snapped them like sticks with each pair of hands. In the frantic melee Valentine caught sight of Carabella wrestling with a Metamorph, forcing it to the ground with the powerful forearm muscles years of juggling had developed; and there was Sleet, ferociously vindictive, pounding another with his boots in savage joy. But the wagon was burning. The wagon was burning. The woods were full of Metamorphs, night was swiftly coming on, the rain was a torrent, and the wagon was burning.
As the heat of the fire increased, the center of the battle shifted from the roadside to the forest, and matters became even more confused, for in the darkness it was hard to tell friend from foe. The Metamorph trick of shapeshifting added another complication, although in the frenzy of the fight they were unable to hold their transformations for long, and what seemed to be Sleet, or Shanamir, or Zalzan Kavol, reverted quickly to its native form.
Valentine fought savagely. He was slippery with his own sweat and the blood of Metamorphs, and his heart hammered mightily with the furious exertion. Panting, gasping, never still an instant, he waded through the tangle of enemies with a zeal that astonished him, never pausing for an instant’s rest. Thrust and cut, thrust and cut—
The Metamorphs were armed with only the simplest of weapons, and, though there seemed to be dozens of them, their numbers soon were dwindling rapidly. Lisamon Hultin was doing awful destruction with her vibration-sword, swinging it two-handed and lopping off the boughs of trees as well as the limbs of Metamorphs. The surviving Skandars, spraying energy-bolts wildly around the scene, had ignited half a dozen trees and had littered the ground with fallen Metamorphs. Sleet was maiming and slaughtering as if he could in one wild minute avenge himself for all the pain he fancied the Metamorphs had brought upon him. Khun and Vinorkis too were fighting with passionate energy.
As suddenly as the ambush had begun, it was over.
By the light of the fires Valentine could see dead Metamorphs everywhere. Two dead Skandars lay among them. Lisamon Hultin bore a bloody but shallow wound on one thigh; Sleet had lost half his jerkin and had taken several minor cuts; Shanamir had clawmarks across his cheek. Valentine too felt some trifling scratches and nicks, and his arms had a leaden ache of fatigue. But he had not been seriously harmed. Deliamber, though—where was Deliamber? The Vroon wizard was nowhere to be seen. In anguish Valentine turned to Carabella and said, “Did the Vroon stay in the wagon?”
“I thought we all came out when it burst afire.”
Valentine frowned. In the silence of the forest the only sounds were the terrible hissing and crackling of fire and the quiet mocking patter of the rain. “Deliamber?” Valentine called. “Deliamber, where are you?”
“Here,” answered a high-pitched voice from above. Valentine looked up and saw the sorcerer clinging to a sturdy bough, fifteen feet off the ground. “Warfare is not one of my skills,” Deliamber explained blandly, swinging outward and letting himself drop into Lisamon Hultin’s arms.
Carabella said, “What do we do now?”
Valentine realized that she was asking him. He was in command. Zalzan Kavol, kneeling by his brothers’ bodies, seemed stunned by their deaths and by the loss of his precious wagon.
He said, “We have no choice but to cut through the forest. If we try to take the main road we’ll meet more Metamorphs. Shanamir, what of the mounts?”
“Dead,” the boy sobbed. “Every one. The Metamorphs—”
“On foot, then. A long wet journey it will be, too. Deliamber, how far do you think we are from the River Steiche?”
“A few days’ journey, I suspect. But we have no sure notion of the direction.”
“Follow the slope of the land,” Sleet said. “Rivers won’t lie uphill from here. If we keep going east we’re bound to hit it.”
“Unless a mountain stands in our way,” Deliamber remarked.
“We’ll find the river,” Valentine said firmly. “The Steiche flows into the Zimr at Ni-moya—is that right?”
“Yes,” said Deliamber, “but its flow is turbulent.”
“We’ll have to chance it. A raft, I suppose, will be the quickest to build. Come. If we stay here much longer we’ll be set upon again.”
They could salvage nothing from the wagon, neither clothing nor food nor belongings nor their juggling gear—all lost, every scrap, everything but what had been on them when they came forth to meet the ambushers. To Valentine that was no great loss; but to some of the others, particularly the Skandars, it was overwhelming. The wagon had been their home a long while.
It was difficult to get Zalzan Kavol to move from the spot. He seemed frozen, unable to abandon the bodies of his brothers and the ruin of his wagon. Gently Valentine urged him to his feet. Some of the Metamorphs, he said, might well have escaped in the skirmish; they could soon return with reinforcements; it was perilous to remain here. Quickly they dug shallow graves in the soft forest floor and laid Thelkar and Heitrag Kavol to rest. Then, in steady rain and gathering darkness, they set out in what they hoped was an easterly direction.
For over an hour they walked, until it became too dark to see; then they camped miserably in a little soggy huddle, clinging to one another until dawn. At first light they rose, cold and stiff, and picked their way onward through the tangled forest. The rain, at least, had stopped. The forest here was less of a jungle, and gave them little challenge, except for an occasional swift stream that had to be forded with care. At one of those, Carabella lost her footing and was fished out by Lisamon Hultin; at another it was Shanamir who was swept downstream, and Khun who plucked him to safety. They walked until midday, and rested an hour or two, making a scrappy meal of raw roots and berries. Then they went on until darkness.
And passed two more days in the same fashion.
And on the third came to a grove of dwikka-trees, eight fat squat giants in the forest, with monstrous swollen fruits hanging from them.
“Food!” Zalzan Kavol bellowed.
“Food sacred to the forest-brethren,” Lisamon Hultin said. “Be careful!”
The famished Skandar, nevertheless, was on the verge of cutting down one of the enormous fruits with his energy-thrower when Valentine said sharply, “No! I forbid it!”
Zalzan Kavol stared incredulously. For an instant his old habits of command asserted themselves, and he glared at Valentine as if about to strike him. But he kept his temper in check.
“Look,” Valentine said.
Forest-brethren were emerging from behind every tree. They were armed with their dart-blowers; and seeing the slender apelike creatures encircling them, Valentine in his weariness felt almost willing to be slain. But only for a moment. He recovered his spirits and said to Lisamon Hultin, “Ask them if we may have food and guides to the Steiche. If they ask a price, we can juggle for them with stones, or pieces of fruit, I suppose.”
The warrior-woman, twice as tall as the forest-brethren, went into their midst
and talked with them a long time. She was smiling when she returned.
“They are aware,” she said, “that we are the ones who freed their brothers in Ilirivoyne!”
“Then we are saved!” cried Shanamir.
“News travels swiftly in this forest,” Valentine said.
Lisamon Hultin went on, “We are their guests. They will feed us. They will guide us.”
That night the wanderers ate richly on dwikka-fruit and other forest delicacies, and there was actually laughter among them for the first time since the ambush. Afterward the forest-brethren performed a sort of dance for them, a monkeyish prancing thing, and Sleet and Carabella and Valentine responded with impromptu juggling using objects collected in the forest. Afterward Valentine slept a deep, satisfying sleep. In his dreams he had the gift of flight, and saw himself soaring to the summit of Castle Mount.
And in the morning a party of chattering forest-brethren led them to the River Steiche, three hours’ journey from the dwikka-tree grove, and bade them farewell with little twittering cries.
The river was a sobering sight. It was broad, though nothing remotely like the mighty Zimr, and it sped northward with startling haste, flowing so energetically that it had carved out a deep bed bordered in many places by high rocky walls. Here and there ugly stone snags rose above the water, and downstream Valentine could see white eddies of rapids.
The building of rafts took a day and a half. They cut down the young slim trees that grew by the riverbank, trimmed and trued them with knives and sharp stones, lashed them together with vines. The results were hardly elegant, but the rafts, though crude, did look reasonably riverworthy. There were three altogether—one for the four Skandars, one for Khun, Vinorkis, Lisamon Hultin, and Sleet, and one occupied by Valentine, Carabella, Shanamir, and Deliamber.
“We will probably become separated as we go downriver,” Sleet said. “We should choose a meeting-place in Ni-moya.”
Deliamber said, “The Steiche and the Zimr flow together at a place called Nissimorn. There is a broad, sandy beach there. Let us meet at Nissimorn Beach.”
“At Nissimorn Beach, yes,” Valentine said.
He cut loose the cord that bound his raft to the shore, and was carried off into the river.
The first day’s journey was uneventful. There were rapids, but not difficult ones, and they poled safely past them. Carabella showed skill at handling the raft, and deftly steered them around the occasional rocky patches.
After a time the rafts became separated, Valentine’s taking some subcurrent and moving rapidly ahead of the other two. In the morning he waited, hoping the others would catch up. But there was no sign of them and eventually he decided to depart.
On, on, on, for the most part swept easily along, with occasional moments of anxiety in the white-water stretches. By afternoon of the second day the course was becoming rougher. The land seemed to dip here, sloping downward as the Zimr drew near, and the river, following the line of descent, plunged and bucked. Valentine began to worry about waterfalls ahead. They had no charts, no notion of dangers: they took everything as it came. He could only trust to luck that this swift water would deliver them safely to Ni-moya.
And then? By boat to Piliplok, and by pilgrim-ship to the Isle of Sleep, and somehow procure an interview with the Lady his mother, and then? And then? How did one claim the Coronal’s throne, when one’s face was not the face of Lord Valentine the rightful ruler? By what claim, by what authority? It seemed to Valentine an impossible quest. He might be better remaining here in the forest, ruling over his little band. They, readily enough, accepted him for what he thought himself to be; but in that world of billions of strangers, in that vast empire of giant cities that lay beyond the edge of the horizon, how, how, how would he ever manage to convince the unbelievers that he, Valentine the juggler, was—
No. These thoughts were foolish. He had never, not since he had appeared, shorn of memory and past, on the verge overlooking Pidruid, felt the need to rule over others; and if he had come to command this little group, it was more by natural gift and by Zalzan Kavol’s default than out of any overt desire on his part. And yet he was in command, however tentatively and delicately. So it would be as he traveled onward through Majipoor. He would take one step at a time, and do that which seemed right and proper, and perhaps the Lady would guide him, and if the Divine so willed it he would one day stand again on Castle Mount, and if that was not part of the great plan, why, that would be acceptable also. There was nothing to fear. The future would unroll serenely in its own true course, as it had done since Pidruid. And—
“Valentine!” Carabella shouted.
The river seemed to sprout giant stony teeth. There were boulders everywhere, and monstrous white whirlpools, and, just ahead, an ominous tumbling descent, a place where the Steiche leaped out into space and went roaring down a series of steps to a valley far below. Valentine gripped his pole, but no pole could help him now. It lodged between two snags and was ripped from his grasp; a moment later there was a ghastly grinding sound as the flimsy raft, battered by submerged rocks, swung around at right angles to its course and split apart. He was hurled into the chilly stream and swept forward like a cork. For a moment he grasped Carabella by the wrist; but then the current pulled her free, and as he clutched desperately for her he was engulfed by the swift water and driven under.
Gasping and choking, Valentine struggled to get his head above the water. When he did, he was already far downstream. The wreckage of the raft was nowhere in sight.
“Carabella?” he yelled. “Shanamir? Deliamber? Hoy! Hoy!”
He roared until his voice was ragged, but the booming of the rapids so thoroughly covered his cries that he could scarcely hear them himself. A terrible sense of pain and loss numbed his spirit. All gone, then? His friends, his beloved Carabella, the wily little Vroon, the clever, cocky boy Shanamir, all swept to death in an instant? No. No. Unthinkable. That was an agony far worse than this business, still unreal to him, of being a Coronal thrust from the Castle. What did that mean? These were beings of flesh and blood, dear to him; that was only a title and power. He would not stop calling their names as the river threw him about. “Carabella!” he shouted. “Shanamir!”
Valentine clawed at rocks, trying to halt his willy-nilly descent, but he was in the heart of the rapids now, buffeted and battered by the current and by the stones of the riverbed. Dazed and exhausted, half paralyzed by grief, Valentine gave up struggling and let himself be carried along, down the giant staircase of the river, a tiny plaything spinning and bouncing along. He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms over his head, attempting to minimize the surface he presented to the rocks. The power of the river was awesome. So here is how it ends, he thought, the grand adventure of Valentine of Majipoor, once Coronal, later wandering juggler, now about to be broken to bits by the impersonal and uncaring forces of nature. He commended himself to the Lady whom he thought to be his mother, and gulped air, and went heels over head, head over heels, down and down and down, and struck something with frightening force and thought this must be the end, only it was not the end, and struck something again that gave him an agonizing blow in the ribs, knocking the air from him, and he must have lost consciousness for a time, for he felt no further pain.
And then he found himself lying on a pebble-strewn strand, in a quiet sidestream of the river. It seemed to him that he had been shaken in a giant dice-box for hours, and cast up at random, discarded and useless. His body ached in a thousand places. His lungs felt soggy when he breathed. He was shivering and his skin was covered with goose bumps. And he was alone, under a vast cloudless sky, at the edge of some unknown wilderness, with civilization some unknown distance ahead and his friends perhaps dashed to death on the boulders.
But he was alive. That much was sure. Alone, battered, helpless, grief-stricken, lost … but alive. The adventure, then, was not ended. Slowly, with infinite effort, Valentine hauled himself out of the surf and tottered to t
he riverbank, and let himself carefully down on a wide flat rock, and with numb fingers undid his clothing and stretched out to dry himself under the warm friendly sun. He looked toward the river, hoping to see Carabella come swimming along, or Shanamir with the wizard perched on his shoulder. No one. But that doesn’t mean they’re dead, he told himself. They may have been cast up on farther shores. I’ll rest here for a time, Valentine resolved, and then I’ll go searching for the others, and then, with them or without, I’ll set out onward, toward Ni-moya, toward Piliplok, toward the Isle of the Lady, onward, onward, onward toward Castle Mount or whatever else lies ahead for me. Onward. Onward. Onward.
PART THREE
The Book of the Isle of Sleep
1
For what felt like months or perhaps years Valentine lay sprawled naked on his warm flat rock on the pebbly beach where the unruly River Steiche had deposited him. The roar of the river was a constant drone in his ears, oddly soothing. The sunlight enfolded him in a hazy golden nimbus, and he told himself that its touch would heal his bruises and abrasions and contusions, if only he lay still long enough. Vaguely he knew he ought to rise and see about shelter, and begin to search for his companions, but he barely could find the strength to turn from one side to the other.
This was no way, he knew, for a Coronal of Majipoor to conduct himself. Such self-indulgence might be acceptable for merchants or tavernkeepers or even jugglers, but a higher discipline rested upon one who had pretensions to govern. Therefore get to your feet, he told himself, and clothe your body, and start walking northward along the riverbank until you reach those who can help you regain your lofty place. Yes. Up, Valentine! But he remained where he was. He had expended every scrap of energy in him, Coronal or not, during the helter-skelter plunge down the rapids. Lying here like this, he had a powerful sense of the immensity of Majipoor, its many thousands of miles of circumference stretching out beneath his limbs, a planet large enough comfortably to house twenty billion people without crowding, a planet of enormous cities and wondrous parks and forest preserves and sacred districts and agricultural territories, and it seemed to him that if he took the trouble to rise, it would be necessary for him to cover all that colossal domain on foot, step by step by step. It seemed simpler to stay where he was.
Lord Valentine's Castle: Book One of the Majipoor Cycle Page 26
