Lord Valentine's Castle

by Robert Silverberg

  So, then? Nothing to do but wait, and plan, and hope that Zalzan Kavol intended a generally eastward route. And save his crowns and bide his time, until the moment was ripe for going to the Lady.

  3

  A few days after their departure from Dulorn, purses bulging with the generous Ghayrog pay, Valentine drew Zalzan Kavol aside to ask him about the direction of travel. It was a gentle late-summer day, and here, where they were camped for lunch along the eastern slope of the Rift, a purple mist enfolded everything, a low thick clammy cloud that took its delicate lavender color from pigments in the air, for there were deposits of skuvva-sand just north of here and the winds were constantly stirring the stuff aloft.

  Zalzan Kavol looked uncomfortable and irritable in this weather. His gray fur, purpled now by droplets of mist, was clumped in comic bunches, and he rubbed at it, trying to restore it to its proper nap. Probably not the best moment for such a conference, Valentine realized, but it was too late: the issue had been broached.

  Zalzan Kavol said hollowly, “Which of us is the leader of this troupe, Valentine?”

  “You are, beyond question.”

  “Then why do you try to govern me?”

  “I?”

  “In Pidruid,” the Skandar said, “you asked me to go next to Falkynkip, for the convenience of your herdsman squire’s family honor, and I remind you that you forced me to hire the herdsman boy in the first place, though he is no juggler and never will be. In these things I yielded; I know not why. There was also the matter of your interfering in my quarrel with the Vroon—”

  “My interference had benefit,” Valentine pointed out, “as you yourself admitted at the time.”

  “True. But interference of itself is unfamiliar to me. Do you understand that I am absolute master of this troupe?”

  Valentine shrugged lightly. “No one disputes that.”

  “But do you understand it? My brothers do. They are aware that a body can have only one head—unless it’s a Su-Suheris body, and we’re not talking of those—and here I am the head, it is from my mind that plans and instructions flow, and mine alone.” Zalzan Kavol flashed an austere smile. “Is this tyranny? No. This is simple efficiency. Jugglers can never be democrats, Valentine. One mind designs the patterns, one alone, or there is chaos. Now what do you want with me?”

  “Only to know the shape of our route.”

  With barely suppressed anger Zalzan Kavol said, “Why? You are in our employ. You go where we go. Your curiosity is misplaced.”

  “It doesn’t seem that way to me. Some routes are more useful to me than others.”

  “Useful? To you? You have plans? You told me you had no plans!”

  “I do now.”

  “What do you plan, then?”

  Valentine took a deep breath. “Ultimately to make the pilgrimage to the Isle, and become a devotee of the Lady. Since the pilgrim-ships sail from Piliplok, and all of Zimroel lies between us and Piliplok, it would be valuable to me to know whether you plan to go in some other direction, let’s say down to Velathys, or maybe back to Til-omon or Narabal, instead of—”

  “You are discharged from my service,” Zalzan Kavol said icily.

  Valentine was astounded. “What?”

  “Terminated. My brother Erfon will give you ten crowns as your settlement. I want you on your way within an hour.”

  Valentine felt his cheeks growing hot. “This is totally unexpected! I merely asked—”

  “You merely asked. And in Pidruid you merely asked, and in Falkynkip you merely asked, and next week in Mazadone you would merely ask. You annoy my tranquillity, Valentine, and this cancels out your promise as a juggler. Besides, you are disloyal.”

  “Disloyal? To what? To whom?”

  “You hire on with us, but secretly mean to use us as the vehicle to get you to Piliplok. Your commitment to us is insincere. I call that treachery.”

  “When I hired on with you, I had nothing else in mind but to travel with your troupe wherever you went. But things have changed, and now I see reason to make the pilgrimage.”

  “Why did you allow things to change? Where’s your sense of duty to your employers and teachers?”

  “Did I hire on with you for life?” Valentine demanded. “Is it treachery to discover that one has a goal more important than tomorrow’s performance?”

  “That diversion of energy,” said Zalzan Kavol, “is what leads me to be rid of you. I want you thinking about juggling every hour of the day, and not about the departure date of pilgrim-ships from Shkunibor Pier.”

  “There would be no diversion of energy. When I juggle, I juggle. And I’d resign from the troupe when we approached Piliplok. But until then—”

  “Enough,” Zalzan Kavol said. “Pack. Go. Take yourself swiftly to Piliplok and sail to the Isle, and may you fare well. I have no further need of you.”

  The Skandar seemed altogether serious. Scowling in the purple mist, slapping at the soggy patches in his pelt, Zalzan Kavol swung heavily around and began to walk away. Valentine trembled in tension and dismay. The thought of leaving now, of traveling alone to Piliplok, left him aghast; and beyond that he felt part of this troupe, more so than he had ever been aware, a member of a close-knit team, and would not willingly be sundered. At least not now, not yet, while he could remain with Carabella and Sleet and even the Skandars, whom he respected without liking, and continue to increase his skills of eye and hand while moving eastward toward whatever strange destiny Deliamber seemed to have in mind for him.

  “Wait!” Valentine called. “What about the law?”

  Zalzan Kavol glared over his shoulder. “Which law?”

  “The one requiring you to keep three human jugglers in your employ,” said Valentine.

  “I will hire the herdsman boy in your place,” Zalzan Kavol retorted, “and teach him whatever skills he can learn.” And he stalked off.

  Valentine stood stunned. His conversation with Zalzan Kavol had taken place in a grove of small golden-leafed plants that evidently were psychosensitive: for, he noticed now, the plants had folded their intricate compound leaflets in the course of the quarrel, and looked shriveled and blackened for ten feet on all sides of him. He touched one. It was crisp and lifeless, as though it had been torched. He felt abashed at being a party to such destruction.

  “What happened?” Shanamir asked, appearing suddenly and staring in wonder at the withered foliage. “I heard yelling. The Skandar—”

  “Has fired me,” said Valentine vacantly, “because I asked him which way we were going next, because I admitted to him that I intended eventually to journey on pilgrimage to the Isle and wondered if his route would suit my purpose.”

  Shanamir gaped. “You are to make the pilgrimage? I never knew!”

  “A recent decision.”

  “Why, then,” the boy cried, “we’ll make it together, won’t we? Come, we’ll pack our things, we’ll steal a couple of mounts from these Skandars, we’ll leave at once!”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course!”

  “It’s thousands of miles to Piliplok. You and I, and no one to guide us, and—”

  “Why not?” Shanamir asked. “Look, we ride to Khyntor, and there we take a riverboat to Ni-moya, and on from there down the Zimr to the coast, and at Piliplok we buy passage on the pilgrim-ship, and—what’s wrong, Valentine?”

  “I belong with these people. I’m learning an art from them, I—I—” Valentine broke off in confusion. Was he a juggler-in-training, or a Coronal-in-exile? Was it his purpose to plod along with shaggy Skandars, yes, with Carabella and Sleet also, or was it incumbent on him to move by the fastest means toward the Isle, and then with the Lady’s help toward Castle Mount? He was confounded by these uncertainties.

  “The cost?” Shanamir said. “Is that what worries you? You had fifty royals and more in Pidruid. You must have some of that left. I have a few crowns myself. If we need more, you can work as a juggler on the riverboat, and I could curry mount
s, I suppose, or—”

  “Where are you planning to go?” said Carabella, coming abruptly upon them out of the forest. “And what has happened to these sensitivos here? Is there trouble?”

  Briefly Valentine told her of his talk with Zalzan Kavol.

  She listened in silence, with her hand to her lips; and, when he was done, she darted off abruptly, without a word, in the direction Zalzan Kavol had taken.

  “Carabella?” Valentine called. But already she was out of sight.

  “Let’s go,” said Shanamir. “We can be out of here in half an hour, and by nightfall we’ll be miles away. Look, you pack our things. I’ll take two of the mounts and lead them around through the woods, down the slope toward the little lake we passed when we came in, and you meet me down there by the grove of cabbage trees.” Shanamir waved his hands impatiently. “Hurry! I’ve got to get the mounts while the Skandars aren’t around, and they might come back at any minute!”

  Shanamir vanished into the forest. Valentine stood frozen. To leave now, so suddenly, with so little time to prepare himself for this upheaval? And what of Carabella? Not even a good-bye? Deliamber? Sleet? He started toward the wagon to gather his few possessions, halted, plucked indecisively at the dead leaves of the poor sensitivo plants, as though by pruning the withered stalks he could instantly induce new growth. Gradually he compelled himself to see the brighter side. This was a disguised blessing. If he stayed with the jugglers, it would delay by months or even years the confrontation with reality that obviously lay in store for him. And Carabella, if any truth lay in the shape of things that began to emerge, could be no part of that reality, anyway. So, then, it behooved him to shrug away his shock and distress, and to take to the highway, bound for Piliplok and the pilgrim-ships. Come, he told himself, get moving, collect your things. Shanamir’s waiting by the cabbage trees with the mounts. But he could not move.

  And then Carabella came bounding toward him, face aglow.

  “It’s all fixed,” she said. “I got Deliamber to work on him. You know, a little trick here and there, a bit of a touch with the tip of a tentacle—the usual wizardry. He’s changed his mind. Or we’ve changed it for him.”

  Valentine was startled by the intensity of his feeling of relief. “I can stay?”

  “If you’ll go to him and ask forgiveness.”

  “Forgiveness for what?”

  Carabella grinned. “That doesn’t matter. He took offense, the Divine only knows why! His fur was wet. His nose was cold. Who knows? He’s a Skandar, Valentine. He has his own weird sense of what’s right and wrong; he’s not required to think the way humans do. You got him angry and he discharged you. Ask him politely to take you back, and he will. Go on, now. Go.”

  “But—but—”

  “But what? Are you going to stand on pride now? Do you want to be rehired or don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then go,” Carabella said. She seized him by the arm and gave a little tug, to budge him as he stood there faltering and fumbling, and as she did so, it must have occurred to her whose arm it was she was tugging, for she sucked in her breath and let go of him and moved away, hovering as if on the verge of kneeling and making the starburst symbol. “Please,” she said softly. “Please go to him, Valentine. Before he changes his mind again? If you leave the troupe, I’ll have to leave it too, and I don’t want to. Go. Please.”

  “Yes,” said Valentine. She led him over the spongy mist-moistened ground to the wagon. Zalzan Kavol sat sulkily on the steps, huddling in a cloak in the damp, close warmth of the purple mist. Valentine approached him and said straightforwardly, “It was not my intent to anger you. I ask your pardon.”

  Zalzan Kavol made a low growling sound, almost below the threshold of audibility.

  “You are a nuisance,” the Skandar said. “Why am I willing to forgive you? From now on you will not speak to me unless I have spoken to you first. Understood?”

  “Understood, yes.”

  “You will make no attempt to influence the route we travel.”

  “Understood,” said Valentine.

  “If you irritate me again, you will be terminated without severance pay and you will have ten minutes to get out of my sight, no matter where we are, even if we are camped in the midst of a Metamorph reservation and nightfall is coming, do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Valentine said.

  He waited, wondering if he would be asked to bow, to kiss the Skandar’s hairy fingers, to grovel in obeisance. Carabella, standing to one side, seemed to be holding her breath, as though expecting some explosion to come from the spectacle of a Power of Majipoor begging forgiveness from an itinerant Skandar juggler.

  Zalzan Kavol regarded Valentine disdainfully, as he might have regarded a cold fish of uncertain vintage presented to him in a congealed sauce for dinner. Acidulously he said, “I am not required to provide my employees with information of no concern to them. But I will tell you, anyway, that Piliplok is my native city, and I return there from time to time, and it is my purpose to arrive there eventually. How soon it will be depends on what engagements I can arrange between here and there: but be informed that our route lies generally eastward, although there may be some departures from that path, for we have a livelihood to earn. I hope this pleases you. When we reach Piliplok, you may resign from the troupe if you still have it in mind to undergo the pilgrimage, but if you induce any members of the troupe other than the herdsman boy to accompany you on that voyage, I will ask an injunction against it in the Coronal’s Court, and prosecute you to the fullest. Understood?”

  “Understood,” said Valentine, though he wondered whether he would deal honorably with the Skandar on this point.

  “Lastly,” said Zalzan Kavol, “I ask you to remember that you are paid a good many crowns a week, plus expenses and bonuses, to perform in this troupe. If I detect you filling your mind with thoughts of the pilgrimage, or of the Lady and her servants, or of anything else but how to throw things into the air and catch them in a theatrically suitable manner, I’ll revoke your employment. In these last few days you’ve already seemed unacceptably moody, Valentine. Change your ways. I need three humans for this troupe, but not necessarily the ones I have now. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Valentine said.

  “Go, then.”

  Carabella said, as they walked away, “Was that terribly unpleasant for you?”

  “It must have been terribly pleasant for Zalzan Kavol.”

  “He’s just a hairy animal!”

  “No,” said Valentine gravely. “He’s a sentient being equal to ourselves in civil rank, and never speak of him as anything else. He only looks like an animal.” Valentine laughed, and after a moment Carabella laughed with him, a trifle edgily. He said, “In dealing with people who are enormously touchy on matters of honor and pride, I think it’s wisest to be accommodating to their needs, especially if they’re eight feet tall and provide you with your wages. At this point I need Zalzan Kavol far more than he needs me.”

  “And the pilgrimage?” she asked. “Are you really planning to undergo it? When did you decide that?”

  “In Dulorn. After conversation with Deliamber. There are questions about myself I must answer, and if anyone can help me with those answers, it’s the Lady of the Isle. So I’ll go to her, or try to. But all that’s far in the future, and I’ve sworn to Zalzan Kavol not to think of such things.” He took her hand in his. “I thank you, Carabella, for repairing matters between Zalzan Kavol and me. I wasn’t at all ready to be discharged from the troupe. Or to lose you so soon after I had found you.”

  “Why do you think you would have lost me,” she asked, “if the Skandar had insisted on letting you go?”

  He smiled. “I thank you for that, too. And now I should go down to the cabbage-tree grove, and tell Shanamir to return the mounts that he’s stolen for us.”

  4

  In the next few days the landscape began to grow surpassingly strange,
and Valentine had more cause for gladness that he and Shanamir had not tried to proceed by themselves.

  The district between Dulorn and the next major city, Mazadone, was relatively thinly populated. Much of it, according to Deliamber, was a royal forest preserve. That bothered Zalzan Kavol, for jugglers would not find employment in forest preserves, nor, for that matter, in low-lying swampy farmland occupied mainly by rice paddies and lusavender-seed plantations; but there was no choice but to follow the main forest highway, since nothing more promising lay to the north or south. On they went, in generally humid and drizzly weather, through a region of villages and farms and occasional thick stands of the fat-trunked comical cabbage trees, short and squat, with massive white fruits sprouting directly from their bark. But as Mazadone Forest Preserve drew closer, the cabbage trees gave way to dense thickets of singing ferns, yellow-fronded and glassy of texture, that emitted piercing discordant sounds whenever they were approached, shrill high-pitched bings and twangs and bleeps, nasty screeches and scrapes. That would not have been so bad—the unmelodious song of the ferns had a certain raucous charm, Valentine thought—but the fern thickets were inhabited by bothersome small creatures far more disagreeable than the plants, little toothy winged rodents known as dhiims that came flapping up out of hiding every time the proximity of the wagon touched off the fern-song. The dhiims were about the length and breadth of a small finger, and were covered by fine golden fur; they arose in such numbers that they clouded the air, and swarmed about indignantly, sometimes nipping with their tiny but effective incisors. The thickly furred Skandars up front in the driver’s seat largely ignored them, merely swatting at them when they clustered too close, but the usually stolid mounts were bothered, and balked in the traces several times. Shanamir, sent out to placate the animals, suffered half a dozen painful bites; and as he scurried back into the wagon a good many dhiims entered with him. Sleet took a frightening nip on his cheek near his left eye, and Valentine, beset by dozens of infuriated creatures at once, was bitten on both arms. Carabella methodically destroyed the dhiims with a stiletto used in the juggling act, skewering them with single-minded determination and great skill, but it was an ugly half hour before the last of them was dead.