The jugglers now were only a few miles north of that entrance, having left the drab mercantile city of Verf as quickly as possible. The rain, light but insistent, had continued all morning. The countryside here was unexciting, a place of light sandy soil and dense stands of dwarf trees with pale green bark and narrow, twittering leaves. There was little conversation in the wagon. Sleet seemed lost in meditation, Carabella juggled three red balls obsessively in the mid-cabin space, the Skandars who were not driving engaged in some intricate game played with slivers of ivory and packets of black drole-whiskers, Shanamir dozed, Vinorkis made entries in a journal he carried, Deliamber entertained himself with minor incantations, the lighting of tiny necromantic candles, and other wizardry amusements, and Lisamon Hultin, who had hitched her mount to the team drawing the wagon so that she could come in from the rain, snored like a beached sea-dragon, awakening now and then to gulp a globelet of the cheap gray wine she had bought in Verf.
Valentine sat in a corner, up against a window, thinking of Castle Mount. What could it be like, a mountain thirty miles high? A single stone shaft rising like a colossal tower into the dark night of space? If Velathys Scarp, a mile high, was as Deliamber said an impassable wall, what sort of barrier was a thing thirty times as tall? What shadow did Castle Mount cast when the sun was in the east? A dark stripe running the length of Alhanroel? And how were the cities on its lofty slope provided with warmth, and air to breathe? Some machines of the ancients, Valentine had heard, that manufactured heat and light, and dispensed sweet air, miraculous machines of that forgotten technological era of thousands of years ago, when the old arts brought from Earth still were widely practiced here; but he could no more comprehend how such machines might work than he understood what forces operated the engines of memory in his own mind to tell him that this dark-haired woman was Carabella, this white-haired man Sleet. He thought too of Castle Mount’s highest reaches, and that building of forty thousand rooms at its summit. Lord Valentine’s Castle now, Lord Voriax’s not so long ago, Lord Malibor’s when he was a boy in that childhood he no longer remembered. Lord Valentine’s Castle! Was there really such a place, or was the Castle and its Mount only a fable, a vision, a fantasy such as comes in dreams? Lord Valentine’s Castle! He imagined it clinging to the mountaintop like a coat of paint, a bright splash of color just a few molecules thick, or so it would seem against the titanic scale of that impossible mountain, a splash that coursed irregularly down the flank of the summit in a tentacular way, hundreds of rooms extending on this face, hundreds more on that, a cluster of great chambers extending themselves pseudopod-fashion here, a nest of courtyards and galleries over there. And in its innermost place the Coronal in all grandeur, dark-bearded Lord Valentine, except that the Coronal would not be there now, he would still be making his grand processional through the realm, in Ni-moya by now or some other eastern city. And I, thought Valentine, I once lived on that Mount? Dwelled in that Castle? What did I do, when I was Coronal—what decrees, what appointments, what duties? The whole thing was inconceivable, and yet, he felt the conviction growing in him, there was fullness and density and substance to the phantom bits of memory that drifted through his mind. He knew now that he had been born not in Ni-moya by the river’s bend, as the false recollections planted in his mind had it, but rather in one of the Fifty Cities high up on the Mount, almost at the verge of the Castle itself, and that he had been reared among the royal caste, among that cadre from which princes were chosen, that his childhood and boyhood had been one of privilege and comfort. He still had no memory of his father, who must have been some high prince of the realm, nor could he recall anything of his mother except that her hair was dark and her skin was swarthy, as his once had been, and—a memory rushed into his awareness out of nowhere—and that she had embraced him a long while one day, weeping a little, before she told him that Voriax had been chosen as Coronal in the place of the drowned Lord Malibor, and she would go thenceforth to live as Lady on the Isle of Sleep. Was there truth to that, or had he imagined it just now? He would have been—Valentine paused, calculating—twenty-two years old, very likely, when Voriax came to power. Would his mother have embraced him at all? Would she have wept, on becoming Lady? Or rather rejoice, that she and her eldest son were chosen Powers of Majipoor? To weep and to rejoice at once, maybe. Valentine shook his head. These mighty scenes, these moments of potent history: would he ever regain access to them, or was he always to labor under the handicap placed upon him by those who had stolen his past?
There was a tremendous explosion in the distance, a long low groundshaking boom that brought everyone in the wagon to attention. It continued for several minutes and gradually subsided to a quiet throb, then to silence.
“What was that?” Sleet cried, groping in the rack for an energy-thrower.
“Peace, peace,” Deliamber said. “It is the sound of Piurifayne Fountain. We are approaching the boundary.”
“Piurifayne Fountain?” Valentine asked.
“Wait and see,” Deliamber told him.
The wagon came to a halt a few minutes later. Zalzan Kavol turned round from the driver’s seat and yelled, “Where’s that Vroon? Wizard, there’s a roadblock up ahead!”
“We are at Piurifayne Gate,” said Deliamber.
A barricade made of stout glossy yellow logs lashed with a bright emerald twine spanned the narrow roadway, and to the left of it was a guardhouse occupied by two Hjorts in customs-official uniform of gray and green. They ordered everyone out of the wagon and into the rain, though they themselves were under a protective canopy.
“Where bound?” asked the fatter Hjort.
“Ilirivoyne, to play at the Shapeshifter festival. We are jugglers,” said Zalzan Kavol.
“Permit to enter Piurifayne Province?” the other Hjort demanded.
“No such permits are required,” Deliamber said.
“You speak too confidently, Vroon. By decree of Lord Valentine the Coronal more than a month past, no citizens of Majipoor enter the Metamorph territory except on legitimate business.”
“Ours is legitimate business,” growled Zalzan Kavol.
“Then you would have a permit.”
“But we knew nothing of the need for one!” the Skandar protested.
The Hjorts looked indifferent to that. They seemed ready to turn their attention to other matters.
Zalzan Kavol glanced toward Vinorkis as though expecting him to have some sort of influence with his compatriots. But the Hjort merely shrugged. Zalzan Kavol glared at Deliamber next and said, “It falls within your responsibilities, wizard, to advise me of such matters.”
The Vroon shrugged. “Not even wizards can learn of changes in the law that happen while they travel in forest preserves and other remote places.”
“But what do we do now? Turn back to Verf?”
The idea seemed to bring a glow of delight to Sleet’s eyes. Reprieved from this Metamorph adventure after all! But Zalzan Kavol was fuming. Lisamon Hultin’s hand strayed to the hilt of her vibration-sword. Valentine stiffened at that.
He said quietly to Zalzan Kavol, “Hjorts are not always incorruptible.”
“A good thought,” the Skandar murmured.
Zalzan Kavol drew forth his money-pouch. Instantly the attention of the Hjorts sharpened. This was indeed the right tactic, Valentine decided.
“Perhaps I have found the necessary document,” said Zalzan Kavol. Ostentatiously removing two one-crown pieces from the pouch, he caught a Hjort’s rough-skinned puffy hand in one of his, and with the others pressed a coin into each palm, smiling his most self-satisfied smile. The Hjorts exchanged glances, and they were not glances of bliss. Contemptuously they allowed the coins to fall to the muddy ground.
“A crown?” Carabella muttered in disbelief. “He expected to buy them with a crown?”
“Bribing an officer of the imperial government is a serious offense,” the fatter Hjort declared ominously. “You are under arrest and remanded for trial to Verf
. Remain in your vehicle until appropriate escort can be found for you.”
Zalzan Kavol looked outraged. He whirled, began to say something to Valentine, choked it off, gestured angrily at Deliamber, made a growling noise, and spoke in a low voice and in the Skandar language to the three nearest of his brothers. Lisamon Hultin again began to finger the sword-hilt. Valentine felt despair. There would be two dead Hjorts here in another moment, and the jugglers would all be criminal fugitives at the edge of Piurifayne. That was not likely to speed his journey to the Lady of the Isle.
“Do something quickly,” Valentine said under his breath to Autifon Deliamber.
But the Vroonish sorcerer was already in motion. Stepping forward, he snatched up the money and offered it again to the Hjorts, saying, “Your pardon, but you must have dropped these small coins.” He dropped them into the Hjorts’ hands, and at the same time allowed the tips of his tentacles to coil lightly about their wrists for an instant.
When he released them, the thinner Hjort said, “Your visa is good for three weeks only, and you must leave Piurifayne by way of this gate. Other exit points are illegal for you.”
“Not to mention very dangerous,” added the other. He gestured and unseen figures pulled the barricade sideways fifteen feet along a buried track, so that there was room for the wagon to proceed.
As they entered the wagon Zalzan Kavol said furiously to Valentine, “In the future, give me no illegal advice! And you, Deliamber: make yourself aware of the regulations that apply to us. This could have caused us great delay, and much loss of income.”
“Perhaps if you had tried bribing with royals instead of crowns,” Carabella said beyond the Skandar’s range of hearing, “we would have had a simpler time of it.”
“No matter, no matter,” Deliamber said. “We were admitted, were we not? It was only a small sorcery, and cheaper than a heavy bribe.”
“These new laws,” Sleet began. “So many decrees!”
“A new Coronal,” said Lisamon Hultin. “He wants to show his power. They always do. They decree this, they decree that, and the old Pontifex goes along with everything. This one decreed me right out of a job, do you know that?”
“How so?” Valentine asked.
“I was bodyguard to a merchant in Mazadone, much afraid of jealous rivals. This Lord Valentine placed a new tax on personal bodyguards for anyone below noble rank, amounting to my whole year’s salary; and my employer, damn his ears, let me go on a week’s notice! Two years, and it was good-bye, Lisamon, thank you very much, take a bottle of my best brandy as your going-away gift.” She belched resonantly. “One day I was a defender of his miserable life, the next I was a superfluous luxury, and all thanks to Lord Valentine! Oh, poor Voriax! D’ye think his brother had him murdered?”
“Guard your tongue!” Sleet snapped. “Such things aren’t done on Majipoor.”
But she persisted. “A hunting accident, was it? And the last one, old Malibor, drowned while out fishing? Why are our Coronals suddenly dying so strangely? It never happened before like this, did it? They went on to become Pontifex, they did, and hid themselves away in the Labyrinth and lived next to forever, and now we have Malibor feeding the sea-dragons and Voriax taking a careless bolt in the forest.” She belched again. “I wonder. Up there on Castle Mount, maybe they’re getting too hungry for the taste of power.”
“Enough,” Sleet said, looking uncomfortable with such talk.
“Once a new Coronal’s picked, all the rest of the princes are finished, you know, no hope of advancement. Unless, unless, unless, unless the Coronal should die, and back they go into the hopper to be picked again. When Voriax died and this Valentine came to rule, I said—”
“Stop it!” Sleet cried.
He rose to his full height, which was hardly chest-high to the warrior-woman, and his eyes blazed as if he planned to chop her off at the thighs to equalize matters between them. She remained at her ease, but her hand again was wandering toward her sword. Smoothly Valentine interposed himself.
“She means no offense to the Coronal,” he said gently. “She is fond of wine, and it loosens her tongue.” And to Lisamon Hultin he said, “Forgive him, will you? My friend is under strain in this part of the world, as you know.”
A second enormous explosion, five times as loud and fifty times as frightening as the one that had occurred half an hour earlier, interrupted the discussion. The mounts reared and squealed; the wagon lurched; Zalzan Kavol shouted ferocious curses from the driver’s seat.
“Piurifayne Fountain,” Deliamber announced. “One of the great sights of Majipoor, well worth getting wet to see.”
Valentine and Carabella rushed from the wagon, the others close behind. They had come to an open place in the road, where the forest of little green-boled trees fell away to create a kind of natural amphitheater, completely without vegetation, running perhaps half a mile back from the highway. At its farther end a geyser was in eruption, but a geyser that was to the ones Valentine had seen at Hot Khyntor as a sea-dragon is to a minnow. This was a column of frothing water that seemed taller than the tallest tower in Dulorn, a white shaft rising five hundred feet, six hundred, possibly even more, roaring out of the ground with incalculable force. At its upper end, where its unity broke and gave way to streamers and spouts and ropes of water that darted off in many directions, a mysterious light appeared to glow, kindling a whole spectrum of hues at the fringes of the column, pinks and pearls and crimsons and pale lavenders and opals. A warm spray filled the air.
The eruption went on and on—an incredible volume of water driven by incredible might into the sky. Valentine felt his entire body massaged by the subterranean forces that were at work. He stared in awe and wonder, and it was almost with shock that he realized that the event was ending, the column now was shrinking, no more than four hundred feet, three hundred, now just a pathetic strand of white sinking toward the ground, now only forty feet, thirty, and then gone, gone, vacant air where that stunning shaft had been, droplets of warm moisture as its only revenant.
“Every thirty minutes,” Autifon Deliamber informed them. “As long as the Metamorphs have lived on Majipoor, so it is said, that geyser has never been a minute late. It is a sacred place to them. See? There are pilgrims now.”
Sleet caught his breath and begun making holy signs. Valentine put a steadying hand to his shoulder. Indeed Metamorphs, Shapeshifters, Piurivars, a dozen or more of them, gathered at a kind of wayside shrine not far ahead. They were looking at the travelers, and, Valentine thought, not in a particularly friendly way. Several of the aborigines in the front of the group stepped briefly behind others, and when they reappeared they looked strangely blurred and indistinct, but that was not all, for they had undergone transformations. One had sprouted great cannonballs of breasts, in caricature of Lisamon Hultin, and another had grown four shaggy Skandar-arms, and another was mimicking Sleet’s white hair. They made a curious thin sound which might have been the Metamorph version of laughter, and then the entire group slipped away into the forest.
Valentine did not release his grip on Sleet’s shoulder until he felt some of the tension ebb from the little juggler’s rigid body. Lightly he said, “A good trick that is! If we could do that—perhaps grow some extra arms in the middle of our act—what do you say, Sleet, would you like that?”
“I would like to be in Narabal,” Sleet said, “or Piliplok, or someplace else very far from here.”
“And I in Falkynkip, feeding slops to my mounts,” said Shanamir, who looked pale and shaken.
“They mean us no harm,” Valentine said. “This will be an interesting experience, one that we will never forget.”
He smiled broadly. But there were no smiles about him, not even on Carabella, Carabella the inextinguishably buoyant. Zalzan Kavol himself looked oddly discomforted, as if perhaps he might now be having second thoughts about the wisdom of pursuing his love of royals into the Metamorph province. Valentine could not, by sheer force of optimistic energ
y alone, give his companions much cheer. He looked toward Deliamber.
“How far is it to Ilirivoyne?” he asked.
“It lies somewhere ahead,” the Vroon replied. “How far, I have no idea. We will come to it when we come to it.”
It was not an encouraging reply.
12
This was primordial country, timeless, unspoiled, an outpost of time’s early dawn on civilized and housebroken Majipoor. The Shapeshifters lived in rain-forest land, where daily downpours cleansed the air and let vegetation run riot. Out of the north came the frequent storms, down into that natural funnel formed by Velathys Scarp and the Gonghars; and as the moist air rose in the ascent of the Gonghar foothills, gentle rains were released, that soaked the light spongy soil. Trees grew tall and slender-trunked, sprouting high and forming thick canopies far overhead; networks of creepers and lianas tied the treetops together, cascades of dark leaves, tapering, drip-tipped, glistened as if polished by the rain. Where there were breaks in the forest, Valentine could see distant green-cloaked mist-wrapped mountains, heavy-shouldered, forbidding, great mysterious bulks crouching on the land. Of wildlife there was little, at least not much that let itself be seen: an occasional red-and-yellow serpent slithering along a bough, an infrequent green-and-scarlet bird or toothy web-winged brown aerolizard fluttering overhead, and once a frightened bilantoon that scampered delicately in front of the wagon and vanished into the woods with a flurry of its sharp little hooves and a panicky wigwagging of its upturned tufted tail. Probably forest-brethren lurked here, since several groves of dwikka-trees came into view. And no doubt the streams were thick with fish and reptiles, the forest floor teemed with burrowing insects and rodents of fantastic hue and shape, and for all Valentine knew, each of the innumerable dark little lakes held its own monstrous submerged amorfibot, that arose by night to prowl, all neck and teeth and beady eyes, for whatever prey came within reach of its massive body. But none of these things made themselves apparent as the wagon sped southward over the rough, narrow wilderness road.
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