By mid-afternoon the festivities were under way. Small bands of musicians played heavy, pulsating, jangling music of eccentric rhythm, and throngs of Metamorphs danced a slow and stately pattern of interweavings, moving almost like sleepwalkers. On certain streets races were run, and judges stationed at points along the course engaged in intricate arguments as the racers went past them. Booths apparently constructed during the night dispensed soups, stews, beverages, and grilled meats.
Valentine felt like an intruder in this place. He wanted to apologize to the Metamorphs for having come among them at their holiest time. Yet no one but the children seemed to be paying the slightest attention to them, and the children evidently regarded them as curiosities brought here for their amusement. Young, shy Metamorphs lurked everywhere, flashing jumbled imitations of Deliamber and Sleet and Zalzan Kavol and the rest, but never allowing anyone to get close to them.
Zalzan Kavol had called a rehearsal for late afternoon, back of the wagon. Valentine was one of the first to arrive, glad of an excuse to remove himself from the crowded streets. He found only Sleet and two of the Skandars.
It seemed to him that Zalzan Kavol was eyeing him in an odd way. There was something new and disturbing about the quality of the Skandar’s attentiveness. After a few minutes Valentine was so troubled by it that he said, “Is something wrong?”
“What would be wrong?”
“You seem out of countenance.”
“I? I? Nothing’s the matter. A dream, is all. I was thinking on a dream I had last night.”
“You dreamed of the blue-skinned prisoner?”
Zalzan Kavol looked baffled. “Why do you think that?”
“I did, and Sleet.”
“My dream had nothing at all to do with the blue-skinned one,” the Skandar replied. “Nor do I wish to discuss it. It was foolishness, mere foolishness.” And Zalzan Kavol, moving away, picked up a double brace of knives and began to juggle them in an edgy, absentminded way.
Valentine shrugged. It had not even occurred to him that Skandars had dreams, let alone that they might have troublesome ones. But of course: they were citizens of Majipoor, they shared in all the attributes of people here, and so they must live full and rich dream-lives like everyone else, with sendings from King and Lady, and stray intrusions from the minds of lesser beings, and upwellings of self from their own deeper reaches, even as humans did, or, Valentine supposed, Hjorts and Vroons and Liimen. Still, it was curious. Zalzan Kavol was so guarded of emotion, so unwilling to let anything of himself be seen by others save greed and impatience and irritation, that Valentine found it strange that he would admit something so personal as that he was pondering a dream.
He wondered if Metamorphs had meaningful dreams, and sendings, and all of that.
The rehearsal went well. Afterward the jugglers made a light and not very satisfying dinner of fruits and berries that Lisamon Hultin had gathered in the forest, and washed it down with the last of the wine they had brought from Khyntor. Bonfires now were blazing in many streets of Ilirivoyne, and the discordant music of the various bands set up weird clashing near-harmonies. Valentine had assumed the performance would take place in the plaza, but no, Metamorphs in what perhaps were priestly costumes came at darkness to escort them to some entirely other part of town, a much larger oval clearing that already was ringed by hundreds or even thousands of expectant onlookers. Zalzan Kavol and his brothers went over the ground carefully, checking for pitfalls and irregularities that might disrupt their movements. Sleet usually took part in that, but, Valentine noticed abruptly, Sleet had vanished somewhere between the rehearsal place and this clearing. Had his patience run out, had he gone off to do something rash? Valentine was just about to set out in search when Sleet appeared, breathing lightly as though he had just been jogging.
“I went to the plaza,” he said in a low voice. “The cages are still piled up. But most of the guards must be off at the dancing. I was able to exchange a few words with the prisoner before I was chased.”
“And?”
“He said he’s to be sacrificed at midnight in the Fountain, exactly as in my sending. And tomorrow night the same will happen to us.”
“What?”
“I swear it by the Lady,” said Sleet. His eyes were like augers. “It was under pledge to you, my lord, that I came into this place. You assured me no harm would befall me.”
“Your fears seemed irrational.”
“And now?”
“I begin to revise my opinion,” Valentine said. “But we’ll get out of Ilirivoyne in good health. I pledge you that. I’ll speak with Zalzan Kavol after the performance, and after I’ve had a chance to confer with Deliamber.”
“It would please me more to get on the road sooner.”
“The Metamorphs are feasting and drinking this evening. They’ll be less likely to notice our departure later,” said Valentine, “and less apt to pursue us, if pursuit is their aim. Besides, do you think Zalzan Kavol would agree to cancel a performance merely on the rumor of danger? We’ll do our act, and then we’ll begin to extricate ourselves. What do you say?”
“I am yours, my lord,” Sleet replied.
14
It was a splendid performance, and no one was in better form than Sleet, who did his blind-juggling routine and carried it off flawlessly. The Skandars flung torches at one another with giddy abandon, Carabella cavorted on the rolling globe, Valentine juggled while dancing, skipping, kneeling, and running. The Metamorphs sat in concentric circles around them, saying little, never applauding, peering in at them out of the foggy darkness with unfathomable intensity of concentration.
Working to such an audience was hard. It was worse than working in rehearsal, for no one expects an audience then, but now there were thousands of spectators and they were giving nothing to the performers; they were statue-still, as the children had been, an austere audience that offered neither approval nor disapproval but only something that had to be interpreted as indifference. In the face of that, the jugglers presented ever more taxing and marvelous numbers, but for more than an hour they could get no response.
And then, astoundingly, the Metamorphs began a juggling act of their own, an eerie dreamlike counterfeit of what the troupe had been doing.
By twos and threes they came forward from the darkness, taking up positions in the center of the ring only a few yards from the jugglers. As they did so they swiftly shifted forms, so that six of them now wore the look of bulky shaggy Skandars, and one was small and lithe and much like Carabella, and one had Sleet’s compact form, and one, yellow-haired and tall, wore the image of Valentine. There was nothing playful about this donning of the jugglers’ bodies: to Valentine it seemed ominous, mocking, distinctly threatening, and when he looked to the side at the non-performing members of the troupe, he saw Autifon Deliamber making worried gestures with his tentacles, Vinorkis scowling, and Lisamon Hultin rocking evenly back and forth on the balls of her feet as if readying herself for combat.
Zalzan Kavol looked disconcerted also by this development.
“Continue,” he said in a ragged tone. “We are here to perform for them.”
“I think,” said Valentine, “we are here to amuse them, but not necessarily as performers.”
“Nevertheless, we are performers, and we will perform.”
He gave a signal and launched, with his brothers, into a dazzling interchange of multitudinous sharp and dangerous objects. Sleet, after a moment’s hesitation, scooped up a handful of clubs and began to throw them in cascades, as did Carabella. Valentine’s hands were chilled; he felt no willingness in them to juggle.
The nine Metamorphs alongside them were beginning to juggle now too.
It was only counterfeit juggling, dream-juggling, with no true art or skill to it. It was mockery and nothing more. They held in their hands rough-skinned black-fruits, and bits of wood, and other ordinary things, and threw them from hand to hand in a child’s parody of juggling, now and again failing to
make even those simple catches and bending quickly to retrieve what they had dropped. Their performance aroused the audience as nothing that the true jugglers had done had managed to do. The Metamorphs now were humming—was this their form of applause?—and rocking rhythmically, and clapping hands to knees, and, Valentine saw, some of them were transforming themselves almost at random, taking on odd alternate forms, human or Hjort or Su-Suheris as the whim struck, or modeling themselves after the Skandars or Carabella or Deliamber. At one point he saw six or seven Valentines in the rows nearest him.
Performing was all but impossible in such a circus of distractions, but the jugglers clung grimly to their routines for some minutes more, doing poorly now, dropping clubs, missing beats, breaking up long-familiar combinations. The humming of the Metamorphs grew in intensity.
“Oh, look, look!” Carabella cried suddenly.
She gestured toward the nine mock jugglers, and pointed at the one who represented Valentine.
Valentine gasped.
What the Metamorph was doing defied all comprehension, and struck him rigid with terror and astonishment. For it had begun to oscillate between two forms. One was the Valentine-image, the tall, wide-shouldered, big-handed, golden-haired young man.
And the other was the image of Lord Valentine the Coronal.
The metamorphosis was almost instantaneous, like the flashing of a light. One moment Valentine saw his twin before him, and the next instant there was, in his place, the black-bearded fierce-eyed Coronal, a figure of might and presence, and then he was gone and the simple juggler was back. The humming of the crowd became louder: they approved of the show. Valentine…Lord Valentine…Valentine…Lord Valentine…
As he watched, Valentine felt a trail of icy chill go down his back, felt his scalp prickle, his knees quiver. There was no mistaking the import of this bizarre pantomime. If ever he had hoped for confirmation of all that had swept through him these weeks since Pidruid, he was getting it now. But here? In this forest town, among these aboriginal folk?
He looked into his own mimicked face.
He looked into the face of the Coronal.
The other eight jugglers leaped and pranced in a nightmarish dance, their legs rising high and stamping down, the false Skandar-arms waving and thumping against their sides, the false Sleet-hair and Carabella-hair wild in the night wind, and the Valentine-figure remained still, alternating one face and the other, and then it was over; nine Metamorphs stood in the center of the circle, holding out their hands to the audience, and the rest of the Piurivars were on their feet and dancing in the same wild way.
The performance was ended. Still dancing, the Metamorphs streamed out into the night, toward the booths and games of their festival.
Valentine, stunned, turned slowly and saw the frozen, astonished faces of his companions. Zalzan Kavol’s jaw sagged, his arms dangled limply. His brothers clustered close behind him, their eyes wide in awe and shock. Sleet looked frighteningly pale; Carabella, the opposite, her cheeks flushed, almost feverish. Valentine held out a hand toward them. Zalzan Kavol came stumbling forward, dazed, all but tripping over his own feet. The giant Skandar paused a few feet from Valentine. He blinked, he ran his tongue over his lips, he seemed to be working hard to make his voice function at all.
Finally he said, in a tiny, preposterous voice: “My lord…?”
First Zalzan Kavol and then his five brothers dropped hesitantly and awkwardly to their knees. With trembling hands Zalzan Kavol made the starburst symbol; his brothers did the same. Sleet, Carabella, Vinorkis, Deliamber, all knelt as well. The boy Shanamir, looking frightened and baffled, stared open-mouthed at Valentine. He seemed paralyzed with wonder and surprise. Slowly he bent to the ground also.
Lisamon Hultin cried out, “Have you all gone crazy?”
“Down and pay homage!” Sleet ordered her hoarsely. “You saw it, woman! He is the Coronal! Down and pay homage!”
“The Coronal?” she repeated in confusion.
Valentine stretched his arms out over them all in a gesture that was as much one of comfort as blessing. They were frightened of him and of what had just befallen; so too was he, but his fear was passing quickly, and in its place came strength, conviction, sureness. The sky itself seemed to cry at him: You are Lord Valentine who was Coronal on Castle Mount, and you shall have the Castle again one day, if you fight for it. Through him now flowed the power of his former imperial office. Even here, in this rain-swept, remote hinterland, in this ramshackle aboriginal town, here with the sweat of juggling still on his body, here in these coarse common clothes, Valentine felt himself to be what he once had been, and although he did not understand what metamorphosis had been worked on him to make him what he now was, he no longer questioned the reality of the messages that had come in dreams. And he felt no guilt, no shame, no deceitfulness, at receiving this homage from his stupefied companions.
“Up,” he said gently. “All of you. On your feet. We must get out of this place. Shanamir, round up the mounts. Zalzan Kavol, get the wagon ready.” To Sleet he said, “Everyone should be armed. Energy-throwers for those who know how to use them, juggling knives for the rest. See to it.”
Zalzan Kavol said heavily, “My lord, there is in all this the flavor of a dream. To think that all these weeks I traveled with—to think I spoke roughly to—that I quarreled with—”
“Later,” Valentine said. “We have no time for discussing these things now.”
He turned to Lisamon Hultin, who seemed busy in some conversation with herself, moving her lips, gesturing, explaining things to herself, debating these bewildering events. In a quiet, forceful voice Valentine said, “You were hired only to bring us as far as Ilirivoyne. I need you to give us your strength as we escape. Will you stay with us to Ni-moya and beyond?”
“They made the starburst at you,” she said puzzledly. “They all kneeled. And the Metamorphs—they—”
“I was once Lord Valentine of Castle Mount. Accept it. Believe it. The realm has fallen into dangerous hands. Remain at my side, Lisamon, as I journey east to set things right.”
She put her huge meaty hand over her mouth and looked at him in amazement.
Then she began to sag into an homage, but he shook his head, caught her by the elbow, would not let her kneel. “Come,” he said. “That doesn’t matter now. Out of here!”
They gathered up their juggling gear and sprinted through the darkness toward the wagon, far across town. Shanamir and Carabella had already taken off, and were running well ahead. The Skandars moved in a single ponderous phalanx, shaking the ground beneath them; Valentine had never seen them move so quickly before. He ran just behind them, alongside Sleet. Vinorkis, splay-footed and slow, struggled to keep pace with them. To the rear was Lisamon Hultin. She had scooped up Deliamber and was carrying the little wizard perched in the crook of her left arm; in her right she bore her unsheathed vibration-sword.
As they neared the wagon Sleet said to Valentine, “Shall we free the prisoner?”
“Yes.”
He beckoned to Lisamon Hultin. She put Deliamber down and followed him.
With Sleet in the lead, they ran toward the plaza. To Valentine’s relief it was all but empty, no more than a handful of Piurivar guards on duty. The twelve cages still were stacked in tiers at the far end, four on the bottom, then rows of four and three, and the one containing the blue-skinned alien perched on top. Before the guards could react Lisamon Hultin was among them, seizing them two at a time and hurling them far across the plaza.
“Take no lives,” Valentine warned.
Sleet, monkey-swift, was scrambling up the stack of cages. He reached the top and began to cut through the thick withes that held the cage door shut. With brisk sawing motions of the knife he slashed while Valentine held the withes taut. In a moment the last of the fibers was severed and Valentine hoisted the door. The alien clambered out, stretching his cramped limbs and looking questioningly at his rescuers.
“Come with us,” Vale
ntine said. “Our wagon is over there, beyond the plaza. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” said the alien. His voice was deep, harsh, resonant, with a sharp clipped edge to each syllable. Without another word he swung himself down past the cages of the forest-brethren to the ground, where Lisamon Hultin had finished dealing with the Metamorph guards and was piling them tidily in a heap.
Impulsively Valentine sliced through the lashings on the cage of forest-brethren nearest to him. The busy little hands of the creatures reached through the bars and pulled the latch, and out they came. Valentine went on to the next cage. Sleet had already descended.
“One moment,” Valentine called. “The job’s not quite done.”
Sleet drew his knife and set to work. In moments all the cages were open, and the forest-brethren, dozens of them, were disappearing into the night.
As they ran to the wagon Sleet said, “Why did you do that?”
“Why not?” Valentine asked. “They want to live too.”
Shanamir and the Skandars had the wagon ready to go, the mounts hitched, the rotors turning. Lisamon Hultin was the last one in; she slammed the door behind her and yelled to Zalzan Kavol, who took off immediately.
And just in time, for half a dozen Metamorphs appeared and began running frantically after them, shouting and gesticulating. Zalzan Kavol stepped up the wagon’s speed. Gradually the pursuers fell behind and were lost to sight as the wagon entered the utter darkness of the jungle.
Sleet peered worriedly back. “Do you think they’re still following us?”
“They can’t keep up with us,” said Lisamon Hultin. “And they travel only by foot. We’re safely out of there.”
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