“Are you sure?” Sleet asked. “What if they have some side route to take in catching up with us?”
“Worry about that when we must,” said Carabella. “We’re moving quickly.” She shuddered. “And let it be a long while before we see Ilirivoyne again!”
They fell silent. The wagon glided swiftly onward.
Valentine sat slightly apart from the others. It was inevitable, yet it distressed him, for he was still more Valentine than Lord Valentine, and it was strange and disagreeable to set himself up above his friends. But there was no helping it. Carabella and Sleet, learning privately of his identity, had come to terms with it privately in their own ways; Deliamber, who had known the truth before Valentine himself, had never been overly awed by it; but the others, whatever suspicions they may have had that Valentine was something more than a happy-go-lucky wanderer, were dumbfounded by the open acknowledgment of his rank that had come out of the grotesque Metamorph performance. They stared; they were speechless; they sat in stiff, unnatural postures, as if afraid to slouch in the presence of a Coronal. But how should one behave in the presence of a Power of Majipoor? They could not sit here constantly making starbursts at him. The gesture seemed absurd to Valentine anyway, a comical out-poking of the fingers and nothing more: his growing sense of his own importance did not seem to include much spirit of self-importance yet.
The alien introduced himself as Khun of Kianimot, a world of a star relatively close by Majipoor. He seemed a dark and brooding sort, with a crystalline anger and despair at his core, something integral to his being, that expressed itself, Valentine thought, in the set of his lips and the tone of his voice and particularly in the intense gaze of his strange, haunted purple eyes. Of course it was possible, Valentine conceded, that he was projecting his own human notions of expression onto this alien being, and that perhaps Khun was, as Kianimot folk went, a person of total jollity and amiability. But he doubted that.
Khun had come to Majipoor two years before, on business that he chose not to explain. It was, he said bitterly, the greatest mistake of his life, for among the merry Majipoorans he had been parted from all his money, he had unwisely embarked on a journey to Zimroel unaware that there was no starport on that continent from which he could depart for his home world, and he had even more foolishly ventured into Piurivar territory, thinking he could recoup his losses in some sort of trade with the Metamorphs. But they had seized him instead and thrust him in the cage, and held him prisoner for weeks, meaning to give him to the Fountain on the high night of their festival.
“Which would perhaps have been best,” he said. “One quick blast of water and all this wandering would be at an end. Majipoor makes me weary. If I am destined to die on this world of yours, I think I would prefer it to be soon.”
“Pardon us for rescuing you,” Carabella said sharply.
“No. No. I mean no ingratitude. But only—” Khun paused. “This place has been grief for me. So too was Kianimot. Is there any place in the universe where life does not mean suffering?”
“Has it been that bad?” asked Carabella. “We find it tolerable here. Even the worst is tolerable enough, considering the alternative.” She laughed. “Are you always this gloomy?”
The alien shrugged. “If you are happy, I admire and envy you. I find existence painful and life meaningless. But these are dark thoughts for one who has just been rescued. I thank you for your aid. Who are you, and what rashness brought you to Piurifayne, and where do you go now?”
“We are jugglers,” said Valentine, with a sharp glance at the others. “We came to this province because we thought there was work for us here. And if we succeed in getting away from this place, we’ll head for Ni-moya, and down the river to Piliplok.”
“And from there?”
Valentine gestured vaguely. “Some of us will make the pilgrimage to the Isle. Do you know what that is? And the others—I can’t say where they’ll go.”
“I must reach Alhanroel,” Khun said. “My only hope lies in going home, which is impossible from this continent. In Piliplok perhaps I can arrange passage across the sea. May I travel with you?”
“Of course.”
“I have no money.”
“We see that,” said Valentine. “It makes no difference.”
The wagon moved on swiftly through the night. No one slept, except in occasional quick naps. A light rain was falling now. In the darkness of the forest, dangers might lie on any side, but there was a paradoxical comfort in not being able to see anything, and the wagon sped on unmolested.
After an hour or so Valentine looked up and saw Vinorkis standing before him, gaping like a gaffed fish and quivering with what must be unbearable tension.
“My lord?” he said in a tiny voice.
Valentine nodded to the Hjort. “You’re trembling, Vinorkis.”
“My lord—how do I say this?—I have a terrible confession to make—”
Sleet opened his eyes and glared bleakly. Valentine signaled him to be calm.
Vinorkis said, “My lord—” and faltered. He began again. “My lord, in Pidruid a man came to me and said, ‘There is a tall fair-haired stranger at a certain inn and we believe he has committed monstrous crimes.’ And this man offered me a bag of crowns if I would keep close by the fair-haired stranger, and go wherever he went, and give news of his doings to the imperial proctors every few days.”
“A spy?” Sleet blurted. His hand flew to the dagger at his hip.
“Who was this man who hired you?” Valentine asked quietly.
The Hjort shook his head. “Someone in the service of the Coronal, by the way he dressed. I never knew his name.”
“And you gave these reports?” Valentine said.
“Yes, my lord,” Vinorkis murmured, staring at his feet. “In every city. After a time I hardly believed that you could be the criminal they said you were, for you seemed kind and gentle and sweet of soul, but I had taken their money, and there was more money for me every time I reported—”
“Let me kill him now,” Sleet muttered harshly.
“There’ll be no killing,” Valentine said. “Neither now nor later.”
“He’s dangerous, my lord!”
“Not any longer.”
“I never trusted him,” Sleet said. “Nor did Carabella, nor Deliamber. It wasn’t just that he was Hjort. There was always something shifty about him, sly, insinuating. All those questions, all that sucking around for information—”
Vinorkis said, “I ask pardon. I had no idea whom I was betraying, my lord.”
“You believe that?” Sleet cried.
“Yes,” Valentine said. “Why not? He had no more idea who I was than—than I did. He was told to trail a fair-haired man and give information to the government. Is that so evil a thing? He was serving his Coronal, or so he thought. His loyalty must not be repaid by your dagger, Sleet.”
“My lord, sometimes you are too innocent,” Sleet said.
“Perhaps true. But not this time. We have much to gain by forgiving this man, and nothing at all by slaying him.” To the Hjort Valentine said, “You have my pardon, Vinorkis. I ask only that you be as loyal to the true Coronal as you’ve been to the false.”
“You have my pledge, my lord.”
“Good. Get yourself some sleep, now, and put away your fear.”
Vinorkis made the starburst and backed away, settling down in mid-cabin beside two of the Skandars.
Sleet said, “That was unwise, my lord. What if he continues to spy on us?”
“In these jungles? Messages to whom?”
“And when we leave the jungles?”
“I think he can be trusted,” said Valentine. “I know, this confession may have been only a double ruse, to lull us into casting aside our suspicions. I’m not as naïve as you think, Sleet. I charge you to keep private watch over him when we reach civilization again—just in case. But I think you’ll find his repentance is genuine. And I have uses for him that will make him valuable to m
e.”
“Uses, my lord?”
“A spy can lead us to other spies. And there’ll be other spies, Sleet. We may want Vinorkis to maintain his contacts with the imperial agents, eh?”
Sleet winked. “I see your meaning, my lord!”
Valentine smiled, and they fell silent.
Yes, he told himself, Vinorkis’ horror and remorse were genuine. And provided much that Valentine needed to know; for if the Coronal had been willing to pay good sums to have an insignificant wanderer followed from Pidruid to Ilirivoyne, how insignificant could that wanderer actually be? Valentine felt a weird prickling along his skin. More than anything else, Vinorkis’ confession was a confirmation of all that Valentine had discovered about himself. Surely, if the technique that had been used to cast him from his body was new and relatively untried, the conspirators would be uncertain about how permanent the mind-wiping would be, and would hardly dare to allow the outcast Coronal to roam about the land free and unobserved. A spy, then, and probably others close by; and the threat of quick preventive action if word got back to the usurper that Valentine was beginning to recover his memory. He wondered how carefully the imperial forces were tracking him, and at what point they would choose to intercept him on his journey toward Alhanroel.
Onward the wagon moved in the blackness of night. Deliamber and Lisamon Hultin conferred endlessly with Zalzan Kavol about the route; the other main Metamorph settlement, Avendroyne, lay somewhere to the southeast of Ilirivoyne, in a gap between two great mountains, and it seemed likely that the road they were on would take them there. To ride blithely into another Metamorph town hardly seemed wise, of course. Word must have gone on ahead of the freeing of the prisoner and the escape of the wagon. Still, there was even greater peril in trying to go back toward Piurifayne Fountain.
Valentine, not at all sleepy, reenacted the Metamorph pantomime a hundred times in his mind. It had the quality of a dream, yes, but no dream was so immediate: he had been close enough to touch his Metamorph counterpart; he had seen, beyond all doubt, those shifts of features from fair to dark, dark to fair. The Metamorphs knew the truth, more clearly than he himself. Could they read souls, as Deliamber sometimes did? What had they felt, knowing they had a fallen Coronal in their midst? No awe, certainly: Coronals were nothing to them, mere symbols of their own defeat thousands of years ago. It must have seemed terribly funny to them to have a successor to Lord Stiamot tossing clubs at their festival, amusing them with silly tricks and dances, far from the splendors of Castle Mount, a Coronal in their own muddy wooden village. How strange, he thought. How much like a dream.
15
Toward dawn huge rounded mountains became visible, with a broad notch between them. Avendroyne could not be far. Zalzan Kavol, with a deference he had never shown before, came aft to consult Valentine on strategy. Lie low in the woods all day, and wait until nightfall to try to get past Avendroyne? Or attempt a bold daylight passage?
Leadership was unfamiliar to Valentine. He pondered a moment, trying to look far-seeing and thoughtful.
At length he said, “If we go forward by day, we are too conspicuous. On the other hand, if we waste all day hiding here, we give them more time to prepare plans against us.”
“Tonight,” Sleet pointed out, “is the high festival again in Ilirivoyne, and probably here also. We might slip by them while they’re merrymaking, but in daylight we have no chance.”
“I agree,” said Lisamon Hultin.
Valentine looked around. “Carabella?”
“If we wait, we give the Ilirivoyne people time to overtake us. I say go onward.”
“Deliamber?”
The Vroon delicately touched tentacle-tips together. “Onward. Bypass Avendroyne, double back toward Verf. There’ll be a second road to the Fountain from Avendroyne, surely.”
“Yes,” Valentine said. He looked to Zalzan Kavol. “My thoughts run with Deliamber and Carabella. What of yours?”
Zalzan Kavol scowled. “Mine say, let the wizard make this wagon fly, and take us tonight to Ni-moya. Otherwise, continue on without waiting.”
“So be it,” said Valentine, as if he had made the decision single-handedly. “And when we approach Avendroyne, we’ll send scouts out to find a road that bypasses the town.”
On they went, moving more cautiously as daybreak arrived. The rain was intermittent, but when it came now it was no gentle spatter, more an almost tropical downpour, a heavy cannonade of drops that rattled with malign force against the wagon’s roof. To Valentine the rain was welcome: perhaps it would keep the Metamorphs indoors as they went through.
There were signs of outskirts now, scattered wicker huts. The road forked and forked again, Deliamber offering a guess at each point of division, until finally they knew they must be close to Avendroyne. Lisamon Hultin and Sleet rode out as scouts, and returned in an hour with good news: one of the two roads just ahead ran right into the heart of Avendroyne, where festival preparations were under way, and the other curved toward the northeast, bypassing the city entirely and going through what looked like a farming district on the farther slopes of the mountains.
They took the northeast road. Uneventfully they passed the Avendroyne region.
Now, in late afternoon, they journeyed down the mountain pass and into a broad thickly forested plain, rain-swept and dark, that marked the eastern perimeter of Metamorph territory. Zalzan Kavol drove the wagon furiously onward, pausing only when Shanamir insisted that the mounts absolutely had to rest and forage; virtually tireless they might be, and of synthetic origin, but living things were what they were, and now and then they needed to halt. The Skandar yielded reluctantly; he seemed possessed by desperate need to put Piurifayne far behind him.
Toward twilight, as they went in heavy rain through rough, irregular country, trouble came suddenly upon them.
Valentine was riding in mid-cabin, with Deliamber and Carabella; most of the others were sleeping, and Heitrag Kavol and Gibor Haern were driving. There came a crashing, crackling, smashing sound from ahead, and a moment later the wagon jolted to a stop.
“Tree down in the storm!” Heitrag Kavol called. “Road blocked in front of us!”
Zalzan Kavol muttered curses and tugged Lisamon Hultin awake. Valentine saw nothing but green ahead, the entire crown of some forest giant blocking the road. It might take hours or even days to clear that. The Skandars, hoisting energy-throwers to their shoulders, went out to investigate. Valentine followed. Darkness was falling rapidly. The wind was gusty, and shafts of rain swept almost horizontally into their faces.
“Let’s get to work,” Zalzan Kavol growled, shaking his head in annoyance. “Thelkar! You start cutting from down there! Rovorn! The big side branches! Erfon—”
“It might be swifter,” Valentine suggested, “to back up and look for another fork in the road.”
The idea startled Zalzan Kavol, as if the Skandar would never in a century have conceived such a notion. He mulled it for a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. “That does make some sense. If we—”
And a second tree, larger even than the first, toppled to the ground a hundred yards behind them. The wagon was trapped.
Valentine was the first to comprehend what must be happening. “Into the wagon, everyone! It’s an ambush!” He rushed toward the open door.
Too late. Out of the darkening forest came a stream of Metamorphs, fifteen or twenty of them, perhaps even more, bursting silently into their midst. Zalzan Kavol let out a terrible cry of rage and opened fire with his energy-thrower, the blaze of light cast a strange lavender glow over the roadside and two Metamorphs fell, charred hideously. But in the same instant Heitrag Kavol uttered a strangled gurgle and dropped, a weapon shaft through his neck, and Thelkar fell, clutching at another in his chest.
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 th
e 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—