Lord Valentine's Castle Read online

  In late morning they finished loading their goods aboard, and went to the inn for lunch. Valentine was startled to see the Hjort with the orange-daubed whiskers, Vinorkis, appear at this point and take a seat beside Zalzan Kavol. The Skandar hammered on the table for attention and bellowed, “Meet our new road manager! This is Vinorkis, who will assist me in making bookings, look after our properties, and handle all manner of chores that now fall to me!”

  “Oh, no,” Carabella muttered under her breath. “He’s hired a Hjort? That weird one who’s been staring at us all week?”

  Vinorkis smiled a ghastly Hjort smile, showing triple bands of rubbery chewing-cartilage, and peered about in a goggle-eyed way.

  Valentine said, “So you were serious about joining us! I thought that was a joke, about your juggling figures.”

  “It is well known that Hjorts never make jokes,” said Vinorkis gravely, and broke into vociferous laughter.

  “But what becomes of your trade in haigus hides?”

  “Sold my stock entirely at market,” the Hjort replied. “And I thought of you, not knowing where you’d be tomorrow, and not caring. I admired that. I envied that. I asked myself, Are you going to peddle haigus hides all your days, Vinorkis, or will you try something new? A traveling life, perhaps? So I offered my services to Zalzan Kavol when I happened to overhear he was in need of an assistant. And here I am!”

  “Here you are,” said Carabella sourly. “Welcome!”

  After a hearty meal they began their departure. Shanamir led Zalzan Kavol’s quartet of mounts from the stable, talking softly and soothingly to the animals as the Skandars tied them into the traces. Zalzan Kavol took the reins; his brother Heitrag sat beside him, with Autifon Deliamber squeezed in alongside. Shanamir, on his own mount, rode alongside. Valentine clambered into the snug, luxurious passenger compartment along with Carabella, Vinorkis, Sleet, and the other four Skandars. There was much rearranging of arms and legs to fit everyone in comfortably.

  “Hoy!” Zalzan Kavol cried sharply, and it was off and out, through Falkynkip Gate and eastward down the grand highway on which Valentine had entered Pidruid just a week ago Moonday.

  Summer’s warmth lay heavily on the coastal plain, and the air was thick and moist. Already the spectacular blossoms of the fireshower palms were beginning to fade and decay, and the road was littered with fallen petals, like a crimson snowfall. The wagon had several windows—thin, tough sheets of stickskin, the best quality, carefully matched, perfectly transparent—and in an odd solemn silence Valentine watched Pidruid dwindle and disappear, that great city of eleven million souls where he had juggled before the Coronal and tasted strange wines and spicy foods and spent a festival night in the arms of the dark-haired Carabella.

  And now the road lay open before him, and who knew what travels awaited, what adventures would befall?

  He was without plan, and open to all plans. He itched to juggle again, to master new skills, to cease being an apprentice and to join with Sleet and Carabella in the most intricate of maneuvers, and perhaps even to juggle with the Skandars themselves. Sleet had warned him about that: that only a master could risk juggling with them, for their double sets of arms gave them an advantage no human could hope to match. But Valentine had seen Sleet and Carabella throwing with the Skandars, and maybe in time he would do so as well. A high ambition! he thought. What more could he ask than to become a master worthy of juggling with Zalzan Kavol and his brothers!

  Carabella said, “You look so happy all of a sudden, Valentine.”

  “Do I?”

  “Like the sun. Radiant. Light streams from you.”

  “Yellow hair,” he said amiably. “It gives that illusion.”

  “No. No. A sudden smile—”

  He pressed his hand against hers. “I was thinking of the road ahead. A free and hearty life. Wandering zigzag across Zimroel, and stopping to perform, and learning new routines. I want to become the best human juggler on Majipoor!”

  “You stand a good chance,” Sleet said. “Your natural skills are enormous. You need only the training.”

  “For that I count on you and Carabella.”

  Carabella said quietly, “And while you were thinking of juggling, Valentine, I was thinking about you.”

  “And I about you,” he whispered, abashed. “But I was ashamed to say it aloud.”

  The wagon now had reached the switchbacked ridge road that led upward to the great inland plateau. It climbed slowly. In places the angles of the road were so sharp that the wagon could barely execute the turns, but Zalzan Kavol was as cunning a driver as he was a juggler, and brought the vehicle safely around each tight corner. Soon they were at the top of the ridge. Distant Pidruid now looked like a map of itself, flattened and foreshortened, hugging the coast. The air up here was drier but hardly cooler, and in late afternoon the sun unleashed ghastly blasts, a mummifying heat from which there could be no escape before sundown.

  That night they halted in a dusty plateau village along the Falkynkip road. A disturbing dream came to Valentine again as he lay on a scratchy mattress stuffed with straw: once more he moved among the Powers of Majipoor. In a vast echoing stone-floored hall the Pontifex sat enthroned at one end and the Coronal at the other, and set in the ceiling was a terrifying eye of light, like a small sun, that cast a merciless white glare. Valentine bore some message from the Lady of the Isle, but he was unsure whether to deliver it to Pontifex or Coronal, and whichever Power he approached receded to infinity as Valentine neared. All night long he trudged back and forth over that cold slippery floor, reaching hands in supplication toward one Power or the other, and always they floated away.

  He dreamed again of Pontifex and Coronal the next night, in a town on the outskirts of Falkynkip. This was a hazy dream, and Valentine remembered nothing of it except impressions of fearsome royal personages, enormous pompous assemblies, and failures of communication. He awoke with a feeling of deep and aching discontent. Plainly he was receiving dreams of high consequence, but he was helpless to interpret them. “The Powers obsess you and will not let you rest,” Carabella said in the morning. “You seem tied to them by unbreakable cords. It isn’t natural to dream so frequently of such mighty figures. I think surely these are sendings.”

  Valentine nodded. “In the heat of the day I imagine I feel the hands of the King of Dreams pressing coldly on my temples. And when I close my eyes his fingers enter my soul.”

  Alarm flashed in Carabella’s eyes. “Can you be sure they are his sendings?”

  “Not sure, no. But I think—”

  “Perhaps the Lady—”

  “The Lady sends kinder, softer dreams, so I believe,” said Valentine. “These are sendings of the King, I much fear. But what does he want of me? What crime have I done?”

  She frowned. “In Falkynkip, Valentine, take yourself to a speaker, as you promised.”

  “I’ll look for one, yes.”

  Autifon Deliamber, joining the conversation unexpectedly, said, “May I make a recommendation?”

  Valentine had not seen the wizened little Vroon approach. He looked down, surprised.

  “Pardon,” the sorcerer said offhandedly. “I happened to overhear. You are troubled by sendings, you think?”

  “They could be nothing else.”

  “Can you be certain?”

  “I’m certain of nothing. Not even of my name, or yours, or the day of the week.”

  “Sendings are rarely ambiguous. When the King speaks, or the Lady, we know without doubt,” Deliamber said.

  Valentine shook his head. “My mind is clouded these days. I hold nothing sure. But these dreams vex me, and I need answers, though I hardly know how to frame my questions.”

  The Vroon reached up to take Valentine’s hand with one of his delicate, intricately branched tentacles. “Trust me. Your mind may be clouded, but mine is not, and I see you clearly. My name is Deliamber, and yours is Valentine, and this is Fiveday of the ninth week of summer, and in Falkynkip i
s the dream-speaker Tisana, who is my friend and ally, and who will help you find your proper path. Go to her and say that I give her greetings and love. Time has come for you to begin to recover from the harm that has befallen you, Valentine.”

  “Harm? Harm? What harm is that?”

  “Go to Tisana,” Deliamber said firmly.

  Valentine sought Zalzan Kavol, who was speaking with some person of the village. Eventually the Skandar was done, and turned to Valentine, who said, “I ask leave to spend Starday night apart from the troupe, in Falkynkip.”

  “Also a matter of family honor?” asked Zalzan Kavol sardonically.

  “A matter of private business. May I?”

  The Skandar shrugged an elaborate four-shouldered shrug. “There is something strange about you, something troublesome to me. But do as you wish. We perform in Falkynkip anyway, tomorrow, at the market fair. Sleep where you like, but be ready to leave early Sunday morning, eh?”

  12

  Falkynkip was nothing in the way of being a city to compare with huge sprawling Pidruid, but all the same was far from insignificant, a county seat that served as metropolis for a ranching district of great size. Perhaps three quarters of a million people lived in and about Falkynkip, and five times as many in the outlying countryside. But its pace was different from Pidruid’s, Valentine observed. Possibly its location on this dry, hot plateau rather than along the mild and humid coast had something to do with that: but people moved deliberately here, with stolid, unhurried manners.

  The boy Shanamir made himself scarce on Starday. He had indeed slipped off secretly the night before to his father’s farm some hours north of the city, where—so he told Valentine the next morning—he had left the money he had earned in Pidruid and a note declaring that he was going off to seek adventure and wisdom, and had managed to get away again without being noticed. But he did not expect his father to take lightly the loss of so skilled and useful a hand, and fearing that municipal proctors would be out in search of him, Shanamir proposed to spend the rest of his stay in Falkynkip hidden in the wagon. Valentine explained this to Zalzan Kavol, who agreed, with his usual acrid grace.

  That afternoon at the fair the jugglers came marching boldly out, Carabella and Sleet leading the way, he banging a drum, she tapping a tambourine and singing a lilting jingle:

  Spare a royal, spare a crown,

  Gentlefolk, come sit ye down.

  Astonishment and levity—

  Come and see our jugglery!

  Spare an inch and spare a mile,

  Gentlefolk, we’ll make you smile.

  Cup and saucer, ball and chair,

  Dancing lightly in the air!

  Spare a moment, spare a day,

  And we’ll spin your cares away,

  A moment’s time, a coin well spent,

  Will bring you joy and wonderment.

  But levity and wonderment were far from Valentine’s spirit that day, and he juggled poorly. He was tense and uneasy from too many nights of troubled sleep, and also was inflamed with ambitions that went beyond his present skills, which led him to overreach himself. Twice he dropped clubs, but Sleet had shown him ways of pretending that that was part of the routine, and the crowd seemed forgiving. Forgiving himself was a harder matter. He crept off sullenly to a wine-stand while the Skandars took the center of the stage.

  From a distance he watched them working, the six huge shaggy beings weaving their twenty-four arms in precise and flawless patterns. Each juggled seven knives while constantly throwing and receiving others, and the effect was spectacular, the tension extreme, as the silent interchange of sharp weapons went on and on. The placid burghers of Falkynkip were spellbound.

  Watching the Skandars, Valentine regretted all the more his own faulty performance. Since Pidruid he had yearned to go before an audience again—his hands had twitched for the feel of clubs and balls—and he had finally had his moment and had been clumsy. No matter. There would be other marketplaces, other fairs. All across Zimroel the troupe would wander, year after year, and he would shine, he would dazzle audiences, they would cry out for Valentine the juggler, they would demand encore after encore, until Zalzan Kavol himself looked black with jealousy. A king of jugglers, yes, a monarch, a Coronal of performers! Why not? He had the gift. Valentine smiled. His dour mood was lifting. Was it the wine, or his natural good spirits reasserting themselves? He had been at the art only a week, after all, and look what he had achieved already! Who could say what wonders of eye and hand he would perform when he had had a year or two of practice?

  Autifon Deliamber was at his side. “Tisana is to be found in the Street of Watermongers,” the diminutive sorcerer said. “She expects you shortly.”

  “Have you spoken to her of me, then?”

  “No,” said Deliamber.

  “But she expects me. Hah! Is it by sorcery?”

  “Something of that,” the Vroon said, giving a Vroonish wriggle of the limbs that amounted to a shrug. “Go to her soon.”

  Valentine nodded. He looked across: the Skandars were done, and Sleet and Carabella were demonstrating one-arm juggling. How elegantly they moved together, he thought. How calm, how confident they were, how crisp of motion. And how beautiful she was. Valentine and Carabella had not been lovers since the night of the festival, though sometimes they had slept side by side; it was a week now, and he had felt aloof and apart from her, though nothing but warmth and support had come from her to him. These dreams were the problem, draining and distracting him. To Tisana, then, for a speaking, and then, perhaps tomorrow, to embrace Carabella again—

  “The Street of Watermongers,” he said to Deliamber. “Very well. Will there be a sign marking her dwelling?”

  “Ask,” Deliamber said.

  As Valentine set out, the Hjort Vinorkis stepped from behind the wagon and said, “Off for a night on the town, are you?”

  “An errand,” Valentine said.

  “Want some company?” the Hjort laughed his coarse, noisy laugh. “We could hit a few taverns together, hoy? I wouldn’t mind getting away from all this jugglery for a few hours.”

  Uneasily Valentine said, “It’s the sort of thing one must do by oneself.”

  Vinorkis studied him a moment. “Not too friendly, are you?”

  “Please. It’s exactly as I said: I must do this alone. I’m not going tavern-crawling tonight, believe me.”

  The Hjort shrugged. “All right. Be like that—see if I care. I just wanted to help you have fun—show you the town, take you to a couple of my favorite places—”

  “Another time,” said Valentine quickly.

  He strode off toward Falkynkip.

  The Street of Watermongers was easy enough to find—this was an orderly town, no medieval maze like Pidruid, and there were neat and comprehensible city maps posted at every major intersection—but finding the home of the dream-speaker Tisana was a slower business, for the street was long and those he asked for directions merely pointed over their shoulders toward the north. He followed along steadfastly and by early evening reached a small gray rough-shingled house in a residential quarter far from the marketplace. It bore on its weatherworn front door two symbols of the Powers, the crossed lightning-bolts that stood for the King of Dreams, and the triangle-within-triangle that was the emblem of the Lady of the Isle of Sleep.

  Tisana was a sturdy woman of more than middle years, heavy-bodied and of unusual height, with a broad strong face and cool searching eyes. Her hair, thick and unbound, black streaked with swaths of white, hung far down her shoulders. Her arms, emerging bare from the gray cotton smock that she wore, were solid and powerful, although swinging dewlaps of flesh hung from them. She seemed a person of great strength and wisdom.

  She greeted Valentine by name and bade him be comfortable in her house.

  “I bring you, as you must already know, the greetings and love of Autifon Deliamber,” he said.

  The dream-speaker nodded gravely. “He has sent advance word, yes. That ras
cal! But his love is worth receiving, for all his tricks. Convey the same from me to him.” She moved around the small dark room, closing draperies, lighting three thick red candles, igniting some incense. There was little furniture, only a high-piled woven rug in tones of gray and black, a venerable wooden table on which the candles stood, and a tall clothes-cabinet in antique style. She said, as she made her preparations, “I’ve known Deliamber nearly forty years—would you believe it? It was in the early days of the reign of Tyeveras that we met, at a festival in Piliplok, when the new Coronal came to town, Lord Malibor that drowned on the sea-dragon hunt. The little Vroon was tricky even then. We stood there cheering Lord Malibor in the streets, and Deliamber said, ‘He’ll die before the Pontifex, you know,’ the way someone might predict rain when the south wind blows. It was a terrible thing to say, and I told him so. Deliamber didn’t care. A strange business, when the Coronal dies first, when the Pontifex lives on and on. How old d’ye think Tyeveras is by now? A hundred? A hundred twenty?”

  “I have no idea.” said Valentine.

  “Old, very old. He was Coronal a long while before he entered the Labyrinth. And he’s been in there for three Coronal-reigns—can you imagine? I wonder if he’ll outlive Lord Valentine too.” Her eyes came to rest on Valentine’s. “I suppose Deliamber knows that too. Will you have wine with me now?”

  “Yes,” Valentine said, uncomfortable with her blunt, outgoing manner and with the sense she gave him of knowing far more about him than he knew himself.

  Tisana produced a carven stone decanter and poured two generous drinks, not the spicy fireshower wine of Pidruid but some darker, thicker vintage, sweet with undertastes of peppermint and ginger and other, more mysterious, things. He took a quick sip, and then another, and after the second she said casually, “It contains the drug, you know.”

  “Drug?”

  “For the speaking.”

  “Oh. Of course. Yes.” His ignorance embarrassed him. Valentine frowned and stared into his goblet. The wine was dark red, almost purple, and its surface gave back his own distorted reflection by candlelight. What was the procedure? he wondered. Was he supposed now to tell his recent dreams to her? Wait and see, wait and see. He drained the drink in quick uneasy gulps and immediately the old woman refilled, topping off her own glass, which she had barely touched.