Lord Valentine's Castle: Book One of the Majipoor Cycle Read online

  He saw himself crossing the harsh and terrible purple plain that he had visited so often in recent slumber. This time he knew without question where the plain was: no realm of fantasy, but the distant continent of Suvrael that lay beneath the unshielded glare of the naked sun, and these fissures in the ground were scars of summer, where what little moisture the soil contained had been sucked forth. Ugly twisted plants with swollen grayish leaves lay limp against the ground, and things with thorns and weird angular joints grew tall. Valentine walked swiftly, in the heat and the merciless biting wind and the skin-cracking dryness. He was late, overdue at the palace of the King of Dreams, where he had been hired to perform.

  The palace now loomed before him, sinister, black-shadowed, all spidery turrets and jagged porticoes, a building as spiky and forbidding as the plants of the desert. More a jail than a palace it seemed, at least in its outer aspect, but inside everything was different, cool and luxurious, with fountains in the courtyards, and soft plush draperies, and a scent of flowers in the air. Servants bowed and beckoned to him, leading him to inner chambers, stripping away his sand-crusted clothes, bathing him, drying him in feathery towels, giving him fresh clothes, elegant jeweled robes, offering him chilled sherbets, icy wine of a silvery hue, morsels of unknown delicate meats, and at last bringing him to the great high-vaulted throne-room where the King of Dreams sat in state.

  At a vast distance Valentine saw him enthroned: Simonan Barjazid, the malign and unpredictable Power who from this windswept desert territory sent his messages of terrible import all through Majipoor. He was a heavy-bodied man, his face beardless, fleshy-jowled, eyes deep-set and ringed with dark circles, and around his close-cropped stubbly head he wore the golden diadem of his power, the thought-amplifying apparatus that a Barjazid had devised a thousand years ago. To Simonan’s left sat his son Cristoph, fleshy like his father, and at his right hand was his son Minax, the heir, a man of lean and forbidding aspect, dark-skinned and sharp-faced, as if honed by the desert winds.

  The King of Dreams, with a casual wave of his hand, ordered Valentine to begin.

  It was knives he juggled, ten, fifteen of them, thin shining stilettos that would pierce right through his arm if they dropped wrongly, but he handled them with ease, juggling as only Sleet might do, or perhaps Zalzan Kavol, a virtuoso display of skill. Valentine stood still, making only the tiniest flicking motions of his hands and wrists, and the knives soared aloft and flashed with keen brilliance, coursing high through the air and falling perfectly back to his waiting fingers, and as they rose and fell, rose and fell, the arc that they described took on an alteration of form, no longer a mere cascade but becoming the starburst emblem of the Coronal, blades pointing outward as they flew through the air, and abruptly, as Valentine approached the climax of his performance, the knives froze in midair, and hovered there just above his questing fingers, and would not descend to them.

  And from behind the throne came a scowling fierce-eyed man who was Dominin Barjazid, the third of the sons of the King of Dreams, and he strode toward Valentine and with an easy contemptuous gesture swept the starburst of knives from the air, thrusting them into the sash of his robe.

  The King of Dreams smiled mockingly. “You are an excellent juggler, Lord Valentine. At last you find a proper occupation.”

  “I am Coronal of Majipoor,” Valentine replied.

  “Were. Were. Were. You are a wanderer now, and fit to be nothing more.”

  “Lazy,” said Minax Barjazid.

  “Cowardly,” said Cristoph Barjazid. “Idle.”

  “A shirker of duty,” Dominin Barjazid declared.

  “Your rank is forfeit,” said the King of Dreams. “Your office is vacated. Go. Go and juggle, Valentine the juggler. Go, idler. Go, wanderer.”

  “I am Coronal of Majipoor,” Valentine repeated firmly.

  “No longer,” said the King of Dreams. He touched his hands to the diadem at his forehead and Valentine rocked and shook as if the ground had opened at his feet, and he stumbled and fell, and when be looked up again he saw that Dominin Barjazid now was clad in the green doublet and ermine robe of a Coronal, and had altered in appearance so that his face was the face of Lord Valentine and his body was the body of Lord Valentine, and out of the juggling knives that he had taken from Valentine he had fashioned the starburst crown of a Coronal, which his father Simonan Barjazid now placed upon his brow.

  “See?” the King of Dreams cried. “Power passes to the worthy! Go, juggler! Go!”

  And Valentine fled into the purple desert, and saw the angry swirls of a sandstorm racing toward him out of the south, and tried to escape, but the storm came at him from all directions. He roared, “I am Lord Valentine the Coronal!” but his voice was lost in the wind and he felt sand in his teeth. He shouted, “This is treason, to usurp the power!” and his shout was blown away. He looked toward the palace of the King of Dreams, but it was no longer to be seen, and a great and shattering sense of eternal loss overwhelmed him.

  He woke.

  Carabella lay peacefully beside him. The first pale light of dawn was entering the room. Although it had been a monstrous dream, a sending of the most portentous sort, he felt utterly calm. For days now he had tried to deny the truth, but there was no rejecting it now, however bizarre, however fantastic it seemed. In another body he had once been Coronal of Majipoor, and body and identity had been stolen somehow from him. Could it be? A dream of such urgency could scarcely be dismissed or ignored. He sorted through the deepest places of his mind, trying to uncover memories of power, ceremonies on the Mount, glimpses of royal pomp, the taste of responsibility. Nothing. Nothing whatever. He was a juggler, and nothing more than a juggler, and he could remember no shred of his life before Pidruid: it was as if he had been born on that hillside, moments before Shanamir the herdsman had encountered him, born there with money in his purse and a flask of good red wine at his hip and a scattering of false memories in his mind.

  And if it was true? If he was Coronal?

  Why, then, he must go forth, for the sake of the commonwealth of Majipoor, to overthrow the tyrant and reclaim his rightful position. There would be that obligation upon him. But the notion was absurd. It created a dryness in his throat and a pounding in his chest, close to panic. To overthrow that dark-haired man of power, who had ridden in pomp through Pidruid? How could that possibly be done? How even come near a Coronal, let alone push him from his perch? That it had been done once—maybe—was no argument that it could be done again, and by a wandering juggler, an easy-natured young man who felt no compelling urge to tackle the impossible. Besides, Valentine saw in himself so little aptitude for governing. If he had in fact been Coronal, he must have had years of training on Castle Mount, a lengthy apprenticeship in the ways and uses of power, but not a trace of that was left to him now. How could he pretend to be a monarch, with none of a monarch’s skills in his head?

  And yet—and yet—

  He glanced down at Carabella. She was awake; her eyes were open; she was watching him in silence. The awe was still upon her, but no longer the terror.

  She said, “What will you do, lord?”

  “Call me Valentine, now and ever.”

  “If you so command me.”

  “I do so command you,” he said.

  “And tell me—Valentine: what will you do?”

  “Travel with the Skandars,” he replied. “Continue to juggle. Master the art more thoroughly. Keep close watch on my dreams. Bide my time, seek to comprehend. What else can I do, Carabella?” He put his hand lightly to hers, and momentarily she shrank from his touch, and then did not, but pressed her other hand above his. He smiled. “What else can I do, Carabella?”

  PART TWO

  The Book of the Metamorphs

  1

  The Ghayrog city of Dulorn was an architectural marvel, a city of frosty brilliance that extended for two hundred miles up and down the heart of the great Dulorn Rift. Though it covered so huge an area, the city’s pred
ominant thrust was vertical: great shining towers, fanciful of design but severely restrained in material, that rose like tapered fangs from the soft gypsum-rich ground. The only approved building material in Dulorn was the native stone of the region, a light, airy calcite of high refractive index, that glittered like fine crystal, or perhaps like diamond. Out of this the Dulornese had fashioned their sharp-tipped high-rise structures and embellished them with parapets and balconies, with enormous flamboyant flying buttresses, with soaring cantilevered ribs, with stalactites and stalagmites of sparkling facets, with lacy bridges far above the streets, with colonnades and domes and pendentives and pagodas. The juggling troupe of Zalzan Kavol, approaching the city from the west, came upon it almost exactly at noon, when the sun stood straight overhead and streaks of white flame seemed to dance along the flanks of the titanic towers. Valentine caught his breath in wonder. Such a vast place! Such a wondrous show of light and form!

  Fourteen million people dwelled in Dulorn, making it one of the larger cities of Majipoor, although by no means the largest. On the continent of Alhanroel, so Valentine had heard, a city of this size would be nothing remarkable, and even here on the more pastoral continent of Zimroel there were many that matched or surpassed it. But surely no place could equal its beauty, he thought. Dulorn was cold and fiery, both at once. Its gleaming spires insistently claimed one’s attention, like chill, irresistible music, like the piercing tones of some mighty organ rolling out across the darkness of space.

  “No country inns for us here!” Carabella cried happily. “We’ll have a hotel, with fine sheets and soft cushions!”

  “Will Zalzan Kavol be so generous?” Valentine asked.

  “Generous?” Carabella laughed. “He has no choice. Dulorn offers only luxurious accommodations. If we sleep here, we sleep in the street or we sleep like dukes: there’s nothing between.”

  “Like dukes,” Valentine said. “To sleep like dukes. Why not?”

  He had sworn her, that morning before leaving the inn, to say nothing to anyone about last night’s events, not to Sleet, not to any of the Skandars, not even, should she feel the need to seek one, to a dream-speaker. He had demanded the oath of silence from her in the name of the Lady, the Pontifex, and the Coronal. Furthermore he had compelled her to continue to behave toward him as though he had always been, and for the rest of his life would remain, merely Valentine the wandering juggler. In extracting the oath from her Valentine had spoken with force and dignity worthy of a Coronal, so that poor Carabella, kneeling and trembling, was as frightened of him all over again as if he were wearing the starburst crown. He felt more than a little fraudulent about that, for he was far from convinced that the strange dreams of the previous night were to be taken at face value. But still, those dreams could not lightly be dismissed, and so precautions must be taken, secrecy, guile. They came strangely to him, such maneuvers. He swore Autifon Deliamber also to the oath, wondering as he did so how much he could trust a Vroon and a sorcerer, but there seemed to be sincerity in Deliamber’s voice as he vowed to keep his confidence.

  Deliamber said, “And who else knows of these matters?”

  “Only Carabella. And I have her bound by the same pledge.”

  “You’ve said nothing to the Hjort?”

  “Vinorkis? Not a word. Why do you ask?”

  The Vroon replied, “He watches you too carefully. He asks too many questions. I have little liking for him.”

  Valentine shrugged. “It’s not hard to dislike Hjorts. But what do you fear?”

  “He guards his mind too well. His aura is a dark one. Keep your distance from him, Valentine, or he’ll bring you trouble.”

  The jugglers entered the city and made their way down broad dazzling avenues to their hotel, guided by Deliamber, who seemed to have a map of every corner of Majipoor engraved in his mind. The wagon halted in front of a tower of splendid height and awesome fantasy of architecture, a place of minarets and arched vaults and shining octagonal windows. Descending from the wagon, Valentine stood blinking and gaping in awe.

  “You look as though you’ve been clubbed on the head,” Zalzan Kavol said gruffly. “Never seen Dulorn before?”

  Valentine made an evasive gesture. His porous memory said nothing to him of Dulorn: but who, once having seen this city, could forget it?

  Some comment seemed called for. He said simply, “Is there anything more glorious on all of Majipoor?”

  “Yes,” the gigantic Skandar replied. “A tureen of hot soup. A mug of strong wine. A sizzling roast over an open fire. You can’t eat beautiful architecture. Castle Mount itself isn’t worth a stale turd to a starving man.” Zalzan Kavol snorted in high self-approbation and, hefting his luggage, strode into the hotel.

  Valentine called bemusedly after him, “But I was speaking only of the beauty of cities!”

  Thelkar, usually the most taciturn of the Skandars, said, “Zalzan Kavol admires Dulorn more than you would believe. But he’d never admit it.”

  “He admits admiration only for Piliplok, where we were born,” Gibor Haern put in. “He feels it’s disloyal to say a good word for anyplace else.”

  “Shh!” cried Erfon Kavol. “He comes!”

  Their senior brother had reappeared at the hotel door. “Well?” Zalzan Kavol boomed. “Why are you standing about? Rehearsal in thirty minutes!” His yellow eyes blazed like those of some beast of the woods. He growled, clenched his four fists menacingly, and vanished again.

  An odd master, Valentine thought. Somewhere far beneath that shaggy hide, he suspected, lay a person of civility and even—who could tell?—of kindness. But Zalzan Kavol worked hard at his bearishness.

  The jugglers were booked to perform at the Perpetual Circus of Dulorn, a municipal festivity that was in progress during every hour of the day and on every day of the year. The Ghayrogs, who dominated this city and its surrounding province, slept not nightly but seasonally, for two or three months at a time, mainly in winter, and when they were awake were insatiable in their demand for entertainment. According to Deliamber they paid well and there were never enough itinerant performers in this part of Majipoor to satisfy their needs.

  When the troupe gathered for the afternoon practice session, Zalzan Kavol announced that tonight’s engagement was due to take place between the fourth and sixth hours after midnight. Valentine was unhappy about that. This night in particular he was eager for the guidance that dreams might bring, after last night’s weighty revelations. But what chance could there be for useful dreams if he spent the most fertile hours of the night onstage?

  “We can sleep earlier,” Carabella observed. “Dreams come at any hour. Or do you have an appointment for a sending?”

  It was a sly teasing remark, for one who had trembled in awe of him not so much earlier. He smiled to show he had taken no offense—he could see self-doubt lurking just beneath her mockery of him—and said, “I might not sleep at all, knowing that I must rise so early.”

  “Have Deliamber touch you as he did last night,” she suggested.

  “I prefer to find my own path into sleep,” he said.

  Which he did, after a stiff afternoon of practice and a satisfying dinner of wind-dried beef and cold blue wine at the hotel. He had taken a room by himself here, and before he entered the bed—cool smooth sheets, as Carabella had said, fit for a duke—he commended his spirit to the Lady of the Isle and prayed for a sending from her, which was permissible and frequently done, though not often effective. It was the Lady now whose aid he most dearly needed. If he was in truth a fallen Coronal, then she was his fleshly mother as well as his spiritual one, and might confirm him in his identity and direct him along his quest.

  As he moved into sleep, he tried to visualize the Lady and her Isle, to reach out across the thousands of miles to her and create a bridge, some spark of consciousness over that immense gap, by which she could make contact with him. He was hampered by the empty places in his memory. Presumably any adult Majipooran knew the features of t
he Lady and the geography of the Isle as well as he did the face of his own mother and the outskirts of his city, but Valentine’s crippled mind gave him mainly blanks, which had to be filled by imagination and chance. How had she looked that night in the fireworks over Pidruid? A round smiling face, long thick hair. Very well. And the rest? Suppose the hair is black and glossy, black like that of her sons Lord Valentine and dead Lord Voriax. The eyes are brown, warm, alert. The lips full, the cheeks lightly dimpled, a fine network of wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. A stately, robust woman, yes, and she strolls through a garden of lush floriferous bushes, yellow tanigales and camellias and eldirons and purple thwales, everything rich with tropical life; she pauses to pluck a blossom and fasten it in her hair, and moves on, along white marble flagstones that wind sinuously between the shrubs, until she emerges on a broad stone patio set into the side of the hill on which she dwells, looking down on the terraces upon terraces descending in wide sweeping curves toward the sea. And she looks westward to far-off Zimroel, she closes her eyes, she thinks of her lost, wandering outcast son in the city of the Ghayrogs, she gathers her force and broadcasts sweet messages of hope and courage to Valentine exiled in Dulorn—

  Valentine slipped into deep sleep.

  And indeed the Lady came to him as he dreamed. He encountered her not on the hillside below her garden, but in some empty city in a wasteland, a ruined place of weather-beaten sandstone pillars and shattered altars. They approached one another from opposite sides of a tumbledown forum under ghostly moonlight. But her face was veiled and she kept it averted from him; he recognized her by the heavy coils of her dark hair and by the fragrance of the creamy-petaled eldiron flower beside her ear, and knew that he was in the presence of the Lady of the Isle, but he wanted her smile to warm his soul in this bleak place, he wanted the comfort of her gentle eyes, and he saw only the veil, the shoulders, the side of her head. “Mother?” he asked uncertainly. “Mother, it’s Valentine! Don’t you know me? Look at me, Mother!”