Majipoor Chronicles Read online

  He glared at Valentine and turned away.

  Questions blossomed in Valentine like alabandinas in summer, but he suppressed them all, for he saw Voriax’ lips quivering and knew that he had already gone beyond a boundary. Voriax was ripping angrily at the fallen branches, pulling twigs free with a vehemence not at all necessary, for the wood was dry and brittle. Valentine did not attempt again to breach his brother’s defenses, though he had learned only a little of what he wanted to know. He suspected, from Voriax’ defensiveness, that Voriax did indeed hunger for the kingship and devoted all his waking hours to training himself for it; and he had an inkling, but only an inkling, of why he should want it. For its own sake, for the power and the glory? Well, why not? And for fulfillment of a destiny that called certain people to high obligations? Yes, that too. And doubtless to atone for the slight that had been shown their father when he had been passed over for the crown. But still, but still, to give up one’s freedom merely to rule the world—it was a mystery to Valentine, and in the end he decided that Voriax was right, that these were things he could not fully comprehend at the age of seventeen.

  He carried his load of firewood back to the campsite and began kindling a blaze. Voriax joined him soon, but he said nothing, and a chill of estrangement lingered between the brothers that gave Valentine great distress. He wished he could apologize to Voriax for having probed so deeply, but that was impossible, for he had never been graceful at such things with Voriax, nor Voriax with him. He still felt that brother could talk to brother concerning the most intimate matters without giving offense. But on the other hand this frostiness was hard to bear, and if prolonged would poison their holiday together. Valentine searched for a way of regaining amity and after a moment chose one that had worked well enough when they were younger.

  He went to Voriax, who was carving the meat for their meal in a gloomy, sullen way, and said, “While we wait for the water to boil, will you wrestle with me?”

  Voriax glanced up, startled. “What?”

  “I feel the need for exercise.”

  “Climb those pingla-trees, then, and dance on their branches.”

  “Come. Take a few falls with me, Voriax.”

  “It would not be right.”

  “Why? If I overthrew you, would that offend your dignity even further?”

  “Careful, Valentine!”

  “I spoke too sharply. Forgive me.” Valentine went into a wrestler’s crouch and held out his hands. “Please? Some quick holds, a bit of sweat before dinner—”

  “Your leg is only newly healed.”

  “But healed it is. You can use your full strength on me, as I will on you, and never fear.”

  “And if the leg snaps again, and we a day’s journey from any city worth the name?”

  “Come, Voriax,” Valentine said impatiently. “You fret too much! Come, show me you still can wrestle!” He laughed and slapped his palms together and beckoned, and slapped his hands again, and thrust his grinning face almost against the nose of Voriax, and pulled his brother to his feet, and then Voriax yielded and began to grapple with him.

  Something was wrong. They had wrestled often enough, ever since Valentine had been big enough to fight his brother as an equal, and Valentine knew all of Voriax’ moves, his little tricks of balance and timing. But the man he wrestled with now seemed a complete stranger. Was this some Metamorph sneaked upon him in the guise of Voriax? No, no, no; it was the leg, Valentine realized. Voriax was holding back his strength, was being deliberately gentle and awkward, was once again patronizing him. In surprising rage Valentine lunged and, although in this early moment of the bout etiquette called on them only to be testing and probing one another, he seized Voriax with the intent to throw him, and forced him to one knee. Voriax stared in amazement. As Valentine caught his breath and gathered his strength to drive his brother’s shoulders against the ground, Voriax rallied and pressed upward, unleashing for the first time all his formidable strength: he nearly went down anyway before Valentine’s onslaught, but at the last moment he rolled free and sprang to his feet.

  They circled one another warily.

  Voriax said, “I see I underestimated you. Your leg must be entirely healed.”

  “So it is, as I’ve told you many times. I merely limp a little, which makes no difference. Come here, Voriax: come within reach again.”

  He beckoned. They sprang for one another and locked chest against chest, neither able to budge the other, and stayed that way for what seemed to Valentine an hour or more, though probably it was only minutes. Then he drove Voriax back a few inches, and then Voriax dug in and resisted, and forced Valentine back the same distance. They grunted and sweated and strained, and grinned at one another in the midst of the struggle. Valentine took the keenest pleasure in that grin of Voriax, for it meant that they were brothers again, that the chill between them was thawed, that he was forgiven for his impertinence. In that moment he yearned to embrace Voriax instead of wrestling with him; and in that same moment of relaxed tension Voriax shoved at him, twisted, pivoted, drew him to the ground, pinned his midsection with his knee, and clamped his hands against Valentine’s shoulders. Valentine held himself firm, but there was no withstanding Voriax for long at this stage: steadily Voriax pushed Valentine downward until his shoulder blades pressed against the cool moist ground.

  “Your match,” Valentine said, gasping, and Voriax rolled free, lying beside him as laughter overtook them both. “I’ll whip you the next one!”

  How good it felt, even in defeat, to have regained his brother’s love!

  Abruptly Valentine heard the sound of applause coming from not very far away. He sat up and stared about in the twilight, and saw the figure of a woman, sharp-featured and with extraordinarily long straight black hair, standing by the edge of the forest. Her eyes were bright and wicked, her lips were full, her clothes were of a strange style—mere strips of tanned leather crudely tacked together. She seemed quite old to Valentine, perhaps as much as thirty.

  “I watched you,” she said, coming toward them with no trace of fear. “At first I thought it was a real quarrel, but then I saw it was for sport.”

  “At first it was a real quarrel,” said Voriax. “But also it was sport, always. I am Voriax of Halanx, and this is Valentine, my brother.”

  She looked from one to the other. “Yes, of course, brothers. Anyone could see that. I am called Tanunda, and I am of Ghiseldorn. Shall I tell you your fortunes?”

  “Are you a witch, then?” Valentine asked.

  There was merriment in her eyes. “Yes, yes, certainly, a witch. What else?”

  “Come, then, foretell for us!” cried Valentine.

  “Wait,” said Voriax. “I have no liking for sorceries.”

  “You are too sober by half,” Valentine said. “What harm can it do? We visit Ghiseldorn the city of wizards; should we not then have our destinies read? What are you afraid of? It’s a game, Voriax, only a game!” He walked toward the witch and said, “Will you stay with us for dinner?”

  “Valentine—”

  Valentine glanced boldly at his brother and laughed. “I’ll protect you against evil, Voriax! Have no fear!” And in a lower voice he said, “We’ve traveled alone long enough, brother. I’m hungry for company.”

  “So I see,” murmured Voriax.

  But the witch was attractive and Valentine was insistent and shortly Voriax appeared to grow less uneasy about her presence; he carved a third portion of meat for her, and she went into the forest and came back with fruits of the pingla and showed them how to roast them to make their juice run into the meat and give a pleasingly dark and smoky flavor to it. Valentine felt his head swimming somewhat after a time, and he doubted that the few sips of wine he had had could be responsible, so quite probably it was the juice of the pinglas; the thought crossed his mind that there might be some treachery here, but he rejected it, for the dizziness that was overtaking him was an amiable and even exciting one and he saw no peril in it. He
looked across at Voriax, wondering if his brother’s more suspicious nature would arise to darken their feast, but Voriax, if he was feeling the effects of the juice at all, appeared only to be made more congenial by it: he laughed loudly at everything, he swayed and clapped his thighs, he leaned close to the witch-woman and shouted raucous things into her face. Valentine helped himself to more meat. Night was falling, now, a sudden blackness settling over the camp, stars abruptly blazing out of a sky lit only by one small sliver of moon. Valentine imagined he could hear distant singing and discordant chanting, though it seemed to him that Ghiseldorn must be too far away for such sounds to carry through the dense woods: a fantasy, he decided, stirred by these intoxicating fruits.

  The fire burned low. The air grew cool. They huddled close together, Valentine and Voriax and Tanunda, and body pressed against body in what was at first an innocent way and then not so innocent. As they entwined Valentine caught his brother’s eye, and Voriax winked, as if he were saying, We are men together tonight, and we will take our pleasure together, brother. Now and then with Elidath or Stasilaine, Valentine had shared a woman, three tumbling merrily in a bed built for two, but never with Voriax, Voriax who was so conscious of his dignity, his superiority, his high position, so there was special delight for Valentine in this game now. The Ghiseldorn witch had shed her leather garments and showed a lean and supple body by firelight. Valentine had feared that her flesh would be repellent, she being so much older than he, older even than Voriax by some years, but he saw now that that was the foolishness of inexperience, for she seemed altogether beautiful to him. He reached for her and encountered Voriax’ hand against her flank; he slapped at it playfully, as he would at a buzzing insect, and both brothers laughed, and above their deep laughter came the silvery chuckling of Tanunda, and all three rolled about in the dewy grass.

  Valentine had never known so wild a night. Whatever drug was in the pingla-juice worked on him to free him of all inhibition and to spur his energies, and with Voriax it must have been the same. To Valentine the night became a sequence of fragmentary images, of sequences of events unlinked to others. Now he lay sprawled with Tanunda’s head in his lap, stroking her gleaming brow while Voriax embraced her, and he listened to their mingled gasps with a strange pleasure; and then it was he who held the witch tight, and Voriax was somewhere close at hand but he could not tell where; and then Tanunda lay sandwiched between the two men for some giddy grappling; and somehow they went from there to the stream, and bathed and splashed and laughed, and ran naked and shivering to the dying fire, and made love again, Valentine and Tanunda, Voriax and Tanunda, Valentine and Tanunda and Voriax, flesh calling to flesh until the first grayish strands of morning broke the darkness.

  All three were awake as the sun burst into the sky. Great swathes of the night were gone from Valentine’s memory, and he wondered if he had slept unknowing from time to time, but now his mind was weirdly clear, his eyes were wide, as though this were the middle of the day. Voriax was the same, and the grinning naked witch who sprawled between them.

  “Now,” she said, “the telling of fortunes!”

  Voriax made an uneasy sound, a rasping of the throat, but Valentine said quickly, “Yes! Yes! Prophesy for us!”

  “Gather the pingla-seeds,” she said.

  They were scattered all about, glossy black nuts with splashes of red on them. Valentine scooped up a dozen of them, and even Voriax collected a few; these they gave to Tanunda, who had found a handful also, and she began to roll them in her fists and scatter them like dice on the ground. Five times she cast them, and scooped them up and cast again; then she cupped her hands and allowed a line of seeds to fall in a circle, and threw the remaining ones within that circle, and peered close a long while, squatting with face to the ground to study the patterns. At length she looked up. The wanton deviltry was gone from her face; she looked strangely altered, very solemn and some years older.

  “You are high-born men,” she said. “But that could be seen from the way you carry yourselves. The seeds tell me much more. I see great perils ahead for both of you.”

  Voriax looked away, scowling, and spat.

  “You are skeptical, yes,” she said. “But you each face dangers. You—” she indicated Voriax—“must be wary of forests, and you—” a glance at Valentine—“of water, of oceans.” She frowned. “And of much else, I think, for your destiny is a mysterious one and I am unable to read it clearly. Your line is broken—not by death, but by something stranger, some change, a great transformation—” She shook her head. “It is puzzling to me. I can be of no other help.”

  Voriax said, “Beware of forests, beware of oceans—beware of nonsense!”

  “You will be king,” said Tanunda.

  Voriax caught his breath sharply. The anger fled his face and he gaped at her.

  Valentine smiled and clapped his brother’s back and said, “You see? You see?”

  “And you also will be king,” the witch said.

  “What?” Valentine was bewildered. “What foolishness is this? Your seeds deceive you!”

  “If they do, it is for the first time,” said Tanunda. She gathered the fallen seeds and flung them quickly into the stream, and wrapped her strips of leather about her body. “A king and a king, and I have enjoyed my night’s sport with you both, your majesties-to-be. Shall you go on to Ghiseldorn today?”

  “I think not,” said Voriax, without looking at her.

  “Then we will not meet again. Farewell!”

  She moved swiftly toward the forest. Valentine stretched out a hand toward her, but said nothing, only squeeze the air helplessly with his trembling fingers, and then she was gone. He turned toward Voriax, who was scuffing angrily at the embers of the fire. All the joy of the night’s revelry had fled.

  “You were right,” Valentine said. “We should not have let her dabble in prophecy at our expense. Forests! Oceans! And this madness of our both being kings!”

  “What does she mean?” asked Voriax. “That we will share the throne as we shared her body this night past?”

  “It will not be,” said Valentine.

  “Never has there been joint rule in Majipoor. It makes no sense! It is unthinkable! If I am to be king, Valentine, how are you also to be king?”

  “You are not listening to me. I tell you, pay no attention to it, brother. She was a wild woman who gave us a night of drunken pleasure. There’s no truth in prophecy.”

  “She said I was to be king.”

  “And so you probably shall be. But it was only a lucky guess.”

  “And if not? And if she is a genuine seer?”

  “Why, then, you will be king!”

  “And you? If she spoke truly about me, then you too must be Coronal, and how—”

  “No,” Valentine said. “Prophets often speak in riddles and ambiguities. She means something other than the literal. You are to be Coronal, Voriax, it is the common knowledge—and there is some other meaning to the thing she predicted for me, or else there is no meaning at all.”

  “This frightens me, Valentine.”

  “If you are to be Coronal there is nothing to fear. Why do you grimace like that?”

  “To share the throne with one’s brother—” He worried at the idea as at a sore tooth, refusing to move away from it.

  “It will not be,” said Valentine. He scooped up a fallen garment, found it to belong to Voriax, and tossed it to him. “You heard me speak yesterday. It goes beyond my understanding why anyone would covet the throne. Certainly I am no threat to you in that regard.” He seized his brother’s wrist. “Voriax, Voriax, you look so dire! Can the words of a forest-witch affect you so? I swear this to you: when you are Coronal, I will be your servant, and never your rival. By our mother who is to be the Lady of the Isle do I swear it. And I tell you that what passed here this night is not to be taken seriously.”

  “Perhaps not,” Voriax said.

  “Certainly not,” said Valentine. “Shall we leave this pl
ace now, brother?”

  “I think so.”

  “She used her body well, do you not agree?”

  Voriax laughed. “That she did. It saddens me a little to think I’ll never embrace her again. But no, I would not care to hear more of her lunatic soothsaying, however wondrous the movements of her hips may be. I’ve had my fill of her, and of this place, I think. Shall we pass Ghiseldorn by?”

  “I think so,” Valentine said. “What cities lie along the Glayge near here?”

  “Jerrik is next, where many Vroons are settled, and Mitripond, and a place called Gayles. I think we should take lodging in Jerrik, and amuse ourselves with some gambling for a few days.”

  “To Jerrik, then.”

  “Yes, to Jerrik. And say no more concerning the kingship to me, Valentine.”

  “Not a word, I promise.” He laughed and threw his arms around Voriax. “Brother! I thought several times on this journey that I had lost you altogether, but I see that all is well, that I have found you again!”

  “We were never lost to one another,” said Voriax, “not for an instant. Come, now: pack your things, and onward to Jerrik!”

  They never spoke again of their night with the witch and of the things she had foretold. Five years later, when Lord Malibor perished while hunting sea-dragons, Voriax was chosen as Coronal, to no one’s surprise, and Valentine was the first to kneel in homage before his brother. By then Valentine had virtually forgotten the troublesome prophecy of Tanunda, though not the taste of her kisses and the feel of her flesh. Both of them kings? How, after all, could that be, since only one man could be Coronal at a time? Valentine rejoiced for his brother Lord Voriax and was content to be what he was. And by the time he understood the full meaning of the prophecy, which was not that he would rule jointly with Voriax but that he would succeed him on the throne, though never before on Majipoor had brother followed brother in such a way, it was impossible for him to embrace Voriax and reassure him of his love; for Voriax was lost to him forever, struck down by a hunter’s stray bolt in the forest, and Valentine was brotherless and alone as in awe and amazement he mounted the steps of the Confalume Throne.