Lord Valentine's Castle m-1 Read online

  "Brother!" he cried in anguish. "In the name of the Divine—"

  His plea drew harsh laughter and a sharp obscenity. The saber descended in a mighty swing. Valentine thrust out his blade and was shaken by a terrible body-numbing shiver as metal rang against metal and his light sword was snapped to a stump. In the same moment he tripped over a dry sand-scoured snag of wood and tumbled heavily to the ground, landing in a tangle of thorny creeping stems. The huge man with the saber reared above him, blotting out the sun, filling the sky. The death-song took on a murderous screeching intensity of timbre; the vultures fluttered and swooped.

  The sleeping Valentine moaned and trembled. He turned again, huddled close against Carabella, took warmth from her as the dread cold of the death-dream enveloped him. It would be so easy to awaken now, to escape the horror and violence of these images, to swim to safety on the shores of consciousness. But no. With fierce discipline he thrust himself again into the nightmare. The giant figure laughed. The saber rose high. The world lurched and crumbled beneath his fallen body. He commended his soul to the Lady and waited for the blow to descend.

  And the blow of the saber was awkward and lame, and with a foolish thud his brother’s sword buried itself deep in the sand, and the texture and thrust of the dream were altered, for no longer did Valentine hear the wailing hiss of death-songs, and now he found everything reversed, found currents of new and unexpected energy pouring into him. He leaped to his feet. His brother tugged at the saber, cursed, struggled to pull it from the ground, and Valentine snapped it with a contemptuous kick.

  He seized the other man barehanded.

  Now it was Valentine who commanded the duel, and his cowering brother who retreated before a shower of blows, sagging now to his knees as Valentine battered him, growling like a wounded bear, shaking his bloody head from side to side, taking the beating and offering no defense, murmuring only, "Brother . . . brother . . . " as Valentine pounded him to the sand.

  He lay still and Valentine stood victor over him.

  Let it be dawn, Valentine prayed, and released himself from sleep.

  It was still dark. He blinked and clasped his arms to his sides and shivered. Violent frenzied images, fragmented but potent, swam in his troubled mind.

  Carabella studied him thoughtfully.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "I dreamed."

  "You cried out three times. I thought you would wake. A strong dream?"

  "Yes."

  "And now?"

  "I’m puzzled. Troubled."

  "Tell me your dream?"

  It was an intimate request. And yet were they not lovers? Had they not gone down into the world of sleep together, partners in the night’s quest?

  "I dreamed that I fought with my brother," he said hoarsely. "That we dueled with swords in a hot barren desert, that he came close to killing me, that at the last moment I rose from the ground and found new strength and — and — and I beat him to death with my fists."

  Her eyes glittered like an animal’s in the darkness: she watched him like some wary beady-eyed drole.

  "Do you always have such ferocious dreams?" she asked after a time.

  "I don’t think so. But—"

  "Yes?"

  "Not only the violence. Carabella, I have no brother!"

  She laughed. "Do you expect dreams to correspond exactly to reality? Valentine, Valentine, where were you taught? Dreams have a truth deeper than the reality we know. The brother of your dream could be anyone or no one: Zalzan Kavol, Sleet, your father, Lord Valentine, the Pontifex Tyeveras, Shanamir, even me. You know that unless they be specific sendings, dreams transform all things."

  "I know, yes. But what does it mean, Carabella? To duel with a brother — to be killed, almost, by him — to slay him instead—"

  "You want me to speak your dream for you?" she said, surprised.

  "It speaks nothing to me except fear and mystery."

  "You were badly frightened, yes. You were soaked with sweat and you cried out again and again. But painful dreams are the most revealing ones, Valentine. Speak it for yourself."

  "My brother— I have no brother—"

  "I told you, it doesn’t matter."

  "Did I make war against myself, then? I don’t understand. I have no enemies, Carabella."

  "Your father," she suggested.

  He considered that. His father? He searched for a face that he could give to the shadowy man with the saber, but he found only more darkness.

  "I don’t remember him," Valentine said.

  "Did he die when you were a boy?"

  "I think so." Valentine shook his head, which was beginning to throb. "I don’t remember. I see a big man — his beard is dark, his eyes are dark—"

  "What was his name? When did he die?"

  Valentine shook his head again.

  Carabella leaned close. She took his hands in hers and said softly, "Valentine, where were you born?"

  "In the east."

  "Yes, you’ve said that. Where? What city, what province?"

  "Ni-moya?" he said vaguely.

  "Are you asking me or telling me?"

  "Ni-moya," he repeated. "A big house, a garden, near the bend of the river. Yes. I see myself there. Swimming in the river. Hunting in the duke’s forest. Am I dreaming that?"

  "Are you?"

  "It feels like — something I’ve read. Like a story I’ve been told."

  "Your mother’s name?"

  He began to reply, but when he opened his mouth no name came.

  "She died young too?"

  "Galiara," Valentine said without conviction. "That was it. Galiara."

  "A lovely name. Tell me what she looked like."

  "She— she had—" He faltered. "Golden hair, like mine. Sweet smooth skin. Her eyes— her voice sounded like— it’s so hard, Carabella!"

  "You’re shaking."

  "Yes."

  "Come. Here." Once again she drew him close. She was much smaller than he, and yet she seemed very much stronger now, and he took comfort from her closeness. Gently she said, "You don’t remember anything, do you, Valentine?"

  "No. Not really."

  "Not where you were born or where you came from or what your parents looked like or even where you were last Starday, isn’t that so? Your dreams can’t guide you because you have nothing to speak against them." Her hands roamed his head; her fingers probed delicately but firmly into his scalp.

  "What’re you doing?" he asked.

  "Looking to see if you’ve been hurt. A blow on the head can take the memory away, you know."

  "Is there anything there?"

  "No. No, nothing. No marks. No bumps. But that doesn’t mean anything. It could have happened a month or two ago. I’ll look again when the sun has risen."

  "I like the feel of your hands touching me, Carabella."

  "I like touching you," she said.

  He lay quietly against her. The words that had passed between them just now troubled him intensely. Other people, he realized, had rich memories of their childhood and adolescence, and knew the names of their parents and were sure of the place where they had been born, and he had nothing but his overlay of hazy notions, this mist of thin untrustworthy memories covering a well of blankness, yes, and he had known that the blankness was there but had chosen not to peer into it. Now Carabella had forced that upon him. Why, he wondered, was he unlike others? Why were his memories without substance? Had he taken some blow on the head, as she suggested? Or was it just that his mind was dim, that he lacked the capacity to retain the imprints of experience, that he had wandered for years across the face of Majipoor, erasing each yesterday as each new day dawned?

  Neither of them slept again that night. Toward morning, quite suddenly, they began to make love again, in silence, in a kind of driven purposeful way quite different from the earlier playful union; and then they rose, still saying nothing, and bathed in the chilly little brook, and dressed and made their way through town t
o the inn. There were still some bleary-eyed revelers staggering in the streets as the bright eye of the sun rose high over Pidruid.

  —10—

  AT CARABELLA’S PROMPTING Valentine took Sleet into his confidence, and told him of his dream and of the conversation that followed it. The little white-haired juggler listened thoughtfully, never interrupting, looking increasingly solemn. He said when Valentine had done, "You should seek guidance from a dream-speaker. This is too strong a sending to be ignored."

  "Do you think it is a sending, then?"

  "Possibly it is," said Sleet.

  "From the King?"

  Sleet spread his hands and contemplated his fingertips. "It could be. You will have to wait and pay close heed. The King never sends simple messages."

  "It could be from the Lady just as well," Carabella offered. "The violence of it shouldn’t deceive us. The Lady sends violent dreams when the need exists."

  "And some dreams," said Sleet with a smile, "come neither from the Lady nor from the King, but up out of the depths of our own foggy minds. Who can tell unaided? Valentine, see a dream-speaker."

  "Would a dream-speaker help me find my memories, then?"

  "A dream-speaker or a sorcerer, yes. If dreams are no guidance to your past, nothing will be."

  "Besides," said Carabella, "a dream so strong should not go unexamined. There is your responsibility to be considered. If a dream commands an action, and you choose not to pursue that action—" She shrugged. "Your soul will answer for it, and swiftly. Find a speaker, Valentine."

  "I had hoped," Valentine said to Sleet, "that you would have some wisdom in these things."

  "I am a juggler. Find a speaker."

  "Can you recommend one in Pidruid?"

  "We will be leaving Pidruid shortly. Wait until we are a few days’ journey from the city. You will have richer dreams to give the speaker by then."

  "I wonder if this is a sending," said Valentine. "And from the King? What business would the King of Dreams have with a wanderer like me? I hardly think it possible. With twenty billion souls on Majipoor, how could the King find time to deal with any but the most important?"

  "In Suvrael," said Sleet, "at the palace of the King of Dreams, are great machines that scan this entire world, and send messages into the minds of millions of people every night. Who knows how those millions are chosen? One thing they tell us when we are children, and I know it has truth: at least once before we leave this world, we will feel the touch of the King of Dreams against our spirit, each and all of us. I know that I have."

  "You?"

  "More than once." Sleet touched his lank, coarse white hair. "Do you think I was born white-haired? One night I lay in a hammock in the jungles outside Narabal, no juggler then, and the King came to me as I slept and placed commands upon my soul, and when I awakened my hair was like this. I was twenty-three years old."

  "Commands?" Valentine blurted. "What commands?"

  "Commands that turn a man’s hair from black to white between darkness and dawn," Sleet said. Obviously he wished to say no more. He got to his feet and glanced at the morning sky as though checking the elevation of the sun. "I think we’ve had enough talk for now, friend. There still are crowns to earn at the festival. Would you learn a few new tricks before Zalzan Kavol sends us out to work?"

  Valentine nodded. Sleet fetched balls and clubs; they went out into the courtyard.

  "Watch," said Sleet, and he stood close behind Carabella. She held two balls in her right hand, he one in his left, and they put their other arms around one another. "This is half-juggling," Sleet said. "A simple thing even for beginners, but it looks extremely challenging." Carabella threw; Sleet threw and caught; at once they were in the rhythm of interchange, easily passing the balls back and forth, one entity with four legs and two minds and two juggling arms. Indeed it did look taxing, Valentine thought. Sleet called out, "Feed the clubs to us now!"

  As Valentine delivered each club with a quick sharp toss to Carabella’s right hand, she worked it into the sequence, one, two, three, until balls and clubs flew from her to Sleet, from Sleet to her, in a dizzying cascade. Valentine knew from his own private trials how difficult it was to deal with that many objects. Five balls would be in his compass in another few weeks, he hoped; four clubs might be feasible soon too; but to handle three of each at the same time, and coordinate this half-juggling as well, was a feat that amazed him with admiration. And some jealousy too, he realized oddly, for here was Sleet with his body tight up against Carabella’s, forming a single organism with her, and only a few hours ago she had lain with him by the side of that brook in the Pidruid park.

  "Try it," Sleet said.

  He stepped aside and Carabella put herself in front of Valentine, arm and arm. They worked with three balls only. At first Valentine had problems judging the height and force of his throws, and sometimes sent the ball popping beyond Carabella’s reach, but in ten minutes he had the knack of it and in fifteen they were working together as smoothly as if they had been doing the act for years. Sleet encouraged him with lively applause.

  One of the Skandars appeared, not Zalzan Kavol but his brother Erfon, who even as Skandars went was dour and chill. "Are you ready?" he asked gruffly.

  The troupe performed that afternoon in the private park of one of the powerful merchants of Pidruid, who was giving an entertainment for a provincial duke. Carabella and Valentine performed their new half-juggling routine, the Skandars did something flamboyant with dishes and crystal goblets and cooking-pans, and, as a climax, Sleet was led forth to juggle blindfolded.

  "Is this possible?" Valentine asked, awed.

  "Watch!" said Carabella.

  Valentine watched, but few others did, for this was Sunday after the great Starday frenzy, and the lordlings who had ordered this performance were a weary, jaded bunch, half asleep, bored with the skills of the musicians and acrobats and jugglers they had hired. Sleet stepped forward carrying three clubs and planted himself in a firm, confident way. standing a moment with his head cocked as though listening to the wind that blows between the worlds, and then, catching his breath sharply, he began to throw.

  Zalzan Kavol boomed, "Twenty years of practice, lords and ladies of Pidruid! The keenest sense of hearing is necessary for this! He detects the rustle of the clubs against the atmosphere as they fly from hand to hand!"

  Valentine wondered how even the keenest sense of hearing could detect anything against the hum of conversation and the clink of dishes and the loud ostentatious pronouncements of Zalzan Kavol, but Sleet made no errors. That the juggling was difficult even for him was obvious: normally he was smooth as a machine, tireless as a loom, but now his hands were moving in sudden sharp skips and lunges, grasping hastily at a club that was spinning up almost out of reach, snatching with desperate quickness at one that had fallen nearly too far. Still, it was miraculous juggling. It was as if Sleet had some chart in his mind of the location of each of the moving clubs, and put his hand where he expected a club to fall, and found it there, or close enough. He did ten, fifteen, twenty exchanges of the clubs, and then gathered all three to his chest, flipped the blindfold aside, took a deep bow. There was a pattering of applause. Sleet stood rigid. Carabella came to him and embraced him, Valentine clapped him lustily on the shoulder, and the troupe left the stage.

  In the dressing room Sleet was quivering from strain and beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. He gulped fireshower wine without restraint, as though it were nothing. "Did they pay attention?" he asked Carabella. "Did they even notice?"

  "Some did," she said gently.

  Sleet spat. "Pigs! Blaves! They have not enough skill to walk from one side of a room to the other, and they sit there chattering when— when an artist— when—"

  Valentine had never seen Sleet show temper before. This blind juggling, he decided, was not good for the nerves. He seized the livid Sleet by both shoulders and leaned close. "What matters," he said earnestly, "is the display of skill, not t
he manners of the audience. You were perfect."

  "Not quite," Sleet said sullenly. "The timing—"

  "Perfect," Valentine insisted. "You were in complete command. You were majestic. How could you care what drunken merchants might say or do? Is it for their souls or yours that you mastered the art?"

  Sleet managed a weak grin. "The blind juggling cuts deep into the soul."

  "I would not see you in such pain, my friend."

  "It passes. I feel a little better now."

  "Your pain was self-inflicted," Valentine said. "It was unwise to allow yourself such outrage. I say again: you were perfect, and nothing else is important." He turned to Shanamir. "Go to the kitchen and see if we might have some meat and bread. Sleet has worked too hard. He needs new fuel, and fireshower wine isn’t enough."

  Sleet looked merely tired now, instead of tense and furious. He reached forth a hand. "Your soul is warm and kind, Valentine. Your spirit is a gentle and sunny one."

  "Your pain pained me."

  "I’ll guard my wrath better," Sleet said. "And you’re right, Valentine: we juggle for ourselves. They are incidental. I should not have forgotten that."

  Twice more in Pidruid Valentine saw the blind juggling done; twice more he saw Sleet stalk from a stage, rigid and drained. The attention of the onlookers, Valentine realized, had nothing to do with Sleet’s fatigue. It was a demonic hard thing to do, was all, and the price the small man paid for his skill was a high one. When Sleet suffered, Valentine did what he could to beam comfort and strength to him. There was great pleasure for Valentine in serving the other man in that way.

  Twice more, too, Valentine had dark dreams. One night the apparition of the Pontifex came to him and summoned him into the Labyrinth, and inward he went, down its many passageways and incomprehensible avenues, and the image of gaunt old Tyeveras floated like a will-o’-the-wisp before him, leading him onward to the core, until at last he attained some inner realm of the great maze and suddenly the Pontifex vanished, and Valentine stood alone in a void of cold green light, all footing gone, falling endlessly toward the center of Majipoor. And another night it was the Coronal, riding in his chariot across Pidruid, who beckoned him and invited him to a game of counters, and they threw the dice and moved the markers, and what they played with was a packet of bleached knucklebones, and when Valentine asked whose bones they were, Lord Valentine laughed and tugged at his stiff black fringe of a beard and fastened his dazzling harsh eyes on him and said, "Look at your hands," and Valentine looked, and his hands were without fingers, mere pink globes at his wrists.