The Mountains of Majipoor

1

The sky, which had been a frosty blue all these weeks of Harpirias’s northward journey into this bleak and turbulent land, was the color of lead today. The air had grown so cold that it seemed to burn the skin. And a fierce cutting wind had suddenly begun rushing down through the narrow pass in the great mountain wall just ahead, carrying with it clouds of tiny hard particles, myriad sharp-edged things that struck Harpirias’s unprotected cheeks like little stinging insects.

"Prince, you asked me yesterday what a snowstorm was like," said Korinaam the Shapeshifter, who was the expedition’s guide. "Today you’ll find out."

"I thought it was supposed to be summer here just now," Harpirias said. "Does it snow in the Khyntor Marches even in summer?"

"Even in summer, oh, yes, it does that very often," Korinaam replied serenely. "Sometimes for many days on end. Wolf-summer, we call that. When the snowdrifts pile higher than a Skandar’s head, and famished steetmoys come out of the far north by the dozens to prey on the herds of the farmers in the foothills."

"By the Lady, if that’s summer, what can the winters in this place be like, then?"

"If you are a believing man, you would do well to pray that the Divine never gives you the opportunity to find out," said Korinaam. "Come, prince. The pass awaits us."

Harpirias squinted uneasily toward the fanged heights before them. The heavy sky looked bruised and swollen. With mounting vigor the churning wind threw maddening handfuls of those sharp little particles in his face.

Surely it was suicidal to be going up into the teeth of that storm. Scowling, Harpirias glanced toward Korinaam. The Shapeshifter seemed untroubled by the gathering fury above. His frail, attenuated figure was clad only in a twist of yellow cloth around his waist; his rubbery-looking greenish torso showed no reaction to the sudden bitter cold; his face, virtually featureless — tiny nose, slit of a mouth, narrow eyes sharply slanting beneath heavy hoods — was almost impossible to read.

"Do you really think it’s wise to try to take the pass while it’s snowing?" Harpirias asked.

"Wiser than to wait down here for the avalanches and the floods that will follow them," the Shapeshifter said. His eye-hoods drew back for a moment. There was an uncompromising look in the dark implacable eyes beneath. "When traveling these roads in wolf-summer time, the higher the better is the rule, prince. Come. The real snowfall isn’t upon us yet. This is only harbinger-ice, the vanguard that rides on the first wind. We ought to be moving onward before things get worse."

Korinaam jumped into the floater that he shared with Harpirias. Eight similar vehicles were lined up behind it along the narrow mountain road. Aboard them were the two dozen soldiers of this expedition to the inhospitable northlands which Harpirias so reluctantly found himself leading, and the equipment that was supposed to tide them through their difficult and dangerous venture into this desolate, forbidding country. But Harpirias hesitated a moment more, standing beside the open door of the floater, staring up in awe and wonder at the oncoming storm.

Snow! Actual snow!

He had heard of snow. He had read of it in storybooks when he was a child: frozen water, it was, water that had been turned by extreme cold to some kind of tangible substance. It sounded magical: lovely white dust, austere and pure, cold beyond all comprehension, that would melt at the touch of your finger.

Magical, yes. Unreal, the stuff of fable and witchcraft. Hardly anywhere on the whole vast world of Majipoor was it possible to encounter temperatures low enough actually to freeze water. Certainly one did not ever find snow on the airy slopes of Castle Mount, where Harpirias had spent his boyhood and young manhood among the knights and princes of the Coronal’s court, and where the great weather-machines built in ancient times kept the Fifty Cities wrapped in eternal gentle springtime.

It was said that snow sometimes fell in the worst of winters along the highest ridges of certain other mountain peaks, though: atop Mount Zygnor in northern Alhanroel, and in the Gonghar range that ran across the midsection of the continent of Zimroel. But Harpirias had never been within a thousand miles of Zygnor, nor within five thousand of the Gonghars. He had never been anywhere at all where snow might be probable, until suddenly he was thrust into the command of this unlikely mission into Zimroel’s far northland — into the harsh and lofty mountain-girt plateau known as the Khyntor Marches. The veritable motherland of snow, that was, infamous for its howling icy gales and formidable glacier-locked peaks. Here alone in all of Majipoor did true winter reign: behind the awesome mountains known as the Nine Sisters that cut an entire peninsula off from the rest of the world and doomed it to a stern frigid climate of its own.

But Harpirias and his companions were making their Khyntor journey in summer. And so even here he was not expecting to experience a snowfall, but only perhaps to catch a glimpse of the leftover snow of the winter before, lying along the rims of the topmost peaks. As indeed he had. The travelers were no more than a few hundred miles north of the green round-bosomed hills that rise behind the city of Ni-moya when the landscape had begun to change, lush dense shrubbery giving way to sparse stands of yellow-boled trees, and then they were in the foothills of the Marches, climbing steadily across a rising terrain of flat gray shields of granite cut by swift streams, and at last the first of the Nine Sisters of Khyntor came into sight: Threilikor, the Weeping Sister. But there was no snow on Threilikor in this season, only the multitude of streams and rivulets and cascades that gave her her name.

The next mountain they reached, though, was Javnikor, the Black Sister, and the road that took them past her flank showed Harpinas her north face, where near the summit the dark rock was brightly encrusted here and there with a scattering of white patches, like sinister encroaching blemishes. Still farther to the north, along the sides of the mountain known as Cuculimaive — the Lovely Sister, a symmetrical pile of pink stone festooned with uncountable rocky spires and parapets and outcroppings of all imaginable shapes — Harpirias beheld something even stranger, long grayish-white tongues of ice trailing down, which Korinaam said were glaciers. "Frozen rivers of ice is what they are, rivers of ice that flow down into the lowlands, slowly, very slowly, moving just a few feet every year."

Rivers of ice! How could there be such a thing?

And now before them lay the Twin Sisters, Shelvokor and Malvokor, which could not be gone around but must be ascended if the travelers were to attain their destination. Two great square-shouldered blocks of stone side by side, they were, immensely broad and so high that Harpirias could not begin to guess their height, and their upper reaches were mantled thickly in white, even on their south faces, so that when the sun struck their surfaces they were blinding to behold. A single narrow pass led up and between them, which Kormaam said must now be traversed. And down from that pass, scouring everything in its path, there blew a wind such as Harpirias had never felt before, a wind out of the Pit, a wolf-wind, a demon-wind, cold and biting and angry, carrying with it the sharp icy harbingers of a summer snowstorm.

"Well?" Korinaam said.

"You really think we should go up into that?"

"There is no other choice."

Harpirias shrugged and clambered into the floater next to the Shapeshifter. Korinaam touched the controls and the vehicle glided forward. The other floaters followed.

For a time the ascent merely seemed strange and beautiful. The snow came upon them in luminous wind-whipped ribbons that swirled and gusted in a wild frantic dance. The air before them took on a wondrous shimmer from the glittering flecks that were tossing about in it. A soft white cloak began to cover the black walls of the pass.

But after a time the storm intensified, the cloak wrapped itself closer and closer about them. Harpirias could see nothing but whiteness, before, behind, above, to the right and left. On every side there was snow, only snow, a dense swaddling of snow.

Where was the road? It was miraculous that Korinaam was able to see it at all, let alone to follow every twist and turn.

Though it was warm enough inside the floater, Harpirias found himself starting to shiver and could not stop. From such glimpses of the pass as he had had in the early stages of the climb, he knew that the road was a treacherous one, switching back from side to side above terrible abysses as it rose between the two stolid mountains. Even if Korinaam did not simply steer the floater over the edge on one of the sharper turns, the wind was only too likely to pick the vehicle up and send it crashing down the slope.

Harpirias sat still, saying nothing, fighting to keep his teeth from chattering. It was not proper for him to show fear. He was a knight of the Coronal’s court, a beneficiary of the severe and rigorous training that such a phrase implied. Nor was his ancestry that of a coward. A thousand years before, his celebrated ancestor Prestimion had ruled this world in glory, doing deeds of high renown, first as Coronal, then as Pontifex. Could a descendant of the resplendent Prestimion permit himself to display cowardice before a Shapeshifter?

No. No.

Malvokor, which could not be gone around but must be ascended if the travelers were to attain their destination. Two great square-shouldered blocks of stone side by side, they were, immensely broad and so high that Harpirias could not begin to guess their height, and their upper reaches were mantled thickly in white, even on their south faces, so that when the sun struck their surfaces they were blinding to behold. A single narrow pass led up and between them, which Korinaam said must now be traversed. And down from that pass, scouring everything in its path, there blew a wind such as Harpirias had never felt before, a wind out of the Pit, a wolf-wind, a demon-wind, cold and biting and angry, carrying with it the sharp icy harbingers of a summer snowstorm.

"Well?" Korinaam said.

"You really think we should go up into that?"

"There is no other choice."

Harpirias shrugged and clambered into the floater next to the Shapeshifter. Korinaam touched the controls and the vehicle glided forward. The other floaters followed.

For a time the ascent merely seemed strange and beautiful. The snow came upon them in luminous wind-whipped ribbons that swirled and gusted in a wild frantic dance. The air before them took on a wondrous shimmer from the glittering flecks that were tossing about in it. A soft white cloak began to cover the black walls of the pass.

But after a time the storm intensified, the cloak wrapped itself closer and closer about them. Harpirias could see nothing but whiteness, before, behind, above, to the right and left. On every side there was snow, only snow, a dense swaddling of snow.

Where was the road? It was miraculous that Korinaam was able to see it at all, let alone to follow every twist and turn.

Though it was warm enough inside the floater, Harpirias found himself starting to shiver and could not stop. From such glimpses of the pass as he had had in the early stages of the climb, he knew that the road was a treacherous one, switching back from side to side above terrible abysses as it rose between the two stolid mountains. Even if Korinaam did not simply steer the floater over the edge on one of the sharper turns, the wind was only too likely to pick the vehicle up and send it crashing down the slope.

Harpirias sat still, saying nothing, fighting to keep his teeth from chattering. It was not proper for him to show fear. He was a knight of the Coronal’s court, a beneficiary of the severe and rigorous training that such a phrase implied. Nor was his ancestry that of a coward. A thousand years before, his celebrated ancestor Prestimion had ruled this world in glory, doing deeds of high renown, first as Coronal, then as Pontifex. Could a descendant of the resplendent Prestimion permit himself to display cowardice before a Shapeshifter?

No. No.

And yet — that driving wind — these curves — those blinding surges of ever-thickening snow -

Calmly Korinaam said, turning casually toward Harpirias as he spoke, "They tell the tale of the great beast Naamaaliilaa, who walked these mountains alone, in the days when she was the only being that lived on this world. And in a storm like this she breathed upon a cliff of ice, and licked with her tongue the place she had breathed on, and as her tongue moved, she carved a figure from it, and he was Saabaataan, the Blind Giant, the first man of our kind. And then she breathed again and licked again, and brought forth from the ice Siifiinaatuur, the Red Woman, the mother of us all. And Saabaataan and Siifiinaatuur went down out of this icy land into the forests of Zimroel, and were fruitful and multiplied and spread over all the world, and thus the race of Piurivars came into being. So this is a holy land to us, prince. In this place of frost and storm our first parents were conceived."

Harpirias responded only with a grunt. His interest in Shapeshifter creation myths was no more than moderate at the best of times, and this was something less than the best of times.

The wind struck the floater with the force of a giant fist. The vehicle lurched wildly, bobbing like a straw in the breeze and veering toward the brink of the abyss. Coolly Korinaam set it back on its course with the lightest touch of one long many-jointed finger.

Harpirias said through clenched teeth, "How much farther is it, would you say, to the valley of the Othinor?"

"Two passes and three valleys beyond this one, that’s all." "Ah. And how long will that take us, do you think?" Korinaam smiled indifferently. "A week, maybe. Or two, or three. Or perhaps forever."