The Mountains of Majipoor

3

What had happened, Harpirias was to learn, was that a scientific expedition had ventured into the cheerless and virtually uninhabited realm that was the Marches in search of the supposed fossil remains of certain extinct land-dwelling dragons: gigantic reptilian creatures of an earlier era, related in some fashion to the immense and intelligent sea-dragons that to this day still wandered the immeasurable oceans of Majipoor in swarming herds. Confused and contradictory tales of the one-time existence of such land-dragons on Majipoor were common to the mythology of many of the races that inhabited the giant planet. Among the Liimen, that unfortunate race of poor and itinerant sausage-sellers and fishermen, it was an article of faith that in a former epoch the dragons had lived upon the land, then had chosen to retreat to the sea, and would at some apocalyptic time take up residence on shore once again and bring about the salvation of the world. The Hjorts and the shaggy four-armed Skandars embraced similar beliefs; and the Shapeshifters or Metamorphs, the true aborigines of the planet, apparently had some such notions of their own, involving a long-vanished golden age when they and the dragons had been the only inhabitants of Majipoor, the two races living in telepathic harmony both on the land and in the sea. But it was difficult for anyone who was not himself a Metamorph to know what it was that the Metamorphs really believed.

The documents that Harpirias received told him that a party of steetmoy-hunters, roving unusually far to the north one mild summer, had penetrated deep into the normally snowy reaches of the Khyntor Marches and had spied outcrop-pings of fossilized bones of titanic size jutting from a barren rock formation high up near the rim of a remote canyon.

On the supposition that the bones were those of the legendary land-dragons, a party of some eight or ten paleontologists had received permission from the administrative authorities in Zimroel to go in search of the fossil outcropping. A Metamorph named Korinaam — a native of Ni-moya who, like a number of his people, had long earned his living by leading hunting parties into the more accessible regions of the Arctic zone — was hired to convey them into the Marches .

"They went up there early last summer," said Heptil Magloir, the little Vroon from the Bureau of Antiquities who had signed the original exploration permit. "Nothing was heard from them for months. Then, in late fall, just before the full onset of the snowy season in the Marches , Korinaam returned to Ni-moya. Alone. The entire scientific party had been captured and was being held prisoner, he said, and he had been sent back to negotiate terms for their release."

Harpirias raised his eyebrows. "Prisoners? Prisoners of whom? Surely not the March-men." Tribes of rugged half-civilized nomads were known to roam the Marches , descending once in a while into the settled regions of Zimroel to offer furs and leather for sale, and the meat of the northland beasts they hunted. But these mountain folk, wild as they sometimes seemed, had never sought to raise any challenge against the vastly more numerous and powerful city-dwelling people of Majipoor.

"Not March-men, no," said the Vroon, who was a many-tentacled creature barely higher than Harpirias’s knee. "At least, none that we have ever had dealings with before. It seems that the explorers were seized by a race of fierce barbarians — a people previously unknown to us, native to the northern Marches ."

"A lost race?" said Harpirias, suddenly fascinated. "Some isolated bunch of Shapeshifters, do you mean?"

"Humans. The backward descendants, so Korinaam says, of a small band of fur traders who went off into the upper Marches thousands of years ago and became trapped — or chose to trap themselves — in a little ice-bound valley, which until the recent spate of relatively warm years was completely cut off from the rest of Majipoor. They’ve devolved into the ugliest kind of savagery, and know nothing of the outside world. For example, they don’t have the slightest inkling that Majipoor is a planet of inconceivable size which contains billions of people. They believe that the whole world is pretty much like their own region, inhabited by a few scattered tribes of primitives who live by hunting and foraging. And when they were told about the Coronal and the Pontifex, they evidently understood them to be nothing more than petty tribal chieftains."

"Why take the scientists prisoner, though?"

"The main concern of these people, if I can dignify them with that term," answered the Vroon, "is simply to be left alone. They want to be allowed to go on living as they’ve always lived, safe from intrusion up there in the age-old isolation of their little valley, behind its wall of snow and ice. They’ve demanded a guarantee of that from the Coronal. And they intend to keep our paleontologists as hostages until we come across with a treaty to that effect."

Harpirias nodded gloomily. "So I’ve been picked to serve as our ambassador to this bunch of mountain savages, is that it?"

"Exactly so."

"Wonderful. And I suppose I’m to go to them and tell them sweetly and kindly — assuming that I can communicate with them at all — that the Coronal deplores this shameful violation of their privacy and respects their sacred territorial rights, and he pledges that no attempts will be made to send settlers into the unappealing icebox where they prefer to live. And I’m to let them know that as the authorized representative of His Majesty Lord Ambinole I am fully empowered to sign the treaty promising everything they are asking. In return for all this they are to release the hostages forthwith. Do I have it right?"

"There is one little complication," said Heptil Magloir.

"Only one?"

"They aren’t expecting an ambassador. They expect the Coronal himself to come."

Harpirias gasped. "But they can’t really think he will!"

"Unfortunately, they do. As I’ve already told you, they have no comprehension whatever of the size of Majipoor, or of the grandeur and majesty of the Coronal, or of the high responsibilities over which he presides. And these mountaineers are proud and touchy people. Their domain has been trespassed upon by strangers, which is apparently something they don’t permit; it strikes them as perfectly right and proper that those strangers’ chieftain now should show up in their village and humbly beg their pardon."

"I see," said Harpirias. "And therefore you want me to go to them and abjectly prostrate myself before them, all the while pretending that I’m Lord Ambinole. Is that it?"

The Vroon’s multitude of ropy tentacles moved in an agitated way. Softly he said, "No such statement was made by me."

"Well, who am I supposed to be, then?"

"Be anybody that will make them happy. Tell them anything at all, so long as it gets those scientists free."

"Anything. Up to and including masquerading as the Coronal?"

"The tactics you employ are for you to choose," said Heptil Magloir primly. "These matters are entirely up to your discretion. You have a completely free hand. A man of your skill and tact will undoubtedly be equal to the task."

"Yes. Undoubtedly."

Harpirias took a few deep breaths. They wanted him to lie. They would not tell him to lie, but they had no objections to it, if lying to the savages was what it took to free the hostages. That saddened and angered him. Though Harpirias was far from straitlaced, the idea of posing as the Coronal among these barbarians seemed shockingly improper to him. It was offensive that they would even suggest it. What sort of man did they think he was?

Crisply he said, after a bit, "And when, may I ask, am I supposed to set out on this embassy?"

"At the beginning of the Khyntor summer. It’s the only time of year when the region where these people live is even slightly accessible."

"That gives me some months yet."

"So it does."

This all was like some very bad joke. The thought of undertaking this crazy chase off into the frigid Arctic wilderness filled Harpirias with despair.

"And if I were to decline the assignment?" he asked, after another brief pause.

"Decline? Decline?" The Vroon repeated the word as though he scarcely understood its meaning.

"I have no experience, after all, with travel under such difficult conditions."

"The Metamorph Korinaam will be your guide."

"Of course," Harpirias said dourly. "That should make it all much easier."

The question of his refusing to undertake the mission seemed to have been brushed aside. Harpirias suspected that it would not be useful to raise it again.

But his doom was sealed, he knew, if he actually did let himself be sent off into the snowy wastes of the Marches . The journey would not be a quick or easy one, and the negotiations with those proud barbarians were bound to be maddeningly lengthy and frustrating. By the time he returned from the northlands — if ever he did — he would beyond any doubt have spent too much time in obscure parts of the world to have any hope of reclaiming his old position at Lord Ambinole’s court. The other young men of his group would have gobbled up all the really important posts. The best he could hope for was to be a petty bureaucrat for the rest of his life; but more probably he would die in the course of this absurd and hazardous expedition, perhaps lost in some great snowstorm or else slain out of hand by the brutal mountaineers when they came to realize that he was not the Coronal, only some minor functionary of the diplomatic service.

All this, for one white sinileese! Oh, Lubovine, Lubovine, what have you done to me?

Perhaps there was some way he could get out of this, though. The long winter of the Marches still had some while to run, which gave Harpirias a little time to maneuver before he was supposed to depart. Cautiously he consulted a few of his senior colleagues at the Office of Provincial Liaison about the necessity of his accepting this new assignment.

Was there any appeal mechanism in the department by which he could claim the urgency of his present work as a reason for refusing the embassy to the Marches ? They peered at him as though he were speaking some alien language. Could he decline on grounds of jeopardy to his health? They shrugged. What effect would it have on his career if he turned the assignment down? Nothing other than catastrophic, they replied.

He debated throwing himself upon the mercy of Prince Lubovine. But that would be idiotic, he decided.

He considered appealing to the Coronal himself. No, it was probably very unwise to try that: one did not want to define oneself before Lord Ambinole as a person who shrank from uncomfortable duties, after all. And as for going over the Coronal’s head to the senior monarch of the realm, the Pontifex Taghin Gawad cloistered deep in his imperial Labyrinth, why, that would be true madness, futile beyond words.

What he did do was to compose eloquent despondent letters to his highly placed kinsmen at court; but he left them in his files, unsent.

The weeks ticked by. In Ni-moya, where the weather was always mild and warm, the daylight hours now stretched far into the evening. Summer, or whatever passed for summer in that place, must be at last on its way to the Khyntor Marches, Harpirias realized dolefully. The northlands expedition was rolling toward him like an avalanche and there evidently was no way of shunting it aside.

"A visitor for you," his aide announced one morning.

A visitor? A visitor? No one ever came visiting him here! Who-

"Tembidat!" Harpirias cried, as a long-legged young man in the gaudy finery of a Castle lordling came striding into his office. "What are you doing in Ni-moya?"

"A little business on behalf of my family," Tembidat said. "We have stajja plantations not very far west of here that have been badly mismanaged in recent years, it seems. So I talked my father into letting me make an inspection tour and set things to rights. With a side trip to Ni-moya to see a certain old friend." He glanced around, shaking his head. "So this is where you work?"

"Magnificent, isn’t it?"

"If only I could tell you how sorry I am that any of this had to happen, Harpirias — how hard I’ve worked to get you out of this mess—" Tembidat’s expression brightened. "But it’s almost over now. Another few weeks and you can kiss this ghastly place goodbye, isn’t that so, old man?"

"You know about my new mission?"

"Know about it? I helped to arrange it!"

"You what?"

"Oh, it was mostly your cousin Vildimuir who set things up for you," Tembidat said, grinning broadly. "He was the first to hear the story about those nitwit scientists who got themselves captured by the wild men of the mountains, and he started in right away among the Coronal’s men, angling for you to be placed in charge of the rescue mission. Then he told me about it, and I put a word in for you with the Ministry of Frontier Affairs, which as you might expect is terribly excited about the whole thing because there’s a newly discovered primitive culture involved that’s going to require special handling, and that might just lead to a bigger budget for the Ministry; and I managed to convince none other than Inamon Ghaznavis that you were absolutely the best man to go up there and talk to them, in view of your diplomatic background and the fact that you were stationed here in Ni-moya anyway, just a hop and a skip from the foothills of the Marches, and so—"

"Wait a minute," Harpirias broke in. "I can’t believe what you’re saying. Isn’t it bad enough that I’ve been dumped into this miserable dead-end job here? Did you and Vildimuir think it was going to make things any better for me by entangling me in some crazy expedition into a horrendous frostbitten place where no civilized man has ever gone before?"

"Absolutely."

"How so?"

Tembidat glared at him as though he were thick-witted.

"Listen to me, Harpirias," he said. "This expedition is the only chance you have to save yourself from having to spend the rest of your days pushing moronic government papers around in this office."

"The Coronal, so you once swore to me, was going to pardon me after a few months and let me come back to—"

"Listen to me," said Tembidat. "The Coronal has forgotten all about you. Don’t you think he’s got other things on his mind? The only bit of information he’s likely to remember about Harpirias of Muldemar is that he did something once that got Prince Lubovine very angry, and Lubovine can be such a pain in the neck that the Coronal doesn’t want to stir him up again over whatever it is that you did, so whenever one of us brings up the subject of recalling you to Castle Mount he just brushes it aside. And after a time he won’t even remember who you were or why there’s any reason to reinstate you at the Castle. All right. Now you get sent off into the Marches to rescue a bunch of lost scientists from a lost tribe of ferocious savages. No doubt your journey is going to be extremely harrowing and grueling and you’ll be called upon to perform all sorts of grand heroic deeds along the way." "No doubt," Harpirias said blackly. "There’s no question of it. Be serious, Harpirias." "I’m trying to be," Harpirias said. "It’s not easy." He was surprised himself at how sharp and cynical and suspicious he had become, here in Ni-moya. The Harpirias of Castle Mount had been nothing at all like that. There were times these days that he could hardly recognize himself, so thoroughly had he changed.

Tembidat went on undaunted. "So your trip will be a glorious epic endeavor. You’ll go to the northlands, perform bravely and well under highly difficult circumstances, and make your way safely back through all the perils, bringing the hostages with you. In all probability the Coronal, who is easily stirred by tales of great exploits and high adventure that seem to hearken back to some more romantic era, is going to want to hear all about your experiences. So you’ll be called back to the Castle to deliver your report in person, and Lord Ambinole will be tremendously delighted by your stirring account of heroic thrills and chills on the ice-fields of the north, Harpirias, tremendously delighted, and by the vivid descriptions you’ll give him of your death-defying rescue of those brilliant scientists, a deed which is going to be celebrated for centuries to come in song and story. And of course he’s not going to ship you back to some stupid desk job in Ni-moya after he’s heard all that."

"Of course. Unless I don’t happen to survive this glorious epic adventure in the first place, that is. Unless it turns out that I get clobbered by an avalanche or wind up being eaten by the savages."

"If you want to be a hero of song and story, Harpirias, you have to take a few risks. But there’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t—"

"Can’t you understand, Tembidat, I don’t want to be a hero of song and story? I just want to get out of this dreadful place and back to the Mount, where I belong."

"Very well. This is the only way to achieve that."

"It’s a lunatic thing to do," said Harpirias. "The risks are overwhelmingly great and the possibility of any kind of real payoff for me is merely hypothetical."

"I agree."

"Then how can you expect me to be willing to—"

Tembidat sighed. "There’s simply no alternative, Harpirias. This is the one and only opportunity you’re going to get. Look here: your distinguished cousin Vildimuir has gone pretty far out on a limb to get you this assignment. It meant crossing departmental lines and pulling strings at three or four Ministries, while at the same time keeping various other people who actually wanted command of this expedition from getting it.

I’m talking about our old friends Sinnim and Graniwain and Noridath, specifically. They thought a little jaunt into the Marches might be fun. Do you remember the concept of fun, Harpirias? Seeing strange scenery, making your way through a dangerous unknown place, coping with a savage warlike race: they were more than eager to go, let me tell you, and they weren’t the only ones. With extreme difficulty Vildimuir succeeded in snaring the assignment for you instead. If you embarrass him now by turning the job down, you can bet that he isn’t going to knock himself out finding you some other way out of Ni-moya, do you follow me? Either you go, Harpirias, or you settle down here for keeps and learn to love the work that you’re doing right now. Those are your only choices."

"I see. What an extremely pretty situation." Harpirias turned away to keep Tembidat from seeing the anguish in his eyes. "So everything really is over for me, isn’t it? All because I fired a single shot at a silly animal with fancy red antlers."

"Don’t be such a pessimist, old man. What’s happened to you? Where’s your sense of adventure? You’ll make the trip, you’ll achieve everything you’re supposed to, and you’ll come home a hero and start your career all over again. Jump for it, Harpirias! How many chances for excitement like this does any of us get in a lifetime? I’d be happy to go with you myself, if I could."

"Would you? What’s stopping you?"

Color came to Tembidat’s face. "I’m here on complicated family business that’s going to take me months to clean up, or I would. You know very well that I would. But never mind, Harpirias. Turn the assignment down, if that’s how you feel. I’ll tell Vildimuir that you were deeply grateful for all his help, but that in the end you decided that you really preferred your nice quiet desk job in Ni-moya, and therefore—"

"Don’t be an imbecile, Tembidat. Of course I’m going to go."

"You are?"

Harpirias managed a smile. The effort was considerable. "Did you ever seriously think I wouldn’t?"