The Mountains of Majipoor

4

The storm went on and on, hour after hour. After a time, Harpirias came to take it for granted that the world should consist of nothing but whiteness. That other world in which he had once lived, the world of colors, of green trees and red flowers and blue rivers and turquoise sky, seemed now to have been only a dream. What was real was the insistent swarms of small white particles that came endlessly hurtling against the front, screen of the floater on the tireless driving gusts of wind, and the thick mantle of whiteness that wrapped it snugly on every side, above and below, before and behind, blurring everything into indistinguishabily.

He said nothing. Asked no questions, offered no comments. He sat impassively, like a figure of wood, while Korinaam beside him steered the floater with almost arrogant confidence through the horrific gale.

How long did these wolf-summer storms last? How far was it to the other side of the pass? How many of the other floaters were still following along behind them? Harpirias’s mind brimmed with questions of this sort; but they rose like flotsam on the tide, and bobbed about a moment, and were quickly gone again. The unrelenting snow was almost hypnotic. It lulled him into a calm waking sleep, a pleasant numbness of the soul.

Gradually the fury of the storm gave over. The air cleared. The onslaught of rushing ice-particles ceased to assail them and only a few spiraling flakes now drifted down. The wall of cloud overhead grew frayed and tattered, and broke, and the sun reappeared, golden-green, magnificent. Distinct shapes began to take form out of the universal furry whiteness: the black fangs of rocky cliffs rearing up beside the roadway, the tormented angularity of some giant tree thrusting almost horizontally from the side of the mountain wall, the iron mass of a cloud against the paler background of the sky. The drifting heaps of gleaming powdery snow were already beginning to melt.

Harpirias, emerging from his trance, saw that the road was wider here, and that it was descending at a gentle but steady slope. The view was clear ahead. They had traversed the pass between the two blocky mountains and were entering into an open place of sparse long-stalked grass and bare granite boulders, a broad apron-shaped plateau that stretched far into the grayish distance, with other mountains beyond.

He looked around. The second floater was riding practically on their heels and others were visible farther back.

"How many do you see?" Korinaam asked.

Harpirias shaded his eyes as he stared into the sun-blink that had followed the snow, and counted the vehicles as they came down the last curvetting switchback out of the pass. "Six — seven — eight."

"Good. No need to wait for anybody, then."

It amazed Harpirias that the entire convoy had been able to get safely across the precarious pass in that blinding storm. But everyone back in Ni-moya had assured him that his little army was made up of capable troops. There were about two dozen soldiers in all; he was the only human. Nearly all the members of his expeditionary force were towering brawny Skandars, ponderous furry four-armed people of great strength and superb coordination, whose ancestors had come to Majipoor long ago from some world where snow and cold must have been nothing at all unusual. Harpirias had a few Ghayrogs under his command as well, sleek-scaled green-eyed folk whose aspect was reptilian, with flickering forked tongues and writhing snaky coils sprouting from their heads, though in fact they were mammalian enough internally in most respects.

That seemed to Harpirias like a very skimpy force indeed to go up against an entire tribe of belligerent barbarians on their home grounds. But Korinaam had insisted that to bring more troops would be a grave error: "The mountain passes are extremely difficult ones. You would have a very hard time conveying a large party through them. Besides, the mountain people themselves would look upon any sizable army as an invasion force rather than a diplomatic mission. Almost certainly they would attack you from ambush, striking from strategic points high above the passes. Against such guerrilla warfare," the Shapeshifter argued, "you would have no chance whatever."

Now that he had seen the first of the passes through which they must go, Harpirias realized that Korinaam had been right. Even without the added complication of a snowstorm such as this one, there was no way they could defend themselves against attack by the mountaineers. Best to give the appearance of coming in peace, and depend on the good will of the tribesmen, such as it might be, than to offer the pretense of significant might, when in fact any show of strength by an army of outlanders would be unsustainable in these easily defended heights.

The summer sun, high and powerful now, swiftly consumed the freshly fallen snow. White drifts and spires turned quickly to soft slush and then became brooks of fast-moving runoff; enormous fluffy masses clinging to high rock faces broke free and came gliding down to land in silent billowy explosions; deep puddles sprang up almost instantaneously; the roadbed turned to a sticky wallow, over which the floaters hovered in fastidious disdain, rising an extra two or three feet from ground level to avoid stirring up muddy eddies. The air grew strangely bright, with a hard crystalline edge on it not seen in lower latitudes. Birds of the most splendid hues, with plumages of blazing scarlet and incandescent green and deep, radiant blue, came forth in sudden innumerable multitudes and swarmed overhead like throngs of lovely insects. It was almost impossible to believe that only an hour earlier a terrible snowstorm had been raging here.

"Look there," Korinaam said. "Haiguses. Coming out to hunt for stragglers after the storm. Nasty things, they are."

Harpirias followed the Metamorph’s pointing arm. Some twenty or thirty small thick-furred animals had popped out of caves halfway up the rock slopes bordering the valley and were scuttering quickly down from boulder to boulder, moving with an awesome agility. Most had reddish fur, a few were black. All had large gleaming eyes, a furious blood-red crimson in color, and each was armed with a trio of long needle-sharp horns that splayed out menacingly at wide angles from its flat broad forehead.

They moved as a pack, surrounding smaller animals and hounding them out into the open, where they were speared and quickly devoured. Harpirias shuddered. Their efficiency and insatiability were impressive and frightening.

"They’ll attack you or me the same way," said Korinaam. "Eight or ten of them can bring down even a Skandar. Leap straight up like fleas, gore him in the belly, swarm all over him. The March-men hunt them for their fur. Mainly the black ones, which are rarer than the red, and prized accordingly."

"I would think they’d be a lot rarer, if they’re the only ones that get hunted."

"A black haigus isn’t all that easy to catch. They’re smarter and faster than the red ones, too: a superior breed in every way. You’ll see only the great hunters wearing black haigus robes. And the king of the Othinor, naturally."

"Then I should be wearing black haigus too," said Harpirias. "To show him how important I am. A stole, at the very minimum, if not a full robe. I have some skill at hunting, you see, and—"

"Leave the haiguses for the haigus-hunters, my friend. They know how to deal with them. You don’t want to go anywhere near those foul little animals, no matter how much of a hunter you may be. A safer way of showing King Toikella how important you are would be by conducting yourself before him with true kingly presence and majesty — as though you are a Coronal."

"As though," said Harpirias. "Well, why not? I can do that. There’s already been one Coronal in my family, after all."

"Has there, now?" Kormaam asked, without much interest.

"Prestimion. Coronal to the great Pontifex Confalume. When he became Pontifex himself, his Coronal was Lord Dekkeret. More than a thousand years ago, this was."

"Indeed," said Korinaam. "My knowledge of your race’s history is a little vague. But if you have a Coronal’s blood in your veins, well, then, you should be capable of comporting yourself like one."

"Like one, perhaps. But not cd one."

"What do you mean?"

"The Vroon from the Department of Antiquities who gave me this job — Heptil Magloir, that was his name — suggested that things would go easier for me up here if I told the Othinor that I actually was the Coronal."

"He did, did he?" Korinaam chuckled. "In truth it wouldn’t actually be such a bad idea. The Coronal is the person they’re expecting, you know. You do know that, don’t you?"

"Yes, I do. But I’m under no formal instructions to pretend that I’m Lord Ambinole. Nor am I going to do any such thing."

"Even for the sake of easing the negotiations?"

"Even," said Harpirias sharply. "It’s entirely out of the question."

"Well then, prince," Korinaam said, with a hint of amusement or perhaps mockery in his inflection. "It’s out of the question, I suppose. If you say so."

"I say so, yes."

The Shapeshifter laughed quietly again. Harpirias felt a burst of irritation at being condescended to this way. How very much like a Shapeshifter it was, he thought, to be willing to engage in such chicanery as that.

It was centuries now since the Piurivars — the Shapeshifters, the Metamorphs, a people with as many names as they had faces — had won full political equality on Majipoor; but, like many young aristocrats of the Mount, Harpinas still harbored some residual prejudices against them. He believed, not entirely incorrectly, that the Shapeshifters were tricky and devious, a race of schemers, slippery and unpredictable, who had never completely reconciled themselves to the occupation of their planet by the billions of humans and other species that had colonized Majipoor nearly fifteen thousand years before. An attempt by the Piurivars hundreds of years ago in the time of Valentine Pontifex to drive all the intruders from their world had failed, as inevitably it had had to, and a detente between the outnumbered Shapeshifters and the dominant humans of Majipoor had been negotiated to everybody’s presumable satisfaction. But still — still -

You could never trust them, Harpirias believed. No matter how sincere and helpful they might sound, it was never a good idea to take anything they said at face value, because there was almost always some hidden double meaning, some sly and treacherous subtext to their words. And of course Korinaam would see nothing wrong with Harpirias’s letting himself pass as Lord Ambinole before the mountaineers. A Shapeshifter — one who by nature was able to assume virtually any physical form he liked — would have no problems with an immoral little masquerade like that.

The caravan moved onward, past the place of the haiguses, heading out onto the widening plateau. The afternoon now had become bright and clear, and they advanced under a cloudless sky rich with light. Scarcely any vestige remained of the screeching snowstorm through which they had been riding only a few hours before. The air was calm, the sun was high and strong. Scattered dark patches of dampness, speedily vanishing, were the only visible signs of the snowy fury that had whirled down upon them then.

A single huge triangular mountain, like a giant’s tooth thrusting upward from the valley, rose directly before them at a great distance, deep purple against the blue of the sky. Stony sharp-contoured hills, covered only by thin and widely spaced stands of graceless scrubby trees and some faint shadowy splashes of bluish grass, bordered their path on both sides as they rode toward it. Now and then Korinaam pointed out animals: the imposing white-furred bulk of a steetmoy standing at the tip of an inaccessible crag; a herd of graceful mazigotivel leaping from one strip of grass to another to graze; a keen-eyed mountain hawk making slow, purposeful circles high overhead.

To Harpirias these Marches seemed to be a place that dwelled perpetually at the edge of some mighty drama. The silence, the immensity of the vistas, the clearness and brightness of the air, the strangeness of the tortured landscape and its few inhabitants — everything intensified the potent impact of the place and kindled high wonder in him. For all his anger at the chain of events that had brought him to these mountains, he could not now regret being here, nor did he doubt he would ever forget the splendor of these sights.

At this time of year the sun remained aloft in these latitudes far into what Harpirias regarded as the normal hours of the night. Since the day did not seem to end, he wondered whether Konnaam would keep them riding onward until midnight or later; but just as hunger was beginning to announce itself to him, the Shapeshifter told him to give the order for a leftward turn into a side canyon opening just before them.

"There’s an encampment of March-men in there," Korinaam explained. "They spend their summers in this place. You see the black smoke of the campfire rising, do you? They’ll sell us meat for our dinner."

The mountaineers came out to greet them well before the caravan had reached their camp. Evidently they knew Korinaam, and had dealt with him many times before, because they greeted him cordially enough, and there was a long exchange of effusive compliments in a rough, barking kind of mountaineer lingo of which Harpirias could understand only occasional words.

It was Harpirias’s first encounter with the nomads of the Marches . He had expected them to be more or less like wild beasts in human form, and indeed they were dressed in roughly sewn hides and not very clean-smelling ones at that, nor did any of them appear to have washed in recent days. At a glance, no one would mistake them for citizens of Ni-moya.

But a close look revealed them to be much less savage than he had imagined. In truth they were robust, vigorous, articulate people with ready smiles and bright alert eyes, who had, actually, very little about them that was primitive or alien. Give them a haircut and a bath and an outfit of clean city clothes and they would pass easily in a crowd. The Skandars, immense hulking four-armed figures covered all over with coarse shaggy fur, were far wilder-looking creatures.

The mountain folk gathered around the travelers in good-natured excitement, offering little trinkets of bone and crude leather sandals for sale. Harpirias bought a few things as mementos of the trip. Some, who spoke more intelligibly than the rest, bombarded him with questions about Ni-moya and other places in Zimroel; and when he told them that in fact he came from Castle Mount, and had lived only a short while in Ni-moya, they grew even more animated, and asked him if it was true that the Coronal’s castle had forty thousand rooms, and wanted to know what sort of man Lord Ambinole was, and whether Harpirias himself lived in a grand palace with many servants. Then too they wanted tales of the senior ruler, the Pontifex Taghin Gawad, who was even more mysterious to them, since he never left his imperial seat in the Labyrinth of Alhanroel. Did he really exist, or was he only a figure of myth? If he existed, why had he not picked his own son to be Coronal, instead of the unrelated Ambinole? For what reason were there two monarchs in the world at all, an elder and a younger?

A simple folk, yes. Accustomed to a harsh life, but not unfamiliar with the luxuries of the cities. Most of them had been down into the more civilized parts of Zimroel more than once; a few, apparently, had lived for extended periods in one city or another. They had rejected them, that was all: this was where they preferred to live. But they had not cut themselves off entirely from the great world whose northernmost extremity they happened to inhabit. Simple and unsophisticated they might be, yes, but they were far from savage.

"You’ll see real savages soon enough," Korinaam said. "Wait until we reach the country of the Othinor."