The Mountains of Majipoor

5

Harpirias feasted that evening on skewers of grilled meat of a kind unknown to him, and drank mug after mug of a thin, acrid green beer that seemed less intoxicating than it turned out to be. The sun hovered above the rim of the nearby mountains far into the night, and even when it finally dropped from view the sky remained strangely light. He slept in his floater, a fitful and troublesome night’s sleep, punctuated by fragmentary dreams and long spells of wakefulness, and awakened with a sour taste in his mouth and an all too predictable throbbing in his head.

In the morning the caravan rolled onward, continuing northward across the plateau. The day was clear and crisp, no sign at all of any new snowstorm. But the terrain grew progressively more bleak hour by hour. With every mile they covered the elevation of the plateau increased moderately but perceptibly, so that Harpirias, looking back, was able to see the road they had traversed, lying far below them.

In this high country the air was chilly even at midday, and there were no more trees here, nor was there much vegetation of any kind, only a few small, practically leafless bushes and isolated scraps of grass. Mainly the landscape consisted of bare rocky hills covered with old gray crusts of ice, over which lay the light dusting of yesterday’s storm, barely melted here at all. In the distance, now and then, the fires of other March-men encampments made dark trails of smoke against the sky, but they had no other meetings with any of the mountain folk.

They came at last to the triangular mountain that had stood before them since the last pass: Elminan, it was, the Steadfast Sister. Its true size now became apparent, for at close range it was like an unanswerable wall filling the entire sky with the gigantic question that it posed.

"There is no way over it," said Korinaam. "It can be climbed on this side, but on the other there is no descending. All we can do is go around it."

Which they did: a journey of some days, through rough and ragged country made intractable by long miles of icy ridges hard as iron.

This was a land of wild and hungry beasts that roved with impunity. One morning a pack of ten or twelve shambling great-haunched creatures bigger than Skandars approached the floaters and began energetically to rock them, as if hoping to tip them over and crack them open from below. Harpirias heard one pounding with the force of a giant hammer against the roof of his vehicle. "Khulpoins," Korinaam said. "Very disagreeable."

Harpirias took his energy-thrower from its rack. "I’ll try a warning shot, perhaps, to scare them off."

"Useless. Nothing scares them. Give me the weapon."

Reluctantly Harpirias let the Shapeshifter take it from him. Korinaam opened the hatch of the floater a little way and poked the energy-thrower’s tube through. Harpirias had a glimpse of wild fiery eyes, slavering jaws, a row of teeth like yellow scythes. Korinaam sighted calmly along the barrel and fired. There was a chilling howl of pain and the khulpoin sprang away from the floater, streams of blood spurting in startling violet gouts from a gaping hole in its shoulder.

"You only wounded it," Harpirias said, with some contempt.

"Exactly. Maximum blood flow, that’s the trick. Watch what happens."

The khulpoin, roaring, had begun to run in a lopsided staggering way across the icy ridges, biting frantically at the wound in its shoulder as it went. A trail of purple blood sprang up behind it. Instantly its companions left off their attack on the caravan and gave pursuit. They caught up with it a hundred yards away, surrounding it, clawing at it, leaping upon it as it fell. Even at this distance their growls of satisfaction reverberated through the floater with appalling force.

"Now we leave them to their meal," said Korinaam, sending the floater into high acceleration. Harpirias looked back only once, wincing at what he saw.

A day and a night and a day and a night more, and all the while purple Elminan stood above them like a scornful sentinel; and then at last they reached the mountain’s western edge and began to pass around to the far side of it. That transition took another day and a half, until Harpirias found himself looking up at Elminan’s north face, a horrifying vertical slab, a sheer straight drop that terminated in a pile of tremendous boulders at ground level. Small wonder there could be no traveling over this mountain, but only around it.

The country beyond was desert-dry and altogether stark. From time to time, as they crossed it, lightning would break without warning or apparent cause out of a cloudless sky, striking the ground with the vehemence of an angry god’s wrath and sending up a quick puff of flame. Even Korinaam seemed distressed by this place, and they put it behind them as quickly as they could.

The last of the nine great mountains of the Marches could be seen on the horizon now: two of them lay to the east, Thail and Samaril, the Wise Sister and the Cruel Sister, and to the west, so far away that it was no more than a dark nubbin against the sky, was triple-peaked Kantavinorka, the Eldest Sister. But the route that Korinaam was following took them straight onward, ever northward, past the last campfire of the March-men, past the northernmost zone of known exploration, deep into an empty ice-locked wilderness of perpetual winter, as silent as though it stood under some solemn enchantment. It seemed to Harpirias that they were heading for the roof of the world.

Had anyone ever ventured here before, in all the history of Majipoor? Yes, yes, it must be so: it was clear that Korinaam was familiar with these roads and knew where he was going.

None the less this place seemed to Harpirias like a virgin world, untouched, unknowable. The familiar cities of Majipoor, lying somewhere far behind him in the warm happy haze of summer, had ceased to be real for him: they were dream-cities now, myth-cities, places that had sprouted in the fertile compost of his imagination but could not possibly have any tangible existence. The inconceivably great curve of the giant planet, stretching on and on behind him into the unknown south polar regions, no longer had any substance for him. Only this was real, this bitter land of snow and mist and gleaming rocky walls. Would the journey ever end? No, no, no: he became convinced that he was fated to go on and on forever, deeper and deeper into these bleak and sterile mysteries, led eternally onward by this somber, enigmatic Shapeshifter in a journey to the end of time and space.

But journeys end, even this one.

Korinaam, one morning, gestured toward a dark line that lay against the horizon from east to west, what appeared to be an unbroken vertical wall of stone a hundred times the height of a man that sealed them off from any hope of further advance.

"The domain of the Othinor," he said.

Harpirias looked around, mystified. "Where?"

"Behind that line of mountains."

"But there’s no way through!"

"Oh, yes, prince," said Korinaam. "One way. Just one."

It was a wedge-shaped opening in the rock face, a mere crack hardly wader than the floaters themselves. Korinaam needed two days to find it, and there were moments when Harpirias was convinced that the Metamorph had no real idea of where it was; but then, suddenly, the narrow entrance presented itself to them. Korinaam brought the floater to a halt, opened its hatch, signaled to Harpirias to dismount.

"We must enter on foot," the Shapeshifter told him. "It’s the only way possible. Come: follow me."

Harpirias disliked leaving the floaters behind; but obviously there was no choice. The vehicles could never fit through this little breach in the rock. Arranging his troops in a double column, the biggest and fiercest-looking Skandars in front, he took his position at the head of the line with Korinaam beside him and marched through into the realm of the Othinor.

He found himself in a secret world of extraordinary beauty and strangeness.

The looming snow-crowned mountain palisade that hid this place from the awareness of outsiders ran off to the right and left, then curved inward as though to meet and unite with itself, somewhere not too far to the north — thus creating a deep, roughly elliptical pocket canyon, entirely enclosed and shielded by lofty walls of black stone. Within lay a flat shimmering snow field, glinting brilliantly under the noonday sun; and at the farther end of this broad plaza, clustered at the foot of the rock wall, was a shining city made all of ice: sturdy buildings two and even three stories high fashioned from square-hewn blocks of the stuff, laid with impressive precision one atop another and showily bedecked with a bizarre, complex array of fanciful icy parapets and turrets. From their myriad angular surfaces came a thousand thousand dazzling beams of reflected sunlight, like a swarm of diamonds tumbling through the air.

Into this sheltered place the sun would intrude, Harpirias calculated, only for a few hours at a time on just a few days of midsummer. The steep angle at which the canyon wall ascended probably kept the village of the Othinor in shadow all the rest of the year: a claustrophobic place of darkness and mystery, cold and grim. But just now it was radiantly lovely.

As he stood gazing wonderstruck at this eerie little frostbound empire of the high country, figures emerged from the city of ice and began to run across the open plaza toward them.

"The Othinor," Korinaam said. "Remain calm, make no menacing gestures."

They looked like demons. The name "Othinor," Korinaam had explained, meant either "The Hidden Ones" or "The Holy Ones" in the native language: which one was the correct translation was still uncertain. But there was nothing very holy about those who came charging forward now. There were perhaps twenty of them, a band of snarling, hairy, uncouth-looking men, dressed in haphazardly sewn pelts of fur, with jagged stripes of clashing colors painted across their faces and arms. Though they appeared to be armed only with spears and crude swords, they looked ready and eager to go on the offensive against the newcomers.

Harpirias glanced back and saw that some of his Skandars were stirring uneasily. He heard the click of energy-throwers being put in readiness.

"No weapons," he said sharply. "Just stand your ground, and take no action unless we’re actually attacked."

It was difficult, even so, to look on nonchalantly as this motley horde of howling devils came rushing toward them. Harpirias threw an uncertain look at Korinaam, who only smiled and said, "They aren’t going to harm us. They know who I am and they understand that I’ve come back with good news for them."

"I hope you’re right," muttered Harpirias.

"Hold both your arms outstretched with the palms facing forward: it’s a sign of peaceful intentions. Look as dignified and regal as you can and don’t say a thing."

Harpirias struck the pose, feeling more than a little foolish. In another moment the Othinor had reached them and surrounded them, capering and dancing in an almost comic show of barbaric force, shouting, sticking out their tongues, waving their swords and spears in their faces with theatrical ardor.

Perhaps that’s all it is, thought Harpirias: a show, a staged display of force. Their little way of signifying to strangers that they are not a people to be trifled with.

Korinaam was speaking now: loudly and slowly and clearly, uttering harsh thick-tongued words that had the sound of mere gibberish, though the odd word or two sounded almost familiar. One of the Othinor, a tall gaunt-faced man more elaborately robed and painted than the others, offered a reply, speaking with much greater rapidity; and after a pause Korinaam spoke again, apparently repeating his previous declaration. So it went, for some minutes, one long bewildering stream of palaver after another.

The language of these people, Harpirias began to see, was some distant relative to the language that was spoken everywhere on Majipoor. Like the tongue the March-men spoke, it was a transformed and distorted form of it, scarcely recognizable to a city-dweller. But the divergence had gone even further in this remote northern region. The March-men’s speech was actually just a rough-and-ready dialect of standard Majipoori; the strange lingo spoken here, developed during thousands of years of isolation, seemed to have become virtually a different language. How well, Harpirias wondered, did Kormaam understand it?

Well enough, apparently. The Othinor had halted their grotesque capering and were standing quietly in a circle around them. The one who had replied to Korinaam originally — was he the king? No, probably just a priest, Harpirias decided — still was speaking with him, but in a less formal, more conversational way; some of the others, after peering at Harpirias’s Skandars and Ghayrogs in unconcealed fascination at the sight of such alien beings, now came up to them to carry out an inspection at closer range.

An Othinor gingerly put his fingertips to the smooth, rigid scales of Mizguun Troyzt, the Ghayrog floater technician, and lightly rubbed them. Though Mizguun Troyzt’s cold unblinking eyes remained expressionless, his serpentine hair writhed in emphatic annoyance. He backed away an inch or two, but the Othinor reached out further.

"I do not want to be touched like this," the Ghayrog said to Harpirias, between clenched jaws.

"Nor I," said Eskenazo Marabaud, the captain of the Skandars. An Othinor, standing on tiptoes, had reached up to tug the dense reddish hair that covered the Skandar’s great slab of a chest, and now was pulling at the lower of Eskenazo Marabaud’s two pairs of arms as though to find out whether they were really attached to his body.

Harpirias fought back laughter. But all the Othinor now were poking and prodding energetically at the Skandars and Ghayrogs; and he saw that in another moment there was likely to be an incident. "You’d better put a stop to this," he said to Korinaam.

"There is no help for it," the Shapeshifter said. "It is a natural curiosity on their part. Your men will have to get used to it."

"And how long am I supposed to stand with my arms out like this?"

"You can put them down now. We are officially admitted to the village. The priest here tells me that King Toikella is looking forward with much pleasure to making your acquaintance. So come, now, prince: to the royal palace."