The Mountains of Majipoor

6

The palace of the Othinor monarch was, predictably, the grandest of the buildings of the village, a three-storied structure at the extreme eastern end, its flat white facade covered from top to bottom with a scrollwork of fantastic interlaced ice-carvings of the most intricate kind. Within, though, it turned out to be a single cavernous room, enormously high and broad, with no supporting columns. Such construction, thought Harpirias, must surely strain the tensile strength of the ice-blocks out of which the place had been built to its absolute limits.

The great hall was dark and smoky and dank. Its air was stiflingly close, unexpectedly warm, with a foul fishy aroma. Heavy weavings hung from the walls and the floor was strewn with dried rushes that crunched nastily under foot. The only illumination came from a large leather-walled tank, set in a deep pit in the very center of the room, which held a pool of dark oil of some unfamiliar sort that was burning slowly with a bluish flickering glow. Behind it sat King Toikella high atop an astounding platformlike throne made of scores of colossal bones, a whole charnel house of them, tightly and elegantly wedged and woven together — thighbones, ribs, immense curving tusks, shoulderblades, jawbones, an awesome royal seat constructed entirely from the bodies of the formidable beasts that roamed this icy land.

The king himself was well worthy of such a throne: a gigantic potbellied man, entirely bald, strikingly ugly, naked except for a strip of leather around his waist and an array of bone beads and long yellow teeth dangling from a string on his chest. His face and back and shoulders were striped with bright streaks of paint. In his left hand he held a great gross gobbet of bloody, greasy meat, charred on one side but otherwise practically raw, which he had been gnawing on as Harpirias and Korinaam entered. A bevy of half-naked women, most of them as fat and ugly as he was — wives? concubines? royal princesses? — lolled at the foot of the throne.

The Shapeshifter stepped forward, struck what was evidently a ceremonial pose of submission — arms out high, palms turned forward — and greeted the king with a long, slow speech, altogether unintelligible to Harpirias. The king was silent for a time when Korinaam had finished. He tore off a chunk of meat and chewed it reflectively. He looked Harpirias over with care. Then — slowly, solemnly — he rose to his full majestic height, the meat still in his mouth, and spoke for a long while in the deepest voice Harpirias had ever heard come from a human throat. It was a low rumbling growl more like a Skandar’s voice than a man’s.

When he had finished he pulled another whopping piece of meat from the haunch in his hand and tossed it in an offhand way down to Harpirias, who caught it in some surprise.

"The king bids you welcome," Korinaam murmured.

"Tell him that I thank him for his kindness."

"Not yet. Eat what he’s given you, first."

"Are you serious?"

"Extremely. Eat it, prince."

Harpirias stared unhappily at the meat. A sharp, acrid, uninviting aroma rose from it. Only one corner appeared to be cooked at all. The rest of it was bright red, except for the thick vein of fat and gristle that ran through its middle. He turned the hefty chunk over, surreptitiously scanning it for maggots.

"Eat it," the Metamorph said again. "Meat from the king’s own portion must not be refused."

"Ah," Harpirias said. "Yes. Yes, certainly."

It was all starting to seem unreal. Civilized, tranquil Majipoor felt very far away. This could well be some strange new universe he had wandered into, or a particularly vivid hallucination. Or perhaps he was asleep, and it was simply a dark sending of the King of Dreams. But if this was a dream he saw no way of waking from it.

Harpirias reminded himself that there were worse things in the world than eating half-raw meat; and also that a diplomat often must make himself conform to the customs of his hosts. He took a bite. The meat wasn’t half as bad as it looked. He had tasted less agreeable fare while out hunting in the forests of Castle Mount. The second bite was less pleasing: he had struck the fat, and he had to struggle to keep from gagging. But he recovered and bit into the meat again. King Toikella was watching with interest.

"Now thank him for me," Harpirias told the Shapeshifter.

"You haven’t finished eating it."

"Neither has he. We can eat while we parley."

"Prince, I think—"

"Give him my thanks," said Harpirias. "This instant."

Korinaam nodded curtly. Turning toward the throne, he launched into a loud, florid-sounding oration. The king listened with apparent pleasure, nodding emphatically after a time and offering a lengthy response of his own, in which, now and again, Harpirias heard the words Coronal and Lord Ambinole in the midst of the torrent of guttural mountaineer speech. Then Harpirias realized that the king was looking directly at him whenever he pronounced those words.

An ugly suspicion grew in him.

"Wait a minute," he said angrily to Korinaam, when Toikella appeared to have reached the end of his reply. "What have you done? You haven’t told him that I’m the Coronal, have you? You know I ordered you not to do that."

The Shapeshifter made an apologetic gesture. "Indeed.

Nor have I done so. But I’m afraid that he himself has jumped to that conclusion, prince."

"Well, unconclude him, then. Now. I’m not going to operate under false pretenses."

Korinaam looked troubled. His form flowed and rippled a little around the edges for a moment, always a sign of acute Shapeshifter distress. "This is not a good time for telling him such a thing. That would only confuse and perhaps anger him, just when everything has begun so smoothly. We’ll have plenty of opportunities later to get the matter cleared up."

"Now, I said. Not later. He’s got to realize that there’s been an error, that I’m only the Coronal’s emissary, not actually the Coronal. It’s an order, Korinaam. I want you to make it absolutely clear to him that—"

But King Toikella had begun speaking again. The Metamorph gestured urgently to Harpirias to be quiet, and Harpirias subsided. In his annoyance he took another bite of his chunk of meat without even noticing.

Harpirias realized glumly that he was completely in the Shapeshifter’s power: unable to communicate verbally with King Toikella himself, he was forced to rely on his Metamorph interpreter for every transaction. Korinaam was free to tell the king anything he felt like and Harpirias would never know the truth of what had been said. That could become a problem. Already had, in fact.

Toikella was silent again, waiting.

The Shapeshifter glanced toward Harpirias. "The king declares that he is well pleased you have come," he said.

"Fine. I’d like you to ask him if the hostages are in good health."

"Once again, prince, I must beg your indulgence. The time for asking that is also not just yet."

Another hot jolt of fury shot through Harpirias. "Am I the ambassador, or are you, Korinaam?"

With a sweeping gesture of subservience the Shapeshifter said, "There can be no doubt on that score, prince."

"But nevertheless it seems that you make yourself the final arbiter of what I am allowed to say. In this case I have to insist. Knowing the condition of the hostages is of prime—"

"We must assume that the hostages are in excellent condition, prince," said Korinaam smoothly. "But to ask questions about them at this point would be inappropriate and premature. Worse: it would be impolite."

"Impolite? That naked barbarian sits up there on a throne made out of bones, eating a haunch of practically raw meat and forcing me to do the same, and you tell me that we have to worry about being polite to him?"

"Politeness is always useful in these affairs," Korinaam said, giving Harpirias an unctuous smile. "Patience, also. I beg you, prince, to take my advice seriously. I know what these people are like. You do not."

True enough, Harpirias thought.

Nor was it possible in any case to continue the conversation with the king just now, for Toikella had descended from his throne and was bellowing orders to various members of his court in an amazing thunderous voice.

"What’s he saying?" Harpirias asked the Metamorph.

"That we are to be shown to our quarters, so that we can have a few hours of rest after our long and arduous journey. There’ll be a grand feast tonight in our honor. Othinor hospitality at its finest."

"I can just imagine," said Harpirias unhappily.

By way of guest accommodations the Othinor king provided them with a dozen or so chambers in a low, sprawling icehouse at the opposite end of the village from the royal palace. Harpirias’s Skandars had to bunk three or four to a room, cramped though that would be for the bulky creatures; his four Ghayrogs, who liked to keep to themselves, took a pair of rooms; Harpirias and Korinaam each were permitted the luxury of private quarters.

The room they had given Harpirias was a square, boxy windowless cell, lit only by small dim lamps made of carved bone that burned the same thick dark odoriferous oil which had illuminated Toikella’s throne chamber. Its air was so still and stagnant, despite the burning lamps, that the enclosure seemed almost to be without air at all; and it was cold — cold. Living in it would be like living in a storage refrigerator. Even indoors, his breath rose in steamy clouds before his face.

Everything was ice, the entire structure fashioned of heavy blocks of it — floor and walls and ceiling and all. There was no furniture, only a pile of furry rugs on the floor to serve as a bed.

"Will this be satisfactory, prince?" Korinaam asked him, as he stood frowning in the doorway.

"And if I say no?"

"You will cause the king much embarrassment."

"Certainly I wouldn’t want to do that," said Harpirias. "And this is better than sleeping outdoors, I suppose." Though not by very much, he added silently.

"Indeed," replied the Shapeshifter in a solemn tone, and left him to such brief repose as he was able to find in the midst of the stack of thick, itchy furs.

The feast that evening was held in the great high-ceilinged hall that was the royal palace. They had spread heavy rugs, made of white steetmoy hides sewn end to end, over much of the floor — luxurious immaculate rugs that undoubtedly were brought out only on very special occasions. Massive tables of broad rough-hewn planks, resting on substantial trestles fashioned from the same huge bones out of which the royal throne had been constructed, were covered with all manner of plates and tureens and bowls and porringers brimming with foodstuffs. A dozen slender flambeaus projected from sconces of bone set into the walls at the end of arm-shaped handles, providing a smoky, fitful light.

Before the meal there was dancing. The king, seated far above everyone else on the platform that was his throne, rose and clapped his hands, and a dozen musicians playing crude unfamiliar instruments, drums and pipes and gongs and odd-looking stringed devices, set up a discordant screeching polyrhythmic caterwauling at such unthinkable volume that Harpirias feared that the walls of the palace would come crashing down.

The members of the royal harem were the first to dance, a gaggle of tubby bare-breasted women in loincloths and moccasins of black fur, who formed a line and pranced wildly about, kicking up their legs and hurling their arms outward with a berserk manic clumsiness that was both comic and endearing. It was an effort for Harpirias to keep a straight face. But then he realized that the dance was supposed to be funny: the dancers themselves were chortling as they cavorted and collided, and whoops of pleasure from the onlookers filled the room, with the king’s own mighty roars resounding over all the rest.

Then Toikella himself stepped down from the throne and thrust himself into the line of dancers. He was a formidable figure, half again as tall as any of the women, his shining shaven head rising above them like a mountain dome. His monumental chest was bare, as it had been earlier, but tonight he had donned a cape of black haigus fur that was fastened at his throat to dangle down his back. The haiguses had been stitched together horns and all: angry red eyes gleamed from the pelts, and a triple row of the sharp needles jutted threateningly along the king’s heavy-muscled shoulders.

"Eyya!" he boomed. "Halga! Shifta skepta gartha blin!"

He moved among the women, stamping his feet, flinging high his arms, bellowing and howling. They swirled around him, no longer comic now but weirdly compelling as they matched his primeval stampings and flingings with fierce, savage steps of their own. It was an awesome sight, ludicrous but frightening at the same time. Harpirias had never seen anything like it.

And now the king seemed to be beckoning to him, bending forward at the waist, staring straight at him, crooking and wriggling his fingers.

Could it be? Were those gestures a summons?

Yes, they were. Harpirias glanced inquiringly toward Korinaam, who nodded. "He’s inviting you to dance with him," the Metamorph said. "It’s a tremendous honor. It means he regards you almost as an equal."

"Almost an equal. Right."

"You should dance."

"No doubt I should. Yes. Yes, of course I’ll dance."

Harpirias hesitated just a moment, studying the steps with closer care, soaking up the strange clashing rhythms. Then he moved out into the center of the floor.

The women slipped back into the shadows. He was alone with the king, who loomed over him like a titan.

Sweat rolled in streams down Toikella’s bare glistening body. He grinned in high amusement — Harpirias noticed for the first time that there were bright gems, an emerald and a ruby and a third one of a darker hue, set into his front teeth — and struck his hands together three times. It was a signal, apparently, to the musicians, who halted their frenzied wailing and honking and pounding and screeching and set about playing a different tune entirely, one that was slow and sinuous, a dark, quiet, serpentine melody, haunting and strange.

The king, his shoulders hunched high and his hands held facing each other with fingers writhing mysteriously, began now to move with implausible grace in a wide circle around Harpirias, treading lightly, almost floating. It could have been the dance of a hunter stalking his prey.

Harpirias, having no idea of what step he was meant to undertake, remained still for a moment, watching Toikella in the baffled fashion of one who is beginning to slip into a trance. But then he too started to move, almost without conscious volition: flexing his fingers first, then slowly raising and lowering his shoulders, and finally mimicking the king’s fastidious tiptoe delicacy as he set out to follow his own circular path, going in the direction opposite to Toikella’s.

For long moments they stalked each other, winding round and round, the immense fleshy man and the shorter, more compact one, while the music gradually grew and grew in tempo and volume. Soon it began to approach the wild intensity of the women’s dance. Harpirias picked up his pace as the music rose. Toikella, still grinning, moved faster as well. Harpirias laughed. It was impossible now to maintain his earlier delicacy of step. He leaped; he bounded; he stamped his feet and clapped his hands.

"Eyya!" cried the king. "Halga!"

"Eyya!" Harpirias echoed. "Halga!"

"Shifta skepta gartha blin!"

"Shifta skepta!"

"Gartha blin!"

"Shifta skepta gartha blin!"

Harpirias threw his head back, flung his hands high, pulled one knee almost to his chest and then the other. He howled and roared. He stamped and clapped. And he saw now that others were coming out onto the floor, some of the women first, and then the elaborately robed man with the painted face who had spoken with Korinaam at the entrance to the valley, and other men after him, flamboyantly painted also — high warriors of the tribe, perhaps. Even a few of the Skandars joined the dance, finally, although none of the Ghayrogs did, nor did Korinaam venture forth. For what seemed like hours they all circled round the room like a band of moonstruck madmen, until abruptly the music died away in mid-note, as if all the musicians had perished in the same instant, and the only sounds in the room were those of laughter and harsh breathing.

The king, who was standing beside Harpirias as the music ended, turned toward him. There was a look of total delight in the big man’s eyes. He reached out one outsized paw for him and gathered Harpirias in, drawing him into a crushing embrace. For a seemingly endless moment the king held him there. The royal effluvium was overwhelming: a reeking mixture of sweat, animal grease, thickly applied pigments, awful perfumes.

Then Toikella released him, grinned once more, and clapped his forehead in what had the look of a salute. Harpirias, grinning also, returned the gesture. The dance had left him exhilarated. He felt almost like himself again, after all these long gloomy months of exile. To his surprise, he found himself oddly charmed, too, by Toikella, who seemed to be an amiable, high-spirited old tyrant. It appeared that Toikella was taken by him as well.

Yes, Harpirias thought, we will be the best of friends, he and I. We will sit up late together and drink whatever it is that they like to drink in this place, and we will tell each other the stories of our lives. Friends, yes. Bosom companions.

It was time for the feasting, finally.

The king served Harpirias with his own hands: a high honor, evidently, but something of a doubtful one, since diplomatic courtesy now obliged Harpirias to eat everything that Toikella had chosen for him. Left to his own discretion, he might have preferred a less generous assortment, for nearly everything on the serving tables looked and smelled inedible.

Most of it was meat, roasts and stews and skewered strips, buried under thick, pungent sauces. There were several soups — Harpirias hoped that those fluids were soups, and nothing more sinister — and mounds of roasted nuts, and vegetable mushes of various kinds, and what might have been gnarled roots, baked until charred. The beverage of choice evidently was some kind of bitter, brackish beer, grayish-black in color, that bubbled unpleasantly of its own accord in the bowl.

Harpirias ate what he could, nibbling here, staunchly cramming there, washing it all down with desperate gulps of the beer. These people seemed to like their meat half-cooked and fatty, and most of it had a gaminess which even an experienced huntsman like Harpirias found hard to tolerate. All the sauces were much too spicy for him, and many of the vegetable dishes had a spoiled or fermented undertaste. But he did his best. He understood what a sacrifice it must be for the Othinor to provide such abundance as this, living as they did in a land that was covered by snow most of the year, where farming was unknown, where every scrap of food must be pried from nature’s unwilling grasp.

The king plied him with second portions, and thirds, and fourths. Harpirias laughed and protested, and confined his eating to nibbles, and let the royal servants clear his unfinished plates away whenever Toikella was looking the other way.

The evening wore on. And on and on.

Three clowns entered the room and carried out a long unfathomable routine of jokes and haphazard juggling that brought tears of mirth to the king’s face. The women danced again, and then a group of the men. Harpirias grew drowsy, but gamely compelled himself to pay attention. He drank more of the bubbling bitter beer: it was almost possible to like it, after a while. Gradually he became aware that the feasters were beginning to slip away, in groups of two and three. The big room had grown very quiet. The king had gathered two armloads of his women to his side and had slumped down with them onto the rugs.

Softly Korinaam said, "Come, prince. The evening is at its end."

"Shall I bid the king good night?"

"He won’t notice, I suspect." Indeed, Toikella appeared preoccupied. Soft moist slobbering sounds could be heard. "We should just go," the Shapeshifter said.

Together they crossed the icy plaza to the guest house at the far end. It was late enough so that darkness had fallen. The air on this midsummer night was clear and crisp, and had what Harpirias regarded as a wintry edge to it. The stars hardly seemed to shimmer: they were discrete points of light, keenly bright.

"You did well tonight," said Korinaam, as they entered the building of ice. "A good start to the mission."

Harpirias nodded. He felt woozy. Too much stimulation, too much strange beer, too much bad food, too much close smoky air. He pushed the leather door-flap aside and went into his room. It was even warmer inside than the throne room had been, and the lamps, which had been lit during his absence, had filled the air with thick oily smoke, so that Harpirias choked and gagged at the first breath of it.

There was someone in the room. A woman.

"Yes?" he said. "What do you want?"

She rose and came toward him, displaying a gap-toothed smile. Harpirias recognized her as one of those who had clustered earlier at the foot of King Toikella’s throne — the youngest-looking and least unattractive of them, in fact, a reasonably slender girl with straight, glossy dark hair cut in a bowl shape just about to the level of her ears. She was wearing only the moccasins and loincloth of black fur that had been the costume of the dancers, and now, quite casually, she pulled the loincloth down and kicked it aside. With a cheerful gesture she pointed toward the pile of sleeping-furs, tapped her chest, extended her hand to him.

"No," Harpirias said. "Not tonight, thanks. I’m very, very tired. I’d just like to go to sleep."

She bobbed her head up and down and giggled. She pointed again to the furs.

Harpirias stayed where he was. "You didn’t understand a word of what I said, did you? No. No, how could you?"

For an instant he was almost tempted. He had been living chastely for so long now that chastity was starting to feel almost like a normal way of life to him, which was a situation that surely needed to be remedied. But not here, not now, not with her. She was far from hideous — pleasing features, alert mischievous eyes, a decent figure, appealing breasts — but she was, after all, barbaric in her manner and dirty and unfragrant in her person. And he was extremely tired and not at all interested.

It was flattering that she had taken a fancy to him, he supposed. But what would the king say when he discovered that the ambassador from the civilized world had allowed himself a night’s sport with a member of the royal harem?

"I’m sorry," he said gently. "Perhaps another time." He picked up her discarded loincloth and pressed it into her hand. Then, putting the tips of his fingers lightly and he hoped unprovocatively against her back, he steered her toward the door, not exactly pushing her but making it as clear as he could that he was asking her to go.

She turned and looked back at him for a long charged moment. Sadly? Angrily? Mockingly? He couldn’t tell.

Then she was gone.

Shaking his head, Harpirias did what he could to cleanse himself and get ready for sleep. He was on the verge of climbing between two of the furs on the floor when the Shape-shifter’s quiet voice from the hallway said, "May I speak with you, prince?"

Harpirias yawned. This was getting very annoying. He said, without rising to pull back the sheet of leather that functioned as the door, "What is it, Korinaam?"

"The girl you refused has come to me."

"My warmest congratulations. I wish you much joy of her."

"You misunderstand me, prince. She came to me to ask what she has done wrong with you, why she has displeased you. She has gone away bewildered and insulted."

"She has? Well, that’s too bad, I suppose. It wasn’t my intention to hurt her feelings. But I didn’t particularly want company tonight, not hers, not anybody’s. And as a general rule it doesn’t seem smart to me to be sleeping with the king’s wives."

"Not one of his wives, prince. It is King Toikella’s youngest daughter whom you have rejected. And when he learns of it, there’s bound to be no small amount of trouble."

"His daughter? He wants me to go to bed with his daughter?"

"It is traditional Othinor courtesy," said the Shapeshifter. "You really must not refuse."

Appalled, Harpirias pressed both his hands to his forehead. Was Korinaam serious? Yes, yes, he must be. For a wild moment Harpirias debated asking the Metamorph to summon the girl back; but then a mounting sense of vexation overcame the force of whatever presumable obligations of diplomacy he might be under. He wanted to get some sleep. There were limits to the things he was supposed to do for the sake of getting this treaty signed. He was not going to sleep with a smelly savage girl simply to keep King Toikella happy. Not. Not. Not. Not.

Thinking quickly, Harpirias said, "You will tell the king, when and if the matter comes up, that I am highly appreciative of the honor he has paid me. But in fact I have taken a severe vow of abstinence from physical pleasure as one of the disciplines of my high office. Under its terms I mustn’t allow myself to be approached by a woman."

"You have said nothing of this before, prince."

"I’m saying it now. A vow of abstinence. Is that understood?"

"It is, yes."

"Thank you. Good night, Korinaam."

He pulled one of the furs over his head, skin side out. It smelled as though they had tanned it in steetmoy urine.

This was all going to be even more difficult than he had expected, he told himself. If his dear friend Tembidat and his beloved cousin Vildimuir had happened to be within his reach just now, he would with a good deal of pleasure have wrung their necks.