He dreamed again of Pontifex and Coronal the next night, in a town on the outskirts of Falkynkip. This was a hazy dream, and Valentine remembered nothing of it except impressions of fearsome royal personages, enormous pompous assemblies, and failures of communication. He awoke with a feeling of deep and aching discontent. Plainly he was receiving dreams of high consequence, but he was helpless to interpret them. "The Powers obsess you and will not let you rest," Carabella said in the morning. "You seem tied to them by unbreakable cords. It isn’t natural to dream so frequently of such mighty figures. I think surely these are sendings."
Valentine nodded. "In the heat of the day I imagine I feel the hands of the King of Dreams pressing coldly on my temples. And when I close my eyes his fingers enter my soul."
Alarm flashed in Carabella’s eyes. "Can you be sure they are his sendings?"
"Not sure, no. But I think—"
"Perhaps the Lady—"
"The Lady sends kinder, softer dreams, so I believe," said Valentine. "These are sendings of the King, I much fear. But what does he want of me? What crime have I done?"
She frowned. "In Falkynkip, Valentine, take yourself to a speaker, as you promised."
"I’ll look for one, yes."
Autifon Deliamber, joining the conversation unexpectedly, said, "May I make a recommendation?"
Valentine had not seen the wizened little Vroon approach, He looked down, surprised.
"Pardon," the sorcerer said offhandedly. "I happened to overhear. You are troubled by sendings, you think?"
"They could be nothing else."
"Can you be certain?"
"I’m certain of nothing. Not even of my name, or yours, or the day of the week."
"Sendings are rarely ambiguous. When the King speaks, or the Lady, we know without doubt," Deliamber said.
Valentine shook his head. "My mind is clouded these days. I hold nothing sure. But these dreams vex me, and I need answers, though I hardly know how to frame my questions."
The Vroon reached up to take Valentine’s hand with one of his delicate, intricately branched tentacles. "Trust me. Your mind may be clouded, but mine is not, and I see you clearly. My name is Deliamber, and yours is Valentine, and this is Fiveday of the ninth week of summer, and in Falkynkip is the dream-speaker Tisana, who is my friend and ally, and who will help you find your proper path. Go to her and say that I give her greetings and love. Time has come for you to begin to recover from the harm that has befallen you, Valentine."
"Harm? Harm? What harm is that?"
"Go to Tisana," Deliamber said firmly.
Valentine sought Zalzan Kavol, who was speaking with some person of the village. Eventually the Skandar was done, and turned to Valentine, who said, "I ask leave to spend Starday night apart from the troupe, in Falkynkip."
"Also a matter of family honor?" asked Zalzan Kavol sardonically.
"A matter of private business. May I?"
The Skandar shrugged an elaborate four-shouldered shrug. "There is something strange about you, something troublesome to me. But do as you wish. We perform in Falkynkip anyway, tomorrow, at the market fair. Sleep where you like, but be ready to leave early Sunday morning, eh?"
—12—
FALKYNKIP WAS NOTHING in the way of being a city to compare with huge sprawling Pidruid, but all the same was far from insignificant, a county seat that served as metropolis for a ranching district of great size. Perhaps three quarters of a million people lived in and about Falkynkip, and five times as many in the outlying countryside. But its pace was different from Pidruid’s, Valentine observed. Possibly its location on this dry, hot plateau rather than along the mild and humid coast had something to do with that: but people moved deliberately here, with stolid, unhurried manners.
The boy Shanamir made himself scarce on Starday. He had indeed slipped off secretly the night before to his father’s farm some hours north of the city, where — so he told Valentine the next morning — he had left the money he had earned in Pidruid and a note declaring that he was going off to seek adventure and wisdom, and had managed to get away again without being noticed. But he did not expect his father to take lightly the loss of so skilled and useful a hand, and fearing that municipal proctors would be out in search of him, Shanamir proposed to spend the rest of his stay in Falkynkip hidden in the wagon. Valentine explained this to Zalzan Kavol, who agreed, with his usual acrid grace.
That afternoon at the fair the jugglers came marching boldly out, Carabella and Sleet leading the way, he banging drum, she tapping a tambourine and singing a lilting jingle:
Spare a royal, spare a crown,
Gentlefolk, come sit ye down.
Astonishment and levity —
Come and see our jugglery!
Spare an inch and spare a mile,
Gentlefolk, we’ll make you smile.
Cup and saucer, ball and chair,
Dancing lightly in the air!
Spare a moment, spare a day,
And we’ll spin your cares away.
A moment’s time, a coin well spent,
Will bring you joy and wonderment.
But levity and wonderment were far from Valentine’s spirit that day, and he juggled poorly. He was tense and uneasy from too many nights of troubled sleep, and also with inflamed with ambitions that went beyond his present skills which led him to overreach himself. Twice he dropped clubs but Sleet had shown him ways of pretending that that was part of the routine, and the crowd seemed forgiving. Forgiving himself was a harder matter. He crept off sullenly to a wine-stand while the Skandars took the center of the stage.
From a distance he watched them working, the six big shaggy beings weaving their twenty-four arms in precise ail flawless patterns. Each juggled seven knives while constantly throwing and receiving others, and the effect was spectacular, the tension extreme, as the silent interchange of sharp weapons went on and on. The placid burghers of Falkynkip were spellbound.
Watching the Skandars, Valentine regretted all the more his own faulty performance. Since Pidruid he had yearned to go before an audience again — his hands had twitched for the feel of clubs and balls — and he had finally had his moment and had been clumsy. No matter. There would be other marketplaces, other fairs. All across Zimroel the troupe would wander, year after year, and he would shine, he would dazzle audiences, they would cry out for Valentine the juggler, they would demand encore after encore, until Zalzan Kavol himself looked black with jealousy. A king of jugglers, yes, a monarch, a Coronal of performers! Why not? He had the gift. Valentine smiled. His dour mood was lifting. Was it the wine, or his natural good spirits reasserting themselves? He had been at the art only a week, after all, and look what he had achieved already! Who could say what wonders of eye and hand he would perform when he had had a year or two of practice?
Autifon Deliamber was at his side. "Tisana is to be found in the Street of Watermongers," the diminutive sorcerer said. "She expects you shortly."
"Have you spoken to her of me, then?"
"No," said Deliamber.
"But she expects me. Hah! Is it by sorcery?"
"Something of that," the Vroon said, giving a Vroonish wriggle of the limbs that amounted to a shrug. "Go to her soon."
Valentine nodded. He looked across: the Skandars were done, and Sleet and Carabella were demonstrating one-arm juggling. How elegantly they moved together, he thought. How calm, how confident they were, how crisp of motion. And how beautiful she is. Valentine and Carabella had not been lovers since the night of the festival, though sometimes they had slept side by side; it was a week now, and he had felt aloof and apart from her, though nothing but warmth and support had come from her to him. These dreams were the problem, draining and distracting him. To Tisana, then, for a speaking, and then, perhaps tomorrow, to embrace Carabella again—
"The Street of Watermongers," he said to Deliamber. "Very well. Will there be a sign marking her dwelling?"
"Ask," Deliamber said.
As Vale
ntine set out, the Hjort Vinorkis stepped from behind the wagon and said, "Off for a night on the town, are you?"
"An errand," Valentine said.
"Want some company?" The Hjort laughed his coarse, noisy laugh. "We could hit a few taverns together, hoy? I wouldn’t mind getting away from all this jugglery for a few hours."
Uneasily Valentine said, "It’s the sort of thing one must do by oneself."
Vinorkis studied him a moment. "Not too friendly, are you?"
"Please. It’s exactly as I said: I must do this alone. I’m not going tavern-crawling tonight, believe me."
The Hjort shrugged. "All right. Be like that, see if I care. I just wanted to help you have fun — show you the town, take you to a couple of my favorite places—"
"Another time," said Valentine quickly.
He strode off toward Falkynkip.
The Street of Watermongers was easy enough to find — this was an orderly town, no medieval maze like Pidruid, and there were neat and comprehensible city maps posted at every major intersection — but finding the home of the dream-speaker Tisana was a slower business, for the street was long and those he asked for directions merely pointed over their shoulders toward the north. He followed along steadfastly and by early evening reached a small gray rough-shingled house in a residential quarter far from the marketplace. It bore on its weatherworn front door two symbols of the Powers, the crossed lightning-bolts that stood for the King of Dreams, and the triangle-within-triangle that was the emblem of the Lady of the Isle of Sleep.
Tisana was a sturdy woman of more than middle years, heavy-bodied and of unusual height, with a broad strong face and cool searching eyes. Her hair, thick and unbound, black streaked with swaths of white, hung far down her shoulders. Her arms, emerging bare from the gray cotton smock that she wore, were solid and powerful, although swinging dewlaps of flesh hung from them. She seemed a person of great strength and wisdom.
She greeted Valentine by name and bade him be comfortable in her house.
"I bring you, as you must already know, the greetings and love of Autifon Deliamber," he said.
The dream-speaker nodded gravely. "He has sent advance word, yes. That rascal! But his love is worth receiving, for all his tricks. Convey the same from me to him." She moved around the small dark room, closing draperies, lighting three thick red candles, igniting some incense. There was little furniture, only a high-piled woven rug in tones of gray and black, a venerable wooden table on which the candles stood, and a tall clothes-cabinet in antique style. She said, as she made her preparations, "I’ve known Deliamber nearly forty years, would you believe it? It was in the early days of the reign of Tyeveras that we met, at a festival in Piliplok, when the new Coronal came to town, Lord Malibor that drowned on the sea-dragon hunt. The little Vroon was tricky even then. We stood there cheering Lord Malibor in the streets, and Deliamber said, ‘He’ll die before the Pontifex, you know,’ the way someone might predict rain when the south wind blows. It was a terrible thing to say, and I told him so. Deliamber didn’t care. A strange business, when the Coronal dies first, when the Pontifex lives on and on. How old d’ye think Tyeveras is by now? A hundred? A hundred twenty?"
"I have no idea," said Valentine.
"Old, very old. He was Coronal a long while before he entered the Labyrinth. And he’s been in there for three Coronal reigns, can you imagine? I wonder if he’ll outlive Lord Valentine too." Her eyes came to rest on Valentine’s. "I suppose Deliamber knows that too. Will you have wine with me now?"
"Yes," Valentine said, uncomfortable with her blunt, outgoing manner and with the sense she gave him of knowing far more about him than he knew himself.
Tisana produced a carven stone decanter and poured two generous drinks, not the spicy fireshower wine of Pidruid but some darker, thicker vintage, sweet with undertastes of peppermint and ginger and other, more mysterious, things. He took a quick sip, and then another, and after the second she said casually, "It contains the drug, you know."
"Drug?"
"For the speaking."
"Oh. Of course. Yes." His ignorance embarrassed him. Valentine frowned and stared into his goblet. The wine was dark red, almost purple, and its surface gave back his own distorted reflection by candlelight. What was the procedure? he wondered. Was he supposed now to tell his recent dreams to her? Wait and see, wait and see. He drained the drink in quick uneasy gulps and immediately the old woman refilled, topping off her own glass, which she had barely touched.
She said, "A long time since your last speaking?"
"Very long, I’m afraid."
"Evidently. This is the moment when you give me my fee, you know. You’ll find the price somewhat higher than you remember."
Valentine reached for his purse. "It’s been so long—"
" — that you don’t remember. I ask ten crowns now. There are new taxes, and other bothers. In Lord Voriax’s time it was five, and when I first took up speaking, in the reign of Lord Malibor, I got two or two and a half. Is ten a burden for you?"
It was a week’s pay for him from Zalzan Kavol, above his room and board; but he had arrived in Pidruid with plenty of money in his purse, he knew not how or why, close on sixty royals, and much of that remained. He gave the dream-speaker a royal and she dropped the coin negligently into a green porcelain bowl on the table. He yawned. She was watching him closely. He drank again; she did also, and refilled; his mind was growing cloudy. Though it was still early at night, he would soon be sleepy.
"Come now to the dream-rug," she said, blowing out two of the three candles.
She pulled off her smock and was naked before him.
That was unexpected. Did dream-speaking involve some sort of sexual contact? With this old woman? Not that she seemed so old now: her body looked a good twenty years younger than her face, not a girl’s body by any means, but still firm-fleshed, plump but unwrinkled, with heavy breasts and strong smooth thighs. Perhaps these speakers were some sort of holy prostitutes, Valentine thought. She beckoned to him to undress, and he cast his clothes aside. They lay down together on the thick woolen rug in the half-darkness, and she drew him into her arms, but there was nothing at all erotic about the embrace — more maternal, if anything, an all-enfolding engulfment. He relaxed. His head was against her soft warm bosom and it was hard for him to stay awake. The scent of her was strong in his nostrils, a sharp pleasant aroma like that of the gnarled and ageless needle-trees that grew on the high peaks of the north just below the snow-line, an odor that was crisp and pungent and clean. She said softly, "In the kingdom of dreams the only language spoken is that of truth. Be without fear as we embark together."
Valentine closed his eyes.
High peaks, yes, just below the snow-line. A brisk wind blew across the crags, but he was not at all cold, though his feet were bare against the dry stony soil. A trail lay before him, a steeply sloping path in which broad gray flagstones had been laid to form a gigantic staircase leading into a mist-wrapped valley, and without hesitation Valentine started the descent. He understood that these images were not yet those of his dream, only of the prelude, that he had only begun his night’s journey and was still merely on the threshold of sleep. But as he went downward he passed others, making the ascent, figures familiar to him from recent nights, the Pontifex Tyeveras with parchment skin and withered face, laboring up the steps in feeble quavering manner, and Lord Valentine the Coronal clambering with bold assertive strides, and dead Lord Voriax floating serenely just above the steps, and the great warrior-Coronal Lord Stiamot out of eight thousand years past, brandishing some mighty staff around the tip of which furious storms swirled, and was this not the Pontifex Arioc who had resigned the Labyrinth six thousand years before to proclaim himself a woman, and become Lady of the Isle of Sleep instead? And this the great ruler Lord Confalume, and the equally great Lord Prestimion who had succeeded him, under whose two long reigns Majipoor had attained its peak of wealth and power? And then came Zalzan Kavol with the wizard Delia
mber on his back, and Carabella, naked and nut-brown, sprinting with unfailing vigor, and Vinorkis, goggling and gaping, and Sleet, juggling balls of fire as he climbed, and Shanamir, and a Liiman selling sizzling sausages, and the gentle sweet-eyed Lady of the Isle, and the old Pontifex again, and the Coronal, and a platoon of musicians, and twenty Hjorts bearing the King of Dreams, terrible old Simonan Barjazid, in a golden litter. The mists were thicker down here, the air more dank, and Valentine found his breath coming in short painful bursts, as though instead of descending from the heights he had been climbing all the time, working his way by awful struggle above the line of needle-trees, into the bare granite shields of the high mountains, barefoot on burning strands of snow, swaddled in gray blankets of cloud that concealed all of Majipoor from him.
There was noble austere music in the heavens now, awesome choirs of brass playing solemn and somber melodies suitable for the robing-ceremony of a Coronal. And, indeed, they were robing him, a dozen crouching servants placing on him the cloak of office and the starburst crown, but he shook his head lightly and brushed them away, and with his own hands he removed the crown and handed it to his brother of the menacing saber, and shrugged off his fine robes and distributed them in strips to the poor, who used them to make bindings for their feet, and word went out to all the provinces of Majipoor that he had resigned his high office and given up all power, and once more he found himself on the flagstone steps, descending the mountain trail, seeking that valley of mists that lay in the unattainable beyond.
"But why do you go downward?" asked Carabella, blocking his path, and he had no answer to that, so that when little Deliamber pointed upward he shrugged meekly and began a new ascent, through fields of brilliant red and blue flowers, through a place of golden grass and lofty green cedars. He perceived that this was no ordinary peak he had been climbing and descending and climbing anew, but rather Castle Mount itself, that jutted thirty miles into the heavens, and his goal was that bewildering all-encompassing ever-expanding structure at its summit, the place where the Coronal dwelled, the castle that was called Lord Valentine’s Castle but that had, not long before, been Lord Voriax’ Castle and before that Lord Malibor’s Castle, and other names before that, names of all those mighty princes who had ruled from Castle Mount, each putting his imprint on the growing castle and giving his name to it while he lived there, all the way back to Lord Stiamot the conqueror of the Metamorphs, he who was the first to dwell on Castle Mount and built the modest keep out of which all the rest had sprouted. I will regain the Castle, Valentine told himself, and I will take up residence.
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