—13—
ILIRIVOYNE WAS NEITHER a city nor a village, but something intermediate, a forlorn concentration of many low, impermanent-looking structures of withes and light woods, arranged along irregular unpaved streets that seemed to stretch for considerable distances into the forest. The place had a makeshift look, as though Ilirivoyne might have been located elsewhere a few years ago and might be in an altogether other district a few years hence. That it was festival-time in Ilirivoyne was signaled, apparently, by fetish-sticks of some sort planted in front of almost every house, thick shaven stakes to which bright ribbons and bits of fur had been attached; also on many streets scaffolding had been erected, as for performances, or, thought Valentine uneasily, for tribal rites of some darker kind.
Finding the House of Offices and the Danipiur was simple. The main street opened into a broad plaza bordered on three sides by small domed buildings with ornately woven roofs, and on the fourth by a larger structure, the first three-story building they had seen in Ilirivoyne, with an elaborate garden of globular thick-stemmed gray-and-white shrubs in front of it. Zalzan Kavol drew the wagon into a clearing just outside the plaza.
"Come with me," the Skandar said to Deliamber. "We’ll see what we can arrange."
They were inside the House of Offices a long while. When they emerged, a female Metamorph of great presence and authority was with them, doubtless the Danipiur, and the three stood together by the garden in elaborate conversation. The Danipiur pointed; Zalzan Kavol alternately nodded and shook his head; Autifon Deliamber, dwarfed between the two tall beings, made frequent graceful gestures of diplomatic conciliation. Finally Zalzan Kavol and the Vroon returned to the wagon. The Skandar’s mood seemed brighter.
"We’ve come just in time," he announced. "The festival has already begun. Tomorrow night is one of the major holidays."
"Will they pay us?" Sleet asked.
"So it would seem," said Zalzan Kavol. "But they will supply us with no food, and no lodging either, for Ilirivoyne is without hostelries. And there are certain specified zones of the city that we may not enter. I have had friendlier welcomes in other places. But also less friendly ones now and then, I suppose."
Crowds of solemn, silent Metamorph children trailed after them as they moved the wagon from the plaza to an area just back of it where they could park. In late afternoon they held a practice session, and though Lisamon Hultin did her formidable best to clear the young Metamorphs from the scene and keep them away, it was impossible to prevent them from slipping back, emerging between trees and out of bushes to stare at the jugglers. Valentine found it unnerving to work in front of them, and he was plainly not the only one, for Sleet was tense and uncharacteristically awkward, and even Zalzan Kavol, the master of masters, dropped a club for the first time in Valentine’s memory. The silence of the children was disturbing — they stood like blank-eyed statues, a remote audience that drained energy and gave none in return — but even more troublesome was their trick of metamorphosis, their way of slipping from one shape to another as casually as a human child might suck its thumb. Mimicry was their apparent purpose, for the forms they took were crude, half-recognizable versions of the jugglers, such as the older Metamorphs had attempted earlier at Piurifayne Fountain. The children held the forms only briefly — their skills seemed feeble — but in the pauses between routines Valentine saw them now sprouting golden hair for him, white for Sleet, black for Carabella, or making themselves bearish and many-armed like the Skandars, or trying to imitate faces, individual features, expressions, everything done in a distorted and unflattering way.
The travelers slept crammed aboard the wagon that night, one packed close upon the other, and all night, so it seemed, a steady rain fell. Valentine only occasionally was able to sleep; he dropped into light dozes, but mainly he lay awake listening to Lisamon Hultin’s lusty snoring or the even more grotesque sounds coming from the Skandars. Somewhere in the night he must have had some real sleep, for a dream came to him, hazy and incoherent, in which he saw the Metamorphs leading a procession of prisoners, forest-brethren and the blue-skinned alien, up the road toward Piruifayne Fountain, which erupted and rose above the world like a colossal white mountain. And again toward morning he slept soundly for a time, until Sleet woke him by shaking his shoulder a little before dawn.
Valentine sat up, rubbing his eyes. "What is it?"
"Come outside. I have to talk."
"It’s still dark!"
"Even so. Come!"
Valentine yawned, stretched, got creakily to his feet. He and Sleet picked their way carefully over the slumbering forms of Carabella and Shanamir, went warily around one of the Skandars, and down the steps of the wagon. The rain had stopped, but the morning was dark and chilly, and a nasty fog rose from the ground.
"I have had a sending," Sleet said. "From the Lady, I think."
"Of what sort?"
"About the blue-skinned one, in the cage, that they said was a criminal going to be punished. In my dream he came to me and said he was no criminal at all, but only a traveler who had made the error of entering Shapeshifter territory, and had been captured because it’s their custom to sacrifice a stranger in Piurifayne Fountain at festival-time. And I saw how it is done, the victim bound hand and foot and left in the basin of the Fountain, and when the explosion comes he is hurled far into the sky."
Valentine felt a chill that did not come from the morning mist. "I dreamed something similar," he said.
"In my dream I heard more," Sleet went on. "That we are in danger too, not perhaps from sacrifice but in danger all the same. And if we rescue the alien, he will help us to safety, but if we leave him to die, we will not leave Piurivar country alive. You know I fear these Shapeshifters, Valentine, but this dream is something new. It came to me with the clarity of a sending. It ought not be dismissed as more fears of foolish Sleet."
"What do you want to do?"
"Rescue the alien."
Valentine said uneasily, "And if he really was a criminal? By what right do we meddle in Piurivar justice?"
"By right of sending," said Sleet. "Are those forest-brethren criminals too? I saw them also go into the Fountain. We are among savages, Valentine."
"Not savages, no. But strange folk, whose way is not like the ways of Majipoor."
"I’m determined to set the blue-skinned one free. If not with your help, then by myself."
"Now?"
"What better time?" Sleet asked. "It’s still dark. Quiet. I’ll open the cage; he’ll slip off into the jungle."
"You think the cage is unguarded? No, Sleet. Wait. This makes no sense. You’ll jeopardize us all if you act now. Let me try to find out more about this prisoner and why he’s caged, and what’s intended for him. If they do mean to sacrifice him, they’d do it at some high point of the festival. There’s time."
"The sending is on me now," Sleet said.
"I dreamed a dream something like yours."
"But not a sending."
"Not a sending, no. Still, enough to let me think your dream holds truth. I’ll help you, Sleet. But not now. This isn’t the moment for it."
Sleet looked restless. Clearly in his mind he was already on the way to the place of the cages, and Valentine’s opposition was thwarting him.
"Sleet?"
"Yes?"
"Hear me. This is not the moment. There is time."
Valentine looked steadily at the juggler. Sleet returned his gaze with equal steadfastness for a moment; then, abruptly, his resolve broke and he lowered his eyes. "Yes, my lord," he said quietly.
During the day Valentine tried to gain information about the prisoner, but with little success. The cages, eleven holding forest-brethren and the twelfth holding the alien, now had been installed in the plaza opposite the House of Offices, stacked in four tiers with the alien’s cage alone on high, far above the ground. Piurivars armed with dirks guarded them.
Valentine approached, but he was only halfway across the plaza when he w
as stopped. A Metamorph told him, "This is forbidden for you to enter."
The forest-brethren began frantically to rattle their bars. The blue-skinned one called out, thickly accented words that Valentine could barely understand. Was the alien saying, "Flee, fool, before they kill you too!" or was that only Valentine’s heightened imagination at work? The guards held a tight cordon around the place. Valentine turned away. He attempted to ask some children nearby if they could explain the cages to him; but they looked at him in obstinate silence, giving him cool blank-eyed stares and murmuring to one another and making little partial metamorphoses that mimicked his fair hair, and then they scattered and ran as though he were some sort of demon.
All morning long Metamorphs entered Ilirivoyne, swarming in from the outlying forest settlements. They brought with them decorations of many sorts, wreaths and buntings and draperies and mirror-bedecked posts and tall poles carved with mysterious runes; everyone seemed to know what to do, and everyone was intensely busy. No rain fell after sunrise. Was it by witchcraft, Valentine wondered, that the Piurivars provided a rare dry day for their high holiday, or only coincidence?
By mid-afternoon the festivities were under way. Small bands of musicians played heavy, pulsating, jangling music of eccentric rhythm, and throngs of Metamorphs danced a slow and stately pattern of interweavings, moving almost like sleep-walkers. On certain streets races were run, and judges stationed at points along the course engaged in intricate arguments as the racers went past them. Booths apparently constructed during the night dispensed soups, stews, beverages, and grilled meats.
Valentine felt like an intruder in this place. He wanted to apologize to the Metamorphs for having come among them at their holiest time. Yet no one but the children seemed to be paying the slightest attention to them, and the children evidently regarded them as curiosities brought here for their amusement. Young shy Metamorphs lurked everywhere, flashing jumbled imitations of Deliamber and Sleet and Zalzan Kavol and the rest, but never allowing anyone to get close to them.
Zalzan Kavol had called a rehearsal for late afternoon, back of the wagon. Valentine was one of the first to arrive, glad of an excuse to remove himself from the crowded streets. He found only Sleet and two of the Skandars.
It seemed to him that Zalzan Kavol was eyeing him in an odd way. There was something new and disturbing about the quality of the Skandar’s attentiveness. After a few minutes Valentine was so troubled by it that he said, "Is something wrong?"
"What would be wrong?"
"You seem out of countenance."
"I? I? Nothing’s the matter. A dream, is all. I was thinking on a dream I had last night."
"You dreamed of the blue-skinned prisoner?"
Zalzan Kavol looked baffled. "Why do you think that?"
"I did, and Sleet."
"My dream had nothing at all to do with the blue-skinned one," the Skandar replied. "Nor do I wish to discuss it. It was foolishness, mere foolishness." And Zalzan Kavol, moving away, picked up a double brace of knives and began to juggle them in an edgy, absent-minded way.
Valentine shrugged. It had not even occurred to him that Skandars had dreams, let alone that they might have troublesome ones. But of course: they were citizens of Majipoor, they shared in all the attributes of people here, and so they must live full and rich dream-lives like everyone else, with sendings from King and Lady, and stray intrusions from the minds of lesser beings, and upwellings of self from their own deeper reaches, even as humans did, or, Valentine supposed, Hjorts and Vroons and Liimen. Still, it was curious. Zalzan Kavol was so guarded of emotion, so unwilling to let anything of himself be seen by others save greed and impatience and irritation, that Valentine found it strange that he would admit something so personal as that he was pondering a dream.
He wondered if Metamorphs had meaningful dreams, and sendings, and all of that.
The rehearsal went well. Afterward the jugglers made a light and not very satisfying dinner of fruits and berries that Lisamon Hultin had gathered in the forest, and washed it down with the last of the wine they had brought from Khyntor. Bonfires now were blazing in many streets of Ilirivoyne, and the discordant music of the various bands set up weird clashing near-harmonies. Valentine had assumed the performance would take place in the plaza, but no, Metamorphs in what perhaps were priestly costumes came at darkness to escort them to some entirely other part of town, a much larger oval clearing that already was ringed by hundreds or even thousands of expectant onlookers. Zalzan Kavol and his brothers went over the ground carefully, checking for pitfalls and irregularities that might disrupt their movements. Sleet usually took part in that, but, Valentine noticed abruptly, Sleet had vanished somewhere between the rehearsal place and this clearing. Had his patience run out, had he gone off to do something rash? Valentine was just about to set out in search when Sleet appeared, breathing lightly as though he had just been jogging.
"I went to the plaza," he said in a low voice. "The cages are still piled up. But most of the guards must be off at the dancing. I was able to exchange a few words with the prisoner before I was chased."
"And?"
"He said he’s to be sacrificed at midnight in the Fountain, exactly as in my sending. And tomorrow night the same will happen to us."
"What?"
"I swear it by the Lady," said Sleet. His eyes were like augers. "It was under pledge to you, my lord, that I came into this place. You assured me no harm would befall me."
"Your fears seemed irrational."
"And now?"
"I begin to revise my opinion," Valentine said. "But we’ll set out of Ilirivoyne in good health. I pledge you that. I’ll speak with Zalzan Kavol after the performance, and after I’ve had a chance to confer with Deliamber."
"It would please me more to get on the road sooner."
"The Metamorphs are feasting and drinking this evening. They’ll be less likely to notice our departure later," said Valentine, "and less apt to pursue us, if pursuit is their aim. Besides, do you think Zalzan Kavol would agree to cancel a performance merely on the rumor of danger? We’ll do our act, and then we’ll begin to extricate ourselves. What do you say?"
"I am yours, my lord," Sleet replied.
—14—
IT WAS A SPLENDID PERFORMANCE, and no one was in better form than Sleet, who did his blind-juggling routine and carried it off flawlessly. The Skandars flung torches at one another with giddy abandon, Carabella cavorted on the rolling globe, Valentine juggled while dancing, skipping, kneeling, and running. The Metamorphs sat in concentric circles around them, saying little, never applauding, peering in at them out of the foggy darkness with unfathomable intensity of concentration.
Working to such an audience was hard. It was worse than working in rehearsal, for no one expects an audience then, but now there were thousands of spectators and they were giving nothing to the performers; they were statue-still, as the children had been, an austere audience that offered neither approval nor disapproval but only something that had to be interpreted as indifference. In the face of that, the jugglers presented ever more taxing and marvelous numbers, but for more than an hour they could get no response.
And then, astoundingly, the Metamorphs began a juggling act of their own, an eerie dreamlike counterfeit of what the troupe had been doing.
By twos and threes they came forward from the darkness, taking up positions in the center of the ring only a few yards from the jugglers. As they did so they swiftly shifted forms, so that six of them now wore the look of bulky shaggy Skandars, and one was small and lithe and much like Carabella, and one had Sleet’s compact form, and one, yellow-haired and tall, wore the image of Valentine. There was nothing playful about this donning of the jugglers’ bodies: to Valentine it seemed ominous, mocking, distinctly threatening, and when he looked to the side at the non-performing members of the troupe he saw Autifon Deliamber making worried gestures with his tentacles, Vinorkis scowling, and Lisamon Hultin rocking evenly back and forth on the bal
ls of her feet as if readying herself for combat.
Zalzan Kavol looked disconcerted also by this development.
"Continue," he said in a ragged tone. "We are here to perform for them."
"I think," said Valentine, "we are here to amuse them, but not necessarily as performers."
"Nevertheless, we are performers, and we will perform."
He gave a signal and launched, with his brothers, into a dazzling interchange of multitudinous sharp and dangerous objects. Sleet, after a moment’s hesitation, scooped up a handful of clubs and began to throw them in cascades, as did Carabella. Valentine’s hands were chilled; he felt no willingness in them to juggle.
The nine Metamorphs alongside them were beginning to juggle now too.
It was only counterfeit juggling, dream-juggling, with no true art or skill to it. It was mockery and nothing more. They held in their hands rough-skinned black fruits, and bits of wood, and other ordinary things, and threw them from hand to hand in a child’s parody of juggling, now and again failing to make even those simple catches and bending quickly to retrieve what they had dropped. Their performance aroused the audience as nothing that the true jugglers had done had managed to do. The Metamorphs now were humming — was this their form of applause? — and rocking rhythmically, and clapping hands to knees, and, Valentine saw, some of them were transforming themselves almost at random, taking on odd alternate forms, human or Hjort or Su-Suheris as the whim struck, or modeling themselves after the Skandars or Carabella or Deliamber. At one point he saw six or seven Valentines in the rows nearest him.
Performing was all but impossible in such a circus of distractions, but the jugglers clung grimly to their routines for some minutes more, doing poorly now, dropping clubs, missing beats, breaking up long-familiar combinations. The humming of the Metamorphs grew in intensity.
"Oh, look, look!" Carabella cried suddenly.
She gestured toward the nine mock jugglers, and pointed at the one who represented Valentine.
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