They resumed the journey, and presently they passed into the great confluence of the Steiche and the Zimr, a water so wide that it was impossible for Valentine to conceive it as the mere meeting-place of two rivers. At the town of Nissimorn on the southwestern shore they parted from the Liimen and boarded the ferry that would take them on across to Ni-moya, largest of the cities of the continent of Zimroel.
Thirty million citizens dwelled here. At Ni-moya the River Zimr made a great bend, changing its course sharply from easterly to southeasterly. There a prodigious megalopolis had taken form. It spread for hundreds of miles along both banks of the river and up several tributaries that flowed in from the north. Valentine and his companions saw first the southern suburbs, residential districts that gave way, in the extreme south, to the agricultural territory stretching down into the Steiche Valley. The main urban zone lay on the north bank, and could only dimly be seen at first, tier upon tier of flat-topped white towers descending toward the river. Ferries by the dozens plied the water here, linking the myriad riverside towns. The crossing took several hours, and twilight was beginning before Ni-moya proper was clearly in view.
The city looked magical. Its lights, just coming on, sparkled invitingly against the backdrop of heavily forested green hills and impeccable white buildings. Giant fingers of piers thrust into the river, and an astounding bustle of vessels great and small lined the waterfront. Pidruid, which had seemed so mighty to Valentine in his early days of wandering, was a minor city indeed compared with this.
Only the Skandars, Khun, and Deliamber had seen Ni-moya before. Deliamber spoke of the city’s marvels: its Gossamer Galleria, a mercantile arcade a mile long, raised above the ground on nearly invisible cables; its Park of Fabulous Beasts, where the rarest of Majipoor’s fauna, those creatures brought closest to extinction by the spread of civilization, roved in surroundings approximating their natural habitats; its Crystal Boulevard, a glittering street of revolving reflectors that awed the eye; its Grand Bazaar, fifteen square miles of mazelike passageways housing uncountable thousands of tiny shops under continuous roofs of dazzling yellow sparklecloth; its Museum of Worlds, its Chamber of Sorcery, its Ducal Palace, built on a heroic scale said to be surpassed only by Lord Valentine’s Castle, and many other things that sounded, to Valentine, more like the stuff of myth and fantasy than anything one might encounter in a real city.
But they would see none of these things. The thousand-instrument municipal orchestra, the floating restaurants, the artificial birds with jeweled eyes, and all the rest would have to wait until, if ever the day came, he returned to Ni-moya in a Coronal’s robes.
As the ferry neared the slip Valentine called everyone together and said, "Now we must determine our individual courses. I mean to take passage here for Piliplok, and make my way from there to the Isle. I’ve prized your companionship this far, and I would have it even longer, but I can offer you nothing except endless journeying and the possibility of an early death. My hope of success is slight and the obstacles are formidable. Will any of you continue with me?"
"To the other side of the world!" Shanamir cried.
"And I," said Sleet, and Vinorkis the same.
"Would you have doubted me?" Carabella asked.
Valentine smiled. He looked to Deliamber, who said, "The sanctity of the realm is at stake. How could I not follow the rightful Coronal wherever he asks?"
"This mystifies me," Lisamon Hultin said. "I understand none of this business of a Coronal roaming out of his proper body. But I have no other employment, Valentine. I am with you."
"I thank you all," Valentine said. "I will thank you again, and more grandly, in the feasting-hall on Castle Mount."
Zalzan Kavol said, "And have you no use for Skandars, my lord?"
Valentine had not expected that. "Will you come?"
"Our wagon is lost. Our brotherhood is broken by death. We are without our juggling gear. I feel no calling to be a pilgrim, but I will follow you to the Isle and beyond, and so also will my brothers, if you want us."
"I want you, Zalzan Kavol. Is there such a post as juggler to the royal court? You will have it, I promise!"
"Thank you, my lord," said the Skandar gravely.
"There is one more volunteer," said Khun.
"You too?" Valentine said in surprise.
The dour alien replied, "It matters little to me who is king of this planet where I am stranded. But it matters much to me to behave honorably. I would be dead now in Piurifayne but for you. I owe you my life and I will give you such aid as I can."
Valentine shook his head. "We did for you only what any civilized being would do for any other. No debt exists."
"I see it otherwise. Besides," said Khun, "my life until now has been trivial and shallow. I left my native Kianimot for no good reason to come here, and I lived foolishly here and nearly paid with my life, and why go on as I have been doing? I will join your cause and make it mine, and perhaps I will come to believe in it, or feel that I do, and if I die to make you king, it will only even the debt between us. With a death well accomplished I can repay the universe for a life poorly spent. Can you use me?"
"With all my heart I welcome you," Valentine said.
The ferry released a grand blast of its horn and glided smoothly into its slip.
They stayed the night at the cheapest waterfront hotel they could find, a clean but stark place of whitewashed stone walls and communal tubs, and treated themselves to a modestly lavish dinner at an inn nearby. Valentine called for a pooling of funds and appointed Shanamir and Zalzan Kavol joint treasurers, since they seemed to have the finest appreciation of the value and uses of money. Valentine himself had much remaining of the funds he had had in Pidruid, and Zalzan Kavol produced from a hidden pouch a surprising stack of ten-royal pieces. Together they had enough to get them all to the Isle of Sleep.
In the morning they bought passage aboard a riverboat similar to the one that had carried them from Khyntor to Verf, and began their voyage to Piliplok, the great port at the mouth of the Zimr.
For all they had traveled across the face of Zimroel, some thousands of miles still separated them from the east coast. But on the broad breast of the Zimr vessels moved swiftly and serenely. Of course, the riverboat stopped again and again at the innumerable towns and cities of the river, Larnimisculus and Belka and Clarischanz, Flegit, Hiskuret, Centriun, Obliorn Vale, Salvamot, Gourkaine, Semirod and Cerinor and Haunfort Major, Impemond, Orgeliuse, Dambemuir, and many more, an unending flow of nearly indistinguishable places, each with its piers, its waterfront promenades, its planting of palms and alabandinas, its gaily painted warehouses and sprawling bazaars, its ticket-clutching passengers eager to come on board and impatient for departure once they had ascended the ramp. Sleet whittled juggling clubs out of some scraps of wood he begged from the crew, and Carabella found balls somewhere to juggle, and at meals the Skandars quietly palmed dishware and slipped it out of sight, so that the troupe gradually accumulated implements to work with, and from the third day on they earned some extra crowns by performing on the plaza-deck. Zalzan Kavol gradually regained some of his old gruff self-assurance now that he was performing again, although he still was oddly subdued, his soul moving on tiptoe through situations that once would have called forth angry storms.
This was the native territory of the four Skandars, who had been born in Piliplok and began their careers on circuit through the inland towns of the huge province, ranging as far upriver as Stenwamp and Port Saikforge, a thousand miles from the coast. This familiar countryside brightened them, these rolling tawny hills and bustling little cities of wooden buildings, and Zalzan Kavol spoke lengthily of his early career here, his successes and failures — very few of those — and of a dispute with an impresario that led him to seek fortune at the other end of Zimroel. Valentine suspected that there was some violence involved, perhaps some embroilment with the law, but he asked no questions.
One night after much wine the Skandars even bro
ke into song, for the first time in Valentine’s time with them — a Skandar song, mournful and lugubrious, sung in a minor key as the singers shuffled about and about in a slump-shouldered circling march:
Dark my heart
Dark my fears
Dim my eyes
And full of tears.
Death and woe,
Death and woe,
Follow us
Where’er we go.
Far the lands
I used to roam.
Far the hills
And streams of home.
Death and woe,
Death and woe,
Follow us
Where’er we go.
Seas of dragons,
Lands of pain,
I shall not see
My home again.
Death and woe,
Death and woe,
Follow us
Where’er we go.
The song was so unrelievedly gloomy, and the enormous Skandars looked so absurd as they lurched about chanting it, that it was all that Valentine and Carabella could do to hold back laughter at first. But by the second chorus Valentine actually found himself moved by it, for there seemed real emotion in the song: the Skandars had met death and woe, and though they were close to home now, they had spent much of their lives far from Piliplok; and perhaps, Valentine thought, it was a harsh and painful thing to be a Skandar on Majipoor, a shaggy-pelted creature moving ponderously in the warm air among smaller and sleeker beings.
The summer now was over, and in eastern Zimroel it was the dry season, when warm winds blew from the south, vegetation went dormant until the spring rains, and, so said Zalzan Kavol, tempers became short and crimes of passion common. Valentine found this region less interesting than the jungles of the mid-continent or the subtropic floribundance of the far west, though he decided after a few days of close observation that it did have a certain austere beauty of its own, restrained and severe, quite unlike the riotous lushness of the west. All the same, he was pleased and relieved when, after day upon day on this changeless and seemingly unending river, Zalzan Kavol announced that the outskirts of Piliplok were in view.
—3—
PILIPLOK WAS ABOUT AS OLD and about as large as its counterpart port on the farther shore of the continent, Pidruid; but the resemblance went no deeper. For Pidruid had been built without a plan, a random tangle of streets and avenues and boulevards winding around one another according to whim, whereas Piliplok had been laid out, untold thousands of years ago, with rigid, almost maniacal, precision.
It occupied a promontory of great magnitude on the southern shore of the mouth of the Zimr. The river here was of inconceivable width, sixty or seventy miles across at the point where it flowed into the Inner Sea, and carrying the burden of silt and debris accumulated in all its swift seven-thousand-mile flow out of the far northwest, it stained the blue-green waters of the ocean with a dark tinge that, it was said, could be seen hundreds of miles out. The north headland at the river-mouth was a chalk cliff a mile high and many miles wide, which even from Piliplok was visible on a clear day, a shining white wall dazzling in the morning light. There was nothing over there that could in any way be used as a harbor, and so it had never been settled, but was set aside as a holy preserve. Devotees of the Lady lived there in a withdrawal from the world so total that no one had intruded on them in a hundred years. But Piliplok was another matter: eleven million people occupying a city that radiated in stern spokes from its magnificent natural harbor, A series of curving bands crossed the axis of these spokes, the inner ones mercantile, then zones of industry and recreation, and in the outer reaches the residential neighborhoods, fairly sharply delimited by levels of wealth and to a lesser degree by race. There was a heavy concentration of Skandars in Piliplok — it seemed to Valentine that every third person on the waterfront belonged to Zalzan Kavol’s people — and it was a little intimidating to see so many giant hairy four-armers swaggering about. Here, too, lived many of the aloof and aristocratic two-headed Su-Suheris folk, dealers in luxury commodities, fine fabrics and jewelry and the rarest handicrafts of every province. The air here was crisp and dry, and, feeling the unyielding southerly wind hot against his cheeks, Valentine began to understand what Zalzan Kavol had meant about the short tempers kindled by that wind.
"Does it ever stop blowing?" he asked.
"On the first day of spring," said Zalzan Kavol.
Valentine hoped to be elsewhere by then. But a problem immediately appeared. With Zalzan Kavol and Deliamber he went to Shkunibor Pier at the eastern end of Piliplok harbor to arrange transport to the Isle. For months now Valentine had imagined himself in this city and at that pier, and it had taken on an almost legendary glamour in his mind, a place of vast perspectives and sweeping architecture; and so it disappointed him more than a little to get there and find that the chief place of embarkation for the pilgrim-ships was a ramshackle, dilapidated structure, peeling green paint on its sides, tattered banners flapping in the wind.
Worse was in store. The pier seemed deserted. After some prowling Zalzan Kavol found a departure schedule posted in a dark corner of the ticket house. Pilgrim-ships sailed for the Isle the first of every month — except in autumn, when sailings were spaced more widely because of prevailing unfavorable winds. The last ship of the season had departed a week ago Saturday. The next left in three months.
"Three months!" Valentine cried. "What will we do in Piliplok for three months? Juggle in the streets? Beg? Steal? Read the schedule again, Zalzan Kavol!"
"It will say the same," the Skandar declared. He grimaced. "I am fond of Piliplok beyond any place, but I have no love for it at wind-time. What foul luck!"
"Do no ships at all sail in this season?" Valentine asked.
"Only the dragon-ships," said Zalzan Kavol.
"And what are they?"
"Fishing vessels, that prey on the sea-dragons, which come together in herds to mate at this time of year, and are easily taken. Plenty of dragon-ships set forth now. But what use are they to us?"
"How far out to sea do they go?" Valentine asked.
"As far as they must to make their catch. Sometimes as far as the Rodamaunt Archipelago, if the dragons are swarming easterly."
"Where is that?"
Deliamber said, "It is a long chain of islands far out in the Inner Sea, perhaps midway from here to the Isle of Sleep."
"Inhabited?"
"Quite heavily."
"Good. Surely there’s commerce between islands, then. What if we hire one of these dragon-ships to take us on as passengers, and carry us as far as the Archipelago, and there we commission some local captain to transport us to the Isle?"
"Possibly," Deliamber said.
"There’s no rule requiring all pilgrims to arrive by pilgrim-ship?"
"None that I know of," said the Vroon.
"The dragon-ships will not care to bother with passengers," Zalzan Kavol objected. "They never carry any such trade."
"Would a few royals arouse their interest in doing so?"
The Skandar looked doubtful. "I have no idea. Their trade’s a lucrative one as it is. They might consider passengers a nuisance, or even bad luck. Nor would they necessarily agree to haul us out to the Archipelago, if it happens to lie beyond this year’s hunting track. Nor can we be sure, even if we do reach the Archipelago, that anyone there would be willing to carry us farther."
"On the other hand," Valentine said, "it might all be quite easy to arrange. We have money, and I’d rather use it persuading sea-captains to give us passage than spend it on lodgings and food for the next three months in Piliplok. Where can we find the dragon-hunters?"
An entire section of the waterfront spanning three or four miles was set apart for their use, pier after pier after pier, and there were dozens of the huge wooden vessels in harbor, being outfitted for the new hunting season just beginning. The dragon-ships were of one design, and an ominous and morbid one it was, Valentine thought, for they were g
reat bloated things with flaring outbellying hulls and enormous fanciful three-pronged masts, and terrifying toothy figureheads at their prows and long spiky tails at their sterns. Most were decorated along their flanks with bold scarlet-and-yellow eye-patterns or rapacious-looking rows of white teeth; and high abovedecks were bristling cupolas for the harpooners and mammoth winches for the nets, and bloodstained platforms where the butchering took place. To Valentine it was incongruous to make use of such a killer-vessel in reaching the peaceful and holy Isle of Sleep. But he had no other way.
And even this way soon began to seem doubtful. From ship to ship they went, from wharf to wharf, from drydock to drydock, and the dragon-captains listened without interest to their proposal and made swift refusals. Zalzan Kavol did most of the speaking, for the captains were mainly Skandars and might give sympathetic ear to one of their own kind. But no persuasion would sway them.
"You would be a distraction to the crew," said the first captain. "Forever stumbling over gear, getting seasick, making special requests for service—"
"We are not chartered to carry passengers," said the second. "The rules are strict."
"The Archipelago lies south of our preferred waters," the third declared.
"I have long believed," said the fourth, "that a dragon-ship that goes to sea with strangers to the guild on board is a ship that will never return to Piliplok. I choose not to test that superstition this year."
"Pilgrims are no concern of mine," the fifth told them. "Let the Lady waft you to the Isle, if she will. You won’t get there aboard my ship."
The sixth also refused, adding that no captain was likely to aid them. The seventh said the same. The eighth, having heard that a party of drylanders was wandering the decks looking for passage, refused even to speak with them.
The ninth captain, a grizzled old Skandar with gaps in her teeth and faded fur, was more friendly than the others, though just as unwilling to make room for them on her vessel. She did, at least, have a suggestion. "On Prestimion Pier," she said, "you will find Captain Gorzval of the Brangalyn. Gorzval has made several unlucky voyages and is known to be short of funds; I heard him in a tavern just the other night trying to arrange a loan to pay for repairs to his hull. It may be that some extra revenue from passengers would be useful to him now."
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