Lord Valentine's Castle

by Robert Silverberg

  One night after much wine the Skandars even broke 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

  All 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 lustiness 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 a 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 glamor 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 Starday. 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 great 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 docks 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.”

  “And where is Prestimion Pier?” Zalzan Kavol asked.

  “The farthest in this line, beyond Dekkeret and Kinniken, just west of the salvage-yard.”

  A berth close by the salvage-yard seemed appropriate for the Brangalyn, Valentine thought bleakly an hour later, upon having his first view of Captain Gorzval’s vessel. It looked about ready to be broken up for scrap. It was a smaller and older ship than the others he had seen, and at some point in its long history it must have suffered a staved hull, for in its rebuilding it had become malproportioned, with mismatched timbers and an oddly sloping look to starboard. The painted eyes and teeth along the waterline had lost their luster; the figurehead was awry; the tailspikes had been snapped off eight or ten feet from their mountings, perhaps a petulant swipe by an angry dragon; the masts had lost some of their yards also. Crewmen with a sluggish and dispirited look to them were at work, but not in any very effective way, caulking and coiling ropes and mending sail.

  Captain Gorzval himself seemed as weary and worn as his vessel. He was a Skandar not quite as tall as Lisamon Hultin—virtually a dwarf among his race—with a cast in one eye and a stump where his outer left arm should be. His fur was matted and coarse; his shoulders were slumped; his entire look was one of fatigue and defeat. But he brightened immediately at Zalzan Kavol’s query about taking passengers to the Rodamaunt Archipelago.

  “How many?”

  “Twelve. Four Skandars, a Hjort, a Vroon, five humans, and one—other.”

  “All pilgrims, you say?”

  “All pilgrims.”

  Gorzval made the sign of the Lady in a perfunctory way and said, “You know it’s irregular for passengers to travel on a dragon-ship. But I owe the Lady recompense for past favors received. I’m willing to make an exception. Cash in advance?”

  “Of course,” said Zalzan Kavol.

  Valentine quickly released his breath. This was a miserable dilapidated ship, and Gorzval probably a third-rate navigator dogged by bad fortune or even downright incompetence; nevertheless, he was willing to take them, and no one else would even entertain the idea.

  Gorzval named his price and waited, with obvious tension, to be haggled with. What he asked was less than half what they had unsuccessfully offered the other captains. Zalzan Kavol, bargaining out of habit and pride, no doubt, attempted to cut three royals from that. Gorzval, plainly dismayed, offered a reduction of a royal and a half; Zalzan Kavol appeared ready to shave another few crowns, but Valentine, pitying the hapless captain, cut in quickly to say, “Done. When do we sail?”

  “In three days,” Gorzval said.

  It turned out to be four, actually—Gorzval spoke vaguely of some need for additional refitting, by which he meant, Valentine discovered, patching of some fairly serious leaks. He had not been able to afford it until his passengers had hired on. According to the gossip in the dockside taverns, Lisamon Hultin reported, Gorzval had been trying to mortgage part of his catch to raise the money for carpenters, but found no takers. He had, she said, a doubtful reputation: his judgment was inferior, his luck poor, his crew ill-paid and shiftless. Once he had missed the sea-dragon swarm entirely and returned empty to Piliplok; on another voyage he had lost his arm to a lively little dragon not quite as dead as he thought; and on this last one the Brangalyn had been struck amidships by an irritated beast and nearly sent to the bottom. “We might do better,” Lisamon Hultin suggested, “by trying to swim to the Isle.”

  “Possibly we’ll bring our captain better luck than he’s had,” said Valentine.

  Sleet laughed. “If optimism alone could carry one to the throne, my lord, you’d be on Castle Mount by Winterday.”

  Valentine laughed with him. But after the disaster in Piurifayne he hoped he was not leading these folk into new catastrophe aboard this ill-favored vessel. They were following him, after all, on faith alone, on the evidence of dreams and wizardry and an enigmatic Metamorph prank: it would be shame and pain for him if, in his haste to reach the Isle, he caused them more grief. Yet Valentine felt powerful sympathy for the bedraggled stump-armed Gorzval. An unlucky mariner he might be—but a fitting helmsman, perhaps, for a Coronal so frowned upon by fortune that he had managed to lose throne and memory and identity all in a single night!

  On the eve of the Brangalyn’s departure Vinorkis drew Valentine aside and said in a troubled tone, “My lord, we are being watched.”

  “How do you know?”

  The Hjort smiled and preened his orange mustachios. “When one has done a little spying, one recognizes the traits in others. I’ve noticed a grayish Skandar lounging around the docks these past few days, asking questions of Gorzval’s people. One of the ship’s carpenters told me he was curious about the passengers Gorzval had taken on, and about our destination.”

  Valentine scowled. “I hoped we had shaken them off our track in the jungles!”

  “They must have discovered us again in Ni-moya, my lord.”

  “Then we must lose them again in the Archipelago,” said Valentine. “And be wary until then of other spies along our way. I thank you, Vinorkis.”

  “No thanks are needed, my lord. It is my duty.”

  A strong wind blew from the south in the morning when the ship set forth. Vinorkis kept close look for the inquisitive Skandar at the pier during the embarkation, but he was nowhere in view; his work was done, Valentine supposed, and some other informant farther on would continue the surveillance on the usurper’s behalf.

  The route lay to the east and south; these d
ragon-ships were accustomed to tack against that constant hostile wind all the way to the hunting-grounds. It was a wearying business, but there was no avoiding it, for the sea-dragons were within the reach of hunters only at this season. The Brangalyn had supplementary engine power, but not any great deal of it, fuels of all kinds being so scarce on Majipoor. With a certain majestic clumsiness the Brangalyn picked up the side wind and moved out of Piliplok harbor into the open sea.

  This was the smaller sea of Majipoor, the Inner Sea, which separated eastern Zimroel from western Alhanroel. It was no trifle—some five thousand miles from shore to shore—yet it was a mere puddle compared with the Great Sea that occupied most of the other hemisphere, an ocean beyond the possibility of navigation, untold thousands of miles of open water. The Inner Sea was more human in scale, and was broken midway between the continents by the Isle of Sleep—itself big enough so that on another world, of less extraordinary size, it would be considered a continent—and by several major island chains.

  The sea-dragons spent their lives in unending migration between the two oceans. Round and round the globe they went, taking years or even decades, so far as anyone knew, to make the circumnavigation. Perhaps a dozen great herds of them inhabited the ocean, traveling constantly from west to east. Every summer one of those herds would complete its journey across the Great Sea, passing south of Narabal and up the southern coast of Zimroel toward Piliplok. It was forbidden to hunt them then, for the herd abounded at that time with pregnant cows. By autumn the young were born, the herd now having reached the windswept water between Piliplok and the Isle of Sleep, and the annual hunt began. Out from Piliplok came the dragon-ships in great numbers. The herds were thinned of both young and old, and the survivors made their way back into the tropics, passing south of the Isle of Sleep, rounding the hump of Alhanroel’s lengthy Stoienzar Peninsula, and heading on eastward below Alhanroel to the Great Sea, where they would swim unmolested until their time brought them round to Piliplok again.