Lord Valentine's Castle

by Robert Silverberg

  Lord Malibor stood on the deck

  And fought both hard and well.

  Thick was the blood that flowed that day

  And great the blows that fell.

  “How far do you think it is to the outside?” he asked.

  “Half a mile or so.”

  “Really?”

  She laughed. “I suppose ten or fifteen feet. Here, clear the opening behind me. This meat’s piling up faster than I can sweep it away.”

  Feeling like a butcher, and not enjoying the sensation much, Valentine seized the chunks of severed flesh and hauled them back out of the cavity, tossing them as far as he could. He shivered in horror as he saw the fleshy whips of the stomach floor seize the meat and sweep it blithely on toward the digestive pond. Any protein was welcome here, so it seemed.

  Deeper, deeper they traveled into the dragon’s abdominal wall. Valentine tried to calculate the probable width of it, taking the length of the creature at no less than three hundred feet; but the arithmetic became a muddle. They were working in close quarters and in a foul, hot atmosphere. The blood, the raw meat, the sweat, the narrowness of the cavity—it was hard to imagine a more repellent place.

  Valentine looked back. “The hole’s closing behind us!”

  “Beast that lives forever must have tricks of healing,” the giantess muttered. She thrust and gouged and hacked. Uneasily Valentine watched new flesh sprouting as if by magic, the wound healing with phenomenal speed. What if they became encapsulated in this opening? Smothered by joining flesh? Lisamon Hultin pretended to be unworried, but he saw her working harder, faster, grunting and moaning, standing with colossal legs planted far apart and shoulders braced. The gash was sealed to their rear, pink new meat covering the hole, and now it was closing at the sides. Lisamon Hultin slashed and cut with furious intensity, and Valentine continued his humbler task of clearing the debris, but she was plainly wearying now, her giant strength visibly diminished, and the hole seemed to be closing almost as fast as she could cut.

  “Don’t know if I—can keep—it up—” she muttered.

  “Give me the sword, then!”

  She laughed. “Watch out! You can’t do it!” In wild rage she returned to the struggle, bellowing curses at the dragon’s flesh as it sprouted around her. It was impossible now to tell where they were; they were burrowing through a realm without landmarks. Her grunts grew sharper and shorter.

  “Maybe we should try to go back to the stomach area,” he suggested. “Before we’re trapped so—”

  “No!” she roared. “I think we’re getting there! Not so meaty here—tougher, more like muscle—maybe the sheath just under the hide—”

  Suddenly seawater poured in on them.

  “We’re through!” Lisamon Hultin cried. She turned, seizing Valentine as though he were a doll, and pushed him forward, headfirst into the opening in the monster’s flank. Her arms were locked in a fierce grip around his hips. She gave one tremendous thrust and he barely had time to fill his lungs with air before he was projected out through the slippery walls into the cool green embrace of the ocean. Lisamon Hultin emerged just after him, still gripping him tightly, now by his ankle and then by his wrist, and they rocketed upward, upward, rising like corks.

  For what seemed like hours they flew toward the surface. Valentine’s forehead ached. His ribs soon would burst. His chest was on fire. We are climbing from the very bottom of the sea, he thought bleakly, and we will drown before we reach the air, or our blood will boil the way it does in divers who go too deep in search of the eyestones off Til-omon, or we will be squeezed flat by the pressure, or—

  He erupted into clear sweet air, popping nearly the full length of his body out of the water and falling back with a splash. Limply he floated, a straw on the waters, weak, trembling, struggling for breath. Lisamon Hultin floated alongside. The warm beautiful sun blazed wonderfully, straight overhead.

  He was alive, and he was unharmed, and he was free of the dragon.

  And he bobbed somewhere on the breast of the Inner Sea, a hundred miles from anywhere.

  5

  When the first moments of exhaustion had passed, he raised his head and peered about. The dragon was still visible, hump and ridge above the surface, only a few hundred yards away. But it seemed placid and appeared to be swimming slowly in the opposite direction. Of the Brangalyn there was no trace—only scattered timbers over a broad span of ocean. Nor were other survivors in view.

  They swam to the nearest timber, a good-sized strip of the hull, and flung themselves across it. For a long while neither of them spoke. At length Valentine said, “And now do we swim to the Archipelago? Or should we simply go straight on to the Isle of Sleep?”

  “Swimming is hard work, my lord. We could ride on the dragon’s back.”

  “But how guide him?”

  “Tug on the wings,” she suggested.

  “I have my doubts of that.”

  They were silent again.

  Valentine said, “At least in the belly of the dragon we had a fresh catch of fish delivered every few minutes.”

  “And the inn was large,” Lisamon Hultin added. “But poorly ventilated. I think I prefer it here.”

  “But how long can we drift like this?”

  She looked at him strangely. “Do you doubt that we’ll be rescued, my lord?”

  “It seems reasonably in doubt, yes.”

  “It was prophesied to me in a dream from the Lady,” said the giantess, “that my death would come in a dry place when I was very old. I am still young and this place is the least dry on all of Majipoor, except perhaps the middle of the Great Sea. Therefore there is nothing to fear. I will not perish here, and neither will you.”

  “A comforting revelation,” Valentine said. “But what will we do?”

  “Can you accomplish sendings, my lord?”

  “I was Coronal, not King of Dreams.”

  “But any mind can reach any other, with true intent! Do you think only the King and Lady have such skills? The little wizard Deliamber talked into minds at night, I know that, and Gorzval said he spoke with dragons in his sleep, and you—”

  “I am barely myself, Lisamon. Such of my mind as is left to me will send no sendings.”

  “Try. Reach out across the waters. To the Lady your mother, my lord, or to her people on the Isle, or to the folk of the Archipelago. You have the power. I am only a stupid swinger of swords, but you, lord, have a mind that was deemed worthy of the Castle, and now, in the hour of our need—” The giantess seemed transfigured with passion. “Do it, Lord Valentine! Call for help, and help will come!”

  Valentine was skeptical. He knew little of the network of dream-communication that seemed to bind this planet together; it did appear that mind often called to mind, and of course there were the Powers of the Isle and of Suvrael supposedly sending directed messages forth by some means of mechanical amplification, but yet, drifting here on a slab of wood in the ocean, body and clothes filthied with the flesh and blood of the giant beast that lately had swallowed him, spirit so drained by unending adversity that even his legendary sunny faith in luck and miracles was put to rout—how could he hope to summon aid across such a gulf?

  He closed his eyes. He sought to concentrate the energies of his mind in a single point deep within his skull. He imagined a glowing spark of light there, a hidden radiance that he could tap and beam forth. But it was useless. He found himself wondering what toothy creature might soon be nibbling at his dangling feet. He distracted himself with fears that any messages he might send would reach only as far as the hazy mind of the dragon nearby, that had destroyed the Brangalyn and almost all its people, and now might wish to turn back and finish the job. Still, he tried. For all his doubts, he owed it to Lisamon Hultin to make the attempt. He held himself still, barely breathing, seeking intently to do whatever it might be that could transmit such a message.

  On and off during the afternoon and early evening he attempted it. Darkness came on quick
ly, and the water grew strangely luminescent, flickering with a ghostly greenish light. They did not dare sleep at the same time, for fear they might slip from the timber and be lost; so they took turns, and when it was Valentine’s turn he fought hard for wakefulness, thinking more than once that he was losing consciousness. Creatures swam near them in the night, making tracks of cold fire through the luminous wavelets.

  From time to time Valentine tried the sending-forth of messages again. But he saw no avail in it.

  We are lost, he thought.

  Toward morning he gave himself up to sleep, and had perplexing dreams of dancing eels atop the water. Vaguely, while sleeping, he strived to reach far-off minds with his mind, and then he slipped into a slumber too deep for that.

  And woke to the touch of Lisamon Hultin’s hand on his shoulder.

  “My lord?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her in bewilderment.

  “My lord, you may stop making sendings now. We are saved!”

  “What?”

  “A boat, my lord! See? From the east?”

  Wearily he raised his head and followed her gesture. A boat, yes, a small one, coming toward them. Oars flashing in the sunlight. Hallucination, he thought. Delusion. Mirage.

  But the boat grew larger against the horizon, and then it was there, and hands were groping for him, hauling him up, and he was sprawled feebly against someone and someone else was putting a flask to his lips, a cool drink, wine, water, he had no way of telling, and they were peeling off his soggy befouled garments and wrapping him in something clean and dry. Strangers, two men and a woman, with great manes of tawny hair and clothing of an unfamiliar sort. He heard Lisamon Hultin talking with them, but the words were blurred and indistinct, and he made no attempt to discern their meaning. Had he conjured up these rescuers with his mental broadcast, then? Angels, were they? Spirits? Valentine settled back, hardly caring, totally spent. He thought hazily of drawing Lisamon Hultin aside and telling her to make no mention of his true identity, but he lacked even the energy for that, and hoped she would have sense enough not to compound absurdity with absurdity by saying any such thing. “He is Coronal of Majipoor in disguise, yes, and the dragon swallowed us both but we were able to cut ourselves free, and—” Yes. Certainly that would have the ring of unanswerable truth to these people. Valentine smiled faintly and drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  When he woke he was in a pleasant sunlit room, facing out on a broad golden beach, and Carabella was looking down at him with an expression of grave concern.

  “My lord?” she said softly. “Do you hear me?”

  “Is this a dream?”

  “This is the island of Mardigile in the Archipelago,” she told him. “You were picked up yesterday, drifting in the ocean, along with the giantess. These islanders are fisherfolk, who have been scouting the sea for survivors since the ship went down.”

  “Who else lives?” Valentine asked quickly.

  “Deliamber and Zalzan Kavol are here with me. The Mardigile folk say that Khun, Shanamir, Vinorkis, and some Skandars—I don’t know if they’re ours—were picked up by boats from a neighboring island. Some of the dragon-hunters escaped in their own boats and have reached the islands too.”

  “And Sleet? What of Sleet?”

  Carabella showed, for a flashing moment, a look of fear. “I have no news of Sleet,” she said. “But the rescue is continuing. He may be safe on one of these islands. There are dozens hereabouts. The Divine has preserved us so far: we will not be cast aside now.” She laughed lightly. “Lisamon Hultin has told a wonderful story of how you both were swallowed by the great dragon, and hacked your way out with the vibration-sword. The islanders love it. They think it’s the most splendid fable since the tale of Lord Stiamot and the—”

  “It happened,” Valentine said.

  “My lord?”

  “The dragon. Swallowing us. She tells the truth.”

  Carabella giggled. “When I first learned in dreams of your real self, I believed that. But when you tell me—”

  “Within the dragon,” Valentine said earnestly, “there were great pillars holding up the vault of the stomach, and an opening at one end through which seawater came rushing every few minutes, and with it came fish that were pushed by little whips toward a greenish pond where they were digested, and where the giantess and I would have been digested too, if we were less lucky. Did she tell you that? And do you think we spent our time out there inventing a fable to amuse you all?”

  Eyes wide, Carabella said, “She told the same story, yes. But we thought—”

  “It’s true, Carabella.”

  “Then it is a miracle of the Divine, and you will be famous in all time to come!”

  “I’m already going to be famous,” said Valentine acidly, “as the Coronal who lost his throne, and took up juggling for lack of a royal occupation. That will win me a place in the ballads alongside the Pontifex Arioc, who made himself Lady of the Isle. The dragon, now, that only embellishes the legend I’m creating around myself.” His expression changed suddenly. “You’ve told none of these people who I am, I hope?”

  “Not a word, my lord.”

  “Good. Keep it that way. They have enough difficult things to believe about us, as it is.”

  An islander, slim and tanned and with the great sweep of fair hair that seemed the universal style here, brought Valentine a tray of food: some clear soup, a tender piece of baked fish, triangular wedges of a fruit with dark indigo flesh dotted with tiny scarlet seeds. Valentine found himself ravenously hungry.

  Afterward he strolled with Carabella on the beach outside his cottage. “Once again I thought you were lost to me forever,” he said softly. “I thought I would never hear your voice again.”

  “Do I matter that much to you, my lord?”

  “More than I could ever tell you.”

  She smiled sadly. “Such pretty words, eh, Valentine? For so I call you, Valentine, but you are Lord Valentine, and how many fancy women do you have, Lord Valentine, waiting for you on Castle Mount?”

  He had now and then been thinking the same thing himself. Had he a lover there? Many of them? An intended bride, even? So much of his past was still shrouded. And if he reached the Castle, and if a woman who had waited for him came forth to him—

  “No,” he said. “You are mine, Carabella, and I am yours, and whatever may have been in the past—if ever anything was—lies in the past now. I have a different face these days. I have a different soul.”

  She looked skeptical, but did not challenge what he had said, and he lightly kissed her frown away.

  “Sing to me,” he said. “The song you sang under the bush in Pidruid, the festival-night. Not all the wealth of Castle Mount, it went, Is worth my love to me. Eh?”

  “I know another much like it,” she said, and took up the pocket-harp from her hip:

  My love has donned a pilgrim’s robe

  Afar across the sea

  My love has gone to the Isle of Sleep

  Across the dreaming sea.

  Sweet my love, and fair as dawn

  Afar across the sea

  Lost my love to an island tall

  Across the dreaming sea.

  Lady kind of the distant Isle

  Afar across the sea

  Fill my dreams with my lover’s smile

  Across the dreaming sea.

  “A different sort of song, that one,” Valentine said. “A sadder one. Sing me that other, love.”

  “Another time.”

  “Please. This is a time of joy, of reuniting, Carabella. Please.”

  She smiled and sighed and took up the harp again.

  My love is fair as is the spring,

  As gentle as the night,

  My love is sweet as stolen fruit—

  Yes, he thought. Yes, that one was better. He let his hand rest tenderly on the nape of her neck, and stroked it as they walked along the beach. It was astonishingly beautiful here, warm and peaceful. Birds
of fifty hues perched in the tortuous-limbed little trees of the shore, and a crystalline sea, surfless, transparent, lapped at the fine sand. The air was soft and mild, fragrant with the perfumes of unknown blossoms. From far away came the sound of laughter and of a gay, bright, tinkling music. How tempting it was, Valentine thought, to abandon all fantasies of Castle Mount and settle forever on Mardigile, and go out at dawn on a fishing-boat for the catch, and spend the rest of each day frolicking in the hot sunshine.

  But there would be no such abdications for him. In the afternoon Zalzan Kavol and Autifon Deliamber, both healthy and well rested after their ordeals at sea, came to call on him, and soon they were talking of ways and means to continue the journey.

  Zalzan Kavol, parsimonious as always, had had the money-pouch on him when the Brangalyn went down, and so at least half their treasury had survived, even if Shanamir had lost the rest. The Skandar laid out the glittering coins. “With this,” he said, “we can hire these fisherfolk to convey us to the Isle. I have spoken with our hosts. This Archipelago is nine hundred miles in length, and numbers three thousand islands, more than eight hundred of them inhabited. No one here wishes to journey all the way to the Isle, but for a few royals we can hire a large trimaran that will carry us to Rodamaunt Graun, near the midpoint of the chain, and there we can probably find transport the rest of the way.”

  “When can we leave?” Valentine asked.

  “As soon,” said Deliamber, “as we are reunited once more. I am told that several of our people are on their way across from the nearby isle of Burbont at this moment.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Khun, Vinorkis, and Shanamir,” Zalzan Kavol answered, “and my brothers Erfon and Rovorn. With them is Captain Gorzval. Gibor Haern is lost at sea—I saw him perish, struck by a timber and sent under—and of Sleet there is no news.”

  Valentine touched the Skandar’s shaggy forearm. “I grieve for your latest loss.”

  Zalzan Kavol’s feelings seemed well under control. “Let us rather rejoice that some of us still live, my lord,” he said quietly.

  In early afternoon a boat from Burbont brought the other survivors. There were embraces all round; and then Valentine turned to Gorzval, who stood apart, looking numb and bewildered, rubbing at the stump of his severed arm. The dragon-captain seemed in shock. Valentine would have put his arms around the hapless man, but the instant he approached, Gorzval sank to his knees in the sand and touched his forehead to the ground and stayed there, trembling, arms outspread in the starburst gesture. “My lord—” he whispered harshly. “My lord—”