Could it be? Were those gestures a summons?
Yes, they were. Harpirias glanced inquiringly toward Korinaam, who nodded. “He’s inviting you to dance with him,” the Metamorph said. “It’s a tremendous honor. It means he regards you almost as an equal.”
“Almost an equal. Right.”
“You should dance.”
“No doubt I should. Yes. Yes, of course I’ll dance.”
Harpirias hesitated just a moment, studying the steps with closer care, soaking up the strange clashing rhythms. Then he moved out into the center of the floor.
The women slipped back into the shadows. He was alone with the king, who loomed over him like a titan.
Sweat rolled in streams down Toikella’s bare glistening body. He grinned in high amusement—Harpirias noticed for the first time that there were bright gems, an emerald and a ruby and a third one of a darker hue, set into his front teeth—and struck his hands together three times. It was a signal, apparently, to the musicians, who halted their frenzied wailing and honking and pounding and screeching and set about playing a different tune entirely, one that was slow and sinuous, a dark, quiet, serpentine melody, haunting and strange.
The king, his shoulders hunched high and his hands held facing each other with fingers writhing mysteriously, began now to move with implausible grace in a wide circle around Harpirias, treading lightly, almost floating. It could have been the dance of a hunter stalking his prey.
Harpirias, having no idea of what step he was meant to undertake, remained still for a moment, watching Toikella in the baffled fashion of one who is beginning to slip into a trance. But then he too started to move, almost without conscious volition: flexing his fingers first, then slowly raising and lowering his shoulders, and finally mimicking the king’s fastidious tiptoe delicacy as he set out to follow his own circular path, going in the direction opposite to Toikella’s.
For long moments they stalked each other, winding round and round, the immense fleshy man and the shorter, more compact one, while the music gradually grew and grew in tempo and volume. Soon it began to approach the wild intensity of the women’s dance. Harpirias picked up his pace as the music rose. Toikella, still grinning, moved faster as well. Harpirias laughed. It was impossible now to maintain his earlier delicacy of step. He leaped; he bounded; he stamped his feet and clapped his hands.
“Eyya!” cried the king. “Halga!”
“Eyya!” Harpirias echoed. “Halga!”
“Shifta skepta gartha blin!”
“Shifta skepta!”
“Gartha blin!”
“Shifta skepta gartha blin!”
Harpirias threw his head back, flung his hands high, pulled one knee almost to his chest and then the other. He howled and roared. He stamped and clapped. And he saw now that others were coming out onto the floor, some of the women first, and then the elaborately robed man with the painted face who had spoken with Korinaam at the entrance to the valley, and other men after him, flamboyantly painted also—high warriors of the tribe, perhaps. Even a few of the Skandars joined the dance, finally, although none of the Ghayrogs did, nor did Korinaam venture forth. For what seemed like hours they all circled round the room like a band of moonstruck madmen, until abruptly the music died away in mid-note, as if all the musicians had perished in the same instant, and the only sounds in the room were those of laughter and harsh breathing.
The king, who was standing beside Harpirias as the music ended, turned toward him. There was a look of total delight in the big man’s eyes. He reached out one outsized paw for him and gathered Harpirias in, drawing him into a crushing embrace. For a seemingly endless moment the king held him there. The royal effluvium was overwhelming: a reeking mixture of sweat, animal grease, thickly applied pigments, awful perfumes.
Then Toikella released him, grinned once more, and clapped his forehead in what had the look of a salute. Harpirias, grinning also, returned the gesture. The dance had left him exhilarated. He felt almost like himself again, after all these long gloomy months of exile. To his surprise, he found himself oddly charmed, too, by Toikella, who seemed to be an amiable, high-spirited old tyrant. It appeared that Toikella was taken by him as well.
Yes, Harpirias thought, we will be the best of friends, he and I. We will sit up late together and drink whatever it is that they like to drink in this place, and we will tell each other the stories of our lives. Friends, yes. Bosom companions.
It was time for the feasting, finally.
The king served Harpirias with his own hands: a high honor, evidently, but something of a doubtful one, since diplomatic courtesy now obliged Harpirias to eat everything that Toikella had chosen for him. Left to his own discretion, he might have preferred a less generous assortment, for nearly everything on the serving tables looked and smelled inedible. Most of it was meat, roasts and stews and skewered strips, buried under thick, pungent sauces. There were several soups—Harpirias hoped that those fluids were soups, and nothing more sinister—and mounds of roasted nuts, and vegetable mushes of various kinds, and what might have been gnarled roots, baked until charred. The beverage of choice evidently was some kind of bitter, brackish beer, grayish-black in color, that bubbled unpleasantly of its own accord in the bowl.
Harpirias ate what he could, nibbling here, staunchly cramming there, washing it all down with desperate gulps of the beer. These people seemed to like their meat half-cooked and fatty, and most of it had a gaminess which even an experienced huntsman like Harpirias found hard to tolerate. All the sauces were much too spicy for him, and many of the vegetable dishes had a spoiled or fermented undertaste. But he did his best. He understood what a sacrifice it must be for the Othinor to provide such abundance as this, living as they did in a land that was covered by snow most of the year, where farming was unknown, where every scrap of food must be pried from nature’s unwilling grasp.
The king plied him with second portions, and thirds, and fourths. Harpirias laughed and protested, and confined his eating to nibbles, and let the royal servants clear his unfinished plates away whenever Toikella was looking the other way.
The evening wore on. And on and on.
Three clowns entered the room and carried out a long unfathomable routine of jokes and haphazard juggling that brought tears of mirth to the king’s face. The women danced again, and then a group of the men. Harpirias grew drowsy, but gamely compelled himself to pay attention. He drank more of the bubbling bitter beer: it was almost possible to like it, after a while. Gradually he became aware that the feasters were beginning to slip away, in groups of two and three. The big room had grown very quiet. The king had gathered two armloads of his women to his side and had slumped down with them onto the rugs.
Softly Korinaam said, “Come, prince. The evening is at its end.”
“Shall I bid the king good night?”
“He won’t notice, I suspect.” Indeed, Toikella appeared preoccupied. Soft moist slobbering sounds could be heard. “We should just go,” the Shapeshifter said.
Together they crossed the icy plaza to the guest house at the far end. It was late enough so that darkness had fallen. The air on this midsummer night was clear and crisp, and had what Harpirias regarded as a wintry edge to it. The stars hardly seemed to shimmer: they were discrete points of light, keenly bright.
“You did well tonight,” said Korinaam, as they entered the building of ice. “A good start to the mission.”
Harpirias nodded. He felt woozy. Too much stimulation, too much strange beer, too much bad food, too much close smoky air. He pushed the leather door-flap aside and went into his room. It was even warmer inside than the throne room had been, and the lamps, which had been lit during his absence, had filled the air with thick oily smoke, so that Harpirias choked and gagged at the first breath of it.
There was someone in the room. A woman.
“Yes?” he said. “What do you want?”
She rose and came toward him, displaying a gap-toothed smile. Harpirias reco
gnized her as one of those who had clustered earlier at the foot of King Toikella’s throne—the youngest-looking and least unattractive of them, in fact, a reasonably slender girl with straight, glossy dark hair cut in a bowl shape just about to the level of her ears. She was wearing only the moccasins and loincloth of black fur that had been the costume of the dancers, and now, quite casually, she pulled the loincloth down and kicked it aside. With a cheerful gesture she pointed toward the pile of sleeping-furs, tapped her chest, extended her hand to him.
“No,” Harpirias said. “Not tonight, thanks. I’m very, very tired. I’d just like to go to sleep.”
She bobbed her head up and down and giggled. She pointed again to the furs.
Harpirias stayed where he was. “You didn’t understand a word of what I said, did you? No. No, how could you?”
For an instant he was almost tempted. He had been living chastely for so long now that chastity was starting to feel almost like a normal way of life to him, which was a situation that surely needed to be remedied. But not here, not now, not with her. She was far from hideous—pleasing features, alert mischievous eyes, a decent figure, appealing breasts—but she was, after all, barbaric in her manner and dirty and unfragrant in her person. And he was extremely tired and not at all interested.
It was flattering that she had taken a fancy to him, he supposed. But what would the king say when he discovered that the ambassador from the civilized world had allowed himself a night’s sport with a member of the royal harem?
“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “Perhaps another time.” He picked up her discarded loincloth and pressed it into her hand. Then, putting the tips of his fingers lightly and he hoped unprovocatively against her back, he steered her toward the door, not exactly pushing her but making it as clear as he could that he was asking her to go.
She turned and looked back at him for a long charged moment. Sadly? Angrily? Mockingly? He couldn’t tell.
Then she was gone.
Shaking his head, Harpirias did what he could to cleanse himself and get ready for sleep. He was on the verge of climbing between two of the furs on the floor when the Shape-shifter’s quiet voice from the hallway said, “May I speak with you, prince?”
Harpirias yawned. This was getting very annoying. He said, without rising to pull back the sheet of leather that functioned as the door, “What is it, Korinaam?”
“The girl you refused has come to me.”
“My warmest congratulations. I wish you much joy of her.”
“You misunderstand me, prince. She came to me to ask what she has done wrong with you, why she has displeased you. She has gone away bewildered and insulted.”
“She has? Well, that’s too bad, I suppose. It wasn’t my intention to hurt her feelings. But I didn’t particularly want company tonight, not hers, not anybody’s. And as a general rule it doesn’t seem smart to me to be sleeping with the king’s wives.”
“Not one of his wives, prince. It is King Toikella’s youngest daughter whom you have rejected. And when he learns of it, there’s bound to be no small amount of trouble.”
“His daughter? He wants me to go to bed with his daughter?”
“It is traditional Othinor courtesy,” said the Shapeshifter. “You really must not refuse.”
Appalled, Harpirias pressed both his hands to his forehead. Was Korinaam serious? Yes, yes, he must be. For a wild moment Harpirias debated asking the Metamorph to summon the girl back; but then a mounting sense of vexation overcame the force of whatever presumable obligations of diplomacy he might be under. He wanted to get some sleep. There were limits to the things he was supposed to do for the sake of getting this treaty signed. He was not going to sleep with a smelly savage girl simply to keep King Toikella happy. Not. Not. Not. Not.
Thinking quickly, Harpirias said, “You will tell the king, when and if the matter comes up, that I am highly appreciative of the honor he has paid me. But in fact I have taken a severe vow of abstinence from physical pleasure as one of the disciplines of my high office. Under its terms I mustn’t allow myself to be approached by a woman.”
“You have said nothing of this before, prince.”
“I’m saying it now. A vow of abstinence. Is that understood?”
“It is, yes.”
“Thank you. Good night, Korinaam.”
He pulled one of the furs over his head, skin side out. It smelled as though they had tanned it in steetmoy urine.
This was all going to be even more difficult than he had expected, he told himself. If his dear friend Tembidat and his beloved cousin Vildimuir had happened to be within his reach just now, he would with a good deal of pleasure have wrung their necks.
7
The next day passed slowly and strangely. Hardly anyone was awake and about in the village when Harpirias went outside in the morning: only some nearly naked children, playing games of pursuit along the base of the high rocky wall that enclosed the settlement, and half a dozen women of the tribe laying out strips of freshly butchered meat to dry in the one narrow strip of sunlight that was able to penetrate the canyon. The meat was meant to be put away, he assumed, against the winter that would all too soon arrive.
Gradually the place came to life. The day was warm, the sky was bright and clear. A party of hunters assembled down near the palace and solemnly filed off toward the nearby cliffs. Some old women carried a stack of hides into the sunny part of the plaza and squatted in a circle to scrape them with bone knives. A limping musician came out of a house, knelt crosslegged on the ice, and played a single thin tune on a bone pipe for more than an hour, over and over.
At noon the gaunt-faced high priest—for so Harpirias had come to regard him—emerged from the royal palace and strode to a large flat slab of black stone, no doubt an altar of some sort, that rose a few inches above the icy floor of the plaza in the open space midway between the canyon entrance and the clustered buildings of the village. He was bearing a crudely painted clay jug, from which, once he had reached the altar, he drew seeds or nuts of some sort that he hurled toward the four corners of the world. An offering to the gods, Harpirias supposed.
Of the king and the other members of his court there was no sign all morning. “He is a late sleeper,” Korinaam said.
“I envy him, then,” Harpirias said. “I was awake at dawn, half sweltering and half freezing. When will the negotiating sessions begin, do you think?”
“Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after. Or the day after that.”
“No sooner.”
“The king is never in any hurry.”
“But I am,” said Harpirias. “I want to be out of here before the next winter begins.”
“Yes,” the Metamorph replied. “I don’t doubt that you do.”
Something about the way he said that was not very encouraging.
Harpirias thought of the eight paleontologists—or perhaps there were ten; no one seemed quite sure—who at this moment were held prisoner somewhere not far from here. They knew what winter was like in Othinor country. They had spent a year living somewhere near here in dark frigid cages, probably, eating mush and acrid gruel, scraps of cold fatty meat, bitter roots, nuts. Very likely they were more than a little weary of this place by now. But the king was never in any hurry, said Korinaam. And Korinaam should know.
Harpirias tried to accommodate himself to the slow rhythms of the place. The life of the village, he had to admit, was fascinating in its way. Surely this was how primitive people had lived thousands of years ago, hundreds of thousands, really, in that almost mythical era when Old Earth had been the one and only home of mankind and the idea that human beings might journey to the stars was the wildest kind of fantasy. The daily routine, the hunting and gathering of food, the preparing and storing of it, the endless making of simple tools and weapons, the rituals and observances and little superstitious customs, the children’s games, the sudden inexplicable eruptions of laughter or singing or loud dispute that subsided just as suddenly—it all ma
de Harpirias feel as though he had slipped backward in time to some distant epoch of mankind’s primeval past. He would very much rather have been among his friends on Castle Mount just now, drinking the rich potent wine of Muldemar and swapping lively tales of intrigue and chicanery among the dukes and princes of the Coronal’s entourage; but he had to admit that what he was experiencing here was something that was granted to very few, and which he might actually look back upon fondly and gratefully, some day far in the future.
The king came out of his palace, finally, late in the afternoon. Harpirias, who was playing a game of knucklebone in the plaza with Eskenazo Marabaud and a couple of the other Skandars, watched with amazement as the king paused, turned, peered blankly at them a moment with no sign of recognition or interest on his face, and moved along his way.
“As if he didn’t even notice us,” Harpirias murmured.
“Maybe he didn’t,” said Eskenazo Marabaud. “Kings see only what they want to see. Perhaps he doesn’t feel like seeing us today.”
A shrewd observation, Harpirias thought. Yesterday Toikella had been all solicitude and generosity; today he took no more notice of the ambassador and his troops than he would have of a visiting parry of fleas. Was this the king’s way of letting the visitors from the outer world know that events unfolded only on Toikella time in the land of the Othinor?
Or—and this was a more troublesome possibility—had he taken offense at Harpirias’s crass and blunt rejection of his daughter’s favors?
Whatever the reason, there were no negotiations that day, nor any contact with the king whatsoever. The members of the embassy were left to amuse themselves all afternoon. No one spoke with them or even paid any particular attention to them as they wandered through the village.
Toward evening three Othinor women brought the visitors their dinner aboard heavy sleds that they dragged with evident effort across the plaza: a side of cold meat, a tub of the gray-black beer that had gone flat, a tangled mound of roasted roots, all of it obviously leftovers from last night’s feast. It was meager fare.
The Mountains of Majipoor Page 6