The Mountains of Majipoor

by Robert Silverberg

  More than that, the girl was unable to say.

  But she had given him something to start with. Harpirias was grateful for that much, and he told her so, as well as he could manage it. Ivla Yevikenik evidently understood his meaning, and was pleased.

  Harpirias realized that he was coming to like Ivla Yevikenik very much, that he was in fact thankful for the circumstances that had forced them together. Not only was she an eager and passionate lover, but she was good-hearted and friendly as well, the lone island of warmth that he had found in this grim land.

  Outside, a fierce wind was roaring through the open village square. Harpirias shivered. Just another lovely summer night among the Othinor.

  Affectionately he traced the outline of the girl’s cheeks with his fingertips, and even let his hand linger a moment over the ornamental sliver of bone in her upper lip. She made a little sighing sound and wriggled up close against him. She licked the tips of his fingers; she nibbled his chin; she caught hold of both his wrists and squeezed them with surprising force.

  Strange as it may sound, he imagined himself telling the Coronal one day, I found it appropriate for reasons of diplomatic necessity to become the lover of King Toikella’s daughter. As it turned out, however, the barbarian princess was young and beautiful, and a fiery and uninhibited bedmate besides, well versed in the strange amorous skills of her people—

  Oh, yes. His lordship would certainly love that part of the story.

  But there was the little matter of getting out of here and back to Castle Mount first.

  13

  In the morning, when Ivla Yevikenik had wrapped herself in her furs and left his room, Harpirias went looking for Korinaam. He had a few questions to ask him about their encounter with the Metamorphs of the high country. But Korinaam was nowhere to be found, neither in his room nor anywhere else in the Othinor village.

  “When did you last see him?” Harpirias asked Eskenazo Marabaud.

  “Last night, around the time they brought our evening meal to the lodging house,” the Skandar captain replied.

  “Did he say anything to you then?”

  “Not a thing, no. Stared at me for an instant in that fishy way of theirs—you know what I mean. And then just walked down the corridor and disappeared into his room.”

  But the Ghayrog Mizguun Troyzt, who needed no sleep because this was not his season of hibernation, was able to provide better information. During the late hours of the night Mizguun Troyzt had gone out of the village enclosure to the place where they had left the floaters, so that he could oil their rotors against the cold and perform other routine maintenance on them; and, returning in the darkness just before the dawn, he had seen the Shapeshifter crossing the village plaza by himself, heading for the passageway that ran behind the royal palace.

  Mizguun Troyzt had watched for a moment or two in idle curiosity as Korinaam circled around toward the far side of the palace and melted into the shadows. Then—it was, after all, no business of his what the Shapeshifter might be up to—Mizguun Troyzt had returned to his own room to await the new day. And that was the last time, apparently, that he or anyone else had seen Korinaam.

  What was in back of the royal palace?

  Why, the beginning of the trail that led up the mountain wall to the royal hunting preserve.

  Of course! Of course! The situation was instantly clear to Harpirias. Korinaam must have gone off to make contact with his newly discovered Shapeshifter brethren in the high country above the village!

  Which was perplexing and maddening. The negotiations with King Toikella had not yet really even begun, after all this time. In recent days the king had been far too preoccupied with the advent of the Eililylal in his territory to make himself available for discussions of any sort with Harpirias.

  And now here was the official interpreter and guide blithely vanishing into the high country on an unauthorized errand without so much as a by-your-leave. How long was Korinaam going to be gone? Three days? Five? What if he never returned at all, but fell victim up there to the stark conditions of the trail, or the unpredictable hostility of his own kinsmen?

  In that case, how would the treaty with the Othinor ever be worked out, and the hostages set free, without an interpreter? And there was something even more important to consider. How, Harpirias wondered, were he and his soldiers going to find their way back to civilization without the Metamorph’s help?

  He boiled with rage. There was nothing he could do, though, except wait.

  Three days went by; and Harpirias’s anger and impatience mounted steadily. The only comforts he found were in the girl Ivla Yevikenik, and in the dark bitter beer of the village. But he could make love only so much, and drink only so much, before even those palliatives ceased to have any effect. Nor were his traveling companions of much benefit to him. They were common soldiers and he was a prince of the Mount, after all, and they were Skandars and Ghayrogs besides. No friendship was possible there. Essentially he was alone in this place.

  Fretfully Harpirias roamed the village, desperate for diversion. No one blocked his way; he went wherever he pleased. Or nearly so: evidently he would not be permitted to visit the hostages in their cave, for one morning when he saw the daily trek of food-carriers setting out for them he attempted to join the march, but he was firmly turned aside. Otherwise the Othinor placed no restrictions on his movements. Unchallenged, Harpirias went out to inspect the flat stone altar in the middle of the plaza, and saw that its surface was inscribed with faint incomprehensible glyphs and stained with the dried blood of old sacrifices. He peered into dark musty ice-caverns where foodstuffs were stored, the roots and grains and berries that the inhabitants of this miserable land gathered during the summer foragings against the frightful winter that would soon descend. He opened the leather door of a low dome-shaped ice building he had not noticed before, and found himself facing a room full of small snarling animals tied down with leather harnesses. Entering another, he came upon seven or eight fat-bellied heavy-breasted women of the king’s harem, lying naked on thick stacks of furs and smoking long narrow pipes of bone. The air in there was stale and close, reeking with the stench of sweat and some evil perfume and whatever it was that they were smoking. The women giggled shrilly and gestured as though to beckon Harpirias within, but he made a quick exit.

  The interior of yet another building where crude wooden boxes were stacked smelled of incense and dust: Harpirias lifted the lid of one box and saw dried human skulls inside, old ones, yellowed and crumbling.

  He asked Ivla Yevikenik about that.

  “A very holy place,” she said. “You must not go in there again.”

  Whose skulls were they? Those of former kings? Dead priests? Defeated foes? Harpirias realized that he would probably never find out. But what did it matter, anyway? He hadn’t come here to carry out an anthropological study of these people, but only to wrest a pack of fatuous fossil-hunters from their grasp—which perhaps he might never accomplish, for another light snowfall had occurred on the third day of Korinaam’s absence. Harpirias was convinced now that the Shapeshifter must have perished somewhere in the high country. His body was lying hidden beneath a blanket of snow; in all likelihood it would never be found.

  And so it well might be, Harpirias reflected, that he was going to spend the rest of his days in this miserable little icebound village at the far edge of the world, living on charred roots and half-cooked chunks of meat. Was it possible that the skulls in those boxes were those of previous distinguished ambassadors from the outer world, and that his own was destined to rest among them, one of these days?

  These endless idle hours seemed interminable. He felt like a prisoner here, like one of those miserable sequestered men in their ice cave high up the canyon wall. At night, lying in the arms of Ivla Yevikenik, he prayed for some reassuring dream. If only the blessed Lady of the Isle, whose spirit roved the world at night bringing welcome balm and surcease to the troubled, would favor him with some sending that w
ould soothe his soul!

  But of her sweet mercy Harpirias received no token. Very likely the icy kingdom of the Othinor was beyond the reach even of the Lady.

  14

  On the evening of the fourth day since the disappearance of Korinaam, Harpirias was dozing alone in his room when word came that the Shapeshifter had at last returned.

  “Bring him to me,” he told Eskenazo Marabaud.

  Korinaam looked pale and haggard from his adventure. His robe was soiled and torn, his slit-like lips were tightly compressed, his eyelids were swollen, hooding his eyes so that they could hardly be seen at all. He held himself in a tense, edgy way, as though he might be thinking of undergoing transformation into some other guise and making an escape. Harpirias imagined Korinaam turning himself suddenly into a long serpentine ribbon, swiftly gliding out of the room while he sought in vain to catch hold of him.

  “Do you want me to stay?” the Skandar asked. Perhaps something along those same lines had occurred to him.

  Harpirias nodded. To Korinaam he said coldly, “Where have you been?”

  Korinaam was slow to reply.

  “On a little reconnaissance mission,” he said at length.

  “I don’t remember asking you to undertake any such mission. Where were you performing this reconnaissance?”

  “Around. About.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “It was a private matter.” There was a note of defiance in the Metamorph’s tone.

  “I realize that,” said Harpirias. “I still want to know the details.”

  He signaled to Eskenazo Marabaud. “Hold him, will you? I don’t want him vanishing on me.”

  The Skandar, who was standing behind Korinaam, wrapped two of his arms around the Shapeshifter’s chest. Korinaam looked amazed. His eyes opened as wide as Harpirias had ever seen them, and he glared at Harpirias in unconcealed hatred.

  “Now,” Harpirias said coolly. “Once more, Korinaam. Tell me where you went.”

  The Shapeshifter remained silent for a time. Then he said, reluctantly, “To the heights overlooking the village.”

  “Yes. I rather thought so. And just why did you go there?”

  Korinaam seemed ready to burst with indignation. “Prince, I demand that you order your Skandar to let go of me! You have no right—”

  Harpirias cut him off. “I have every right. You happen to be here in the employment of the Coronal and you’ve chosen to go off on an unauthorized side journey at a time when your services were needed. I want an explanation. Again: what were you looking for up there, Korinaam?”

  “I refuse to discuss my private affairs with you.”

  “You have no private affairs in this place.—Twist his arm a little, Eskenazo Marabaud.”

  “This is an absolute outrage!” Korinaam cried. “I am a free citizen of—”

  “Yes. Of course you are. No one denies that.—Twist it a little harder, will you, Eskenazo Marabaud? Until he yelps a little. Or until he gives me the answers I want. Don’t worry, it won’t break. You can’t break a Shapeshifter’s arm, you know. The bones simply give with the stress, like rubber. But you can hurt him, all the same. It will be quite all right to hurt him if he doesn’t cooperate. Yes, that’s the way.—What were you looking for up there, Korinaam?”

  Silence. Harpirias looked toward the Skandar and made a twisting gesture with his hands.

  “I was looking for the people we saw on the ridge the day of the hunt,” Korinaam said sullenly.

  “Ah. I’m not surprised to hear that. And why did you want to find them?”

  Silence.

  “Twist,” Harpirias told the Skandar.

  Korinaam said, “Are you aware that this is interrogation under torture? It’s barbaric! It’s unthinkable!”

  “You have my sincerest apologies,” said Harpirias. “Will your arm break after all, I wonder, if he twists it far enough? We don’t really want to find out, do we, Korinaam? Tell me: Who were those people we saw on the ridge?”

  “That’s what I was trying to find out.”

  “No. You already know who they are, don’t you? Tell me. Tell me, Korinaam. Who are they?”

  “Piurivars,” Korinaam murmured, looking down toward the ground.

  “Are they, now? Cousins of yours?”

  “So to speak. Distant cousins. Very distant.”

  Harpirias nodded. “Thank you.—You can let go of him, Eskenazo Marabaud. He seems to be more cooperative now. Wait outside, will you?” To the Metamorph he said, once the Skandar had gone, “All right. Tell me what you know about these distant cousins, Korinaam.”

  But Korinaam claimed to know very little about them, and Harpirias had the feeling that for once he was sincere.

  There were, Korinaam said, old legends among his people to the effect that one branch of the Metamorph race had settled in the far north in the time of Lord Stiamot, many thousands of years ago—Piurivars who had escaped, as Harpirias had already guessed, from the genocidal war that Lord Stiamot had launched against the aboriginal inhabitants of the planet.

  While all the rest of the surviving Metamorphs had been rounded up and confined in the reservation set aside for them in the jungles of Zimroel—so the tale went—these free Piurivars had continued to dwell in isolation and independence, following the ancient nomadic ways of their people in the snowy and mountainous country beyond the nine great peaks of the Khyntor Marches. Like the Othinor, they had lived as a people apart, unknown to the other inhabitants of Majipoor and perhaps, after all this time, equally unaware of them. There had never been any communication between them and other Metamorphs, not even during Valentine’s reign, when the great Piurivar uprising against human rule had taken place. Their very existence had become a matter of conjecture and speculation.

  Now and again a sighting was reported by one of the Shapeshifters who, like Korinaam, lived in Ni-moya or some other city bordering on the Marches and made their livings providing guide service to hunters or explorers that wished to venture into the north country. But none of those sightings had ever led to anything. It was impossible for the Metamorph guides even to be sure that what they were seeing—always at a great distance, for just a fleeting moment—were people of their own kind.

  Until now.

  “I have no doubt of it,” Korinaam said. “My eyesight is very keen, prince. The day we saw them, I watched them undergo their change.”

  “And so you decided to take off without authorization to visit them. Why?”

  “They are of my blood, prince. For nearly nine thousand years now they have lived in these mountains without ever once coming face-to-face with others of their kind. I wanted to speak with them.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “That the persecution is over, that we Piurivars are free to come and go as we please on Majipoor, that they can emerge at last from their hiding place amidst the snow and ice. Is that so difficult for you to understand, prince?”

  “You could have told me what you intended to do, at least. You could have asked my permission.”

  “You would never have given it.”

  Harpirias was caught off guard by that. His face reddened. “Why do you say so?”

  “Because,” said Korinaam evenly, “I am a Piurivar, and this is a Piurivar affair, and why would any of that matter in the slightest to you, prince? You would have said that it was inconvenient for me to leave the village, because I was needed here as your interpreter. You would have told me that I could return to these mountains at another time, on my own, and look for my kinsmen then. Is that not so, prince?”

  Suddenly Harpirias had difficulty meeting the Shapeshifter’s implacable gaze. He could make no immediate reply.

  “Possibly it is,” he said finally. “But even so: you still shouldn’t have gone off without leaving some sort of message about where you were going. What would we have done if you had died up there?”

  “I had no intention of dying up there.”

  “It’s a di
fficult climb in dangerous territory. There was a snowstorm during the time you were gone. A light one, but suppose it had been one like the one we rode through in the pass of the Twin Sisters? You aren’t immortal, Korinaam.”

  “I know how to take care of myself in these mountains. As you see, I have returned, and only slightly the worse for wear.”

  “Yes. So you have.”

  Korinaam offered no response. He continued to stare at Harpirias with undisguised animosity.

  This was all becoming very uncomfortable. Somehow Korinaam had gained the upper hand in the discussion, though Harpirias was not quite sure when that had happened. It embarrassed him deeply now that he had felt compelled to resort to arm-twisting in order to make the Shapeshifter speak.

  He said, after an awkward pause, “Well? And did you succeed in having a talk with these long-lost relatives of yours, then?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I talked to them,” said Korinaam. “Not with them.”

  “Ah. To them but not with them. Meaning that you couldn’t speak to them in a language they understood?”

  Korinaam said, in a tense and ragged tone, “That is essentially what happened.—Do we really need to discuss this any further, prince?”

  “Yes. We do. I want to know precisely what took place between you and those people.”

  “I’ve told you. For two days I searched for them, and then I found them, camped on a hillside across a ravine opposite the place where I was. It was impossible for me to get really close, but I tried to speak with them from where I stood; they didn’t seem to comprehend anything I was saying; after a little while I gave up and headed back down the mountain.”