'And now?'
'I’m puzzled. Troubled.'
'Tell me your dream?'
It was an intimate request. And yet were they not lovers? Had they not gone down into the world of sleep together, partners in the night’s quest?
'I dreamed that I fought with my brother,' he said hoarsely. 'That we dueled with swords in a hot barren desert, that he came close to killing me, that at the last moment I rose from the ground and found new strength and — and — and I beat him to death with my fists.'
Her eyes glittered like an animal’s in the darkness: she watched him like some wary beady-eyed drole.
'Do you always have such ferocious dreams?' she asked after a time.
'I don’t think so. But—'
'Yes?'
'Not only the violence. Carabella, I have no brother!'
She laughed. 'Do you expect dreams to correspond exactly to reality? Valentine, Valentine, where were you taught? Dreams have a truth deeper than the reality we know. The brother of your dream could be anyone or no one: Zalzan Kavol, Sleet, your father, Lord Valentine, the Pontifex Tyeveras, Shanamir, even me. You know that unless they be specific sendings, dreams transform all things.'
'I know, yes. But what does it mean, Carabella? To duel with a brother — to be killed, almost, by him — to slay him instead—'
'You want me to speak your dream for you?' she said, surprised.
'It speaks nothing to me except fear and mystery.'
'You were badly frightened, yes. You were soaked with sweat and you cried out again and again. But painful dreams are the most revealing ones, Valentine. Speak it for yourself.'
'My brother— I have no brother—'
'I told you, it doesn’t matter.'
'Did I make war against myself, then? I don’t understand. I have no enemies, Carabella.'
'Your father,' she suggested.
He considered that. His father? He searched for a face that he could give to the shadowy man with the saber, but he found only more darkness.
'I don’t remember him,' Valentine said.
'Did he die when you were a boy?'
'I think so.' Valentine shook his head, which was beginning to throb. 'I don’t remember. I see a big man — his beard is dark, his eyes are dark—'
'What was his name? When did he die?'
Valentine shook his head again.
Carabella leaned close. She took his hands in hers and said softly, 'Valentine, where were you born?'
'In the east.'
'Yes, you’ve said that. Where? What city, what province?'
'Ni-moya?' he said vaguely.
'Are you asking me or telling me?'
'Ni-moya,' he repeated. 'A big house, a garden, near the bend of the river. Yes. I see myself there. Swimming in the river. Hunting in the duke’s forest. Am I dreaming that?'
'Are you?'
'It feels like — something I’ve read. Like a story I’ve been told.'
'Your mother’s name?'
He began to reply, but when he opened his mouth no name came.
'She died young too?'
'Galiara,' Valentine said without conviction. 'That was it. Galiara.'
'A lovely name. Tell me what she looked like.'
'She— she had—' He faltered. 'Golden hair, like mine. Sweet smooth skin. Her eyes— her voice sounded like— it’s so hard, Carabella!'
'You’re shaking.'
'Yes.'
'Come. Here.' Once again she drew him close. She was much smaller than he, and yet she seemed very much stronger now, and he took comfort from her closeness. Gently she said, 'You don’t remember anything, do you, Valentine?'
'No. Not really.'
'Not where you were born or where you came from or what your parents looked like or even where you were last Starday, isn’t that so? Your dreams can’t guide you because you have nothing to speak against them.' Her hands roamed his head; her fingers probed delicately but firmly into his scalp.
'What’re you doing?' he asked.
'Looking to see if you’ve been hurt. A blow on the head can take the memory away, you know.'
'Is there anything there?'
'No. No, nothing. No marks. No bumps. But that doesn’t mean anything. It could have happened a month or two ago. I’ll look again when the sun has risen.'
'I like the feel of your hands touching me, Carabella.'
'I like touching you,' she said.
He lay quietly against her. The words that had passed between them just now troubled him intensely. Other people, he realized, had rich memories of their childhood and adolescence, and knew the names of their parents and were sure of the place where they had been born, and he had nothing but his overlay of hazy notions, this mist of thin untrustworthy memories covering a well of blankness, yes, and he had known that the blankness was there but had chosen not to peer into it. Now Carabella had forced that upon him. Why, he wondered, was he unlike others? Why were his memories without substance? Had he taken some blow on the head, as she suggested? Or was it just that his mind was dim, that he lacked the capacity to retain the imprints of experience, that he had wandered for years across the face of Majipoor, erasing each yesterday as each new day dawned?
Neither of them slept again that night. Toward morning, quite suddenly, they began to make love again, in silence, in a kind of driven purposeful way quite different from the earlier playful union; and then they rose, still saying nothing, and bathed in the chilly little brook, and dressed and made their way through town to the inn. There were still some bleary-eyed revelers staggering in the streets as the bright eye of the sun rose high over Pidruid.
—10—
AT CARABELLA’S PROMPTING Valentine took Sleet into his confidence, and told him of his dream and of the conversation that followed it. The little white-haired juggler listened thoughtfully, never interrupting, looking increasingly solemn. He said when Valentine had done, 'You should seek guidance from a dream-speaker. This is too strong a sending to be ignored.'
'Do you think it is a sending, then?'
'Possibly it is,' said Sleet.
'From the King?'
Sleet spread his hands and contemplated his fingertips. 'It could be. You will have to wait and pay close heed. The King never sends simple messages.'
'It could be from the Lady just as well,' Carabella offered. 'The violence of it shouldn’t deceive us. The Lady sends violent dreams when the need exists.'
'And some dreams,' said Sleet with a smile, 'come neither from the Lady nor from the King, but up out of the depths of our own foggy minds. Who can tell unaided? Valentine, see a dream-speaker.'
'Would a dream-speaker help me find my memories, then?'
'A dream-speaker or a sorcerer, yes. If dreams are no guidance to your past, nothing will be.'
'Besides,' said Carabella, 'a dream so strong should not go unexamined. There is your responsibility to be considered. If a dream commands an action, and you choose not to pursue that action—' She shrugged. 'Your soul will answer for it, and swiftly. Find a speaker, Valentine.'
'I had hoped,' Valentine said to Sleet, 'that you would have some wisdom in these things.'
'I am a juggler. Find a speaker.'
'Can you recommend one in Pidruid?'
'We will be leaving Pidruid shortly. Wait until we are a few days’ journey from the city. You will have richer dreams to give the speaker by then.'
'I wonder if this is a sending,' said Valentine. 'And from the King? What business would the King of Dreams have with a wanderer like me? I hardly think it possible. With twenty billion souls on Majipoor, how could the King find time to deal with any but the most important?'
'In Suvrael,' said Sleet, 'at the palace of the King of Dreams, are great machines that scan this entire world, and send messages into the minds of millions of people every night. Who knows how those millions are chosen? One thing they tell us when we are children, and I know it has truth: at least once before we leave this world, we will feel the touch of the King of Dreams against our spirit, each and all of us. I know that I have.'
'You?'
'More than once.' Sleet touched his lank, coarse white hair. 'Do you think I was born white-haired? One night I lay in a hammock in the jungles outside Narabal, no juggler then, and the King came to me as I slept and placed commands upon my soul, and when I awakened my hair was like this. I was twenty-three years old.'
'Commands?' Valentine blurted. 'What commands?'
