'But what becomes of your trade in haigus hides?'
'Sold my stock entirely at market,' the Hjort replied. 'And I thought of you, not knowing where you’d be tomorrow, and not caring. I admired that. I envied that. I asked myself, Are you going to peddle haigus hides all your days, Vinorkis, or will you try something new? A traveling life, perhaps? So I offered my services to Zalzan Kavol when I happened to overhear he was in need of an assistant. And here I am!'
'Here you are,' said Carabella sourly. 'Welcome!'
After a hearty meal they began their departure. Shanamir led Zalzan Kavol’s quartet of mounts from the stable, talking softly and soothingly to the animals as the Skandars tied them into the traces. Zalzan Kavol took the reins; his brother Heitrag sat beside him, with Autifon Deliamber squeezed in alongside. Shanamir, on his own mount, rode alongside, Valentine clambered into the snug, luxurious passenger compartment along with Carabella, Vinorkis, Sleet, and the other four Skandars. There was much rearranging of arms and legs to fit everyone in comfortably.
'Hoy!' Zalzan Kavol cried sharply, and it was off and out, through Falkynkip Gate and eastward down the grand highway on which Valentine had entered Pidruid just a week ago Moonday.
Summer’s warmth lay heavily on the coastal plain, and the air was thick and moist. Already the spectacular blossoms of the fireshower palms were beginning to fade and decay, and the road was littered with fallen petals, like a crimson snow fall. The wagon had several windows — thin, tough sheets of stickskin, the best quality, carefully matched, perfectly transparent — and in an odd solemn silence Valentine watched Pidruid dwindle and disappear, that great city of eleven million souls where he had juggled before the Coronal an tasted strange wines and spicy foods and spent a festival night in the arms of the dark-haired Carabella.
And now the road lay open before him, and who knew what travels awaited, what adventures would befall?
He was without plan, and open to all plans. He itched to juggle again, to master new skills, to cease being an apprentice and to join with Sleet and Carabella in the most intricate of maneuvers, and perhaps even to juggle with the Skandar themselves. Sleet had warned him about that: that only a master could risk juggling with them, for their double sets of arms gave them an advantage no human could hope match. But Valentine had seen Sleet and Carabella throw with the Skandars, and maybe in time he would do so as well. A high ambition he thought. What more could he ask than to become a master worthy of juggling with Zalzan Kavol and his brothers!
Carabella said, 'You look so happy all of a sudden Valentine.'
'Do I?'
'Like the sun. Radiant. Light streams from you.'
'Yellow hair,' he said amiably. 'It gives that illusion.'
'No. No. A sudden smile—'
He pressed his hand against hers. 'I was thinking of the road ahead. A free and hearty life. Wandering zigzag across Zimroel, and stopping to perform, and learning new routines. I want to become the best human juggler on Majipoor!'
'You stand a good chance,' Sleet said. 'Your natural skills are enormous. You need only the training.'
'For that I count on you and Carabella.'
Carabella said quietly, 'And while you were thinking of juggling, Valentine, I was thinking about you.'
'And I about you,' he whispered, abashed. 'But I was ashamed to say it aloud.'
The wagon now had reached the switch-backed ridge road that led upward to the great inland plateau. It climbed slowly. In places the angles of the road were so sharp that the wagon could barely execute the turns, but Zalzan Kavol was as cunning a driver as he was a juggler, and brought the vehicle safely around each tight corner. Soon they were at the top of the ridge. Distant Pidruid now looked like a map of itself, flattened and foreshortened, hugging the coast. The air up here was drier but hardly cooler, and in late afternoon the sun unleashed ghastly blasts, a mummifying heat from which there could be no escape before sundown.
That night they halted in a dusty plateau village along the Falkynkip road. A disturbing dream came to Valentine again as he lay on a scratchy mattress stuffed with straw: once more he moved among the Powers of Majipoor. In a vast echoing stone-floored hall the Pontifex sat enthroned at one end and the Coronal at the other, and set in the ceiling was a terrifying eye of light, like a small sun, that cast a merciless white glare. Valentine bore some message from the Lady of the Isle, but he was unsure whether to deliver it to Pontifex or Coronal, and whichever Power he approached receded to infinity as Valentine neared. All night long he trudged back and forth over that cold slippery floor, reaching hands in supplication toward one Power or the other, and always they floated away.
He dreamed again of Pontifex and Coronal the next night, in a town on the outskirts of Falkynkip. This was a hazy dream, and Valentine remembered nothing of it except impressions of fearsome royal personages, enormous pompous assemblies, and failures of communication. He awoke with a feeling of deep and aching discontent. Plainly he was receiving dreams of high consequence, but he was helpless to interpret them. 'The Powers obsess you and will not let you rest,' Carabella said in the morning. 'You seem tied to them by unbreakable cords. It isn’t natural to dream so frequently of such mighty figures. I think surely these are sendings.'
Valentine nodded. 'In the heat of the day I imagine I feel the hands of the King of Dreams pressing coldly on my temples. And when I close my eyes his fingers enter my soul.'
Alarm flashed in Carabella’s eyes. 'Can you be sure they are his sendings?'
'Not sure, no. But I think—'
'Perhaps the Lady—'
'The Lady sends kinder, softer dreams, so I believe,' said Valentine. 'These are sendings of the King, I much fear. But what does he want of me? What crime have I done?'
She frowned. 'In Falkynkip, Valentine, take yourself to a speaker, as you promised.'
'I’ll look for one, yes.'
Autifon Deliamber, joining the conversation unexpectedly, said, 'May I make a recommendation?'
Valentine had not seen the wizened little Vroon approach, He looked down, surprised.
'Pardon,' the sorcerer said offhandedly. 'I happened to overhear. You are troubled by sendings, you think?'
'They could be nothing else.'
'Can you be certain?'
'I’m certain of nothing. Not even of my name, or yours, or the day of the week.'
'Sendings are rarely ambiguous. When the King speaks, or the Lady, we know without doubt,' Deliamber said.
Valentine shook his head. 'My mind is clouded these days. I hold nothing sure. But these dreams vex me, and I need answers, though I hardly know how to frame my questions.'
The Vroon reached up to take Valentine’s hand with one of his delicate, intricately branched tentacles. 'Trust me. Your mind may be clouded, but mine is not, and I see you clearly. My name is Deliamber, and yours is Valentine, and this is Fiveday of the ninth week of summer, and in Falkynkip is the dream-speaker Tisana, who is my friend and ally, and who will help you find your proper path. Go to her and say that I give her greetings and love. Time has come for you to begin to recover from the harm that has befallen you, Valentine.'
'Harm? Harm? What harm is that?'
'Go to Tisana,' Deliamber said firmly.
Valentine sought Zalzan Kavol, who was speaking with some person of the village. Eventually the Skandar was done, and turned to Valentine, who said, 'I ask leave to spend Starday night apart from the troupe, in Falkynkip.'
'Also a matter of family honor?' asked Zalzan Kavol sardonically.
'A matter of private business. May I?'
The Skandar shrugged an elaborate four-shouldered shrug. 'There is something strange about you, something troublesome to me. But do as you wish. We perform in Falkynkip anyway, tomorrow, at the market fair. Sleep where you like, but be ready to leave early Sunday morning, eh?'
—12—
FALKYNKIP WAS NOTHING in the way of being a city to compare with huge sprawling Pidruid, but all the same was far from insignificant, a county seat that served as metropolis for a ranching district of great size. Perhaps three quarters of a million people lived in and about Falkynkip, and five times as many in the outlying countryside. But its pace was different from Pidruid’s, Valentine observed. Possibly its location on this dry, hot plateau rather than along the mild and humid coast had something to do with that: but people moved deliberately here, with stolid, unhurried manners.
The boy Shanamir made himself scarce on Starday. He had indeed slipped off secretly the night before to his father’s farm some hours north of the city, where — so he told Valentine the next morning — he had left the money he had earned in Pidruid and a note declaring that he was going off to seek adventure and wisdom, and had managed to get away again without being noticed. But he did not expect his father to take lightly the loss of so skilled and useful a hand, and fearing that municipal proctors would be out in search of him, Shanamir proposed to spend the rest of his stay in Falkynkip hidden in the wagon. Valentine explained this to Zalzan Kavol, who agreed, with his usual acrid grace.
That afternoon at the fair the jugglers came marching boldly out, Carabella and Sleet leading the way, he banging drum, she tapping a tambourine and singing a lilting jingle:
