But levity and wonderment were far from Valentine’s spirit that day, and he juggled poorly. He was tense and uneasy from too many nights of troubled sleep, and also with inflamed with ambitions that went beyond his present skills which led him to overreach himself. Twice he dropped clubs but Sleet had shown him ways of pretending that that was part of the routine, and the crowd seemed forgiving. Forgiving himself was a harder matter. He crept off sullenly to a wine-stand while the Skandars took the center of the stage.
From a distance he watched them working, the six big shaggy beings weaving their twenty-four arms in precise ail flawless patterns. Each juggled seven knives while constantly throwing and receiving others, and the effect was spectacular, the tension extreme, as the silent interchange of sharp weapons went on and on. The placid burghers of Falkynkip were spellbound.
Watching the Skandars, Valentine regretted all the more his own faulty performance. Since Pidruid he had yearned to go before an audience again — his hands had twitched for the feel of clubs and balls — and he had finally had his moment and had been clumsy. No matter. There would be other marketplaces, other fairs. All across Zimroel the troupe would wander, year after year, and he would shine, he would dazzle audiences, they would cry out for Valentine the juggler, they would demand encore after encore, until Zalzan Kavol himself looked black with jealousy. A king of jugglers, yes, a monarch, a Coronal of performers! Why not? He had the gift. Valentine smiled. His dour mood was lifting. Was it the wine, or his natural good spirits reasserting themselves? He had been at the art only a week, after all, and look what he had achieved already! Who could say what wonders of eye and hand he would perform when he had had a year or two of practice?
Autifon Deliamber was at his side. 'Tisana is to be found in the Street of Watermongers,' the diminutive sorcerer said. 'She expects you shortly.'
'Have you spoken to her of me, then?'
'No,' said Deliamber.
'But she expects me. Hah! Is it by sorcery?'
'Something of that,' the Vroon said, giving a Vroonish wriggle of the limbs that amounted to a shrug. 'Go to her soon.'
Valentine nodded. He looked across: the Skandars were done, and Sleet and Carabella were demonstrating one-arm juggling. How elegantly they moved together, he thought. How calm, how confident they were, how crisp of motion. And how beautiful she is. Valentine and Carabella had not been lovers since the night of the festival, though sometimes they had slept side by side; it was a week now, and he had felt aloof and apart from her, though nothing but warmth and support had come from her to him. These dreams were the problem, draining and distracting him. To Tisana, then, for a speaking, and then, perhaps tomorrow, to embrace Carabella again—
'The Street of Watermongers,' he said to Deliamber. 'Very well. Will there be a sign marking her dwelling?'
'Ask,' Deliamber said.
As Valentine set out, the Hjort Vinorkis stepped from behind the wagon and said, 'Off for a night on the town, are you?'
'An errand,' Valentine said.
'Want some company?' The Hjort laughed his coarse, noisy laugh. 'We could hit a few taverns together, hoy? I wouldn’t mind getting away from all this jugglery for a few hours.'
Uneasily Valentine said, 'It’s the sort of thing one must do by oneself.'
Vinorkis studied him a moment. 'Not too friendly, are you?'
'Please. It’s exactly as I said: I must do this alone. I’m not going tavern-crawling tonight, believe me.'
The Hjort shrugged. 'All right. Be like that, see if I care. I just wanted to help you have fun — show you the town, take you to a couple of my favorite places —'
'Another time,' said Valentine quickly.
He strode off toward Falkynkip.
The Street of Watermongers was easy enough to find — this was an orderly town, no medieval maze like Pidruid, and there were neat and comprehensible city maps posted at every major intersection — but finding the home of the dream-speaker Tisana was a slower business, for the street was long and those he asked for directions merely pointed over their shoulders toward the north. He followed along steadfastly and by early evening reached a small gray rough-shingled house in a residential quarter far from the marketplace. It bore on its weatherworn front door two symbols of the Powers, the crossed lightning-bolts that stood for the King of Dreams, and the triangle-within-triangle that was the emblem of the Lady of the Isle of Sleep.
Tisana was a sturdy woman of more than middle years, heavy-bodied and of unusual height, with a broad strong face and cool searching eyes. Her hair, thick and unbound, black streaked with swaths of white, hung far down her shoulders. Her arms, emerging bare from the gray cotton smock that she wore, were solid and powerful, although swinging dewlaps of flesh hung from them. She seemed a person of great strength and wisdom.
She greeted Valentine by name and bade him be comfortable in her house.
'I bring you, as you must already know, the greetings and love of Autifon Deliamber,' he said.
The dream-speaker nodded gravely. 'He has sent advance word, yes. That rascal! But his love is worth receiving, for all his tricks. Convey the same from me to him.' She moved around the small dark room, closing draperies, lighting three thick red candles, igniting some incense. There was little furniture, only a high-piled woven rug in tones of gray and black, a venerable wooden table on which the candles stood, and a tall clothes-cabinet in antique style. She said, as she made her preparations, 'I’ve known Deliamber nearly forty years, would you believe it? It was in the early days of the reign of Tyeveras that we met, at a festival in Piliplok, when the new Coronal came to town, Lord Malibor that drowned on the sea-dragon hunt. The little Vroon was tricky even then. We stood there cheering Lord Malibor in the streets, and Deliamber said, ‘He’ll die before the Pontifex, you know,’ the way someone might predict rain when the south wind blows. It was a terrible thing to say, and I told him so. Deliamber didn’t care. A strange business, when the Coronal dies first, when the Pontifex lives on and on. How old d’ye think Tyeveras is by now? A hundred? A hundred twenty?'
'I have no idea,' said Valentine.
'Old, very old. He was Coronal a long while before he entered the Labyrinth. And he’s been in there for three Coronal reigns, can you imagine? I wonder if he’ll outlive Lord Valentine too.' Her eyes came to rest on Valentine’s. 'I suppose Deliamber knows that too. Will you have wine with me now?'
'Yes,' Valentine said, uncomfortable with her blunt, outgoing manner and with the sense she gave him of knowing far more about him than he knew himself.
Tisana produced a carven stone decanter and poured two generous drinks, not the spicy fireshower wine of Pidruid but some darker, thicker vintage, sweet with undertastes of peppermint and ginger and other, more mysterious, things. He took a quick sip, and then another, and after the second she said casually, 'It contains the drug, you know.'
'Drug?'
'For the speaking.'
'Oh. Of course. Yes.' His ignorance embarrassed him. Valentine frowned and stared into his goblet. The wine was dark red, almost purple, and its surface gave back his own distorted reflection by candlelight. What was the procedure? he wondered. Was he supposed now to tell his recent dreams to her? Wait and see, wait and see. He drained the drink in quick uneasy gulps and immediately the old woman refilled, topping off her own glass, which she had barely touched.
She said, 'A long time since your last speaking?'
'Very long, I’m afraid.'
'Evidently. This is the moment when you give me my fee, you know. You’ll find the price somewhat higher than you remember.'
Valentine reached for his purse. 'It’s been so long—'
' — that you don’t remember. I ask ten crowns now. There are new taxes, and other bothers. In Lord Voriax’s time it was five, and when I first took up speaking, in the reign of Lord Malibor, I got two or two and a half. Is ten a burden for you?'
It was a week’s pay for him from Zalzan Kavol, above his room and board; but he had arrived in Pidruid with plenty of money in his purse, he knew not how or why, close on sixty royals, and much of that remained. He gave the dream-speaker a royal and she dropped the coin negligently into a green porcelain bowl on the table. He yawned. She was watching him closely. He drank again; she did also, and refilled; his mind was growing cloudy. Though it was still early at night, he would soon be sleepy.
'Come now to the dream-rug,' she said, blowing out two of the three candles.
She pulled off her smock and was naked before him.
That was unexpected. Did dream-speaking involve some sort of sexual contact? With this old woman? Not that she seemed so old now: her body looked a good twenty years younger than her face, not a girl’s body by any means, but still firm-fleshed, plump but unwrinkled, with heavy breasts and strong smooth thighs. Perhaps these speakers were some sort of holy prostitutes, Valentine thought. She beckoned to him to undress, and he cast his clothes aside. They lay down together on the thick woolen rug in the half-darkness, and she drew him into her arms, but there was nothing at all erotic about the embrace — more maternal, if anything, an all- enfolding engulfment. He relaxed. His head was against her soft warm bosom and it was hard for him to stay awake. The scent of her was strong in his nostrils, a sharp pleasant aroma like that of the gnarled and ageless needle-trees that grew on the high peaks of the north just below the snow-line, an odor that was crisp and pungent and clean. She said softly, 'In the kingdom of dreams the only language spoken is that of truth. Be without fear as we embark together.'
Valentine closed his eyes.
High peaks, yes, just below the snow-line. A brisk wind blew across the crags, but he was not at all cold, though his feet were bare against the dry stony soil. A trail lay before him, a steeply sloping path in which broad gray flagstones had been laid to form a gigantic staircase leading into a mist-wrapped valley, and without hesitation Valentine started the descent. He understood that these images were not yet those of his dream, only of the prelude, that he had only begun his night’s journey and was still merely on the threshold of sleep. But as he went downward he passed others, making the ascent, figures familiar to him from recent nights, the
