slammed shut a gateway behind Valentine. Retreat was impossible. Before him lay a narrow winding corridor, sourcelessly lit by some cruel white light that numbed the eyes. For hours Valentine descended on a spiral path. Then the walls of the corridor widened, and he found himself in another roofless temple of white stone, or perhaps the same one as before, for the pockmarked red-skinned being again blocked his way, growling with that unfathomable anger.
'Behold the Pontifex,' the creature said.
And Valentine looked beyond it into a darkened chamber and saw the imperial sovereign of Majipoor seated upon a throne, clad in robes of black and scarlet, and wearing the royal tiara. And the Pontifex of Majipoor was a monster with many arms and many legs, and the face of a man but wings of a dragon, and he sat shrieking and roaring upon the throne like a madman. A terrible whistling sound came from his lips, and the smell of the Pontifex was a frightful stink, and the black leathery wings flailed the air with fierce intensity, buffeting Valentine with cold gales. 'Your majesty,' Valentine said, and bowed, and said, again, 'Your majesty.'
'Your lordship,' replied the Pontifex. And laughed, and reached for Valentine and tugged him forward, and then Valentine was on the throne and the Pontifex, laughing insanely, was fleeing up the brightly lit corridors, running and flapping wings and raving and shrieking, until he was lost from sight.
Valentine woke, wet with perspiration, in Carabella’s arms. She showed a look of concern bordering on fear, as if the terrors of his dream had been only too obvious to her, and she held him a moment, saying nothing, until he had had a chance to comprehend the fact that he was awake. Tenderly she stroked his cheeks. 'You cried out three times,' she told him.
'There are occasions,' he said after gulping a little wine from a flask beside the bed, 'when it seems more wearying to sleep than to remain awake. My dreams are hard work, Carabella.'
'There’s much in your soul that seeks to express itself, my lord.'
'It expresses itself in a very strenuous way,' Valentine said, and nestled down against her breasts. 'If dreams are the source of wisdom, I pray to grow no wiser before dawn.'
—9—
IN KHYNTOR, ZALZAN KAVOL booked passage for the troupe aboard a riverboat bound toward Ni-moya and Piliplok. They would be journeying only a short way down the river, though, to the minor city of Verf, gateway to the Metamorph territory.
Valentine regretted having to leave the riverboat at Verf. when he could easily, for another ten or fifteen royals, sail all the way to Piliplok and take ship for the Isle of Sleep. That, after all, and not the Shapeshifter reservation, was his most urgent immediate destination: the Isle of the Lady, where perhaps he might find confirmation of the visions that tormented him. But that was not to be, just yet.
Destiny, Valentine thought, could not be rushed. Thus far things had moved with deliberate speed but toward some definite, if not always understandable, goal. He was no longer the cheerful and simple idler of Pidruid, and, although he had no sure knowledge of what it was he was becoming, he had a definite sense of inner transition, of boundaries passed and not to be recrossed. He saw himself as an actor in some vast and bewildering drama the climactic scenes of which were still far away in space and time.
The riverboat was a grotesque and fanciful structure, but not without a beauty of sorts. Oceangoing ships such as had been in port at Pidruid were designed for grace and sturdiness, since they would face journeys of thousands of miles between harbors; but the riverboat, a short-haul vessel, was squat and broad-beamed, more of a floating platform than a ship, and as if to compensate for the inelegance of its design its builders had festooned it with ornament — a great soaring bridge topped with triple figureheads painted in brilliant reds and yellows, an enormous central courtyard almost like a village plaza, with statuary and pavilions and game- parlors, and, at the stern, an upswept superstructure of many levels in which passengers were housed. Belowdecks were cargo holds, steerage quarters, dining halls, and cabins for the crew, as well as the engine room, from which two gigantic smokestacks sprouted that came curving up the sides of the hull and rose skyward like the horns of a demon. The entire frame of the ship was of wood, metal being too scarce on Majipoor for such large-scale enterprises and stone being generally deemed undesirable for maritime use; and the carpenters had exerted their imaginations over nearly every square foot of the surface, decorating it with scrollwork, bizarre dadoes, outjutting joists, and similar flourishes of a hundred kinds.
The riverboat seemed a vast and teeming microcosm. As they waited for sailing, Valentine and Deliamber and Carabella strolled the deck, thronged with citizens of many districts and of all the races of Majipoor. Valentine saw frontiersmen from the mountains beyond Khyntor, Ghayrogs in the finery affected in Dulorn, people of the humid southlands in cool white linens, travelers in sumptuous robes of crimson and green which Carabella said were typical of western Alhanroel, and many others. The ubiquitous Liimen sold their ubiquitous grilled sausages; officious Hjorts strutted about in uniforms of the riverboat line, giving information and instructions to those who asked and to many who did not; a Su-Suheris family in diaphanous green robes, conspicuous because of their unlikely double-headed bodies and aloof, imperious mien, drifted like emissaries from the world of dreams through the crowds, who gave way in automatic deference. And there was one small group of Metamorphs on deck that afternoon.
Deliamber saw them first. The little Vroon made a clucking sound and touched Valentine’s hand. 'See them? Let’s hope Sleet doesn’t.'
'Which ones?' Valentine asked.
'By the railing. Standing alone, looking uneasy. They wear their natural form.'
Valentine stared. There were five of them, perhaps a male and a female adult and three younger ones. They were slender, angular, long-legged beings, the older ones taller than he, with a frail, insubstantial look to them. Their skins were sallow, almost green in hue. Their faces approached the human pattern in construction, except that their cheekbones were sharp as blades, their lips were almost nonexistent and their noses were reduced to mere bumps, and their eyes, set on angles that sloped inward toward the center, were tapered and without pupils. Valentine was unable to decide whether these Metamorphs bore themselves with arrogance or with timidity: certainly they must regard themselves as in hostile territory aboard this riverboat, these natives of the ancient race, these descendants of those who had possessed Majipoor before the coming of the first Earthborn settlers fourteen thousand years ago. He could not take his eyes from them.
'How is the changing of shape accomplished?' he asked.
'Their bones are not joined like those of most races,' answered Deliamber. 'Under muscular pressure they will move and take up new patterns. Also they have mimicry cells in their skins, that allow them to alter color and texture, and there are other adaptations. An adult can transform itself almost instantaneously.'
'And what purpose does this serve?'
'Who can say? Most likely the Metamorphs ask what purpose there was in creating races in this universe that are unable to shift shape. It must have some value to them.'
'Very little,' said Carabella acidly, 'if they could have such powers and still have their world snatched away from them.'
'Shifting shape is not enough of a defense,' Deliamber replied, 'when people travel from one star to another to steal your home.'
The Metamorphs fascinated Valentine. To him they represented artifacts of Majipoor’s long history, archaeological relicts, survivors from the era when there were no humans here, nor Skandars nor Vroons nor Ghayrogs, only these fragile green people spread out across a colossal planet. Before the settlers came — the intruders, ultimately the conquerors. How long ago it had been! He wished they would perform a transformation as he watched, perhaps turn into Skandars or Liimen before his eyes. But they remained unwavering in their identities.
Shanamir, looking agitated, appeared suddenly out of the crowd. He seized Valentine’s arm and blurted, 'Do you know what’s on board with us? I heard the cargo-handlers talking. There’s a whole family of Shape—'
'Not so loud,' Valentine said. 'Look yonder.'
The boy looked and shivered. 'Scary things, they are.'
'Where’s Sleet?'
'On the bridge, with Zalzan Kavol. They’re trying to get a permit to perform tonight. If he sees them—'
'He’ll have to confront Metamorphs sooner or later,' Valentine murmured. To Deliamber he said, 'Is it uncommon for them to be seen outside their reservation?'
'They are found everywhere, but never in great numbers, and rarely in their own form. There might be eleven of them living in Pidruid, say, and six in Falkynkip, nine in Dulorn—'
'Disguised?'
'Yes, as Ghayrogs or Hjorts or humans, whatever seems best in a certain place.'
The Metamorphs began to leave the deck. They moved with great dignity, but, unlike the little Su-Suheris group, there was nothing imperious about them; they seemed rather to give an impression of wishing they were invisible.
Valentine said, 'Do they live in their territory by choice or compulsion?'
'Some of each, I think. When Lord Stiamot completed the conquest, he forced them to leave Alhanroel entirely. But Zimroel was barely settled then, just the coastal outposts, and they were allowed most of the interior. They chose only the territory between the Zimr and the southern mountains, though, where access could easily be controlled, and withdrew into that. By now there’s a tradition that the Metamorphs dwell only in that territory, except for the unofficial few living out in the cities. But I have no idea whether that tradition has force of law. Certainly they pay little attention to the decrees that emerge from the Labyrinth or Castle Mount.'
'If imperial law matters so little to them, are we not taking great risks in going to Ilirivoyne?'
Deliamber laughed. 'The days when Metamorphs attacked outsiders for the sheer love of vengeance are long over, so I am assured. They are a shy and sullen people, but they will do us no harm, and we’ll probably leave their country intact and well laden with the money that Zalzan Kavol loves so much. Look, here he comes now.'
The Skandar, with Sleet beside him, approached, looking self-satisfied.
'We have arranged the right to perform,' he announced. 'Fifty crowns for an hour’s work, right after dinner! We’ll give them our simplest tricks, though. Why exert ourselves before we get to Ilirivoyne?'
'No,' Valentine said. 'We should do our best.' He looked hard at Sleet. 'There’s a party of Metamorphs aboard this boat. Perhaps they’ll carry the word of our excellence ahead of us to Ilirivoyne.'
'Wisely argued,' said Zalzan Kavol.
Sleet was taut and fearful. His nostrils flickered, his lips compressed, he made holy signs with his left hand at his side. Valentine turned to him and said in a low
