That seemed sensible. Valentine beckoned to Lisamon Hultin, and they got down from the wagon and strode back toward the place of the cages. Instantly the forest-brethren set up a frantic screeching and banging on their bars. The Metamorph bearers — armed, Valentine noticed now, with effective-looking short dirks of polished horn or wood — unhurriedly formed themselves into a phalanx in the road, keeping Valentine and Lisamon Hultin from a closer approach to the large cage. One Metamorph, plainly the leader, stepped forward and waited with menacing calmness for inquiries.
Valentine said quietly to the giantess, 'Will he speak our language?'
'Probably. Try it.'
'We are a troupe of roving jugglers,' Valentine said in a loud, clear voice, 'come to perform at the festival we hear you hold at Ilirivoyne. Are we near Ilirivoyne now?'
The Metamorph, half a head taller than Valentine, though much flimsier of build, seemed amused.
'You are in Ilirivoyne,' was the cool, remote reply.
Valentine moistened his lips. These Metamorphs gave off a thin, sharp odor, acrid but not disagreeable. Their strangely sloped eyes were frighteningly expressionless. He said, 'To whom would we go to make arrangements for performing in Ilirivoyne?'
'The Danipiur interviews all strangers who come to Ilirivoyne. You will find her at the House of Offices.'
The Metamorph’s frosty self-contained manner was disconcerting. After a moment Valentine said, 'One thing more. We see that in that large cage you keep a being of an unfamiliar sort. May I ask, for what purpose?'
'Punishment.'
'A criminal?'
'So it is said,' the Metamorph replied distantly. 'Why does this concern you?'
'We are strangers in your land. If strangers are placed in cages here, we might prefer to find employment somewhere else.'
There was a flicker of some emotion — amusement? contempt? — around the Metamorph’s mouth and nostrils. 'Why should you fear such a thing? Are you criminals?'
'Hardly.'
'Then you will not be caged. Pay your respects to the Danipiur and address further questions to her. I have important tasks to complete.'
Valentine looked toward Lisamon Hultin, who shrugged. The Metamorph walked away. There was nothing more to do but return to the wagon.
The bearers were lifting the cages and fastening them to poles laid across their backs. From the large cage came a roar of anger and despair.
—13—
ILIRIVOYNE WAS NEITHER a city nor a village, but something intermediate, a forlorn concentration of many low, impermanent-looking structures of withes and light woods, arranged along irregular unpaved streets that seemed to stretch for considerable distances into the forest. The place had a makeshift look, as though Ilirivoyne might have been located elsewhere a few years ago and might be in an altogether other district a few years hence. That it was festival-time in Ilirivoyne was signaled, apparently, by fetish-sticks of some sort planted in front of almost every house, thick shaven stakes to which bright ribbons and bits of fur had been attached; also on many streets scaffolding had been erected, as for performances, or, thought Valentine uneasily, for tribal rites of some darker kind.
Finding the House of Offices and the Danipiur was simple. The main street opened into a broad plaza bordered on three sides by small domed buildings with ornately woven roofs, and on the fourth by a larger structure, the first three-story building they had seen in Ilirivoyne, with an elaborate garden of globular thick- stemmed gray-and-white shrubs in front of it. Zalzan Kavol drew the wagon into a clearing just outside the plaza.
'Come with me,' the Skandar said to Deliamber. 'We’ll see what we can arrange.'
They were inside the House of Offices a long while. When they emerged, a female Metamorph of great presence and authority was with them, doubtless the Danipiur, and the three stood together by the garden in elaborate conversation. The Danipiur pointed; Zalzan Kavol alternately nodded and shook his head; Autifon Deliamber, dwarfed between the two tall beings, made frequent graceful gestures of diplomatic conciliation. Finally Zalzan Kavol and the Vroon returned to the wagon. The Skandar’s mood seemed brighter.
'We’ve come just in time,' he announced. 'The festival has already begun. Tomorrow night is one of the major holidays.'
'Will they pay us?' Sleet asked.
'So it would seem,' said Zalzan Kavol. 'But they will supply us with no food, and no lodging either, for Ilirivoyne is without hostelries. And there are certain specified zones of the city that we may not enter. I have had friendlier welcomes in other places. But also less friendly ones now and then, I suppose.'
Crowds of solemn, silent Metamorph children trailed after them as they moved the wagon from the plaza to an area just back of it where they could park. In late afternoon they held a practice session, and though Lisamon Hultin did her formidable best to clear the young Metamorphs from the scene and keep them away, it was impossible to prevent them from slipping back, emerging between trees and out of bushes to stare at the jugglers. Valentine found it unnerving to work in front of them, and he was plainly not the only one, for Sleet was tense and uncharacteristically awkward, and even Zalzan Kavol, the master of masters, dropped a club for the first time in Valentine’s memory. The silence of the children was disturbing — they stood like blank-eyed statues, a remote audience that drained energy and gave none in return — but even more troublesome was their trick of metamorphosis, their way of slipping from one shape to another as casually as a human child might suck its thumb. Mimicry was their apparent purpose, for the forms they took were crude, half-recognizable versions of the jugglers, such as the older Metamorphs had attempted earlier at Piurifayne Fountain. The children held the forms only briefly — their skills seemed feeble — but in the pauses between routines Valentine saw them now sprouting golden hair for him, white for Sleet, black for Carabella, or making themselves bearish and many-armed like the Skandars, or trying to imitate faces, individual features, expressions, everything done in a distorted and unflattering way.
The travelers slept crammed aboard the wagon that night, one packed close upon the other, and all night, so it seemed, a steady rain fell. Valentine only occasionally was able to sleep; he dropped into light dozes, but mainly he lay awake listening to Lisamon Hultin’s lusty snoring or the even more grotesque sounds coming from the Skandars. Somewhere in the night he must have had some real sleep, for a dream came to him, hazy and incoherent, in which he saw the Metamorphs leading a procession of prisoners, forest-brethren and the blue-skinned alien, up the road toward Piruifayne Fountain, which erupted and rose above the world like a colossal white mountain. And again toward morning he slept soundly for a time, until Sleet woke him by shaking his shoulder a little before dawn.
Valentine sat up, rubbing his eyes. 'What is it?'
'Come outside. I have to talk.'
'It’s still dark!'
'Even so. Come!'
Valentine yawned, stretched, got creakily to his feet. He and Sleet picked their way carefully over the slumbering forms of Carabella and Shanamir, went warily around one of the Skandars, and down the steps of the wagon. The rain had stopped, but the morning was dark and chilly, and a nasty fog rose from the ground.
'I have had a sending,' Sleet said. 'From the Lady, I think.'
'Of what sort?'
'About the blue-skinned one, in the cage, that they said was a criminal going to be punished. In my dream he came to me and said he was no criminal at all, but only a traveler who had made the error of entering Shapeshifter territory, and had been captured because it’s their custom to sacrifice a stranger in Piurifayne Fountain at festival-time. And I saw how it is done, the victim bound hand and foot and left in the basin of the Fountain, and when the explosion comes he is hurled far into the sky.'
Valentine felt a chill that did not come from the morning mist. 'I dreamed something similar,' he said.
'In my dream I heard more,' Sleet went on. 'That we are in danger too, not perhaps from sacrifice but in danger all the same. And if we rescue the alien, he will help us to safety, but if we leave him to die, we will not leave Piurivar country alive. You know I fear these Shapeshifters, Valentine, but this dream is something new. It came to me with the clarity of a sending. It ought not be dismissed as more fears of foolish Sleet.'
'What do you want to do?'
'Rescue the alien.'
Valentine said uneasily, 'And if he really was a criminal? By what right do we meddle in Piurivar justice?'
'By right of sending,' said Sleet. 'Are those forest-brethren criminals too? I saw them also go into the Fountain. We are among savages, Valentine.'
'Not savages, no. But strange folk, whose way is not like the ways of Majipoor.'
'I’m determined to set the blue-skinned one free. If not with your help, then by myself.'
'Now?'
'What better time?' Sleet asked. 'It’s still dark. Quiet. I’ll open the cage; he’ll slip off into the jungle.'
'You think the cage is unguarded? No, Sleet. Wait. This makes no sense. You’ll jeopardize us all if you act now. Let me try to find out more about this prisoner and why he’s caged, and what’s intended for him. If they do mean to sacrifice him, they’d do it at some high point of the festival. There’s time.'
'The sending is on me now,' Sleet said.
'I dreamed a dream something like yours.'
'But not a sending.'
'Not a sending, no. Still, enough to let me think your dream holds truth. I’ll help you, Sleet. But not now. This isn’t the moment for it.'
Sleet looked restless. Clearly in his mind he was already on the way to the place of the cages, and Valentine’s opposition was thwarting him.
'Sleet?'
'Yes?'
'Hear me. This is not the moment. There is time.'
Valentine looked steadily at the juggler. Sleet returned his gaze with equal steadfastness for a moment; then, abruptly, his resolve broke and he lowered his eyes. 'Yes, my lord,' he said quietly.
During the day Valentine tried to gain information about the prisoner, but with little success. The cages, eleven holding forest-brethren and the twelfth holding
