Lisamon Hultin went on, 'We are their guests. They will feed us. They will guide us.'
That night the wanderers ate richly on dwikka-fruit and other forest delicacies, and there was actually laughter among them for the first time since the ambush. Afterward the forest-brethren performed a sort of dance for them, a monkeyish prancing thing, and Sleet and Carabella and Valentine responded with impromptu juggling using objects collected in the forest. Afterward Valentine slept a deep, satisfying sleep. In his dreams he had the gift of flight, and saw himself soaring to the summit of Castle Mount.
And in the morning a party of chattering forest-brethren led them to the River Steiche, three hours’ journey from the dwikka-tree grove, and bade them farewell with little twittering cries.
The river was a sobering sight. It was broad, though nothing remotely like the mighty Zimr, and it sped northward with startling haste, flowing so energetically that it had carved out a deep bed bordered in many places by high rocky walls. Here and there ugly stone snags rose above the water, and downstream Valentine could see white eddies of rapids.
The building of rafts took a day and a half. They cut down the young slim trees that grew by the riverbank, trimmed and trued them with knives and sharp stones, lashed them together with vines. The results were hardly elegant, but the rafts, though crude, did look reasonably riverworthy. There were three altogether — one for the four Skandars, one for Khun, Vinorkis, Lisamon Hultin, and Sleet, and one occupied by Valentine, Carabella, Shanamir, and Deliamber.
'We will probably become separated as we go downriver,' Sleet said. 'We should choose a meeting-place in Ni-moya.'
Deliamber said, 'The Steiche and the Zimr flow together at a place called Nissimorn. There is a broad, sandy beach there. Let us meet at Nissimorn Beach.'
'At Nissimorn Beach, yes,' Valentine said. He cut loose the cord that bound his raft to the shore, and was carried off into the river.
The first day’s journey was uneventful. There were rapids, but not difficult ones, and they poled safely past them. Carabella showed skill at handling the raft, and deftly steered them around the occasional rocky patches.
After a time the rafts became separated, Valentine’s taking some subcurrent and moving rapidly ahead of the other two. In the morning he waited, hoping the others would catch up. But there was no sign of them and eventually he decided to depart.
On, on, on, for the most part swept easily along, with occasional moments of anxiety in the white-water stretches. By afternoon of the second day the course was becoming rougher. The land seemed to dip here, sloping downward as the Zimr drew near, and the river, following the line of descent, plunged and bucked. Valentine began to worry about waterfalls ahead. They had no charts, no notion of dangers: they took everything as it came. He could only trust to luck that this swift water would deliver them safely to Ni-moya.
And then? By boat to Piliplok, and by pilgrim-ship to the Isle of Sleep, and somehow procure an interview with the Lady his mother, and then? And then? How did one claim the Coronal’s throne, when one’s face was not the face of Lord Valentine the rightful ruler? By what claim, by what authority? It seemed to Valentine an impossible quest. He might be better remaining here in the forest, ruling over his little band. They, readily enough, accepted him for what he thought himself to be; but in that world of billions of strangers, in that vast empire of giant cities that lay beyond the horizon, how, how would he ever manage to convince the unbelievers that he, Valentine the juggler, was—
No. These thoughts were foolish. He had never, not since he had appeared, shorn of memory and past, on the verge overlooking Pidruid, felt the need to rule over others; and if he had come to command this little group, it was more by natural gift and by Zalzan Kavol’s default than out of any overt desire on his part. And yet he was in command, however tentatively and delicately. So it would be as he traveled onward through Majipoor. He would take one step at a time, and do that which seemed right and proper, and perhaps the Lady would guide him, and if the Divine so willed it he would one day stand again on Castle Mount, and if that was not part of the great plan, why, that would be acceptable also. There was nothing to fear. The future would unroll serenely in its own true course, as it had done since Pidruid. And—
The river seemed to sprout giant stony teeth. There were boulders everywhere, and monstrous white whirlpools, and, just ahead, an ominous tumbling descent, a place where the Steiche leaped out into space and went roaring down a series of steps to a valley far below. Valentine gripped his pole, but no pole could help him now. It lodged between two snags and was ripped from his grasp; a moment later there was a ghastly grinding sound as the flimsy raft, battered by submerged rocks, swung around at right angles to its course and split apart. He was hurled into the chilly stream and swept forward like a cork. For a moment he grasped Carabella by the wrist; but then the current pulled her free, and as he clutched desperately for her he was engulfed by the swift water and driven under.
Gasping and choking, Valentine struggled to get his head above water. When he did, he was already far downstream. The wreckage of the raft was nowhere in sight.
'Carabella?' he yelled. 'Shanamir? Deliamber? Hoy! Hoy!'
He roared until his voice was ragged, but the booming of the rapids so thoroughly covered his cries that he could scarcely hear them himself. A terrible sense of pain and loss numbed his spirit. All gone, then? His friends, his beloved Carabella, the wily little Vroon, the clever, cocky boy Shanamir, all swept to death in an instant? No. No. Unthinkable. That was an agony far worse than this business, still unreal to him, of being a Coronal thrust from the Castle. What did that mean? These were beings of flesh and blood, dear to him; that was only a title and power. He would not stop calling their names as the river threw him about.
Valentine clawed at rocks, trying to halt his willy-nilly descent, but he was in the heart of the rapids now, buffeted and battered by the current and by the stones of the riverbed. Dazed and exhausted, half paralyzed by grief, Valentine gave up struggling and let himself be carried, down the giant staircase of the river, a tiny plaything spinning and bouncing along. He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms over his head, attempting to minimize the surface he presented to the rocks. The power of the river was awesome. So here is how it ends, he thought, the grand adventure of Valentine of Majipoor, once Coronal, later wandering juggler, now about to be broken to bits by the impersonal and uncaring forces of nature. He commended himself to the Lady whom he thought to be his mother, and gulped air, and went heels over head, head over heels, down and down and down, and struck something with frightening force and thought this must be the end, only it was not the end, and struck something again that gave him an agonizing blow in the ribs, knocking the air from him, and he must have lost consciousness for a time, for he felt no further pain.
And then he found himself lying on a pebble-strewn strand, in a quiet sidestream of the river. It seemed to him that he had been shaken in a giant dice-box for hours, and cast up at random, discarded and useless. His body ached in a thousand places. His lungs felt soggy when he breathed. He was shivering and his skin was covered with goosebumps. And he was alone, under a vast cloudless sky, at the edge of some unknown wilderness, with civilization some unknown distance ahead and his friends perhaps dashed to death on the boulders.
But he was alive. That much was sure. Alone, battered, helpless, grief-stricken, lost . . . but alive. The adventure, then, was not ended. Slowly, with infinite effort, Valentine hauled himself out of the surf and tottered to the riverbank, and let himself carefully down on a wide flat rock, and with numb fingers undid his clothing and stretched out to dry himself under the warm friendly sun. He looked toward the river, hoping to see Carabella come swimming along, or Shanamir with the wizard perched on his shoulder. No one. But that doesn’t mean they’re dead, he told himself. They may have been cast up on farther shores. I’ll rest here for a time, Valentine resolved, and then I’ll go searching for the others, and then, with them or without, I’ll set out onward, toward Ni-moya, toward Piliplok, toward the Isle of the Lady, onward, onward, onward toward Castle Mount or whatever else lies ahead for me. Onward. Onward. Onward.
III
The Book of the Isle of Sleep
—1—
FOR WHAT FELT LIKE MONTHS or perhaps years Valentine lay sprawled naked on his warm flat rock on the pebbly beach where the unruly River Steiche had deposited him. The roar of the river was a constant drone in his ears, oddly soothing. The sunlight enfolded him in a hazy golden nimbus, and he told himself that its touch would heal his bruises and abrasions and contusions, if only he lay still long enough. Vaguely he knew he ought to rise and see about shelter, and begin to search for his companions, but he barely could find the strength to turn from one side to the other.
This was no way, he knew, for a Coronal of Majipoor to conduct himself. Such self-indulgence might be acceptable for merchants or tavernkeepers or even jugglers, but a higher discipline rested upon one who had pretensions to govern. Therefore get to your feet, he told himself, and clothe your body, and start walking northward along the riverbank until you reach those who can help you regain your lofty place. Yes. Up, Valentine! But he remained where he was. He had expended every scrap of energy in him. Coronal or not, during the helter-skelter plunge down the rapids. Lying here like this, he had a powerful sense of the immensity of Majipoor, its many thousands of miles of circumference stretching out beneath his limbs, a planet large enough comfortably to house twenty billion people without crowding, a planet of enormous cities and wondrous parks and forest preserves and sacred districts and agricultural territories, and it seemed to him that if he took the trouble to rise it would be necessary for him to cover all that colossal domain on foot, step by step by step. It seemed simpler to stay where he was.
Something tickled the small of his back, something rubbery and insistent. He ignored it.
'Valentine?'
He ignored that too, for a moment.
The tickling occurred again but by then it had filtered through his fatigue-dulled brain that someone had spoken his name, and therefore that one of his companions must have survived after all. Joy flooded his soul. With what little energy he could muster, Valentine raised his head and saw the small many-limbed figure of Autifon Deliamber standing beside him. The Vroonish wizard was about to prod him a third time.
'You’re alive!' Valentine cried.
'Evidently I am. And so are you, more or less.'
'And Carabella? Shanamir?'
'I have not seen them.'
