'As I feared,' Valentine murmured dully. He closed his eyes and lowered his head, and in leaden despair lay once more like jetsam.
'Come,' Deliamber said. 'There is a vast journey ahead of us.'
'I know. That’s why I don’t want to get up.'
'Are you hurt?'
'I don’t think so. But I want to rest, Deliamber. I want to rest a hundred years.'
The sorcerer’s tentacles probed and poked Valentine in a dozen places. 'No serious damage,' the Vroon murmured. 'Much of you is still healthy.'
'Much of me isn’t,' said Valentine indistinctly. 'What about you?'
'Vroons are good swimmers, even old ones like me. I am unhurt. We should go on, Valentine.'
'Later.'
'Is this how a Coronal of Majip—'
'No,' Valentine said. 'But a Coronal of Majipoor would not have had to shoot the Steiche rapids on a slapped-together log raft. A Coronal would not have been wandering in this wilderness for days and days, sleeping in the rain and eating nothing but nuts and berries. A Coronal—'
'A Coronal would not allow his lieutenants to see him in a condition of indolence and spiritlessness,' Deliamber said sharply. 'And one of them is approaching right now.'
Valentine blinked and sat up, Lisamon Hultin was striding along the beach toward them. She looked a trifle disarranged, her clothing in shreds, her gigantic fleshy body purpled with bruises here and there, but her pace was jaunty and her voice, when she called out to them, was as booming as ever.
'Hoy! Are you intact?'
'I think so,' Valentine answered. 'Have you seen any others?'
'Carabella and the boy, half a mile or so back that way.'
He felt his spirits soar. 'Are they all right?'
'She is, at any rate.'
'And Shanamir?'
'Doesn’t want to wake up. She sent me out to look for the sorcerer. Found him sooner than I thought. Phaugh, what a river! That raft came apart so fast it was almost funny!'
Valentine reached for his clothing, found it still wet, and, with a shrug, dropped it to the rocks. 'We must get to Shanamir at once. Have you news of Khun and Sleet and Vinorkis?'
'Didn’t see them. I went into the river and when I came up I was alone.'
'And the Skandars?'
'No sign of them at all.' To Deliamber she said, 'Where do you think we are, wizard?'
'Far from anywhere,' the Vroon replied. 'Safely out of the Metamorph lands, at any rate. Come, take me to the boy.'
Lisamon Hultin scooped Deliamber to her shoulder and strode back along the beach, while Valentine limped along behind them, carrying his damp clothing over his arm. After a time they came upon Carabella and Shanamir camped in an inlet of bright white sand surrounded by thick river-reeds with scarlet stems. Carabella, battered and weary-looking, wore only a brief leather skirt. But she seemed in reasonably good shape. Shanamir lay unconscious, breathing slowly, his skin an odd dark hue.
'Oh, Valentine!' Carabella cried, springing up and running to him. 'I saw you swept away — and then — and then — Oh, I thought I’d never see you again!'
He held her close against him. 'And I thought the same. I thought you were lost to me forever, love.'
'Were you hurt?'
'Not permanently,' he said. 'And you?'
'I was tossed and tossed and tossed until I couldn’t remember my own name. But then I found a calm place and I swam to shore, and Shanamir was already there. But he wouldn’t wake up. And Lisamon came out of the underbrush and said she’d try to find Deliamber, and — Will he be all right, wizard?'
'In a moment,' said Deliamber, arranging his tentacle-tips over the boy’s chest and forehead, as if making some transfer of energy. Shanamir grunted and stirred. His eyes opened tentatively, closed, opened again. In a thick voice he began to say something, but Deliamber told him to be silent, to lie still, to let the strength flow back into him.
There was no question of attempting to move on that afternoon. Valentine and Carabella constructed a crude shelter out of reeds; Lisamon Hultin assembled a meager dinner of raw fruit and young pininna-sprouts; and they sat in silence beside the river, watching a spectacular sunset, bands of violet and gold streaking the great dome of the sky, reflections in luminous tones of orange and purple in the water, undertones of pale green, satiny red, silken crimson, and then the first puffs of gray and black, the swift descent of night.
In the morning they all felt able to proceed, though stiff from a night in the open. Shanamir showed no ill effects: Deliamber’s care and the natural resilience of youth had restored his vitality.
Patching together their clothing as best they could, they set out to the north, following the beach until it gave out, then continuing through the forest of gawky androdragma-trees and flowering alabandina that flanked the river. The air was soft and mild here, and the sun, descending in dappled splotches through the treetops, gave a welcome warmth to the weary stragglers.
In the third hour of the march Valentine caught the scent of fire just ahead, and what smelled very much like the aroma of grilled fish. He jogged forward, salivating, prepared to buy, beg, if necessary steal, some of that fish, for it had been more days than he cared to count since he had last tasted cooked food. Down a rough talus slope he skidded, into sunlight on white pebbles, so bright he could barely see. In the glare he made out three figures crouched over a fire by the river’s edge, and when he shaded his eyes he discovered that one was a compact human with pale skin and a startling shock of white hair, and another was a long-legged blue-skinned being of alien birth, and the third a Hjort.
'Sleet!' Valentine cried. 'Khun! Vinorkis!'
He ran toward them, slipping and sliding over the rocks.
They watched his wild approach calmly, and when he was close by them Sleet, in a casual manner, handed him a stake on which was spitted a fillet of some pink-fleshed river fish.
'Have some lunch,' Sleet said amiably.
Valentine gaped. 'How did you get so far ahead of us? What did you build this fire with? How did you catch the fish? What have you—'
'Your fish will get cold,' Khun said. 'Eat first, questions after.'
Valentine took a hasty bite — he had never tasted anything so delicious, a tender moist meat splendidly seared, surely as elegant a morsel as had ever been served in the feasts on Castle Mount — and, turning, called to his companions to come down the slope. But they were already on their way, Shanamir whooping and cavorting as he ran, Carabella gracefully darting over the rocks, Lisamon Hultin, bearing Deliamber, pounding thunderously toward him. 'There’s fish for all!' Sleet proclaimed. They had caught at least a dozen, which circled sadly in a shallow rock-rimmed pool near the fire. Efficiently Khun plucked them forth and split and gutted them. Sleet held them briefly over the flame and passed them to the others, who ate ravenously.
Sleet explained that when their raft had broken up they had found themselves clinging to a fragment some three logs wide, and had managed to hang on all the way through the rapids and far downstream. They vaguely remembered having seen the beach where Valentine was cast ashore, but they had not noticed him on it as they passed by, and they had drifted another few miles before they had recovered enough from their rapids-running to want to let go of their logs and swim to the bank. Khun had caught the fish bare-handed: he had, said Sleet, the quickest hands he had ever seen, and would probably make a magnificent juggler. Khun grinned — the first time Valentine had seen anything but a grim expression on his face.
'And the fire?' Carabella asked. 'You started it by snapping your fingers, I suppose?'
'We attempted it,' Sleet answered smoothly. 'But it proved to be strenuous work. So we walked over to the village of fisherfolk just beyond the bend and asked to borrow a light.'
'Fisherfolk?' Valentine said, startled. 'An outpost of Liimen,' said Sleet, 'who evidently don’t know that it’s their racial destiny to sell sausages in the western cities. They gave us shelter last night, and have agreed to ferry us up to Ni-moya this afternoon, so that we can wait for our friends at Nissimorn Beach.' He smiled. 'I suppose we’ll need to hire a second boat now.'
Deliamber said, 'Are we that close to Ni-moya?'
'Two hours by boat, so I’m told, to the place where the rivers flow together.'
Suddenly the world seemed less huge to Valentine, and the chores that awaited him less overwhelming. To have eaten a real meal once again, and to know that a friendly settlement lay nearby, and that he would soon be leaving the wilderness behind, was tremendously cheering. Only one thing troubled him now: the fate of Zalzan Kavol and his three surviving brothers.
The Liiman village was indeed close at hand — perhaps five hundred souls, short flat-headed dark-skinned people whose triple sets of bright fiery eyes regarded the wanderers with little curiosity. They lived in modest thatched huts close beside the river, and raised an assortment of crops in small gardens to supplement the catch that their fleet of crude fishing-boats brought in. Their dialect was a difficult one, but Sleet seemed able to communicate with them and managed to arrange not only another boat but also the purchase, for a couple of crowns, of fresh clothing for Carabella and Lisamon Hultin.
In early afternoon they set out, with four taciturn Liimen as their crew, on the journey to Ni-moya.
The river ran as swift as ever here, but there were few rapids of any consequence, and the two boats sped nicely along through countryside increasingly populous and tame. The steep riverbanks of the uplands gave way, down here, to broad alluvial plains of heavy black silt, and shortly an almost continuous strip of farming villages appeared.
Now the river widened and grew calm, becoming a broad, even waterway with a deep blue glint. The land here was flat and open, and though the settlements on both sides were doubtless goodly cities with populations of many thousands, they seemed mere hamlets, so dwarfed were they by the gigantic surroundings. Ahead lay a dark, immense headwater that seemed to span the entire horizon as though it were the open sea.
'River Zimr,' announced the Liiman at the helm of Valentine’s boat. 'Steiche ends here. Nissimorn Beach on left.'
Valentine beheld a huge crescent strand, bordered by a dense grove of palm trees of a peculiarly lopsided shape, purplish fronds jutting up like ruffled feathers. As they drew near, Valentine was startled to see a raft of crudely trimmed logs on the beach, and, sitting beside it, four giant shaggy four-armed figures. The Skandars
