Lord Valentine's Castle

ZALZAN KAVOL HAD HIRED ONE of the grandest fishing-boats on the island, a marvelous turquoise trimaran named Pride of Mardigile. It was a splendid fifty-footer rising nobly on its three sleek hulls, and its sails, spotless and dazzling in the morning sunlight, bore bright vermilion edging that gave the craft a festive, jubilant air. Their captain was a man past middle years, one of the most prosperous fishermen of the island, Grigitor by name, tall and sturdy, with hair down to his waist and skin so vigorous it looked to have been oiled; he was one of those who had rescued Deliamber and Zalzan Kavol, when the first alarms of a sinking ship had reached the island. He had a crew of five, his sons and daughters, all strapping and handsome after his image.

The route of the voyage lay first toward Burbont, less than half an hour’s sail away, and then into an open channel of shallow greenish water that linked the two outermost islands to the rest. The sea-bottom here was of clean white sand, and sunlight penetrated easily to it, setting off patterns of sparkling coruscations that revealed the undersea dwellers, the rip-toads and the twitch-crabs and the big-leg lobsters, and the gaudy-hued multitudes of fish, and the sinister, lurking sand-eels. Once even a small sea-dragon flitted by, far too close to land for its own good and obviously confused; one of Grigitor’s daughters urged that they go after it, but he shook the notion off, saying that their responsibility was to get their passengers swiftly to Rodamaunt Graun.

All morning they sailed, passing three more islands — Richelure, Grialon, Voniaire, said their captain — and at noon they dropped anchor for lunch. Two of Grigitor’s children went over the side to hunt, moving like magnificent animals, naked in the brilliant water, quickly spearing crustaceans and fish with rarely a missed thrust. Grigitor himself prepared the meal, cubes of raw white flesh marinated in a spicy sauce and washed down with cheering pungent green wine. Deliamber withdrew after eating only a little, and perched himself on the tip of one of the outer hulls, staring intently to the north. After a while Valentine noticed, and would have gone to him, but Carabella caught him by the wrist.

'He is in trance,' she said. 'Let him be.'

They delayed their departure after lunch by some minutes, until the little Vroon descended from his place and rejoined them. The wizard looked pleased.

'I have cast my mind forth,' he announced, 'and I bring you good news. Sleet lives!'

'Good news indeed!' Valentine cried. 'Where is he?'

'An island in that group,' said Deliamber, gesturing vaguely with a cluster of tentacles. 'He is with several of Gorzval’s people who escaped by boat from the disaster.'

Grigitor said, 'Tell me which island, and we’ll make for it.'

'It has the shape of a circle, with an opening at one side, and a body of water at its center. The people are dark-skinned and wear their hair in long ringlets, with jewels in their earlobes.'

'Kangrisorn,' said one of Grigitor’s daughters instantly.

Her father nodded. 'Kangrisorn it is,' he said. 'Pull up anchor!'

Kangrisorn lay an hour to the windward, somewhat off the route Grigitor had chartered. It was one of half a dozen small sandy atolls, mere rings of upraised reef surrounding little lagoons, and it must have been uncommon for people of Mardigile to visit it, for long before the trimaran had entered the harbor children of Kangrisorn were flocking out in boats to view the strangers. They were as dark as the Mardigilese were golden, and just as beautiful in their solemn way, with shining white teeth and hair so black it seemed almost blue. With much laughter and waving of arms they guided the trimaran through the entrance to the lagoon, and there, squatting at the edge of the water, was Sleet indeed, looking sunburned and a bit ragged but mainly intact. He was juggling five or six globes of bleached white coral for an audience that consisted of a few dozen islanders and five members of Gorzval’s crew, four humans and a Hjort.

Gorzval seemed apprehensive at encountering his erstwhile employees. He had begun to recover his spirits during the morning’s voyage, but now he grew tense and withdrawn as the trimaran entered the lagoon. Carabella was the first off, splashing through the shallow water to embrace Sleet; Valentine followed close behind. Gorzval lurked to the rear, eyes lowered.

'How did you find us?' Sleet asked.

Valentine indicated Deliamber. 'Sorcery. How else? Are you well?'

'I thought I’d die of seasickness getting here, but I’ve had a day or two to recover.' With a shudder he said, 'And you? I saw you sucked under, and believed all was over.'

'So it seemed,' said Valentine. 'A strange story, which I’ll tell you another time. We are all together again, eh, Sleet? All but Gibor Haern,' he added mournfully, 'who perished in the wreck. But we’ve taken on Gorzval as one of our companions. Come forward, Gorzval! Aren’t you pleased to see your men again?'

Gorzval muttered something indistinct and looked between Valentine and the others, meeting no one’s eyes. Valentine comprehended the situation and turned to the crew people, meaning to ask them to hold no ill will toward the former captain for a disaster far beyond mortal control. He was taken aback to discover the five of them groveling at his feet.

Sleet said, abashed, 'I thought you were dead, my lord. I couldn’t resist telling them my tale.'

'I see,' said Valentine, 'that the news is apt to spread more rapidly than I wish, no matter how solemnly I swear you all to silence. Well, it’s pardonable, Sleet.' To the others he said, 'Up. Up. This crawling in the sand does none of us any good.'

They rose. Their contempt for Gorzval was impossible for them to hide; but it was overshadowed by the astonishment they felt at being in the presence of the Coronal. Of the five, Valentine quickly learned, two — the Hjort and one of the humans — chose to remain on Kangrisorn in the hope of finding, eventually, some way to return to Piliplok and resume their trade. The other three begged to accompany him on his pilgrimage.

The new members of the rapidly expanding band were two women — Pandelon and Cordeine, a carpenter and a sailmender — and a man, Thesme, one of the winchwinders. Valentine bade them be welcome, and accepted pledges of allegiance from them, a ceremony that stirred vague discomfort in him. Yet he was growing accustomed to taking on these trappings of rank.

Grigitor and his children had paid no attention to the kneelings and hand-kissings among the passengers. Just as well: until he had conferred with the Lady, Valentine wished not to spread news across the world of his return to self-awareness. He was still uncertain of his strategy and unsure of his powers. Besides, if he advertised his existence he might draw the attention of the present Coronal, who was not likely to stay his hand if he discovered that a pretender was journeying toward Castle Mount.

The trimaran resumed its voyage. From isle to golden isle it went, staying well within the coastal channels and only occasionally venturing into deeper, bluer waters. Past Lormanar and Climidole they sailed, and Secundail, Blayhar Strand, Garhuven, and Wiswis Keep; past Quile and Fruil; past Dawnbreak, Nissemhold, and Thiaquil; past Roazen and Piplinat; and past the great crescent sand-spit known as Damozal. They stopped at the island of Sungyve for fresh water, at Musorn for fruit and leafy vegetables, at Cadibyre for casks of the young pink wine of that island. And after many days of traveling through these small sun-blessed places they pulled into the spacious harbor of Rodamaunt Graun.

This was a large lush island of mountainous origin, surrounded by black volcanic beaches and equipped along its southern shore with a splendid natural breakwater. Rodamaunt Graun was dominant in the Archipelago, by far the largest in the chain, with a population, so Grigitor asserted, of five and a half million. Twin cities spread out like wings from both sides of the harbor, but the flanks of the island’s looming central peak were also well populated, with dwellings of rattan and skupik-wood rising in neat ranks almost to mid-point. About the last line of houses the slopes were thickly covered with jungle, and at the highest level rose a plume of thin white smoke, for Rodamaunt Graun was an active volcano. The last eruption, said Grigitor, had occurred less than fifty years before. But that was hard to believe, when one looked at the impeccable houses and the unbroken forest growth above them.

Here the Pride of Mardigile would turn back for home, but Grigitor arranged for the voyagers to shift to a trimaran even more noble, the Rodamaunt Queen, which would carry them to the Isle of Sleep. Her skipper was one Namurinta, a woman of regal poise and bearing, with long straight hair as white as Sleet’s and a youthful, unlined face. Her manner was fastidious and quizzical: she studied her assortment of passengers closely, as if trying to determine what pull had drawn such a mixture into an off-season pilgrimage, but she said only, 'If you are refused at the Isle, I will return you to Rodamaunt Graun, but there will be extra costs for your upkeep in that event.'

'Does the Isle often refuse pilgrims?' Valentine asked.

'Not when they come at the proper time. But the pilgrim-ships, as I suppose you know, don’t sail in autumn. There may not be facilities ready for receiving you.'

'We’ve come this far with only minor difficulties,' said Valentine jauntily. He heard Carabella snicker and Sleet make stagy coughing sounds. 'I feel confident,' he went on, 'that we’ll meet no obstacles greater than those we’ve already encountered.'

'I admire your determination,' Namurinta said, and signaled to her crew to prepare for departure.

The Archipelago in its eastern half hooked somewhat to the north, and the islands here were generally unlike Mardigile and its neighbors, being mainly the tops of a submerged mountain chain, not flat coral-based platforms. Studying Namurinta’s charts, Valentine concluded that this part of the Archipelago had once been a long tail of a peninsula jutting out of the southwest corner of the Isle of Sleep, but had been swallowed by some rising of the Inner Sea in ancient times. Only the tallest peaks had remained above water; and between the easternmost island of the Archipelago and the coast of the Isle there now lay some hundreds of miles of open sea — a formidable journey for a trimaran, even so well equipped a trimaran as Namurinta’s.

But the voyage was uneventful. They stopped at four ports — Hellirache, Sempifiore, Dimmid, and Guadeloom — for water and victuals, sailed on serenely past Rodamaunt Ounze, the last island of the Archipelago, and entered Ungehoyer Channel, which separated the Archipelago from the Isle of Sleep. This was a broad but shallow seaway, richly endowed with marine life and heavily fished by the island folk, all but the easternmost hundred miles, which formed part of the holy perimeter of the Isle. In these waters were monsters of a harmless kind, great balloon-shaped creatures known as volevants that anchored themselves to deep rocks and lived by filtering plankton through their gills; these creatures excreted a constant stream of nutrient matter, which sustained the enormous population of life-forms about them. Valentine saw dozens of volevants in the next few days: swollen globular sacks of a deep carmine hue, fifty to eighty feet across at their upper ends, plainly visible just a few feet below the calm surface. They bore dark semicircular markings on their skins, which Valentine imagined were eyes and noses and lips, so that he saw faces peering gravely up from the water, and it seemed to him that the volevants were beings of the deepest melancholy, philosophers of weight and wisdom reflecting eternally on the ebb and flow of the tides. 'They sadden me,' he told Carabella. 'Forever hovering there, tied by their tails to hidden boulders, swaying slowly as the currents move them. How thoughtful they are!'

'Thoughtful! Primitive gasbags, no cleverer than a sponge!'

'But look carefully at them, Carabella. They want to fly, to soar — they look up at the sky, at the whole world of the air, and long to encounter it, but all they can do is hang below the waves, and sway, and fill themselves with invisible organisms. Just in front of their faces lies another world, and it would be death to them to enter it. Are you untouched by that?'