Lord Valentine's Castle

'I wish we would turn back now, my lord.'

'Courage, Sleet.'

The juggler shrugged and turned away. Valentine peered into the darkness. He did not underestimate the acuteness of Sleet’s hearing, he who juggled blindfolded by sheer sound alone. But to flee this place of marvels because they heard odd rustlings and footsteps in the distance — no, not so soon, not so hastily.

Yet, without communicating his uneasiness to the others, he moved still more cautiously. Ermanar’s ghosts might not exist, yet it was folly to be too rash in this strange city.

And as they were exploring one of the most ornate of the buildings in the central area of palaces and temples, Zalzan Kavol, who was leading the way, stopped short abruptly when a slab of rock, dislodged from above, came clattering down practically at his feet. He cursed and growled, 'Those stinking apes—'

'No, not apes, I think,' said Deliamber quietly. 'There’s something bigger up there.'

Ermanar flashed a light toward the overhanging ledge of an adjoining structure. For an instant a silhouette that might have been human was in view; then it vanished. Without hesitating Lisamon Hultin began to run to the far side of the building, followed by Zalzan Kavol, who brandished his energy-thrower. Sleet and Carabella went the other way. Valentine would have gone with them, but Ermanar caught him by the arm and held him with surprising strength, saying apologetically, 'I may not permit you to place yourself in risk, my lord, when we have no idea—'

'Halt!' came the mighty booming voice of Lisamon Hultin.

There was the sound of a scuffle in the distance, and then that of someone clambering over the mounds of fallen masonry in no very ghostlike way. Valentine longed to know what was happening, but Ermanar was right: to go darting off after an unknown enemy in the darkness of an unfamiliar place was a privilege denied to the Coronal of Majipoor.

He heard grunts and cries, and a high-pitched sound of pain. Moments later Lisamon Hultin reappeared, dragging a figure who wore the starburst emblem of the Coronal on his shoulder. She had her arm locked about his chest and his feet were dangling six inches off the ground.

'Spies,' she said. 'Skulking around up there, keeping watch on us. There were two of them, I think.'

'Where’s the other?' Valentine asked.

'Might have gotten away,' said the giantess. 'Zalzan Kavol went after him.' She dumped her prisoner down before Valentine, and held him to the ground with a foot pressed against his middle.

'Let him up,' Valentine said.

The man rose. He looked terrified. Brusquely Ermanar and Nascimonte checked him for weapons and found none.

'Who are you?' Valentine asked. 'What are you doing here?'

No reply.

'You can speak. We won’t harm you. You have the starburst on your arm. Are you part of the Coronal’s forces?'

A nod.

'Sent out here to trail us?'

Again a nod.

'Do you know who I am?'

The man stared silently at Valentine.

'Are you able to speak?' Valentine asked. 'Do you have a voice? Say something. Anything.'

'I— if I—'

'Good. You can talk. Again: do you know who I am?'

In a thin whisper the captive replied, 'They say you would steal the throne from the Coronal.'

'No,' Valentine said. 'You have it wrong, fellow. The thief is he who sits now on Castle Mount. I am Lord Valentine, and I demand your allegiance.'

The man stared, bewildered, uncomprehending.

'How many of you were up there?' Valentine asked.

'Please, sir—'

'How many?' Sullen silence.

'Let me twist his arm a little,' Lisamon Hultin begged.

'That won’t be necessary.' Valentine moved closer to the cowering man and said gently, 'You understand nothing of this, but all will be made clear in time. I am the true Coronal, and by the oath you swore to serve me, I ask you now to answer. How many of you were up there?'

Conflicts raged in the man’s face. Slowly, reluctantly, be-wilderedly, he replied, 'Just two of us, sir.'

'Can I believe that?'

'By the Lady, sir!'

'Two of you. All right. How long were you following us?'

'Since — since Lumanzar.'

'Under what orders?'

Hesitation again. 'To — to observe your movements and report to camp in the morning.'

Ermanar scowled. 'Which means that other one is probably halfway to the lake by now.'

'You think so?'

It was the rough, harsh voice of Zalzan Kavol. The Skandar strode into their midst and dumped down before Valentine, as though it were a sack of vegetables, the body of a second figure wearing the starburst emblem. Zalzan Kavol’s energy-thrower had seared a hole through him from back to front. 'I chased him about half a mile, my lord. A quick devil he was, too! He was moving more easily than I over the heaps of stones, and starting to pull away from me. I ordered him to stop, but he kept going, and so—'

'Bury him somewhere off the path,' Valentine said curtly.

'My lord? Did I do wrong to kill him?'

'You had no choice,' Valentine said in a softer tone. 'I wish you had managed to catch him. But you couldn’t, so you had no choice. Very well, Zalzan Kavol.'

Valentine turned away. The slaying had shaken him, and he could hardly pretend otherwise. This man had died only because he was loyal to the Coronal, or to the person he believed to be the Coronal.

The civil war had had its first casualty. The bloodshed had begun, here in this city of the dead.

—4—

THERE WAS NO THOUGHT of continuing the tour now. They returned with the prisoner to their camp. And in the morning Valentine gave orders to move on through Velalisier and begin the northeastward swing.

By day the ruined city seemed not as magical, although no less impressive. It was hard to understand how so frail and unmechanical a folk as the Metamorphs had ever moved these giant blocks of stone about; but perhaps twenty thousand years ago they had not been quite so unmechanical. The glowering Shapeshifters of the Piurifayne forests, those people of wicker huts and muddy streets, were only the broken remnant of the race that once had ruled Majipoor.

Valentine vowed to return here, once this business with Dominin Barjazid was settled, and explore the ancient capital in detail, clearing underbrush and excavating and reconstructing. If possible, he thought, he would invite Metamorph leaders to take part in that work — though he doubted they would care to cooperate. Something was needed to reopen lines of communication between the two populations of the planet.

'If I am Coronal again,' he said to Carabella as the cavalcade rode past the pyramids and headed out of Velalisier, 'I intend—'

'When you are Coronal again,' she said.

Valentine smiled. 'When I am Coronal again, yes. I intend to examine the entire problem of the Metamorphs. Bring them back into the mainstream of Majipooran life, if that can be done. Give them a place in the government, even.'

'If they’ll have it.'

'I mean to overcome that anger of theirs,' said Valentine. 'I’ll dedicate my reign to it. Our entire society, our wonderful and harmonious and loving realm, was founded on an act of theft and injustice, Carabella, and we’ve succeeded in teaching ourselves to overlook that.'

Sleet glanced up. 'The Shapeshifters weren’t making full use of this planet. There weren’t twenty million of them on the entire enormous place when our ancestors came here.'

'But it was theirs!' Carabella cried. 'By what right—'

'Easily, easily,' Valentine said. 'There’s no use fighting over the deeds of the first settlers. What’s done is done, and we must live with it. But it’s within our power to change the way we’ve been living with it, and if I’m Coronal again, I—'

'When,' said Carabella.

'When,' Valentine echoed.

Deliamber said mildly, in that far-off way of his that gained the immediate attention of all listeners, 'It may be that the present troubles of the realm are the beginning of the retribution for the suppression of the Metamorphs.'

Valentine stared at him. 'What do you mean by that?'

'Only that we have gone a long way, here on Majipoor, without paying any sort of price for the original sin of the conquerors. The account accumulates interest, you know. And now this usurpation, the evils of the new Coronal, the prospect facing us of war, death and destruction, chaos — perhaps the past is starting to send us its reckoning at last.'

'But Valentine had nothing to do with the oppression of the Metamorphs,' Carabella protested. 'Why should he be the one to suffer? Why was he chosen to be cast down from power, and not some high-handed Coronal of long ago?'