Collected Short Fiction, page 1028
The Valentine-Metamorph came at him again. Claws went for his eyes. Valentine dodged, twisted, stabbed. The blade sank deep and the Metamorph reeled back. Valentine trembled in shock, but only for an instant. He turned to confront the next.
This was a new experience for kind, this fighting and killing, and it made his soul ache. But to be gentle now was to invite a quick death. He thrust and cut, thrust and cut. From behind him he heard Carabella call, “How are you doing?”
“Holding—my—own—” he grunted.
Zalzan Gibor, seeing his magnificent wagon on fire, howled and caught a Metamorph by the waist and hurled it into the pyre; two more rushed at him, but another Skandar seized them and snapped them like sticks with each pair of hands. In the frantic melee Valentine caught sight of Carabella wrestling with a Metamorph, forcing it to the ground with the powerful forearm muscles years of juggling had developed; and there was Sleet, ferociously vindictive, pounding another with his boots in savage joy. But the wagon was burning. The wagon was burning. The woods were full of Metamorphs, night was swiftly coming on, the rain was a torrent, and the wagon was burning.
As the heat of the fire increased, die center of the battle shifted from the roadside to the forest, and matters became even more confused, for in the darkness it was hard to tell friend from foe. The Metamorph trick of shapeshifting added another complication, although in the frenzy of the fight they were unable to hold their transformations for long, and what seemed to be Sleet, or Shanamir, or Zalzan Gibor, reverted quickly to its native form.
Valentine fought savagely. He was slippery with his own sweat and the blood of Metamorphs, and his heart hammered mightily with the furious exertion. Panting, gasping, never still an instant, he waded through the tangle of enemies with a zeal that astonished him, never pausing for an instant’s rest. Thrust and cut, thrust and cut—
The Metamorphs were armed with only the simplest of weapons, and though there seemed to be dozens of them, their numbers soon were dwindling rapidly. Lisamon Hultin was doing awful destruction with her vibration-sword, swinging it two-handed and lopping off the boughs of trees as well as the limbs of Metamorphs. The surviving Skandars, spraying energy-bolts wildly around the scene, had ignited half a dozen trees and had littered die ground with fallen Metamorphs. Sleet was maiming and slaughtering as if he could in one wild minute avenge himself for all the pain he fancied the Metamorphs had brought upon him. Khun too was fighting with passionate energy.
As suddenly as the ambush had begun, it was over.
By the light of the fires Valentine could see dead Metamorphs everywhere. Two dead Skandars lay among them. Lisamon Hultin bore a bloody but shallow wound on one thigh; Sleet had lost half his jerkin and had taken several minor cuts; Shanamir had claw marks across his cheek. Valentine too felt some trifling scratches and nicks, and his arms had a leaden ache of fatigue. But he had not been seriously harmed. Deliamber, though—where was Deliamber? The Vroon wizard was nowhere to be seen. In anguish Valentine turned to Carabella and said, “Did the Vroon stay in the wagon?”
“I thought we all came out when it burst afire.”
Valentine frowned. In the silence of the forest the only sounds were the terrible hissing and crackling of fire and the quiet mocking patter of the rain. “Deliamber?” Valentine called. “Deliamber, where are you?”
“Here,” answered a high-pitched voice from above. Valentine looked up and saw the sorcerer clinging to a sturdy bough, fifteen feet off the ground. “Warfare is not one of my skills,” Deliamber explained blandly, swinging outward and letting himself drop into Lisamon Hultin’s arms.
Carabella said, “What do we do now?”
Valentine realized that she was asking him. He was in command, not merely by virtue of his rank but because Zalzan Gibor, kneeling by his brothers’ bodies, seemed stunned by their deaths and by the loss of his precious wagon.
He said, “We must cut through the forest. If we try to take the main road we’ll meet more Metamorphs. Shanamir, what of the mounts?”
“Dead,” the boy sobbed. “Every one. The Metamorphs—”
“On foot, then. A long wet journey it will be, too. Deliamber, how far do you think we are from the River Steiche?”
“A few days’ journey, I suspect. But we have no sure notion of the direction.”
“Follow the slope of the land,” Sleet said. “Rivers won’t lie uphill from here. If we keep going east we’re bound to hit it.”
“Unless a mountain stands in our way,” Deliamber remarked.
“We’ll find the river,” Valentine said firmly. “The Steiche flows into the Zimr at Ni-moya, is that right?”
“Yes,” said Deliamber, “but its flow is turbulent.”
“We’ll have to chance it. A raft, I suppose, will be quickest to build. Come. If we stay here much longer we’ll be set upon again.”
They could salvage nothing from the wagon, neither clothing nor food nor belongings nor their juggling gear—all lost, every scrap, everything but what had been on them when they came forth to meet the ambushers. To Valentine that was no great loss, but to some of the others, particularly the Skandars, it was overwhelming. The wagon had been their home a long while.
It was difficult to get Zalzan Gibor to move from the spot. He seemed paralyzed, unable to abandon the bodies of his brothers and the ruin of his wagon. Gently Valentine urged him to his feet. Some of the Metamorphs, he said, might well have escaped in the skirmish; they could soon return with reinforcements; it was perilous to remain anywhere near here. Quickly they dug shallow graves in the soft forest floor and laid Thelkar and Heitrag Gibor to rest. Then, in steady rain and gathering darkness, they set out in what they hoped was an easterly direction.
For over an hour they walked, until it became too dark to see; then they camped miserably in a little soggy huddle, clinging to one another until dawn. Valentine slept only in brief snatches. He kept expecting Metamorphs to spring upon them out of the blackness.
At first light they rose, cold and stiff, and picked their way onward through the tangled forest. The rain, at least, had stopped during the night. The forest here was less of a jungle, and gave them little challenge, except for an occasional swift rushing stream that had to be forded with care. At one of those, Carabella lost her footing and was fished out by Lisamon Hultin; at another it was Shanamir who was swept downstream and Khun who plucked him to safety. They walked until midday and rested an hour or two, making a scrappy meal of raw roots and berries. Then they went on until darkness.
And passed two more days in the same fashion.
And on the third came to a grove of dwikka-trees, eight fat squat giants in the forest, with monstrous swollen fruits hanging from them.
“Food!” Zalzan Gibor bellowed.
“Food sacred to the forest-brethren,” Lisamon Hultin said. “Be careful!”
The famished Skandar, nevertheless, was on the verge of cutting down one of the enormous fruits with his energy-thrower when Valentine said sharply, “No! I forbid it!”
Zalzan Gibor stared incredulously. For an instant his old habits of command asserted themselves, and he glared at Valentine as if about to strike him, before remembering what a transformation of the roles had occurred at Ilirivoyne. He hesitated, under tight control.
“Look,” Valentine said.
Forest-brethren were emerging from behind every tree. They were armed with their dart blowers; and seeing the slender ape-like creatures encircling them, Valentine in his weariness felt almost willing to be slain. But only for a moment. He recovered his spirits and said to Lisamon Hultin, “Ask them if we may have food and guides to the Steiche. If they ask a price, we can juggle for them with stones or pieces of fruit, I suppose.”
The warrior-woman, twice as tall as the forest-brethren, went into their midst and talked with them a long time. Zalzan Gibor, as the conference went on, muttered and kicked at the ground; he seemed still angry with the forest-brethren for the barricade they had imposed on him back near Dulorn. But Lisamon Hultin was smiling when she returned.
“They are aware,” she said, “that we are the ones who freed their brothers in Dirivoyne!”
“Then we are saved!” cried Shanamir exultantly.
“News travels swiftly in this forest,” Valentine said.
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 dwiklca-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 for itself bordered in many places by high rocky walls. Here and there in its course ugly stone snags rose above the water, and downstream Valentine could see white eddies of rapids. Running this river would be taxing even for experts. Nevertheless, they had no choke. They might otherwise wander for weeks in the dangerous Metamorph land; this river; if it did not kill them, would sweep them onward to Ni-moya in a matter of days.
The building of rafts took a day and a half. Sleet supervised; he seemed to have some skills at construction. 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 Nissimom. There is a broad, sandy beach there. Let us meet at Nissimom Beach.”
“At Nissimom Beach, yes,” Valentine said.
He cut loose the cord that bound his raft to the shore and was carried off into the river.
For the first day the journey was uneventful. There were rapids, but not overly difficult ones, and they poled safely past them. Carabella showed skill at handling the raft, and that skill grew with experience as she deftly steered them around the occasional rocky patches. There was little rain, and the river, though swift, was not so wild that they could not stop occasionally to gather fruit. This vegetarian diet was beginning to bore Valentine, and he felt thin and a little weak, but somewhere ahead was the grand metropolis of Ni-moya, and he still had a purse full of royals against his belt, so there would be fine feasting when at last they returned to civilized territory.
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 Nimoya.
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 do better remaining here in the forest, ruling over his little band, his Skandars and his giant warrior-woman and his friends the jugglers and Shanamir. 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 edge of the horizon, how, 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 desire to rule over others; and if he had come to command this little group, it was more by natural gift and by Zalzan Gibor’s default than out of any overt quest on his part for power. 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 the Lady would guide him if it was appropriate for her to do so, and if the Divine so willed it, he would one day stand again on Castle Mount, and if that were 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—
“Valentine!” Carabella shouted.
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 caught between two snags and was ripped from his grasp; a moment later there was a ghastly grinding sound as the flimsy raft, caught between 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. Nor could he see the others. He imagined he had a glimpse of Shanamir clinging to a boulder, but it could well be illusion.
“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. “Carabella!” he shouted. “Shanamir!”
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 along, 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, the only people who truly mattered to him on this entire gigantic world, 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 of me. Onward. Onward. Onward.
(to be continued next month)
1980
Lord Valentine’s Castle
Readers who began the new Silverberg novel in the November or December issue are no doubt already into the exciting third part of LORD VALENTINE’S CASTLE. If you did miss either of the first two parts, the authors synopsis will, we think, enable you to fully enjoy part three. However, we do have back issues of November and December available at $2.00 each.
