Collected Short Fiction, page 1053
Dominin Barjazid said, “I made you pretty, didn’t I?”
“And made yourself less so,” said Valentine cordially. “Why do you scowl, Dominin? That face was once better known for its smile.”
“You smiled too much, Valentine. You were too easy, too mild, too light of soul to rule.”
“Is that how you saw me?”
“I and many others. I understand you’ve become a wandering juggler these days.”
Valentine nodded. “I needed a trade, after you took away the one I had. Juggling suited me.”
“It would have,” Barjazid said. His voice echoed in the long empty chamber. “You were always best at giving amusement to others. I invite you to return to juggling, Valentine. The seals of power are mine.”
“The seals are yours, but not the power. Your guards have deserted you. The Castle is secure against you.
Come, give yourself up, Dominin, and we will return you to your father’s land.”
“What of the weather-machines, Valentine?”
“Those have been turned back on.”
“A lie! A silly lie!” Barjazid whirled and threw open one of the tall arching windows. A blast of frigid air rushed in so swiftly that Valentine, at the other end of the room, could feel it almost at once. “The machines are guarded by the people I most trust,” said Barjazid. “Not your people, but my own, that I brought from Suvrael. They will keep them off until the order comes from me to turn them on, and if all of Castle Mount turns black and perishes before that order comes, so be it, Valentine. So be it! Will you let that happen?”
“It will not happen.”
“It will,” said Barjazid, “If you remain in the Castle. Go. I grant you safe conduct down the Mount and free passage to Zimroel. Juggle in the western towns, as you did a year ago, and forget this foolishness of claiming the throne. I am Lord Valentine the Coronal.”
“Dominin—”
“Lord Valentine is my name! And you are the wondering juggler Valentine of Zimroel! Go, take up your trade.”
Lightly Valentine said, “It’s a powerful temptation, Dominin. I enjoyed performing, perhaps more than anything I’ve done in my life. Nevertheless, destiny requires me to carry the burdens of government, regardless of my private wishes. Come, now.” He took a step toward Barjazid, another, another. “Come with me, out to the antechamber, so we can show the knights of the Castle that this rebellion is over and the world returns to its true pattern.”
“Stay back!”
“I mean no harm to you, Dominin. In a way I’m grateful to you, for some extraordinary experiences, things that would surely never have befallen me but for—”
“Back! Not another step!”
Valentine continued to advance. “And gratitude, too, for ridding me of that annoying little limp, which interfered with some of the pleasures of—”
“Not—another—step—”
Barely a dozen feet separated them now. Beside Dominin Barjazid was a table laden with the paraphernalia of the judgment-hall, three heavy brazen candlesticks, an imperial orb, and next to it a scepter. Uttering a strangled cry of rage, Barjazid seized a candlestick with both hands and hurled it savagely at Valentine’s head. But Valentine stepped deftly aside and with a neat snap of his hand caught the massive metal implement as it went by. Barjazid hurled another. Valentine caught that too.
“One more,” Valentine said. “Let me show you how it’s done!”
Barjazid’s face was mottled with fury: he choked, he hissed, he snorted in anger. The third candlestick flew toward Valentine. Valentine already had the first two in motion, spinning easily end over end from hand to hand, and it was no task at all for him to snatch the third and fit it into sequence, forming a gleaming cascade in the air before him. Blithely he juggled them, laughing, tossing them ever higher, and how good it felt to be juggling again, to be using the old skills after so long, hand and eye, hand and eye.
“See?” he said. “Like this. We can teach you, Dominin? You only need to learn to relax. Here, throw me the scepter as well, and the orb. I can do five, and maybe even more than that. A pity the audience is so small, but—”
Still juggling, he walked toward Barjazid, who backed away, eyes wide, chin flecked with spittle.
And abruptly Valentine was rocked and swayed by a sending of some sort, a waking dream that hit him with the force of a blow. He rocked back, stunned, and the candlesticks tumbled clangorously to the dark wooden floor. There came a second blow, dizzying him, and a third. Valentine struggled to keep from falling. The game he had been playing with Barjazid was ended now, and some new encounter had begun that Valentine did not comprehend at all.
He rushed forward, meaning to seize his adversary before the force struck him again.
Barjazid retreated, holding his trembling hands before his face. Was this onslaught coming from him, or did he have an ally hidden in the room? Valentine recoiled as that inexorable unseen power thrust against his mind once more, even more numbingly. He shook. He pressed his hands to his temples and tried to collect his senses. Catch Barjazid, he told himself, get him down, sit on him, yell for assistance—
He sprang forward, lunged, seized the false Coronal’s arm. Barjazid yelled and pulled free. Advancing, Valentine sought to comer him, and nearly did, but abruptly, with a wild shriek of fear and frustration, Dominin Barjazid darted past him and went scrambling across the room. He dived into one of the curtained alcoves on the far side, crying, “Help me! Father, help me!”
Valentine followed and ripped away the curtain.
And stood back in astonishment. Concealed in the alcove was a powerfully built, fleshy old man, dark-eyed, glowering, wearing on his forehead a glittering golden circlet, and grasping in one hand some device of ivory and gold, something of straps and hasps and levers. Simonan Barjazid he was, the King of Dreams, the terrifying old haunter out of Suvrael, skulking here in the judgment-room of the Coronal! It was he who had sent the mind-numbing dream-commands that nearly had felled Valentine, and he struggled now to send another but was prevented by the distraction of his own son, who dung hysterically to him begging for help.
Valentine knew this was more than he could handle alone.
“Sleet!” he called. “Carabella! Zalzan Gibor!”
Dominin Barjazid sobbed and moaned. The King of Dreams kicked at him as if he were some bothersome dog nipping at his heels. Valentine edged cautiously into the alcove, hoping to snatch that dread dream-machine from old Simonan Barjazid before he could work more damage with it.
And as Valentine reached for it, something more astounding yet occurred. The outlines of Simonan Barjazid’s face and body began to waver, to blur—
To change—
To turn into something monstrously strange, to become angular and slender, with eyes that sloped inward and a nose that was a mere bump and lips that could scarcely be seen—
A Metamorph.
Not the King of Dreams at all, but a counterfeit, a masquerade King, a Shapeshifter, a Piurivar, a Metamorph Dominin Barjazid screamed in horror and let go of the bizarre figure, recoiling and throwing himself down, quivering and whimpering, against the wall. The Metamorph glared at Valentine in what surely was a unalloyed hatred and hurled the dream-device at him with ferocious violence. Valentine could only partly shield himself; the machine caught him in the chest and knocked him awry, and in the moment the Metamorph rushed past him, dashed frantically to the far side of the room, and in a wild scramble leaped over the sill of the window that Dominin Barjazid had opened, flinging himself out into the night.
Pale, shaken, Valentine turned and saw the room full of people, Sleet, Zalzan Gibor, Deliamber, Shanamir, Carabella, Tunigom, and he could not tell how many others, hastily pressing in through the narrow vestibule. He pointed toward Dominin Barjazid, who lay huddled in a pitiful state of shock and collapse.
“Tunigom, I give you charge of him. Take him to a secure place and see that no harm comes to him.”
“The Pinitor Court, my lord, is safest. And a dozen picked men will guard him every instant.”
Valentine nodded. “Good. I don’t want him left alone. And get a doctor to him: he’s had a monstrous fright, and I think it’s done him harm.” He looked toward Sleet. “Friend, are you carrying a wine flask? I’ve had some strange moments here myself.” Sleet reached a flask to him; Valentine’s hand quivered, and he nearly spilled the wine before he got it to his lips.
Calmer now, he walked to the window through which the Metamorph had leaped. Lanterns gleamed somewhere far below. It was a fall of a hundred feet, or more, and in the courtyard down there he saw figures surrounding something that lay covered with a cloak. Valentine turned away.
“A Metamorph,” he said in bewilderment. “Was it only a dream? I saw the King of Dreams standing there—and then it was a Metamorph—and then it rushed to the window—”
Carabella touched his arm. “My lord, will you rest now? The Castle is won.”
“A Metamorph,” Valentine said again, with wonder in his voice.
“There were Metamorphs also in the hall of the weather-machines,” said Tunigom.
“What?” Valentine stared. “What did you say?”
“My lord, Elidath has just come up from the vaults with a strange story.” Tunigom gestured, and out of the crowd at the back of the room stepped Elidath himself, looking battle-weary, his cloak stained and his doublet tom.
“My lord?”
“The weather-machines—”
“They are unharmed, and the air and warmth go forth again, my lord.”
Valentine let out a long sigh. “Well done! And there were Shapeshifters, you say?”
“The hall was guarded by troops in the uniform of the Coronal’s own guard,” said Elidath. “We challenged them, we ordered them to yield, and they would not, even to me. Whereupon we fought them, and we—slew them, my lord—”
“There was no other way?”
“No other way,” Elidath said. “We slew them, and as they died they—changed—”
“Every one?”
“All were Metamorphs, yes.”
Valentine shivered. Strangeness upon strangeness in this nightmare revolution! He felt exhaustion rushing upon him. The engines of life turned again; the Castle was his, and the false Coronal a prisoner; the world was redeemed, order restored, the threat of tyranny averted. And yet—and yet—there was this new mystery, and he was so terribly tired—
“My lord,” said Carabella, “come with me.”
“Yes,” he said hallowly. “Yes, I’ll rest a little while.” He smiled faintly. “See me to the couch in the robing-room, will you, my love? I think I will rest, an hour or so. When was it that I last slept, do you recall?”
Carabella slipped her arm through his. “It seems like days, doesn’t it?”
“Weeks. Months. Just an hour—don’t let me sleep more than that—”
“Of course, my lord.”
He sank to the couch like one who has been drugged. Carabella drew a coverlet over him and darkened the room, and he curled up, letting his weary body go limp. But through his mind darted luminous images: Dominin Barjazid clinging to that old man’s knees, and the King of Dreams angrily trying to shake him off, all the while waving the strange machine about, and then the shifting of shapes, the eerie Piurivar face glaring at him—Dominin Barjazid’s terrifying cry—the Metamorph rushing toward the open window—again and again, again and again, scenes beyond comprehension acting themselves out in Valentine’s tormented mind—
And sleep came over him gently, slipping up on him as he lay wrestling with the demons of the judgment-hall.
He slept the hour he had asked, and something more than that, for when he woke it was because the bright golden light of morning was in his eyes. He sat up, blinking and stretching. His body ached. A dream, he thought, a wild and bewildering dream of—no, no dream. No dream.
“My lord, are you rested?”
Carabella, Sleet, Deliamber. Watching him. Standing guard over his slumber.
Valentine smiled. “I’m rested, yes. And the night is gone. What has been happening?”
“Little enough,” said Carabella, “except that the air grows warm again, and the Castle rejoices, and word is spreading down the Mount of the change that has come upon the world.”
“The Metamorph who sprang from the window—was it killed?”
“Indeed, my lord,” said Sleet.
“It wore the robes and regalia of the King of Dreams and carried one of his devices. How was that, do you think?”
Deliamber said, “I can make guesses, my lord. I have spoken with Dominin Barjazid—he is the next thing to a madman now and will be a long time healing, if ever—and he told me certain things. Last year, my lord, his father the King of Dreams fell gravely ill and was thought close to death. This was while you still held the throne.”
“I recall nothing of that.”
“No,” said the Vroon, “they made no advertisement of it. But it looked perilous, and then a new physician came to Suvrael, someone of Zimroel who claimed great skills, and indeed the King of Dreams, made a miraculous recovery, like one who had risen from the dead. It was then, my lord, that the King of Dreams placed into his son’s mind the notion of trapping you in Til-omon and displacing you from the throne.”
Valentine gasped. “The physician—a Metamorph?”
“Indeed,” said Deliamber. “Masquerading, by his art, as a man of your race. And masquerading afterward as Simonan Barjazid, I think, until undone by the frenzy and confusion of that struggle in the judgment-room, which caused the metamorphosis to waver and fail.”
“And Dominin? Is he also—”
“No, my lord, he is the true Dominin, and the sight of the thing that pretended to be his father has wrecked his mind. But do you see, it was the Metamorph that put him up to the usurpation, and one might suppose another Metamorph would have replaced Dominin, by and by, as Coronal.”
“And Metamorphs guarding the weather-machines—obeying not Dominin’s orders, but the false King’s! A secret revolution, is it, Deliamber? Not at all a seizure of power by the Barjazid family, but the beginning of a rebellion by the Shapeshifters?”
“So I fear, my lord.”
Valentine stared into emptiness. “Much is explained, now. And much more is cast into disorder.”
Sleet said, “My lord, we must search them out and destroy them wherever they hide among us, and bottle the rest up in Piurifayne where they can do us no harm!”
“Easy, friend,” Valentine said. “Your hatred of Metamorphs still lives, eh?”
“And with reason!”
“Yes, perhaps so. Well, we will search them out and have no secret Metamorphs pretending to be Pontifex or Lady or even the keeper of the stables. But I think also we must reach toward those people and heal them of their anger if we can, or Majipoor will be thrown into endless war.” He rose and fastened his cloak and held his arms high. “Friends, we have work to do, I fear, and no small measure of it. But first comes celebration! Sleet, I name you the chancellor of my restoration-festivities, to plan the banquet and arrange the entertainments and summon the guests. Let the word go forth to Majipoor that all is well, or nearly so, and Valentine’s on his throne again!”
16.
The Confalume throne-room was the largest and grandest of the rooms of the Castle, with glittering gilded beams and fine tapestries and a floor of smooth guma-wood from the Khyntor peaks, a hall of splendor and majesty in which the most significant of imperial ceremonies took place. But rarely had the Confalume throne-room beheld a spectacle such as this.
For high on the great many-stepped Confalume Throne sat Lord Valentine the Coronal, and on a throne to his left, nearly as lofty, sat the Lady his mother, resplendent in a gown all of white, and to his right, on a throne of the same height as the Lady’s, was Homkarst the high spokesman of the Pontifex, for Tyeveras himself had sent his regrets and Homkast in his place. And arrayed before them, virtually filling the room, were the dukes and princes and knights of the realm, such an assembly as had not been seen in one place since the days of Lord Confalume himself—overlords out of far Zimroel, from Pidruid and Til-omon and Narabal, and the Ghayrog duke from Dulorn, and the great ones of Piliplok and Ni-moya and fifty other cities of Zimroel, and a hundred more of Alhanroel, beyond the fifty of Castle Mount. But not all this throng was dukes and princes, for there were humbler people also, Gorzval the stump-armed Skandar and Cordeine who had been his sailmender and Pandelon his carpenter, and Vinorkis the Hjort dealer in haigus hides, and Tisana the old dream-speaker of Falkynkip, and many more of no rank higher than that, standing among these grandees with faces shining in awe.
Lord Valentine rose and saluted his mother, and rendered a salute to Homkast, and bowed as the cries went up, “Long live the Coronal!” And when silence fell he said quietly, “Today we hold grand festival, to celebrate the restoration of the commonwealth and making whole of the order of things. We have entertainment for you this day.”
He clapped his hands and there was music: horns, drums, pipes, a lively and lilting outburst of melody, a dozen players striding into the room, Shanamir leading them. And behind them came the jugglers, in costumes of surpassing beauty, costumes worthy of great princes: Carabella first, and little scar-faced white-haired Sleet just back of her, and then gruff shaggy Zalzan Gibor and the two brothers who remained to him. They carried juggling gear of many kinds, swords and knives and sickles, torches ready to be lit, eggs, plates, gaily painted clubs, and a host of other things. When they reached the center of the room, they took up their positions facing one another along the points of an imaginary star, and stood straight-shouldered and poised.
“Wait,” said Lord Valentine. “There’s room for one more!”
Step by step down the Confalume Throne he came, until he was three steps from the bottom. He grinned at the Lady and gestured to Carabella, who flung a blade at him. He caught it neatly and she threw another, and a third, and he began to juggle them on the steps of the throne, as he had vowed to do so long ago on the Isle of Sleep.
