Now that he had seen the first of the pa.s.ses through which they must go, Harpirias realized that Korinaam had been right. Even without the added complication of a snowstorm such as this one, there was no way they could defend themselves against attack by the mountaineers. Best to give the appearance of coming in peace, and depend on the good will of the tribesmen, such as it might be, than to offer the pretense of significant might, when in fact any show of strength by an army of outlanders would be unsustainable in these easily defended heights.

The summer sun, high and powerful now, swiftly consumed the freshly fallen snow. White drifts and spires turned quickly to soft slush and then became brooks of fast-moving runoff; enormous fluffy ma.s.ses clinging to high rock faces broke free and came gliding down to land in silent billowy explosions; deep puddles sprang up almost instantaneously; the roadbed turned to a sticky wallow, over which the floaters hovered in fastidious disdain, rising an extra two or three feet from ground level to avoid stirring up muddy eddies. The air grew strangely bright, with a hard crystalline edge on it not seen in lower lat.i.tudes. Birds of the most splendid hues, with plumages of blazing scarlet and incandescent green and deep, radiant blue, came forth in sudden innumerable mult.i.tudes and swarmed overhead like throngs of lovely insects. It was almost impossible to believe that only an hour earlier a terrible snowstorm had been raging here.

"Look there," Korinaam said. "Haiguses. Coming out to hunt for stragglers after the storm. Nasty things, they are."

Harpirias followed the Metamorph's pointing arm. Some twenty or thirty small thick-furred animals had popped out of caves halfway up the rock slopes bordering the valley and were scuttering quickly down from boulder to boulder, moving with an awesome agility. Most had reddish fur, a few were black. All had large gleaming eyes, a furious blood-red crimson in color, and each was armed with a trio of long needle-sharp horns that splayed out menacingly at wide angles from its flat broad forehead.

They moved as a pack, surrounding smaller animals and hounding them out into the open, where they were speared and quickly devoured. Harpirias shuddered. Their efficiency and insatiability were impressive and frightening.

"They'll attack you or me the same way," said Korinaam. "Eight or ten of them can bring down even a Skandar. Leap straight up like fleas, gore him in the belly, swarm all over him. The March-men hunt them for their fur. Mainly the black ones, which are rarer than the red, and prized accordingly."

"I would think they'd be a lot rarer, if they're the only ones that get hunted."

"A black haigus isn't all that easy to catch. They're smarter and faster than the red ones, too: a superior breed in every way. You'll see only the great hunters wearing black haigus robes. And the king of the Othinor, naturally."

"Then I should be wearing black haigus too," said Harpirias. "To show him how important I am. A stole, at the very minimum, if not a full robe. I have some skill at hunting, you see, and - "

"Leave the haiguses for the haigus-hunters, my friend. They know how to deal with them. You don't want to go anywhere near those foul little animals, no matter how much of a hunter you may be. A safer way of showing King Toikella how important you are -would be by conducting yourself before him with true kingly presence and majesty-as though you are a Coronal."

"As though," said Harpirias. "Well, why not? I can do that. There's already been one Coronal in my family, after all."

"Has there, now?" Kormaam asked, without much interest.

"Prestimion. Coronal to the great Pontifex Confalume. When he became Pontifex himself, his Coronal was Lord Dekkeret. More than a thousand years ago, this was."

"Indeed," said Korinaam. "My knowledge of your race's history is a little vague. But if you have a Coronal's blood in your veins, well, then, you should be capable of comporting yourself like one."

"Like one, perhaps. But not CD one."

"What do you mean?"

"The Vroon from the Department of Antiquities who gave me this job -Heptil Magloir, that was his name - suggested that things would go easier for me up here if I told the Othinor that I actually was the Coronal."

"He did, did he?" Korinaam chuckled. "In truth it wouldn't actually be such a bad idea. The Coronal is the person they're expecting, you know. You do know that, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. But I'm under no formal instructions to pretend that I'm Lord Ambinole. Nor am I going to do any such thing."

"Even for the sake of easing the negotiations?"

"Even," said Harpirias sharply. "It's entirely out of the question."

"Well then, prince," Korinaam said, with a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt or perhaps mockery in his inflection. "It's out of the question, I suppose. If you say so."

"I say so, yes."

The Shapeshifter laughed quietly again. Harpirias felt a burst of irritation at being condescended to this way. How very much like a Shapeshifter it was, he thought, to be willing to engage in such chicanery as that.

It was centuries now since the Piurivars-the Shapeshifters, the Metamorphs, a people with as many names as they had faces-had won full political equality on Majipoor; but, like many young aristocrats of the Mount, Harpinas still harbored some residual prejudices against them. He believed, not entirely incorrectly, that the Shapeshifters were tricky and devious, a race of schemers, slippery and unpredictable, who had never completely reconciled themselves to the occupation of their planet by the billions of humans and other species that had colonized Majipoor nearly fifteen thousand years before. An attempt by the Piurivars hundreds of years ago in the time of Valentine Pontifex to drive all the intruders from their world had failed, as inevitably it had had to, and a detente between the outnumbered Shapeshifters and the dominant humans of Majipoor had been negotiated to everybody's presumable satisfaction. But still-still - You could never trust them, Harpirias believed. No matter how sincere and helpful they might sound, it was never a good idea to take anything they said at face value, because there was almost always some hidden double meaning, some sly and treacherous subtext to their words. And of course Korinaam would see nothing wrong with Harpirias's letting himself pa.s.s as Lord Ambinole before the mountaineers. A Shapeshifter- one who by nature was able to a.s.sume virtually any physical form he liked-would have no problems with an immoral little masquerade like that.

The caravan moved onward, past the place of the haiguses, heading out onto the widening plateau. The afternoon now had become bright and clear, and they advanced under a cloudless sky rich with light. Scarcely any vestige remained of the screeching snowstorm through which they had been riding only a few hours before. The air was calm, the sun was high and strong. Scattered dark patches of dampness, speedily vanishing, were the only visible signs of the snowy fury that had whirled down upon them then.

A single huge triangular mountain, like a giant's tooth thrusting upward from the valley, rose directly before them at a great distance, deep purple against the blue of the sky. Stony sharp-contoured hills, covered only by thin and widely s.p.a.ced stands of graceless scrubby trees and some faint shadowy splashes of bluish gra.s.s, bordered their path on both sides as they rode toward it. Now and then Korinaam pointed out animals: the imposing white-furred bulk of a steetmoy standing at the tip of an inaccessible crag; a herd of graceful mazigotivel leaping from one strip of gra.s.s to another to graze; a keen-eyed mountain hawk making slow, purposeful circles high overhead.

To Harpirias these Marches seemed to be a place that dwelled perpetually at the edge of some mighty drama. The silence, the immensity of the vistas, the clearness and brightness of the air, the strangeness of the tortured landscape and its few inhabitants - everything intensified the potent impact of the place and kindled high wonder in him. For all his anger at the chain of events that had brought him to these mountains, he could not now regret being here, nor did he doubt he would ever forget the splendor of these sights.

At this time of year the sun remained aloft in these lat.i.tudes far into what Harpirias regarded as the normal hours of the night. Since the day did not seem to end, he wondered whether Konnaam would keep them riding onward until midnight or later; but just as hunger was beginning to announce itself to him, the Shapeshifter told him to give the order for a leftward turn into a side canyon opening just before them.

"There's an encampment of March-men in there," Korinaam explained. "They spend their summers in this place. You see the black smoke of the campfire rising, do you? They'll sell us meat for our dinner."

The mountaineers came out to greet them well before the caravan had reached their camp. Evidently they knew Korinaam, and had dealt with him many times before, because they greeted him cordially enough, and there was a long exchange of effusive compliments in a rough, barking kind of mountaineer lingo of which Harpirias could understand only occasional words.

It was Harpirias's first encounter with the nomads of the Marches. He had expected them to be more or less like wild beasts in human form, and indeed they were dressed in roughly sewn hides and not very clean-smelling ones at that, nor did any of them appear to have washed in recent days. At a glance, no one would mistake them for citizens of Ni-moya.

But a close look revealed them to be much less savage than he had imagined. In truth they were robust, vigorous, articulate people with ready smiles and bright alert eyes, who had, actually, very little about them that was primitive or alien. Give them a haircut and a bath and an outfit of clean city clothes and they would pa.s.s easily in a crowd. The Skandars, immense hulking four-armed figures covered all over with coa.r.s.e s.h.a.ggy fur, were far wilder-looking creatures.

The mountain folk gathered around the travelers in good-natured excitement, offering little trinkets of bone and crude leather sandals for sale. Harpirias bought a few things as mementos of the trip. Some, who spoke more intelligibly than the rest, bombarded him with questions about Ni-moya and other places in Zimroel; and when he told them that in fact he came from Castle Mount, and had lived only a short while in Ni-moya, they grew even more animated, and asked him if it was true that the Coronal's castle had forty thousand rooms, and wanted to know what sort of man Lord Ambinole was, and whether Harpirias himself lived in a grand palace with many servants. Then too they wanted tales of the senior ruler, the Pontifex Taghin Gawad, who was even more mysterious to them, since he never left his imperial seat in the Labyrinth of Alhanroel. Did he really exist, or was he only a figure of myth? If he existed, why had he not picked his own son to be Coronal, instead of the unrelated Ambinole? For what reason were there two monarchs in the world at all, an elder and a younger?

A simple folk, yes. Accustomed to a harsh life, but not unfamiliar with the luxuries of the cities. Most of them had been down into the more civilized parts of Zimroel more than once; a few, apparently, had lived for extended periods in one city or another. They had rejected them, that was all: this was where they preferred to live. But they had not cut themselves off entirely from the great world whose northernmost extremity they happened to inhabit. Simple and unsophisticated they might be, yes, but they were far from savage.

"You'll see real savages soon enough," Korinaam said. "Wait until we reach the country of the Othinor."

Harpirias feasted that evening on skewers of grilled meat of a kind unknown to him, and drank mug after mug of a thin, acrid green beer that seemed less intoxicating than it turned out to be. The sun hovered above the rim of the nearby mountains far into the night, and even when it finally dropped from view the sky remained strangely light. He slept in his floater, a fitful and troublesome night's sleep, punctuated by fragmentary dreams and long spells of wakefulness, and awakened with a sour taste in his mouth and an all too predictable throbbing in his head.

In the morning the caravan rolled onward, continuing northward across the plateau. The day was clear and crisp, no sign at all of any new snowstorm. But the terrain grew progressively more bleak hour by hour. With every mile they covered the elevation of the plateau increased moderately but perceptibly, so that Harpirias, looking back, was able to see the road they had traversed, lying far below them.

In this high country the air was chilly even at midday, and there were no more trees here, nor was there much vegetation of any kind, only a few small, practically leafless bushes and isolated sc.r.a.ps of gra.s.s. Mainly the landscape consisted of bare rocky hills covered with old gray crusts of ice, over which lay the light dusting of yesterday's storm, barely melted here at all. In the distance, now and then, the fires of other March-men encampments made dark trails of smoke against the sky, but they had no other meetings with any of the mountain folk.

They came at last to the triangular mountain that had stood before them since the last pa.s.s: Elminan, it was, the Steadfast Sister. Its true size now became apparent, for at close range it was like an unanswerable wall filling the entire sky with the gigantic question that it posed.

"There is no way over it," said Korinaam. "It can be climbed on this side, but on the other there is no descending. All we can do is go around it."

Which they did: a journey of some days, through rough and ragged country made intractable by long miles of icy ridges hard as iron.

This was a land of wild and hungry beasts that roved with impunity. One morning a pack of ten or twelve shambling great-haunched creatures bigger than Skandars approached the floaters and began energetically to rock them, as if hoping to tip them over and crack them open from below. Harpirias heard one pounding with the force of a giant hammer against the roof of his vehicle. "Khulpoins," Korinaam said. "Very disagreeable."

Harpirias took his energy-thrower from its rack. "I'll try a warning shot, perhaps, to scare them off."

"Useless. Nothing scares them. Give me the weapon."

Reluctantly Harpirias let the Shapeshifter take it from him. Korinaam opened the hatch of the floater a little way and poked the energy-thrower's tube through. Harpirias had a glimpse of wild fiery eyes, slavering jaws, a row of teeth like yellow scythes. Korinaam sighted calmly along the barrel and fired. There was a chilling howl of pain and the khulpoin sprang away from the floater, streams of blood spurting in startling violet gouts from a gaping hole in its shoulder.

"You only wounded it," Harpirias said, with some contempt.

"Exactly. Maximum blood flow, that's the trick. Watch what happens."

The khulpoin, roaring, had begun to run in a lopsided staggering way across the icy ridges, biting frantically at the wound in its shoulder as it went. A trail of purple blood sprang up behind it. Instantly its companions left off their attack on the caravan and gave pursuit. They caught up with it a hundred yards away, surrounding it, clawing at it, leaping upon it as it fell. Even at this distance their growls of satisfaction reverberated through the floater with appalling force.

"Now we leave them to their meal," said Korinaam, sending the floater into high acceleration. Harpirias looked back only once, wincing at what he saw.

A day and a night and a day and a night more, and all the while purple Elminan stood above them like a scornful sentinel; and then at last they reached the mountain's western edge and began to pa.s.s around to the far side of it. That transition took another day and a half, until Harpirias found himself looking up at Elminan's north face, a horrifying vertical slab, a sheer straight drop that terminated in a pile of tremendous boulders at ground level. Small wonder there could be no traveling over this mountain, but only around it.

The country beyond was desert-dry and altogether stark. From time to time, as they crossed it, lightning would break without warning or apparent cause out of a cloudless sky, striking the ground with the vehemence of an angry G.o.d's wrath and sending up a quick puff of flame. Even Korinaam seemed distressed by this place, and they put it behind them as quickly as they could.

The last of the nine great mountains of the Marches could be seen on the horizon now: two of them lay to the east, Thail and Samaril, the Wise Sister and the Cruel Sister, and to the west, so far away that it was no more than a dark nubbin against the sky, was triple-peaked Kantavinorka, the Eldest Sister. But the route that Korinaam was following took them straight onward, ever northward, past the last campfire of the March-men, past the northernmost zone of known exploration, deep into an empty ice-locked wilderness of perpetual winter, as silent as though it stood under some solemn enchantment. It seemed to Harpirias that they were heading for the roof of the world.

Had anyone ever ventured here before, in all the history of Majipoor? Yes, yes, it must be so: it was clear that Korinaam was familiar with these roads and knew where he was going.

None the less this place seemed to Harpirias like a virgin world, untouched, unknowable. The familiar cities of Majipoor, lying somewhere far behind him in the warm happy haze of summer, had ceased to be real for him: they were dream-cities now, myth-cities, places that had sprouted in the fertile compost of his imagination but could not possibly have any tangible existence. The inconceivably great curve of the giant planet, stretching on and on behind him into the unknown south polar regions, no longer had any substance for him. Only this was real, this bitter land of snow and mist and gleaming rocky walls. Would the journey ever end? No, no, no: he became convinced that he was fated to go on and on forever, deeper and deeper into these bleak and sterile mysteries, led eternally onward by this somber, enigmatic Shapeshifter in a journey to the end of time and s.p.a.ce.

But journeys end, even this one.

Korinaam, one morning, gestured toward a dark line that lay against the horizon from east to west, what appeared to be an unbroken vertical wall of stone a hundred times the height of a man that sealed them off from any hope of further advance.

"The domain of the Othinor," he said.

Harpirias looked around, mystified. "Where?"

"Behind that line of mountains."

"But there's no way through!"

"Oh, yes, prince," said Korinaam. "One way. Just one."

It was a wedge-shaped opening in the rock face, a mere crack hardly wader than the floaters themselves. Korinaam needed two days to find it, and there were moments -when Harpirias was convinced that the Metamorph had no real idea of where it was; but then, suddenly, the narrow entrance presented itself to them. Korinaam brought the floater to a halt, opened its hatch, signaled to Harpirias to dismount.

"We must enter on foot," the Shapeshifter told him. "It's the only way possible. Come: follow me."

Harpirias disliked leaving the floaters behind; but obviously there was no choice. The vehicles could never fit through this little breach in the rock. Arranging his troops in a double column, the biggest and fiercest-looking Skandars in front, he took his position at the head of the line with Korinaam beside him and marched through into the realm of the Othinor.

He found himself in a secret world of extraordinary beauty and strangeness.

The looming snow-crowned mountain palisade that hid this place from the awareness of outsiders ran off to the right and left, then curved inward as though to meet and unite with itself, somewhere not too far to the north-thus creating a deep, roughly elliptical pocket canyon, entirely enclosed and shielded by lofty walls of black stone. Within lay a flat shimmering snow field, glinting brilliantly under the noonday sun; and at the farther end of this broad plaza, cl.u.s.tered at the foot of the rock wall, was a shining city made all of ice: st.u.r.dy buildings two and even three stories high fashioned from square-hewn blocks of the stuff, laid with impressive precision one atop another and showily bedecked with a bizarre, complex array of fanciful icy parapets and turrets. From their myriad angular surfaces came a thousand thousand dazzling beams of reflected sunlight, like a swarm of diamonds tumbling through the air.

Into this sheltered place the sun would intrude, Harpirias calculated, only for a few hours at a time on just a few days of midsummer. The steep angle at which the canyon wall ascended probably kept the village of the Othinor in shadow all the rest of the year: a claustrophobic place of darkness and mystery, cold and grim. But just now it was radiantly lovely.

As he stood gazing wonderstruck at this eerie little frostbound empire of the high country, figures emerged from the city of ice and began to run across the open plaza toward them.

"The Othinor," Korinaam said. "Remain calm, make no menacing gestures."

They looked like demons. The name "Othinor," Korinaam had explained, meant either "The Hidden Ones" or "The Holy Ones" in the native language: which one was the correct translation was still uncertain. But there was nothing very holy about those who came charging forward now. There were perhaps twenty of them, a band of snarling, hairy, uncouth-looking men, dressed in haphazardly sewn pelts of fur, with jagged stripes of clashing colors painted across their faces and arms. Though they appeared to be armed only with spears and crude swords, they looked ready and eager to go on the offensive against the newcomers.

Harpirias glanced back and saw that some of his Skandars were stirring uneasily. He heard the click of energy-throwers being put in readiness.

"No weapons," he said sharply. "Just stand your ground, and take no action unless we're actually attacked."

It was difficult, even so, to look on nonchalantly as this motley horde of howling devils came rushing toward them. Harpirias threw an uncertain look at Korinaam, who only smiled and said, "They aren't going to harm us. They know who I am and they understand that I've come back with good news for them."

"I hope you're right," muttered Harpirias.

"Hold both your arms outstretched with the palms facing forward: it's a sign of peaceful intentions. Look as dignified and regal as you can and don't say a thing."

Harpirias struck the pose, feeling more than a little foolish. In another moment the Othinor had reached them and surrounded them, capering and dancing in an almost comic show of barbaric force, shouting, sticking out their tongues, waving their swords and spears in their faces with theatrical ardor.

Perhaps that's all it is, thought Harpirias: a show, a staged display of force. Their little way of signifying to strangers that they are not a people to be trifled with.

Korinaam was speaking now: loudly and slowly and clearly, uttering harsh thick-tongued words that had the sound of mere gibberish, though the odd word or two sounded almost familiar. One of the Othinor, a tall gaunt-faced man more elaborately robed and painted than the others, offered a reply, speaking with much greater rapidity; and after a pause Korinaam spoke again, apparently repeating his previous declaration. So it went, for some minutes, one long bewildering stream of palaver after another.

The language of these people, Harpirias began to see, was some distant relative to the language that was spoken everywhere on Majipoor. Like the tongue the March-men spoke, it was a transformed and distorted form of it, scarcely recognizable to a city-dweller. But the divergence had gone even further in this remote northern region. The March-men's speech was actually just a rough-and-ready dialect of standard Majipoori; the strange lingo spoken here, developed during thousands of years of isolation, seemed to have become virtually a different language. How -well, Harpirias wondered, did Kormaam understand it?

Well enough, apparently. The Othinor had halted their grotesque capering and were standing quietly in a circle around them. The one who had replied to Korinaam originally-was he the king? No, probably just a priest, Harpirias decided - still was speaking with him, but in a less formal, more conversational way; some of the others, after peering at Harpirias's Skandars and Ghayrogs in unconcealed fascination at the sight of such alien beings, now came up to them to carry out an inspection at closer range.

An Othinor gingerly put his fingertips to the smooth, rigid scales of Mizguun Troyzt, the Ghayrog floater technician, and lightly rubbed them. Though Mizguun Troyzt's cold unblinking eyes remained expressionless, his serpentine hair writhed in emphatic annoyance. He backed away an inch or two, but the Othinor reached out further.

"I do not want to be touched like this," the Ghayrog said to Harpirias, between clenched jaws.

"Nor I," said Eskenazo Marabaud, the captain of the Skandars. An Othinor, standing on tiptoes, had reached up to tug the dense reddish hair that covered the Skandar's great slab of a chest, and now was pulling at the lower of Eskenazo Marabaud's two pairs of arms as though to find out whether they were really attached to his body.

Harpirias fought back laughter. But all the Othinor now were poking and prodding energetically at the Skandars and Ghayrogs; and he saw that in another moment there was likely to be an incident. "You'd better put a stop to this," he said to Korinaam.

"There is no help for it," the Shapeshifter said. "It is a natural curiosity on their part. Your men will have to get used to it."

"And how long am I supposed to stand with my arms out like this?"

"You can put them down now. We are officially admitted to the village. The priest here tells me that King Toikella is looking forward with much pleasure to making your acquaintance. So come, now, prince: to the royal palace."

The palace of the Othinor monarch was, predictably, the grandest of the buildings of the village, a three-storied structure at the extreme eastern end, its flat white facade covered from top to bottom with a scrollwork of fantastic interlaced ice-carvings of the most intricate kind. Within, though, it turned out to be a single cavernous room, enormously high and broad, with no supporting columns. Such construction, thought Harpirias, must surely strain the tensile strength of the ice-blocks out of which the place had been built to its absolute limits.

The great hall was dark and smoky and dank. Its air was stiflingly close, unexpectedly warm, with a foul fishy aroma. Heavy weavings hung from the walls and the floor was strewn with dried rushes that crunched nastily under foot. The only illumination came from a large leather-walled tank, set in a deep pit in the very center of the room, which held a pool of dark oil of some unfamiliar sort that was burning slowly with a bluish flickering glow. Behind it sat King Toikella high atop an astounding platformlike throne made of scores of colossal bones, a whole charnel house of them, tightly and elegantly wedged and woven together-thighbones, ribs, immense curving tusks, shoulderblades, jawbones, an awesome royal seat constructed entirely from the bodies of the formidable beasts that roamed this icy land.

The king himself was well worthy of such a throne: a gigantic potbellied man, entirely bald, strikingly ugly, naked except for a strip of leather around his waist and an array of bone beads and long yellow teeth dangling from a string on his chest. His face and back and shoulders were striped with bright streaks of paint. In his left hand he held a great gross gobbet of b.l.o.o.d.y, greasy meat, charred on one side but otherwise practically raw, which he had been gnawing on as Harpirias and Korinaam entered. A bevy of half-naked women, most of them as fat and ugly as he was-wives? concubines? royal princesses?-lolled at the foot of the throne.

The Shapeshifter stepped forward, struck what was evidently a ceremonial pose of submission-arms out high, palms turned forward-and greeted the king with a long, slow speech, altogether unintelligible to Harpirias. The king was silent for a time when Korinaam had finished. He tore off a chunk of meat and chewed it reflectively. He looked Harpirias over with care. Then - slowly, solemnly-he rose to his full majestic height, the meat still in his mouth, and spoke for a long while in the deepest voice Harpirias had ever heard come from a human throat. It was a low rumbling growl more like a Skandar's voice than a man's.

When he had finished he pulled another whopping piece of meat from the haunch in his hand and tossed it in an offhand way down to Harpirias, who caught it in some surprise.

"The king bids you welcome," Korinaam murmured.

"Tell him that I thank him for his kindness."

"Not yet. Eat what he's given you, first."

"Are you serious?"

"Extremely. Eat it, prince."