"I'll be the judge of that," Harpirias said.

But there was little opportunity for him to define the agenda of the day's talks. The king seemed deeply shaken. Brooding, remote, edgy, he greeted them with little more than a surly growl and a perfunctory wave of his left hand.

Harpirias told the Shapeshifter to open by saying that the amba.s.sador wished to take up certain matters concerning the welfare of the hostages. A calculated risk, Harpirias thought. Korinaam was plainly reluctant, but so far as Harpirias was able to judge, he did as he was told.

Toikella, slouching on his throne, said nothing, only grunted and shrugged.

"Tell him that it has to do with the women who are being sent to them," Harpirias continued. "That I was extremely disturbed to find out that such things were going on. That I have the strongest objection to such things."

"Prince, I implore you - "

"Tell him. Exactly as I instruct you."

Korinaam gave Harpirias a weary nod. He turned toward the king once more and spoke briefly to him.

This time the response was immediate and violent. Toikella's face turned flaming red. He pounded the sides of the throne and snarled almost incoherently. Then, recovering himself, he spoke more calmly with the Shapeshifter, but in a dark imperious way that left no doubt of his simmering anger. And as he continued to speak his tone gradually grew more heated again.

"You see, prince?" asked Korinaam smugly.

"What's he saying?"

"Essentially, that he isn't interested in discussing this topic with you. That the subject isn't negotiable and in any event he thinks you aren't qualified to talk about it. He's using the scornful form of the p.r.o.noun you, by the way."

"The scornful form?"

"They employ it when they want to cast doubts on the virility of an enemy."

Harpirias felt his own temper rising. "Still clinging to that notion, is he? Well, you can tell him for me -"

"Wait," Korinaam broke in. The king was still speaking.

"He says-we should take ourselves out of his presence at once, he says. No talks at all today. The session is canceled."

"Because he's so upset over the hajbaraks?"

"Not only that. It's much more complicated. He was in a touchy mood to begin with, but you've made it a lot worse, I'm afraid. Just as I warned you. He's worked himself up into a real fit of rage. We have to go, right now."

"You can't mean that. Waste yet another day? It'll be winter here before we ever get down to - "

"We have no choice. If you could understand the things he's saying, you'd know that. Come-come-he'll be throwing pieces of the throne at us in another minute." Konnaam plucked nervously at the sleeve of Harpirias's jerkin. "Come, prince!"

When they were outside Harpirias said, "All right. What was it that sent him up the tree like that?"

"It's the matter of your vow of chast.i.ty, prince. That's what is really troubling him, not the hostages or anything else. When you began to talk about the women who are being sent to the hostages, you reminded him of the other thing -your refusing of his daughter."

"My chast.i.ty is no concern of his."

"Ah, but it is, it is, prince! Just as you heard yesterday from those men in the ice-cave: he is expecting you to sire a royal heir for him. He is furious because you sent his daughter away, and the talks are not going to make any progress whatever until you embrace her and plant the son of a Coronal in her womb."

"The son of a Coronal!" Harpirias cried. "Is that what he thinks he'll get out of me?"

The Shapeshifter's impenetrable eyes might have been showing a certain sly pleasure. He said nothing.

"For the love of the Divine, Korinaam, do you see what you've done? I told you and told you and told you again that I didn't care for the idea of letting him think that I was Lord Ambinole. I ordered you on at least three different occasions to make the truth known to him. But you refused, and refused, and refused once more, and now-do you see? He wants a Coronal's child for a grandson, and how can I give him that? I am not the Coronal, Korinaam! Not! Not!"

"You are of royal blood, prince."

"A thousand years removed."

"Nevertheless. Your ancestor was a great king. Even if you are not Coronal yourself, we can explain that you are royal. Make the child, and Toikella will be satisfied."

"Make the child?" Harpirias sputtered. "What are you saying?"

"Is it such a dreadful ch.o.r.e? The girl seemed fair enough to me."

Harpirias drew a deep breath. "As if you could tell. But what the girl looks like is completely beside the point. I'm simply not going to- No," he said grimly. "We go back in there and you let him know the truth about who I am, and that's that."

"He will kill us, prince." There was no mockery in the Shapeshifter's tone now.

"Do you mean that?"

"He thinks you are his lordship. It is too late to tell him anything else. He has too much pride invested in having the Coronal of Majipoor as a suppliant in his village. If we tell him at this late hour that we've allowed him to deceive himself about who you really are up till now, he'll kill us both out of hand. Believe me, prince."

"But that would be an act of war! His lordship's government would send an army in here and carry him away into prison for the rest of his life."

"He has no idea of the strength of his lordship's government," Korinaam said. "As you know, he believes that his lordship is a tribal chieftain who is no more important or powerful than he is himself, and that no invader could possibly mount a successful a.s.sault on this village. Of course, he would find out eventually that he is wrong. But you and I would still be dead."

Hopeless. Hopeless. Harpirias saw that he was totally boxed in by Korinaam's steadfast refusal to speak the truth to the king and the king's own ill-informed a.s.sumptions.

He retreated to his room in the guest house to ponder the situation.

It was wild folly to have let Korinaam sustain this witless misunderstanding this long. And what a tangle it had become now! To be forced to go on and on with this nonsensical hum-b.u.g.g.e.ry, on pain of death, pretending that he was indeed the anointed master of Castle Mount-and to be asked, of all things, to provide the king with an heir in whose veins the royal blood of Majipoor would be combined with that of the Othinor chieftain - But certainly it was a high crime against the realm to pose as a Coronal. Regardless of the explanations he could give for having undertaken such an imposture, he knew that it was unthinkable to attempt it. And yet-and yet- Lord Harpirias, Coronal of Majipoor!

He could pretend to it if there was a good reason for doing so, could he not? For the sake of the mission? Conduct himself as though he were king? Stalk around this icy realm of misery as though he were indeed the master of Castle Mount, as though it was he who held the royal seat upon the glorious Confalume Throne, he who wore the starburst crown? How would Toikella ever know it was not so?

No. This was vacuous nonsense.

He could no more imagine himself to be Coronal than he could imagine himself old. He was Harpirias of Muldemar, a young man of the Prestimion line, a minor prince of the Castle Mount aristocracy. He wanted to go on being Harpirias of Muldemar. He was satisfied with that. He had no ambitions beyond that. To masquerade, even here, even for a moment, even out of supposed diplomatic necessity, as the lord of the world would be a grotesque blasphemy.

He knew he must correct the foolishness into which Korinaam had thrust him before it proceeded any further.

But how?

No answer presented itself. Harpirias was still puzzling over it, alone in his room, far into the evening.

Then, very late, came a voice at his door, a woman's voice, speaking softly to him in words he was unable to understand.

"Who is it?" he called. But he had a good idea.

She spoke again. There seemed to be a plaintive, imploring note in her voice.

Harpirias went to the door, pulled the leather flap aside. Yes, it was she: the one who had come to him before, the king's young dark-haired daughter. Tonight she was more formally dressed, a fine robe of white fur, leather buskins, a bright scarlet ribbon elaborately woven through the glossy bowl of her hair. A spindle-shaped sliver of carved bone had been thrust into her upper lip from side to side: some sort of tribal jewelry, no doubt.

She looked terrified. Her eyes were wide and rigidly fixed on him, and she was trembling in a way that had nothing to do with the chill of the air. A muscle was jerking rhythmically in her cheek. Harpirias stood there a long while, staring at her, not knowing what to do.

"No," he said to her after a time, trying to keep his voice gentle. "I'm really sorry. But I can't do this. I simply can't." He smiled sadly, shook his head, pointed outward through the door. "Can you understand what I'm saying? You have to go. What you want from me is something I can't give you."

She shivered in an almost convulsive way. Held out her hands to him. They were shaking.

"No," she said, and to his amazement she was speaking his language. "No-please-please - "

"You know Majipoori?"

Not very much of it, apparently. He had the impression that the girl was speaking by rote. "Please-please - I-come -in! - Korinaam has taught her this, Harpirias thought suddenly. That would be very much like him.

He shook his head again.

"You can't. You mustn't. I'm simply not going to -"

"Please!" There was a terrible urgency in her tone. She seemed about to fall at his feet.

In the face of that, how could he turn her away? Harpirias sighed and beckoned her in. Just for a little while, he told himself. A little while, and that would be all.

The girl stumbled into the icy room. It was impossible for her to stop shivering. Harpirias wanted to put his arms around her and offer comfort. But he could not allow himself to do that. It was important to keep his distance.

Evidently she had exhausted her few comprehensible words now. She was gesturing to him in some sort of pantomime, raising her arms high over her head and bringing them down to her sides in a broad sweeping gesture, then doing it again, again, again. Harpirias struggled to make sense out of her miming. Something big. A mountain, was that what she was portraying? Did this have anything to do with the two dead animals that had been thrown down into the village from the top of the canyon wall?

She swept one hand downward in front of herself in a swelling curve from her forehead to her knees. Indicating her belly? A representation of the pregnancy that she desired from him? Maybe not. She made the mountain gesture again, and then the belly. He watched her uncomprehendingly. She opened her mouth, pointed to her teeth. The mountain again. The belly. Once more the teeth.

Harpirias shook his head.

She paused in thought for an instant or two. Then she thrust her arms out toward the floor at an angle, a gesture that seemed to indicate size, and began to march stiff-leggedly around the room in a comical hulking way.

He was altogether lost. "An animal? A big animal? A hajbarak?"

"No. No." She looked annoyed at his denseness. Once more the mountain, the belly, the teeth. The hulking stiff-legged strut. And this time he got it.

A mountain that walked-a big belly-and the teeth-a big potbellied man with unusual teeth - "Toikella!" he cried.

The girl nodded happily. Comprehension at last.

He waited. She appeared to be thinking again. Then, as she had done the last time she had come to him, she pointed toward the pile of sleeping-furs, tapped her chest, extended her hand to Harpirias. Harpirias began to explain to her once again that he wasn't willing to go to bed with her. But before he could say anything she acted out the Toikella pantomime again; and then she let her face puff up and her eyes turn demented in what was clearly a representation of royal anger, and went jumping around the room furiously wielding an imaginary sword or lance. After which, shrinking down from her Toikella size to her own, she clutched at her body with both her arms and made her eyes glaze over. Wounded. Dying.

"Toikella will kill you if I don't sleep with you?" Harpirias asked. "Is that it?"

She gave him a helpless uncomprehending look. He tried again, speaking louder and more slowly. "King-will-kill - you?"

The girl shrugged and went through the whole pantomimed rigmarole again.

"Kill both of us?" Harpirias asked. "Kill only me?"

But words were useless. Evidently she had already uttered every word of his language that she understood, all four or five of them. He knew only two or three words of hers, and none that would help him now.

She was imploring him with her eyes. Looking desperately at him, then looking toward the pile of furs. Offering herself to him once more.

Harpirias realized that he had probably caught the gist of her anguished charade correctly. Her father the king had ordered her to bear a royal heir. He would settle for nothing less. If Harpirias sent her away as he had before, Toikella's ire would be aroused to a murderous heat.

Whether it was the girl that he would kill, or Harpirias, or the two of them, was not something that he had been able to get from her. But it made no difference. The implications were clear that some sort of violence would come from this, unless he yielded to the king's blind insistence.

And, trapped between the cynical lies that Konnaam had told and the dynastic expectations of King Toikella, Harpirias saw that he had no choice.

"All right," he said to her. "Come on. I'll make a little prince for you, if that's what your father wants so badly."

He didn't expect her to understand anything of that, nor did she. But when he caught her lightly by the wrist and drew her toward the bed of furs her eyes brightened in immediate comprehension. A kind of glow came into her face that made her seem almost attractive.

Not that she was particularly repugnant, Harpirias thought. Stockier and more muscular than he really preferred a woman to be, and somewhat deficient in bodily cleanliness, perhaps, and the dark s.p.a.ces in her smile where front teeth were missing disturbed him. But-even so - He had never been an outstanding model of moral fastidiousness himself. In his time Harpirias had embraced more than a few young women whose deportment and appearance would have raised eyebrows at the Coronal's court. That laughing red-haired dancing girl long ago in Bombifale, the one with the fiery eyes and the hoa.r.s.e shrill voice of a fish-peddler-and that slim-legged juggler la.s.s in the holiday town of High Morpin, who could swear like a sailor-and especially that swaggering broad-hipped huntress he had met while wandering alone in the forests back of Normork, who had showed him a trick or two when he was eighteen that would never have crossed his mind - There had been others. More than a few, more than a few. If he was forced now to add a swarthy smudge-faced barbarian girl to the list, well, so be it. Diplomats have to perform all sorts of unusual things in the course of their duties, Harpirias told himself once again. His mission would very likely fail if he persisted in his prissy refusal to honor Toikella's wishes in this matter. Therefore it could be construed as his professional duty to oblige the king. And if he was not in fact the Coronal, for all that Toikella had chosen to believe he was, it was certainly true that the blood of Coronals past ran in his veins. The king would have to be satisfied with that.

So be it. So be it.

Harpirias unfastened the robe of white fur and held it open as the girl slipped out of it.

She was naked beneath it. Her body was lean and taut-fleshed, with small hard b.r.e.a.s.t.s and nicely flaring hips. Apparently she had oiled herself from head to foot with something- could it be hajbarak grease, he wondered? -that gave her a smooth and agreeably slippery feel, and masked to some extent the scent of her unwashed skin.

They dropped down together to the pile of hides. Harpirias quickly wriggled into the middle of the heap, for it was much too cold in the ice-walled room for him to want to expose his unclothed body very long to the air. Though apparently the girl would have preferred to remain on top of the pile rather than within it, she seemed to understand his need, and after a bit she followed him underneath. Once they were safely covered, side by side and snug beneath the mound of furs, she laughed and pressed her hand against his chest, rolling over and pushing him down so that she could climb into the upper position.

"That's how you like it, is it? Fine. Whatever you want."

She grinned down at him. There was a playful sparkle in her eyes, as though this were some sort of game for her. Harpirias wondered how old she was. Twenty? Younger, maybe. Fifteen? There was no telling.

He tried to kiss her, but she averted her mouth. Not their custom, apparently. So be it, Harpirias thought. That little sliver of carved bone stuck through her upper lip would have caused difficulties anyway.

She said something to him in her language. "I don't understand," he told her. She laughed and said it again. Othinor words of tender pa.s.sion? Somehow he doubted that. Maybe she was just telling him her name.

"Harpirias," he said. "My name is Harpirias. What's yours?"

She giggled. Said something again, a single word, which a moment later she said a second time. Perhaps it was of some significance; but of course, he hadn't a clue to its meaning.

"Shabilikat?" he ventured.

His attempt at mimicking her sent the girl into a gale of wild laughter.

"Shabilikat," he said again. "Shabilikat."

It seemed to amuse her inordinately to hear him repeating the word. But when he tried it one more time she put her hand over his mouth; and then, an instant later, she wrapped her powerful thighs around his waist, straddling him in a manner that left him without much of an urge to make further attempts at conversation.

It was a long night, and an active one, and rather more pleasant than Harpirias had antic.i.p.ated, although the style of it was very strange to a man accustomed to the more polished women of the Majipoor aristocracy. Yet he accommodated readily enough to the l.u.s.ty vigor of her lovemaking, the eager clawing hands, the fierce rocking thrusts, the robust uproarious outbursts of hilarity at what struck him as oddly inopportune moments. She seemed insatiable. Harpirias, though, after long months of unbroken continence, was far from troubled by that.

Somewhere along the way the furs with which he had covered them went flying to one side, but he hardly noticed the cold. Eventually-he had no idea how many hours later it was -he tumbled suddenly into the deepest and darkest of sleeps, the way one might tumble into a well; and when he woke, much later, he discovered that she had covered him once again while he slept and had slipped out of his room without awakening him.