"What do you say, Korinaam? Are those some of your people? What would Piurivars be doing living in these mountains?"

But Korinaam only shrugged and shook his head, and made no other answer. The ident.i.ty of the creatures on the ridge was apparently a matter of complete indifference to him just now. He looked exhausted by the climb. His eyes were glazed, his narrow shoulders were slumped, his breath came in short rasping bursts.

In the succeeding hours there were no additional sightings of the mysterious creatures of the heights. They had appeared, they had done their mocking dance, they had vanished. But the strange episode cast a long shadow over the royal hunt all the rest of that day. Toikella stalked ahead in frosty silence, striding up one ridge and down the next, lost in a private realm of angry brooding. Nor did any of the other Othinor speak a word. Accompanied by Korinaam and the Skandars, Harpirias trailed along behind them, understanding nothing of what had taken place.

Animals could be seen in the flatlands between the crests - black s.h.a.ggy things, seemingly of great size, ambling slowly over the rocky plains and nibbling at the spa.r.s.e patches of stubby gray-green gra.s.s. Hajbaraks, were they? Korinaam was unsure and the Othinor still remained grimly uncommunicative. In any case the beasts were well beyond range, and drifted even farther away as Toikella approached them.

The air grew cooler as the day went along: there was a real bite in it now. The bleak upland terrain was gray and cheerless. Harpirias felt his spirits sagging ever deeper from hour to hour. This was nothing like the hunts he had known on Castle Mount. Those had been joyous sport, this was a dismal dreary trek.

It began to appear likely that the sacred hunt would last several days, or perhaps even more. That was a gloomy prospect indeed.

Toward evening, though, some unwary animal unexpectedly came rushing out from between two vertical slabs of pink rock, right into the midst of the hunting party. It was a scruffy-looking gray beast of only moderate size, big-headed and lean, with unpleasant curving claws and a long slavering mouth: a scavenger of some sort, from the looks of it. One of the king's manservants began to swing at it with the staff he was carrying, as if to swat it aside like vermin; but Toikella let out a great raging cry and quickly stepped forward. Catching the staff in mid-course and twisting it from the man's hand, the king roughly shoved the servant down and out of his way. Then he drew the short sword that he wore on a thong around his waist and thrust it into the befuddled animal's belly.

The wounded beast reared back, rising up on its back legs and striking ineffectually at Toikella with its curved claws. The king brushed the animal's forearm aside in the most casual way and thrust again, and a third time; and the creature uttered a soft bubbling sigh and fell down on its side. Streams of greenish-red blood came in spurting gushes from its wounds.

The king said a few curt words to Mankhelm. Immediately the priest drew a flask of black leather from his box of holy regalia and held it to the gouts of spouting blood until it was full. He handed it then to the king; and then, kneeling, Mankhelm began to flay the dying animal even as it slowly threshed about.

"What's happening?" Harpirias asked Korinaam in a low voice.

"I'm not certain. But it's a ritual butchering of some sort, that much is clear."

"Isn't the king supposed to be hunting hajbaraks on this expedition?"

"Perhaps he's decided that this animal will do."

And indeed that seemed to be the case. The priest had now laid the animal's flesh bare-it was dead, finally-and with the efficiency of one who has long been accustomed to preparing sacrificial offerings he was cutting the thing into sections, laying the meat of the haunches over here, the heart nearby, certain other of the internal organs in a different place. Harpirias had to admire Mankhelm's skill at stripping and quartering the creature. When the job was done the priest rose and draped the animal's raw moist skin over Toikella's broad shoulders, fastening it in place with a beaded leather cord that he tied about the king's neck. The head of the beast, still attached to the hide, dangled down along the royal back, dead eyes gla.s.sily staring outward.

What followed was shocking even to someone as experienced in the bloodshed of the hunt as Harpirias. Toikella held the black leather flask of blood aloft, solemnly offering it to the four quarters of the heavens; and then he drank it down in four or five gulps. Next he knelt and devoured the red and steaming heart. Something that was probably the liver he handed to Mankhelm, who consumed part of it and set the remainder atop a flat rock that had evidently been chosen to serve as an altar. The rest of the meat the king divided, giving torn b.l.o.o.d.y segments to each of his men, and then turning toward Harpirias with one for him.

Harpirias stared blankly.

"Take it," Konnaam whispered. "Eat it."

"But it's raw."

The Shapeshifter glared at him. "You're being asked to partic.i.p.ate in one of the holiest rituals these people have. Perhaps the holiest. The king is paying you a high compliment. Take it. Eat it."

Harpirias gave him a morose nod.

Tembidat, he thought, you will owe me much for ail this!

The meat was hard and stringy, and its flavor was that of dead things. Somehow Harpirias choked it down, though he came close to vomiting. Toikella watched in evident satisfaction as Harpirias swallowed it, and clapped him l.u.s.tily between the shoulderblades when he -was done.

The others in Harpirias's party were spared the honor of partaking of the holy meat. None of them appeared to be unhappy about that.

There was chanting now, and a ceremonial burning of the uneaten parts of the animal's body. The rest of the carca.s.s was simply tossed down the closest ravine. Then the king spoke briefly to his men, who began at once to pack and stow the hunting gear.

"Is that it?" Harpirias asked. "The hunt is over?"

"So the king has decreed," said the Shapeshifter. "He's not going to bother going after a hajbarak. This animal has been designated the official midsummer sacrifice and this year's hunt is at its end."

"He's upset about the people he saw dancing on the ridge, isn't he? That's why he's cutting things short."

"Very likely."

"Who were they, Korinaam? What were they?"

"I have no idea," the Metamorph said tightly. He looked away. The question seemed to pain him. "Ah: we're just about ready to leave, it would appear. We're going to go back down to the village now."

"Now? But it's starting to get dark!"

"Nevertheless, we seem to be leaving."

There could be no doubt about that. Already the towering figure of King Toikella, still clad in the b.l.o.o.d.y animal skin, was a good distance along the way, heading back toward the place where the trail down to the village began. Harpirias had no choice but to fall in with the marchers, though the dusk was deepening rapidly now into night and it struck him as perilous in the extreme to attempt the icy, rock-strewn path at this late hour. Would they even reach the trail at all before full darkness came? Or would they have to go blundering through the broken and difficult terrain of this plateau without being able to see where they were going?

He hurried to catch up with the swiftly striding Othinor.

No one said so much as a word during the downward march. The king's mood was so black that his men gave him a wide berth. Beyond any question the hunt had been something far short of a success, even if Toikella had chosen to decree that it -was.

The descent, illuminated only by the light of one crescent moon, was a slow and harrowing one. The trail was all but invisible; it could only have been by instinct alone that Toikella chose the right path out of the myriad dimly seen choices that presented themselves. Somewhere in the middle of the night a cold harsh wind slicing downward from the summit began to blow against their backs. Harpirias wondered if the wild gusts would sweep them from the trail and fling them down the side of the mountain, their bodies tumbling into the plaza of the village like those of the murdered hajbaraks. He shivered and huddled into himself and placed his feet with exaggerated care at every step.

It was dawn before they reached the bottom of the canyon wall. Exhausted by the night's exertions, Harpirias went straight to his room and buried himself beneath the entire pile of furs.

As he settled in he wondered once more what those creatures were who had jeered and mocked the king of the Othinor on that high ridge. Surely they were the same who had slain the royal beasts and hurled their bodies to the canyon floor. Something very strange was happening here: but what? What?

He had no answers. Whatever mystery was unfolding among these people, he was without any way of penetrating it.

Even under the furs Harpirias could not stop shivering. The morning sounds of the awakening village came dimly to him through the ice walls of the guest lodge. But neither the cold nor the noise mattered to him for long. He was governed now by fatigue. He drew his knees to his chest and shut his eyes tightly and within moments he went toppling into the deepest of sleep.

Immediately upon his return from the high country Harpirias applied himself to the task of learning to speak the language of the Othinor. There was too much going on in this place that was opaque to him; and the only interpreter that he had had shown himself to be untrustworthy. He needed to master the language himself, if he could. He had never given much thought before to the problem of learning to speak another language. Except in these mountains, Majipoori was universally understood all over the world, and there was no need for a prince of the Mount to trouble himself to become familiar with the tongues that the Vroons, or the Skandars, or the Liimen, or any of the other alien minority races of the planet, might speak among themselves.

Ivla Yevikenik did her best to help him. It was like a game for her, one more amusing thing that they could do together between bouts of lovemaking. There was an air of childish glee about her during their sessions of linguistic studies. She might have a woman's body, Harpirias realized, but in truth she was only a girl, and a simple-hearted one at that. Probably she regarded him as some interesting kind of life-sized doll that her father had chosen to bestow on her. And teaching Harpirias to speak Othinor was just another way of playing with her new toy.

Progress was slow at first. She was able quickly enough to teach Harpirias a few rudimentary things, "hand" and "eye" and "mouth" and other such obvious point-and-ask nouns. But it was not an easy thing for him to go beyond that degree of complexity with her. After a time, though, things began to fit together in his mind in a logical and orderly way; and then, to his surprise and pleasure, Harpirias found himself quickly learning the main elements of the language.

Even now, the grammar remained an enigma to him, and his p.r.o.nunciation of most words was so far off the mark that it sent her into merry convulsions. But he pieced together enough of a vocabulary so that in short order he was able to communicate with her, after a. fashion, through a mixture of half-garbled words, strenuous gestures, and elaborate pantomiming.

Once more he spoke to her of Majipoor, its glories and splendors. Ivla Yevikenik seemed to comprehend much more this time. She scarcely appeared to breathe as he described the world beyond the ice-barrier for her. Her eyes widened in wonder-and, perhaps, disbelief-when he told her of Castle Mount and its Fifty Cities, High Morpin with its mirror-slides and juggernauts, Halanx and its grand estates, Normork of the great stone wall and the mighty Dekkeret Gate, and high above everything else the ancient Castle of Lord Ambinole in all its unreckonable thousands of rooms, spreading like some huge many-tentacled creature over the summit of the Mount. He told her too of the vastness of the River Zimr, a river the size of an ocean, and of its innumerable towns, Belka and Clarischanz and Gourkaine, Semirod and Impemond and Haunfort Major and all the rest, and also of the place where the Zimr merged with its sister river, the Steiche, to form the enormous inland sea along whose immeasurable sh.o.r.es the city of Ni-moya of the white towers had been built. .

Harpirias felt a pang of homesickness as he spoke the names of these places and sights - even the names of cities that he himself had never beheld, even the name of Ni-moya, which he had loathed. For they were all Majipoor, whether he had been to them or not; and he felt hopelessly cut off from the Majipoor he had known in this stark and forlorn land of ice, try as he might to convince himself that this was Majipoor too.

When he had talked with her of Majipoor long enough so that they were starting to grow easier of speech with one another, he asked her about the figures that they had seen on the high ridge, and of her father's angry reaction to their derisive posturing and dancing.

"Who are they?" Harpirias asked. "Do you know?"

"Devils, they are. Wild people. They live beside the Frozen Sea."

In the northernmost reaches of the Khyntor Marches, was what she meant-almost at the planetary pole. The extreme limit of the world, the very brink of nowhere. A place where, according to myth and the ancient conjecture of geographers, the ocean itself had turned to a sheet of perpetual ice and human life was impossible to sustain.

"What kind of people, Ivla Yevikenik? Do they look like us?"

"No."

"What, then?"

She groped for words, could not find useful ones, and instead began to move around the room in an odd sideways manner, holding her shoulders hunched together and her arms dangling as if they had no strength. Harpirias was puzzled at first; but gradually it struck him that what she was doing was imitating Korinaam: his flimsy physique, his way of walking.

Harpirias pointed toward the room that was next to his in the lodge -Korinaam's room. "They are Shapeshifters, you mean?" And he too mimicked Korinaam's manner.

"Yes. Yes. Shapeshifters." Ivla Yevikenik grinned at him and clapped her hands in pleasure at her own success in answering his question.

Shapeshifters! So it was true! Just as he had suspected.

Or had he put the word in her mouth himself? Was she simply telling him what she thought he wanted to hear?

Possibly so. But Harpirias had a hunch that the information she was giving him was accurate. The creatures on the heights, after all, had had the semblance of men while they were dancing; but when they had gone racing off afterward, they had run on all fours in a way that no human being could have managed. The only rational explanation he could find was that they had altered their bodily form to achieve that.

And Korinaam-who had been so evasive when Harpirias twice tried to draw an opinion about them from him-he must have recognized at once that the people of the heights were a band of his own distant kinsmen, some sort of wild Metamorphs of the northland. Which for reasons of his own he had not wanted to confirm.

What would a tribe of wild Shapeshifters be doing by the sh.o.r.es of the Frozen Sea?

Harpirias knew that in the old days before the arrival of the first human settlers, thousands of years ago, the Piurivars had lived wherever they pleased on the giant planet. Their capital city had been at Velalisier in south-central Alhanroel, and its stupendous stone ruins were still there for all to see. There had been other Metamorph settlements, now vanished without a trace, on the other side of the Inner Sea in the forests of Zimroel, and even in the desert wastes of the isolated southern continent of Suvrael. But why would they have gone into the frigid northlands? So far as anyone was aware, Metamorphs were people who preferred warm climates.

Harpirias thought once more of the creation fable that Kormaam had told him during their journey up from Ni-moya -the one about the great beast that had wandered the northern mountains in solitude, the only inhabitant of the world, and had brought the first Piunvars into being by carving them from the ice with her tongue. From that tale Harpirias had learned that the Piurivars believed this chilly northland to be their earliest home, from which they had eventually launched the migrations that would send them radiating outward over all of Majipoor.

Were these wild devils of the ice the last remnant of that archaic Metamorph population, still roaming the broken and tormented landscape of the ancestral territory of their race?

Probably not, Harpirias thought. More likely the myth of a northern origin was only a myth and this was some forgotten group that had fled to the extreme north seeking refuge at the time of the conquest of Majipoor by humans. Who had simply remained in these remote districts ever since, their existence unknown even to their Metamorph km, just as the Othinor had maintained themselves undisturbed in their secluded mountain-ringed hiding place all these centuries.

"Tell me more," he said to the girl. "Everything you know about them."

There was little enough to tell. Slowly, with all the patience he could muster, he drew what there was of it from her.

"They are the Eililylal," she said. He supposed that that was the Othinor name for them; and Harpirias recalled, an instant later, that that also was the word Toikella had shouted in his rage, the word that Korinaam had translated as "enemies -enemies." Perhaps the word had two meanings in Othinor, the other one being the name of the hated Shape-shifter tribe of the highlands; but Korinaam would not have known that.

Ivla Yevikenik told him that the Eililylal descended periodically out of their barren inhospitable territory to cause trouble for the Othinor, stealing their stored supplies of dried meat and raiding their animal pens. In years gone by there had been a great war between the Othinor and the Eililylal; even now, the Othinor made a practice of killing on sight any Eililylal they happened to encounter.

And now the Eililylal had returned to the Othinor land. They were the ones, said Ivla Yevikenik, who lately had been slaying the sacred hajbaraks and throwing their corpses down into the village as tokens of mockery. No one knew why. Possibly it was the beginning of some new war between the tribes. The king was deeply troubled by it, and his uneasiness had been greatly increased by the appearance of a contingent of Eililylal in the highlands during the royal hunt-a sign of profound bad luck. That was why he had called the hunt off as soon as he had found at least one animal to slay.

More than that, the girl was unable to say.

But she had given him something to start with. Harpirias was grateful for that much, and he told her so, as well as he could manage it. Ivla Yevikenik evidently understood his meaning, and was pleased.

Harpirias realized that he was coming to like Ivla Yevikenik very much, that he was in fact thankful for the circ.u.mstances that had forced them together. Not only was she an eager and pa.s.sionate lover, but she was good-hearted and friendly as well, the lone island of warmth that he had found in this grim land.

Outside, a fierce wind was roaring through the open village square. Harpirias shivered. Just another lovely summer night among the Othinor.

Affectionately he traced the outline of the girl's cheeks with his fingertips, and even let his hand linger a moment over the ornamental sliver of bone in her upper lip. She made a little sighing sound and wriggled up close against him. She licked the tips of his fingers; she nibbled his chin; she caught hold of both his wrists and squeezed them with surprising force.

Strange cut it may sound, he imagined himself telling the Coronal one day, I found it appropriate for reasons of diplomatic necessity to become the lover of King Toikella's daughter. At it turned out, however, the barbarian princess was young and beautiful, and a fiery and uninhibited bedmate besides, well verged in the strange amorous skills of her people - Oh, yes. His lordship would certainly love that part of the story.

But there was the little matter of getting out of here and back to Castle Mount first.

In the morning, when Ivla Yevikenik had wrapped herself in her furs and left his room, Harpirias went looking for Korinaam. He had a few questions to ask him about their encounter with the Metamorphs of the high country. But Korinaam was nowhere to be found, neither in his room nor anywhere else in the Othinor village.

"When did you last see him?" Harpirias asked Eskenazo Marabaud.

"Last night, around the time they brought our evening meal to the lodging house," the Skandar captain replied.

"Did he say anything to you then?"

"Not a thing, no. Stared at me for an instant in that fishy way of theirs -you know what I mean. And then just walked down the corridor and disappeared into his room."

But the Ghayrog Mizguun Troyzt, who needed no sleep because this was not his season of hibernation, was able to provide better information. During the late hours of the night Mizguun Troyzt had gone out of the village enclosure to the place where they had left the floaters, so that he could oil their rotors against the cold and perform other routine maintenance on them; and, returning in the darkness just before the dawn, he had seen the Shapeshifter crossing the village plaza by himself, heading for the pa.s.sageway that ran behind the royal palace.

Mizguun Troyzt had watched for a moment or two in idle curiosity as Korinaam circled around toward the far side of the palace and melted into the shadows. Then -it was, after all, no business of his 'what the Shapeshifter might be up to - Mizguun Troyzt had returned to his own room to await the new day. And that was the last time, apparently, that he or anyone else had seen Korinaam.

What was in back of the royal palace?

Why, the beginning of the trail that led up the mountain wall to the royal hunting preserve.

Of course! Of course! The situation was instantly clear to Harpirias. Korinaam must have gone off to make contact with his newly discovered Shapeshifter brethren in the high country above the village!

Which was perplexing and maddening. The negotiations with King Toikella had not yet really even begun, after all this time. In recent days the king had been far too preoccupied with the advent of the Eililylal in his territory to make himself available for discussions of any sort with Harpirias.

And now here was the official interpreter and guide blithely vanishing into the high country on an unauthorized errand without so much as a by-your-leave. How long was Korinaam going to be gone? Three days? Five? What if he never returned at all, but fell victim up there to the stark conditions of the trail, or the unpredictable hostility of his own kinsmen?

In that case, how would the treaty with the Othinor ever be worked out, and the hostages set free, without an interpreter? And there was something even more important to consider. How, Harpirias wondered, were he and his soldiers going to find their way back to civilization without the Metamorph's help?

He boiled with rage. There was nothing he could do, though, except wait.

Three days went by; and Harpirias's anger and impatience mounted steadily. The only comforts he found were in the girl Ivla Yevikenik, and in the dark bitter beer of the village. But he could make love only so much, and drink only so much, before even those palliatives ceased to have any effect. Nor were his traveling companions of much benefit to him. They were common soldiers and he was a prince of the Mount, after all, and they were Skandars and Ghayrogs besides. No friendship was possible there. Essentially he was alone in this place.

Fretfully Harpirias roamed the village, desperate for diversion. No one blocked his way; he went wherever he pleased. Or nearly so: evidently he would not be permitted to visit the hostages in their cave, for one morning when he saw the daily trek of food-carriers setting out for them he attempted to join the march, but he was firmly turned aside. Otherwise the Othinor placed no restrictions on his movements. Unchallenged, Harpirias went out to inspect the flat stone altar in the middle of the plaza, and saw that its surface was inscribed with faint incomprehensible glyphs and stained with the dried blood of old sacrifices. He peered into dark musty ice-caverns where foodstuffs were stored, the roots and grains and berries that the inhabitants of this miserable land gathered during the summer foragings against the frightful winter that would soon descend. He opened the leather door of a low dome-shaped ice building he had not noticed before, and found himself facing a room full of small snarling animals tied down with leather harnesses. Entering another, he came upon seven or eight fat-bellied heavy-breasted women of the king's harem, lying naked on thick stacks of furs and smoking long narrow pipes of bone. The air in there was stale and close, reeking with the stench of sweat and some evil perfume and whatever it was that they were smoking. The women giggled shrilly and gestured as though to beckon Harpirias within, but he made a quick exit.

The interior of yet another building where crude wooden boxes were stacked smelled of incense and dust: Harpirias lifted the lid of one box and saw dried human skulls inside, old ones, yellowed and crumbling.

He asked Ivla Yevikenik about that.

"A very holy place," she said. "You must not go in there again."