Lord Prestimion

  “And will that happen to us?” asked Prestimion, wondering if the Procurator might at this moment be wandering around amidst those identical stone humps.

  The Su-Suheris shook both his heads in that unnerving way of his. “Ah, no, lordship: we go past these mountains, not over them. But their presence to the east of us tells us that we have taken the correct road. We must look now for the Cliff of Eyes, which will be coming upon us very soon.”

  “The Cliff of Eyes,” said Septach Melayn. “What in the name of the Divine can that be?”

  “Wait and see,” said Maundigand-Klimd.

  When they found it—and sharp-eyed Septach Melayn was the first to spy it—there could be no doubt of its identity. It was a stately mountain of some whitish stone that stood by itself, rising conspicuously above the highway just to their right; and its entire face was bespeckled with a multitude of large, deeply inset oval-shaped boulders of some dark shining mineral, scattered across it like raisins in a pudding. The effect was of a thousand stern black eyes peering down at passers-by from the mountain’s white face. Gialaurys made a flurry of holy signs at the sight of it, and even Prestimion felt a shiver of something like awe, or even fear.

  “How did this happen?” he wanted to know. But no one offered an answer, and he knew better than to expect one. Who could say what force had shaped the world, or for what reason? One did not inquire into the nature and motives of the Divine. The world was the world: it was as it was, a place of eternal delight and mystery.

  The Cliff of Eyes seemed to watch them for hours as they rode past its eerie flank.

  “And soon,” said Maundigand-Klimd, bending over his map, “we will be at the Pillars of Dvorn, which mark the boundary between the central sector of Alhanroel and the south.”

  It was just before dusk when they reached them: two great blue-gray rocks, ten times the height of a man and tapering upward to sharply pointed tips. They stood facing each other with the road running straight as an arrow’s flight between them, so that they formed a kind of ceremonial gateway to the lands beyond. The rocks were rough and convoluted on their outer faces but smooth and flat on the inner ones, which made it seem as if they were the two severed halves of a single great structure.

  “There is magic here,” Gialaurys muttered restively, and offered another swarm of holy signs.

  “Ah, yes,” said Septach Melayn, with a playful lilt to his voice. “There’s a curse on the place. Every twenty thousand years the rocks come crashing together, and woe betide the wayfarers who happen to be passing through the gateway just then.”

  “So you know the old legend, do you?” asked Maundigand-Klimd.

  Septach Melayn swung around to face him. “Legend? What legend? I was only having a little sport with Gialaurys.”

  “Then you reinvent what already was,” said the Su-Suheris. “For indeed there was an ancient Shapeshifter tale that said just that, that these were clashing rocks, which had moved before and someday would move again. And, what is worse, that the next time they did, it would be a great king of the human folk that perished here between them.”

  “It would, would it?” said Prestimion, smiling jauntily and letting his gaze travel quickly from one great rock face to another. “Well, then, I suppose I’m safe, because, although I’m certainly a king, no one yet would call me a great one.” And added, with a wink at Septach Melayn, “But perhaps we should look for some other route south anyway, eh? Just to be absolutely safe.”

  “The Pontifex Dvorn, my lord, caused magical plates of brass to be installed on each side of the road, inscribed with runes to protect against just such a thing,” Maundigand-Klimd said. “Of course, that was thirteen thousand years ago and the plates have long since vanished. You see those shallow square indentations high up on the walls? That was where they were, or so it’s said. But I think our chances of passing through safely are excellent.”

  And indeed the Pillars of Dvorn remained in place as the royal caravan went past them. There was a distinct change in the look of the land on the far side, a greater density of foliage in response to the increase in warmth and humidity, and the hills there were smooth, rounded humps instead of hard jagged crags.

  Maundigand-Klimd’s maps showed no settlements within fifty miles of the Pillars. But the travelers had gone no more than ten minutes’ journey when they came upon the ghost of a road leading off the main highway toward a cluster of low hills to the west, and Septach Melayn, fastening his keen vision on those hills, announced that he could make out a row of stone walls midway up, half buried beneath thickets of strangling vines. Prestimion, his curiosity piqued, sent Abrigant off with a couple of men to investigate. They returned fifteen minutes later with the report that a ruined city lay hidden in there, deserted except for a family of Ghayrog farmers who made their home amidst the ancient buildings. It was, so one of the Ghayrogs had told them, all that remained of a great metropolis of Lord Stiamot’s time, whose people were massacred by Shapeshifters during the Metamorph Wars.

  “This cannot be,” said Maundigand-Klimd, shaking both his heads at once. “Lord Stiamot lived seventy centuries ago. In this climate the jungle would long since have swallowed up any such abandoned city.”

  “Let’s have a look at it,” said Prestimion, and they made a side jaunt down the western road, which after a few hundred yards became nothing more than a dirt track that climbed steadily into the hills at a gentle grade. Soon the wall of the ruined city came into view. It was a substantial stone structure, at least fifteen feet high in most places, but nearly overwhelmed by shrubs and vines. Just to the left of the entrance to the city proper stood an immense many-buttressed tree with pale-gray bark, whose myriad arms, flattening as they embraced the stone of the wall, seemed to be melting into it so that it was difficult to tell where tree left off and ruin began.

  Two sturdy young Ghayrogs came forth to greet them. They were both naked, but it was impossible to tell whether they were male or female, because the sexual organs of male Ghayrogs emerged only when they were aroused, and the breasts of the females were similarly hidden except when they were nursing young. Nor, mammals though they were, was it easy to think that they were other than reptilian. These two had brightly gleaming scales and strong tubular arms and legs; their cold green eyes were unblinking and their forked scarlet tongues flicked constantly in and out between their hard fleshless lips; and masses of fleshy black coils writhed like serpents on their heads in lieu of hair.

  They greeted their visitors with a kind of indifferent courtesy and asked them to wait while they summoned their grandfather. He appeared shortly, a venerable Ghayrog indeed, limping slowly up to them. “I am Bekrimiin,” he said, with a creaky but effusive gesture of welcome. Prestimion did not offer his own name in return. “We are very poor here, but you are welcome to such hospitality as we can provide,” Bekrimiin said, and signaled to his grandchildren, who quickly produced platters that were nothing more than the giant heart-shaped leaves of some nearby tree, on which they had placed some sort of mashed starchy vegetable, evidently fermented, that had a fiercely spicy flavor. Prestimion took some and ate with a determined show of pleasure, and several of the others followed suit, though neither Gialaurys nor the fastidious Septach Melayn made even a pretense of eating. A sweet, mildly bubbly liquid—either wine or beer; Prestimion was unable to tell which—accompanied it.

  Afterward the Ghayrog led them into the heart of the ruins. Only the merest outlines of the city were visible, mainly the foundations of buildings, here and there a charred tower, or a couple of standing walls, propped up by the trees that stood beside them, of what might once have been a warehouse or a temple or a palace. Most of the structures had long since been engulfed by the giant buttressed trees, whose flattening arms tended to grow together until they completely encircled and concealed whatever it was that they had drawn their support from when young. The name of the city, the old man said, was Diarwis, a name that meant nothing to Prestimion or his companions.
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  “It dates from Lord Stiamot’s time, does it?” Prestimion asked.

  The Ghayrog laughed harshly. “Oh, no, nothing like that. These foolish children told you that? They are ignorant. Whatever I try to teach them of history goes from their minds before I finish my words.—But no, the city is much more recent. It was abandoned only nine hundred years ago.”

  “Then there was no Metamorph attack here, either?”

  “They told you that too, did they? No, no, that is just a myth. The Metamorphs were long gone from Alhanroel by then. This city destroyed itself.” And the old Ghayrog told a tale of a cruel and haughty duke, and of an uprising of the serfs who tilled his fields: the murder of three members of the duke’s family, and the duke’s savage reprisal, and then a further uprising, leading to an even more brutal reprisal, followed by the assassination of the duke himself and the abandonment of the city by serfs and masters alike, for by that time not enough people remained alive here to sustain any sort of urban life.

  Prestimion listened in brooding silence, stunned by this bit of unknown history.

  Like any prince of the Castle who had been marked for a high role in the government, he had made an extensive study of the annals of Majipoor’s history; and, by and large, it was a strikingly peaceful tale, with no significant bloodshed between the time of Stiamot’s campaigns against the Metamorphs and Prestimion’s own struggle with Korsibar. Certainly he had never come upon any accounts of rebellious serfs and assassinated dukes. The story went against all that he wanted to believe about the basically benign ways of the people of Majipoor, who had learned long ago to settle their quarrels by less violent means. He would rather have been told that the Shapeshifters had been the ones who worked this ruination; at least there already was a well-established history of fierce conflict between humans and Metamorphs, though it had come to an end thousands of years before this city’s destruction.

  Bekrimiin informed his guests now that they were welcome to stay with him overnight, or for as long as they wished; but Prestimion had already had more than enough of this place, which had begun to weigh heavily on his spirits. To Gialaurys he said, “Thank him and give him some money, and tell him that it is the Coronal who he has entertained this afternoon. And then let’s be on our way.” To Abrigant he added, “When we are back at the Castle, find me whatever documents you can that exist concerning this place. I’d like to study its history more deeply.”

  “There may very well be nothing to find in the archives about it,” said Septach Melayn. “The suppression of unpleasant facts was perhaps not any invention of ours, my lord.”

  “Perhaps so,” Prestimion said somberly, and went out through the city’s gateway, and stood for a time staring at the great tree that held the city wall in its devouring embrace; and he said little to anyone all the rest of the afternoon.

  They entered now into the district known as Arvyanda. Whenever anyone spoke of that region, it was always in the phrase, “Arvyanda of the golden hills,” which brought to Prestimion’s mind the image of the parched tawny hills of some area that had long dry summers, as was common farther to the north. He wondered why hills would be golden in this perpetually green and lush tropical region of frequent rainfall. Or was it that the yellow metal itself was mined in this place?

  But the answer came quickly enough, and it was neither of those. A thick-boled tree with wide boat-shaped leaves grew in copious quantity on the hillsides of Arvyanda, to the exclusion of nearly everything else; and in the bright tropical sunlight those innumerable leaves, which were stiff and outspread and of a texture that seemed almost metallic, gave back a brilliant golden reflection, as though the entire region had been gilded.

  In Arvyanda city they made inquiries concerning Dantirya Sambail, with inconclusive results. Nobody was prepared to claim that they had actually seen the Procurator pass that way, although there were some scattered reports of unpleasant strangers moving swiftly through the outskirts of town some weeks before. Were they being deliberately vague, or were the Arvyanda folk merely stupid and unobservant? There was no easy way to tell; but in any case there was nothing to learn from them.

  “Shall we continue?” Septach Melayn asked Prestimion.

  “As far as the coast, yes.”

  On the other side of Arvyanda were the celebrated topaz mines of Zeberged. It was the transparent form of the precious mineral that was found here, clear as the finest glass and, when polished, of an unparalleled brilliance. But so bright was the sun against the rocky terrain of Zeberged that the topaz outcroppings were invisible by day because of the glare; and therefore the miners came out only at twilight, when the topaz could be seen gleaming lustrously by the last rays of the light, and clapped bowls over the shining stones to serve as markers. Early the next morning they would return and cut away the marked pieces of rock, and turn them over to the craftsmen who polished them.

  Prestimion watched all this with interest. But the miners of Zeberged, though they presented him with wondrous slabs of purest topaz, could give him no information about Dantirya Sambail.

  Beyond Zeberged the sky grew dark with clouds, hanging heavy in the sky like thick, opalescent gauze. They were entering rainy Kajith Kabulon, where a wedge-shaped mountain formation perpetually caught the fogs that came off the southern seas and transformed them into rain. Indeed it was not long before they reached the zone of precipitation, and once they did they saw no more sunlight for days. The rain came in a steady drumbeat. It was essentially continuous, interrupted only by occasional scant hours of surcease.

  The jungles of Kajith Kabulon were green, green, green. Trees and shrubs in exuberant prodigality rose everywhere toward the sky, their trunks striped brilliantly with strands of red and yellow fungi that provided the only splashes of vivid color to be seen and their crowns tied together by an impenetrable tangle of lianas and epiphytes that formed a virtually solid canopy, against which the rain constantly splashed, dripping through to the ground below. The spongy soil was covered by a dense carpet of furry green moss, broken here and there by narrow streamlets and numerous small pools, all of which reflected and refracted the dim greenish light in such complex ways that it often was impossible to tell whether that light came from overhead or rose in spontaneous generation from the forest floor.

  There was animal life everywhere here too, bewildering in its abundance. Voracious long-legged bugs; clouds of fleas; droning white wasps with black-striped wings. Blue spiders that hung groundward in lengthy chains from towering trees. Flies with immense ruby eyes. Yellow-spotted scarlet lizards. Flat-headed booming toads. Mysterious small things that lurked in the crannies of rocks without revealing any more of themselves than hairy probing talons. And, now and again, some heavy shaggy beast that never came anywhere near the travelers, but could be seen at a great distance, snorting and snuffling through the jungle as it overturned clods of moss with its fork-like trunk to seek whatever might dwell beneath. In the green darkness, things took on strange borrowed forms: slender chameleons looked like gray twigs, twigs like chameleons, snakes pretended to be vines, certain vines had the unmistakable look of serpents. Rotting logs lying in the streams were easily enough taken for lurking predatory gurnibongs; but once, as Gialaurys knelt by the water’s edge to splash his face in the morning, he saw what he was sure was only a log that was lying in the stream a few feet from him rise, grunting, on four stubby legs and move slowly away, snapping its long toothy snout in displeasure at having been disturbed.

  Prince Thaszthasz, a supple, olive-skinned man of unknowable age who had governed in Kajith Kabulon as far back as Prestimion could remember, took the unheralded arrival of the Coronal in his province as calmly as he seemed to take everything else. He provided a lavish feast for Prestimion at his wickerwork palace at the heart of the jungle, an open and airy structure that he said was patterned after a style favored by the Metamorphs of Ilirivoyne, far off on the other continent. “I build a new one every year,” Thaszthasz explained. “It saves on
housekeeping costs.” They dined on the sweet fruits and smoked meats of the rain-forest, a procession of flavors wholly unfamiliar to the men from Castle Mount, but the wine, at least, was of the north, a touch of home at last. There were musicians; there were jugglers; three sinuous girls wearing next to nothing performed an intricate, provocative dance. Prestimion and the prince discussed the pleasures of the Coronation festivals, the vigorous health of the Pontifex as Prestimion had lately observed it, and the fascinations of the jungle about them, which Thaszthasz unsurprisingly thought the most beautiful district in all of Majipoor.

  Gradually, as the night wore on, the talk came around to more serious matters. Prestimion began gradually to move toward the topic of Dantirya Sambail; but before he had quite managed to be specific about his reasons for coming south, Prince Thaszthasz deftly interjected that he had a grave problem on his hands himself, which was the growing incidence of inexplicable insanity among the people of his province.

  “We are in general very well balanced folk here, you know, my lord. The unvarying mildness and warmth of our climate, the beauty and tranquility of our surroundings, the steady music of the rain—you have no idea, your lordship, how beneficial all of that is for the soul.”

  “This is true. I have no idea of it indeed,” said Prestimion.

  “But now—in the past six months, or eight, perhaps—quite suddenly, there has been a change. We see the most solid citizens suddenly rising up and going off by themselves, entirely unprepared, into the forest. Leaving the main roads, you understand, which is a perilous thing, for the forest is huge—you would call it a jungle, I suppose—and it can be unkind to those who flout its requirements. There have been eleven hundred such disappearances so far. Only a handful of those who have gone have returned. Why did they go? What were they seeking? They are unable to tell us.”