Crisply he said, after a bit, “And when, may I ask, am I supposed to set out on this embassy?”
“At the beginning of the Khyntor summer. It’s the only time of year when the region where these people live is even slightly accessible.”
“That gives me some months yet.”
“So it does.”
This all was like some very bad joke. The thought of undertaking this crazy chase off into the frigid Arctic wilderness filled Harpirias with despair.
“And if I were to decline the assignment?” he asked, after another brief pause.
“Decline? Decline?” The Vroon repeated the word as though he scarcely understood its meaning.
“I have no experience, after all, with travel under such difficult conditions.”
“The Metamorph Korinaam will be your guide.”
“Of course,” Harpirias said dourly. “That should make it all much easier.”
The question of his refusing to undertake the mission seemed to have been brushed aside. Harpirias suspected that it would not be useful to raise it again.
But his doom was sealed, he knew, if he actually did let himself be sent off into the snowy wastes of the Marches. The journey would not be a quick or easy one, and the negotiations with those proud barbarians were bound to be maddeningly lengthy and frustrating. By the time he returned from the northlands—if ever he did—he would beyond any doubt have spent too much time in obscure parts of the world to have any hope of reclaiming his old position at Lord Ambinole’s court. The other young men of his group would have gobbled up all the really important posts. The best he could hope for was to be a petty bureaucrat for the rest of his life; but more probably he would die in the course of this absurd and hazardous expedition, perhaps lost in some great snowstorm or else slain out of hand by the brutal mountaineers when they came to realize that he was not the Coronal, only some minor functionary of the diplomatic service.
All this, for one white sinileese! Oh, Lubovine, Lubovine, what have you done to me?
Perhaps there was some way he could get out of this, though. The long winter of the Marches still had some while to run, which gave Harpirias a little time to maneuver before he was supposed to depart. Cautiously he consulted a few of his senior colleagues at the Office of Provincial Liaison about the necessity of his accepting this new assignment.
Was there any appeal mechanism in the department by which he could claim the urgency of his present work as a reason for refusing the embassy to the Marches? They peered at him as though he were speaking some alien language. Could he decline on grounds of jeopardy to his health? They shrugged. What effect would it have on his career if he turned the assignment down? Nothing other than catastrophic, they replied.
He debated throwing himself upon the mercy of Prince Lubovine. But that would be idiotic, he decided.
He considered appealing to the Coronal himself. No, it was probably very unwise to try that: one did not want to define oneself before Lord Ambinole as a person who shrank from uncomfortable duties, after all. And as for going over the Coronal’s head to the senior monarch of the realm, the Pontifex Taghin Gawad cloistered deep in his imperial Labyrinth, why, that would be true madness, futile beyond words.
What he did do was to compose eloquent despondent letters to his highly placed kinsmen at court; but he left them in his files, unsent.
The weeks ticked by. In Ni-moya, where the weather was always mild and warm, the daylight hours now stretched far into the evening. Summer, or whatever passed for summer in that place, must be at last on its way to the Khyntor Marches, Harpirias realized dolefully. The northlands expedition was rolling toward him like an avalanche and there evidently was no way of shunting it aside.
“A visitor for you,” his aide announced one morning.
A visitor? A visitor? No one ever came visiting him here! Who—
“Tembidat!” Harpirias cried, as a long-legged young man in the gaudy finery of a Castle lordling came striding into his office. “What are you doing in Ni-moya?”
“A little business on behalf of my family,” Tembidat said. “We have stajja plantations not very far west of here that have been badly mismanaged in recent years, it seems. So I talked my father into letting me make an inspection tour and set things to rights. With a side trip to Ni-moya to see a certain old friend.” He glanced around, shaking his head. “So this is where you work?”
“Magnificent, isn’t it?”
“If only I could tell you how sorry I am that any of this had to happen, Harpirias—how hard I’ve worked to get you out of this mess—” Tembidat’s expression brightened. “But it’s almost over now. Another few weeks and you can kiss this ghastly place goodbye, isn’t that so, old man?”
“You know about my new mission?”
“Know about it? I helped to arrange it!”
“You what?”
“Oh, it was mostly your cousin Vildimuir who set things up for you,” Tembidat said, grinning broadly. “He was the first to hear the story about those nitwit scientists who got themselves captured by the wild men of the mountains, and he started in right away among the Coronal’s men, angling for you to be placed in charge of the rescue mission. Then he told me about it, and I put a word in for you with the Ministry of Frontier Affairs, which as you might expect is terribly excited about the whole thing because there’s a newly discovered primitive culture involved that’s going to require special handling, and that might just lead to a bigger budget for the Ministry; and I managed to convince none other than Inamon Ghaznavis that you were absolutely the best man to go up there and talk to them, in view of your diplomatic background and the fact that you were stationed here in Ni-moya anyway, just a hop and a skip from the foothills of the Marches, and so—”
“Wait a minute,” Harpirias broke in. “I can’t believe what you’re saying. Isn’t it bad enough that I’ve been dumped into this miserable dead-end job here? Did you and Vildimuir think it was going to make things any better for me by entangling me in some crazy expedition into a horrendous frostbitten place where no civilized man has ever gone before?”
“Absolutely.”
“How so?”
Tembidat glared at him as though he were thick-witted.
“Listen to me, Harpirias,” he said. “This expedition is the only chance you have to save yourself from having to spend the rest of your days pushing moronic government papers around in this office.”
“The Coronal, so you once swore to me, was going to pardon me after a few months and let me come back to—”
“Listen to me,” said Tembidat. “The Coronal has forgotten all about you. Don’t you think he’s got other things on his mind? The only bit of information he’s likely to remember about Harpirias of Muldemar is that he did something once that got Prince Lubovine very angry, and Lubovine can be such a pain in the neck that the Coronal doesn’t want to stir him up again over whatever it is that you did, so whenever one of us brings up the subject of recalling you to Castle Mount he just brushes it aside. And after a time he won’t even remember who you were or why there’s any reason to reinstate you at the Castle. All right. Now you get sent off into the Marches to rescue a bunch of lost scientists from a lost tribe of ferocious savages. No doubt your journey is going to be extremely harrowing and grueling and you’ll be called upon to perform all sorts of grand heroic deeds along the way.”
“No doubt,” Harpirias said blackly.
“There’s no question of it. Be serious, Harpirias.”
“I’m trying to be,” Harpirias said. “It’s not easy.”
He was surprised himself at how sharp and cynical and suspicious he had become, here in Ni-moya. The Harpirias of Castle Mount had been nothing at all like that. There were times these days that he could hardly recognize himself, so thoroughly had he changed.
Tembidat went on undaunted. “So your trip will be a glorious epic endeavor. You’ll go to the northlands, perform bravely and well under highly difficult circumstances,
and make your way safely back through all the perils, bringing the hostages with you. In all probability the Coronal, who is easily stirred by tales of great exploits and high adventure that seem to hearken back to some more romantic era, is going to want to hear all about your experiences. So you’ll be called back to the Castle to deliver your report in person, and Lord Ambinole will be tremendously delighted by your stirring account of heroic thrills and chills on the ice-fields of the north, Harpirias, tremendously delighted, and by the vivid descriptions you’ll give him of your death-defying rescue of those brilliant scientists, a deed which is going to be celebrated for centuries to come in song and story. And of course he’s not going to ship you back to some stupid desk job in Ni-moya after he’s heard all that.”
“Of course. Unless I don’t happen to survive this glorious epic adventure in the first place, that is. Unless it turns out that I get clobbered by an avalanche or wind up being eaten by the savages.”
“If you want to be a hero of song and story, Harpirias, you have to take a few risks. But there’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t—”
“Can’t you understand, Tembidat, I don’t want to be a hero of song and story? I just want to get out of this dreadful place and back to the Mount, where I belong.”
“Very well. This is the only way to achieve that.”
“It’s a lunatic thing to do,” said Harpirias. “The risks are overwhelmingly great and the possibility of any kind of real payoff for me is merely hypothetical.”
“I agree.”
“Then how can you expect me to be willing to—”
Tembidat sighed. “There’s simply no alternative, Harpirias. This is the one and only opportunity you’re going to get. Look here: your distinguished cousin Vildimuir has gone pretty far out on a limb to get you this assignment. It meant crossing departmental lines and pulling strings at three or four Ministries, while at the same time keeping various other people who actually wanted command of this expedition from getting it. I’m talking about our old friends Sinnim and Graniwain and Noridath, specifically. They thought a little jaunt into the Marches might be fun. Do you remember the concept of fun, Harpirias? Seeing strange scenery, making your way through a dangerous unknown place, coping with a savage warlike race: they were more than eager to go, let me tell you, and they weren’t the only ones. With extreme difficulty Vildimuir succeeded in snaring the assignment for you instead. If you embarrass him now by turning the job down, you can bet that he isn’t going to knock himself out finding you some other way out of Ni-moya, do you follow me? Either you go, Harpirias, or you settle down here for keeps and learn to love the work that you’re doing right now. Those are your only choices.”
“I see. What an extremely pretty situation.” Harpirias turned away to keep Tembidat from seeing the anguish in his eyes. “So everything really is over for me, isn’t it? All because I fired a single shot at a silly animal with fancy red antlers.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist, old man. What’s happened to you? Where’s your sense of adventure? You’ll make the trip, you’ll achieve everything you’re supposed to, and you’ll come home a hero and start your career all over again. Jump for it, Harpirias! How many chances for excitement like this does any of us get in a lifetime? I’d be happy to go with you myself, if I could.”
“Would you? What’s stopping you?”
Color came to Tembidat’s face. “I’m here on complicated family business that’s going to take me months to clean up, or I would. You know very well that I would. But never mind, Harpirias. Turn the assignment down, if that’s how you feel. I’ll tell Vildimuir that you were deeply grateful for all his help, but that in the end you decided that you really preferred your nice quiet desk job in Ni-moya, and therefore—”
“Don’t be an imbecile, Tembidat. Of course I’m going to go.”
“You are?”
Harpirias managed a smile. The effort was considerable. “Did you ever seriously think I wouldn’t?”
4
The storm went on and on, hour after hour. After a time, Harpirias came to take it for granted that the world should consist of nothing but whiteness. That other world in which he had once lived, the world of colors, of green trees and red flowers and blue rivers and turquoise sky, seemed now to have been only a dream. What was real was the insistent swarms of small white particles that came endlessly hurtling against the front, screen of the floater on the tireless driving gusts of wind, and the thick mantle of whiteness that wrapped it snugly on every side, above and below, before and behind, blurring everything into indistinguishability.
He said nothing. Asked no questions, offered no comments. He sat impassively, like a figure of wood, while Korinaam beside him steered the floater with almost arrogant confidence through the horrific gale.
How long did these wolf-summer storms last? How far was it to the other side of the pass? How many of the other floaters were still following along behind them? Harpirias’s mind brimmed with questions of this sort; but they rose like flotsam on the tide, and bobbed about a moment, and were quickly gone again. The unrelenting snow was almost hypnotic. It lulled him into a calm waking sleep, a pleasant numbness of the soul.
Gradually the fury of the storm gave over. The air cleared. The onslaught of rushing ice-particles ceased to assail them and only a few spiraling flakes now drifted down. The wall of cloud overhead grew frayed and tattered, and broke, and the sun reappeared, golden-green, magnificent. Distinct shapes began to take form out of the universal furry whiteness: the black fangs of rocky cliffs rearing up beside the roadway, the tormented angularity of some giant tree thrusting almost horizontally from the side of the mountain wall, the iron mass of a cloud against the paler background of the sky. The drifting heaps of gleaming powdery snow were already beginning to melt.
Harpirias, emerging from his trance, saw that the road was wider here, and that it was descending at a gentle but steady slope. The view was clear ahead. They had traversed the pass between the two blocky mountains and were entering into an open place of sparse long-stalked grass and bare granite boulders, a broad apron-shaped plateau that stretched far into the grayish distance, with other mountains beyond.
He looked around. The second floater was riding practically on their heels and others were visible farther back.
“How many do you see?” Korinaam asked.
Harpirias shaded his eyes as he stared into the sun-blink that had followed the snow, and counted the vehicles as they came down the last curvetting switchback out of the pass. “Six—seven—eight.”
“Good. No need to wait for anybody, then.”
It amazed Harpirias that the entire convoy had been able to get safely across the precarious pass in that blinding storm. But everyone back in Ni-moya had assured him that his little army was made up of capable troops. There were about two dozen soldiers in all; he was the only human. Nearly all the members of his expeditionary force were towering brawny Skandars, ponderous furry four-armed people of great strength and superb coordination, whose ancestors had come to Majipoor long ago from some world where snow and cold must have been nothing at all unusual. Harpirias had a few Ghayrogs under his command as well, sleek-scaled green-eyed folk whose aspect was reptilian, with flickering forked tongues and writhing snaky coils sprouting from their heads, though in fact they were mammalian enough internally in most respects.
That seemed to Harpirias like a very skimpy force indeed to go up against an entire tribe of belligerent barbarians on their home grounds. But Korinaam had insisted that to bring more troops would be a grave error: “The mountain passes are extremely difficult ones. You would have a very hard time conveying a large party through them. Besides, the mountain people themselves would look upon any sizable army as an invasion force rather than a diplomatic mission. Almost certainly they would attack you from ambush, striking from strategic points high above the passes. Against such guerrilla warfare,” the Shapeshifter argued, “you would have no chance whatever.” r />
Now that he had seen the first of the passes 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 masses 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 latitudes. Birds of the most splendid hues, with plumages of blazing scarlet and incandescent green and deep, radiant blue, came forth in sudden innumerable multitudes 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.