Robert Silverberg - The Mountains of Majipoor

The king plied him with second portions, and thirds, and fourths. Harpirias laughed and protested, and confined his eating to nibbles, and let the royal servants clear his unfinished plates away whenever Toikella was looking the other way.

The evening wore on. And on and on.

Three clowns entered the room and carried out a long unfathomable routine of jokes and haphazard juggling that brought tears of mirth to the king’s face. The women danced again, and then a group of the men. Harpirias grew drowsy, but gamely compelled himself to pay attention. He drank more of the bubbling bitter beer: it was almost possible to like it, after a while. Gradually he became aware that the feasters were beginning to slip away, in groups of two and three. The big room had grown very quiet. The king had gathered two armloads of his women to his side and had slumped down with them onto the rugs.

Softly Korinaam said, "Come, prince. The evening is at its end."

"Shall I bid the king good night?"

"He won’t notice, I suspect." Indeed, Toikella appeared preoccupied. Soft moist slobbering sounds could be heard. "We should just go," the Shapeshifter said.

Together they crossed the icy plaza to the guest house at the far end. It was late enough so that darkness had fallen. The air on this midsummer night was clear and crisp, and had what Harpirias regarded as a wintry edge to it. The stars hardly seemed to shimmer: they were discrete points of light, keenly bright.

"You did well tonight," said Korinaam, as they entered the building of ice. "A good start to the mission."

Harpirias nodded. He felt woozy. Too much stimulation, too much strange beer, too much bad food, too much close smoky air. He pushed the leather door-flap aside and went into his room. It was even warmer inside than the throne room had been, and the lamps, which had been lit during his absence, had filled the air with thick oily smoke, so that Harpirias choked and gagged at the first breath of it.

There was someone in the room. A woman.

"Yes?" he said. "What do you want?"

She rose and came toward him, displaying a gap-toothed smile. Harpirias recognized her as one of those who had clustered earlier at the foot of King Toikella’s throne — the youngest-looking and least unattractive of them, in fact, a reasonably slender girl with straight, glossy dark hair cut in a bowl shape just about to the level of her ears. She was wearing only the moccasins and loincloth of black fur that had been the costume of the dancers, and now, quite casually, she pulled the loincloth down and kicked it aside. With a cheerful gesture she pointed toward the pile of sleeping-furs, tapped her chest, extended her hand to him.

"No," Harpirias said. "Not tonight, thanks. I’m very, very tired. I’d just like to go to sleep."

She bobbed her head up and down and giggled. She pointed again to the furs.

Harpirias stayed where he was. "You didn’t understand a word of what I said, did you? No. No, how could you?"

For an instant he was almost tempted. He had been living chastely for so long now that chastity was starting to feel almost like a normal way of life to him, which was a situation that surely needed to be remedied. But not here, not now, not with her. She was far from hideous — pleasing features, alert mischievous eyes, a decent figure, appealing breasts — but she was, after all, barbaric in her manner and dirty and unfragrant in her person. And he was extremely tired and not at all interested.

It was flattering that she had taken a fancy to him, he supposed. But what would the king say when he discovered that the ambassador from the civilized world had allowed himself a night’s sport with a member of the royal harem?

"I’m sorry," he said gently. "Perhaps another time." He picked up her discarded loincloth and pressed it into her hand. Then, putting the tips of his fingers lightly and he hoped unprovocatively against her back, he steered her toward the door, not exactly pushing her but making it as clear as he could that he was asking her to go.

She turned and looked back at him for a long charged moment. Sadly? Angrily? Mockingly? He couldn’t tell.

Then she was gone.

Shaking his head, Harpirias did what he could to cleanse himself and get ready for sleep. He was on the verge of climbing between two of the furs on the floor when the Shape-shifter’s quiet voice from the hallway said, "May I speak with you, prince?"

Harpirias yawned. This was getting very annoying. He said, without rising to pull back the sheet of leather that functioned as the door, "What is it, Korinaam?"

"The girl you refused has come to me."

"My warmest congratulations. I wish you much joy of her."

"You misunderstand me, prince. She came to me to ask what she has done wrong with you, why she has displeased you. She has gone away bewildered and insulted."

"She has? Well, that’s too bad, I suppose. It wasn’t my intention to hurt her feelings. But I didn’t particularly want company tonight, not hers, not anybody’s. And as a general rule it doesn’t seem smart to me to be sleeping with the king’s wives."

"Not one of his wives, prince. It is King Toikella’s youngest daughter whom you have rejected. And when he learns of it, there’s bound to be no small amount of trouble."

"His daughter? He wants me to go to bed with his daughter?"

"It is traditional Othinor courtesy," said the Shapeshifter. "You really must not refuse."

Appalled, Harpirias pressed both his hands to his forehead. Was Korinaam serious? Yes, yes, he must be. For a wild moment Harpirias debated asking the Metamorph to summon the girl back; but then a mounting sense of vexation overcame the force of whatever presumable obligations of diplomacy he might be under. He wanted to get some sleep. There were limits to the things he was supposed to do for the sake of getting this treaty signed. He was not going to sleep with a smelly savage girl simply to keep King Toikella happy. Not. Not. Not. Not.

Thinking quickly, Harpirias said, "You will tell the king, when and if the matter comes up, that I am highly appreciative of the honor he has paid me. But in fact I have taken a severe vow of abstinence from physical pleasure as one of the disciplines of my high office. Under its terms I mustn’t allow myself to be approached by a woman."

"You have said nothing of this before, prince."

"I’m saying it now. A vow of abstinence. Is that understood?"

"It is, yes."

"Thank you. Good night, Korinaam."

He pulled one of the furs over his head, skin side out. It smelled as though they had tanned it in steetmoy urine.

This was all going to be even more difficult than he had expected, he told himself. If his dear friend Tembidat and his beloved cousin Vildimuir had happened to be within his reach just now, he would with a good deal of pleasure have wrung their necks.

The next day passed slowly and strangely. Hardly anyone was awake and about in the village when Harpirias went outside in the morning: only some nearly naked children, playing games of pursuit along the base of the high rocky wall that enclosed the settlement, and half a dozen women of the tribe laying out strips of freshly butchered meat to dry in the one narrow strip of sunlight that was able to penetrate the canyon. The meat was meant to be put away, he assumed, against the winter that would all too soon arrive.

Gradually the place came to life. The day was warm, the sky was bright and clear. A party of hunters assembled down near the palace and solemnly filed off toward the nearby cliffs. Some old women carried a stack of hides into the sunny part of the plaza and squatted in a circle to scrape them with bone knives. A limping musician came out of a house, knelt cross-legged on the ice, and played a single thin tune on a bone pipe for more than an hour, over and over.