Robert Silverberg - The Mountains of Majipoor

At noon the gaunt-faced high priest — for so Harpirias had come to regard him — emerged from the royal palace and strode to a large flat slab of black stone, no doubt an altar of some sort, that rose a few inches above the icy floor of the plaza in the open space midway between the canyon entrance and the clustered buildings of the village. He was bearing a crudely painted clay jug, from which, once he had reached the altar, he drew seeds or nuts of some sort that he hurled toward the four corners of the world. An offering to the gods, Harpirias supposed.

Of the king and the other members of his court there was no sign all morning. "He is a late sleeper," Korinaam said.

"I envy him, then," Harpirias said. "I was awake at dawn, half sweltering and half freezing. When will the negotiating sessions begin, do you think?"

"Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after. Or the day after that."

"No sooner;

"The king is never in any hurry."

"But I am," said Harpirias. "I want to be out of here before the next winter begins."

"Yes," the Metamorph replied. "I don’t doubt that you do."

Something about the way he said that was not very encouraging.

Harpirias thought of the eight paleontologists — or perhaps there were ten; no one seemed quite sure — who at this moment were held prisoner somewhere not far from here. They knew what winter was like in Othinor country. They had spent a year living somewhere near here in dark frigid cages, probably, eating mush and acrid gruel, scraps of cold fatty meat, bitter roots, nuts. Very likely they were more than a little weary of this place by now. But the king was never in any hurry, said Korinaam. And Korinaam should know.

Harpirias tried to accommodate himself to the slow rhythms of the place. The life of the village, he had to admit, was fascinating in its way. Surely this was how primitive people had lived thousands of years ago, hundreds of thousands, really, in that almost mythical era when Old Earth had been the one and only home of mankind and the idea that human beings might journey to the stars was the wildest kind of fantasy. The daily routine, the hunting and gathering of food, the preparing and storing of it, the endless making of simple tools and weapons, the rituals and observances and little superstitious customs, the children’s games, the sudden inexplicable eruptions of laughter or singing or loud dispute that subsided just as suddenly — it all made Harpirias feel as though he had slipped backward in time to some distant epoch of mankind’s primeval past. He would very much rather have been among his friends on Castle Mount just now, drinking the rich potent wine of Muldemar and swapping lively tales of intrigue and chicanery among the dukes and princes of the Coronal’s entourage; but he had to admit that what he was experiencing here was something that was granted to very few, and which he might actually look back upon fondly and gratefully, some day far in the future.

The king came out of his palace, finally, late in the afternoon. Harpinas, who was playing a game of knucklebone in the plaza with Eskenazo Marabaud and a couple of the other Skandars, watched with amazement as the king paused, turned, peered blankly at them a moment with no sign of recognition or interest on his face, and moved along his way.

"As if he didn’t even notice us," Harpirias murmured.

"Maybe he didn’t," said Eskenazo Marabaud. "Kings see only what they want to see. Perhaps he doesn’t feel like seeing us today."

A shrewd observation, Harpirias thought. Yesterday Toikella had been all solicitude and generosity; today he took no more notice of the ambassador and his troops than he would have of a visiting parry of fleas. Was this the king’s way of letting the visitors from the outer world know that events unfolded only on Toikella time in the land of the Othinor?

Or — and this was a more troublesome possibility — had he taken offense at Harpirias’s crass and blunt rejection of his daughter’s favors?

Whatever the reason, there were no negotiations that day, nor any contact with the king whatsoever. The members of the embassy were left to amuse themselves all afternoon. No one spoke with them or even paid any particular attention to them as they wandered through the village.

Toward evening three Othinor women brought the visitors their dinner aboard heavy sleds that they dragged with evident effort across the plaza: a side of cold meat, a tub of the gray-black beer that had gone flat, a tangled mound of roasted roots, all of it obviously leftovers from last night’s feast. It was meager fare.

"I think there may be some trouble here," Harpirias said to Korinaam.

"Try to be more patient, prince. All this is normal. The king is establishing his control over us."

"But we can’t let him have control over us!"

"That doesn’t mean he won’t make the attempt. He is a king, after all."

"A barbarian king."

"A king all the same. In his own eyes he is the equal of the Coronal and the Pontifex together. You should never forget that, prince. He will speak with us in his own good time. This is only the first day."

"A day of idleness makes me restless."

"Which is what he wants to achieve," said Korinaam. "Thus he puts you at a disadvantage. Patience, prince. Patience."

There was another strangeness after dinner, a considerable one. As Harpirias stepped out of the guest house for some fresh air, just when dusk was falling, he caught sight of a flare of brightness along the rim of the canyon wall, indeed at its highest point, far up over the side of the village where the royal palace was. It was as though someone had lit a beacon fire up there.

Perhaps this was something they did every night here, he thought. Sending some agile boy of the tribe to the top of the wall to ignite the torch of evening. But no, no, this had the appearance of an unusual event, for the plaza now was filling with tribesfolk, pointing, chattering. A girl ran into the palace to summon Toikella, and he came out in swift strides, all but naked in the evening chill, craning his neck and shading his eyes against the brightening moonlight as he stared upward.

Harpirias centered all his concentration on the place where he had seen that bright flare; and shortly it became clear to him that there were tiny dark figures up there, no bigger than insects at this distance, just next to the bonfire on the canyon rim. They appeared to be struggling with something that they were trying to push over the edge of the canyon, a big black bundle of some sort, very bulky and difficult to maneuver. After another few moments they succeeded: Harpirias watched it fall, rebounding off the side of the canyon two or three times as it plunged, striking a horn-shaped rocky knoll and catching there briefly, then coming free and plummeting straight to the canyon floor to land with a monstrous thudding sound practically in front of the palace.

The body of a huge animal, it was: a thick-legged coarse-furred thing with great crescent tusks, a giant grazing beast, perhaps, a descendant of the formidable mountain-dwelling creature which according to Metamorph myth had brought the primordial inhabitants of Majipoor into being by licking them out of an icy cliff.

It lay now on the ice of the plaza in a somber motionless heap — a vast shaggy black mound from which bright streams of blood were flowing. The king, muttering and frowning, walked around it and around again, prodding and tugging at it. Plainly he was deeply disturbed. Harpirias realized that the animal must have been deliberately mutilated before it was thrown over the cliff; not only had its throat been slashed but red slashes showed through the heavy fur along its flanks and belly where deep cuts had been made in geometrical patterns.