Robert Silverberg - The Mountains of Majipoor

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For young Prince Harpirias, the journey into the frozen tundra of the remote borderlands of Majipoor might well have been a death sentence. But it was also the only way out of a petty bureaucrat’s job in a provincial city, where he’d been exiled as punishment for a youthful indiscretion. Doomed to spend the rest of his days hopelessly separated from the Coronal’s glittering court, he grasps at his only hope — a mission that could represent suicide or salvation.
Somewhere beyond the nine guardian mountains of the Khyntor Marches, a party of paleontologists were captured while searching for the fossils of a fabled species of land-dwelling dragons. Their captors are a lost race of humans who, cut off from the majesty and civilization of Majipoor, have reverted to a primitive hunter-gatherer existence. Only one of the party has returned, a Shapeshifter named Korinaam, to bring back the terms for the release of the scientists.
Harpirias sets out on a mission of negotiation and rescue with a small band of soldiers and the wily Shapeshifter, who acts as both guide and interpreter. Facing blinding blizzards and slashing ice storms, physical privation and the attack of strange beasts, they finally reach their destination, only to find themselves face-to-face with a shockingly barbaric culture ruled by a dangerous chieftain. One mistake, one minor violation of custom and taboo, and the prince and his companions will face instant death or endless captivity.

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There was nothing Harpirias could say in return. Best to leave things as they were, he thought. Toikella’s pride, at least, was still intact. And perhaps the wounds of this visit would heal after a while, and in his old age he would boast of how he had forced the Coronal of Majipoor to come crawling to him once upon a time to gain the release of his explorers, and how he had extracted from the Coronal a child of royal blood in payment for the hostages he had taken.

So be it, Harpirias thought. Korinaam had been right after all: nothing would have been gained by forcing the truth down Toikella’s throat, and much would have been lost.

He bade the king a formal farewell, which Toikella received stonily, with great hauteur; and then he turned to Ivla Yevikenik for one last fond and weepy moment with his Othinor princess. But what could he say to her? What, indeed, could he say? For all his Castle Mount eloquence, nothing came to him now. She stared solemnly at him; he smiled; she managed a smile of sorts as well; her tears glistened; she blotted them with the back of her hand. He could not kiss her goodbye. Kissing was not the custom here. In the end Harpirias took her hand and held it a time, and let it go. She took his, and put it lightly to her belly, and kept it captive there for a moment, resting on her, as though to let him feel the new life that was quickening there. Then she released him and turned away. Harpirias gathered his troops and beckoned to the freed hostages to follow him, and went out of the feasting-hall.

18

From the look of the star-speckled darkness overhead, dawn was still some hours off. But it took the rest of the night to load the waiting floaters and make them ready for the homeward journey. The sky was already streaked with pink before all the final tasks were finished.

Harpirias stood for a moment just outside the high wall of stone that surrounded the hidden kingdom of the Othinor. Home, now! Home to the waiting warmth of civilized Majipoor — and, perhaps, the resurrection of his own interrupted career on Castle Mount. He had actually accomplished the task he had been sent here to do; more than that, he had had his great adventure and he had gained a lifetime’s worth of stories to tell, stories that the Coronal would listen to eagerly, and everyone else as well. And now home to tell those stones; home to a decent bath, and a dinner of real food, oysters and spiced fish and breast of sekkimaund or haunch of bilantoon, and the thick strong wine of Muldemar or the bright crimson wine of Bannikanniklole or the golden wine of Piliplok or the fine silvery-gray wine of Amblemorn, maybe all four in quick succession — with some clear-eyed beauty with high cheekbones and delicate brows as his companion for the night, yes, or — why not? — two or three -

But Harpirias knew that the land of the Othinor had imprinted itself upon his soul forever. Beyond any doubt he would dream time and again of the land of the Othinor, when finally he was home once more. Images of the ice-world would steal into his mind, and of King Toikella’s smoky banquet-hall, and of the jeering, capering Eililylal of the heights: that he knew. And the glossy-haired girl with a sliver of carved bone through her upper lip who had slipped into his room to keep him warm on so many frosty nights: she too would come to him in his sleep.

Yes. Yes. All that and much more: Harpirias was certain of that. He would never forget this place.

"Everything is stowed, prince," Eskenazo Marabaud called to him. "Sun’s about to come up. Shall we get going?"

"In a moment," Harpirias said.

He stepped back through the narrow wedge-shaped crack in the mountain wall that afforded the only access to King Toikella’s land. The ice-village gleamed faintly in the pearly light of dawn. Harpirias let his eyes rove the shining fanciful facades, the glittering icy filigrees.

A small figure was standing in front of the lodge where his quarters had been. At this distance, it was hard for him to see her clearly, but Harpirias could envision her well enough in the eye of his mind, a ragged smudgy figure in carelessly arrayed furs, a girl who perhaps was bearing his Othinor child. Waving to him, hesitantly at first, then more eagerly, a gesture of obvious love and longing.

He stared at her for a time. Then he waved back at her, and turned and walked away, passing through the crevice in the mountain wall and heading for his floater to begin his long journey home.

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