VI
The Serpent Princess
Wearing a fine new red satin coat with jeweled buttons, Jorian followed Harichumbra through the maze of courts and halls to the Hall of the Green Serpent. Karadur tottered along behind. As a nobleman and a traveler, Jorian was allowed to wear his sword in Trimandilam, but he had to check it at the entrance to the ballroom. The Mulvanians did not use peace wires. Jorian caught a glimpse of Randir standing in the corner of the cloakroom, the only straight blade in a host of scimitars. The brand was further conspicuous by its plain guard of silvered brass amid the jeweled hilts of the Mulvanians.
The ballroom occupied most of the ground floor of the Hall of the Green Serpent. It had a polished floor of brown marble and long windows, filled with little leaded panes of many shapes, which opened on a terrace. Most of the windows were open to the mild evening air, admitting hosts of insects, which whirled in suicidal circles around the flames of the many lamps and candles. A couple of low-class Mulvanians were kept busy with broom and dustpan, sweeping up little charred corpses from the marble.
The terrace overlooked a large court in the form of a sunken garden, where hedges and bushes loomed dark in the fading twilight and fountains tinkled. On the side of the hall away from the balcony, a huge carpet had been rolled up.
Several score of the nobility of Mulvan and their women were already standing about the ballroom, talking, drinking fruit juice, and nibbling sweetmeats from a long table to one side. The men were gorgeous in silks and satins, plumes and jewels. Lords from the east and south favored skirts, while those from the west and north encased their legs in baggy pantaloons, gathered in at the ankle. Their ladies stood among them, their bangles clashing musically when they moved. The younger ones had flowers, stars, eyes, and other figures painted on their bare breasts.
Harichumbra introduced Jorian to various lords, to whom he bowed deeply until he was dizzy. He sipped fruit juice, wished for something more sustaining, and exchanged words with a young Mulvanian as large as himself. This man, Lord Chavero of Kolkai, wore pantaloons of a brilliant saffron yellow and a spray of peacock plumes in his turban. Jorian said: “The weather is delightful this time of year in Trimandilam, I find, my lord.”
Chavero yawned. “It will do, though you foreigners always complain of the heat in summer. Are you from Novaria or some barbarous place?”
“That is right, although we do not deem it so barbarous as all that.”
“Perhaps not, but how would you know, without having visited Mulvan to form a standard of comparison?”
“A good question, but I might ask you the same.”
The man pulled a long mustachio. “It stands to reason that, since Mulvan is the center and fount of civilization, all other places must be inferior to it in culture. But you, as a barbarian, cannot be expected to understand logic.”
Jorian fought down a temptation to answer back in kind, but temptation won. “It is interesting to hear you speak thus, my lord. For we have a saying in Kortoli, that the most ignorant man is he who thinks he knows it all.”
Chavero puzzled over this statement for an instant. Then his look of perplexity changed to anger as he replied, “And we have a saying, my good man, that the yapping dog must not mind if it get itself kicked. Let us hope it will not be necessary to—”
A trumpet sang, cutting short this speech. A eunuch smote the pave with his staff and cried: “The Great King!”
Shaju, blazing with jewels, stood in the doorway. All the Mulvanians, and Jorian, too, dropped to their knees and touched their foreheads to the ground three times. The king called out: “Rise, my friends! For the remainder of this even, consider your obeisances to My Majesty as made.”
Behind him, Karadur whispered: “That means we can speak to him without prostrating ourselves first.” The wizard pulled at Jorian’s sleeve. “Come away from that Kolkaian, quickly, ere he embroil you in a quarrel! He is a dangerous man. He would fain be Yargali s next lover, and if he knew of our intentions . . .”
“Some have thought me a dangerous man, too,” muttered Jorian, but he let Karadur lead him off through the crowd. He asked Karadur: “Do His Majesty’s wives attend such functions?”
“They used to, but since the distressing affair of the Lady Radmini and Lord Valshaka, he has shut them up, the way they did before the time of King Sivroka. The queens are watching the show now from behind that screened balcony.” Karadur nodded his turban towards a marble screen high up at one end of the hall. “And doubtless wishing they could descend to mingle with the rest of us. When—”
Another trumpet interrupted. From the end of the hall opposite to that by which the king had entered, a eunuch struck the marble and called out, “Her Supernatural Highness, the Serpent Princess Yargali!”
Everybody bowed low. In the door stood a woman as tall as Jorian himself—well over six feet—and weighing, as far as he could judge, a good deal more. Her skin, exposed by Mulvanian fashions to just above her delta, was almost black, like that of a Mulvanian peasant. Huge jewels gleamed in her tiara and earrings; a triple rope of pearls ranging up to the size of crab-apples hung down between her enormous breasts.
Jorian had never seen so voluptuous a figure; he could hardly believe his eyes. Those breasts were the most astonishing of his experience. Larger than melons—in fact, as big and round as the udder of a milch cow—they stood out from her massive body without any sag at all. Below them, the body curved in to a waist which, while normal for a small woman, looked impossibly slender on this creature. Then the body widened out to broad, heavy hips and a slightly bulging belly. A cloth-of-gold embroidered skirt hung from her hips, just above groin level, to her ankles, and more ferns blazed on the buckles of her slippers. The face beneath the tiara was round and plump, like that of Jorian’s Estrildis, but not fat; in fact, if one could ignore her size and tear one’s eyes away from her extraordinary bodily development, she was a remarkably beautiful woman.
“By Imbal’s iron yard!” breathed Jorian. “With a basin-bone like that, she could bear giants and heroes—”
“Hush!” said Karadur. “The dancing is about to begin. Will you take part?”
“The ladies all seem to be paired off already, so I don’t know how to obtain a partner. Anyway, I am not sure I know the steps well enough, for all of Harichumbra’s coaching.”
The orchestra struck up, and the couples lined up for the grand march. The king and the serpent princess led the march, the king holding one arm out so that the tips of his fingers just touched those of the princess. Mulvanian dancing frowned upon any bodily contact other than fingertips. Jorian remained by the fruit juice table with a few other non-dancers.
Karadur said: “I will present you to Lord Hirayaxa. He has brought both his wives, and I am sure he will let you dance with one—”
“No, no, never mind,” said Jorian with a sudden rush of shyness. “I had rather just watch.”
The grand march ended, and a eunuch cried: “Take position for the nriga!”
The male dancers lined up on one side of the ballroom, the female on the other. The musicians played; the eunuch called the figures. Everybody advanced three steps. The men and the women bowed to each other. They stepped back two steps and bowed. They advanced three steps and bowed. They formed squares and everybody bowed to everybody . . .
It went on for half an hour at the same slow, stately pace, stepping this way and that and bowing to the eunuch’s commands. Compared to the hearty Novarian dances, Jorian found it a tedious performance.
As the music ended and the dance broke up in a frenzy of bows, a startling figure stepped in through one of the long windows opening on the balcony. This was a thin, dark-skinned man, completely naked, with his scrawny body covered with ash. His matted hair streamed down his back, his dirty beard cascaded down his breast, and his white eyeballs rolled wildly. He burst into a tirade in a dialect that Jorian could only half-follow.
To Jorian’s surprise, nobody moved to suppress or remove the man. Everyone, from the king down, seemed to listen respectfully to the outburst. The naked man raved, foamed at the mouth, and shook his fists. He castigated them all as vile sinners for departing from the ways of their ancestors. He denounced the heathen custom of dancing. He anathematized the elephant mill and demanded that it be broken up. He commanded that all women, and not just those of the king, be shut up in their houses as they were in the days before the wicked innovations of King Sivroka of cursed memory. He called down the wrath of the true gods upon this congregation of sensual sinners. Then he disappeared into the night.
Jorian turned to Harichumbra, who had just bustled up, and asked, “Explain to me, pray, Master Harichumbra, how the king can allow such an affront to his royal dignity?”
“Oh, that is a holy man. He may do as he likes. But come, my lord. The Princess Yargali has expressed the wish to meet you.”
Jorian caught Karadur’s eye and made a slight but significant jerk of his head. He found the super-voluptuous supernatural being standing beside the fruit juice table, with the king beside her.
“Your Majesty!” said Jorian, bowing low “Your radiant Highness! This is indeed a pleasure.”
“It iss my pleasure, also,” said Yargali, speaking Mulvani with an accent that centuries of dwelling in Trimandilam had not affected. “You are a Novarian, no?”
Karadur materialized like one of his spirits and engaged the king in a low-voiced discussion of the state of organized magic in the empire, while Jorian answered the princess: “Aye, Highness. A subject of the king of Kortoli, to be exact.”
“Know you any of those lively Novarian dances? I find the Mulvanian land all too stately for an active person like myself.”
“Permit one to think. One used to be pretty good at our local peasant dance, the volka.”
“Oh, I know that one! That iss the one that goes one—two—three—four—five—six—turn, one—two—three—four—five—six—turn, no?”
“Like this?” said Jorian, walking the fingers of his right hand across the palm of his left.
“But yess! In the reign of King Sirvasha, there was an ambassador from Kortoli here, who showed me. Will you ask me to dance the volka with you, my lord Jorian?”
“One wonders if our musicians know any suitable tune?”
“Oh, we can dance it to any tune that iss loud and fast, with a strong one-two beat, no? Come, let us speak to them about it.”
Yargali started off across the marble floor towards the orchestra. Jorian followed, feebly protesting: “But, Your Highness! One is sure the king’s other guests will not know—”
“Oh, to the next incarnation with them! Thiss will be for just you and me. We will show them barbarians are better dancers than they! We will make them look like the bumps of the logs, no?”
Soon Jorian found himself alone on the dance floor with the princess, the other guests having drawn to the sides. Each placed his hands on the other’s shoulders, and off they went in the vigorous, stamping, and whirling steps of the volka. On and on they went, round and round. Having noted that Mulvanian musical compositions were apt to run on for half-hours or even for hours, Jorian feared that he would be compelled to dance until morning.
After a mere quarter-hour, however, the orchestra stopped. Both Jorian and his partner were breathing hard and sweating freely. The noble lords and ladies snapped their fingers by way of applause, while the pair bowed in all directions and Lord Chavero scowled and pulled his long mustache.
“One suggests,” said Jorian, “that we could use a bit of that fruit punch.”
“An excellent idea, my lord. And you need not use those stilted, ultra-polite forms of speech with me. It iss all very well for these Mulvanians; but my people, who were wise when your forebears were sitting on a bough and scratching, do not bother with such useless refinements. Life iss complicated enough without going out of one’s way to make it more so, no?”
A team of sixteen professional dancing girls, wearing a multitude of beads and bangles and nothing else, had come out on the floor and were performing a dance with little, shuffling steps and rhythmic jerkings of their arms and heads.
Jorian said: “How would Your Highness like to step out on the terrace to cool off?”
“By all means.”
###
When they were outside under the stars, Jorian said: “The holy man’s outburst does not seem to have discouraged the festivities.”
“On, these Mulvanians! Always they are talking about their moral purity. No wine, no meat, no fornication, and so on. But when one comes to know them, they are just as sinful in their own little ways as everybody else. Now they will go home feeling very virtuous because they let the holy man harangue them without taking offense, and they will go right on doing the things they always do.”
“We had a Mulvanian saint like that in Kortoli once,” said Jorian. “He all but ruined the kingdom before they got rid of him.”
“Tell me about thiss holy man!”
“Gladly. This took place back in the reign of King Filoman the Well-Meaning—the father of the more famous King Fusinian.
“King Filoman had without doubt the noblest emotions and the best intentions of any king who ever reigned in Novaria. Nor was he stupid; but alas! he had no common sense whatever. One version of the legend says that this was the result of a peculiar planetary conjunction at the time of his birth. Another says that, when the fairies gathered for his naming ceremony, the fairy who was supposed to confer common sense upon him became enraged when she saw that another fairy wore a gown just like her own and left in a huff without bestowing her gift. So Filoman grew up with all the virtues—courage, honesty, diligence, kindliness, and so forth—except common sense.
“It was after the bankruptcy of the kingdom, as a result of the pension scheme of the ghost that Filoman had retained as his minister, that this holy man, Ajimbalin, came to Kortoli. Filoman’s new minister, Oinax, had just been promoted from a mere clerk in the Treasury and was too much in awe of the king to tell him aught that Filoman did not wish to hear. So Ajimbalin was soon ensconced in the palace, pouring advice into Filoman’s ears.
“Filoman lent these ears willingly enough, for he felt guilty about the collapse of the pension scheme and the hardships that ensued, and even more guilty about his failure to make all the Kortolians as pure and upright and virtuous as himself. ‘It is no wonder,’ said Ajimbalin, ‘when you and your entire people engage in so many vile, sinful habits.’
“ ‘I thought I lived a reasonably virtuous life,’ said Filoman. ‘But, holy Father, perhaps you can persuade me to the contrary.’
“ ‘To achieve salvation for yourself and your folk,’ said the ascetic, ‘you must follow the path to moral perfection on which I shall guide you. By setting an example, we may hope to persuade all your subjects to do likewise; and if example and precept avail not, then stronger measures may be needed. First you must give up fermented beverages, your—ugh!—wine and—ugh!—beer.’
“ ‘If you mean drinking to excess,’ said Filoman, ‘I do not believe I am guilty of that. I have never been drunk in my life.’
“ ‘Nay,’ quoth Ajimbalin, ‘I mean you must give them up entirely.’ So he presently had the court on a regimen of fruit juice, like the punch we have been drinking. Can I get you another?”
“No; please go on with your story.”
“Ajimbalin then wished to extend this prohibition to all Kortolians, but Oinax stood up to him and averted that the kingdom needed the tax revenue after its recent disasters. So the general prohibition of wine and beer was put off for the time being.
“Then Ajimbalin told the king, ‘You must give up this revolting custom of eating the flesh of slain animals. It shows a lack of proper respect for life. How know you if the cow or pig your servants butcher for your table be not an incarnation of one of your own ancestors?’ So the king and the court went on a diet of breadstuffs and greens, like that to which I have been subjected during my stay here.
“Then the holy man said, ‘Next, my son, you must give up the vile, sensual pleasure of going in unto your wife. Since desire is the source of all sorrow, you can attain happiness and escape sorrow only by extinguishing desire and relinquishing all bonds to earthly things and persons.’
“ ‘But I am chiefly concerned, not with my own happiness, but with my subjects’ welfare!’ protested Filoman.
“ ‘All the better,’ said Ajimbalin. ‘By following my rules of life, you will not only achieve a state of indescribable bliss yourself, but also attain such strength and wisdom that you will easily solve your kingdom’s problems. You will be able to push over a city wall or pick up an elephant. You will know the secrets of the forty-nine Mulvanian heavens of the gods and of the forty-nine hells of the demons. You will no longer need an army, for you will be able to rout any foe single-handed. But you cannot have these things and the mingling of your vile flesh with that of a woman, too.’
“ ‘But,’ said Filoman, ‘if all my subjects gave up conjugal relations, there would soon be no people in Korton at all.’
“ ‘All the better,’ said the sage. ‘If people ceased to be born on this plane, then all the souls would perforce be promoted to the next one, instead of being sent back again and again to this vale of suffering and sorrow. So you and the queen, to set an example, must henceforth live like brother and sister.’
“Filoman gave in. The queen, however, did not take kindly to this scheme. Within the year she had eloped with a sea captain from Salimor, who became a notorious pirate. She left behind her young son, who grew up to be the famous King Fusinian.
“Next, Ajimbalin made Filoman relinquish his fine raiment and wear a piece of sacking pinned about his body, as Ajimbalin himself was wont to do. He made him sleep on the ground in the palace courtyard and spend all his waking hours memorizing Ajimbalin’s moral precepts. Filoman’s idea of wild revelry had been to sit up till midnight over a flagon of ale and a game of draughts with some crony; but even these simple pleasures were denied him.
“Strangely enough, this regiment did not produce in King Filoman the state of perfect bliss that Ajimbalin had promised. It only made him unhappier than ever. He missed his wife—for all that she had nagged him—and he missed his son, who had been sent off to the court of the Grand Duke of Othomae to serve as a page. He missed his cronies and he missed the hunting and fishing and dancing and the good food and drink he used to enjoy. Instead of the promised strength and wisdom, he found himself enfeebled in body and bewildered in mind. Weeping, he told Ajimbalin that he must be a hopeless sinner, because the life of perfect virtue had not made him happy but the reverse.
“ ‘Then, my son,’ said the holy man, ‘I see that you are now ready for the final and most drastic step. First you shall make out a document of abdication, naming me king in your room.’
“This startled Filoman, and he argued. But Ajimbalin soon talked him round, for the holy man had so gotten Filoman under his thumb that the king no longer had will of his own. So Filoman wrote out the document.
“ ‘Now,’ said Ajimbalin, you shall utter a prayer to the true god of Mulvan and slay yourself. Only thus can you promote the welfare of your people and end your own sorrow, for you lack the mettle to impose upon Kortoli the reforms required for its salvation, The gods have therefore chosen me as their humble instrument to effect these improvements. Here is a dagger from your armory; one quick thrust and it is done.’
“Filoman took the dagger, looked dubiously at it, and tried its point on his thumb. Then he pricked his breast a little, said ‘Ouch!’ and cast the blade from him, for he could not quite summon the courage to thrust it home. Nor could he nerve himself to drink the poison that Ajimbalin thoughtfully proffered him. He broke down into sobs and tears; and indeed he was a pitiful sight, gaunt from starvation, in rags, and covered with sores and dirt from the ascetic life he had led under Ajimbalin’s spiritual guidance.
“ ‘I will get Oinax to do the deed,’ he said. So the minister was summoned, and a sword that King Filoman had worn in former days was fetched from the armory.
“Filoman explained the plan to Oinax, who fell on his knees and begged the king to reconsider. But Filoman, to whom death now seemed a welcome relief from his misery, was firm.
“ ‘I shall kneel here,’ he said, ‘and when I say Strike!, you shall cut off my head. It will be your last act as my loyal subject, and I do but ask that you make the stroke swift and sure. Thenceforth, your loyalty shall be transferred to the future king, the holy father Ajimbalin.’
“So King Filoman knelt and bowed his head, and Oinax, trembling with fear and horror, took up the sword. Being a small man, he had to wield it in both hands. He took his stance, made a practice swing, and glanced at Ajimbalin. The holy man was crouched nearby, glaring at the king with a strange gleam in his eyes and spittle running from his mouth. Now whether this was some form of holy ecstasy, or whether it was a simple, worldly lust for the power he now saw nearly within his grasp, was never known. For Oinax pivoted suddenly on his heel and struck with all his might at the neck of Ajimbalin, whose head went bouncing and rolling across the floor like a football.
“Horrified, Filoman tried to wrest the sword from Oinax, but so weak was he from his austerities that the minister easily frustrated him. Then the king burst into a fit of mad weeping. And when he had finished that, he seemed to come to himself.
“ ‘How fares the kingdom, Master Oinax?’ he said. ‘It has been months since I heard aught about it.’
“ ‘In some ways well, in others not so well,’ quoth the minister. ‘The leopards, from not being hunted, have become so bold that they snatch children from the streets of the villages. We need to raise the tax on luxurious imports from Mulvan, and we need a new dam on the river Phodon. I have done what I could, but there is much that has necessarily awaited Your Majesty’s return from his—ah—quest for spiritual perfection. And I urge that Your Majesty recall his son from Othomae, where I hear he has fallen in with a wild young crowd and bids fair to acquire dissolute habits.’
“So they buried Ajimbalin and tried to pretend he had never existed. And Filoman returned to his former way of life, and Kortoli, to its normal state.”
“Did your King Filoman ever get his wife back?”
“No. She preferred to be the mistress of a pirate king. She said that Filoman, though nice in his way, bored her, and she wanted excitement for a change.”
“Did he learn common sense from his tribulations?”
“Oh, no, nothing could give him that. Luckily for Kortoli, a few years later he fell from his horse during a hunt and broke his neck. Fusinian—who proved a very different sort—succeeded him.”
###
Yargali: “You tell fascinating tales, Lord Jorian. Do you know many more?”
“Many more indeed. But—” Jorian glanced through the long windows to the interior of the ballroom. “—I fear I should be discourteous to our royal host if I kept you out here for the rest of the ball. Perhaps I might call upon you later . . . ?”
Yargali pointed up to the windows of the upper story of the Hall of the Green Serpent, where lamplights showed through the diamond panes. “Yonder iss my abode, and it would pleasure me to receive you there. But I fear it were impossible.”
“Why so?”
“How would you gain access? All the doors and windows leading into this hall are locked after the ball, with armed guards posted at the doors.”
“Suppose I could fly and appeared before your window after the ball. Should I be admitted?”
“If you came bearing such tales, aye. But I do not see how you can. You have no wings, and the wall iss without carvings to climb by. You would have to walk up the smooth stone like a fly, no?”
“Leave it to me, Highness. Now, perhaps we had bet—”
“One moment, Master Jorian,” said a voice, and a hand was laid, none too gently, on Jorian’s arm. It was Lord Chavero, the disagreeable Mulvanian. “I have somewhat to discuss with you.”
Jorian twisted his arm free. “I believe I am called Lord Jorian by those would entreat me with courtesy.”
“That is one of the things I wish to discuss. But this were a poor place. You will excuse us, Princess? Will you be so good as to descend this stair to the garden, Master Jorian?”
They went down the marble steps at the end of the terrace into the sunken garden, which was six cubits below the level of the terrace. Then Lord Chavero faced Jorian. Although there was no moon—this being the end of the Month of the Wolf—enough light escaped from the ballroom to show each plainly to the other.
“Well?” said Jorian.
“Master Jorian,” began Chavero, “this ball was to have been tor members of the true nobility—that is to say, the nobility of Mulvan, not the self-styled nobles of upstart barbarian realms, who to us of the genuine birth are no more than dirt. We were willing to put up with you as long as it was necessary for you to interpret for Queen Mnevis. Now, however, that condition no longer obtains. Since your presence here is offensive to us of superior blood, you are requested to leave the premises forthwith.”
“Quite a speech,” said Jorian. “But since I was invited by His Majesty himself, and since His Majesty—may he reign forever!—did not withdraw his invitation upon the queen’s departure, I have no intention of complying with your wish. What do you propose to do about it?”
“For the last time, dog, get out!”
“Put me out!”
“I will!” Chavero stooped and fumbled behind a shrub. He straightened up with a naked scimitar in his hand. He stalked towards Jorian on the balls of his feet, blade poised for a quick slash.
Having neither sword, nor cloak, nor dagger to defend himself with, Jorian backed away. As Chavero started a quick rush, Jorian dodged around a fountain. For a few minutes they darted back and forth on opposite sides of the fountain, circumambulating it now clockwise and now contra-clockwise. Although a big, powerful man, the Mulvanian was shorter in the legs and bigger in the belly than Jorian, so the latter managed to keep the fountain between him and his foe.
Then he heard a low call from the balcony: “Lord Jorian! Here!”
A glance showed him Yargali leaning over the marble rail, extending his own sword to him. He left the fountain, bounded over to the foot of the terrace, and caught Randir by the hilt as she tossed it to him.
He spun to face the onrushing Chavero. Their blades met in a whirl of steel; they clashed and sang and struck sparks. Jorian easily parried the whirlwind, slashing attack of the Mulvanian until shortness of breath forced the other to slow down. Then he feinted a backhand cut, reversed it, and slashed diagonally down and to the left, so that the tip of his blade sliced through the sash that upheld the saffron pantaloons.
Jorian then leaped back. Chavero began a quick advance; but what Jorian hoped for happened. Deprived of their support, Chavero’s trousers fell down, and Chavero fell prone on the greensward, right at Jorian’s feet.
Jorian planted his foot on Chavero’s sword. “Now, my lord,” he said smoothly, “I think I will carve my name on your pretty little bare, brown arse—”
“Swine!” yelled Chavero, letting go his sword and rolling to his feet. He grabbed for the trousers wound about his ankles and, at the same time, tried to leap back out of reach of Jorian’s blade. But he missed the garment and fell into the fountain. He emerged from the water, blowing and coughing, and hauled himself out on the side opposite to Jorian.
The latter darted around the fountain and caught up with Chavero as the latter, now trouserless, gained his feet. Jorian brought the flat of his sword with a loud whack against the Mulvanian’s buttocks. Screaming curses and yelling for help, Chavero ran around the paths of the garden with Jorian after him, now and then getting in another blow.
Jorian was almost having too much fun to realize that the noise had aroused the attention of others. Light and motion from the terrace caught his eye. Then he heard the voice of the king, raised in anger: “Stop this at once!”
Jorian and Chavero stood side by side, looking up at the terrace. Thence the king, surrounded by the plumed and bejeweled nobility of the realm, glared down. Chavero kept pulling down the lower front edge of his shirt to preserve his decency.
Shaju pointed to Chavero and barked: “Explain!”
“This—this b-beastly—(cough)—barbarian grossly insulted my honor, sire, and then t-tried to m-m-m- . . .” Chavero’s voice trailed away into spasms of coughing and incoherent stammers and squawks. Between his rage and the water he had taken into his lungs, he could not speak intelligibly. A mutter of anger at the barbarous foreigner ran through the nobles.
While Chavero still sputtered, the king pointed to Jorian. “You, then!”
Jorian gave his best bow. “Your Majesty, since anything one said might be interpreted as self-serving, one prays that you ask the Princess Yargali for an account of this unfortunate event. Having witnessed the whole incident, she can give Your Majesty an objective account.”
“Well?” said the king, turning to Yargali, who told a truthful tale of what happened. She explained that, when she saw Chavero chasing Jorian with a scimitar, which he had evidently hidden ahead of time in the shrubbery, she realized that she could not explain to the king or his officials what was happening in time to save Jorian’s neck. So she had gone straight to the cloakroom and thence fetched Jorian his sword.
The king’s lips twitched, and then he burst into a hearty guffaw, throwing his head back and rocking on his heels. For once he seemed almost human. All the nobles laughed even louder, for it went without saying that a joke by royalty was always ten times as funny as the same joke told oy someone else. King Shaju said something to Minister Ishvarnam, turned his back and re-entered the ballroom. Ishvarnam leant over the marble balustrade and called out: “My lord Chavero! His Majesty instructs me to tell you that you have incurred his august displeasure by your unmannerly conduct. You shall return at once to your estates at Kolkai and remain there until further notice. Lord Jorian, you have His Majesty’s forgiveness for any breach of courtly etiquette that you may have committed in defending yourself, against Lord Chavero, and His Majesty commands you to remain at the ball as long as you wish and to forget tonight’s incident.”
Chavero cast one last sneer in Jorian’s direction. He muttered, “You shall yet rue your insolence, dog!” before stalking away through the darkened garden.
Jorian joined Karadur on the terrace. The latter said in Novarian: “Lucky for you, my son, that you slew not the miscreant. Had you done so, not even Yargali’s tale could have saved you from punishment.”
“I figured that out whilst he was chasing me round the fountain. So, when a chance offered to make him ridiculous without killing him, I seized what the gods offered. But by Zevatas’s brazen beard, was I frightened!”
“My son!” said Karadur in tones of gentle reproof. “If you would play the role of nobleman, you must not go about telling everybody how terrified you were under this or that circumstance. I know you have more courage in one finger than most of these popinjays have in their whole bodies, but you spoil the impression you make by this harping on your own timidity. Desist!”
“ ’Tis the simple truth, though, and don’t you urge men to utter the simple truth?”
“Mayhap, but in this case we must make an exception. I have known men of many kinds, and I believe that noblemen suffer from fright just as much as the rest. The difference is that their sense of honor forbids them to admit their fear.”
“But I am no nobleman, only a—”
“Hush! Whilst you play the part, you must follow the customs, however silly they seem. But now we must beware of Lord Chavero’s vengeance. The remaining nobles may befriend you, for that Chavero was much disliked for his quarrelsome and overbearing nature. But he may still hire a poisoner to slip into your soup that which is no elixir of life.”
“I hope we can be on our way before the morning’s light. Have you that magical rope?”
“Aye, in our quarters.”
“Well, fetch it here at midnight. Can you gain access to yon garden without passing the sentries who guard the Hall of the Green Serpent?”
“That were easy; the door in the hall opposite is not guarded.”
“So be here with that rope. When I have entered Yargali’s lair, go quickly to the stables and take out our mounts. Will the city gates still be open?”
“With luck, since this is a holy day.”
“Well then, take the beasts outside the city wall and tether them in some safe place.”
“Which gate?”
“Let me think—the East.”
“Why not the North or the West? We are going back to Vindium, I trust.”
“Fool!” exploded Jorian. “That’s the first direction they’ll look. We’re going up the Pennerath to the first ford or bridge, then east towards Komilakh. Then north across the Fangs of Halgir to Shven and west again to the Twelve Cities.”
“You mean to travel right around the Inner Sea? A frightful journey! We shall never get to Metouro in time for the meeting.”
“With luck, we shall; I’ve studied the maps. If we are trampled by King Shaju’s elephants, we shall never get there at all.”
“But Shaju has elephants trained as trackers, as hounds are employed in other lands. Of all beasts, the elephant has the keenest sense of smell.”
“Well, we shall have to chance it. When the beasts are secure, gather our gear and meet me at the Inner Gate of the palace.”
“Why not outside the city? Prolonged questioning at the gates is to be avoided.”
“I know not my way about this damned monster of a city and should get lost without you as a guide.”
“Then let us meet outside the outer palace gate, thus avoiding at least two scrutinies. Use the rope to get over the walls.”
“Very well. If they stop you, tell ’em we’re on a secret mission for Ishvamam, or whatever you think they’ll believe. Now I’m going in to fraternize with the beauty and chivalry of Mulvan.”
Inside, Jorian found that Karadur’s prediction had been right. Nobles crowded about him, pressed goblets of fruit juice upon him, and told him that for a barbarian he was indeed a man of parts. One said that Jorian had merely done to Chavero what many others at court had long yearned to do themselves.
As he sipped fruit punch, Jorian reflected that at a Novarian ball he would probably have drunk himself dizzy in his triumph and so be useless for the desperate adventure ahead. Even Mulvanian asceticism, he concluded, had its uses.
###
At midnight, the princess Yargali heard a tap on the window panes of her bedroom. She opened the window to see Jorian, hanging by one hand from a vertical rope, about which his legs were locked, while he tapped with the other hand. As she helped him over the sill and led him into the adjoining living room, she asked:
“Good my lord, to what iss the upper end of yonder rope affixed, that it upheld you so firmly?”
“It is affixed to the afterworld, Highness. I do not fully understand the matter myself, although a magician could doubtless tell you. What have we here?” He picked up a pitcher and sniffed. “Tell me not that this is real wine, in this desert of austerity!”
“It iss indeed.” She whisked the cover off a pair of golden plates, disclosing steaks. “Real flesh, also.”
“By all the gods and demons of Mulvan! How do you manage it?”
She shrugged her huge shoulders, making her great globes quiver. “It iss part of the agreement betwixt myself and the Great Kings. I guard their cursed Kist, whilst they provide me with the meat and drink I wish. I should soon waste away on this Mulvanian diet, which may be good for rabbits but not for me. Now sit and devour, ere your provender cool.”
Jorian did so. Between ravenous bites he asked: “How came you by this agreement, Princess?”
“Know that my people are an ancient race, who dwell in the far-off jungles of Beraoti. But, albeit longer-lived than your folk they beget few offspring. Ana so they have dwindled during the last myriad of years, until there be but a handful left. As a result of a quarrel—into whose nature I will not go—I wass cast out from amongst them. And I arrived, weary and footsore, in Trimandilam in the reign of King Venu, or Venu the Apprehensive as he was called.
“King Venu greeted me hospitably, but after a while he began to worry over the fact that I ate thrice as much as did he and his better-fed subjects and insisted, moreover, upon forbidden flesh. As his sobriquet implies, he wass one of those who are not happy unless they are unhappy over some impending peril, if you understand me, no? He wass a worrier.
“He also worried about the Kist of Avlen, since there had been two attempts to steal it—one by stealth, the other by bribing those who guarded it. The latter attempt would have succeeded had not one of the bribe-takers suffered a rush of conscience and betrayed the plot. For this, he wass promoted to captain whilst the others were trampled by the king’s elephants—an eventuality which hiss so-sensitive conscience had doubtless foreseen.
“So King Venu conceived the idea of skewering two worries with one lance, by making me official guardian of the Kist, in return for which he furnished me with this apartment and with food, drink, and servants to enable me to live in comfort. And that agreement has now been in effect more than five hundred years.”
“I should think,” said Jorian, “that Your Supernatural Highness would find it oppressive to be cooped up in this one suite, day after day.”
“I do not mind, for I do not have the traveler’s itching foot, as you men so often have. I have seen Trimandilam and need not refresh my view of it. And I like not the way the Mulvanians or the lower classes stare at me as if I were some sort of monster. My servants bring me news of the outer world, and I am content with this place, which I have redecorated every century to my taste. Now sit beside me on this divan and tell me some of the tales you promised.” She refilled the goblets. “For ensample, the tale of the disaster that your King Filoman brought upon Kortoli, when he had a ghost for his minister. I have never heard of putting a ghost to such a use.”
Jorian quaffed deeply. “This was early in his reign, when he had occasion to appoint a new minister to replace one who had died. He had reigned for several years in a fair state of justice, order, and prosperity, but it grieved him that some Kortolians still lived lives of vice and crime, for all he had done by precept and example to better things. To remedy this state of affairs, he determined to enlist the services of the wisest man in the Twelve Cities.
“By diligent inquiry, he learnt that the man with the repute of such wisdom was a philosopher from Govannian, named Tsaidar, who was said to be the most learned man in all Novaria.
“But, when Filoman sent a messenger to Govannian, to tender an offer of honorable employment to this Tsaidar, the messenger learnt that the learned doctor had but lately died. When word of this reached King Filoman, he wept with frustration. But his chamberlain said that all hope had not yet fled. There dwelt in the hills of southern Kortoli a witch hight Gloé, who was an able sorceress and a person of good repute, notwithstanding that she had never been able to obtain a license as lawful wizardess from Filoman’s government. Since Tsaidar had but recently died, his spirit might not yet have passed on to its next incarnation, either on this plane or on the next, and therefore could possibly be raised by Gloé to advise the king.
“So Filoman sent to fetch Gloé to Kortoli City, promising immunity for her illicit practice of magic. And Gloé burnt her powders and stirred her cauldron, and shadows gathered without material objects to cast them, and the flames of the candles flickered although there was no breeze to flutter them, and hideous faces, dissolving into one another, appeared in the smoke, and the palace trembled, and the king was seized with freezing cold. And there in the pentacle stood the ghost of Tsaidar the philosopher.
“ ‘Why disturb you me?’ said the ghost in the thin, squeaky voice that ghosts have. ‘I was studying a treatise on logic amongst the neglected old manuscripts in the library of the Grand Bastard of Othomae and had just come upon a new statement of the law of the excluded middle, when you snatched me hither.’
“Well, Gloé explained King Filoman’s purpose. The ghost said: ‘Minister, eh? Well, now, that is different. All my life I sought to find a ruler who would accept my advice and run his realm by logic, but I never found one. I gladly accept your offer, sire. What is the first problem I can solve for you?’
“ ‘I would fain put an end to crime and vice amongst the Kortolians,’ said the king, and went on to describe conditions in the kingdom and the failure of his previous efforts.
“ ‘Well now, ahem ahem, I have a theory about crime,’ quoth the ghost. ‘It is obvious to me that criminals are compelled to commit their felonies by want. Men steal to avert starvation. Men rape because they are too poor to afford lawful wives, or even the modest fees of harlots. Remove the cause—namely, the want—and you instantly end the crimes. I wonder that nobody else has thought for so simple a solution.’
“ ‘But how shall I alleviate their want?’ asked the king.
“ ‘Simple again: give every convicted criminal a modest but adequate pension and turn him loose. That is logical, now is it not?’
“The king could see no flaw in Tsaidar’s reasoning and so permitted Gloé to dismiss him. And he ordered that criminals, instead of being punished, should be given pensions. And so it was done.
“This pension scheme, however, had unexpected results. True, a few of the pensioners reformed, and some even became a credit to the state—like Glous, our leading poet, or Soser the shipping magnate.
“A larger number did nothing either very good or very bad. They settled down to loafing and amusing themselves in more or less harmless ways. What really astonished good King Filoman, however, was that many kept right on committing crimes when, being pensioned, they no longer had to do so.
“Furthermore, the amount of crime actually waxed as Filoman’s subjects discovered that to be convicted was the best way to get a regular stipend from the treasury. People robbed and raped and assaulted all over the place and made no attempt to evade capture. Thus, two merchants accused each other of then; the hatter said the antique dealer had stolen a dozen of his hats, whilst the antique dealer accused the hatter of making off with a costly vase. Even odder, each had his loot in plain sight in his own shop. It was plain to every one save Filoman the Well-Meaning and his ghostly minister that the twain had cooked up this scheme between them, to get on the pension rolls.
“When, during a séance with Gloé Filoman complained of these unwonted events, Tsaidar’s ghost would not admit any flaw in his logic. ‘It must,’ he said, ‘be that the emoluments you pay your felons are not enough to relieve their want. Double all pensions at once, and you shall see.’
“Then so great became the demands on the treasury that Filoman was forced to borrow abroad and then to debase the currency to pay his promised stipends. Soon, Kortolian money contained so much lead and tin mingled with the silver, and copper with the gold, that no knowing person would accept it. The sound money from earlier times went into hiding, whilst all Kortolians sought to rid themselves of Filoman’s counterfeits, as they were called. And soon all trade ground to a halt, for none would take the new money and none would part with the old. There were bread riots in Kortoli City and other distressing events.
“At length, King Filoman determined to seek advice from the living to find out what was wrong. He asked many of those arrested for crime why they had so conducted themselves. Some answered with glib lies. Some admitted that they wanted pensions, too. But one scarred old rogue with a missing ear, who had slain and robbed a merchant on the road, at last revealed to the king what was truly in the minds of many of his kind.
“ ‘You see, Your Majesty,’ said the robber, ‘it is not just the money. To sit at home and live on my pension were too dull to be borne. I should go mad with boredom.’
“ ‘But,’ quoth the king, ‘there are many worthy occupations, such as soldier or hunter or messenger, which would provide you with healthful activity and enable you to do good at the same time.’
“You do not understand, sire. I do not want to do good; I want to do bad. I want to rob and hurt and ay people.’
“ ‘Good gods, why should you wish that?’ said the king.
“ ‘Well, sire, one of man’s deepest desires is to put himself above his fellow men—to compel them to admit his superiority, is it not?’
“ ‘One might say so,’ replied the king cautiously. ‘But I seek to attain superiority by virtue.’
“ ‘You do, but I do not. Now, a living man is, in general, superior to a dead one, is he not.’
“ ‘Aye, it would seem reasonable to say so.’
“ ‘Then, if I slay a man, and I live whilst he dies, I am obviously his superior by the mere fact of being alive, am I not?”
“ ‘I never thought of that,’ said the king, greatly troubled.
“ ‘The same,’ said the scoundrel, ‘applies to assault, robbery, and other deeds that I delight in. If I give something to a man, or accept a free gift from him, or barter things of equal value with him, that proves nought about who is the better man. But if I take from him that which is his, against his wish, I have proved that my power is greater than his. Every time I make another unhappy, without his being able to retaliate, I have proved my superiority.’
“ ‘You must be mad!’ cried the king. ‘Never have I heard so monstrous a philosophy!’
“ ‘Nay, sire, I do assure you that I am but a normal human being like yourself.’
“ ‘If you are normal, then I cannot be, and contrariwise,’ said the king, ‘for our views are as different as day and night.’
“ ‘Ah, but Your Majesty, I said not that we were alike! People are so various that there is no one normal kind, all others being lunatics and antic characters. And most folk have in them different urges, which pull them now one way and now the other. In you, the urge to do good is so much stronger than the urge to do evil that the latter can be neglected, whereas with me and many like me it is the opposite. But amongst the general, you will find, these motives are more evenly balanced, so that they do now good, now ill. And, when one of your subjects has grown to manhood with these urges in a certain proportion, I do not think you will change this proportion thereafter, no matter what you do to or for him.’
“The king sank back on his throne, aghast. At last he said, ‘And where, my good murderer, did you learn to reason so philosophically?’
“ ‘When I was a boy, I went to school in Metouro under your esteemed minister, Tsaidar of Govannian, who was then not a disembodied spirit but a young schoolmaster. And now, sire, if you will summon your treasurer to put me on his pension roll—’
“ ‘I cannot,’ said the king, ‘because you have convinced me of the error of my whole scheme. I cannot call in the headsman to shorten you by the appropriate amount, as you deserve, because you have done me a favor by giving me a deeper insight into my fellow men. On the other hand, I cannot permit you to continue your villainies in Kortoli. So you will be given a horse, a small purse, and twenty-four hours to quit the land, on pain of death if ever you return.’
“And so it was done, not without some soul-searching on the part of Filoman, who felt guilty about turning this rascal loose on one of the neighboring states. He dismissed Tsaidar’s ghost and paid off the witch Gloé, whereupon she cried out: “ ‘Sire! I am bilked! These are those worthless adulterated coins you have been striking lately!’
“ ‘Well, the advice of your ghost proved equally worthless, so we are quits,’ said Filoman. ‘Now get along back to your cave and bother me no more.’
“And Gloé departed, muttering maledictions, although whether these had aught to do with the king’s death in a riding accident some years afterwards is not known. And Filoman appointed Oinax his new minister, and for a while Kortoli returned to its former condition. But then King Filoman fell under the sway of the so-called holy man Ajimbalin, with results whereof I have already told you.”
Jorian had inched closer to the princess, and now had an arm about her vast, bare torso. She put up her face to be kissed, then seized him in a grip of pythonic power.
“Gramercy for your story, man,” she murmured. “And now we shall see whether you are a better man than those pygmies of Mulvanians, with their tools like toothpicks, no? Come!”
Three hours later, Princess Yargali lay on her side, facing the window by which Jorian had entered and breathing slow, deep breaths. Jorian slid quietly out of the huge bed. He quickly donned his garments, except for his boots, which he thrust into his sash.
Then he searched the bedroom for the Kist of Avlen. The candle in this room had burnt down and gone out, but enough light came through the doorway from the living room, where a pair of butter lamps still burnt, for his purpose. He found that none of the chests ranged around the walls was that which he sought. Nor did there seem to be any closets or secret compartments in the walls. A search of the princess’s bathroom proved equally fruitless.
At last Jorian discovered the Kist in the most obvious place: under Yargali’s bed. It was a battered little chest, about a cubit and a half long and a cubit in height and depth, with an old leather strap buckled around it to reinforce its brass clasps. It lay under the side of the bed away from the window. Jorian had lain on that side after making love to Yargali. Evidently, he would have to pull the chest out from under the bed from that side, tiptoe around the bed to the window, and let himself out.
Moving as if treading on razors, Jorian knelt beside the bed. Slowly he pulled the Kist towards himself by one of the brass handles. It did not prove very heavy. Fingerbreadth by fingerbreadth, almost holding his breath, he teased the chest out from under the bed. At last it lay before him. Grasping the two handles, he stood up and stepped back.
Then, to his utter horror, the Princess Yargali muttered in her sleep and rolled over. Her eyes opened. She cast off the coverlet, exposing her huge, brown body with its exaggerated curves.
“Sssso!” she said.
For an instant, Jorian—still a little drunk from Yargali’s wine—was rooted to the spot. In that instant, Yargali changed. Her body elongated; her limbs shrank. The dark-brown skin changed to an epidermis of olive-green scales, with a reticulated pattern of russet and yellow stripes. Her face bulged out and became a long, scaly muzzle. A musky odor filled the bedroom.
She was a serpent—but such a serpent as Jorian had never heard of outside myths and legends. The head, as large as that of a horse, reared up from the pile of coils. A forked tongue flicked out from the jaws. In the middle, the serpent’s body was as big around as Jorian’s waist.
Sobered abruptly and shaking himself out of his momentary paralysis, Jorian thought with lightning speed. If he tried to run around the bed to get to the window, he would come within easy lunging distance of the head. If he had only caused Karadur to send the rope up to one of the living-room windows, he could have fled that way; but now his retreat was cut off. Too late, he remembered Goania’s warning against bedroom windows. If he tried to get out the living-room windows, he would probably give himself a fifteen-cubit fall on the marble of the terrace and break a leg or a neck. The stonework outside was smooth, and there was no ivy to climb by or tree into whose branches to leap.
As the serpent poured off the creaking bed and came for Jorian, he fled into the living room. There were two exits from this parlor. One door, he supposed, opened into the third story of the adjacent hall; there was probably a guard on the far side of it. The other, whose door stood ajar, revealed a descending flight of stairs, down which Yargali had earlier come on her way from her apartment to the ballroom.
Jorian raced across the living room and door at the head of the stairs. Down he went, and after him, hissing like a giant’s kettle, poured Yargali—all forty cubits of her. The thought crossed Jorian’s mind that, in assuming her serpent form, the princess had at least deprived herself of the ability to shout for help.
The ballroom was dark but for one small oil lamp, which burnt on a bracket. The king’s servants had unrolled the huge rug that covered the marble when the floor was not being used for balls.
Jorian dashed to the nearest of the long windows opening on the terrace. The window had, however, been not only closed but also locked. The feeble light showed him the keyhole. Yargali’s serpent head appeared from the doorway at the foot of the stairs.
Given a few minutes, Jorian was sure he could pick the lock of any of the long windows. Given time and no interference, he could probably batter the glass panes out of the window and burst his way through. But the panes were small and the leads between them were stout and closely set, so that this operation would take many blows with some heavy object, such as a chair, and the noise would fetch the guards who stood outside the big doors at the end of the ballroom.
If he tried to get out one of his pick-locks and pick a window lock, Yargali would seize him from behind, throw a coil around him, smother him in her serpentine embrace, and swallow him little by little, head first like a frog. Now Jorian saw why no one had succeeded for five hundred years in stealing the Kist from her somewhat casual guardianship.
As Yargali’s head came towards him, her forked tongue flickering, Jorian set the Kist of Avlen down upon the carpet. Seizing the corner of the rug, he heaved and tugged his way down the side of the ballroom, past the long windows, pulling the carpet with him. It buckled into folds and became frightfully heavy to move, since the whole thing weighed several times as much as Jorian. A smaller or weaker man could not have moved it at all. But, straining and sweating and with muscles cracking with the effort, Jorian hauled the whole carpet down to the far end of the ballroom, where he left it in a crumpled heap.
Then he picked up the Kist—which had come along with the carpet—and went back to one of the long windows. Yargali had now slithered all the way down the stairs and out on the bare, brown marble floor. But here, lacking any roughness or solid objects to exert a horizontal force against, she found herself unable to advance further. Her vast serpentine body rippled; wave after wave flowed from her wedge-shaped head to her tapering tail, but to no avail. Like a flag fluttering in the breeze, she moved but did not progress. Hissing in a fury of frustration, she doubled the speed and violence of her writhings, but her scales slithered futilely back and forth on the polished marble floor.
Meanwhile, Jorian picked the lock of the window at the far end, slipped out with the Kist, and closed the window behind him. He ran to where the magical rope still stood upright on the pave and uttered the simple cantrip that nullified its spell and brought it tumbling down in coils.
###
A quarter-hour later, Jorian rejoined Karadur outside the main gate, around the elephant mill out of sight of the sentries. He whispered: “Have you all our gear? My sword? Thanks . . . Curse it, you forgot my hat! They’ll give it to their hound-elephants to smell. Oh, well, no matter; I have this silly cap. Can we make a sling of your magical rope, so I can carry this damned chest on my back?”
Karadur fingered the rope. “Aye, might as well. The rope’s magical powers are exhausted, and until it be ensorcelled again it is no more than a common rope.”
Another hour saw them riding southward on the road up the left bank of the Pennerath. Jorian told Karadur the essentials of his adventure. The wizard asked: “How did you ever think of that extraordinary expedient for immobilizing Yargali, my son?”
“I remembered when I was a boy, I caught a harmless little snake and kept it for a few days. Then I went with my father to the house of a squire of Ardamai, where my father was installing a water clock. And whilst I was there, helping my father, the serpent escaped from my purse and fell to the squire’s polished hardwood floor. The squire’s wife carried on like a crazy woman until I removed the poor little snake, and I was sent to bed that night without my supper. But I remembered that, on this floor, the snake had been unable to move from here to there for want of traction, and so was easily caught. And I thought it might work the same way with the black wench.”
“How found you your—ah—sensuous escapade?”
“Bumpy, a little like serving a cow elephant maddened by passion. I could have used stirrups there, too; I was almost thrown out on my head on the floor.”
Karadur shuddered. “Was she pleased?”
“She seemed to be, albeit meseems she would have been receptive to more bouts than I was prepared to give. I was but a mere mortal man and a badly frightened one at that.”
“Jorian! I have told you not to talk—”
“Oh, very well. But hereafter I’ll confine my venery to human women. If I could only get back my little Estrildis . . .” He wiped away a tear, then turned a startled face to the wizard. “Gods! I just thought: what if the seed take root?”
“Fear not, my son. A hybrid betwixt a man and one of the serpent people were impossible, which is perhaps as well. I tremble to think what a being combining her shape-changing powers and your craft and daring might do to the world!”