II

 

 

If Forb was old, then Castle Thorn was antique. Guarding the entrance to a bowl-shaped valley, it loomed as large as a city in its own right—not that its whole bulk could be seen from the outcrop of rock serving it as a wharf, despite the glowplants which outlined it at a distance, for its defenses were elaborate and far-reaching. On either bank bomas trembled ready to collapse their spiky branches, while masses of clingweed parted only in response to blasting on a high-pitched whistle. Prongsmen came to hitch the barq’s mooring-tentacles, accompanied by enormous canifangs.

Just before docking Jing had realized that a range of hills on the horizon was gleaming pure white in the moonshine. He had said, “Snow already?”

And the steersman had grunted, “Always.”

So there truly was a place where ice might defy summer. For the first time Jing felt in his inmost tubules how far he was from home.

But there was no time for reflection. A voice was calling to him in city-Forbish: “Hail to the foreigner! I’m told your prongsman is sick. As soon as he’s ashore I’ll see what I can do for him. I’m Scholar Twig, by the way.”

Who was a person of advanced years, his tubby shortness—characteristic of these northerners—aggravated by loss of pressure in his bracing tubules, but his expression alert and manner brisk. Grateful, for Twig was the name the doctor had told him to ask for, Jing returned the greeting.

“How you know I coming?” he demanded.

“Oh, you’ve made news over half the continent,” was the prompt reply. “Sorry we don’t have anyone around who speaks Ntahish, but until you showed up most people thought your homeland was just a legend, you know? Say, is it true you have star-maps going back to the Beginning? How soon can I look at them?”

Groping his way through the rush of words, Jing recalled the protocol which attended ambassadors to Ntah.

“Not I must at once pay respect the lord?”

“He’s dining in the great hall. You’ll meet him in a little. First let me present my colleagues. This is Hedge, this is Bush, this is—”

It was impossible to register so many strangers when he was so fatigued. “But my man-at-arms …?” he ventured.

“Ah, what am I thinking of? Of course, we must get him and you to quarters right away!”

Detailing some junior aides to carry Drakh, Twig led the way at half a trot.

Jing could have wished to move more slowly, because nothing had prepared him for the luxury he discerned all about him. The very stones were warm underpad. The gnarled trunks of the castle were thicker than any he had ever seen, and even at this season they were garlanded with scores of useful secondary plants. Steaming ponds rippled to the presence of fish, while fruit he had not tasted the like of since leaving home dangled from overhanging boughs, and everywhere trailed luminescent vines. Through gaps between the boles, as he ascended branchways in Twig’s wake, he caught glimpses of a landscape which reminded him achingly of parts of Ntah. He had thought in terms of a mere clawhold on survival, but the valley must support a considerable population. He saw three villages, each with a score of homes, surrounded by barns and clamps large enough to store food for a year—and that was only on one side of the castle. Amazing! His spirits rose.

And further still when Drakh was laid in a comfortable crotch and a maid brought warm drink. Passing him a huskful, Twig said dryly, “In case you’re superstitious about fire, it’s untouched by flame. We keep the bags in a hot spring.”

Jing’s people cared little about fire one way or the other, so he forbore to reply. Whatever its nature, the drink effectively drove away dreams. Meanwhile Twig was inspecting Drakh’s licker and saying in disgust, “This should have been changed days ago! Here!”—to the maid—“take it away and bring one of my own at once. They’re of the same stock,” he added to Jing, “though here we have fewer outlandish poisons they can learn to cope with. Faugh! They do stink, though, don’t they, at that stage?”

Now that Jing’s perceptions were renewed, he had realized that the very air inside the castle stank—something to do with the hot springs, possibly. Never mind. He posed a key question.

“Drakh will live, yes?”

“I’m not a specialist in foreign sicknesses, you know! But … Yes, very probably. I’ll send for juice which can be poured between his mandibles. Wouldn’t care to offer him solid food in his condition.”

Jing nodded sober agreement. Reflex might make him bite off his own limbs.

“Are those your maps?” Twig went on, indicating the rolled parchments. “How I want to examine them! But you must be hungry. Come on, I’ll show you to the hall.”

 

There, at its very center, the true antiquity of the castle was revealed. Despite the dense clusters of glowplants which draped the walls, Jing could discern how the ever-swelling boles of its constituent bravetrees had lifted many huge rocks to four or five times his own height. Some of them leaned dangerously inward where the trunks arched together. None of the company, however, seemed to be worrying about what might happen if they tumbled down. Perhaps there were no quakes in this frozen zone; the land might stiffen here, as water did, the year around. Yet it was so warm …

He postponed such mysteries in order to take in his surroundings.

The body of the hall was set with carefully tended trencher-stumps, many more than sufficed for the diners, who were three or at most four score in number. Not only were the stumps plumper than any Jing had seen in Forb; they were plentifully garnished with fruit and fungi and strips of meat and fish, while a channel of hollow stems ran past them full of the same liquor Twig had given him. Entrances were at east and west. At the south end a line of peasants waited for their dole: a slice of trencher-wood nipped off by a contemptuous kitchener and a clawful of what had been dismissed by diners at the north. Jing repressed a gasp. Never, even in Ntah, had he seen such lavish hospitality. It was a wonder that the Count’s enemies in Forb had not already marched to deprive him of his riches.

“So many peasants isn’t usual,” murmured Twig.

“I believe well!” Jing exclaimed. “Plainly did I see villages with land enough and many high barns!”

“Except that on the land the trencher-plants are failing,” Twig said, still softly. “Take one of these and transplant it outside, and it turns rotten-yellow. But save your questions until you’ve fed, or you’ll spend a dream-haunted night. Come this way.”

Jing complied, completing his survey of the hall. In a space at the center, children as yet unable to raise themselves upright were playing with a litter of baby canifangs, whose claws were already sharp. Now and then that led to squalling, whereupon a nursh would run to the defense of its charge, mutely seeking a grin of approval from the fathers who sat to left and right. Each had a female companion, and if the latter were in bud made great show of providing for her, but otherwise merely allowed her to bite off a few scraps.

And at the north end sat the Count himself, flanked by two girls, both pretty in the plump northern manner, but neither budding.

The Count was as unlike what Jing had been led to expect as was his castle. He had been convinced by the doctor that he was to meet a great patron of learning, more concerned with wisdom than material wealth. What he saw was a gross figure so far gone in self-indulgence that he required a sitting-pit, whose only concession to stylish behavior was that instead of biting off his trencher-wood he slashed it with a blade the like of which Jing had never seen, made from some dark but shiny and very sharp substance.

“Sit here with my compeers,” Twig muttered. “Eat fast. There may not be long to go. He’s in a surly mood.”

Thinking to make polite conversation, Jing said, “Has two lovely shes, this lord. Is of the children many to him credit?”

The scholar’s colleagues, Bush, Hedge and so on—names doubtless adopted, in accordance with local custom, when they took service with the Count—froze in unison. Twig whispered forcefully, “Never speak of that where he might overhear! No matter how many women he takes, there is no outcome and never has been, except … See the cripple?”

Previously overlooked, there sat a girl by herself, her expression glum. She leaned to one side as though she had been struck by an assassin’s prong. Yet she bore a visible resemblance to the Count, and she was passably handsome by the standards of Ntah where the mere fact of her being a noble’s daughter would have assured her of suitors. She was alone, though, as if she were an unmated or visiting male. Had he again misunderstood some local convention?

Twig was continuing between gobbles of food. “She’s the reason I’m here—eat, eat for pity’s sake because any moment he’s going to order up the evening’s entertainment which is bound to include you and over there”—with a nod towards a trio of emaciated persons whom Jing identified with a sinking feeling as sacerdotes—“are a bunch of charlatans who would dearly have liked to sink claws in you before I did except that I put it about I wasn’t expecting you before the last boat of autumn in ten days’ time. Anyway, Rainbow—who is much brighter than you’d imagine just looking at her—is his sole offspring. Naturally what he wants is a cure for infertility and an assurance that his line won’t die out. So our real work keeps getting interrupted while we invent another specious promise for him.”

For someone afraid of being overheard, Twig was speaking remarkably freely. But Jing was confused. “You not try read his future from stars?” he hazarded. “You not think possible?”

“Oh, it may well be! But before we can work out what the sky is telling us, we must first understand what’s going on up there. My view, you see, is that fire above and fire below are alike in essence, so that until we comprehend what fire can do we shan’t know what it is doing, and in consequence—Oh-oh. He’s stopped eating, which means the rest of us have to do the same. If you haven’t had enough to keep you dreamfree I can smuggle something to your quarters later. Right now, though, you’re apt to be what’s served him next!”

In fact it didn’t happen quite so quickly. With a spring like a stabberclaw pouncing out of jungle overgrowth, a girl draped in glitterweed erupted from shadow. She proved to be a juggler, and to the accompaniment of a shrill pipe made full use of the hall’s height by tossing little flying creatures into the air and luring them back in graceful swooping curves.

“She came in on the first spring boat,” Twig muttered, “and is going away tomorrow—considerably richer! Even though she didn’t cure the Count’s problem, he must have had a degree of pleasure from her company …”

Certainly the performance improved the Count’s humor; when it was over he joined in the clacking of applause.

“We have a foreign guest among us!” he roared at last. “Let him make himself known!”

“Do exactly as I do!” Twig instructed. “First you—”

“No!” Jing said with unexpected resolve. “I make like in my country to my lord!”

And strode forward fully upright, not letting the least hint of pressure leak from his tubules. Arriving in front of the Count, he paid him the Ntahish compliment of overtopping him yet shielding his mandibles.

“I bring greeting from Ntah,” he said in his best Forbish. “Too, I bring pearlseeds, finest of sort, each to grow ten score like self. Permit to give as signing gratitude he let share knowledge of scholars here!”

And extended what was in fact his best remaining seed.

For an instant the Count seemed afraid to touch it. Then one of his treasurers, who stood by, darted forward to examine it. He reported that it was indeed first-class.

Finally the Count condescended to take it into his own claw, and a murmur of surprise passed around the company. Jing realized he must have committed another breach of etiquette. But there was no help for that.

“You have no manners, fellow,” the Count grunted. “Still, if your knowledge is as valuable as your pearlseed, you may consider yourself welcome. I’ll talk with you when Twig has taught you how to address a nobleman!”

He hauled himself to his pads and lumbered off.

 

“Well, you got away with that,” Twig murmured, arriving at Jing’s side. “But you’ve pressurized a lot of enemies. Not one of them would dare to stand full height before the Count, and they claim to have authority from the Maker Himself!”

Indeed, the three sacerdotes he had earlier designated charlatans were glowering from the far side of the hall as though they would cheerfully have torn Jing mantle from torso.