" — were nonsense," Valentine said. "What she said isn’t worth discussing."

Carabella’s eyes reproached him. He looked away from her.

"Can you accept that?" he asked roughly. "She was a crazy old woman and she told me a lot of nonsense, and I don’t want to discuss it, not with you, not with anyone. It was my speaking. I don’t have to share it. I—" He saw the shock on her face. In another moment he would be babbling. He said in an entirely different tone of voice, "Get the juggling balls, Carabella."

"Now?"

"Right now."

"But—"

"I want you to teach me the exchange between jugglers, the passing of the balls. Please."

"We’re due to leave in half an hour!"

"Please," he said urgently.

She nodded and sprinted up the steps of the wagon, returning a moment later with the balls. They moved apart, to an open place where they would have room, and Carabella flipped three of the balls to him. She was frowning.

"What’s wrong?" he asked.

"Learning new techniques when the mind is troubled is never a good idea."

"It might calm me," he said. "Let’s try."

"As you wish." She began to juggle the three balls she held, by way of warming up. Valentine imitated her, but his hands were cold, his fingers unresponsive, and he had trouble doing this simplest of all routines, dropping the balls several times. Carabella said nothing. She continued to juggle while he launched one abortive cascade after another. His temper grew edgy. She would not tell him again that this was the wrong moment for attempting such things, but her silence, her look, even her stance, all said it more forcefully than words. Valentine desperately sought to strike a rhythm. You have fallen from a high place, he heard the dream-speaker saying, and now you must begin to climb back to it. He bit his lip. How could he concentrate, with such things intruding? Hand and eye, he thought, hand and eye, forget all else. Hand and eye. Nevertheless, Lord Valentine, that ascent awaits you, and it is not I who lays it on you. No. No. No. No. His hands shook. His fingers were rods of ice. He made a false move and the balls went scattering.

"Please, Valentine," Carabella said mildly.

"Get the clubs."

"It’ll be even worse with them. Do you want to break a finger?"

"The clubs," he said.

Shrugging, she gathered up the balls and went into the wagon. Sleet emerged, yawned, nodded a casual greeting to Valentine. The morning was beginning. One of the Skandars appeared and crawled under the wagon to adjust something. Carabella came out bearing six clubs. Behind her was Shanamir, who gave Valentine a quick salute and went to feed the mounts. Valentine took the clubs. Conscious of Sleet’s cool eyes on him, he put himself into the juggling position, threw one club high, and botched the catch. No one spoke. Valentine tried again. He managed to get the three clubs into sequence, but for no more than thirty seconds; then they spilled, one landing unpleasantly on his toe. Valentine caught sight of Autifon Deliamber watching the scene from a distance. He picked up the clubs again. Carabella, facing him, patiently juggled her three, studiously ignoring him. Valentine threw the clubs, got them started, dropped one, started again, dropped two, started yet again, made a faulty grab and bent his left thumb badly out of place.

He tried to pretend that nothing had gone wrong. Once more he picked up the clubs, but this time Sleet came over and took Valentine lightly by both wrists.

"Not now," he said. "Give me the clubs."

"I want to practice."

"Juggling isn’t therapy. You’re upset about something, and it’s ruining your timing. If you keep this up you can do damage to your rhythms that will take you weeks to undo."

Valentine tried to pull free, but Sleet held him with surprising strength. Carabella, impassive, went on juggling a few feet away. After an instant Valentine yielded. With a shrug he surrendered the clubs to Sleet, who scooped them up and took them back into the wagon. A moment later Zalzan Kavol stepped outside, elaborately scratched his pelt fore and aft with several of his hands as though searching in it for fleas, and boomed, "Everybody in! Let’s move it along!"

—14—

THE ROAD TO THE GHAYROG city of Dulorn took them eastward through lush, placid farming country, green and fertile under the eye of the summer sun. Like much of Majipoor this was densely populated terrain, but intelligent planning had created wide agricultural zones bordered by busy strip-cities, and so the day went, through an hour’s worth of farms, an hour’s worth of town, an hour of farms, an hour of town. Here in the Dulorn Rift, the broad sloping lowland east of Falkynkip, the climate was particularly suited for farming, for the Rift was open at its northern end to the polar rainstorms that constantly drenched Majipoor’s temperate arctic, and the subtropical heat was made moderate by gentle, predictable precipitation. The growing season lasted year round: this was the time for harvesting the sweet yellow stajja tubers, from which a bread was made, and for planting such fruits as niyk and glein.

The beauty of the landscape lightened Valentine’s bleak outlook. By easy stages he ceased to think about things that did not bear thinking about, and allowed himself to enjoy the unending procession of wonders that was the planet of Majipoor. The black slender trunks of niyk-trees planted in rigid and complex geometrical patterns danced against the horizon; teams of Hjort and human farmers in rural costumes moved like invading armies across the stajja-fields, plucking the heavy tubers; now the wagon glided quietly through a district of lakes and streams, and now through one where curious blocks of white granite jutted tooth-fashion from the smooth grassy plains.

At midday they entered a place of particularly strange beauty, one of the many public forest preserves. At the gateway a sign glowing with green luminosity proclaimed:

Located here is an outstanding virgin tract of Dulorn Bladdertree. These trees manufacture lighter-than-air gases which keep their upper branches buoyant. As they approach maturity their trunks and root systems atrophy, and they become epiphytic in nature, dependent almost entirely on the atmosphere for nourishment. Occasionally in extreme old age a tree will sever its contact with the ground entirely and drift off to found a new colony far away. Bladdertrees are found both in Zimroel and in Alhanroel but have become rare in recent times. This grove set aside for the people of Majipoor by official decree, 12th. Pont. Confalume Cor. Lord Prestimion.

The jugglers followed the forest trail silently on foot for some minutes without seeing anything unusual. Then Carabella, who led the way, passed through a thicket of dense blue-black bushes and cried out suddenly in surprise.

Valentine ran to her side. She was standing in wonder in the midst of marvels.

Bladdertrees were everywhere, in all stages of their growth. The young ones, no higher than Deliamber or Carabella, were curious ungainly-looking shrublets with thick, swollen branches of a peculiar silvery hue that emerged at awkward angles from squat fleshy trunks. But in trees fifteen or twenty feet tall, the trunks had begun to attenuate and the limbs to inflate, so that now the bulging boughs appeared top-heavy and precarious, and in even older trees the trunks had shriveled to become nothing more than rough, scaly guy-ropes by which the trees’ buoyant crowns were fastened to the ground. High overhead they floated and bobbed in the gentlest breeze, leafless, turgid, the branches puffed up like balloons. The silvery color of the young branches became, in maturity, a brilliant translucent gleam, so that the trees seemed like glass models of themselves, shining brightly in the shafts of sunlight through which they danced and weaved. Even Zalzan Kavol seemed moved by the strangeness and beauty of the trees. The Skandar approached one of the tallest, its gleaming swollen crown floating far overhead, and carefully, almost reverently, encircled its taut narrow stem with his fingers. Valentine thought Zalzan Kavol might be minded to snap the stem and send the bladdertree floating away like a glittering kite, but no, the Skandar seemed merely to be marking the slenderness of the stem, and after a moment he stepped back, muttering to himself.