"Very little," said Carabella acidly, "if they could have such powers and still have their world snatched away from them."

"Shifting shape is not enough of a defense," Deliamber replied, "when people travel from one star to another to steal your home."

The Metamorphs fascinated Valentine. To him they represented artifacts of Majipoor’s long history, archaeological relicts, survivors from the era when there were no humans here, nor Skandars nor Vroons nor Ghayrogs, only these fragile green people spread out across a colossal planet. Before the settlers came — the intruders, ultimately the conquerors. How long ago it had been! He wished they would perform a transformation as he watched, perhaps turn into Skandars or Liimen before his eyes. But they remained unwavering in their identities.

Shanamir, looking agitated, appeared suddenly out of the crowd. He seized Valentine’s arm and blurted, "Do you know what’s on board with us? I heard the cargo-handlers talking. There’s a whole family of Shape—"

"Not so loud," Valentine said. "Look yonder."

The boy looked and shivered. "Scary things, they are."

"Where’s Sleet?"

"On the bridge, with Zalzan Kavol. They’re trying to get a permit to perform tonight. If he sees them—"

"He’ll have to confront Metamorphs sooner or later," Valentine murmured. To Deliamber he said, "Is it uncommon for them to be seen outside their reservation?"

"They are found everywhere, but never in great numbers, and rarely in their own form. There might be eleven of them living in Pidruid, say, and six in Falkynkip, nine in Dulorn—"

"Disguised?"

"Yes, as Ghayrogs or Hjorts or humans, whatever seems best in a certain place."

The Metamorphs began to leave the deck. They moved with great dignity, but, unlike the little Su-Suheris group, there was nothing imperious about them; they seemed rather to give an impression of wishing they were invisible.

Valentine said, "Do they live in their territory by choice or compulsion?"

"Some of each, I think. When Lord Stiamot completed the conquest, he forced them to leave Alhanroel entirely. But Zimroel was barely settled then, just the coastal outposts, and they were allowed most of the interior. They chose only the territory between the Zimr and the southern mountains, though, where access could easily be controlled, and withdrew into that. By now there’s a tradition that the Metamorphs dwell only in that territory, except for the unofficial few living out in the cities. But I have no idea whether that tradition has force of law. Certainly they pay little attention to the decrees that emerge from the Labyrinth or Castle Mount."

"If imperial law matters so little to them, are we not taking great risks in going to Ilirivoyne?"

Deliamber laughed. "The days when Metamorphs attacked outsiders for the sheer love of vengeance are long over, so I am assured. They are a shy and sullen people, but they will do us no harm, and we’ll probably leave their country intact and well laden with the money that Zalzan Kavol loves so much. Look, here he comes now."

The Skandar, with Sleet beside him, approached, looking self-satisfied.

"We have arranged the right to perform," he announced. "Fifty crowns for an hour’s work, right after dinner! We’ll give them our simplest tricks, though. Why exert ourselves before we get to Ilirivoyne?"

"No," Valentine said. "We should do our best." He looked hard at Sleet. "There’s a party of Metamorphs aboard this boat. Perhaps they’ll carry the word of our excellence ahead of us to Ilirivoyne."

"Wisely argued," said Zalzan Kavol.

Sleet was taut and fearful. His nostrils flickered, his lips compressed, he made holy signs with his left hand at his side. Valentine turned to him and said in a low voice, "Now the process of healing begins. Juggle for them tonight as you would for the court of the Pontifex."

Hoarsely Sleet said, "They are my enemies!"

"Not these. They are not the ones of your dream. Those have done you all the damage that lay in their power, and it was long ago."

"It sickens me to be on the same boat."

"There’s no leaving it now," Valentine said. "There are only five of them. A small dose — good practice for meeting what awaits us in Ilirivoyne."

"Ilirivoyne—"

"There is no avoiding Ilirivoyne," said Valentine. "Your pledge to me, Sleet—"

Sleet regarded Valentine in silence a moment.

"Yes, my lord," he whispered.

"Come, then. Juggle with me: we both need practice. And remember to call me Valentine!"

They found a quiet place belowdecks and worked out with the clubs; there was an odd reversal in their roles at first, for Valentine juggled flawlessly, while Sleet was as clumsy as a tyro, dropping the clubs constantly and in several instances bruising his fingers. But in a few minutes his disciplines asserted themselves. He filled the air with clubs, interchanging them with Valentine in patterns of such complexity that it left Valentine laughing and gasping, and finally he had to beg a halt and ask Sleet to return to more manageable cascades.

That night at the deckside performance — their first since the impromptu event staged for the amusement of the forest-brethren — Zalzan Kavol ordered a program that they had never done before an audience. The jugglers divided into three groups of three — Sleet, Carabella, and Valentine; Zalzan Kavol, Thelkar, and Gibor Haern; Heitrag Kavol, Rovorn, and Erfon Kavol — and engaged in simultaneous triple exchanges in the same rhythm, one group of Skandars juggling knives, the other flaming torches, and the humans silver clubs. It was one of the most severe tests of his skills that Valentine had yet experienced. The symmetry of the routine depended on perfection. One dropped implement by any of the nine would ruin the total effect. He was the weakest link; on him the entire impact of the performance depended, therefore.

But he dropped no clubs, and the applause, when the jugglers had ended their act in a flurry of high throws and jaunty catches, was overwhelming. As he took his bows Valentine noticed the family of Metamorphs seated only a few rows away. He glanced at Sleet, who bowed and bowed again, ever more deeply.

As they skipped from the stage Sleet said, "I saw them when we started, and then I forgot about them. I forgot about them. Valentine!" He laughed. "They were nothing at all like the creature I remember from my dream."

—10—

THE TROUPE SLEPT THAT NIGHT in a dank, crowded hold in the bowels of the riverboat. Valentine found himself jammed between Shanamir and Lisamon Hultin on the thinly cushioned floor, and the proximity of the warrior-woman seemed to guarantee that he would have no sleep, for her snoring was a fierce insistent buzz, and more distracting even than the snore was the fear that as her vast body rolled and thrashed about beside him he would be crushed beneath it. Several times indeed she fetched up against him and he was hard put to extricate himself. But soon she lay more quietly, and he felt sleep stealing over him.

A dream came in which he was Coronal, Lord Valentine of the olive skin and black beard, and sat once more in Castle Mount wielding the seals of power, and then somehow he was in a southern city, a moist steaming tropical place of giant vines and gaudy red blossoms, a city that he knew to be Til-omon at the far side of Zimroel, and he attended there a grand feast in his honor. There was another high guest at the table, a somber-eyed man with coarse skin, who was Dominin Barjazid, second son of the King of Dreams, and Dominin Barjazid poured wine in honor of the Coronal, and offered toasts, crying out long life and predicting a glorious reign, a reign to rank with those of Lord Stiamot and Lord Prestimion and Lord Confalume. And Lord Valentine drank, and drank again, and grew flushed and merry, and offered toasts of his own, to his guest and to the mayor of Til-omon and to the duke of the province, and to Simonan Barjazid the King of Dreams, and to the Pontifex Tyeveras, and to the Lady of the Isle, his own beloved mother, and the goblet was filled and filled once again, amber wine and red wine and the blue wine of the south, until finally he could drink no more, and went to his bedchamber and dropped instantly into sleep. As he slept figures moved about him, the men of Dominin Barjazid’s entourage, lifting him and carrying him wrapped in silken sheets, taking him somewhere, and he could give no resistance, for it seemed to him that his arms and legs would not obey him, as if this were a dream, this scene within a dream. And Valentine beheld himself on a table in a secret room, and now his hair was yellow and his skin was fair, and it was Dominin Barjazid who wore the face of the Coronal.