"Piurifayne Fountain," Deliamber announced. "One of the great sights of Majipoor, well worth getting wet to see."

Valentine and Carabella rushed from the wagon, the others close behind. They had come to an open place in the road, where the forest of little green-boled trees fell away to create a kind of natural amphitheater, completely without vegetation, running perhaps half a mile back from the highway. At its farther end a geyser was in eruption, but a geyser that was to the ones Valentine had seen at Hot Khyntor as a sea-dragon is to a minnow. This was a column of frothing water that seemed taller than the tallest tower in Dulorn, a white shaft rising five hundred feet, six hundred, possibly even more, roaring out of the ground with incalculable force. At its upper end, where its unity broke and gave way to streamers and spouts and ropes of water that darted off in many directions, a mysterious light appeared to glow, kindling a whole spectrum of hues at the fringes of the column, pinks and pearls and crimsons and pale lavenders and opals. A warm spray filled the air.

The eruption went on and on — an incredible volume of water driven by incredible might into the sky. Valentine felt his entire body massaged by the subterranean forces that were at work. He stared in awe and wonder, and it was almost with shock that he realized that the event was ending, the column now was shrinking, no more than four hundred feet, three hundred, now just a pathetic strand of white sinking toward the ground, now only forty feet, thirty, and then gone, gone, vacant air where that stunning shaft had been, droplets of warm moisture as its only revenant.

"Every thirty minutes," Autifon Deliamber informed them. "As long as the Metamorphs have lived on Majipoor, so it is said, that geyser has never been a minute late. It is a sacred place to them. See? There are pilgrims now."

Sleet caught his breath and began making holy signs. Valentine put a steadying hand to his shoulder. Indeed Metamorphs, Shapeshifters, Piurivars, a dozen or more of them, gathered at a kind of wayside shrine not far ahead. They were looking at the travelers, and, Valentine thought, not in a particularly friendly way. Several of the aborigines in the front of the group stepped briefly behind others, and when they reappeared they looked strangely blurred and indistinct, but that was not all, for they had undergone transformations. One had sprouted great cannonballs of breasts, in caricature of Lisamon Hultin, and another had grown four shaggy Skandar-arms, and another was mimicking Sleet’s white hair. They made a curious thin sound which might have been the Metamorph version of laughter, and then the entire group slipped away into the forest.

Valentine did not release his grip on Sleet’s shoulder until he felt some of the tension ebb from the little juggler’s rigid body. Lightly he said, "A good trick that is! If we could do that — perhaps grow some extra arms in the middle of our act — what do you say, Sleet, would you like that?"

"I would like to be in Narabal," Sleet said, "or Piliplok, or someplace else very far from here."

"And I in Falkynkip, feeding slops to my mounts," said Shanamir, who looked pale and shaken.

"They mean us no harm," Valentine said. "This will be an interesting experience, one that we will never forget."

He smiled broadly. But there were no smiles about him, not even on Carabella, Carabella the inextinguishably buoyant. Zalzan Kavol himself looked oddly discomforted, as if perhaps he might now be having second thoughts about the wisdom of pursuing his love of royals into the Metamorph province. Valentine could not, by sheer force of optimistic energy alone, give his companions much cheer. He looked toward Deliamber.

"How far is it to Ilirivoyne?" he asked. "It lies somewhere ahead," the Vroon replied. "How far, I have no idea. We will come to it when we come to it." It was not an encouraging reply.

—12—

THIS WAS PRIMORDIAL COUNTRY, timeless, unspoiled, an outpost of time’s early dawn on civilized and housebroken Majipoor. The Shapeshifters lived in rain-forest land, where daily downpours cleansed the air and let vegetation run riot. Out of the north came the frequent storms, down into that natural funnel formed by Velathys Scarp and the Gonghars; and as the moist air rose in the ascent of the Gonghar foothills, gentle rains were released, that soaked the light spongy soil. Trees grew tall and slender-trunked, sprouting high and forming thick canopies far overhead; networks of creepers and lianas tied the treetops together; cascades of dark leaves, tapering, drip-tipped, glistened as if polished by the rain. Where there were breaks in the forest, Valentine could see distant green-cloaked mist-wrapped mountains, heavy-shouldered, forbidding, great mysterious bulks crouching on the land. Of wildlife there was little, at least not much that let itself be seen: an occasional red-and-yellow serpent slithering along a bough, an infrequent green-and-scarlet bird or toothy web-winged brown aeorlizard fluttering overhead, and once a frightened bilantoon that scampered delicately in front of the wagon and vanished into the woods with a flurry of its sharp little hooves and panicky wigwagging of its upturned tufted tail. Probably forest-brethren lurked here, since several groves of dwikka-trees came into view. And no doubt the streams were thick with fish and reptiles, the forest floor teemed with burrowing insects and rodents of fantastic hue and shape, and for all Valentine knew, each of the innumerable dark little lakes held its own monstrous submerged amorflbot, that arose by night to prowl, all neck and teeth and beady eyes, for whatever prey came within reach of its massive body. But none of these things made themselves apparent as the wagon sped southward over the rough, narrow wilderness road.

Nor were the Piurivars themselves much in evidence — now and then a well-worn trail leading into the jungle, or a few flimsy wickerwork huts visible just off the road, or a party of half a dozen pilgrims heading on foot up toward the shrine at the Fountain. They were, said Deliamber, a folk that lived by hunting and fishing, and collecting wild fruits and nuts, and a certain amount of agriculture. Possibly their civilization had once been more advanced, for ruins had been discovered, especially on Alhanroel, of large stone cities thousands of years old, that might have dated from early Piurivar times before the starships arrived — although, Deliamber said, there were some historians who maintained that the ruins were those of ancient human settlements, founded and destroyed in the turbulent pre-Pontifical period twelve to thirteen thousand years ago. At any rate the Metamorphs, if they had ever had a more complex way of life, now preferred to be forest-dwellers. Whether that was retrogression or progress Valentine could not say.

By mid-afternoon the sound of Piurifayne Fountain could no longer be heard behind them, and the forest was more open, more thickly settled. The road was unmarked, and, unexpectedly, it forked in a place where no clues were to be had to anything beyond. Zalzan Kavol looked for guidance to Deliamber, who looked to Lisamon Hultin.

"Damn my gut if I could say," the giantess boomed. "Pick one at random. We’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of getting to Ilirivoyne on it."

But Deliamber had a better idea, and knelt down in the mud to cast an inquiry-spell. He took from his pack a couple of cubes of a wizardy incense. Shielding them from the rain with his cloak, he ignited them to create a pale brown smoke. This he inhaled, while waving his tentacles in intricate curlicues.

The warrior-woman snorted and said, "It’s only a fraud. He’ll wiggle his arms for a while and then he’ll make a guess. Fifty-fifty for Ilirivoyne."

"The left fork," Deliamber announced eventually. It was good sorcery or else lucky guessing, for shortly signs of Metamorph occupation increased. There were no more isolated scatterings of lonely huts, but now little clumps of wickerwork dwellings, eight or ten or more close together every hundred yards, and then even closer. There was much foot traffic too, mainly aboriginal children carrying light burdens in slings dangling from their heads. Many stopped as the wagon went by, and stared and pointed and made little cluttering sounds between their teeth.