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Then the chariot was past the moment was gone, and there was Lord Valentine retreating in the distance, still smiling, still extending his arms, still nodding graciously, still flashing his brilliant gaze at this citizen and that, but Valentine no longer felt himself in the presence of grace and might. Instead he felt vaguely soiled and cheated, and did not know why.
"Come quickly," Zalzan Kavol grunted. "We must get ourselves to the stadium now."
That much was simple. Everyone in Pidruid except the bed-ridden and the imprisoned stood stationed along the line of parade. The auxiliary streets were empty. In fifteen minutes the jugglers were at the waterfront, in ten more they approached the huge bayside stadium. Here a crowd had already begun to form. Thousands jammed the wharfs just beyond the stadium to have a second glimpse of the Coronal as he arrived.
The Skandars formed themselves into a wedge and cut brutally through this mob, Valentine and Sleet and Carabella and Shanamir following in their wake. Performers were instructed to report to the staging area at the stadium’s rear, a great open space fronting the water, and a kind of madness already prevailed there, with hundreds of costumed artists jostling for position. Here were giant gladiators of Kwill who made even the Skandars look frail, and teams of acrobats clambering impatiently over each other’s shoulders, and an entire nude corps de ballet, and three orchestras of strange outworldly instruments, tuning up in bizarre discord, and animal-trainers tugging strings that controlled floater-borne beasts of improbable size and ferocity, and freaks of every description — a man who weighed a thousand pounds, a woman eleven feet high and slender as a black bamboo rod, a Vroon with two heads, Liimen who were triplets and joined by a rope of ghastly blue-gray flesh from waist to waist to waist, someone whose face was like a hatchet and whose lower body was like a wheel — and so much more that Valentine was dizzied by the sights and sounds and smells of this congregation of the bewildering.
Frantic clerks wearing municipal sashes were trying to arrange these performers into an orderly procession. Some sort of order of march actually existed; Zalzan Kavol barked an identification at a clerk and received in return a number that marked his troupe’s place in line. But then it was their task to find their neighbors in the line, and that was not so easy, for everyone in the staging area was in constant motion and finding numbers was like trying to attach name-tags to waves in the sea.
Eventually the jugglers found their place, well back in the crowd, jammed in between a group of acrobats and one of the orchestras. After that there was no moving about, and once more they stood in place for hours. The performers were offered refreshments as they waited: servitors moved among them bearing bits of skewered meat and goblets of green or gold wine, for which no fee was asked. But the air was warm and heavy, and the reek of so many close-packed bodies of so many races and metabolisms made Valentine feel faint. In an hour, he thought, I will be juggling before the Coronal. How odd that sounds! He was aware of Carabella close beside him, jaunty, buoyant, always smiling, unfailingly energetic. "May the Divine spare us from having to do this ever again," she whispered.
At last there was some sense of movement far away near the gate to the stadium, as if some stopcock had been pulled and eddy-currents were drawing the first performers out of the staging area. Valentine stood on tiptoe but had no clear idea of what was happening. The better part of an hour went by before any sort of motion was apparent at their end of the assemblage. Then the line began to go steadily forward.
From within the stadium came sounds: music, screeching beasts, laughter, applause. The orchestra that preceded Zalzan Kavol’s troupe now was ready to enter — twenty players, of three non-human races, bearing fanciful instruments unknown to Valentine, swirls of shining brass pipe and strange lopsided drums and small five-bodied fifes and the like, everything oddly delicate, but the sound they made was not delicate at all when they struck up and began their march. The last of the musicians disappeared through the great double gates of the stadium and an officious major-domo strutted forward to bar the access of the jugglers.
"Zalzan Kavol and his troupe," the major-domo a
"We are here," said Zalzan Kavol.
"You will wait for the signal. Then you enter and follow those musicians in procession from left to right around the stadium. Do not begin to perform until you pass the large green flag that bears the Coronal’s emblem. When you reach the pavilion of the Coronal, pause and make obeisance, and hold your place for sixty seconds, performing your act, before moving onward. When you reach the far gate, depart from the area at once. You will be paid your fee as you leave. Is everything clear?"
"Quite," said Zalzan Kavol.
The Skandar turned to his troupe. He had until this moment been nothing other than brusque and rough, but suddenly he displayed another side, for he reached three of his arms toward his brothers, and clasped hands with them, and something that seemed almost like a loving smile appeared on his harsh face. Then the Skandar embraced Sleet, and then Carabella, and then he drew Valentine toward him and said, as gently as a Skandar could, "You have learned quickly and you show signs of mastery. You were only a convenience for us, but I am pleased now that you are among us."
"Thank you," said Valentine solemnly.
"Jugglers!" the major-domo barked.
Zalzan Kavol said, "It’s not every day that we juggle for a Power of Majipoor. Let this be our finest performance."
He gestured and the troupe moved through the mighty double gates.
Sleet and Carabella led the way, juggling five knives that they exchanged with one another in staccato patterns constantly varying: then, after a space, Valentine walked alone, juggling his three clubs with a taut intensity likely to conceal the simplicity of his routine, and, behind him, the six Skandar brothers, making utmost use of their twenty-four arms to fill the air with a preposterous miscellany of flying objects. Shanamir, as a kind of esquire, concluded the march, making no performance, merely serving as a human punctuation mark.
Carabella was exuberant, irrepressible: she did high-springs, clicking her heels, clapping her hands, and yet never missing a beat, while beside her Sleet, whiplash-quick, compact, dynamic, made himself a veritable well of energy as he snatched knives from the air and returned them to his partner. Even somber economical Sleet allowed himself a quick implausible somersault while the soft air of Majipoor under the light pull of gravity held the knives aloft for the necessary fraction of a second.
Around the stadium they marched, taking their rhythm from the strident squeaks and tootles and thumps of the orchestra before them. The vast throng, jaded already with novelty after novelty, hardly reacted, but no matter: the jugglers’ allegiance was to their art, not to the sweaty faces barely visible in the distant seats.
Valentine had devised yesterday, and privately practiced, a fancy flourish for his routine. The others knew nothing of it, for there were risks in such things for a novice, and a royal performance was perhaps not the right place for a risk — although, he thought, more truthfully a royal performance was the most proper place for extending oneself to the fullest.
So he grasped two of his clubs in his right hand and hurled them high, and as he did so he heard the grunting "Hoy!" of surprise from Zalzan Kavol, but there was no time to think on that, for the two clubs were descending and Valentine sent the one in his left hand up between them in a soaring double flip. Deftly he caught one falling club in each hand, sent the one in his right hand aloft, caught the double-flipped one as it dropped, and went serenely and with great relief into his familiar cascade of clubs, looking neither to the right nor to the left as he trailed Carabella and Sleet around the perimeter of the gigantic stadium.