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"Piurifayne Fountain," Deliamber a
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, ru
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 stu
"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 ca
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 fu
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 a