Tales of Majipoor (36 page)

“What do you think?” he asked Deliamber, when the seven Shapeshifters had gone. “Murderers or not?”

“Probably not,” the Vroon replied. “Not these. Too soft, too citified. But they were holding something back. I’m certain of that.”

“You felt it too, then?”

“Beyond any doubt. What I sensed, your majesty – do you know what the Vroon word
hsirthiir
means?”

“Not really.”

“It isn’t easy to translate. But it has to do with questioning someone who doesn’t intend to tell you any lies but isn’t necessarily going to tell you the truth, either, unless you know exactly how to call it forth. You pick up a powerful perception that there’s an important layer of meaning hidden somewhere beneath the surface of what you’re being told, but that you aren’t going to be allowed to elicit that hidden meaning unless you ask precisely the right question to unlock it. Which means, essentially, that you already have to know the information that you’re looking for before you can ask the question that would reveal it. It’s a very frustrating sensation,
hsirthiir:
almost painful, in fact. It is like hitting one’s beak against a stone wall. I felt myself placed in a state of
hsirthiir
just now. Evidently so did you, your majesty.”

“Evidently I did,” said Valentine.

There was one more visit to make, though. It had been a long day and a terrible weariness was coming over Valentine now. But he felt some inner need to cover all the basic territory in a single sweep; and so, once darkness had fallen, he asked Magadone Sambisa to conduct him to the village of the Metamorph laborers.

She was unhappy about that. “We don’t usually like to intrude on them after they’ve finished their day’s work and gone back there, your majesty.”

“You don’t usually have murders here, either. Or visits from the Pontifex. I’d rather speak with them tonight than disrupt tomorrow’s digging, if you don’t mind.”

Deliamber accompanied him once again. At her own insistence, so did Lisamon Hultin. Tunigorn was too tired to go – his hike through the ruins at midday had done him in – and Mirigant was feeling feverish from a touch of sunstroke; but formidable old Duke Nascimonte readily agreed to ride with the Pontifex, despite his great age. The final member of the party was Aarisiim, the Metamorph member of Valentine’s security staff, whom Valentine brought with him not so much for protection – Lisamon Hultin would look after that – as for the
hsirthiir
problem.

Aarisiim, turncoat though he once had been, seemed to Valentine to be as trustworthy as any Piurivar was likely to be: he had risked his own life to betray his master Faraataa to Valentine in the time of the Rebellion, when he had felt that Faraataa had gone beyond all decency by threatening to slay the Metamorph queen. He could be helpful now, perhaps, detecting things that eluded even Deliamber’s powerful perceptions.

The laborers’ village was a gaggle of meager wickerwork huts outside the central sector of the dig. In its flimsy makeshift look it reminded Valentine of Ilirivoyne, the Shapeshifter capital in the jungle of Zimroel, which he had visited so many years before. But this place was even sadder and more disheartening than Ilirivoyne. There, at least, the Metamorphs had had an abundance of tall straight saplings and jungle vines with which to build their ramshackle huts, whereas the only construction materials available to them here were the gnarled and twisted desert shrubs that dotted the Velalisier plain. And so their huts were miserable little things, dismally warped and contorted.

They had had advance word, somehow, that the Pontifex was coming. Valentine found them arrayed in groups of eight or ten in front of their shacks, clearly waiting for his arrival. They were a pitiful starved-looking bunch, gaunt and shabby and ragged, very different from the urbane and cultivated Metamorphs of Magadone Sambisa’s archaelogical team. Valentine wondered where they found the strength to do the digging that was required of them in this inhospitable climate.

As the Pontifex came into view they shuffled forward to meet him, quickly surrounding him and the rest of his party in a way that caused Lisamon Hultin to hiss sharply and put her hand to the hilt of her vibration-sword.

But they did not appear to mean any harm. They clustered excitedly around him and to his amazement offered homage in the most obsequious way, jostling among themselves for a chance to kiss the hem of his tunic, kneeling in the sand before him, even prostrating themselves. “No,” Valentine cried, dismayed. “This isn’t necessary. It isn’t right.” Already Magadone Sambisa was ordering them brusquely to get back, and Lisamon Hultin and Nascimonte were shoving the ones closest to Valentine away from him. The giantess was doing it calmly, unhurriedly, efficiently, but Nascimonte was prodding them more truculently, with real detestation apparent in his fiery eyes. Others came pressing forward as fast as the first wave retreated, though, pushing in upon him in frantic determination.

So eager were these weary toil-worn people to show their obeisance to the Pontifex, in fact, that he could not help regarding their enthusiasm as blatantly false, an ostentatious overdoing of whatever might have been appropriate. How likely was it, he wondered, that any group of Piurivars, however lowly and simple, would feel great unalloyed joy at the sight of the Pontifex of Majipoor? Or would, of their own accord, stage such a spontaneous demonstration of delight?

Some, men and women both, were even allowing themselves to mimic the forms of the visitors by way of compliment, so that half a dozen blurry distorted Valentines stood before him, and a couple of Nascimontes, and a grotesque half-sized imitation of Lisamon Hultin. Valentine had experienced that peculiar kind of honor before, in his Ilirivoyne visit, and he had found it disturbing and even chilling then. It distressed him again now. Let them shift shapes if they wished – they had that capacity, to use as they pleased – but there was something almost sinister about this appropriation of the visages of their visitors.

And the jostling began to grow even wilder and more frenzied. Despite himself Valentine started to feel some alarm. There were more than a hundred villagers, and the visitors numbered only a handful. There could be real trouble if things got out of control.

Then in the midst of the hubbub a powerful voice called out,“Back! Back!” And at once the whole ragged band of Shapeshifters shrank away from Valentine as though they had been struck by whips. There was a sudden stillness and silence. Out of the now motionless throng there stepped a tall Metamorph of unusually muscular and powerful build. He made a deep gesticulation and announced, in a dark rumbling tone quite unlike that of any Metamorph voice Valentine had ever heard before, “I am Vathiimeraak, the foreman of these workers. I beg you to feel welcome here among us, Pontifex. We are your servants.”

But there was nothing servile about him. He was plainly a man of presence and authority. Briskly he apologized for the uncouth behavior of his people, explaining that they were simple peasants astounded by the presence of a Power of the Realm among them, and this was merely their way of showing respect.

“I know this man,” murmured Aarisiim into Valentine’s left ear.

But there was no opportunity just then to find out more; for Vathiimeraak, turning away, made a signal with one upraised hand and instantly the scene became one of confusion and noise once again. The villagers went running off in a dozen different directions, some returning almost at once with platters of sausages and bowls of wine for their guests, others hauling lopsided tables and benches from the huts. Platoons of them came crowding in once more on Valentine and his companions, this time urging them to sample the delicacies they had to offer.

“They’re giving us their own dinners!” Magadone Sambisa protested. And she ordered Vathiimeraak to call off the feast. But the foreman replied smoothly that it would offend the villagers to refuse their hospitality, and in the end there was no help for it: they must sit down at table and partake of all that the villagers brought for them.

“If you will, majesty,” said Nascimonte, as Valentine reached for a bowl of wine. The duke took it from him and sipped it first; and only after a moment did he return it. He insisted also on tasting Valentine’s sausages for him, and the scraps of boiled vegetables that went with them.

It had not occurred to Valentine that the villagers would try to poison him. But he allowed old Nascimonte to enact his charming little rite of medieval chivalry without objection. He was too fond of the old man to want to spoil his gesture.

Vathiimeraak said, when the feasting had gone on for some time, “You are here, your majesty, about the death of Dr. Huukaminaan, I assume?”

The foreman’s bluntness was startling. “Could it not be,” Valentine said good-humoredly, “that I just wanted to observe the progress being made at the excavations?”

Vathiimeraak would have none of that. “I will do whatever you may require of me in your search for the murderer,” he said, rapping the table sharply to underscore his words. For an instant the outlines of his broad, heavy-jowled face rippled and wavered as if he were on the verge of undergoing an involuntary metamorphosis. Among the Piurivar, Valentine knew, that was a sign of being swept by some powerful emotion. “I had the greatest respect for Dr. Huukaminaan. It was a privilege to work beside him. I often dug for him myself, when I felt the site was too delicate to entrust to less skillful hands. He thought that that was improper, at first, that the foreman should dig, but I said, No, no, Dr. Huukaminaan, I beg you to allow me this glory, and he understood, and permitted me. How may I help you to find the perpetrator of this dreadful crime?”

He seemed so solemn and straightforward and open that Valentine could not help but find himself immediately on guard. Vathiimeraak’s strong, booming voice and overly formal choice of phrase had an overly theatrical quality. His elaborate sincerity seemed much like the extreme effusiveness of the villagers’ demonstration, all that kneeling and kissing of his hem: unconvincing because it was so excessive.

You are too suspicious of these people, he told himself. This man is simply speaking as he thinks a Pontifex should be spoken to. And in any case I think he can be useful.

He said, “How much do you know of how the murder was committed?”

Vathiimeraak responded without hesitation, as if he had been holding a well-rehearsed reply in readiness. “I know that it happened late at night, the week before this, somewhere between the Hour of the Gihorna and the Hour of the Jackal. A person or persons lured Dr. Huukaminaan from his tent and led him to the Tables of the Gods, where he was killed and cut into pieces. We found the various segments of his body the next morning atop the western platform, all but his head. Which we discovered later that day in one of the alcoves along the base of the Shrine of the Downfall.”

Pretty much the standard account, Valentine thought. Except for one small detail.

“The Shrine of the Downfall? I haven’t heard that term before.”

“The shrine of the Seventh Pyramid is what I mean,” said Vathiimeraak. “The unopened shrine that Dr. Magadone Sambisa found. The name that I used is what we call it among ourselves. You notice that I do not say she ‘discovered’ it. We have always known that it was there, adjacent to the broken pyramid. But no one ever asked us, and so we never spoke of it.” Valentine glanced across at Deliamber, who nodded ever so minutely.
Hsirthiir
again, yes.

Something was not quite right, though. Valentine said, “Dr. Magadone Sambisa told me that she and Dr. Huukaminaan came upon the seventh shrine jointly, I think. She indicated that he was just as surprised at finding it there as she had been. Are you claiming that you knew of its existence, but he didn’t?”

“There is no Piurivar who does not know of the existence of the Shrine of the Downfall,” said Vathiimeraak stolidly. “It was sealed at the time of the Defilement and contains, we believe, evidence of the Defilement itself. If Dr. Magadone Sambisa formed the impression that Dr. Huukaminaan was unaware that it was there, that was an incorrect impression.” Once again the edges of the foreman’s face flickered and wavered. He looked worriedly toward Magadone Sambisa and said, “I mean no offense in contradicting you, Dr. Magadone Sambisa.”

“None taken,” she said, a little stiffly. “But if Huukaminaan knew of the shrine before the day we found it, he never said a thing about it to me.”

“Perhaps he had hoped it would not be found,” Vathiimeraak replied.

This brought a show of barely concealed consternation from Magadone Sambisa; and Valentine himself sensed that there was something here that needed to be followed up. But they were drifting away from the main issue.

“What I need you to do,” said Valentine to the foreman, “is to determine the whereabouts of every single one of your people during the hours when the murder was committed.” He saw Vathiimeraak’s reaction beginning to take form, and added quickly, “I’m not suggesting that we believe at this point that anyone from the village killed Dr. Huukaminaan. No one at all is under suspicion at this point. But we do need to account for everybody who was present in or around the excavation zone that night.”

“I will do what I can to find out.”

“Your help will be invaluable, I know,” Valentine said.

“You will also want to enlist the aid of our khivanivod,” Vath iimeraak said. “He is not among us tonight. He has gone off on a spiritual retreat into the farthest zone of the city to pray for the purification of the soul of the killer of Dr. Huukaminaan, whoever that may be. I will send him to you when he returns.”

Another little surprise.

A khivanivod was a Piurivar holy man, something midway between a priest and a wizard. They were relatively uncommon in modern Metamorph life, and it was remarkable that there should be one in residence at this scruffy out-of-the-way village. Unless, of course, the high religious leaders of the Piurivars had decided that it was best to install one at Velalisier for the duration of the dig, to insure that everything was done with the proper respect for the holy places. It was odd that Magadone Sambisa hadn’t mentioned to him that a khivanivod was present here.