The Mountains of Majipoor

18

From the look of the star-speckled darkness overhead, dawn was still some hours off. But it took the rest of the night to load the waiting floaters and make them ready for the homeward journey. The sky was already streaked with pink before all the final tasks were finished.

Harpirias stood for a moment just outside the high wall of stone that surrounded the hidden kingdom of the Othinor. Home, now! Home to the waiting warmth of civilized Majipoor — and, perhaps, the resurrection of his own interrupted career on Castle Mount. He had actually accomplished the task he had been sent here to do; more than that, he had had his great adventure and he had gained a lifetime’s worth of stories to tell, stories that the Coronal would listen to eagerly, and everyone else as well. And now home to tell those stones; home to a decent bath, and a dinner of real food, oysters and spiced fish and breast of sekkimaund or haunch of bilantoon, and the thick strong wine of Muldemar or the bright crimson wine of Bannikanniklole or the golden wine of Piliplok or the fine silvery-gray wine of Amblemorn, maybe all four in quick succession — with some clear-eyed beauty with high cheekbones and delicate brows as his companion for the night, yes, or — why not? — two or three -

But Harpirias knew that the land of the Othinor had imprinted itself upon his soul forever. Beyond any doubt he would dream time and again of the land of the Othinor, when finally he was home once more. Images of the ice-world would steal into his mind, and of King Toikella’s smoky banquet-hall, and of the jeering, capering Eililylal of the heights: that he knew. And the glossy-haired girl with a sliver of carved bone through her upper lip who had slipped into his room to keep him warm on so many frosty nights: she too would come to him in his sleep.

Yes. Yes. All that and much more: Harpirias was certain of that. He would never forget this place.

"Everything is stowed, prince," Eskenazo Marabaud called to him. "Sun’s about to come up. Shall we get going?"

"In a moment," Harpirias said.

He stepped back through the narrow wedge-shaped crack in the mountain wall that afforded the only access to King Toikella’s land. The ice-village gleamed faintly in the pearly light of dawn. Harpirias let his eyes rove the shining fanciful facades, the glittering icy filigrees.

A small figure was standing in front of the lodge where his quarters had been. At this distance, it was hard for him to see her clearly, but Harpirias could envision her well enough in the eye of his mind, a ragged smudgy figure in carelessly arrayed furs, a girl who perhaps was bearing his Othinor child. Waving to him, hesitantly at first, then more eagerly, a gesture of obvious love and longing.

He stared at her for a time. Then he waved back at her, and turned and walked away, passing through the crevice in the mountain wall and heading for his floater to begin his long journey home.