"By Imbal's brazen balls!" he cried. "I didn't know one could do it in so many positions!"
Some temples were in crumbling ruin; others were active. At night, points of yellow lamplight flickered about these fanes and the sound of music and song came to the travelers, sometimes slow and solemn, sometimes fast and frenzied.
Aboard the Jhimu, Karadur studied a magical scroll he had obtained in Janareth, while Jorian rehearsed his girls in their roles. On the sixth day after leaving Janareth, the Jhimu neared the confluence of the Bharma and the Pennerath. In the fork rose the vast city of Trimandilam on its nine hills. The massive wall was of black basalt. Over it the travelers could see the hills, topped by gleaming palaces and temples of marble and alabaster, with gilded roof tiles ablaze in the sun. Below these structures spread thousands of the dun-colored, mud-brick houses of the common folk.
As they tied up, the girls, full of giggling excitement, wanted to scramble ashore. But Jorian sternly ordered them back.
"Queens and their ladies do not plunge into a strange city unescorted," he told them. "You shall wait here until I procure an escort suitable to your station."
Away he strode, leaving the captain of the Jhimu to dispute with an official from the city and the girls to watch the brown-skinned waterfront crowd. Unlike Janareth, the population of Trimandilam was fairly homogenous. The people were smaller than the Novarians and darker, with straight or wavy black hair. Most went barefoot. The main garment for both sexes was a long skirt, which most of the men tucked up between the legs to make a floppy loincloth. Both sexes left the upper body bare in the balmy air. Outside of the poorest classes, all wore masses of jewelry: necklaces of beads and pearls, bracelets, anklets, fillets, earrings, finger rings, nose rings, and toe rings.
An hour later, Jorian was back on a tall, big-boned chestnut-roan stallion, at the head of a score of lancers in spired helmets and jingling mail. After these followed three immense elephants with gaudily painted heads, howdahs on their backs, and their riders clad in drapes bordered with cloth-of-gold.
Jorian vaulted to the ground and bowed low before Mnevis. When the officer of the troop dismounted more slowly, Jorian said:
"May it please Your Majesty, I would fain present to you the gallant Captain Yaushka, veteran of many fierce battles!" He repeated the sentence in Mulvani.
For an instant, the captain and the queen confronted each other, haughty suspicion on one side and regal self-assurance on the other. Regal self-assurance won. The captain dropped to both knees on the granite blocks of the quay and bent down until his forehead touched the pave. Mnevis allowed herself a tiny nod and a small smile.
"Tell the gallant captain," she said to Jorian, "that if his bravery equals his courtesy, the empire has nought to fear."
Grinning, Captain Yaushka rose and signaled the mahouts. These in turn whacked their elephants over the head with their goads. The blows made hollow sounds, like beating a log drum. The three elephants knelt and then lowered their bellies and elbows to the ground. One mahout produced a small ladder, which he placed against the side of the foremost elephant. Captain Yaushka helped the queen up the ladder into the howdah. The eleven ladies-in-waiting gave a few squeals and giggles at the prospect of riding these beasts, but Jorian scowled at them so fiercely that they quickly fell silent.
When each elephant bore four women, the drivers signaled the beasts to rise. The sudden tilting of the howdahs elicited more squeals. Jorian vaulted back on his horse, while a trooper gave Karadur a leg-up for the latter to climb aboard a big white ass. Captain Yaushka blew a trumpet, and the cavalcade started off.
They jingled through endless, narrow, winding streets, where strange smells hung in the air, the elephants' drapes scraped against the house walls as they rounded corners, and people squeezed into doorways and arcades to let them pass. They passed mansions and hovels, temples and shops, inns and emporia, shacks and tenements, taverns and brothels, all jumbled together.
At last they reached the foot of the hill on which stood the royal palace. A wall ran around the base of the hill, and a massive, fortified gate in this wall gave access to the interior. To one side of the gate stood an inclosure in which an elephant mill operated a huge pump. A pair of elephants, one on each end of a long boom pivoted in the center, walked the boom round and round, while bearings squealed and the pump grumbled in its housing.
At the gate, Jorian and his party were scrutinized, questioned, and passed through the gate while the sentries touched their foreheads to the ground in salute to Queen Mnevis. The horses, the ass, and the elephants plodded up a long, sloping avenue, fifty feet wide, which had been hewn out of a cliff that formed that side of the hill. The cliff had been cut down to form an evenly sloping stone ramp and then roughened by transverse grooves, a fingerbreadth apart, to provide traction for the feet of men and animals.
As the avenue rose, the solid stone gave way to a built-up structure of well-fitted stone blocks. The road came up to the level of the main inner fortification wall, of rose-red stone, rising from the top of the cliff and on the right as one ascended the slope. Along the outer side of the avenue, where the cliff fell away, a bronzen pipe, green with verdegris and as thick as a man's leg, passing through holes in stone blocks, carried the water pumped by the elephant mill to the palace and also served as a railing.
The procession reached the gate in the fortification wall and was again passed through. Inside, they faced another gate. Whereas the outer gate was a massive, military structure with arrow-slitted towers, portcullis, murder holes, and other accessories for defense, the inner gate was an ornamental edifice of many-colored stone, with a huge central arch flanked by smaller portals. Under the arch, on the left, a raised platform allowed horsemen easy mounting and dismounting. On the right, a higher platform enabled elephant riders to step on and off their mounts without using a ladder.
As the party gathered afoot under the main arch, a small, wizened brown man came up, bowing repeatedly over clasped hands. "Will Your Highness deign to follow your humble slave?" he said. "I am Harichumbra, your unworthy adviser."
They followed Harichumbra through a series of halls and courts, until Jorian was hopelessly lost. Centuries ago, a king of Mulvan had ordered the entire top of the hill planed off to build this palace, as large in itself as a small city. Hall after hall had been added until the entire hilltop inside the upper wall was now cut up into square and rectangular courts, ranging in size from ball courts to parade grounds.
The halls that divided these courts were long, narrow buildings, mostly of three-story height. They were marvels of Mulvanian architecture. In most of the courts, there had been an effort to give the stonework on all four sides an artistic unity. Thus some courts were walled by white and red stone, some by white and black, some by white and blue, some by white and green, and some by other combinations. Everywhere were arches: plain semicircular arches, pointed arches, segmental arches, basket-handle arches, ogee arches, horseshoe arches, and cusped arches in-every possible combination. They topped monumental gates and ordinary doors and windows. Little balconies projected here and there from the upper stories of the halls. Broad eaves extended out from the flat roofs to provide the courts with shadowed spaces against the fierce tropical sun. Domes, spires, and gazebos rose from the roofs.