Several score of the nobility of Mulvan and their women were already standing about the ballroom, talking, drinking fruit juice, and nibbling sweetmeats from a long table to one side. The men were gorgeous in silks and satins, plumes and jewels. Lords from the east and south favored skirts, while those from the west and north encased their legs in baggy pantaloons, gathered in at the ankle. Their ladies stood among them, their bangles clashing musically when they moved. The younger ones had flowers, stars, eyes, and other figures painted on their bare breasts.
Harichumbra introduced Jorian to various lords, to whom he bowed deeply until he was dizzy. He sipped fruit juice, wished for something more sustaining, and exchanged words with a young Mulvanian as large as himself. This man, Lord Chavero of Kolkai, wore pantaloons of a brilliant saffron yellow and a spray of peacock plumes in his turban. Jorian said:
"The weather is delightful this time of year in Trimandilam, I find, my lord."
Chavero yawned. "It will do, though you foreigners always complain of the heat in summer. Are you from Novaria or some barbarous place?"
"That is right, although we do not deem it so barbarous as all that."
"Perhaps not, but how would you know, without having visited Mulvan to form a standard of comparison?"
"A good question, but I might ask you the same."
The man pulled a long mustacbio. "It stands to reason that, since Mulvan is the center and fount of civilization, all other places must be inferior to it in culture. But you, as a barbarian, cannot be expected to understand logic."
Jorian fought down a temptation to answer back in kind, but temptation won. "It is interesting to hear you speak thus, my lord. For we have a saying in Kortoli, that the most ignorant man is he who thinks he knows it all."
Chavero puzzled over this statement for an instant. Then his look of perplexity changed to anger as he replied, "And we have a saying, my good man, that the yapping dog must not mind if it get itself kicked. Let us hope it will not be necessary to—"
A trumpet sang, cutting short this speech. A eunuch smote the pave with his staff and cried: "The Great King!"
Shaju, blazing with jewels, stood in the doorway. All the Mulvanians, and Jorian, too, dropped to their knees and touched their foreheads to the ground three times. The king called out:
"Rise, my friends! For the remainder of this even, consider your obeisances to My Majesty as made."
Behind him, Karadur whispered: "That means we can speak to him without prostrating ourselves first." The wizard pulled at Jorian's sleeve. "Come away from that Kolkaian, quickly, ere he embroil you in a quarrel! He is a dangerous man. He would fain be Yargali's next lover, and if he knew of our intentions…"
"Some have thought me a dangerous man, too," muttered Jorian, but he let Karadur lead him off through the crowd. He asked Karadur: "Do His Majesty's wives attend such functions?"
"They used to, but since the distressing affair of the Lady Radmini and Lord Valshaka, he has shut them up, the way they did before the time of King Sivroka. The queens are watching the show now from behind that screened balcony." Karadur nodded his turban towards a marble screen high up at one end of the hall. "And doubtless wishing they could descend to mingle with the rest of us. When—"
Another trumpet interrupted. From the end of the hall opposite to that by which the king had entered, a eunuch struck the marble and called out, "Her Supernatural Highness, the Serpent Princess Yargali!"
Everybody bowed low. In the door stood a woman as tall as Jorian himself—well over six feet—and weighing, as far as he could judge, a good deal more. Her skin, exposed by Mulvanian fashions to just above her delta, was almost black, like that of a Mulvanian peasant. Huge jewels gleamed in her tiara and earrings; a triple rope of pearls ranging up to the size of crabapples hung down between her enormous breasts.
Jorian had never seen so voluptuous a figure; he could hardly believe his eyes. Those breasts were the most astonishing of his experience. Larger than melons—in fact, as big and round as the udder of a milch cow—they stood out from her massive body without any sag at all. Below them, the body curved in to a waist which, while normal for a small woman, looked impossibly slender on this creature. Then the body widened out to broad, heavy hips and a slightly bulging belly. A cloth-of-gold embroidered skirt hung from her hips, just above groin level, to her ankles, and more gems blazed on the buckles of her slippers. The face beneath the tiara was round and plump, like that of Jorian's Estrildis, but not fat; in fact, if one could ignore her size and tear one's eyes away from her extraordinary bodily development, she was a remarkably beautiful woman.
"By Imbal's iron yard!" breathed Jorian. "With a basin-bone like that, she could bear giants and heroes—"
"Hush!" said Karadur. "The dancing is about to begin. Will you take part?"
"The ladies all seem to be paired off already, so I don't know how to obtain a partner. Anyway, I am not sure I know the steps well enough, for all of Harichumbra's coaching."
The orchestra struck up, and the couples lined up for the grand march. The king and the Serpent Princess led the march, the king holding one arm out so that the tips of his fingers just touched those of the princess. Mulvanian dancing frowned upon any bodily contact other than fingertips. Jorian remained by the fruit-juice table with a few other non-dancers. Karadur said:
"I will present you to Lord Hirayaxa. He has brought both his wives, and I am sure he will let you dance with one—"
"No, no, never mind," said Jorian with a sudden rush of shyness. "I had rather just watch."
The grand march ended, and a eunuch cried: "Take position for the nriga!"
The male dancers lined up on one side of the ballroom, the female on the other. The musicians played; the eunuch called the figures. Everybody advanced three steps. The men and the women bowed to each other. They stepped back two steps and bowed. They advanced three steps and bowed. They formed squares and everybody bowed to everybody…
It went on for half an hour at the same slow, stately pace, stepping this way and that and bowing to the eunuch's commands. Compared to the hearty Novarian dances, Jorian found it a tedious performance.
As the music ended and the dance broke up in a frenzy of bows, a startling figure stepped in through one of the long windows opening on the balcony. This was a thin, dark-skinned man, completely naked, with his scrawny body covered with ash. His matted hair streamed down his back, his dirty beard cascaded down his breast, and his white eyeballs rolled wildly. He burst into a tirade in a dialect that Jorian could only half follow.
To Jorian's surprise, nobody moved to suppress or remove the man. Everyone, from the king down, seemed to listen respectfully to the outburst. The naked man raved, foamed at the mouth, and shook his fists. He castigated them all as vile sinners for departing from the ways of their ancestors. He denounced the heathen custom of dancing. He anathematized the elephant mill and demanded that it be broken up. He commanded that all women, and not just those of the king, be shut up in their houses as they were in the days before the wicked innovations of King Sivroka of cursed memory. He called down the wrath of the true gods upon this congregation of sensual sinners. Then he disappeared into the night.
Jorian turned to Harichumbra, who had just bustled up, and asked, "Explain to me, pray, Master Harichumbra, how the king can allow such an affront to his royal dignity?"
"Oh, that is a holy man. He may do as he likes. But come, my lord. The Princess Yargali has expressed the wish to meet you."
Jorian caught Karadur's eye and made a slight but significant jerk of his head. He found the super-voluptuous supernatural being standing beside the fruit-juice table, with the king beside her.