"In a moment," said Harpinas. "First tell me this: will you make another attempt to communicate with them?"
"You can be certain that I have no intention of that."
"And why is that?"
"Are you a fool, prince? Can’t you understand simple words? What I saw up there was utterly disgusting. It was hideous to be near them — to watch them capering like beasts — to listen to their revolting screeches — to think that they were actually — of Piurivar blood — that they and I — •"
Softly Harpirias said, "I understand all that, Korinaam. But even so: if I were to ask you to make another journey to see them, would you do it?"
Korinaam was silent for a time.
"If you ordered me to, yes."
"Only if I made it an order?"
"I have no desire to see those creatures again, none at all. But I am aware that I am in the service of the Coronal, whose representative you are, and it is not possible for me to defy your direct order, prince. You may rest assured of that." The Shapeshifter bowed deeply, giving Harpirias a harshly exaggerated salute of deference. "I am not eager to have my arm twisted a second time."
"I regret that it was necessary to do that, Korinaam."
"I’m sure that you do. It must have been extremely disagreeable for you. And quite distasteful for the Skandar too, I would think."
"I told you I regretted it. By the Divine, Korinaam, do you want me to get down and beg your forgiveness? You were being infuriatingly evasive. And insubordinate to boot. I needed to know where you had gone, and why." Harpirias made an impatient dismissive gesture. "Enough of this. Go, now. But in the future you’re not to take a step anywhere outside of this village without permission. Is that clear?"
"Where would I want to go?" asked the Shapeshifter, rubbing his arm.
When he had gone, Harpirias called Eskenazo Marabaud back into the room and instructed him to keep watch on Korinaam’s movements.
"The young woman is here," the Skandar told him. "The one who comes to you at night."
Was that a note of disapproval in his voice? From a Skandar?
"Send her in," Harpirias said.
15
In the middle of the night he was awakened from deep and happy slumber by muffled thumps, angry shouts, and then the sound of a long agonized wailing scream. It took him a moment, or perhaps more than that, to realize that he was not dreaming. As he struggled up toward full wakefulness another scream came, and another, and Harpirias recognized the voice of the screamer as that of Korinaam, calling out for help. He scrambled out from under the pile of hides. Ivla Yevikenik clutched sleepily at him, trying to draw him back, but Harpirias shook her off. Hastily dressing, he rushed into the corridor. A blast of glacial air struck him there: the main entrance to the building stood ajar. He looked into Korinaam’s room. Empty. There were signs of a struggle. Harpirias could hear Korinaam still howling, his shrill cries a mixture of rage and panic. Quickly he ran outside.
A strange scene was being enacted in front of the lodge. Two burly Othinor warriors were dragging the writhing, screaming, kicking Korinaam toward the stone altar, where King Toikella, the high priest, and some of the other important men of the tribe waited in a grim little circle. The king, clad from head to toe in a bulky swaddling of black haigus furs, gripped with both his hands the hilt of an enormous sword that stood before him, its tip thrust into the icy ground.
Eight or ten of the Skandars were in the plaza also. They must have emerged from the lodge in response to Korinaam’s cries for help, and were following uncertainly along behind the Shapeshifter now. They held their energy-throwers at ready, but obviously they were unwilling to take action without a direct order from Harpirias.
Harpirias caught up with them and asked Eskenazo Marabaud what was happening.
"They are going to kill him, prince." "What? Why?"
But the Skandar only shrugged.
Indeed Konnaam had arrived at the altar now and his Othinor captors had flung him down upon it. He lay spread-eagled, quivering in fear, his body flickering through a host of apparently random form-changes with unsettling rapidity, entering some bizarre bestial shape for a moment, then becoming disturbingly human, then reverting to the Metamorph form, but terribly contorted and almost unrecognizable. Several of the Othinor, kneeling beside the stone slab, held him tight. Plainly they were startled by the strange flurry of changes, but they gripped him valiantly all the same. A couple of them seemed to be fastening ropes around Korinaam’s limbs and tying them to pegs that were set in the ground alongside the altar’s perimeter.
Cursing, Harpirias went sprinting forward. The king, somber and immense in his thick black furs, held up a hand to halt him when he was still fifteen or twenty paces from the altar. Solemnly Toikella pointed to the great sword, pointed to Korinaam, made a graphic gesture of execution.
"No!" Harpirias bellowed. "I forbid it!" He stamped his foot and gesticulated ferociously with outspread arms. Toikella might not understand his words, but he would certainly comprehend the displeasure that his urgent tone of voice and violent movements conveyed.
The king scowled, shook his head, pulled the sword from the ground, and slowly began to swing it aloft.
Harpirias responded with even more frantic gestures and a desperate babble of words in what he hoped was comprehensible Othinor — fragments of half-understood phrases that he had learned from Ivla Yevikenik, a torrential stream of blurted exclamations which might or might not make sense, but which perhaps would at least give King Toikella a moment’s pause.
His garbled outcry seemed to have the desired effect. The king, with a puzzled growl, halted in mid-swing and thrust the sword back into the ground, rocking forward and pressing his weight on it, all the while staring at Harpirias as though he had gone out of his mind.
Harpirias approached the altar. Toikella remained utterly still. To the mystified king Harpirias signaled in furious pantomime that the cords binding Korinaam must be removed. The king made no response, but merely continued to lean on the great sword and glower. Out of the corner of his eye Harpirias saw other Othinor warriors, brandishing spears and swords, quietly heading across the plaza toward the altar.
Some of the Skandars had come up behind Harpirias now also. He beckoned them in even closer to him. "Spread out in a semicircle in back of me," he told them. "Draw and arm your energy-throwers. But be very careful not to point them in the direction of the king. And no matter what happens, don’t fire unless I say so."
He looked down at Korinaam, supine and trembling on the altar.
"All right. What in the name of the Divine has been going on here?"
Korinaam’s slitlike lips moved, but no coherent speech came out. His eyes were glazed.
"Speak, man! Tell me!"
With intense effort the Shapeshifter said in a faint quavering voice, "They thought— spying— enemies—"
"Enemies? The high-country Shapeshifters, you mean. Their name means ‘enemies’ here. Eililylal."
From Toikella, at that recognizable word, came a grunt of perceptible surprise.
"Speak to me," Harpirias said to Korinaam. "The king thought you were a spy for the wild Shapeshifters up there, is that it?"
Feebly Korinaam nodded.
"And was going to sacrifice you on the altar?"
Another nod.
"I ought to let him do it!"
"You know I am no spy." Korinaam could barely get the words out. "Please. Please, prince. Tell him that." "You want me to tell him?" "I am— too frightened—" The merest whisper. "Too frightened to beg him for your own life?" "Please— please—" The Metamorph on the altar quivered and shook.