Harpirias nodded gloomily. "So I’ve been picked to serve as our ambassador to this bunch of mountain savages, is that it?"
"Exactly so."
"Wonderful. And I suppose I’m to go to them and tell them sweetly and kindly — assuming that I can communicate with them at all — that the Coronal deplores this shameful violation of their privacy and respects their sacred territorial rights, and he pledges that no attempts will be made to send settlers into the unappealing icebox where they prefer to live. And I’m to let them know that as the authorized representative of His Majesty Lord Ambinole I am fully empowered to sign the treaty promising everything they are asking. In return for all this they are to release the hostages forthwith. Do I have it right?"
"There is one little complication," said Heptil Magloir.
"Only one?"
"They aren’t expecting an ambassador. They expect the Coronal himself to come."
Harpirias gasped. "But they can’t really think he will!"
"Unfortunately, they do. As I’ve already told you, they have no comprehension whatever of the size of Majipoor, or of the grandeur and majesty of the Coronal, or of the high responsibilities over which he presides. And these mountaineers are proud and touchy people. Their domain has been trespassed upon by strangers, which is apparently something they don’t permit; it strikes them as perfectly right and proper that those strangers’ chieftain now should show up in their village and humbly beg their pardon."
"I see," said Harpirias. "And therefore you want me to go to them and abjectly prostrate myself before them, all the while pretending that I’m Lord Ambinole. Is that it?"
The Vroon’s multitude of ropy tentacles moved in an agitated way. Softly he said, "No such statement was made by me."
"Well, who am I supposed to be, then?"
"Be anybody that will make them happy. Tell them anything at all, so long as it gets those scientists free."
"Anything. Up to and including masquerading as the Coronal?"
"The tactics you employ are for you to choose," said Heptil Magloir primly. "These matters are entirely up to your discretion. You have a completely free hand. A man of your skill and tact will undoubtedly be equal to the task."
"Yes. Undoubtedly."
Harpirias took a few deep breaths. They wanted him to lie. They would not tell him to lie, but they had no objections to it, if lying to the savages was what it took to free the hostages. That saddened and angered him. Though Harpirias was far from straitlaced, the idea of posing as the Coronal among these barbarians seemed shockingly improper to him. It was offensive that they would even suggest it. What sort of man did they think he was?
Crisply he said, after a bit, "And when, may I ask, am I supposed to set out on this embassy?"
"At the beginning of the Khyntor summer. It’s the only time of year when the region where these people live is even slightly accessible."
"That gives me some months yet."
"So it does."
This all was like some very bad joke. The thought of undertaking this crazy chase off into the frigid Arctic wilderness filled Harpirias with despair.
"And if I were to decline the assignment?" he asked, after another brief pause.
"Decline? Decline?" The Vroon repeated the word as though he scarcely understood its meaning.
"I have no experience, after all, with travel under such difficult conditions."
"The Metamorph Korinaam will be your guide."
"Of course," Harpirias said dourly. "That should make it all much easier."
The question of his refusing to undertake the mission seemed to have been brushed aside. Harpirias suspected that it would not be useful to raise it again.
But his doom was sealed, he knew, if he actually did let himself be sent off into the snowy wastes of the Marches . The journey would not be a quick or easy one, and the negotiations with those proud barbarians were bound to be maddeningly lengthy and frustrating. By the time he returned from the northlands — if ever he did — he would beyond any doubt have spent too much time in obscure parts of the world to have any hope of reclaiming his old position at Lord Ambinole’s court. The other young men of his group would have gobbled up all the really important posts. The best he could hope for was to be a petty bureaucrat for the rest of his life; but more probably he would die in the course of this absurd and hazardous expedition, perhaps lost in some great snowstorm or else slain out of hand by the brutal mountaineers when they came to realize that he was not the Coronal, only some minor functionary of the diplomatic service.
All this, for one white sinileese! Oh, Lubovine, Lubovine, what have you done to me?
Perhaps there was some way he could get out of this, though. The long winter of the Marches still had some while to run, which gave Harpirias a little time to maneuver before he was supposed to depart. Cautiously he consulted a few of his senior colleagues at the Office of Provincial Liaison about the necessity of his accepting this new assignment.
Was there any appeal mechanism in the department by which he could claim the urgency of his present work as a reason for refusing the embassy to the Marches ? They peered at him as though he were speaking some alien language. Could he decline on grounds of jeopardy to his health? They shrugged. What effect would it have on his career if he turned the assignment down? Nothing other than catastrophic, they replied.
He debated throwing himself upon the mercy of Prince Lubovine. But that would be idiotic, he decided.
He considered appealing to the Coronal himself. No, it was probably very unwise to try that: one did not want to define oneself before Lord Ambinole as a person who shrank from uncomfortable duties, after all. And as for going over the Coronal’s head to the senior monarch of the realm, the Pontifex Taghin Gawad cloistered deep in his imperial Labyrinth, why, that would be true madness, futile beyond words.
What he did do was to compose eloquent despondent letters to his highly placed kinsmen at court; but he left them in his files, unsent.
The weeks ticked by. In Ni-moya, where the weather was always mild and warm, the daylight hours now stretched far into the evening. Summer, or whatever passed for summer in that place, must be at last on its way to the Khyntor Marches, Harpirias realized dolefully. The northlands expedition was rolling toward him like an avalanche and there evidently was no way of shunting it aside.
"A visitor for you," his aide announced one morning.
A visitor? A visitor? No one ever came visiting him here! Who-
"Tembidat!" Harpirias cried, as a long-legged young man in the gaudy finery of a Castle lordling came striding into his office. "What are you doing in Ni-moya?"
"A little business on behalf of my family," Tembidat said. "We have stajja plantations not very far west of here that have been badly mismanaged in recent years, it seems. So I talked my father into letting me make an inspection tour and set things to rights. With a side trip to Ni-moya to see a certain old friend." He glanced around, shaking his head. "So this is where you work?"
"Magnificent, isn’t it?"
"If only I could tell you how sorry I am that any of this had to happen, Harpirias — how hard I’ve worked to get you out of this mess—" Tembidat’s expression brightened. "But it’s almost over now. Another few weeks and you can kiss this ghastly place goodbye, isn’t that so, old man?"
"You know about my new mission?"
"Know about it? I helped to arrange it!"