“This cannot be,” said Maundigand-Klimd, shaking both his heads at once. “Lord Stiamot lived seventy centuries ago. In this climate the jungle would long since have swallowed up any such abandoned city.”
“Let’s have a look at it,” said Prestimion, and they made a side jaunt down the western road, which after a few hundred yards became nothing more than a dirt track that climbed steadily into the hills at a gentle grade. Soon the wall of the ruined city came into view. It was a substantial stone structure, at least fifteen feet high in most places, but nearly overwhelmed by shrubs and vines. Just to the left of the entrance to the city proper stood an immense many-buttressed tree with pale-gray bark, whose myriad arms, flattening as they embraced the stone of the wall, seemed to be melting into it so that it was difficult to tell where tree left off and ruin began.
Two sturdy young Ghayrogs came forth to greet them. They were both naked, but it was impossible to tell whether they were male or female, because the sexual organs of male Ghayrogs emerged only when they were aroused, and the breasts of the females were similarly hidden except when they were nursing young. Nor, mammals though they were, was it easy to think that they were other than reptilian. These two had brightly gleaming scales and strong tubular arms and legs; their cold green eyes were unblinking and their forked scarlet tongues flicked constantly in and out between their hard fleshless lips; and masses of fleshy black coils writhed like serpents on their heads in lieu of hair.
They greeted their visitors with a kind of indifferent courtesy and asked them to wait while they summoned their grandfather. He appeared shortly, a venerable Ghayrog indeed, limping slowly up to them. “I am Bekrimiin,” he said, with a creaky but effusive gesture of welcome. Prestimion did not offer his own name in return. “We are very poor here, but you are welcome to such hospitality as we can provide,” Bekrimiin said, and signaled to his grandchildren, who quickly produced platters that were nothing more than the giant heart-shaped leaves of some nearby tree, on which they had placed some sort of mashed starchy vegetable, evidently fermented, that had a fiercely spicy flavor. Prestimion took some and ate with a determined show of pleasure, and several of the others followed suit, though neither Gialaurys nor the fastidious Septach Melayn made even a pretense of eating. A sweet, mildly bubbly liquid—either wine or beer; Prestimion was unable to tell which—accompanied it.
Afterward the Ghayrog led them into the heart of the ruins. Only the merest outlines of the city were visible, mainly the foundations of buildings, here and there a charred tower, or a couple of standing walls, propped up by the trees that stood beside them, of what might once have been a warehouse or a temple or a palace. Most of the structures had long since been engulfed by the giant buttressed trees, whose flattening arms tended to grow together until they completely encircled and concealed whatever it was that they had drawn their support from when young. The name of the city, the old man said, was Diarwis, a name that meant nothing to Prestimion or his companions.
“It dates from Lord Stiamot’s time, does it?” Prestimion asked.
The Ghayrog laughed harshly. “Oh, no, nothing like that. These foolish children told you that? They are ignorant. Whatever I try to teach them of history goes from their minds before I finish my words.—But no, the city is much more recent. It was abandoned only nine hundred years ago.”
“Then there was no Metamorph attack here, either?”
“They told you that too, did they? No, no, that is just a myth. The Metamorphs were long gone from Alhanroel by then. This city destroyed itself.” And the old Ghayrog told a tale of a cruel and haughty duke, and of an uprising of the serfs who tilled his fields: the murder of three members of the duke’s family, and the duke’s savage reprisal, and then a further uprising, leading to an even more brutal reprisal, followed by the assassination of the duke himself and the abandonment of the city by serfs and masters alike, for by that time not enough people remained alive here to sustain any sort of urban life.
Prestimion listened in brooding silence, stunned by this bit of unknown history.
Like any prince of the Castle who had been marked for a high role in the government, he had made an extensive study of the annals of Majipoor’s history; and, by and large, it was a strikingly peaceful tale, with no significant bloodshed between the time of Stiamot’s campaigns against the Metamorphs and Prestimion’s own struggle with Korsibar. Certainly he had never come upon any accounts of rebellious serfs and assassinated dukes. The story went against all that he wanted to believe about the basically benign ways of the people of Majipoor, who had learned long ago to settle their quarrels by less violent means. He would rather have been told that the Shapeshifters had been the ones who worked this ruination; at least there already was a well-established history of fierce conflict between humans and Metamorphs, though it had come to an end thousands of years before this city’s destruction.
Bekrimiin informed his guests now that they were welcome to stay with him overnight, or for as long as they wished; but Prestimion had already had more than enough of this place, which had begun to weigh heavily on his spirits. To Gialaurys he said, “Thank him and give him some money, and tell him that it is the Coronal who he has entertained this afternoon. And then let’s be on our way.” To Abrigant he added, “When we are back at the Castle, find me whatever documents you can that exist concerning this place. I’d like to study its history more deeply.”
“There may very well be nothing to find in the archives about it,” said Septach Melayn. “The suppression of unpleasant facts was perhaps not any invention of ours, my lord.”
“Perhaps so,” Prestimion said somberly, and went out through the city’s gateway, and stood for a time staring at the great tree that held the city wall in its devouring embrace; and he said little to anyone all the rest of the afternoon.
They entered now into the district known as Arvyanda. Whenever anyone spoke of that region, it was always in the phrase, “Arvyanda of the golden hills,” which brought to Prestimion’s mind the image of the parched tawny hills of some area that had long dry summers, as was common farther to the north. He wondered why hills would be golden in this perpetually green and lush tropical region of frequent rainfall. Or was it that the yellow metal itself was mined in this place?
But the answer came quickly enough, and it was neither of those. A thick-boled tree with wide boat shaped leaves grew in copious quantity on the hillsides of Arvyanda, to the exclusion of nearly everything else; and in the bright tropical sunlight those innumerable leaves, which were stiff and outspread and of a texture that seemed almost metallic, gave back a brilliant golden reflection, as though the entire region had been gilded.
In Arvyanda city they made inquiries concerning Dantirya Sambail, with inconclusive results. Nobody was prepared to claim that they had actually seen the Procurator pass that way, although there were some scattered reports of unpleasant strangers moving swiftly through the outskirts of town some weeks before. Were they being deliberately vague, or were the Arvyanda folk merely stupid and unobservant? There was no easy way to tell; but in any case there was nothing to learn from them.
“Shall we continue?” Septach Melayn asked Prestimion.
“As far as the coast, yes.”
On the other side of Arvyanda were the celebrated topaz mines of Zeberged. It was the transparent form of the precious mineral that was found here, clear as the finest glass and, when polished, of an unparalleled brilliance. But so bright was the sun against the rocky terrain of Zeberged that the topaz outcroppings were invisible by day because of the glare; and therefore the miners came out only at twilight, when the topaz could be seen gleaming lustrously by the last rays of the light, and clapped bowls over the shining stones to serve as markers. Early the next morning they would return and cut away the marked pieces of rock, and turn them over to the craftsmen who polished them.