Harpirias glanced back and saw that some of his Skandars were stirring uneasily. He heard the click of energy-throwers being put in readiness.

"No weapons," he said sharply. "Just stand your ground, and take no action unless we’re actually attacked."

It was difficult, even so, to look on nonchalantly as this motley horde of howling devils came rushing toward them. Harpirias threw an uncertain look at Korinaam, who only smiled and said, "They aren’t going to harm us. They know who I am and they understand that I’ve come back with good news for them."

"I hope you’re right," muttered Harpirias.

"Hold both your arms outstretched with the palms facing forward: it’s a sign of peaceful intentions. Look as dignified and regal as you can and don’t say a thing."

Harpirias struck the pose, feeling more than a little foolish. In another moment the Othinor had reached them and surrounded them, capering and dancing in an almost comic show of barbaric force, shouting, sticking out their tongues, waving their swords and spears in their faces with theatrical ardor.

Perhaps that’s all it is, thought Harpirias: a show, a staged display of force. Their little way of signifying to strangers that they are not a people to be trifled with.

Korinaam was speaking now: loudly and slowly and clearly, uttering harsh thick-tongued words that had the sound of mere gibberish, though the odd word or two sounded almost familiar. One of the Othinor, a tall gaunt-faced man more elaborately robed and painted than the others, offered a reply, speaking with much greater rapidity; and after a pause Korinaam spoke again, apparently repeating his previous declaration. So it went, for some minutes, one long bewildering stream of palaver after another.

The language of these people, Harpirias began to see, was some distant relative to the language that was spoken everywhere on Majipoor. Like the tongue the March-men spoke, it was a transformed and distorted form of it, scarcely recognizable to a city-dweller. But the divergence had gone even further in this remote northern region. The March-men’s speech was actually just a rough-and-ready dialect of standard Majipoori; the strange lingo spoken here, developed during thousands of years of isolation, seemed to have become virtually a different language. How well, Harpirias wondered, did Kormaam understand it?

Well enough, apparently. The Othinor had halted their grotesque capering and were standing quietly in a circle around them. The one who had replied to Korinaam originally — was he the king? No, probably just a priest, Harpirias decided — still was speaking with him, but in a less formal, more conversational way; some of the others, after peering at Harpirias’s Skandars and Ghayrogs in unconcealed fascination at the sight of such alien beings, now came up to them to carry out an inspection at closer range.

An Othinor gingerly put his fingertips to the smooth, rigid scales of Mizguun Troyzt, the Ghayrog floater technician, and lightly rubbed them. Though Mizguun Troyzt’s cold unblinking eyes remained expressionless, his serpentine hair writhed in emphatic annoyance. He backed away an inch or two, but the Othinor reached out further.

"I do not want to be touched like this," the Ghayrog said to Harpirias, between clenched jaws.

"Nor I," said Eskenazo Marabaud, the captain of the Skandars. An Othinor, standing on tiptoes, had reached up to tug the dense reddish hair that covered the Skandar’s great slab of a chest, and now was pulling at the lower of Eskenazo Marabaud’s two pairs of arms as though to find out whether they were really attached to his body.

Harpirias fought back laughter. But all the Othinor now were poking and prodding energetically at the Skandars and Ghayrogs; and he saw that in another moment there was likely to be an incident. "You’d better put a stop to this," he said to Korinaam.

"There is no help for it," the Shapeshifter said. "It is a natural curiosity on their part. Your men will have to get used to it."

"And how long am I supposed to stand with my arms out like this?"

"You can put them down now. We are officially admitted to the village. The priest here tells me that King Toikella is looking forward with much pleasure to making your acquaintance. So come, now, prince: to the royal palace."

The palace of the Othinor monarch was, predictably, the grandest of the buildings of the village, a three-storied structure at the extreme eastern end, its flat white facade covered from top to bottom with a scrollwork of fantastic interlaced ice-carvings of the most intricate kind. Within, though, it turned out to be a single cavernous room, enormously high and broad, with no supporting columns. Such construction, thought Harpirias, must surely strain the tensile strength of the ice-blocks out of which the place had been built to its absolute limits.

The great hall was dark and smoky and dank. Its air was stiflingly close, unexpectedly warm, with a foul fishy aroma. Heavy weavings hung from the walls and the floor was strewn with dried rushes that crunched nastily under foot. The only illumination came from a large leather-walled tank, set in a deep pit in the very center of the room, which held a pool of dark oil of some unfamiliar sort that was burning slowly with a bluish flickering glow. Behind it sat King Toikella high atop an astounding platformlike throne made of scores of colossal bones, a whole charnel house of them, tightly and elegantly wedged and woven together — thighbones, ribs, immense curving tusks, shoulderblades, jawbones, an awesome royal seat constructed entirely from the bodies of the formidable beasts that roamed this icy land.

The king himself was well worthy of such a throne: a gigantic potbellied man, entirely bald, strikingly ugly, naked except for a strip of leather around his waist and an array of bone beads and long yellow teeth dangling from a string on his chest. His face and back and shoulders were striped with bright streaks of paint. In his left hand he held a great gross gobbet of bloody, greasy meat, charred on one side but otherwise practically raw, which he had been gnawing on as Harpirias and Korinaam entered. A bevy of half-naked women, most of them as fat and ugly as he was — wives? concubines? royal princesses? — lolled at the foot of the throne.

The Shapeshifter stepped forward, struck what was evidently a ceremonial pose of submission — arms out high, palms turned forward — and greeted the king with a long, slow speech, altogether unintelligible to Harpirias. The king was silent for a time when Korinaam had finished. He tore off a chunk of meat and chewed it reflectively. He looked Harpirias over with care. Then — slowly, solemnly — he rose to his full majestic height, the meat still in his mouth, and spoke for a long while in the deepest voice Harpirias had ever heard come from a human throat. It was a low rumbling growl more like a Skandar’s voice than a man’s.

When he had finished he pulled another whopping piece of meat from the haunch in his hand and tossed it in an offhand way down to Harpirias, who caught it in some surprise.

"The king bids you welcome," Korinaam murmured.

"Tell him that I thank him for his kindness."

"Not yet. Eat what he’s given you, first."

"Are you serious?"

"Extremely. Eat it, prince."

Harpirias stared unhappily at the meat. A sharp, acrid, uninviting aroma rose from it. Only one corner appeared to be cooked at all. The rest of it was bright red, except for the thick vein of fat and gristle that ran through its middle. He turned the hefty chunk over, surreptitiously scanning it for maggots.

"Eat it," the Metamorph said again. "Meat from the king’s own portion must not be refused."

"Ah," Harpirias said. "Yes. Yes, certainly."