The Majipoor Cycle
Book #07
The King of Dreams

by Robert Silverberg


	And Lord Stiamot wept when  he heard them singing the  ballad of
	his great victory at Weygan  Head, because the Stiamot of  which
	they sang was not  the Stiamot he knew.  He was not himself  any
	more. He had been  emptied into legend. He  had been a man,  and
	now he was a fable.
                                                       -- AITHIN FURVAIN
                                                     The Book of Changes


ONE:
THE BOOK
OF WAITING

1

'That has to be what we're looking for,' said the Skandar, Sudvik Gorn, standing
at the edge of the cliff and pointing down the steep hillside with harsh jabbing
motions of  his lower  left arm.  They had  reached the  crest of the ridge. The
underlying  rock  had crumbled  badly  here, so  that  the trail  they  had been
following terminated in  a rough patch  covered with sharp  greenish gravel, and
just beyond lay a sudden drop into a thickly vegetated valley. 'Vorthinar  Keep,
right there below us! What else could that building be, if not the rebel's keep?
And easy enough for us to set it ablaze, this time of year.'

'Let me see,' young Thastain said.  'My eyes are better than yours.'  Eagerly he
reached for the spyglass that Sudvik Gorn held in his other lower arm.

It was a mistake.  Sudvik Gorn enjoyed baiting  the boy, and Thastain  had given
him yet another chance.  The huge Skandar, better  than two feet taller  than he
was, yanked  the glass  away, shifting  it to  an upper  arm and  waving it with
ponderous  playfulness  high  above  Thastain's  head.  He  grinned  a malicious
snaggletoothed grin. 'Jump for it, why don't you?'

Thastain felt his face  growing hot with rage.  'Damn you! Just let  me have the
thing, you moronic four-armed bastard!'

'What was that? Bastard, am I? Bastard? Say it again?' The Skandar's shaggy face
turned dark. He brandished  the spyglass now as  though the tube were  a weapon,
swinging it threateningly from side to  side. 'Yes. Say it again, and  then I'll
knock you from here to Ni-moya.'

Thastain glared at him. 'Bastard! Bastard!  Go ahead and knock me, if  you can.'
He  was sixteen,  a slender,  fair-skinned boy  who was  swift enough  afoot  to
outrace a bilantoon. This was his first important mission in the service of  the
Five Lords of Zimroel, and the Skandar had selected him, somehow, as his special
enemy. Sudvik Corn's  constant maddening ridicule  was driving him  to fury. For
the past three days, almost from the beginning of their journey from the  domain
of the  Five Lords,  many miles  to the  southeast, up  here into the rebel-held
territory, Thastain had held it in, but now he could contain it no longer.  'You
have to catch me first, though, and  I can run circles around you, and  you know
it. Eh, Sudvik Gorn, you great heap of flea-bitten fur!'

The Skandar growled and came rumbling forward. But instead of fleeing,  Thastain
leaped agilely back  just a few  yards and, whirling  quickly, scooped up  a fat
handful of jagged pebbles. He drew back his arm as though he meant to hurl  them
in Sudvik Corn's face. Thastain gripped  the stones so tightly that their  sharp
edges bit into  the palm of  his hand. You  could blind a  man with stones  like
that, he thought.

Sudvik Gom evidently  thought so too.  He halted in  mid-stride, looking baffled
and angry, and the two stood facing each other. It was a stalemate.

'Come on,' Thastain  said beckoning to  the Skandar and  offering him a  mocking
look. 'One more step. Just one more.' He swung his arm in experimental underhand
circles, gathering momentum for the throw.

The Skandar's red-tinged eyes  flamed with ire. From  his vast chest came  a low
throbbing sound like that  of a volcano readying  itself for eruption. His  four
mighty arms quivered with barely contained menace. But he did not advance.

By  this time  the other  members of  the scouting  party had  noticed what  was
happening. Out of the corner of his eye Thastain saw them coming together to his
right and  left, forming  a loose  circle along  the ridge, watching, chuckling.
None of them liked the Skandar, but Thastain doubted that many of the men  cared
for him very much either. He was  too young, too raw, too green, too  pretty. In
all probability  they thought  that he  needed to  be knocked  around a   little
- roughed up by life as they had been before him.

'Well, boy?' It was the hard-edged voice of Gambrund, the round-cheeked Piliplok
man with the  bright purple scar  that cut a  vivid track across  the whole left
side of  his face.  Some said  that Count  Mandralisca had  done that to him for
spoiling  his aim  during a  gihorna hunt,  others that  it had  been the   Lord
Gavinius in a  drunken moment, as  diough the Lord  Gavinius ever had  any other
kind. 'Don't just stand there! Throw them! Throw them in his hairy face!'

'Right, throw them,' someone else called. 'Show the big ape a thing or two!  Put
his filthy eyes out!'

This was very stupid, Thastain thought. If he threw the stones he had better  be
sure to blind Sudvik Gorn with them on the first cast, or else the Skandar  very
likely would kill him. But if he blinded Sudvik Gorn the Count would punish  him
severely for  it -  quite possibly  would have  him blinded  himself. And  if he
simply tossed the stones away he'd have to run for it, and run very well, for if
Sudvik Gorn caught him he would hammer  him with those great fists of his  until
he was smashed to pulp; but if he fled then everyone would call him a coward for
fleeing.  It was  impossible any  way whichever.  How had  he contrived  to  get
himself into this? And how was he going to get himself out?

He wished most profoundly that someone would rescue him. Which was what happened
a moment later.

'All right, stop it, you two,' said a new voice from a few feet behind Thastain.
Criscanto Vaz, it was. He was  a wiry, broad-shouldered gray -bearded man,  a Ni
-moyan: the oldest of the group, a year or two past forty. He was one of the few
here who had taken a liking of  sorts to Thastain. It was Criscanto Vaz  who had
chosen him to  be a member  of this party,  back at Horvenar  on the Zimr, where
this  expedition had  begun. He  stepped forward  now, placing  himself  between
Thastain and the Skandar. There was a sour look on his face, as of one who wades
in a pool of filth. He gestured brusquely to Thastain. 'Drop diose stones, boy.'
Instantly Thastain  opened his  fist and  let them  fall. 'The Count Mandralisca
would have you both nailed to a tree and Hayed if he could see what's going  on.
You're wasting precious time.  Have you forgotten that  we're here to do  a job,
you idiots?'

'I simply asked him  for the spyglass,' said  Thastain sullenly. 'How does  that
make me an idiot?'

'Give it to him,' Criscanto Vaz  told Sudvik Gom. 'These games are  foolishness,
and  dangerous foolishness  at that.  Don't you  think the  Vorthinar lord   has
sentries aplenty  roving these  hills? We  stand at  risk up  here, every single
moment.'

Grimacing, the gigantic Skandar handed  the glass over. He glowered  at Thastain
in a way that unmistakably said that he meant to finish this some other time.

Thastain tried to pay no attention to that. Turning his back on Sudvik Gorn,  he
went to the very rim of the precipice, dug his boots into the gravel, and leaned
out as far as he dared go. He put the glass to his eye. The hillside before  him
and the valley below sprang out in sudden rich detail.

It was autumn here,  a day of strong,  sultry heat. The lengthy  dry season that
was the summer of this part of  central Zimroel had not yet ended, and  the hill
was covered with a dense  coat of tall tawny grass,  a sort of grass that  had a
bright glassy sheen as  though it were artificial,  as if some master  craftsman
had fashioned it for the sake of decorating the slope. The long gleaming  blades
were heavy with seed-crests, so that the force of the warm south wind bent  them
easily, causing them  to ripple like  a river of  bright gold, running  down and
down and down the slope.

The hillside,  which descended  rapidly in  a series  of swooping  declines, was
nearly featureless except where it was  broken, here and there, by great  jagged
black boulders that rose out of it like dragons' teeth. Thastain could make  out
a sleek short-legged helgibor creeping purposefully through the grass a  hundred
yards below him, its furry green  head lifted for the strike, its  arching fangs
already  bared. A  plump unsuspecting  blue vrimmet,  the helgibor's  prey,  was
grazing serenely not far  away. The vrimmet would  be in big trouble  in another
moment or two. But of the  castle of the rebellious lordling, Thastain  was able
to see nothing at all at first,  despite the keenness of his vision and  the aid
that the spyglass provided.

Then he nudged  the glass just  a little to  the west, and  there the keep  was,
snugly nestling in  a deep fold  of the valley:  a long low  gray curving thing,
like  a  dark scar  against  the tawny  grassland.  It seemed  to  him that  the
bottommost part of the structure was  fashioned of stone, perhaps to the  height
of a man's  thigh, but everything  above that was  of wood, rising  to a sloping
thatched roof.

'There's  the  keep,  all  right,'  Thastain  said,  without  relinquishing  the
spyglass.

Sudvik  Gorn was  right. In  this dry  season, it  would be  no great  challenge
whatever to set the  place on fire. Three  or four firebrands hurled  from above
and the roof would go up, and sparks would leap to the parched unmown grass that
came right up to the foundations  of the building, and the gnarled  oily-looking
shrubs nearby would catch. There would be a roaring holocaust all around. Within
ten minutes the Vorthinar lord and all his men would be roasted alive.

'Do you see sentinels?' Criscanto Vaz asked.

'No. Nobody. Everybody must be inside. No - wait - yes, someone's there!'

A strange figure, very thin and unusually elongated, coming into view around the
side of the building.  The man paused a  moment and looked upward  - straight at
Thastain, so it seemed. Thastain dropped hastily to his belly and signalled with
a furious sweep of his  left hand for the men  behind him to move back  from the
ridge. Then he peered over the edge once more. Cautiously he extended the glass.
The man  was continuing  on his  path, now.  Perhaps he  hadn't noticed anything
after all.

There was something exceedingly odd about  the way he was moving. That  swinging
gait, that  curious flexibility  of movement.  That strange  face, like  no face
Thastain had  ever seen  before. The  man looked  weirdly loose-jointed, somehow
rubbery, one might say. Almost as though he were - could it be -?

Thastain closed one eye and stared as intensely as he knew how with the other.

Yes.  A chill  ran down  Thastain's spine.  A Metamorph,  it was.  Definitely  a
Metamorph. That was a new sight for  him. He had spent his whole short  lifetime
up here in northern Zimroel,  where Metamorphs were rarely if  ever  encountered
- were, indeed, practically legendary creatures.

He took a good look now. Thastain fined  the focus of the glass and was able  to
make out  plainly the  greenish tint  of the  man's skin,  the slitted lips, the
prominent cheekbones, the tiny bump of a nose. And the longbow the creature wore
slung across his back  was surely one of  Shapeshifter design, a flimsy,  highly
flexible-looking thing of light wickerwork, the kind of weapon most suitable for
a being whose skeletonic structure was pliant enough to bend easily, to  undergo
almost any sort of vast transformation.

Unthinkable. It was like seeing a demon walking patrol before the keep. But who,
even someone who was in rebellion  against his own liege lords, would  dare ally
himself with the Metamorphs? It was against the law to have any traffic with the
mysterious aboriginal folk. But, thought Thastain, it was more than illegal.  It
was monstrous.

'There's a Shapeshifter down there,' Thastain  said in a rough whisper over  his
shoulder. 'I can see him walking right past the front of the house. So the story
we heard must be true. The Vorthinar lord's in league with them!'

'You think he saw you?' said Griscanto Vaz.

'I doubt it.'

'All right. Get yourself back from the edge before he does.'

Thastain wriggled backward without rising and scrambled to his feet when he  was
far enough away from the brink. As he lifted his head he became aware of  Sudvik
Gorn's glowering gaze still fixed on him in cold hatred, but Sudvik Gom and  his
malevolence hardly mattered to him now. There was a task to be done.



2

Morning in the Castle. Bright golden-green sunlight entered the grand suite atop
LordThraym's  Tower that  was the  official residence  of the  Coronal and   his
consort. It came flooding in a brilliant stream into the splendid great bedroom,
walled with great blocks of  smooth warm-hued granite hung with  fine tapestries
of cloth of gold, where the Lady Varaile was awakening.

The Castle.

Everyone in the world knew which  castle was meant, when you said  'The Castle':
it could only be Lord Prestimion's Castle, as the people of Majipoor had  called
it these  twenty years  past. Before  that it  had been  called Lord Confalume's
Castle, and  before that  Lord Prankipin's,  and so  on and  so on back into the
vague  mists of  time -  Lord Guadeloom's  Castle, Lord  Pinitor's Castle,  Lord
Kryphon's Castle, Lord Thraym's  Castle, Lord Dizimaule's Castle,  Coronal after
Coronal across the endlessly flowing  centuries of Majipoor's long history,  the
great ones and the mediocre ones  and the ones whose names and  achievements had
become totally obscure, king  after king all the  way back to the  semi-mythical
builder himself, Lord  Stiamot of seven  hundred centuries before,  each monarch
giving his name to the  building for the duration of  his reign. But now it  was
the Castle of the Coronal Lord Prestimion and his wife, the Lady Varaile.

Reigns  end. One  of these  days, almost  certainly, this  place would  be  Lord
Dekkeret's Castle, Varaile knew.

But let that day not come soon, she prayed.

She loved the Castle. She had lived in that unfathomably complex array of thirty
thousand rooms, perched  here atop the  astounding thirty-mile-high splendor  of
Castle Mount that jutted  up like a colossal  spike out of the  immense curve of
the planet, for half her life. It was  her home. She had no desire to leave  it,
as leave it she knew  she must on the day  that Lord Prestimion ascended to  the
title of Pontifex and Dekkeret replaced him as Coronal.

This  morning, with  Prestimion off  somewhere in  one of  the downslope  cities
dedicating a dam or presiding over the installation of a new duke or  performing
one of  the myriad  other functions  that were  required of  a Coronal - she was
unable to remember what the pretext for this journey had been - the Lady Varaile
awoke alone  in the  great bed  of the  royal suite,  as she  did all  too often
nowadays. She  could not  follow the  Coronal about  the world  on his  unending
peregrinations. His boiling restlessness kept him always on the move.

He would have  had her accompany  him on his  trips, if she  could; but that, as
both of them realized,  was usually impossible. Long  ago, when they were  newly
wed,  she  had gone  everywhere  at Prestimion's  side,  but then  had  come the
children and her  own heavy royal  responsibilities besides, the  ceremonies and
social functions and public audiences, to  keep her close to the Castle.  It was
rare now for the Coronal and his lady to travel together.

However necessary these separations  were, Varaile had never  reconciled herself
to their frequency.  She loved Prestimion  no less, after  sixteen years as  his
wife, than she had at the beginning. Automatically, as the first dazzling shafts
of daylight  came through  the great  crystal window  of the  royal bedroom, she
looked  across  to  see  that  golden-green  light  strike  the  yellow  hair of
Prestimion on the pillow beside hers.

But she was  alone in the  bed. As always,  it took her  a moment to  comprehend
that, to remember  that Prestimion  had gone  off, four  or five  days ago,   to
where? Bombifale, was it? Hoikmar?  Deepenhow Vale? She had forgotten  that too.
Somewhere,  one  of the  Slope  Cities, perhaps,  or  perhaps someplace  in  the
Guardian  ring. There  were fifty  cities along  the flanks  of the  Mount.  The
Coronal was in ever-constant motion; Varaile no longer bothered to keep track of
his itinerary, only of the date of his longed-for return.

'Fiorinda?' she called.

The warm contralto reply from the next room was immediate: 'Coming, my lady!'

Varaile rose,  stretched, saluted  herself in  the mirror  on the  far wall. She
still slept naked, as though she were a girl; and, though she was past forty now
and had borne the Coronal three sons and a daughter, she allowed herself the one
petty vanity of taking pleasure in her ability to fend off the inroads of aging.
No sorcerer's spells did she employ for that: Prestimion had once expressed  his
loathing  for  such  subterfuges,  and  in  any  case  Varaile  felt  they  were
unnecessary, at least so far. She was a tall woman, long-thighed and lithe,  and
though she was strongly built,  with full breasts and some  considerable breadth
at the waist, she had not grown at all fleshy with age. Her skin was smooth  and
taut; her hair remained jet-black and lustrous.

'Did milady rest well?' Fiorinda asked, entering.

'As well as could be expected, considering that I was sleeping alone.'

Fiorinda grinned. She was the wife of Teotas, Prestimion's youngest brother, and
each morning  at dawn  left her  own marital  bed so  that she  could be  at the
service of the Lady Varaile when  Varaile awoke. But she seemed not  to begrudge
that, and Varaile was grateful for it. Fiorinda was like a sister to her, not  a
mere sister-in-law; and Varaile, who had had no sisters of her own nor  brothers
either, cherished their friendship.

They bathed together,  as they did  every morning in  the great marble  tub, big
enough  for  six  or eight  people,  that  some past  Coronal's  wife  had found
desirable to install  in the royal  chamber. After-ward Fiorinda,  a small, trim
woman with  radiant auburn  hair and  an irreverent  smile, threw  a simple robe
about herself  so that  she could  help Varaile  with her  own costuming for the
morning. 'The pink sieronal, I think,' said Varaile, 'and the golden difina from
Alaisor.' Fiorinda fetched the trousers  for her and the delicately  embroidered
blouse, and, without needing  to be asked, brought  also the vivid yellow  sfifa
that Varaile liked to drape down her bosom with that ensemble, and the wide  red
and-tan belt of fine Makroposopos weave that was its companion. When Varaile was
dressed Fiorinda resumed her own garments of the day, a turquoise vest and  soft
orange pantaloons.

'Is there news?' Varaile asked.

'Of the Coronal, milady?'

'Of anyone, anything!'

'Very little,' said Fiorinda. The pack  of sea-dragons that were seen last  week
off the Stoien coast are moving northward, toward Treymone.'

'Very odd, sea-dragons  in those waters  at this time  of year. An  omen, do you
think?'

'I must tell you I am no believer in omens, milady.'

'Nor  I,  really.  Nor  is  Presdmion. But  what  are  the  things  doing there,
Fiorinda?'

'Ah,  how can  we ever  understand the  minds of  the sea-dragons,  lady? -   To
continue: a delegation from Sisivondal arrived at the Castle late last night, to
present some gifts for the Coronal's museum.'

Varaile shuddered. 'I was in Sisivondal  once, long ago. A ghastly place,  and I
have ghastly memories of it. It was  where the first Prince Akbalik died of  the
poisoned swamp-crab bite he  had had in the  Stoienzar jungle. I'll let  someone
else deal with  the Sisivondal folk  and their gifts.  - Do you  remember Prince
Akbalik,  Fiorinda?  What  a splendid  man  he  was, calm,  wise,  very  dear to
Prestimion. I think he would have been Coronal someday, if he had lived. It  was
in the time of the campaign against the Procurator that he died.'

'I was only a child then, milady.'

'Yes.  Of course.  How foolish  of me.'  She shook  her head.  Time was  flowing
fiercely past them all.  Here was Fiorinda, a  grown woman, nearly thirty  years
old;  and  how  little  she  knew  of  the  troublesome  commencement  of   Lord
Prestimion's reign, the  rebellion of the  Procurator Dantirya Sambail,  and the
plague of madness that had swept the  world at the same time, and all  the rest.
Nor, of course, did  she have any inkling  of the tremendous civil  war that had
preceded those things, the struggle between Prestimion and the usurper Korsibar.
No  one  knew of  that  tumultuous event  except  a chosen  few  members of  the
Coronal's inner circle. All memory of it had been eradicated from everyone  else
by Presdmion's  master sorcerers,  and just  as well  that it  had. To Fiorinda,
though, even the infamous Dantirya Sambail was  simply someone out of the  story
books. He was a thing of fable to her, only.

As we all  will be one  day, thought Varaile  with sudden gloom:  mere things of
fable.

'And other news?' she asked.

Fiorinda hesitated. It was only for an instant, but that was enough. Varaile saw
through that little hesitation as if she were able to read Fiorinda's mind.

There was other news, important news, and Fiorinda was concealing it.

'Yes?' Varaile urged. 'Tell me.'

'Well -'

'Stop this, Fiorinda. Whatever it is, I want you to tell me right now.'

'Well -' Fiorinda moistened her lips. 'A report has come from the Labyrinth -'

'Yes?'

'It signifies nothing in the slightest, I think.'

'Tell me!' Already the news was taking  shape in Varaile's own mind, and it  was
chilling. 'The Pontifex?'

Fiorinda nodded forlornly. She could not meet Varaile's steely gaze.

'Dead?'

'Oh, no, nothing like that, milady.'

'Then tellme!' cried Varaile, exasperated.

'A mild weakness of the leg and arm. The left leg, the left arm. He has summoned
some mages.'

'A stroke, you mean? The Pontifex Confalume has had a Stroke?'

Fiorinda closed her eyes a moment and drew several deep breaths. 'It is not  yet
confirmed, milady. It is only a supposition.'

Varaile felt a burning  sensation at her own  temples, and a spasm  of dizziness
swept over her. She controlled herself with difficulty, forcing herself back  to
calmness.

It is not yet confirmed, she told herself.

It is only a supposition.

Coolly  she said,  'You tell  me about  sea-dragons off  the far  coast, and  an
insignificant delegation from an unimportant city in the middle of nowhere,  and
you suppress the  news of Confalume's  stroke so that  I need to  pull it out of
you? Do you think I'm a child, Fiorinda, who has to have bad news kept from  her
like that?'

Fiorinda seemed close to tears. 'Milady, as  I said a moment ago, it is  not yet
known as a certainty that it was a stroke.'

'The Pontifex  is well  past eighty.  More likely  past ninety,  for all I know.
Anything that has him summoning his mages is bad news. What if he dies? You know
what will happen then. - Where did you hear this, anyway?'

More  and  more  flustered, Fiorinda  said,  'My  lord Teotas  had  it  from the
Pontifical  delegate to  the Castle  late last  night, and  told me  of it  this
morning as I was setting out to come to you. He will discuss it with you himself
after you've breakfasted, just  before your meeting  with the royal   ministers.
My lord Teotas urged me  not to thrust all this  on you too quickly, because  he
emphasizes that  it is  truly not  as serious  a matter  as it  sounds, that the
Pontifex is generally in good health and is not deemed to be in any danger, that
he -'

'And sea-dragons off the Stolen coast are more important, anyway,' Varaile  said
acidly. 'Has a messenger been sent to the Coronal?'

'I don't know, milady,' said Fiorinda in a helpless voice.

'What about Prince Dekkeret? I haven't seen him around for several days. Do  you
have any idea where he is?'

'I  think  he's  gone  to  Normork,  milady.  His  friend  Dinitak  Barjazid has
accompanied him there.'

'Not the Lady Fulkari?'

'Not the Lady Fulkari,  no. Things are notwell  between Prince Dekkeret and  the
Lady Fulkari these  days, I think.  It was with  Dinitak he went,  on Twoday. To
Normork.'

'Normork!' Varaile shuddered. 'Another hideous place, though Dekkeret loves that
city, the Divine only knows why. And I suppose you have no idea whether anyone's
tried to inform him yet, either? Prince Dekkeret might well find himself Coronal
by nightfall yet and nobody has thought of letting him know that -'

Varaile realized that she was  losing control again. She  caught herself in  mid
flight.

'Breakfast,' she  said, in  a quieter  tone. 'We  should have  something to eat,
Fiorinda.  Whether or  not we're  in the  middle of  a crisis  this morning,  we
shouldn't try to face the day on an empty stomach, eh?'



3

The floater came  around the last  curve of craggy  Normork Crest and  the great
stone wall  of Normork  city rose  up suddenly  before them,  square athwart the
highway that had brought  them down from the  Castle to this level  on the lower
reaches of the  Mount's flank. The  wall was an  immense overbearing barrier  of
rectangular black megaliths piled one upon another to an astonishing height. The
city that it guarded lay utterly  concealed from view behind it. 'Here  we are,'
Dekkeret said. 'Normork.'

'And that?' Dinitak Barjazid asked. He and Dekkeret traveled together often, but
this was his first  visit to Dekkeret's native  city. 'Is that little  thing the
gate? And is our floater really going  to be able to get through it?'  He stared
in amazement at the tiny blinking hole, laughably disproportionate, tucked  away
like an  afterthought at  the foot  of the  mighty rampart.  It was  barely wide
enough, so it would seem, to admit a good-sized cart. Guardsmen in green leather
stood stiffly at attention to either side of it. A tantalizing bit of the hidden
city  could  be  seen framed  within  the  small opening:  what  appeared  to be
warehouses and a couple of many-angled gray towers.

Dekkeret smiled. 'The Eye of Stiamot, the gate is called. A very grand name  for
such a  piffling aperture.  What you  see is  the one  and only  entryway to the
famous city of Normork.  Impressive, isn't it? But  it's big enough for  us, all
right. Not by much, but we'll squeak through.'

'Strange,' Dinitak said, as they passed beneath the pointed arch and entered the
city. 'Such a huge wall, and so wretched and paltry a gate. That doesn't exactly
make strangers feel that they're wanted here, does it?'

'I have some  plans for changing  that, when the  opportunity is at  hand,' said
Dekkeret. 'You'll see tomorrow.'

The occasion  for his  visit was  the birth  of a  son to  the current  Count of
Normork, Considat  by name.  Normork was  not a  particularly important city and
Considat was not a  significant figure in the  hierarchies of Castle Mount,  and
ordinarily the only official cognizance the  Coronal would be likely to take  of
the child's birth would be a congratulatory note and a handsome gift.  Certainly
he would not make it the occasion  for a state visit. But Dekkeret, who  had not
seen Normork for many a month, had requested permission to present the Coronal's
congratulations in person, and had  brought Dinitak along with him  for company.
'Not  Fulkari?'  Presumion had  asked.  For Dekkeret  and  Fulkari had  been  an
inseparable pair these two  or three years past.  To which Dekkeret had  replied
that Count Considat was a man of conservative tastes; it did not seem proper for
Dekkeret to visit him in the company of  a woman who was not his wife. He  would
take Dinitak.  Prestimion did  not press  the issue  further. He  had heard  the
stories -  everyone at  the court  had, by  now -  that something had been going
amiss lately between Prince Dekkeret  and the Lady Fulkari, though  Dekkeret had
said not a word about it to anyone.

They had been  the closest of  friends for years,  Dekkeret and Dinitak,  though
their temperaments and  styles were  very different.  Dekkeret was  a big,  deep
chested,  heavy-shouldered  man  of  boundless  energy  and  unquenchable robust
spirit, whose words tended to come  booming out of him in a  cheerful resounding
bellow. The events of his life thus far had predisposed him to optimism and hope
and limitless enthusiasm.

Dinitak Barjazid, a man a few years  younger with a lean, narrow face and  dark,
glittering,  skeptical eyes,  was half  a head  shorter and  constructed on   an
altogether less substantial scale, compact and trim, with an air of taut  coiled
muscularity about him. His skin was darker even than his eyes, the swarthy  skin
of  one  who  has lived  for  years  under the  frightful  sun  of the  southern
continent. Dinitak spoke  much more quietly  than Dekkeret and  took a generally
darker view of the world. He was a shrewd, pragmatic man, raised in a harsh  sun
baked  land by  a tough  and wily  scoundrel of  a father  who had  been a  very
slippery sort indeed. Often  there was a questioning  edge on what Dinitak  said
that caused Dekkeret to think twice about things, and sometimes more than twice.
And he  was governed  always by  a harsh,  strict sense  of propriety,  a set of
fierce moral imperatives, as  though he had decided  early in life to  build his
life around a  philosophy of doing  and believing the  opposite of whatever  his
father might have done or thought.

They held each other  in the highest estimation.  Dekkeret had vowed that  as he
rose to prominence  within the royal  government ofMajipoor, Dinitak  would rise
with him, although he did not  immediately know how that would be  accomplished,
considering the clouded and notorious past of Dinitak's father and kinsmen.  But
he would find a way.

'Our reception committee, I think,' said Dinitak, pointing inward with a jab  of
his upturned thumb.

Just within  the wall  lay a  triangular cobblestoned  plaza bordered along each
side  by drab  wooden guardhouses.  The emissary  of the  Count of  Normork  was
waiting for them there, a small, flimsy-looking black-bearded man who seemed  as
though he could be  blown away by any  good gust of wind.  He bowed them out  of
their floater, introduced himself as the Justiciar Corde, and in flowery phrases
offered Prince Dekkeret and his  traveling companion the warmest welcome  to the
city. The Justiciar indicated a dozen or so armed men in green leather  uniforms
standing a short distance away. 'These men will protect you while you are here,'
he declared.

'Why?' Dekkeret asked. 'I have my own bodyguard with me.'

'It  is Count  Considat's wish,'  replied the  Justiciar Corde  in a  tone  that
indicated that the issue was not really open to discussion. 'Please - if you and
your men will follow me, excellence -'

'What is that all about?' said Dinitak  under his breath as they made their  way
on foot, escorted fore and aft by the black-clad guardsmen, through the  narrow,
winding alleys  of the  ancient city  to their  lodging-place. 'I wouldn't think
that we'd be in any danger here.'

'We're not.  But when  Prestimion was  here on  a state  visit not long after he
became Coronal,  a madman  tried to  assassinate him  right out  in front of the
Count's palace. That was in the dme of Count Meglis, Considat's father.  Madness
was a very  common thing in  the world back  then, you may  recall. There was an
epidemic of it in every land.'

Dinitak grunted in  surprise. 'Assassinate the  Coronal? You -can't  be serious.
Who would ever do a wild thing like that?'

'Believe me, Dinitak,  it happened, and  it was a  very close thing,  too. I was
still living in Normork then and I saw it with my own eyes. A lunatic swinging a
sharpened sickle, he  was. Came rushing  out of the  crowd in the  plaza and ran
straight for Prestimion. He was stopped just in time, or history would have been
very different.'

'Incredible. What happened to the assassin?'

'Killed, right then and there.'

'As was right and proper,' Dinitak said.

Dekkeret  smiled  at that.  Again  and again  Dinitak  revealed himself  as  the
ferocious moralist that  he was. His  judgments, driven by  a powerful sense  of
right and wrong,  were often severe  and uncompromising, sometimes  surprisingly
so.  Dekkeret  had  taken him  to  task  for that,  early  in  their friendship.
Dinitak's response was to  ask Dekkeret whether he  would prefer him to  be more
like his father in his ways, and  Dekkeret did not pursue the issue after  that.
But often he thought that it  must be painful for Dinitak, forever  seeing sloth
and error and corruption on all sides, even in those he loved.

'Prestimion  was unharmed,  of course.  But the  whole event  was a   tremendous
embarrassment for Meglis, and  he spent the rest  of his days trying  to live it
down.  Nobody outside  Normork thinks  about it  at all,  but here  it's been  a
blemish on the reputation of the  entire city for almost twenty years.  And even
though it's hardly likely that such  a thing would happen again, I  suppose that
Considat wants to make absolutely certain that nobody waving a sharp object gets
anywhere near the Coronal-designate while we're here.'

'That's  imbecilic. Does  he seriously  think his  city is  a hotbed  of  crazed
assassins? And  what a  damnable nuisance,  having these  troops marching around
with us everywhere we go.'

'Agreed. But if he feels he has  to bend over backwards in the name  of caution,
we'll have to humor him. It would give needless offense if we objected.'

Dinitak shrugged and let  the matter drop. Dekkeret  was only too well  aware of
how little tolerance there was in his friend's makeup for folly of any sort, and
plainly this business of providing unneeded guards for the visitors from  Castle
Mount fell  into that  category. But  Dinitak was  able to  see that  having the
guards around  would be  just a  harmless annoyance.  And he  understood when to
yield to Dekkeret in matters of official protocol.

They settled quickly into their hostelry, where Dekkeret was given the capacious
set of rooms that was usually reserved for the Coronal, and Dinitak a lesser but
comfortable apartment one floor below. In early afternoon they set out on  their
first call, a visit  to Dekkeret's mother, the  Lady Taliesme. Dekkeret had  not
seen her in many  months. Although her son's  position as heir-designate to  the
throne entitled her to a suite of  rooms at the Castle, she preferred to  remain
in Normork most of the time - still living, actually, in the same litde dwelling
in Old Town that their family had occupied when Dekkeret was a boy.

She lived there alone, now. Dekkeret's father, a traveling merchant who had  had
indifferent success plodding to and fro  with his satchels of goods amongst  the
Fifty  Cities, had  died a  decade earlier,  still fairly  young but  worn  out,
defeated, even, by the  long laborious struggle that  his life had been.  He had
never been able quite to make himself believe that his son Dekkeret had  somehow
attracted the attention of  Lord Prestimion himself and  had found his way  into
the circle of lordlings around the Coronal at the Castle. That Dekkeret had been
made a knight-initiate  was almost beyond  his capacity to  comprehend; and when
the Coronal had raised him to the rank of prince, his father had taken the  news
merely as a bizarre joke.

Dekkeret often  wondered what  he would  have done  if he  had come  to him  and
announced, 'I have been chosen to  be the next Coronal, father.' Laughed  in his
son's face, most likely. Or slapped him, even, for mocking his father with  such
nonsense. But he had not lived long enough for that.

Taliesme, though,  had handled  her son's  improbable ascent,  and the  stunning
elevation  other  own  position  that  necessarily  had  accompanied  it,   with
remarkable calmness. It was not that she had ever expected Dekkeret to become  a
knight of the Castle, let alone a prince. And undoubtedly not even in her dreams
had she  imagined him  as Coronal.  Nor was  she the  sort of  doting mother who
blandly accepted  any success  that came  to her  son as  nothing more  than his
proper due, inevitable and well deserved.

But a simple and powerful faith in the Divine had been her guide throughout  all
her life. She did not quarrel  with destiny. And so nothing ever  surprised her;
whatever came her way,  be it pain and  sorrow or glory beyond  all measure, was
something  that  had  been  preordained,  something  that  one  accepted without
complaint on the  one hand and  without any show  of astonishment on  the other.
Plainly it  must have  been intended  from the  beginning of  time that Dekkeret
would be Coronal someday - and therefore that she herself would finish her  days
as Lady of  the Isle of  Sleep, a Power  of the Realm.  The Coronal's mother was
always given  that greatly  auspicious post.  Very well:  so be  it. She had not
anticipated any such things, of course; but if they happened anyway, well, their
happening  -had  to  be  viewed  in  retrospect  as  something  as  natural  and
unsurprising as the rising of the sun in the east each day.

What surprised Dinitak was the meanness of the Lady Taliesme's house, a lopsided
little place with sagging window-frames amidst a jumble of small buildings  that
might have been  five thousand years  old, on a  dark, crooked street  of uneven
gray-green cobbled pavement close to the  center of Old Town. What sort  of home
was this for the mother of the next Coronal?

'Yes, I know,' Dekkeret said, grinning.  'But she likes it here. She's  lived in
this house for forty years and it means more to her than ten Castles ever could.
I've bought new furniture for her that's costlier than what was here before, and
nowadays she wears clothing of a  sort that my father could never  have afforded
for her, but otherwise nothing in the least has changed. Which is exactly as she
wants it to be.'

'And the  people around  her? Don't  they know  they're living  next door to the
future Lady of the Isle? Doesn't she know that herself?'

'I have  no idea  what the  neighbors know.  I suspect  that to  them she's just
Taliesme, the widow of the merchant Orvan Pettir. And as for herself-'

The door opened.

'Dekkeret,' said the Lady Taliesme. 'Dinitak. How good to see you both again.'

Dekkeret embraced his mother  lovingly and with great  care, as though she  were
dainty and fragile, and might break  if hugged too enthusiastically. In fact  he
knew she was not half  so fragile as he fancied  her to be; but nonetheless  she
was a small-framed woman, light-boned and petite. Dekkeret's father had not been
large either. From  boyhood onward Dekkeret  had always felt  like some kind  of
gross overgrown monster who had unaccountably been deposited by prankish fate in
the home of those two diminutive people.

Taliesme was wearing a gown of  unadorned ivory silk, and her glistening  silver
hair was bound by a simple, slender gold circlet. Dekkeret had brought gifts for
her that were of the same austere taste, a glossy little dragonbone pendant, and
a cobweb-light shimmering headscarfmade in distant Gabilorn, and a smooth little
ring of  purple jade  from Vyrongimond,  and two  or three  other things of that
sort. She received them  all with evident pleasure  and gratitude, but put  them
away as swiftly as politeness would permit. Taliesme had never coveted treasures
of that sort in the days when they had been poor, and she gave no sign of having
more than a casual interest in them now.

They talked easily, over tea and  biscuits, of life at the Castle;  she inquired
after Lord Prestimion and  Lady Varaile and their  children and - briefly,  very
briefly-mentioned the Lady  Fulkari also; she  spoke ofSeptach Melayn  and other
Council members, and  asked about Dekkeret's  current duties at  the court, very
much as though she were of that court herself in every fiber of her body  rather
than  the  mere  widow  of  an  unimportant  provincial  merchant.  She referred
knowingly, too, to recent  events at the palace  in Normork, the dismissal  of a
minister who was overfond of his wine and the birth of Count Considat's heir and
other  matters  of that  sort;  twenty years  ago  she would  have  had no  more
knowledge  of such  things than  she did  of the  private conversations  of  the
Shapeshifter wizards in their wicker-work capital in distant Piurifayne.

It gave Dekkeret great delight to  see the way the Lady Taliesme  was continuing
to grow into  the role that  destiny was forcing  upon her. He  had spent almost
half his  life, now,  among the  princes of  the Castle,  and was  no longer the
provincial boy he had been, that long-ago day in Normork, when he first had come
to Prestimion's notice. His mother had not had an opportunity for the same  sort
of  education  in  the  ways  of the  mighty.  Yet  she  was  learning, somehow.
Essentially  she  remained  as  artless and  unassuming  as  ever;  but she  was
nonetheless going to be, at some time not very far in the future, a Power of the
Realm, and  he could  see how  capably she  was making  her accommodation to the
strange and altogether  unanticipated enhancement of  her life that  was heading
her way.

A pleasant, civilized chat, then: a mother, her visiting son, the son's  friend.
But  gradually Dekkeret  became aware  of suppressed  tensions in  the room,  as
though  a  second  conversation,  unspoken  and  unacknowledged,  was   drifting
surreptitiously in the air above them:

- Will the Pontifex live much longer, do you think ?

- You know that that is something I don't dare think about, mother.

- But you do, though. As do I. It can't be helped.

He was certain that some such  secret conversation was going on within  her now,
here amidst the clink  of teacups and the  polite passing of trays  of biscuits.
Calm and sane and stable as she was, and ever-tranquil in the face of  destiny's
decrees, even so there was no  way she could avoid casting her  thoughts forward
to the  extraordinary transformation  that fate  would soon  be bringing  to the
merchant's son of Normork and to his mother. The starburst crown was waiting for
him, and the third terrace of the Isle of Sleep for her. She would be  something
other than human if thoughts of such things did not wander into her mind a dozen
times a day.

And into his own.



4

Already, in  his mind's  eye, Thastain  could see  the blackened  timbers of the
house of the Vorthinar  lord crumbling in the  red blaze of the  fire they would
set. As it deserved. He  could not get his mind  around the enormity of what  he
had seen.  It was  bad enough  to have  rebelled against  the Five Lords; but to
consort with  Metamorphs as  well -!  Those were  evils almost beyond Thastain's
comprehension.

Well,  they  had found  what  they had  come  here to  find.  Now, though,  came
disagreement over the nature of their next move.

Criscanto Vaz insisted that  they had to go  back and report their  discovery to
Count Mandralisca, and  let him work  out strategy from  there. But some  of the
men,  most  notably Agavir  Toymin  of Pidruid  in  western Zimroel,  spoke  out
passionately in favor of an immediate attack. The rebel keep was supposed to  be
destroyed: very well, that was what they should set about doing, without  delay.
Why let  someone else  have the  glory? Assuredly  the Five  Lords would  richly
reward the men who had rid them of this enemy. It was senseless to hang back  at
this point, with the headquarters of the foe right within their reach.

Thastain was of  that faction. The  proper thing to  do now, he  thought, was to
make their  way down  that hillside,  creeping as  warily as  that sharp-toothed
helgibor,  and  get  going on  the  job  of starting  the  fire  without further
dithering.

'No,' Criscanto Vaz said. 'We're only  a scouting party. We've got no  authority
to attack. Thastain, run back to the camp and tell the Count what we've found.'

'Stay where you are, boy,' said Agavir Toymin, a burly man who was notorious for
his blatant currying of  favor with the Lord  Gaviral and the Lord  Gavinius. To
Criscanto Vaz he said, 'Who put you  in charge of this mission, anyway? I  don't
remember that anybody  named you our  commander.' There was  sudden sharpness in
his tone, and no little heat.

'Nor you, so far as I know. - Run along, Thastain. The Count must be notified.'

'We'll notify  him that  we've found  the keep  and destroyed  it,' said  Agavir
Toymin. 'What will he do, whip us  for carrying out what we've all come  here to
do? It's three miles from here to the Count's camp. By the time the boy has gone
all.the  way  back  there,  the  wind  will  have  carried  our  scent  to   the
Shapeshifters down below, and there'll be a hillside of defenders between us and
the keep, just waiting for us to descend. No: what we need to do is get the  job
over with and be done with it.'

'I tell you, we are in no  way authorized -' Criscanto Vaz began, and  there was
heat in his voice too, and a glint of sudden piercing anger in his eyes.

'And I tell  you, Criscanto Vaz  -' Agavir Toymin  said, putting his  forefinger
against Criscanto Vaz's breastbone and giving a sharp push.

Criscanto Vaz's eyes blazed. He slapped the finger aside.

That was  all it  took, one  quick gesture  and then  another, to  spark a  wild
conflagration of wrath between them. Thastain, watching in disbelief, saw  their
faces grow dark and distorted as  all common sense deserted them both,  and then
they rushed forward, going at each  other like madmen, snarling and shoving  and
heaving  and  throwing wild  punches.  Others quickly  joined  the fray.  Within
seconds a crazy  melee was in  progress, eight or  nine men embroiled,  swinging
blindly, grunting and cursing and bellowing.

Amazing, Thastain thought.  Amazing! It was  ridiculous behavior for  a scouting
party. They might just as well have hoisted the banner of the Sambailid clan  at
the edge of the cliff, the five blood-red moons on the pale crimson  background,
and announced with a flourish of trumpets to those in the keep below that  enemy
troops were camped above them, intending a surprise attack.

And to  think of  the calm,  judicious Criscanto  Vaz, a  man of such wisdom and
responsibility, allowing himself to get involved in a thing like this -!

Thastain wanted no part of this absurd quarrel himself, and quickly moved  away.
But as  he came  around the'far  side of  the struggling  knot of  men he  found
himself suddenly face  to face once  again with Sudvik  Gorn, who also  had kept
himself apart  from the  fray. The  Skandar loomed  up in  front of  him like  a
mountainous mass of coarse auburn fur. His eyes glowed vengefully. His four huge
hands clenched and unclenched as  if they already were closing  about Thastain's
throat.

'And now, boy -'

Thastain  looked  frantically around.  Behind  him lay  the  sharp drop  of  the
hillside,  with a  camp of  armed enemies  at its  foot. Ahead  of him  was  the
infuriated and  relentless Skandar,  determined now  to vent  his choler. He was
trapped.

Thastain's hand went to the pommel of the hunting knife at his waist. 'Keep back
from me!'

But he wondered how  much of a thrust  would be required to  penetrate the thick
walls  of muscle  beneath the  Skandar's coarse  pelt, and  whether he  had  the
strength for  it, and  what the  Skandar would  succeed in  doing to  him in the
moments before he managed to strike. The little hunting knife, Thastain decided,
would be of not the slightest use against the huge man's great bulk.

It all seemed utterly  hopeless. And Criscanto Vaz,  somewhere in the middle  of
that pack of frenzied lunatics, could do nothing to help him now.

Sudvik Gorn started for  him, growling like a  mollitor coming toward its  prey.
Thastain muttered a prayer to the Lady.

And then, for the second time in ten minutes, rescue came unexpectedly.

'What is  this we  have here?'  said a  quiet, terrifying  voice, a  controlled,
inexorable  voice that  seemed to  emerge out  of nowhere  like a  metal  spring
uncoiling from some concealed machine. 'Brawling, is that it? Among  yourselves?
You've lost your minds, have  you?' It was a voice  with edges of steel. It  cut
through everything like a razor.

'The Count!' came an  anguished sighing cry from  half a dozen throats  at once,
and all fighting ceased instantaneously.

Mandralisca had  given no  indication that  he intended  to follow  them to this
place. So far as anyone knew, he planned to remain behind in his tent while they
went in  search of  the Vorthinar  lord's stronghold.  But here  he was, all the
same,  he  and  his  bandy-legged little  aide-de-camp  Jacomin  Halefice  and a
bodyguard of half a dozen swordsmen. The men of the scouting party, caught  like
errant children with  smudges of jam  on their faces,  stood frozen, staring  in
horror at the fearsome and sinister privy counsellor to the Five Lords.

The  Count  was a  lean,  rangy man,  somewhat  past middle  years,  whose every
movement was astonishingly graceful, as though  he were a dancer. But no  dancer
had ever had so frightening a face. His lips were hard and thin, his eyes had  a
cold glitter, his cheekbones jutted  like whetted blades. A thin  white vertical
scar bisected one of them, the mark of some duel of long ago. As usual he wore a
close-fitting full-body garment  of supple, well-oiled  black leather that  gave
him the shining, sinuous look of a serpent. Nothing broke its smoothness  except
the golden  symbol of  his high  office dangling  on his  breast, the five-sided
paraclet that signified  the power of  life and death  that he wielded  over the
uncountable millions  whom the  Five Lords  of Zimroel  regarded, illicitly,  as
their subjects.

Shrouded  in  an  awful  silence now  did  Mandralisca  move  among them,  going
unhurriedly  from  man to  man,  peering long  into  each one's  eyes  with that
basilisk gaze from which you could  not help but flinch. Thastain felt  his guts
churning as he awaited the moment when his turn would come.

He had never feared anyone or  anything as much as he feared  Count Mandralisca.
There always  seemed to  be a  cold crackling  aura around  the man, an icy blue
shimmer. The  mere sight  of him  far down  some long  hallway inspired  awe and
dread. Thastain's knees  had turned to  water when Criscanto  Vaz had told  him,
after selecting him for this mission, that it would be headed by none other than
the formidable privy counsellor himself.

It was unimaginable, of course, to  decline such an assignment, not if  he hoped
to rise  to a  post of  any distinction  in the  service of  the Five Lords. But
throughout the whole of the journey out of the Sambailid domain and up into this
region of  forests and  grassland where  the rebels  held sway  he had  tried to
shrink himself down  into invisibility whenever  the Count's glance  ventured in
his direction. And now - now -to be compelled to look him straight in the eye -

It  was agonizing,  but it  was over  quickly. Count  Mandralisca paused  before
Thastain,  studied  him  the  way  one might  study  some  little  insect  of no
particular interest that was walking across  a table in front of one,  and moved
on to the next man. Thastain sagged in relief.

'Well,' Mandralisca said, halting  in front of Criscanto  Vaz. 'A little bit  of
knockabout stuff, was it?  Purely for fun? I  would have thought better  of you,
Criscanto Vaz.'

Criscanto Vaz said  nothing. He did  not flinch from  Mandralisca's gaze in  any
way. He stood stiffly upright, a statue rather than a man.

A sudden gleam like the flicker  of a lightning-bolt came into the  Count's eyes
and  the riding-crop  that was  always in  Mandralisca's hand  lashed out   with
blinding speed,  a scornful  backhand stroke.  A burning  red line  sprang up on
Criscanto Vaz's cheek.

Thastain, watching, recoiled  from the blow  as if he  himself had been  struck.
Criscanto Vaz was a sturdy-spirited man of much presence, of great sagacity,  of
considerable quiet strength. Thastain looked upon him almost as a father. And to
see him whipped like this, in front of everyone -

But Criscanto Vaz showed  scarcely any reaction beyond  a brief blinking of  his
eyes and a brief wince as the riding-crop struck him. He held his upright stance
without moving at all, not even putting his hand to the injured place. It was as
if he had been utterly paralyzed by  the shame of having been discovered by  the
Count in such a witless fracas.

Mandralisca moved on. He came to  Agavir Toymin and struck him quickly  with the
crop also, almost without  pausing to think about  it, and, reaching the  end of
the row where Stravin of  Til-omon stood, hit him also.  He had put his mark  on
the three oldest men, the leaders, the ones who should have had enough sense not
to fight. To the others it was  a sufficient lesson; there was no need  actually
to strike them.

And then it was done. Punishment had been administered. Mandralisca stepped back
and scrutinized them all with unconcealed disdain.

Thastain once more tried to shrink himself down into invisibility. The intensity
of Mandralisca's frosty glare was a frightful thing.

'Will someone tell me  what was happening here,  now?' The Count's gaze  came to
rest once again on Thastain. Thastain shivered; but there was no recourse but to
meet those appalling eyes. 'You, boy. Speak!'

With extreme  effort Thastain  forced a  husky half-whisper  out of himself: 'We
have found the enemy keep, your grace. It lies in the valley just below us.'

'Go on. The fighting -'

'There was a  dispute over whether  to go down  to it immediately  and set it on
fire, or to return to your camp for further orders.'

'Ah. A dispute. A dispute.' A look that might almost been one of amusement  came
into Mandralisca's stony eyes. 'With fists.' Then his visage darkened again.  He
spat. 'Well, then, here are the  orders you crave. Get yourselves down  there at
once and put the place to the torch, even as we came here to do.'

'It is guarded by Shapeshifters, your grace,' Thastain said, astonishing himself
by daring to speak out unbidden. But there it was: his words hung before him  in
the air like puffs of strange black smoke.

The Count gave him a long slow look. 'Is it, now? Guarded by Shapeshifters. What
a  surprise.'  Mandralisca  did  not  sound  surprised,  though.  There  was  no
expression whatever in his tone.  Turning toward Criscanto Vaz, he  said, 'Well,
they will burn along with everyone else. You: I place you in charge. Take  three
men with you. The enemies of the Five Lords must perish.'

Criscanto Vaz saluted smartly. He seemed  almost grateful. It was as though  the
blow across the face had never occurred.

He glanced around at the group of waiting men. 'Agavir Toymin,' he said.  Agavir
Toymin,  looking  pleased,  nodded  and touched  two  fingers  to  his forehead.
'Gambrund,' said Mandralisca next. And, after a brief pause: 'Thastain.'

Thastain had not  expected that. Chosen  for the mission!  Him! He felt  a great
surge of  exhilaration. The  thumping in  his chest  was almost  painful, and he
touched his hand to his  breastbone to try to still  it. But of course he  would
have been chosen,  he realized, after  a moment. He  was the quickest,  the most
agile. He was to be the one who would run forward to hurl the firebrands.

The four men  descended in a  triangular formation, with  Thastain at the  apex.
Gambrund, just behind him, carried  the bundle of firebrands; flanking  him were
Criscanto Vaz and Agavir Toymin, armed with bows in case the sentries saw them.

Thastain kept his  head down and  went forward with  great care, mindful  of the
helgibor he had seen  and such other low-slung  predators of the grassland  that
might be lurking hidden in all this thick growth. The bright glassy sheen of the
tawny grass, he realized now,  was not just a trick  of the eye; the blades  did
not simply look glassy, but actually felt like glass, stiff and and sharp-edged,
unpleasant to move through,  making a harsh whispering  sound as he pushed  them
aside.  They provided  a slippery  surface to  walk on  when they  were  crushed
underfoot. Every step Thastain took was a  tense one: it would be all too  easy,
sliding and slithering as he was, to lose his footing and go stumbling  headlong
down into the enemy camp.

But he negotiated the slope safely,  halting when he reached a position  that he
judged was within throwing range. Moments  later the other three came up  behind
him. Thastain pointed toward the keep. No sentinels were in sight.

Criscanto Vaz indicated what he wanted done with quick urgent gestures. Gambrund
held out a firebrand; Agavir  Toymin produced a little energy-torch  and ignited
it with a quick burst  of heat; Thastaine took it  from him, ran forward half  a
dozen steps, and threw it toward the keep, turning himself in a nearly  complete
circle for greater velocity at the moment of release.

The blazing brand flew in a high, arching curve and landed in a bed of dry grass
no more than five feet from the keep. There was the crackling sound of immediate
ignition.

Burn! thought Thastain jubilantly. Burn! Burn! So perish all the enemies of  the
Five Lords!

Criscanto Vaz followed Thastain's brand  a moment later with a  second, throwing
it with less elegance  of form than Thastain  but with greater force:  it soared
splendidly through the air and came down on the diatched roof itself. A  pinkish
spiral  of flame  began to  rise. Thastain,  flinging the  next firebrand   more
emphatically, reached the group of black-trunked glossy-leaved shrubs closest to
the building's wall: they smoldered for a moment and burst into vivid tongues of
fire.

The occupants of  the keep, now,  were aware that  something was up.  'Quickly,'
Criscanto Vaz  cried. They  still had  two firebrands  left. Thastain seized one
with both hands as soon  as Agavir Toymin had it  lit, ran a few steps,  whirled
around, and flung it:  he too reached the  roof this time. Criscanto  Vaz placed
the last one in a patch of dry grass outside the door, just as three or four men
began emerging from it. Several of them set to work desperately trying to  stamp
out the blaze; the others, shouting in  a kind of frenzy, started to make  their
way up the slope toward the attackers.  But the climb from the valley floor  was
practically a vertical one  and they had brought  no weapons with them.  After a
dozen yards  or so  they gave  up and  turned back  toward the  keep, which with
astonishing swiftness was being engulfed  by fire. Like madmen they  ran inside,
though the whole entranceway  was already ablaze. The  front wall fell in  after
them. They would all  roast like spitted blaves  in there, the rebels  and their
tame Shapeshifters as well. Good. Good.

'We've done it!' Thastain cried, exulting at the sight. 'They're all burning!'

'Come, boy,' said Criscanto Vaz. 'Get yourself moving.'

He planted himself solidly and covered the retreat of the other three with drawn
bow. But no one emerged now from the burning building. By the time Thastain  had
reached the  safety of  the crest,  the rebel  keep and  much of the surrounding
grassland was on fire, and a black spear of smoke was climbing into the sky. The
blaze was spreading with awesome rapidity.  The whole valley was sure to  go up:
there would be no survivors down there.

Well, that was what they had  come here to accomplish. The Vorthinar  lord, like
so many of the  little local princelings across  the vast face of  the continent
ofZimroel, had  defied the  decrees of  the five  Sambailid brothers who claimed
supreme authority in  this land; and  so the Vorthinar  lord had had  to perish.
This continent  was meant  to be  Sambailid territory,  had been for generations
until the  overthrow of  the Procurator  by Lord  Presrimion, now  was Sambailid
again.  And this  dme must  remain so  for all  eternity. Thastain,  born  under
Sambailid rule, had no doubts of that. To permit anything else would be to  open
the door to chaos.


Count  Mandralisca seemed  mightily pleased  with the  work they  had done  down
there. There  was something  almost benign  about his  quick frigid  smile as he
greeted them on the crest, his brief, fleeting handclasp of congratulation.

They stood together for a long while at the cliff's edge, gleefully watching the
rebel keep burn. The fire was spreading and spreading, engulfing the dry  valley
from end to end. Even when they were back at camp, miles away, they could  still
smell the acrid tang of smoke, and black drifting cinders occasionally  wandered
toward them on the southward-trending wind.

That night they  opened many a  flagon of wine,  good coarse red  stuff from the
western lands.  Later, in  the darkness,  feeling as  tipsy as  he had ever been
though he had taken  care to stop drinking  before most of the  others, Thastain
went stumbling toward the ditch  where they relieved themselves, and  discovered
the Count already there, with  his aide-de-camp, that stubby little  man Jacomin
Halefice. So even the Count Mandralisca  needed to make water, just as  ordinary
mortals did! Thastain found something pleasantly incongruous about that.

He did not dare  approach. As he hung  back in the shadows  he heard Mandralisca
say in quiet satisfaction,  'They will all die  the way the Vorthinar  lord died
today, eh, Jacomin? And one day there will be no lords in this world other  than
the Five Lords.'

'Not even Lord Presrimion?' the aide-de-camp asked. 'Or Lord Dekkeret, who is to
come after him?'

Thastain saw Mandralisca swing about to  face the smaller man. He was  unable to
see the expression on the Count's face, but he could sense the bleak icy set  of
it from the tone of Mandralisca's voice as he replied:

'Your question provides its own answer, Jacomin.'



5

Asleep  in his  bed in  the royal  lodging-house in  the Guardian  City of   Fa,
Prestimion  dreamed that  he was  back in  the swarming,  incomprehensibly  vast
collection  of  buildings  atop Castle  Mount  that  went by  the  name  of Lord
Prestimion's Castle. He was wandering like a ghost through dusty corridors  that
he had never seen  before. He was taking  unfamiliar pathways that led  him down
into regions of the Castle that he had not even known existed.

A little phantom led him onward, a small floating figure drifting high up in the
air before him,  beckoning him ever  deeper into the  maze that was  the Castle.
'This way, my lord. This way! Follow me!'

The tiny phantom had the form of a Vroon, one of the many non-human peoples that
had dwelled on  Majipoor almost since  the earliest days  of the giant  planet's
occupation  by humans.  They were  doll-sized creatures,  light as  air, with  a
myriad of rubbery tentacular limbs and huge round golden eyes that stared  forth
on either side  of sharply hooked  yellow beaks. Vroons  had the gift  of second
sight, and could peer easily into minds, or unerringly determine the right  road
to take in some district altogether unfamiliar to them. But they could not float
ten  feet off  the ground,  as this  one was  doing. The  part of   Prestimion's
slumbering mind  that stood  outside itself,  watching the  progress of  his own
dreams, knew from that one detail alone that he had to be dreaming.

And he knew also, taking no pleasure in the knowledge, that this was a dream  he
had dreamed many rimes before, in one variation and another.

He almost  recognized the  sectors of  the Castle  through which  the Vroon  was
leading him.  Those ruined  pillars of  crumbling red  sandstone might belong to
Balas Bastion,  where there  were pathways  leading to  the little-used northern
wing. That narrow bridge could perhaps  be Lady Thiin's Overpass, in which  case
that spiraling rampart faced  in greenish brick would  lead toward the Tower  of
Trumpets and the Castle's outer facade.

But  what  was  this  long  rambling  array  of  low  black-tiled  stone hovels?
Prestimion  could  put  no  name to  that.  And  that  windowless, free-standing
circular tower whose rough white walls were inset with row upon row of sharpened
blue flints, sharp side outward? That diamond-shaped desert of gray slabs within
a palisade of pink marble spikes?  That endless vaulted hall, receding into  the
infinite distance, lit  by a row  of giant candelabra  the size of  tree-trunks?
These places could not be real parts of the Castle. The Castle was so huge  that
it would take forever  to see it all,  and even Prestimion, who  had lived there
since he was  a youth, knew  that there must  be many tracts  of it that  he had
never  had occasion  to enter.  But these  places where  his sleeping  self  was
roaming now surely had no real-world existence. They had to be  dream-inventions
and nothing more.

He was going down and down and  down a winding staircase made of planks  of some
gleaming scarlet  wood that  floated, like  the Vroon,  without visible means of
support in the middle of  the air. It was clear  to him that he must  be leaving
the relatively familiar upper reaches of the Castle now and descending into  the
auxiliary zones lower on the Mount where the thousands of people whose  services
were essential  to the  life of  the Castle  dwelled: the  guards and servitors,
gardeners and cooks, archivists  and clerks, road-menders and  wall-builders and
game-keepers, and so on and so on. Neither waking nor dreaming had he spent much
rime down there. But these levels were  part of the Castle too. The Castle,  big
as it was, grew even greater from year to year. It was like a living creature in
that regard. The royal sector of  the great building nestled atop the  uppermost
crags of the Mount, but it had layer upon layer of subterranean vaults  beneath,
cutting deep into the stony heart of the giant mountain. And also there were the
outer zones, sprawling downward for many  miles along every face of the  Mount's
summit like long trailing arms, extending themselves farther down the slope  all
the time.

'My lord?' the Vroon  called, singing sweetly to  him from overhead. 'This  way!
This way!'

Puffy-faced Hjorts  lined his  path now,  bowing officiously,  and great   thick
furred Skandars  made the  starburst salute  with all  the dizzying multiplicity
their four  arms afforded,  and whistling  greetings came  to him from reptilian
Ghayrogs, and flat-faced three-eyed little Liimen acknowledged him also, as  did
a phalanx of  pale haughty Su-Suheris  folk - representatives  of all the  alien
races that shared  vast Majipoor with  its human masters.  There were Metamorphs
here as well, it seemed, long-legged  slinking beings who slipped in and  out of
the shadows on every side. What, Prestimion wondered, were they doing on  Castle
Mount, where the aboriginal species  had been forbidden since the  long-ago days
of Lord Stiamot?

'And now come this  way,' said the Vroon,  leading him into a  building that was
like a castle within  the Castle, a hotel  of some sort with  thousands of rooms
arranged  along a  single infinitely  receding hallway  that uncoiled  endlessly
before him like a highway to the stars; but the Vroon was a Vroon no longer.

This was the version of the dream that Prestimion most dreaded.

There had  been a  transformation. His  guide now  was dark-haired Lady Thismet,
daughter  to the  Coronal Lord  Confalume and  twin sister  to Prince  Korsibar,
Thismet whom he had loved and lost so long ago. As buoyant as the Vroon and just
as swift, she danced along before him with her bare toes a few inches above  the
ground, remaining always just out of his reach, turning now and then to urge him
along  with  a luminous  smile,  a wink  of  her dark  sparkling  eyes, a  quick
encouraging flutter of her fingertips. Her matchless beauty speared through  him
like a blade. 'Wait for me!' he called, and she answered that he must move  more
quickly. But, fast as he went, she  was always faster, a slim lithe figure  in a
rippling white gown, her gleaming jet-black  hair fanning out in back of  her as
she retreated  from him  down that  unending hall.  'Thismet!' he  cried. 'Wait,
Thismet! Wait! Wait!  Wait!' He was  running with desperate  fervor now, pushing
himself to the last extreme of  his endurance. Ahead of him, doors  were opening
on  either side  of the  endless corridor;  faces peered  out, grinned,  winked,
beckoned to him.  They were Thismet  too, every one  of them, Thismet  again and
again, hundreds ofThismets, thousands, but as  he came to each room in  turn its
door slammed shut, leaving him only the tinkling laughter of the Thismet  behind
it. And still the Thismet who was guiding him moved forward serenely, constantly
turning to lure him onward, but never letting him catch up.

'Thismet! Thismet! Thismet!'

His voice became a tremendous clamoring roar of agony and rage and frustration.

'My lord?'

'Thismet! Thismet!'

'My lord,  are you  ill? Speak  to me!  Open your  eyes, my  lord! It's me, roe,
Diandolo! Wake up, my lord. Please, my lord -'

'This - met -'

The lights were on now. Prestimion, blinking, dazed, saw the young page Diandolo
bending over  the bed,  wide-eyed, gaping  at him  in shock.  Other figures were
visible behind him, four, five, six people: bodyguards, servitors, others  whose
faces were completely unfamiliar. He struggled to come fully up out of sleep.

The sturdy figure ofFalco now appeared, nudging Diandolo aside, bending  forward
over  Prestimion.  He was  Prestimion's  steward on  all  his official  travels,
twenty-five or so, a fine strapping  fellow from Minimool with an enviable  head
of thick glossy black hair, a wonderfully melodious singing voice, and a  bright
eyed look of invincible good cheer.

'It was only a dream you were having, my lord.'

Prestimion nodded. His chest and arms were drenched with sweat. His throat  felt
rough and raw from the force of his own outcries. There was a fiery band of pain
across his forehead. 'Yes,' he said hoarsely. 'It was - only - a - dream -'



6

Three of Varaile's four children were  waiting for her in the morning-room  when
she entered it. They rose as she  entered. It was the family custom for  them to
take the first meal of the day with her.

Prince Taradath, the eldest, was accompanying his father on his current journey,
and  therefore it  was the  second son,  Prince Akbalik,  who formally  escorted
Varaile  to  her seat.  He  was twelve,  and  already tall  and  sturdy: he  had
inherited his father's yellow hair and  powerful build, but he had his  mother's
height. In two or three years he would be taller than either of his parents. His
soft eyes and  thoughtful manner, though,  belied his stature  and heft: he  was
destined to be  a scholar, or  perhaps a poet,  most definitely not  any sort of
athlete or warrior.

Prince Simbilon,  ten years  old, still  round-faced in  a babyish way, terribly
solemn of  demeanor- priggish,  even -  elaborately offered  Varaile the tray of
fruits that was her usual first course. But the Lady Tuanelys, who was eight and
had a  conspicuous lack  of interest  in the  routines of  politeness, gave  her
mother nothing more than  the quickest of nods  and returned to her  seat at the
table, and to the plate piled high  with cheese covered with honey that she  had
already provided for herself. It was folly to expect courtesy from Tuanelys. She
was a pretty child, with a lovely cloud of golden hair that she wore in a beaded
net, and finely sculpted features  that foretold the feminine beauty  that would
be hers in six or seven more years; but her lean little body was as straight and
long as a strap, just now. She was  a runner, a climber, a fighter, a tomboy  in
every way.

'Did you sleep well, mother?' Prince Akbalik asked.

'As ever. And yourself?'

But it was Tuanelys who answered. 'I dreamed of a place where all the trees grew
upside down, mother. Their  leaves were in the  ground and their roots  stuck up
into the sky. And the birds -'

'Mother was speaking to Akbalik, child,' said Prince Simbilon loftily.

'Yes. But Akbalik  never has anything  interesting to say.  And neither do  you,
Simbilon.' The Lady Tuanelys stuck her tongue out at him. Simbilon reddened, but
would not respond. Fiorinda, watching the  family scene from one side, began  to
giggle.

Akbalik now said, as though there had been no interruption, 'I slept very  well,
mother.'And  began to  tell her  of his  schedule for  the day,  the classes  in
history and epic poetry in the morning and the archery lesson that afternoon, as
though they were  events of the  greatest importance to  the world. When  he was
done, Prince Simbilon spoke  at length of his  own busy day to  come, punctuated
twice by requests  from the Lady  Tuanelys to pass  her serving-dishes of  food.
Tuanelys had  nothing else  to say  at all.  She rarely  did. Her  life just now
seemed almost entirely focused  on swimming; she spent  hours each day, as  much
time as she could steal from her schooling, racing fiendishly back and forth  in
the pool in the east-wing gymnasium like a frenzied little cambeliot. There  was
something manic about the intensity with which she swam her laps. Her instructor
said she  had to  be halted  after a  certain time  lest she  swim herself  into
exhaustion, because she would never stop of her own accord.

This morning her children's self-absorption seemed less amusing to Varaile  than
it usually did. The  disturbing report from the  Labyrinth cast a somber  shadow
over everything. How  would they react,  she wondered, if  they knew that  their
father might suddenly be much closer than ever before to becoming Pontifex,  and
that they could all find themselves  uprooted from their good life at  the Casde
and forced to move along to the grim subterranean Labyrinth, the Pontifical seat
far to the south, before long?

Varaile forced herself to sweep all such thoughts aside.

That Prestimion would one day be Pontifex had been inevitable from the hour that
he had been anointed as Coronal and they had placed the starburst crown upon his
head. Confalume was very old. He might  die today, or next month, or next  year;
but sooner or later,  and more likely sooner  than later, his time  had to come.
Beyond question Akbalik and Simbilon must understand quite well what that  would
mean for them all. As for Tuanelys, if  she did not know now, she would have  to
learn. And to accept. With high rank comes the obligation to conduct oneself  in
a royal fashion, even if one is only a child.

By the time  she had finished  eating Varaile felt  fully in command  of herself
again. It was time now  for her morning conference with  Prestimion's ministers:
in his absence from the Castle, she served as regent in the Coronal's stead.

Teotas was waiting for her outside the morning-room.

His face was even more grave than usual today, and its folds and furrows  looked
as though they had deepened overnight.  Once he had resembled his older  brother
Prestimion so  closely that  one who  did not  know them  well might almost have
taken them for twins, though in truth  there was a decade's gap between them  in
age. But Teotas had  a sharp, hot, brooding  temper that Prestimion lacked,  and
here in his middle years  it had carved gulleys in  his face that made him  seem
much older than he was, whereas  Prestimion's skin was still unlined. There  was
no mistaking Teotas for the Coronal any  longer; but it was not easy to  believe
that Teotas was the younger brother.

'Fiorinda gave you the message from the Labyrinth?'

'Eventually. I think she would rather have hidden it from me altogether.'

'We would all like to hide it  from ourselves, I think,' Teotas said. 'But  from
some things there's no hiding, eh, Varaile?'

'Will he die?'

'No one knows.  But this latest  event, whatever it  is, undoubtedly brings  him
closer to the day. I think, though, that  we have a little more time left to  us
in this place.'

'Are you saying that because you know that it's what I want to hear, Teotas?  Or
do you actually have  some hard information? Did  the Pontifex have a  stroke or
didn't he?'

'If he did, it was  a very light one. There  was some difficulty in one  leg and
one arm - his mind went dark for an instant -'

'Fiorinda told me about the leg and the arm. Not about the darkness in his mind.
Come on: what else?'

'That is all. He has his mages treating him now.'

'And also a physician or two, I hope?'

Teotas said, shrugging, 'You know what Confalume is like. Maybe he has a  doctor
with him, and maybe not. But the incense is burning round the clock, of that I'm
sure, and the spells are being cast thick and fast. May they only be efficacious
ones.'

'So do I pray,' said Varaile, with a derisive snort.

They walked quickly down the  winding corridors that led  to the Stiamot  throne
room,  where the  meeting would  be held.  The route  took them  past the  royal
robing-chamber and the splendid judgment-hall  that Prestimion had caused to  be
constructed out of a  warren of little  rooms adjacent to  the grandiose  throne
room of Lord Confalume.

Every  Coronal  put  his own  mark  on  the Castle  with  new  construction. The
judgment-hall,  that  magnificent  vaulted chamber  with  great  arching frosted
windows and gigantic glittering chandeliers, was Prestimion's chief contribution
to  the innermost  part of  the Castle,  though he  had also  brought about  the
building  of  the  great  Prestimion  Archive, a  museum  in  which  a  trove of
historical treasure had been brought  together, along the outside margin  of the
central  sector that  was known  as the  Inner Castle.  And he  had still  other
ambitious construction plans, Varaile knew, if only the Divine would grant him a
longer stay on the Coronal's throne.

Nevertheless, for all the stupefying grandeur of the glorious judgment-hall  and
Lord  Confalume's  throne-room beside  it,  Prestimion had  preferred  since the
beginning of  his reign  to spurn  those imposing  settings and  to hold as many
official functions  as he  could in  the ancient  Stiamot throne-room, a simple,
even austere, little stone-floored chamber that supposedly had come down  almost
unchanged from the Castle's earliest days.

As Varaile entered  it now, she  saw nearly all  of the high  peers of the realm
arrayed  within:  the  High  Counsellor Septach  Melayn  and  the  Grand Admiral
Gialaurys  and the  magus Maundigand-Klimd,  and Navigorn  of Hoikmar  and  Duke
Dembitave  of  Tidias  and three  or  four  others, as  well  as  the Pontifical
delegate, Phraatakes Rem, and the Hierarch Bernimorn, the representative of  the
Lady of the Isle at the Casde.  They rose as she came in, and  Varaile signalled
them back into their seats with a flick of her fingertips.

Of the  potent figures  of the  kingdom only  Prestimion's other brother, Prince
Abrigant, was  missing. In  the early  years of  Prestimion's reign Abrigant had
played an important  role in government  affairs - it  was his discovery  of the
rich iron mines of Skakkenoir that had been the foundation of much of the  great
prosperity of the  kingdom under Prestimion's  rule - but  more recently he  had
withdrawn to the  family estates downslope  at Muldemar, the  responsibility for
which had fallen to him by inheritance, and he spent most of his time there. But
all of the others had gathered.  The presence of so many great  dignitaries here
at the  Council meeting  today intensified  the misgivings  that Varaile already
felt.

Quickly she crossed the room to the low white throne of roughly hewn marble that
was the Coronal's seat,  and today, with the  Coronal away, was hers  as regent.
She  glanced to  her left,  where Septach  Melayn sat,  the elegant  long-limbed
swordsman who had been Prestimion's dearest friend since his youth, and who was,
next to Varaile herself, the adviser  whose word he respected the most.  Septach
Melayn met  Varaile's  gaze   uneasily,  almost  sadly.  Gialaurys   -  Navigorn
Dembitave - they appeared to be uncomfortable too. Only the towering  Su-Suheris
magus, Maundigand-Klimd, was inscrutable, as always.

'I am already aware,' she began, 'that  the Pontifex is ill. Can anyone tell  me
precisely   how  ill?'   She  turned   her  attention   toward  the   Pontifical
representative. 'Phraatakes Rem, this news comes by way of you, am I correct?'

'Yes, milady.' He was a small, tidy, gray-haired man who for the past nine years
had  been  the  Pontifex's  official delegate  at  the  Casde  - essentially  an
ambassador  from the  senior monarch  to the  junior one.  The intricate  golden
spiral that  was the  Labyrinth symbol  was affixed  to the  breast of his soft,
velvety-looking gray-green tunic.  'The message arrived  last night. There  have
been no  later ones.  We know  nothing more  than what  you surely  have already
heard.'

'A stroke, is it?' said Varaile bluntly. She was never one for mincing words.

The Pontifical delegate squirmed a little  in his seat. It was disconcerting  to
see that  polished diplomat,  always so  unctuous and  self-assured, show such a
visible sign of distress.  'His majesty experienced some  degree of vertigo -  a
numbness in his hand, an uncertainty of support in his left leg. He has taken to
his bed, and his mages attend him. We await further reports.'

'It sounds very much like a stroke to me,' said Varaile.

'I can offer no opinion concerning that, milady.'

Yegan of Low  Morpin, a stolid,  rather humorless prince  whose presence on  the
Council had long  mystified Varaile, said,  'A stroke is  not necessarily fatal,
Lady Varaile.  There are  those who  have lived  for many  years after suffering
one.'

'Thank you for that observation, Prince Yegan.' And to Phraatakes Rem: 'Has  the
Pontifex been generally in good health thus far this season, would you say?'

'Indeed he has,  milady, active and  energetic. Making proper  allowance for his
age, of course. But he has always been an extremely vigorous man.'

'How old is he, though?' Septach Melayn said. 'Eighty-five? Ninety?' He left his
seat and edgily  began to pace  the little room,  his long legs  taking him from
side to side and back again in just a few quick strides.

'Perhaps even older dian that,' said Yegan.

'He was Coronal  for forty years  and then some,'  offered Navigorn of  Hoikmar,
speaking with a  wheeze. He once  had been a  powerful figure of  a man, a great
military leader in his time, but  lately was grown fat and slow.  'And Pontifex,
now, for twenty years after that, is that not so? And therefore -'

'Yes. Therefore he  must be very  old,' said Varaile  sharply. She struggled  to
rein in her impatience. These men were all ten and twenty years her senior,  and
their days of real decisiveness were behind them; her quick-spirited nature grew
irritable easily when they wandered into these circuitous ruminations.

To the Hierarch Bernimorn she said, 'Has the Lady been informed?'

'We have already sent word to the  Isle,' said the Hierarch, a slim, pale  woman
of some considerable age, who managed to seem at once both frail and commanding.

'Good.' And, to Dembitave: 'What about Lord Presdmion? He's in Deepenhow Vale, I
think. Or Bombifale.'

'Lord  Prestimion is  at present  in the  city of  Fa, milady.  A messenger   is
preparing at this moment to set out for Fa to bring him the news.'

'Who are  you going  to send?'  Navigorn asked.  He said  it in  a thick, blunt,
almost belligerent way.

Dembitave gave die old warrior a puzzled  look. 'Why - how would I know?  One of
the regular Casde couriers is going, I suppose.'

'News  like this  ought not  to come  from a  stranger. I'll  bear the   message
myself.'

Color flared  in Dembitave's  pale cheeks.  He was  Septach Melayn's cousin, the
Duke of  Tidias, a  proud and  somewhat touchy  man, sixty  years of age. He and
Navigorn  had  never  cared  much for  each  other.  Plainly  he took  Navigom's
intervention now as  some kind of  rebuke. For a  moment or two  he proffered no
response. Then he said stiffly, 'As you wish, milord Navigorn.'

'What about Prince Dekkeret?' Varaile asked.  'One would think he ought to  know
too.'

There was a second awkward silence in the room. Varaile stared from one  abashed
face to another. The answer  was all too clear. No  one had thought to tell  the
heir-apparent that the Pontifex might be dying.

'I'm told he has gone off to Normork with his friend Dinitak to see his mother,'
Varaile said crisply. 'He too should be made aware of this. Teotas -'

He snapped to attention. 'I'll tend  to it immediately,' he said, and  went from
the chamber.

And now? What was she supposed to do next?

Improvising swiftly, she said to the Pontifical delegate, 'You will, of  course,
communicate  our  deep concern  for  his majesty's  health,  our dismay  at  his
illness, our  overriding wish  that this  episode prove  to be  only a  moment's
infirmity -' She searched for some further expression of sympathy, found nothing
appropriate, let her voice break off in mid-statement.

But Phraatakes Rem, deftly  taking his cue, smoothly  replied, 'I will do  that,
have no fear. - But I beg you,  milady, let us not overreact. There was no  real
urgency in the  phrasing of the  message I received.  If the High  Spokesman had
felt his majesty's  death to be  imminent, he would  have put matters  in a very
different  way.  I  understand  the distress  that  milady  might  feel over  an
impending change in the administration, and of course each of us here must  feel
the same distress, knowing that his role in the government may soon be coming to
its end, but even so -'

The  deep gravelly  rumble that  was the  voice of  the burly,  ponderous  Grand
Admiral Gialaurys cut into the  Pontifical delegate's measured tones. 'But  what
if Confalume really is in a bad way?  I point out that we have a magus  among us
who clearly sees all that is to come. Should we not consult him?'

'Why not?' cried Septach Melayn heartily. 'Why should we leave ourselves in  the
dark?' His  distaste for  sorcery of  all sorts  was as  well known as the Grand
Admiral's credulous faith in the power of wizardry. But these two, who had  been
Prestimion's great mainstays in the  war against the usurper Korsibar,  had long
since come to a loving acceptance  of the vast chasms of personality  and belief
that lay  between them.  'By all  means, let's  ask the  High Magus! What do you
think, Maundigand-Klimd? Is old Confalume about to leave us or not?'

'Yes,' said Varaile. 'Cast the  Pontifex's future for us, Maundigand-Klimd.  His
future and ours.'

All eyes turned toward the Su-Suheris, who, as usual, stood apart from the rest,
silent, lost in alien ruminations beyond the fathoming of ordinary beings.

He was a  forbidding-looking figure, well  over seven feet  tall, resplendent in
the rich purple  robes and jewel-encrusted  collar that marked  his rank as  the
preeminent magus of the court. His two pale hairless heads rode majestically  at
the summit of his long, columnar, forking neck like elongated globes of  marble,
and his four narrow emerald-green  eyes were, as ever, shrouded  in impenetrable
mystery.

Of all the non-human races that  had come to settle on Majipoor,  the Su-Suheris
were by far the most enigmatic. Most people, put off by their wintry manner  and
the eerie other-worldliness  of their appearance,  looked upon them  as monsters
and  feared  them. Even  those  Su-Suheris who,  like  Maundigand-Klimd, mingled
readily  with  people of  other  species never  entered  into any  sort  of real
intimacy with them. Yet their undeniable skills as mages and diviners gave  them
entry into the highest circles.

Maundigand-Klimd had explained  to Prestimion, once,  the technique by  which he
saw the future. Establishing a linkage  of some type between his pair  of minds,
he was able to create a vortex of neural forces that thrust him briefly  forward
down the  river of  time, a  journey from  which he  would return with glimpses,
however cloudly  and ambiguous  they could  sometimes be,  of that  which was to
come. He entered that divining mode now.

Varaile watched him tensely. She was  no great believer in the merit  of sorcery
herself,  any more  than Prestimion  or Septach  Melayn were,  but she   trusted
Maundigand-Klimd and regarded his divinations as far more reliable than those of
most others of his profession. If he were to announce now that the Pontifex  lay
on the brink of death -

But the Su-Suheris simply said, after  a dme, 'There is no immediate  reason for
fear, milady.'

'Confalume will live?'

'He is not in present danger of dying.'

Varaile let out a deep sigh and leaned back in relief against the throne.  'Very
well, then,' she said, after a moment. 'We have been given a reprieve, it seems.
Shall we accept it without further  question, and move on to other  things? Yes.
Let  us  do  that.'  She  turned to  Belditan  the  Younger  of  Gimkandale, the
chancellor of the  Council, who kept  the agenda for  Council meetings. 'If  you
will  be good  enough to  remind us.  Count Belditan,  of the  matters  awaiting
attention today -'

The Pontifical delegate and the Hierarch Bernimom, whose presence at the meeting
was no longer appropriate, excused themselves and left. Varaile now plunged into
the routine business of the realm with joyful vehemence.

A reprieve indeed is what it was. A respite from the inevitable. They would  not
have to leave the sun-washed magnificence of the Castle and its lofty Mount  and
take themselves  down into  the dark  depths of  the Labyrinth.  Not now, at any
rate. Not yet. Not quite yet.


But at the end of the meeting,  when they had finished dealing with the  host of
trifling  matters  that  had managed  to  make  their way  this  morning  to the
attention  of these  great and  powerful figures  of the  world, Septach  Melayn
lingered in the throne-room after the others had gone. He took Varaile gently by
the hand and said in a soft tone, 'This is our warning, I fear. Beyond any doubt
the end is  coming for Confalume.  You must prepare  yourself for great  change,
lady. So must we all.'

'Prepare myself I will, Septach Melayn. I know that I must.'

She looked upward at him. Tall as she was, he rose high above her, a great lanky
spidery figure of a man, whose arms and legs were extraordinarily thin and whose
slender body had,  even now when  age was beginning  to come upon  him, wondrous
grace and ease of movement.

Here in his later years Septach Melayn had grown even more angular. There seemed
to be  scarcely an  ounce of  unneeded flesh  anywhere on  his spare, attenuated
frame;  but  still  he radiated  a  kind  of beauty  that  was  rare among  men.
Everything about him was  elegant: his posture, his  way of dress, his  tumbling
ringlets  of artfully  arrayed hair,  still golden  after all  these years,  his
little pointed beard and  tightly clipped mustache. He  was a master of  masters
among swordsmen, who had never come close  to being bested in a duel and  had on
only one occasion  ever been wounded,  while fighting four  men at once  in some
horrendous battle  of the  Korsibar war.  Prestimion long  had loved  him like a
brother for his playful wit and devoted nature; and Varaile had come to feel the
same sort of love for him herself.

'Do you think,' she asked him, 'that Prestimion is ready in his heart to  become
Pontifex?'

'Would you not know that better than I, milady?'

'I never speak of it with him.'

'Then let me tell you,' said Septach Melayn, 'that he is as ready for it as ever
a man could be.  All these many decades,  living first as Coronal-designate  and
then as  Coronal, he's  known that  the Pontificate  must lie  at the end of his
days. He has taken that into account. He fought to become Coronal, remember.  It
wasn't simply handed to him. For two full years he battled against Korsibar, and
broke him, and took the throne back  from him that he had stolen. Would  he have
striven so  fiercely for  the starburst  crown, if  he had  not already made his
peace with the knowledge  that the Labyrinth waited  for him beyond his  time in
the Castle?'

'I hope you are right, Septach Melayn.'

'I know I am, good lady. And you know it too.'

'Perhaps I do.'

'Prestimion would never see  becoming Pontifex as a  tragedy. It is part  of his
duty - the duty that was laid upon  him in the hour Lord Confalume chose him  to
be the next Coronal. And you know that he has never shirked duty in any way.'

'Yes, of course. But still - still -'

'I know, lady.'

'The Castle - we have been so happy here -'

'No Coronal likes to leave it. Nor  the Coronal's consort. But it has been  this
way for thousands of years, that one must be Pontifex after one is Coronal,  and
go down into the  Labyrinth, and live there  beneath the ground for  the rest of
one's days, and -'

Septach Melayn  faltered suddenly.  Varaile, startled,  saw a  mist beginning to
form in his keen pale-blue eyes.

He would leave the Castle too, of course, when Prestimion's time to go  arrived.
He would  follow Prestimion  even to  the Labyrinth  like all  the rest of them.
There was pain  in that realization  for him as  well; and for  a moment, only a
moment, it was evident that Septach Melayn had been unable to conceal that pain.

Then the dark moment passed. His bright dandyish smile returned, and he  touched
the Ups of  his fingers lightly  to the golden  curls at his  forehead and said,
'You must  excuse me  now, Lady  Varaile. It  is my  hour for  the swordsmanship
class, and my pupils are expecting me.'

He started to take his leave.

'Wait,' she said. 'One more thing. Your talk of your swordsmanship class puts me
in mind of it.'

'Milady?'

'Do you have room in that class  of yours for one more disciple? Because  I have
one for you: a certain  Keltryn of Sipermit, by name,  who is newly come to  the
Castle.'

Septach Melayn's  expression was  one of  bafflement. 'Keltryn  is not generally
thought to be a man's name, milady.'

'Indeed it isn't. This is the Lady  Keltryn of whom I speak, the younger  sister
ofDekkeret's Fulkari. Who made application to me the day before yesterday on her
sister's  behalf. She's  said to  be quite  capable at  handling weapons,   this
Keltryn, and wants now to take  advantage of the special training you  alone can
confer.'

'A woman?' Septach Melayn spluttered. 'A girl?'

'I'm not asking you to take her as a lover, you know. Only to admit her to  your
classes.'

'But why would a woman want to learn swordsmanship?'

'I have no idea. Perhaps she thinks  it's a useful skill. I suggest you  ask her
that yourself.'

'And if she is injured by one of my young men? I have no tyros in my group.  The
weapons we use have blunted edges, but they can do considerable harm even so.'

'No worse than a bruise or two, I  hope. She ought to be able to tolerate  that.
Surely you don't  mean to turn  the girl away  out of hand,  Septach Melayn. Who
knows? You may  learn a thing  or two about  our sex from  her that you  had not
known before. Take her, Septach Melayn. I make a direct request of it.'

'In that case, how can I refuse? Send this Lady Keltryn to me, and I'll turn her
into the most fearsome swordsman this world has ever seen. You have my pledge on
that, milady. And now - if I have your leave to withdraw -'

Varaile nodded. He  grinned down at  her, and turned  and bounded away  like the
long-legged boy he  had been so  many years ago,  leaving her to  herself in the
now-deserted throne-room.

She stood there alone for a rime, letting all thought drain from her mind.

Then, slowly, she  went from the  room, and down  to her left,  into the maze of
passages that  led out  to the  weird old  five-peaked structure  known as  Lord
Arioc's Watchtower, from which one had  such a wondrous view of the  whole Inner
Castle - the  Pinitor Court and  the reflecting pool  of Lord Siminave  with the
rotunda  of  Lord Haspar  beyond  it, and  the  lacy, airy  balconies  that Lord
Vildivar of that same impossibly ancient era had built, and everything else.

How  beautiful it  all was!  How marvelously  did that  hodge-podge of   curious
structures, assembled here across seven  thousand years, fit together into  this
immense, unequalled masterpiece of architecture!

Very well, Varaile thought.

Prestimion is still Coronal, and I still reside here at the Castle, at least for
the time being.

At last the hour had arrived when inexorable duty would pull them onward to  the
Labyrinth: that  was the  rule, and  it had  not varied  since the  time of  the
founding of  the world.  Every Coronal  had had  to go  through this,  and every
Coronal's wife.

May the Divine preserve the Pontifex Confalume, she prayed.

No question, though, that the Pontifex was approaching his end. But let us  have
a little more time here at the Castle, first. Just a little time more. Some  few
months. A year. Two, perhaps. Whatever we can have.



7

They were at the beginning of the Plain of Whips, now. Ahead, a red wall  rising
against  the northern  horizon, lay  the narrow  line of  flat-topped  sandstone
bluffs on which the Five Lords  had erected their five palaces, with  the mighty
eastward-flowing torrent of the River Zimrjust beyond.

'Look, sir,' said Jacomin  Halefice, and pointed toward  the red hills. 'We  are
almost home, I think.'

Almost home, thought Mandralisca, smiling wryly.  Yes. For him there was only  a
somber irony in that phrase.

He was at home, more or less, anywhere and everywhere and nowhere in the  world.
In his overarching  indifference, all places  were the same  in that regard  for
him. He had looked upon the perilous jungles of the Stoienzar as his home for  a
while, and before that a cell  in the dungeons of Lord Prestimion's  Castle, and
fine lodgings in the  rich sprawling metropolis of  Ni-moya before that, and  he
had lived in many another place as well, on and on back to his bitter  childhood
in a forlorn town amidst the  snowy peaks of the Gonghar Mountains,  a childhood
that he  would much  prefer to  forget. For  the past  five years  this arid and
obscure district in central Zimroel was the one that he had chosen to define  as
'home;' and so, looking up at those sun-baked red bluffs now from the border  of
the sandy inhospitable plain  that stretched before him,  he was able with  some
justice to  agree with  Halefice that  he was  almost home,  for whatever little
value that word might hold.

'There are the  lords' palaces now,  is that not  so, your grace?'  said Jacomin
Halefice, jabbing a  finger toward the  high ridge. The  aide-de-camp was riding
just alongside the  Count, astride a  fat, placid, pale-lavender  mount that was
working hard to keep pace with Mandralisca's more fiery steed.

The Count  shaded his  eyes and  stared upward.  'Three of  them, anyway.  I see
Gavinius's house, and Gavahaud's, and Gavdat's.' The sleek gray domes of ceramic
tile gleamed with a reddish glint in the hard midday sunlight. 'Too soon to make
out the other two, I think. Or are  you telling me that you're able to see  them
already?'

'Actually, I don't quite think I can manage it yet, sir.'

'Nor I,' said Mandralisca.

The Five Lords, when they had launched their strange and so far quite  secretive
break with the authority of the central government, had agreed not to make their
headquarters  in their  uncle's old  capital of  Ni-moya. That  would have  been
wildly imprudent  of them.  They were,  all five,  imprudent men  by nature; but
sometimes they did listen to reason. At Mandralisca's suggestion they had agreed
to  come all  the way  out here  to the  sparsely populated  and long  neglected
province of Gornevon, midway between Ni-moya  and Verf on the south bank  of the
Zimr.

The river, though it was readily  navigable for its entire seven thousand  miles
of length, from the Dulorn Rift in the far west to the coastal city of  Piliplok
on the Inner Sea, was oddly  contrary here. Everywhere else along its  path fine
anchorages abounded and great prosperous urban centers had sprung up in them,  a
host of rich  inland ports -  Khyntor, Mazadone, Verf,  and any number  more, of
which group Ni-moya was  the grandest, a sublime  queen among the cities  of the
western continent.

But here in Gornevon a line  of steep red sandstone bluffs sprang  up vertically
right at the shoreline of the  river's  southern bank. That created an  imposing
indeed,  impassable -  water-front palisade  that stood  as an  inexorable  wall
between the river and  the lands to the  south. Nor was there  anything remotely
like an anchorage to be found along that stretch of the river, not even a  place
where small boats could dock.

Which made the Zimr's southern shore altogether inaccessible in this part of the
country, and all commerce had forsaken it. On the other bank, directly  opposite
the  site where  the palaces  of the  Five Lords  now stood,  was the   generous
crescent harbor that had brought great  wealth to the city of Horvenar;  on this
side, though, there was nothing  but the flat-topped red cliffs,  with something
very much like a desert to the south of them, a parched useless land that no one
had ever seen fit to  settle, since there was no  access from the river and  the
land  approach  from  the  south  was  extremely  difficult.  It  was  here that
Mandralisca had persuaded the Five Lords to situate their capital.

It was a cheerless unwelcoming terrain. Gornevon was an arid province. All of it
lay in the shadow  of the western branch  of the mid-continental Gonghar  range,
and  that long  and towering  chain of  snowy-crested precipices  prevented  the
summer rains that blew from the  southeast, out of the Shapeshifter lands,  from
getting here. On the  other side of the  province stood the mile-high  wall that
was the Velathys  Scarp, which intercepted  the winter rains  that traveled with
the west wind out of the Great Sea; and so Gornevon was a sort of pocket  desert
in the midst  of fertile, prosperous  Zimroel, one of  the driest places  in the
entire immense continent.

'If only we  were coming into  Ni-moya now instead,  eh?' said Halefice,  with a
chuckle.

Mandralisca's response  was a  thin cool  smile. 'You  love your comforts, don't
you, my friend?'

'Who but a madman - or the Five Lords - would prefer this place to Ni-moya, your
grace?'

Mandralisca shrugged. 'Who but a madman, indeed? But we go where we must go. Our
destiny has sent us here: so be it.'

The five brothers would  not have dared, of  course, to use Ni-moya  as the base
for their insurrection, even though  it was their family's ancestral  seat, from
which  their rapacious  uncle the  Procurator Dantirya  Sambail had  long  ruled
Zimroel as a king within the kingdom. Prestimion, having taken Dantirya  Sambail
prisoner on the battlefield of Thegomar  Edge at the conclusion of the  Korsibar
war, had pardoned him, ultimately, for his perfidious role in the  insurrection.
The victorious Coronal had left him  in possession of his lands and  wealth. But
he  had stripped  him of  his title  of Procurator,  and had  debarred him  from
wielding power beyond the boundaries  of his own considerable estates.  That had
been some  sixteen years  ago. There  had been  no Procurators  in Zimroel  ever
since.

Dantirya Sambail's second rebellion had brought him to a bloody end at the  hand
of  Septach  Melayn  in the  marshy  forests  of the  Stoienzar.  His  lands had
descended to his coarse, brutal brothers Gaviad and Gaviundar. Eventually, after
their deaths, the properties had passed to Gaviundar's five sons, who yearned to
regain the sway over all of Zimroel that their great and terrible uncle once had
had; for  the central  government and  its two  monarchs, the  Pontifex and  the
Coronal both, were far away on the other and older continent ofAlhanroel,  where
both its capitals were situated.

On populous Zimroel most people felt  only the most abstract sort of  allegiance
to that government. They  gave lip-service to the  Coronal, yes; but it  was the
power of the Procurator, one of their own, that had always been far more real to
them. They had grown accustomed to  the reign of their ferocious Procurator.  He
had been a singularly  unlovable man, but under  his energetic rule Zimroel  had
attained much affluence and stability. And therefore it was very likely - so the
five sons of Gaviundar told one another - that the people of Zimroel would  even
after  a  lapse  of a  decade  and  a half  choose  to  accept the  Procurator's
legitimate heirs, princes of the true Sambailid blood, as their masters.

Naturally it would not have done to begin any such drive toward power in Ni-moya
itself. Ni-moya was the administrative  center of the western continent,  a hive
of Pontifical bureaucrats. Let any  member of the Sambailid tribe  announce that
he intended once more to exercise  the old family authority over anything  other
than the family's private lands, and immediately word of it would go forth  from
Ni-moya to the  Labyrinth, and from  there to the  Castle, and in  short order a
royal army  under the  Coronal's command  would be  setting out  tor Zimroel  to
restore matters to their proper order.

Out here in the hinterlands, though,  one could do as one wished,  even proclaim
oneself sovereign over  vast domains, and  it might be  years before word  of it
filtered back to the Coronal atop Castle Mount or to the Coronal's own overlord,
the  Pontifex, in  his underground  lair. Majipoorwas  so huge  that news  often
traveled slowly even when carried on swift wings.

And thus the five brothers had  taken themselves out to this remote  outpost and
had given themselves resounding new  titles: they named themselves the  Lords of
Zimroel, true successors by right of  blood to the Procurators of old.  And they
had gradually let the word go forth, village by village throughout the  adjacent
regions of Zimroel  on both sides  of the river,  that they held  supremacy here
now. They had left the river cities themselves alone, so far, because the  river
was the main  highway across the  continent, and any  attempt to interfere  with
commerce on the Zimr would bring quick retribution from the central  government.
But they had  claimed and won  allegiance in the  farming communities north  and
south of the river for  some hundreds of miles, reaching  to the east as far  as
Immanala, to the west  almost to Dulorn. That  provided them with a  domain from
which they could eventually expand.

It was Mandralisca himself, long  the second-in-command to Dantirya Sambail  and
now the chief adviser to his five nephews, who had suggested their new titles to
them.

'You cannot call yourselves Procurators,' he said. 'It would be like an  instant
declaration of war.'

'But 'lords' -?' said Gaviral, who  was the eldest one, and the  quickest-witted
of the lot. 'Only the Coronal may  call himself 'lord' on Majipoor, is that  not
so, Mandralisca?'

'Only  the  Coronal can  take  it as  part  of his  name:  Lord Prankipin,  Lord
Confalume, Lord Prestimion. But any count or  prince or duke is a lord of  sorts
in his own  territory, and one  can quite properly  say, in addressing  him, 'my
lord.' So we will make a little distinction here. You will be the Five Lords  of
Zimroel; but  you will  not try  to speak  of yourselves  as Lord  Gaviral, Lord
Gavinius, Lord Gavdat, and so on. No: you will be 'the Lord Gaviral,' 'the  Lord
Gavinius,' et cetera, et cetera.'

'It seems to me a very fine distinction,' said Gaviral.

'I like it,'  said Gavahaud, who  of the five  was the most  vain. He grinned  a
broad toothy grin. 'The Lord Gavahaud! All hall the Lord Gavahaud! It has a fine
sound, would you not say, eh, Lord Gavilomarin?'

'Be  careful,'  said  Mandralisca.  'You   have  it  wrong  already.  Not   Lord
Gavilomarin, but the Lord Gavilomarin. When  one speaks to him directly one  can
call him 'milord,' and say, 'Milord Gavilomarin,' but never 'Lorrf  Gavilomarin'
alone. Is that clear?'

It  took  them  a while  to  get  it. He  was  not  surprised. In  Mandralisca's
estimation they were, after all, nothing more than a pack of buffoons.

But they  embraced their  new titles  gladly. In  the course  of time  they made
themselves known in this district and several surrounding provinces as the  Five
Lords  of  Zimroel. Not  everyone  accepted the  resurgence  of Sambailid  power
gladly: the Vorthinar lord, for one, a petty princeling with lands to the  north
of the Zimr, had had ideas  of his own about establishing authority  independent
of the Alhanroel regime, and had  refused the Sambailid overtures so rudely  and
categorically that it had been necessary for the brothers to send Mandralisca to
deal with him. But there were plenty  of men who had loved Dantirya Sambail  and
resented his  overthrow by  the outlander  Prestimion, and  they came  from many
parts of the western continent to throw  in their lot with the Five Lords.  Very
quietly a shadow Sambailid administration had emerged out here in rural Zimroel.

In  their  slowly expanding  dominion  the Five  Lords  appointed officials  and
decreed laws. They succeeded  in diverting local  taxes from the  Pontifical tax
collectors to their  own. They built  five fine palaces  for themselves opposite
Horvenar atop the red bluffs of  Gornevon. The dwellings of Gavdat and  Gavinius
and Gavahaud were side by side in a single group, with GaviraTs somewhat to  the
west of the others on a little  promontory with a better view of the  river than
his brothers had, and Gavilomarin's off on the eastern side, separated from  the
rest by a low lateral ridge; and  from those five palaces did they propose  very
gradually to extend their rule over  the continent that their potent uncle  once
had ruled virtually as a king.

Up to this time  the government of the  Pontifex Confalume and the  Coronal Lord
Prestimion in far-off Alhanroel had paid no heed to what had begun to take shape
in Zimroel. Perhaps they were still unaware of it.

The Five Lords knew what risks they were running. But Mandralisca had shown them
how  difficult it  would be  for the  imperial government  to take  any kind  of
serious  punitive  action against  them.  An army  would  have to  be  raised in
Alhanroel and transported somehow to  the other continent across the  great gulf
that  was the  Inner Sea.  Then the  imperial troops  would have  to  commandeer
virtually the  entire fleet  of Zimr  riverboats to  carry them  upriver to  the
rebel-held territory,  or else  march thousands  of miles  overland, through one
probably hostile district after another.

And even if they  succeeded in that, and  brought the rebellious farmers  of the
region back  under control,  it would  not be  easy to  dislodge the  Five Lords
themselves  from  their  hilltop  eyrie  high  above  the  Zimr.  There  was  no
possibility at all of  scaling those red bluffs  from the river side.  That left
only  the desert  approach from  the south  - the  very district  through  which
Mandralisca and his party were riding now. And that was a hellish road indeed.



8

In  the evening  theJusticiar Corde  called for  Dekkeret and  Dinitak at  their
hostelry and escorted them to the palace of the Count for a formal banquet,  the
first of several such events planned for Dekkeret's stay in Normork.

Dekkeret had  seen the  palace often  enough when  he was  growing up:  a blocky
building of gray stone, squat and  nearly windowless, that clung like some  huge
limpet to the city wall in a place  where the wall made a wide outward curve  to
get past  a jutting  spur of  Castle Mount.  It was  a dark, grim-looking place,
fortress-like, uninviting. Even the six slim minarets that sprang from its roof,
which  the architect  probably had  meant to  add a  touch of  lightness to  the
palace's appearance, seemed like nothing so much as an array of barbed spears.

The interior was every bit as  somber as the outside. The building  seemed twice
as big inside as without, and  perhaps four times as ugly. Dekkeret  and Dinitak
were conducted down long stretches of shadowy bewildering corridors lit only  by
smoldering torches and inadequate glowlights,  past radiating clusters of  spoke
like hallways of unadorned stone walls, through rooms with walls of black  brick
decorated with  nothing more  than the  occasional preposterous  statue of  some
unknown  ancient figure  or clumsily  designed tapestries  portraying  forgotten
lords and ladies of the city engaged in their lordly amusements; and  eventually
they arrived  at the  dark, drafty  banqueting-hall of  Count Considat, where an
assortment ofNormork's notables awaited them.

It was a dreary evening.  Considat spoke first, welcoming Normork's  most famous
son back to his native city. The Count was young and had succeeded to his  title
only the year before,  and was an amiable  and almost diffident man  rather more
appealing in look and manner than  his coarse, ill-bred father had been.  But he
was a dreadful speaker who droned on and  on as though he had no idea of  how to
bring his speech to an end,  unleashing a torrent of fatuous platitudes.  At one
point Dekkeret  dozed off,  and only  a sharp  rap under  the table from Dinitak
brought him back to the scene.

Then it was Dekkeret's turn to speak, conveying Lord Prestimion's greetings  and
- since that was  the official pretext of  his visit - congratulating  the Count
and Countess on the birth of their son. He extended Lord Prestimion's regret  at
not being able to be present  in person just now. The congratulatory  gifts that
had been sent by  Lord Prestimion were carried  in by Dekkeret's men.  Justiciar
Corde spoke. Several other high officials of the court, obviously eager to  make
a  powerful impression  on the  future Coronal,  spoke also,  effusively and  to
tiresome effect. Then Count Considat spoke again, no more ably than before,  but
at least with greater brevity. Dekkeret, caught a bit by surprise, improvised  a
reply. Then, only then, was food at last served, a sorry sequence of overcooked,
feebly spiced meats and flaccid vegetables  and prematurely opened wines.  After
dinner speeches were to follow.  Dekkeret made his way through  the interminable
ceremony by dint of a mighty summoning of patience and discipline.

He realized only too well that many more such evenings were in store for him  in
the  years  ahead. Once,  when  he was  much  younger, he  had  imagined that  a
Coronal's life must be an endlessly glamorous affair of tournaments and feasting
and revelry, interrupted now and then by the making of grand, dramatic decisions
that would alter the fates of many millions of people. He knew better now.


The next day,  with no official  functions scheduled before  nightfall, Dekkeret
took Dinitak on a  tour of the city,  just the two of  them - and a  dozen or so
bodyguards. It  was a  clear, warm  morning, the  air soft  and fragrant  in the
eternal springtime of Castle Mount, the sunlight bright and strong. The  soaring
jagged crags of the Mount, rising beyond the city wall on all sides of  Normork,
glinted like ruddy bronze in that brilliant light.

Visitors to Normork often commented on the contrast between the glorious  beauty
of the city's setting and the dark, hermetic look of the city itself, a  tumbled
multitude of close-packed gray buildings huddling in the shadow of that colossal
black wall. Dekkeret, having been raised here, took the prevailing somberness of
Normork for  granted without  finding anything  unusual in  it, indeed,  without
really noticing it at all; but now for  the first time he began to see the  city
through the eyes of its critics. Perhaps, he thought, all the years he had spent
dwelling in the airy higher reaches  of Castle Mount were starting to  alter his
outlook toward this place.

The city wall was all but  unscalable from without. Everywhere inside the  city,
though, stone staircases were set flush against the inner face of the wall  that
led to the  top. They gave  easy access to  the broad road,  wide enough for ten
people to walk abreast  on it at once,  that ran along the  wall's rim. Dekkeret
and Dinitak, accompanied by their  inescapable gaggle of security men,  ascended
by way of the stairs just opposite their hotel.

In  silence  they set  out  westward around  the  city perimeter.  After  a time
Dekkeret beckoned to  his companion to  follow him to  the wall's outer  border.
Leaning far out over it, he said, 'Do you see that highway down there below  us?
The thing  that looks  like a  white ribbon  stretching a  long way off into the
east? That's  the one  that comes  up from  Dundilmir and  Stipool and the other
cities over yonder on this level of  the Mount. That road is the chief  route of
access  to Normork  for those  cities and  everything farther  down. But  you'll
notice that it doesn't actually run into Normork anywhere. It can't, because  it
comes in on the wrong side of  town. You've already seen that the only  entrance
to  the city  is way  around over   there, on  the side  of Normork  that  faces
upslope.'

Dinitak looked and  nodded. 'Yes. It  comes straight up  to the wall  just below
where we're standing, but  there's noplace to enter  the city here. So  it turns
left instead and continues along the  outside of the wall, following it  all the
way around, I suppose,  until - until what?  Until it reaches that  stupid litde
gate?'

'Exactly. On the other side it joins up with the highway that we came down  from
the Castle on, and they  become a single road diat  runs into Normork by way  of
the Eye of Stiamot.'

'And they make  travelers from downslope  go right around  the city in  order to
enter from the upslope side? What an addlepated arrangement!'

'So it is. But changes are coming.'

'Oh?'

'I told you I had a plan for this city,' said Dekkeret grandly. 'We're  standing
right above the location where one day I intend to cut a second gateway  through
this wall.' He  made a broad  sweeping gesture, taking  in a great  swath of the
titanic rampart of black stone. 'Listen  to this, Dinitak! The gate that  I have
in mind to  build will be  something truly majestic,  nothing remotely like  the
puny litde hole by which we entered  yesterday. I'm going to make it fifty  feet
high and forty feet wide, or even  more, so that even a Skandar will  feel small
when he stands under it. I'll fashion it out of a kind of black wood that I know
of from Zimroel, a rare and costly wood that takes a high polish and will  shine
like a mirror in the morning light, and I'll bind it with big iron bands and the
hinges will be  of iron too;  and by my  most sacred decree  it's going to stand
wide open at all times, except when the city is in peril, if ever it is. What do
you say to that, eh?'

Dinitak was silent for a moment, frowning.

'I wonder,' he said finally.

'Go on.'

'It sounds very impressive,  I agree. But do  you think they'd genuinely  want a
gate like that here, Dekkeret? I've been here not even a day and a half, but  my
clear impression already is that what concerns these Normork folk above all else
is safety. They lust for it beyond all reason. They are the most cautious people
in the  world. And  this enormous  impregnable black  wall of  theirs that  they
cherish so dearly is the symbol of that obsession. Doubtless that's why die only
opening in the  wall is such  a tiny one,  and why they  take care to  shut that
little opening and lock it up tight  every evening at sunset. Do you think  that
the convenience of travelers coming from the downslope cities matters a damn  to
them, compared with the security of their own precious selves? If you come along
and poke a  great gaping breach  in their wall  for them, how  likely is it that
they're going to love you for it?'

'I'll be Coronal then. The first Coronal ever who was bom in Normork.'

'Even so -'

'No. They'll accept my gate, I'm sure of it. They'll love my gate. Not at first,
no, perhaps. I grant you they'll need some  dme to get used to it. But it'll  be
an utterly splendid gate, the new symbol of the city, something that people will
travel from all over Castle Mount to stare at. And the citizens will point to it
and say, There it is, there's the gate that Lord Dekkeret built for us, the most
magnificent gate that can be found anywhere in the world.''

'And the fact that it stands open all the time -?'

'Even that. A sign of municipal  confidence. What enemies are there for  them to
fear, anyway? The world is at peace. No invading army is going to come  marching
up the side of Castle Mount. No, Dinitak - perhaps they'll mutter and mumble  at
first, but in a very short while they'll all agree that the new gate is the most
wondrous thing that's been built here since the wall itself.'

'No doubt you are correct,' said Dinitak, with just the lightest touch of  irony
in his tone.

Dekkeret heard it. But he would not  let himself be checked. 'I know that  I am.
The gate is going to be my monument. The Dekkeret Gate, is what people will call
it in  centuries to  come. Everyone  coming up  the Mount  from below  will pass
through it and gape at  it in awe, and they'll  tell each other that this  great
gate, the most famous gate  in the world, was built  long ago by a Coronal  Lord
named Dekkeret, who was a man of this very city of Normork.'

He could not help smiling at  his own absurdly pretentious words. His  monument?
Did a Coronal of Majipoor need seriously to worry about whether he would ever be
forgotten? All that he had  just said began to sound  just a bit foolish to  him
even as the last words  of it died away. Dinitak  often had that effect on  him.
The tough little man's hard-won realism frequently was a useful antidote to some
of Dekkeret's wilder flights of romanticism.

But not this  time, he swore.  Regardless of Dinitak's  misgivings, the Dekkeret
Gate was going to  be built. Probably not  as his first project  after he became
Coronal, but he was determined to do  it sooner or later. It had been  his dream
for many years. Nothing Dinitak could say was going to swerve him from it.

They walked onward along the top of the wall.

'That's the Count's  palace, isn't it?'  Dinitak asked, pointing  over the inner
parapet. 'It looks very different from this angle. But just as hideous.'

'Perhaps. Perhaps.' Dekkeret felt his mood suddenly darkening. A throbbing began
in his temples. He walked toward the parapet for a better view, and found two of
Count Considat's  black-uniformed security  men in  his way.  He gesticulated at
them with such ferocity that they must have thought he meant to fling them  over
the side. Hastily they moved back.

Dekkeret stared  down into  the plaza  in front  of the  palace. His face became
bleak. His lips were tightly clamped. He  pressed the Ups of his fingers to  the
sides of his head and slowly rubbed the area just above his cheekbones.

'What's wrong?' Dinitak asked, when some little while had gone by without a word
from him.

'We would have a perfect view  of the assassination attempt from up  here,' said
Dekkeret quietly. He sketched out the scene for Dinitak with quick movements  of
his hand. 'Lord Prestimion has just  arrived in the plaza. There's his  floater,
sitting right down there. He steps out of it. Gialaurys walks at his left  side.
Akbalik is to the right  of him. You never knew  Akbalik, did you? He died  just
around the  time you  were joining  us in  Stoien city  for the  final attack on
Dantirya Sambail. A wonderful  man, Akbalik was. He  should be the one  about to
become Coronal, not me. - And there's Count Meglis on the palace steps, three or
four steps from the bottom. The stupid bastard is simply standing there, waiting
for Prestimion  to go  to him,  when it's  supposed to  be the other way around.
Prestimion isn't expecting that. He waits  for Meglis to finish coming down  the
steps, but he doesn't, and for a couple of moments neither of them moves.'

Dekkeret fell silent.

'And where were you standing?' Dinitak  asked. 'You told me that you  were there
that day, that you saw the whole thing.'

'Yes. Yes. There was a huge crowd, over there on the left, where the plaza  runs
into  that big  boulevard. Thousands  of people.  Guards holding  us back.   I'm
practically at the front, on that side. The second row.'

Dekkeret sighed. It was followed by another brooding silence.

Dinitak said, 'Then  what? The assassin  bursts out of  the crowd, swinging  his
sickle? Someone yells to  warn the Coronal. The  guards move in and  cut the man
down.'

'No. A girl comes out first -'

'A girl?'

'A beautiful  girl, very  tall, curling  reddish-gold hair.  Sixteen years  old.
Sithelle, her name was. My cousin.  Standing just in front of me,  right against
the rope that's holding the crowd back. She adored Lord Prestimion. We got up at
dawn to get a good position up in front. She was carrying a bouquet that she had
woven herself, hundreds of flowers. Was planning to throw it toward the Coronal,
so I assumed. But no. No.' Dekkeret's voice had become a dull low monotone. 'She
bends down and wriggles under the rope and slips past the guards so that she can
hand the flowers to Prestimion. A very  unwise thing to do. But he's amused.  He
signals to the guards to let her  approach. He takes the flowers from her.  Asks
her a question or two. And then -'

'The man with the sickle?'

'Yes. Skinny man with a beard. Crazy  look in his eye. He comes charging  out of
nowhere, heading straight for Prestimion.  Sithelle doesn't see him coming,  but
she hears footsteps, I guess, and she turns, and he chops at her with the sickle
to get her out of his way.' Dekkeret snapped his fingers. 'Just like that. Blood
everywhere - her throat -'

In a hushed voice Dinitak said, 'He kills her, your cousin?'

'She must have died almost instantly.'

'And then the guards kill him.'

'No,' Dekkeret said. 'I do.'

'You?'

'The assassin had been standing five or six places to my left I came running out
of the crowd right after him - I don't know how I got past the restraining rope,
don't remember that part of  it at all, only that  I was out there, and  I could
see Sithelle with her hand across her throat trying to hold the cut together  as
she started to fall, and Prestimion standing there frozen with the man with  the
sickle raising his arm, and Gialaurys  and Akbalik starting to move in  from the
sides but not fast enough. I grabbed the assassin's arm and twisted it until  it
broke. Then  I put  my arm  around his  neck and  broke that  too. And picked up
Sithelle - she was  dead by then, that  I knew - and  walked off into the  crowd
with her, straight  down Spurifon Boulevard  into Old Town.  No one stopped  me.
People moved away from me as I approached. Her blood was all over me. I took her
to her house and  told her parents what  had happened. It was  the most dreadful
hour of my life. It has stayed with me ever since.'

'You loved  her? You  wanted to  marry her,  did you?  You were promised to each
other?'

'Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. I loved her, yes, of course, but not in that  way.
We  were cousins,  remember. Raised  practically like  brother and  sister.  Our
families wanted us to marry, but I never had any serious thought of it.'

'And she?'

Dekkeret managed a thin smile. 'She  may have had some fantasy of  marrying Lord
Prestimion. I  know she  had pictures  of him  tacked up  all over her room. But
nothing  could  ever have  come  of that,  and  she probably  realized  it. Very
possibly she may have been in  love  with me, I suppose.  We were so  young then
what did either of us know -?'

He looked  down again  into the  plaza. Was  that her  blood still  staining the
cobbles of the plaza ?

No. No, he told himself, stop being ridiculous!

Dinitak said, 'In fact you were in love with her, I think.'

'No. I'm sure I wasn't, not then. But - the Divine help me, Dinitak! - something
has gradually come over me since that time. She won't leave my mind. I look back
across the years and I see her, her  face, her eyes, her hair, the way she  held
herself, the way  she would run  up and down  these stairs, the  mischief in her
glance - and I think, if only she had lived, if only we had had a chance to grow
up a little -'  Dekkeret shook his head  fiercely. 'Never mind. She's  been dead
now longer than she ever was alive. She has no more reality now than someone who
comes to you in a dream. Come: let's get ourselves away from this place.'

'I'm sorry all this got stirred up for you again, Dekkeret.'

'No matter. It's there inside me all the time. Seeing the actual site just  made
it a little worse for a moment.  - That same afternoon, you know, Akbalik  found
me somehow and took me to see Prestimion,  who offered to enroll me as a  knight
initiate at the Castle  as a reward for  saving his life, and  everything that's
happened to me since has been the  direct outcome of what took place down  there
that terrible day. I remember Prestimion  saying to Akbalik, 'Who knows? We  may
have found the next Coronal here today.' His very words. He was joking then,  of
course.'

'But he was right about that.'

'Yes. So it would seem. A direct line, connecting that boy who came running  out
of the  crowd to  save Lord  Prestimion with  the man  who'll sit  someday where
Prestimion sits  now on  the Confalume  Throne.' Dekkeret  laughed harshly. 'Me:
Lord Dekkeret! Isn't that astounding, Dinitak?'

'Not to me. But I do sometimes think you have trouble believing you're  actually
going to be Coronal.'

'Wouldn't you, if you were the one?'

'But I'm  not the  one, and  never will  be, the  Divine be  thanked. I'm  quite
content being who I am.'

'As am I, Dinitak. I'm in no hurry to take over Prestimion's job. If he went  on
being Coronal for the next twenty years, that would be perfectly all right  with
-'

Dinitak caught at Dekkeret's sleeve. 'Hold it a moment. Look - there's something
odd going on over there.'

He followed the line  of Dinitak's pointing arm.  Yes: some sort of  altercation
seemed to be under way about fifty feet farther down the wall, just outside  the
protective circle  of Considat's  security force.  Haifa dozen  of the guardsmen
were surrounding someone. Arms were waving. There was a lot of angry  incoherent
shouting.

'It's too improbable that there would be another assassination attempt,' Dinitak
said.

'Damned right it is. But those halfwits -' Dekkeret raised himself on tiptoe for
a better view. A gasp of outrage burst from him. 'By the Lady, it's a  messenger
from the Castle that they're making trouble for! Come on, Dinitak!'

They rushed over. An overwrought-looking guardsman thrust himself in  Dekkeret's
face and said, 'A suspicious stranger, my lord. We attempted to interrogate him,
but -'

'Blockhead,  don't  you recognize  the  badge of  the  Coronal's couriers?  Step
aside!'

The courier was no  one Dekkeret recognized, but  the golden starburst that  was
his badge of  office was authentic  enough. The man,  though more than  a little
worse for wear after the security guards' intervention, pulled himself  together
stalwartly and held forth to Dekkeret an envelope prominently sealed in  scarlet
wax with the sigil of the  High Counsellor Septach Melayn. 'My lord  Dekkeret, I
bear this message - by order of Prince Teotas, on behalf of the Council, I  have
ridden from the Castle day and night to give it to you -'

Dekkeret  snatched it  from him,  gave the  seal a  cursory glance,  ripped  the
envelope open. There was just a  single scrawled page within, in Teotas's  bold,
square, boyish lettering. Dekkeret's eyes  traveled quickly over the words,  and
then over them again, and again.

'Bad news?' Dinitak asked, after a while.

Dekkeret nodded. 'Indeed. The Pontifex is ill. He may have had a stroke.'

'Dying, is he?'

'That word is not  used here. But how  can it fail to  come to mind, when  a man
ninety years old  is taken ill?  I'm summoned immediately  back to the  Castle.'
Dekkeret forced  a chuckle.  'Well, at  least we  won't have  to suffer  through
another of Count Considat's dreadful  banquets tonight: thanks be to  the Divine
for small mercies. But  what might happen after  that -' He looked  away. He did
not know  what to  think. A  dizzying torrent  of contradictory  feelings rushed
through him: sadness, excitement, dismay, euphoria, disbelief, fear.

Confalume ill. Possibly dying. Perhaps already dead.

Did Prestimion  know? He  was supposed  to be  off traveling  also, just now. As
usual. Dekkeret wondered what sort of scene was unfolding back at the Castle  in
the absence both of the Coronal and the Coronal-designate.

'It may be only  nothing,' he said. His  voice, usually so resonant,  was hollow
and hoarse. 'Old men get ill from time to time. Not everything that seems to  be
a stroke is one. And one doesn't necessarily die of a stroke.'

'All this is true,' said Dinitak. 'But even so -'

Dekkeret held up his hand. 'No. Don't say it.'

Dinitak would  not be  halted. 'You  remarked just  a moment  ago that you hoped
Prestimion went on being Coronal for the next twenty years. And I know you  were
sincere in  hoping that.  But you  didn't seriously  believe that  he would, did
you?'



9

The first pungatans were coming into view, dotting the wasteland before them.

'These filthy plants!'  Jacomin Halefice muttered.  'How I loathe  them! I would
take a torch to the lot of them, if I were allowed!'

'Ah,' said Mandralisca. 'They are our friends, those plants!'

'Your friends, perhaps, your grace. Not mine.'

'They guard our domain,' the Count said. They keep us safe from our enemies, our
lovely pungatans.'

So  they did.  This was  a wild,  cruel desert,  and the  only traversable  road
through it was  a mere stony  track. Venture off  it even a  dozen yards and you
were at the pungatans' mercy - those evil whip-leaved plants that were the  only
things that flourished  here. It would  be a major  logistical task to  guide an
army of any  size through this  land of little  water and nothing  in the way of
wood or edible crops,  where what vegetation there  was struck out savagely  and
lethally at all passers-by.

But Mandralisca knew  the way through  this grim plain.  'Beware the whips!'  he
called out,  glancing back  over his  shoulder at  his men.  'Keep yourselves in
line!'

He gave his mount the spurs and rode onward into the pungatan grove.

They  were  actually  quite  beautiful,  the  pungatans,  or  so  it  seemed  to
Mandralisca. Their thick gray stubby trunks, smooth and columnar, rose from  the
rust-red  soil to  a height  of three  or four  feet. From  the summit  of  each
sprouted a pair of wavy ribbonlike fronds, extending in opposite directions  for
two yards or so with their tips trailing down prettily along the ground into  an
intricate coiling tangle of frayed ends. These fronds seemed delicate and  soft;
they were so  nearly transparent that  they were hard  to see except  at certain
favorable angles. As they fluttered in the breeze, they might almost seem to  be
strands of clear seaweed, surging with the tides.

But one merely had to  pass within fifteen or twenty  feet of one of the  plants
and a  deep wash  of reddish-purple  color came  flooding into  those fluttering
fronds, and they  grew turgid  and began  to tremble  at their  tips; and   then
whack! - they would uncoil to their full startling length and strike, a whiplash
blow of astonishing swiftness and horrific force. It was a savage lateral  swing
that sliced with the power of a sharp sword through any creature rash enough  to
have ventured  within their  range. That  was how  they nourished themselves, in
this  infertile soil:  they killed,  and then  they fed  on the  nutrients  that
leached into the ground from the decomposing bodies of their victims. One  could
see  fragmentary  skeletons  scattered  all  around,  the  ancient  remains   of
incautious beasts and, evidently, a good many unwary travelers.

Someone had long ago laid out a safe track through this unappealing  wilderness,
a narrow zone that passed between the places where the plants tended to grow. It
was marked only  by a sparse  border of rocks  on either side,  and the careless
wayfarer could all too readily  stray outside its limits. But  Count Mandralisca
was not one much given to carelessness. He guided his little convoy through  the
deadly  plain  without   incident  and  thence   up  the  narrow,   interminably
switchbacking trail that took one to the top of the riverfront bluffs and to the
compound of palaces where his masters the Five Lords awaited his return.

What  sort  of  foolishness,  Mandralisca  wondered,  had  they  managed  to get
themselves into in his absence?

He was greeted, as he and his party came riding into the broad colonnaded  plaza
that fronted the three central buildings, by a sight so very much in accord with
his expectations  that he  was hard  put to  choke back  bitter laughter, and to
conceal his loathing and disgust.

Gavinius, the brother for whom Mandralisca cared least of all, was wandering  at
large  in the  plaza, drunk  - no   surprise that!  - and  reeling around  in  a
blundering rampage. Flushed  and sweaty, clad  only in a  loosely flapping linen
apron, he was roaming from one stone column to the next, blowing kisses to  them
as though they were pretty maidens,  all the while bawling some raucous  song. A
leather flask of brandy dangled from one  shoulder. A couple of his women -  his
'wives,' Gavinius liked to call them, but there was no evidence that that was so
in any formal sense - followed along cautiously behind him as though they  hoped
somehow to steer him  back inside the palace.  But they were taking  care not to
get too close. Gavinius was dangerous when he was drunk.

He came to a lurching, staggering halt as the Count came into view.

'Mandralisca!' he bellowed. 'At last! Where have you been, fellow? Been  looking
for you all day!'

The big  man went  stumbling forward.  Mandralisca swung  himself quickly to the
ground. It would not be  the part of wisdom to  remain astride his mount in  the
presence of the Lord Gavinius.

Of the five brothers, Gavinius was the one who most closely resembled their late
father Gaviundar:  a huge  big-bellied red-faced  man with  a wide, florid face,
unpleasant little  blue-green eyes,  and great  fleshy ears  that sprang  out at
acute angles from  the nearly bald  dome of his  head. Though Mandralisca  was a
tall man, the Lord Gavinius was even  taller, and very much greater in bulk.  He
took up a stance that was almost nose to nose with Mandralisca and stood rocking
alarmingly  back  and forth  on  the massive  tree-trunks  that were  his  legs,
squinting at him blearily.  'You want a drink,  Count? Here. Here. Look  at you,
you're dusty all over! Where have you been?' Clumsily he unfastened the strap of
his brandy flask, nearly  dropping it in the  process and catching it  only by a
desperate swipe of his huge paw, and pushed it toward Mandralisca.

'I thank you, milord Gavinius. But I have no thirst just now.'

'No thirst? Ah, but you never do. Damn you, why not? What a sorry stick of a man
you are, Mandralisca!  Have some anyway.  You should want  to drink. You  should
love to drink. How can I trust a man who hates to drink? Here. Here. Drink!'

Shrugging, Mandralisca took the flask from  the bigger man, held it to  his lips
without quite touching it, pretended to take a swig, and handed it back.

Gavinius  corked the  flask and  flipped it  casually over  his shoulder.  Then,
leaning close into Mandralisca's face, he  began thickly to say: 'I had  a dream
last night - the most amazing - it was a sending, Mandralisca, a true sending, I
tell you! I wanted you to speak it  for me, but where were you? Damn you,  where
were you? It was such a dream -'

'He was  away north  of the  Zimr, you  booby, carrying  out a  punitive mission
against the  Vorthinar lord,'  came a  dry, hard  voice suddenly  from one side.
'Isn't that so, Mandralisca?'

Gaviral, it was. The only really clever one of the bunch: the future Pontifex of
Zimroel, if Mandralisca had his way.

The interruption was a welcome one.  Dealing with Gavinius, drunk or sober,  was
always an  irritating business,  and it  could be  perilous besides. Gaviral was
capable of being dangerous in his own cunning way, but at any rate there was  no
risk  of  his grabbing  you  up in  some  bone-crushing demonstration  of  manly
affection, or simply crashing down drunkenly upon you like a toppling tree.

'I have been in the north, yes, milord,' said Mandralisca, 'and the mission  has
been accomplished. The Vorthinar  lord and all his  men went up in  flames these
five days past.'

Gaviral smiled. Alone in this brotherly herd of great uncouth oxen he was a wiry
man, small and fidgety, with quick flickering eyes and a narrow, twitchy  mouth.
He was built on  such a different scale  from the others that  quite possibly he
was not his  father's son at  all, Mandralisca sometimes  suspected. But he  did
have  the  reddish  hair  of  the  whole  Sambailid  clan,  and  the distinctive
coarseness of feature,  and their irrepressible  rapacity of spirit.  'Dead, are
they?' Gaviral said.  'Splendid. Splendid! But  I had no  doubt. You are  a good
staunch faithful man, Mandralisca. What would we ever do without you? You are  a
jewel. You are our strong right arm. I commend you with all my heart.'

There  was  profound   condescension  in  Gaviral's   effusive  tone,  an   airy
insincerity, a lurking disingenuousness, that blared forth in every syllable. He
spoke as one might speak to a servant,  to a lackey, to a minion - that  is, one
might speak that way if one were  a fool and did not understand the  proper ways
of addressing those upon whom you are dependent, inferiors though they might be.

But Mandralisca betrayed no sign of taking offense. 'Thank you, milord,' he said
softly, with a  grateful little smile  and a nod  of his head,  as though he had
been honored with a golden chain, or  a knighthood, or the gift of six  villages
in the fertile north. 'I will cherish these words of yours. Your praise means  a
great deal to me - more, perhaps, than you can realize.'

'It is not  so much praise,  Mandralisca, as a  simple statement of  the truth,'
said Gaviral, seeming very pleased with himself.

He was the brightest of the  five brothers, yes. But what Mandralisca  knew, and
Gaviral did not, was that Gaviral was  not half so bright as he thought  he was.
That was his great flaw. He was easy enough to deceive: merely let him think you
were in awe of his superb mind, and he was yours.

Gavinius now broke in abruptly. 'I dreamed,' he said, returning to his theme  as
though Mandralisca and  Gaviral had not  been speaking with  each other at  all,
'such a dream!  The Procurator came  to me, will  you believe it?  Walked up and
down before me,  looked me in  the eye, said  marvelous things to  me. It was  a
sending, I know it was, but whose  was it? Surely not the Lady's. Why  would the
Lady send the Procurator's spirit to me?  Why would the Lady send me a  dream in
the first place?' Gavinius belched. 'You have to explain it to me,  Mandralisca.
I've been hunting for you all day. Where have you been, anyway?' Then he  turned
away, scuffing about for his flask in the red sand of the plaza. 'And where  has
my brandy gone? What have you done with my flask?'

'Go inside,  Gavinius,' Gaviral  said in  a low  but insistent  tone. 'Lie down.
Close your eyes for a while. The Count will speak your dream later for you.' The
little man gave his  hulking brother a sharp  thump on the breastbone.  Gavinius
looked down, blinking in  astonishment, at the place  where he had been  struck.
'Go. Go, Gavinius.' And Gaviral thumped him again, tapping a little harder  this
time. Gavinius,  still blinking,  went lumbering  off toward  his palace  like a
befuddled bidlak, with his women tagging along just behind.

The  Lords Gavdat  and Gavahaud  had by  this time  appeared in  the plaza,  and
Mandralisca saw Gavilomarin coming toward them over the ridge that separated his
palace from the others. The brothers clustered around their privy counsellor.

Soft, jowly-faced Gavdat of the cavernous nostrils, as soon as he learned of the
successful result of Mandralisca's mission, let it be known that his casting  of
a thaumaturgic horoscope had made that outcome a certainty. He fancied himself a
wizard of sorts, did Gavdat, and  dabbled ineptly in magecraft and spells.  Vain
bull-necked  Gavahaud, as  ugly as  his brothers  but convinced  to a  marvelous
degree of  his own  beauty, offered  Mandralisca congratulations  with a  dainty
foppish salute, doubly grotesque in so heavy-set a man. Big flabby  Gavilomarin,
a pallid-souled negligible person who obligingly agreed with anything any of the
others might say, clapped his hands  in a simple-minded way and giggled  happily
at the news of the burning of the keep.

'So may they all perish, those who oppose us!' said Gavahaud sententiously.

'There will be many of those, I fear,' Mandralisca said.

'The Coronal, you mean?' asked the Lord Gaviral.

'That will be later. I mean  others like the Vorthinar lord. Local  princes, who
see themselves as having a chance to break away from everyone's authority.  Once
they behold lords like yourself openly defying the Coronal and the Pontifex  and
succeeding in  that defiance,  they see  no reason  to continue  to pay taxes to
other administrations. Including your own, my lords.'

'You will burn them for us, then, as you burned this one,' Gavahaud said.

'Yes.  Yes. So  he will!'  cried Gavilomarin,  and gleefully  clapped his  hands
again.

Mandralisca threw him a quick baleful smile. Then, tapping his fingertips to the
golden paraclet of his office that hung at his breast and glancing swiftly  from
one brother to the next, he said, 'My lords, I have had a long journey this day,
and I am very weary. I ask your permission to retire.'


As they made their way toward  the village a little distance south  of Gaviral's
palace where the highest-level retainers lived, Jacomin Halefice said hesitantly
to Mandralisca, 'Sir, may I offer a personal observation?'

'We are friends, are we not, Jacomin?' said Mandralisca.

The statement was so far from the truth that Halefice had difficulty hiding  his
astonishment. But he recovered after a  moment and said, 'It seemed to  me, sir,
that the  brothers, when  they were  speaking with  you just  now -  and I  have
noticed this before, in truth - you will forgive me for saying so, I hope, but '
There he hesitated. 'What I mean to say -'

'Come out with it, will you?'

Halefice said, 'Just that  they are so very  patronizing when they address  you.
They speak  to you  as though  they are  grand and  mighty noblemen  and you are
insignificant, treated like nothing more than a vassal, a mere flunkey.'

'I am their vassal, Jacomin.'

'But not their servant.'

'Not precisely, no.'

'Why do  you abide  their insolence,  then, sir?  For that  is what  it is, and,
forgive me, your grace, but it pains  me to see a man of your  abilities treated
that way. Have  they forgotten that  you and only  you have made  them what they
are?'

'Oh, no, not so. You  give me too much credit,  Jacomin. It was the Divine  that
made them  what they  are, and  also, I  suppose, their  glorious father  Prince
Gaviundar, with some help from their  lady mother, whoever that may have  been.'
Mandralisca flashed his quick frosty smile  again. 'All I did was show  them how
they could make themselves lords of these few unimportant provinces. And, if all
goes well, lords of all Zimroel, perhaps, one day.'

'And it troubles you  not in the.least that  they treat you with  such contempt,
sir?'

Mandralisca surveyed  his bandy-legged  little aide-de-camp  with a  long, slow,
curious look.

He and Jacomin Halefice had been together for more than twenty years, now.  They
had fought side by side against the forces of Prestimion at Thegomar Edge,  when
Korsibar  had  perished  at the  hands  of  his own  Su-Suheris  magus,  and the
Procurator Dantirya Sambail had been defeated and made a prisoner by Prestimion,
and Mandralisca himself, who  had fought to the  last stages of exhaustion,  was
wounded and taken prisoner  also by Rufiel Kisimir  of Muldemar. And the  two of
them had  been near  each other  again at  the time  of the second great defeat,
among the manganoza thickets of  Stoienzar, that time when Dantirya  Sambail was
slain  by Septach  Melayn: Halefice  had helped  Mandralisca slip  off into  the
underbrush and vanish, when Navigorn of Hoikmar was pursuing him and would  have
put him to death.  It was with Halefice's  assistance that Mandralisca had  been
able to  make his  escape from  Alhanroel and  find his  way into the service of
Dantirya Sambail's two brothers.

Halefice's loyalty and devotion were beyond question. He was Mandralisca's right
hand, as Mandralisca had been the right hand of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail.
And  yet, in  all their  time together,  Halefice had  never dared  to speak  so
intimately  with  Mandralisca  as  he  had  just  done.  In  its  way  that was,
Mandralisca thought, somewhat moving.

He  said carefully,  'If they  seem to  treat me  with contempt,  Jacomin,  it's
because their manner is ever a coarse one, as is the style of their whole  clan.
You remember their elegant father  Gaviundar, and his beautiful brother  Gaviad.
Nor was their  uncle Dantirya Sambail  known for the  gentleness of his  tongue.
Where you see  contempt, my friend,  I see only  something of a  lack of tact. I
take no offense. It is in their nature. They are crude rough men. I forgive them
for it, because we are all players in the same game, do you take my meaning?'

'Sir?' said Halefice blankly.

'Apparently  you don't.  Let me  put it   this way:  I serve  the needs  of  the
Sambailids, whether they know it or not, and I think they do not, but also  they
serve mine. It is the  same between you and me,  as well. Think on it,  Jacomin.
But keep your findings to yourself. Let us not discuss these things again, shall
we?'  Mandralisca turned  away, toward  his own  simple cottage.  'Here is   the
parting of our ways,' he said. 'I wish you a good day.'



10

The lights remained  on and the  steward Falco stayed  with Prestimion while  he
calmed himself. Diandolo brought him  something cool and soothing to  drink. The
master of the lodge, virtually beside himself with chagrin that his royal  guest
had  undergone  so terrifying  a  dream under  his  own roof,  produced  such an
outpouring of solicitousness and fuss that Falco had to order him from the room.
Young Prince Taradath, who had accompanied  Prestimion to Fa and had a  suite of
his own across  the courtyard, now  made a belated  appearance, aroused at  last
from the deep sleep  of adolescence by all  the furore in the  halls. Prestimion
sent him away also. His father's nightmares need not be any concern of his.

This was the third day of Prestimion's state visit to Fa. Things had been  going
predictably thus far, the banquets, the speeches, the conferring of royal honors
upon deserving citizens, and all the rest. But for the first two nights  running
he had had the lost-in-unknown-levels-of-the-Castle dream, although, the  Divine
be thanked, without the additional  anguish of having Thismet entering  into it.
But this time the thing in all its full ghastliness had descended on him.

'You were  shouting something  like, 'tizmit,  tizmit, tizmit,'  my lord,' Falco
said. The name of  Thismet would mean nothing  to him, of course.  There were no
more than six people in all the world who knew who she had been. 'It was so loud
I could hear you from two rooms away. ' Tizmit! Tizmit!''

'We are likely to say anything in dreams, Falco. It doesn't have to make sense.'

'This must have been a very bad one, my lord. You still look pale. - Here,  give
me that,' he said, reaching behind him to take the flask that Diandolo had  just
brought into  the room.   'Can't you  hear how   sore the  Coronal's voice   is?
Another drink, my lord?'

Prestimion took the flask. It was brandy,  this time. He gulped it down like  so
much water.

Falco said, 'Shall I summon a speaker for your dream, lordship?'

'No one speaks the Coronal's dreams except the Lady of the Isle, Falco. You know
that. And the Lady is nowhere within reach.' Prestimion rose, a little  unsteady
on his feet,  and went to  the window. All  was dark outside.  It was still  the
middle of a moonless night here in lovely Fa, that gay and ever-charming city of
tier upon  tier of  pink hillside  villas with  lacy stone  balconies. He braced
himself on the windowsill and leaned outward, seeking the cool sweet night air.

Twenty years, and Thismet still haunted him.

She and  her brother  both were  long dead,  dead and  forgotten, so  thoroughly
forgotten that  even their  own father  had no  idea that  they had  ever lived.
Prestimion's team of mages had seen to that, on the battlefield at Thegomar Edge
just after the great victory, when by a colossal act of sorcery they had blotted
all knowledge of the Korsibar insurrection from the memory of the world.

But Prestimion had not forgotten. And, even after all these years with  Varaile,
Varaile whom he loved with a  fervor that had never ebbed, Thismet  persisted in
stealing back into his  unguarded mind again and  again as he slept.  He knew he
would never rid himself of the hold  she had on him. She had been  his dedicated
enemy; then had come  the astounding thunderbolt of  their love; and then,  when
she had  been his  for scarcely  any time  at all,  that shattering  hour on the
battlefield at Thegomar Edge  in which he had  won his crown and  lost his bride
almost in the same moment.

'I'll leave you now,  my lord,' Falco said.  'You'll want to get  back to sleep.
It's still three hours to dawn.'

'Leave me, yes,' said Prestimion.

But he made no attempt to return to his bed. The dream would only be waiting for
him there.  He took  from its  bronze case  the portfolio  of official documents
awaiting his signature  that went with  him everywhere, and  set to work.  There
were always fifty or a  hundred things stored up for  him to sign, most of  them
generated by the ever-busy bureaucrats of the Pontificate, some the work of  his
own governmental departments.

Much of it was trivial stuff, routine proclamations and decrees, trade  treaties
between one province  and another, revisions  of the customs  code, the sort  of
workaday business that other Coronals would have sloughed off on aides to  read,
so that they would merely need to scan a brief appended summary before  signing.
The papers from the Labyrinth, which  had already been approved by the  Pontifex
or someone acting  in his name,  did not even  require the Coronal's  attention,
only his  countersignature. In  theory the  Coronal had  the right  to reject  a
Pontifical decree and send it back to the Labyrinth for reconsideration, but  no
one could remember when any Coronal  had last availed himself of the  privilege.
But Prestimion tried to read as much of this material as he could. In part  that
was due to an overriding sense of  duty; but also he found it oddly  comforting,
on nights  such as  these, to  immerse himself  in such meaningless mind-numbing
toil.

Dawn was still an hour or two away when he heard sounds from the courtyard:  the
gate being opened, the whirring hum  of an arriving floater, a deep,  commanding
voice loudly calling for porters. That was strange, Prestimion thought,  someone
turning up at  the royal lodge  at an hour  like this, and  making so much noise
about it at that.

He peered out.

The floater  was from  the Casde.  It bore  the royal  starburst emblem.  A big,
heavy-set man in a belted ankle-length red tunic had emerged from it. His  great
chest  and  shoulders  led Prestimion  to  think  at first  that  this  might be
Gialaurys; but this man was heftier even than the Grand Admiral, with a  jutting
gut on him that would make  Gialaurys seem almost slender by comparison.  And he
spoke with the pure accent of Castle Mount, not Gialaurys's broad, flat,  almost
comical Piliplok intonation. Prestimion realized after a moment that it must  be
Navigorn.

Here? Why? What had happened?

'Falco!' Prestimion called. The steward  was at the door almost  immediately. He
looked as though he, too, had not gone back to sleep. 'Falco, the Lord  Navigorn
has just  arrived. He's  in the  courtyard. See  that he's  shown up  here right
away.'

The  three  flights  of  stairs left  Navigorn  winded  and  flushed. He  swayed
alarmingly in the doorway for a  moment, a tall ungainly figure confronting  the
compactly built Prestimion. With   difficulty he said,  'Prestimion,  I've -just
come - straight from the - Castle. I set out yesterday afternoon, traveled right
on through the night.' Gingerly Navigorn lowered his bulky form into one of  the
chairs beside the window, a  finely wrought thing of golden  kamateros-wood that
creaked and groaned beneath his weight, but held firm. 'You don't mind if I sit,
do you, Prestimion? Sprinting up those stairs -' He grinned. 'I'm not exactly in
fighting trim these days.'

'Sit.  Sit. You  take up  less space  this way.'  Navigorn elaborately   settled
himself into place. Patiently Prestimion  said, 'Why are you here,  Navigorn? Do
you come with bad news?'

The big man's eyes rose to meet his. He seemed to search a moment for the proper
way to begin. 'The Pontifex may have had a stroke.'

'Ah,' Prestimion said, exhaling the word almost as though he had been punched in
the chest. 'A stroke. May have had a stroke, you say?'

'There's  no  confirmation.  I apologize,  Prestimion,  for  awakening you  with
something like this, but -'

'I was awake, as a matter of fact.' Prestimion indicated the papers strewn about
his desk. 'Tell me about this stroke. This possible stroke.'

'A message came from the Labyrinth. Numbness in his hand, stiffness in his  leg.
Mages have been called in.'

'Is he going to die?'

'Who can say? You know how tough the old man is, Prestimion. He's made of iron.'
A pained  expression crossed  Navigorn's fleshy  face. He  turned and twisted so
restively in his chair that it creaked a protest. He scowled and screwed up  his
face. 'Yes,' he said  finally. 'Yes, this probably  is the beginning of  the end
for him. Just  my guess, you  understand. Pure intuition.  But the man's  ninety
years old, he's been Pontifex for twenty years and he was Coronal for  forty-odd
before  that -  even iron  wears out,  you know,  sooner or  later. I'm   sorry,
Prestimion.'

'Sorry?'

'No Coronal ever wants to go to the Labyrinth.'

'But  every Coronal  eventually does,  Navigorn. Do  you think  this catches  me
unprepared?' And then, almost as if to contradict his own words, Prestimion went
over to the sideboard,  where a flask of  Muldemar wine was sitting,  and poured
some into a bowl. 'Do you want any?' he asked.

'At this hour of the morning? Yes, actually. Yes, I do.'

Prestimion handed him  the bowl and  poured another for  himself. They drank  in
silence. A cascade of troublesome thoughts thundered through Prestimion's brain.

Pacing about  the room,  he said,  'What do  you think  I ought to do, Navigorn?
Return to  the Castle  right away  and await  developments? Or  set out  for the
Labyrinth to pay my respects while his majesty is still alive?'

'Phraatakes Rem doesn't seem to think Confalume's death is imminent. I'd go back
to the Castle,  if I were  you. Meet with  the Council, discuss  things with the
LadyVaraile. And then take yourself down to the Labyrinth.' Navigorn looked  up.
Suddenly there was a  broad incongruous smile on  his face. 'This is  good wine,
Prestimion! From your family's vineyards?'

There's none better, is there? Some more?'

'Please. Yes.'

Prestimion filled  the bowls  again and  they sat  thoughtfully sipping the rich
purple wine for a time, neither of them speaking.

He found it strangely moving that it was Navigorn, rather than Septach Melayn or
Gialaurys or his brother  Teotas, who had brought  him this unsettling news.  He
and Navigorn had been  friends a long while,  he supposed, but their  friendship
had never been the  same sort of intimacy  that he had with  the others. Indeed,
they had even been enemies, once,  though Navigorn had no recollection of  that.
That  had  been  in the  time  of  the Korsibar  usurpation,  when  Navigorn had
unhesitatingly given his loyalty to the false Coronal, and had fought  valiantly
on Korsibar's behalf in the civil war.

But of course  Navigorn had not  regarded Korsibar as  a false Coronal.  However
unlawfully  Confalume's  ill-advised son  had  placed himself  upon  the throne,
however much his seizure of power had violated all custom and convention, he had
been duly  anointed and  crowned, and,  so far  as the  people of  Majipoor were
concerned,  he  was  the  proper  Coronal.  So  of  course  when  Prestimion had
challenged Korsibar's legitimacy as king and  had gone to war to overthrow  him,
Navigorn had staunchly served the man he recognized as his king. It was only  in
the hour  of Korsibar's  defeat, when  the world  was in  chaos and Prestimion's
triumph was assured, that Navigorn had urged Korsibar to surrender and  abdicate
in order to keep the bloodshed from going on any longer.

But stubborn stupid Korsibar had refused to yield, and had died in the battle of
Beldak Marsh below Thegomar Edge; and Navigorn, kneeling before Prestimion,  had
admitted his error  and begged forgiveness.  Which Prestimion had  freely given;
and  more than  that besides.  For in  the great  wiping of  the world's  memory
Navigorn had  lost all  recollection of  the civil  war and  his role  in it  as
Prestimion's enemy, and  so he could  readily accept Prestimion's  invitation to
join his Council, of  which he had been  a valued member all  these years since.
Time had turned Navigorn old and gouty and fat, but he had served Prestimion  as
staunchly  as ever  he had  Korsibar. And   here he  was now,  the one  who  had
volunteered to take on the difficult job of carrying to Prestimion the news that
his time as Coronal might nearly be over.

'Do you  remember, Prestimion,  when we  all went  to the  Labyrinth to wait for
Prankipin's death, and the old man lingered on and on and on and we thought he'd
never die? Ah, there was a time!'

'There was a time indeed,' Prestimion said. 'How could I forget it?'

His mind leaped back  across the decades to  that great gathering, that  shining
array of young  lords that had  assembled in the  underground city in  the final
days of the  long reign ofPrankipin  Pontifex: the flower  ofMajipoor's manhood,
the princes of the realm, gathering about the dying old man. Among them, thought
Prestimion, so many who were destined to die themselves, a year or three  later,
fighting on behalf of the usurping Korsibar in the needless, foolish war that he
had brought upon the world.

Navigorn, lost now in memories, helped himself to more wine without asking. 'You
came down from the Castle with  Serithorn of Samivole, I recall. Septach  Melayn
was with you, and Gialaurys, and that other friend of yours, that sneaky  little
man from Suvrael who called himself a duke - what was his name -?'

'Svor.'

'Svor, yes. And then there was good old Kanteverel of Bailemoona, and the  Grand
Admiral Gonivaul who had  never been to sea,  and Duke Oljebbin, and  Earl Kamba
ofMazadone. Nor  should I  leave out  our vile  red-faced friend  the Procurator
Dantirya Sambail, eh, Prestimion? - and Mandrykarn of Stee -ah, there was a man,
that Mandrykarn! - Venta  of Haplior, also -'  Navigorn shook his head.  'And so
many  of  them died  young.  Wasn't that  strange?  Kamba, Mandrykarn,  Iram  of
Normork, Sibellor of Banglecode, and plenty of others besides - dead, all  dead,
much  too soon.  More's the  pity, that.  Who'd have  known, when  we were   all
together at the Labyrinth, that so many of us would be dead so soon afterward?'

It troubled Prestimion that that thought had occurred to Navigorn too. He waited
tensely to see if the other man was going to extend the catalog of the dead:  to
Korsibar, say. Brawny, swaggering Korsibar had been the most conspicuous  figure
of all at that gathering of lords  in the Labyrinth. But Navigorn did not  speak
Korsibar's name.

And his reflective  mood lifted as  quickly as it  had come. He  smiled, sighed,
lifted his wine-bowl in  salute. 'We had ourselves  a time, though -  didn't we,
Prestimion? We had ourselves a time!'

Navigorn began to  talk now of  the games they  had held at  the Labyrinth while
waiting for Prankipin to  die: the Pontifical Games,  they had called them,  the
grandest tournament of modern times.  'The wrestling between Gialaurys and  that
ape Farholt - I thought they'd kill each other, do you know? It seems like  just
yesterday. And the archery - you  were in your prime, then, Prestimion,  you did
tricks with your bow that  day that no one had  seen before, or since, for  that
matter. Septach Melayn winning the  fencing over Count Farquanor and  making him
look such a helpless  fool in the bargain.  And who was it  in the saber? A  big
man, dark hair, very strong. His face is  right at the edge of my mind, but  his
name is gone. Who was that? Do you remember, Prestimion?'

'I may have  been elsewhere for  the saber matches  that day,' Prestimion  said,
turning away.

'I can still see the rest of the contests so clearly, though. It does seem  just
like yesterday. Twenty years and more, but just like yesterday!'

Just like yesterday, yes, Prestimion thought.

It had been Korsibar who won the saber contests. He was the big dark-haired  man
who lurked  at the  edge ofNavigorn's  mind. But  all recollection of Korsibar's
identity had long ago been edited  from Navigorn's memory, and that of  Thismet,
Korsibar's  sister,  as  well,  and  Prestimion  was  relieved  to  see  that no
recollection of them had crept back into Navigorn in the intervening years.

Nor did  Navigorn seem  to remember  the final  dramatic event  of those  famous
Pontifical Games, the  morning when the  ninety contestants in  the jousting had
come  together in  full armor  in the  Court of  Thrones, from  which they  were
supposed to be transported  to the Arena as  a group. Prince Korsibar  had burst
into  the room  shouting the  news that   death had  come at  last to  the  aged
Pontifex. The long wait was over. The time finally had come for the changing  of
the  reign,  and now  the  Coronal Lord  Confalume  would become  Pontifex,  and
Confalume would name as the new Coronal young Prince Prestimion of Muldemar.

Or so everyone  expected; but that  was not what  happened. For a  dark cloud of
sorcery fell upon the minds of the lords assembled in the Court of Thrones,  and
when it lifted an incredible scene was revealed. Prince Korsibar, the  Coronal's
son, had  taken the  starburst crown  from the  startled Hjort  who held  it and
placed it on his own brow, and now  was sitting in glory in the place where  the
Coronal was meant  to sit, with  his father Confalume,  appearing bewildered and
almost dazed, seated beside him on the Pontifical throne. And the lords who  had
conspired with Korsibar to do this thing cried out loudly, 'All hail the Coronal
Lord Korsibar! Korsibar! Korsibar! Lord Korsibar!'

'Thievery!' was the bellowed answer ofGialaurys. 'Thievery! Thievery!' And would
have rushed forward into the  halberds of Korsibar's guard, but  that Prestimion
reined him in, for he saw that  it was certain death to offer any  resistance to
the takeover. And thus he and his friends withdrew from the room in astonishment
and defeat,  and the  Coronal's throne  was Korsibar's,  though it  had been the
tradition on Majipoor since the earliest  days that a Coronal's son might  never
inherit his father's office.

No, Navigorn had no recollection  of any of that, or  of the great war that  had
followed and had cost the lives of so many men great and small. Korsibar in time
had been overthrown, and Prestimion's sorcerers had sliced his usurpation out of
the history of the world. But that day in the Labyrinth blazed as incandescently
as ever in Prestimion's mind, that  time when the throne that had  been promised
to him had been snatched from his grasp by treachery, forcing him to launch that
bloody war against his own former  friends in order to restore the  proper order
of things.

Navigorn's  voice broke  him from  his reverie:  'Will there  be a  new set   of
Pontifical Games, Prestimion, when we all  go down to the Labyrinth to  wait for
Confalume to die?'

'We don't know yet that Confalume  is dying,' Prestimion said curtly. 'But  even
if he is - more games? No. Not this time, I think.'

He looked toward the window. Dawn was breaking over Fa.

Navigorn was probably  right, he thought:  Confalume's stroke was  the herald of
the old  Pontifex's end,  and before  very long  Majipoor would  see yet another
change of reign. He would go  to the Labyrinth to become Pontifex,  and Dekkeret
would take his seat atop Castle Mount as Coronal.

Was he ready for that? No, of course not. Navigorn had said it truly: no Coronal
ever wants to go to the Labyrinth. But  to it he would go, all the same,  as was
his duty.

Prestimion did wonder how so restless a nature as his was going to abide life in
the  underground capital.  Even the  Castle had  proven too  confining to   him;
throughout his  reign he  had roamed  constantly about  the world, seizing every
excuse  to  visit  distant  cities.  He  had  made  no  less  than  three  grand
processionals, something that  few Coronals before  him had done.  But his whole
reign had been like an unending  grand processional for him: he had  traveled as
no Coronal had ever traveled before.

Of course he would not be requiredto hide himself away in the Labyrinth once  he
became Pontifex. It was merely the custom. The Pontifex, the senior monarch, was
supposed to remain secluded;  the young and glorious  Coronal, it was, who  went
forth among the populace to see and be seen. He meant to abide by that rule,  up
to a point. But only up to a point.

How long is it going to be, he asked himself, before everything changes for me?

The Thismet  dream, perhaps,  had been  an omen.  The past  was reaching  out to
reclaim him, and soon  they would all replay  the time of old  Prankipin's death
once more. But this time he would have the role of the outgoing Coronal that had
been Confalume's then, and Dekkeret would be the new prince moving to the center
of the stage.

At least there were no new Korsibars waiting in the wings. He had seen to  that.
Confalume,  when  he  was Coronal,  had  let  it be  known  that  he had  chosen
Prestimion to  succeed  him,  but  had  never  formally  named  him  as  Coronal
designate, feeling that that was an unseemly thing to do while old Prankipin was
still  alive. Prestimion  had not  made that  mistake. In  the interests  of  an
orderly succession he had already named Dekkeret as his heir, and had  explained
to his own  sons why the  sons of a  Coronal could never  hope to inherit  their
father's throne.

So all  was in  order. There  was no  reason for  any forebodings. What would be
would be, and everything would go well.

Well, then, Prestimion thought, let the changes begin.

He was ready for them. As ready as he ever would be.

To Navigorn he said briskly, 'I suppose you're right that I'd do best to  return
to the Castle  before heading down  to the Labyrinth.  I'll want to  have a long
talk with Varaile first. And I should meet with the Council, of course - prepare
them for the succession -'

The  only  response was  a  loud snore.  Prestimion  glanced back  at  Navigorn.
Navigorn was asleep in his chair.

'Falco!' Prestimion called, opening the door. 'Diandolo!'

The steward and the page came running.

'Get everything ready for our departure. We'll leave for the Castle right  after
breakfast. Diandolo, wake  up Prince Taradath  and tell him  that we're leaving,
and that it's my intention to leave on time. Oh, and a message has to go to Duke
Emelric of Fa, letting him know that my presence at the Castle has suddenly been
required and  that with  great regret  I must  cancel the  rest of my stay here.
Before you do that, though, send a courier off to the Lady Varaile at the Castle
with word that I'm on my way back,  and - well, that should be enough for  now.'
Quietly,  so  as not  to  awaken Navigorn,  Prestimion  began to  gather  up the
scattered papers of state that covered his desk.



11

A  pale, tense  face appeared  in the  doorway ofMandralisca's  work-chamber.  A
hesitant  tenor voice  said, in  not much  more than  a throaty  whisper,  'Your
grace?'

Mandralisca glanced up. A  young man; a boy,  more accurately. Green eyes,  long
straw-colored hair. Earnest, starry-eyed look on his face.

He pushed aside the maps  that he had been studying.  'I know you, I think.  You
were with me on the Vorthinar mission, weren't you?'

'Yes, your grace.' The boy seemed to be trembling. Mandralisca could hardly hear
him. 'There is a visitor here who says that he has -'

A visitor?  This was  not a  place where  visitors came,  this isolated ridgetop
settlement above that barren, dry, remorseless valley.

'What did you say? A visitor?'

'A visitor, yes, sir.'

'Speak up, will you? - Are you afraid of me?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And why is that?'

'Because - because -'

'Something about my face? The look in my eyes?'

'You simply are a frightening person, sir.'  The words came out all in a  burst.
But the boy was gaining courage. His eyes met Mandralisca's squarely.

'Yes. I am.  The truth is  that I work  at it. I  find it a  helpful thing to be
frightening.' Mandralisca  indicated with  an impatient  gesture that  he should
enter the room  instead of hovering  at the door.  The work-chamber, a  circular
room with an arched roof and burnt-orange mud-plastered walls, was a small  one.
The entire house was small: the Five  Lords might live in palaces, but they  had
not bothered to provide one for their privy counsellor. 'Where do you come from,
boy?'

'Sennec, sir. A town not far downriver from Horvenar.'

'How old?'

'Sixteen. - Your visitor, sir, says -'

'Let my damned visitor  wait. Let him eat  manculain turds while he  waits. It's
you I'm talking to just now. What's your name?'

'Thastain, sir.'

'Thastain of Sennec.  The rhythm's a  little brusque. Count  Thastain of Sennec:
does that sound better? Thastain, Count of Sennec. Count of Sennec and Horvenar.
A certain grandeur, that, wouldn't you say?'

The boy did not reply. His expression was a mixture of bewilderment, fear,  and,
perhaps, irritation or even anger.

Mandralisca smiled. 'You think I'm playing some game with you?'

'Who would ever make me a Count, your grace?'

'Who  would ever  have made  me one?  But I  am. Count  Mandralisca of  Zimroel:
there's real poetry for you! I was a country boy just like you, once, a  country
boy from the Gonghars. It was Dantirya Sambail who put the title on me, the  day
before he died. 'You have served me well, Mandralisca, and it's high time I gave
you a proper reward.'  We were in the  jungles of the Stoienzar  then. We didn't
know  they were  about to  catch up  with us.  I knelt  down and  he touched  my
shoulder with  his dagger  and proclaimed  me a  Count right  there on the spot,
Count  of Zimroel,  a title  that no   one had  ever had  before. The  next  day
Prestimion's men found our camp and  the Procurator was killed. But I  got away,
and I took  my Countship with  me. - We'll  make you a  Count too, one  of these
years, maybe. But first  we have to turn  the Lord Gaviral into  a Pontifex. And
the Lord Gavahaud, I suppose, into a Coronal.'

That brought only a blank-faced stare, and then a puzzled frown.

Perhaps he  had said  too much.  It was  time to  send the boy away, Mandralisca
realized. There was an odd pleasure in all of this, though: Thastain's innocence
was a  charming novelty,  and Mandralisca  himself was  in a strangely expansive
mood this morning.  But he had  learned long ago  to mistrust pleasure,  even to
fear  it. And  he was  beginning to  feel too  relaxed with  the boy.  That  was
dangerous.

He said, 'Do you happen to know the name of this visitor of mine?'

'Barz - Braj - Barjz -'

'Barjazid?'

'Barjazid, yes! That's it, sir! Khaymak Barjazid, ofSuvrael!'

Yes.  Yes.  Mandralisca  remembered, now:  the  correspondence,  the offer,  the
invitation to come. It had all slipped from his mind.

'He's traveled a long way, then, this Khaymak Barjazid. Where is he now?'

'In the compound, sir, where everyone is kept who comes up the valley road  from
the pungatan desert. The guards at the first gatehouse found him and brought him
in. He claims that you and he have business to discuss.'

Mandralisca felt a stab  of excitement. The Barjazid  at last! The new  one, the
brother, the unexpected survivor.  He had taken his  time about it. He  had been
dangling the promise of his arrival for  most of the past year. And the  promise
of other things  as well. /  can be of  great use to  you, Barjazid had written.
Allow me to visit you and show you what I have. 'Thank you, Count Thastain. Tell
him to come in.'

Thastain moved toward the door. 'I'll fetch him, your grace.'

'Yes. Do.' But - no, Barjazid should  have been here months ago. Let the  damned
slippery bastard  fry out  there a  little while  longer. He  was no stranger to
desert heat, anyway. And it would  not  do to seem too  eager, now that  the man
and, Mandralisca assumed, his wares - finally were here. Overeagerness  forfeits
you the advantage every time. - 'Wait, boy!'

'Sir?'

Mandralisca  fashioned his  long, tapering  fingers into  a steeple.  'One  more
question, first, before I let you go. Tell me a little more about yourself.  Why
did you enroll in the service of the Five Lords? What were you hoping to gain by
it?'

'To gain, sir? I don't understand. I  wasn't looking to gain anything. It was  a
matter  of my  duty, your  grace. The  Five Lords  are the  rightful rulers   of
Zimroel, by descent from the Procurator Dantirya Sambail.'

'Very prettily spoken. Count Thastain. I admire your devotion to the cause.'

Again the boy headed for the door, as though he could not get himself away  from
Mandralisca's presence too soon.

Mandralisca said, halting  him once more,  'Do you know,  I wonder, what  work I
performed when I first entered the retinue of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail?'

'How could I know that, sir?'

'How could you, indeed. I was his poison-taster. A very old-fashioned  position,
that. Something out of the time of myth and fable. Dantirya Sambail felt that he
needed one. Or perhaps he just wanted one, as a kind of ornamental decoration, a
bit of medieval pageantry. Whatever was put before him to eat or drink, I tasted
first. A snip of his  meat, a sip of his  wine. He never let anything  enter his
mouth without trying it  on me first. I  made quite an impression,  do you know,
standing  at his  shoulder during  banquets at  the Castle  or the   Labyrinth.'
Mandralisca smiled a second time: close to the quota for the entire morning,  he
thought. 'Go, now. Fetch me my Barjazid.'



12

'Shall I go with you?' Varaile asked. 'I could, you know.'

'Are you that eager to see the Labyrinth again?'

'No more so  than you are,  Prestimion. But it's  been an age  since we traveled
together. You aren't trying to avoid me, are you?'

He looked at her in genuine surprise.  'Avoid you? You have to be joking.  But I
want this to  be a brief,  uncomplicated visit, quickly  down, quickly back.  He
apparently isn't  as sick  as we  thought, after  all. I'll  meet with him for a
couple of days, discuss  such important business as  there happens to be,  offer
him my wishes for continued  long life and good health,  and come home. If I  go
with  you,  or  Dekkeret, or  Septach  Melayn  or Dembitave,  or  anybody  but a
Coronal's minimal traveling  retinue, the trip  is bound to  become a much  more
involved sort of thing, with all  manner of formal events suddenly necessary.  I
don't want to put him  under any kind of strain.  And I certainly don't want  to
show up with so many members of the court that Confalume gets the idea that this
is some kind of official farewell visit io a dying man.'

'I don't remember suggesting  that you take the  whole court,' Varaile said.  'I
simply offered to accompany you myself.'

Prestimion took her hands in his and  brought his face very close to hers.  They
were almost exactly of the same height. Smiling, he touched the tip of his  nose
to hers. 'You know that I love you,' he said softly. 'I feel that this is a trip
I should make alone. If you want to come with me, I'm not going to stop you. But
I'd rather just go down there myself and come back as fast as I can. It isn't as
though you and I won't  have plenty of time to  be in the Labyrinth together  in
the years to come.'

'You will come right back, then?'

'This time, yes. The next time I go, it'll be for a longer stay, I'm afraid.'

He had  had much  the same  kind of  conversation with  Dekkeret a  little while
earlier,  and  not a  very  different one  with  Septach Melayn.  They  were all
treating him as though he, and not Confalume, were the invalid. They viewed  the
probability of the Pontifex's death as an enormous crisis for him, and wanted to
gather around him, to protect and comfort him.

They were right to some  degree, of  course. It  was a big thing  he  was facing
not  this  visit to  the  Labyrinth, but  the  inescapable transition  that  lay
somewhere not far ahead in his life. Did they think, though, that he was  likely
to break down and  burst into tears the  moment he set foot  in the subterranean
capital? Did they believe  he was so incapable  of dealing with the  prospect of
becoming Pontifex that he  must have his nearest  and dearest beside him  at all
times? How  could he  explain to  them that  Coronals lived  every day  of their
lives, day and night,  in the awareness that  they might become Pontifex  at any
moment? That  possibility was  inherent in  the job;  anyone who  was unable  to
handle it was by that very fact unqualified to be Coronal.

In the  end, the  only member  of his  household who  went with  him was  Prince
Taradath. The boy had been  disappointed by the abrupt  termination of his  long
promised trip  to Fa,  and had  never seen  the Labyrinth,  besides. Meeting his
majesty the Pontifex would be a memorable thing for him.

And it  would be  useful for  Taradath to  get a  glimpse, however brief, of the
administrative machinery of the Pontificate. Taradath, at fifteen, showed  signs
of  ripening  into a  worthwhile  young man,  for  whom some  good  role in  the
government  no doubt  would be  found when  Dekkeret was  Coronal. The  sons  of
Coronals, aware that they could  never be Coronals themselves, often  turned out
to  be frivolous  idlers, or,  what was  much worse,  vainglorious  empty-headed
boobies like Korsibar. Prestimion hoped for better things from his own boys.

They took the customary route to the Labyrinth, down the River Glayge aboard the
royal  barge  through  the  fertile  agricultural  lowlands.  At  another   time
Prestimion  might  have  made  a little  processional  out  of  it, stopping  at
important river cities like Mitripond or Palaghat or Grewin, but he had promised
Varaile that this would  be a quick trip.  He entered the Labyrinth  through the
Mouth of Waters, the gate that Coronals used, and descended swiftly through  the
many levels of the underground city, past the warrens and burrows that were  the
offices of the bureaucrats and the grand architectural marvels below them -  the
Hall of Winds, the Court of Columns,  the Place of Masks, and the others,  those
strangely beautiful places that would seem  like places of wonder to anyone  who
loved the Labyrinth, as Prestimion doubted  he ever could - and arrived  at last
at the deepest level, the imperial sector, where the Pontifex had his lair.

Protocol called for the High Spokesman to the Pontifex, the Labyrinth's  ranking
official, to greet him. That post had  been held for the past five years  by the
venerable Duke Haskelorn of Chorg, a member of a family that traced its  descent
from the Pontifex Stalvok of ten  reigns earlier. Haskelorn was a man  nearly as
old as Confalume himself, plump and pink-faced, with long drooping cheeks and  a
thick roll of  flesh below his  chin. As was  the custom here,  he wore the tiny
mask across his  eyes and the  bridge of his  nose that was  a kind of  badge of
office among the officials of the Pontificate.

'Confalume -' Prestimion began at once.

'- is in fine health, and looks forward to seeing you at once, Lord Prestimion.'

Fine health? What was the High  Spokesman's idea of fine health? Prestimion  had
no idea what to  expect. But he was  confounded, upon entering the  vestibule of
the maze of rooms, a labyrinth  within the Labyrinth, that was the  residence of
the  Pontifex of  Majipoor. A  smiling Confalume,  formally clad  in the  ornate
scarlet-and-black  Pontifical robes,  was standing  -standing! -  in the  arched
doorway at the vestibule's inner end, holding his arms out toward Prestimion  in
a warm show of welcome.

Prestimion was so thoroughly  taken aback that it  was a moment before  he could
speak, and when he found his tongue the best he could do was stammer, 'They told
me - that you -you were -'

'Dying, Prestimion? Already well on my way back to the Source, eh? Whatever  you
may have heard, my son, here's the truth: I am risen from my bed of  affliction.
As you  see, the  Pontifex stands  on his  own two  legs. The  Pontifex walks. A
little  stiffly,  true,  but  he  walks.  He  speaks,  as  well.  Not  yet dead,
Prestimion, not even close  to it. - You  say nothing. Speechless with  joy, are
you? Yes, I suppose you are. You  are reprieved from the Labyrinth for a  little
while longer.'

'They said you had had a stroke.'

'A little swoon, let's say.' The Pontifex held up his left hand and clenched  it
into a fist. The second and fifth  fingers would not close; he had to  fold them
into place with his  other hand. 'A minor  bit of difficulty here,  you see? But
very minor. And the left leg -' Confalume took a few steps toward him. 'A slight
drag, you will notice. My dancing days are over. Well, it is not required of  me
at my age that I move very quickly. - You could call it a stroke, I suppose, but
not a very serious one.' And then, noticing Taradath standing behind him:  'Your
son, is he,  Prestimion? Grown almost  out of all  recognition since last  I saw
him. When was that, boy, five years ago, seven, when I was at the Castle?'

'Eight years ago,  your majesty,' said  Taradath, all too  plainly fighting back
his awe. 'I was seven years old, then.'

'And now you're as tall as your  father, not that that's such a difficult  thing
to achieve. And you've  got your mother's dark  complexion, too. Well, come  in,
come in, both of you! Don't just stand there!'

There was a quaver in Confalume's  voice, Prestimion observed, and he seemed  to
have  acquired  an  old man's  garrulity  as  well. But  he  appeared  to be  in
phenomenally fine  shape. Confalume  had always  been a  man of  more than usual
vigor and stamina,  of course.  Even now,  his stocky  frame was  still muscular
looking and his sweeping thatch of hair, though it had long since turned  white,
was as thick as ever. Only the  soft, papery texture of his cheeks betrayed  the
Pontifex's great age in any meaningful way.  And he did seem to have thrown  off
all but the most  trifling signs of the  stroke that had caused  such excitement
throughout both capitals of the realm.

He  led Prestimion  and Taradath  within. Few  visitors ever  ventured into  the
private Pontifical chambers. Confalume's famed collection of treasures decorated
every sill and alcove  and shelf: figurines  of spun glass,  carvings of  dragon
ivory inlaid with porphyry and onyx, jeweled caskets, a whole forest of  strange
trees fashioned from strands of woven silver, ancient coins and mounted insects,
leather-bound volumes of  antique lore, and  ever so much  more, the hoard  of a
long acquisitive  lifetime surrounding  him on  all sides.  Nor had the Pontifex
lost his fascination for the arts of wizardry, either: there were his  cherished
instruments of magic, still, his  ammatepalas and veralistias and his  armillary
spheres,  his rohillas  and his  protospathifars, his  powders and  potions  and
ointments. Perhaps,  thought Prestimion,  the old  man had  somehow been able to
magic himself up out of his  deathbed: certainly if faith in occult  matters was
sufficient to bring it about, Confalume would live forever.

The Pontifex poured wine  for Prestimion and himself,  and then for Taradath  as
well, and  showed the  boy through  some of  his rooms  of fanciful objects, and
engaged them in pleasant superficial  conversation about their journey down  the
Glayge, and current construction projects  at the Castle, and the  activities of
the Lady Varaile, and the like. It was all very charming and not in any way  how
Prestimion had expected the visit to unfold.

Taradath was no  longer awed. He  seemed to see  the Pontifex as  no more than a
kindly old grandfather, now.

'Were these  men all  Pontifexes too?'  he asked,  pointing to  the long  row of
painted medallions along the upper wall of the room.

'Indeed so,' Confalume replied. 'This is Prankipin here -you do remember him, of
course, don't you, Prestimion? - and  Gobryas who  was just before him  - Avinas
Kelimiphon - Amyntilir  -' He  could  put  a name  to each  portrait  'Dizimaule
Kanaba - Sirruth - Vildivar -'

Listening to Confalume go on and on, reciting the names of his predecessors  for
thousands  of  years, Prestimion  felt  a humbling  sense  of the  immensity  of
history, that great soaring  arch that disappeared at  its farther end into  the
mists of myth, and in which could be found, at the end that was anchored in  the
present day, none other than his own self.

Most of these men were little more than names to Prestimion. The achievements of
the Pondfexes Kanaba and Sirruth and Vildivar were known only to historians now.
More recent  ones, Gobryas,  Avinas, Kelimiphon,  yes, he  knew something  about
them, though from all accounts they had been mediocre rulers. The world had come
into hard times under the uninspired rule of such men as Gobryas and Avinas. But
Prestimion, looking upward at that long  array of faces, had a sudden  awareness
of himself as part of an extraordinary modern dynasty.

Prankipin, up there.  Coronal for  twenty years  or so  and Pontifex  for  forty
three, had inherited a weak and troubled world from his predecessor Gobryas  and
by wise measures and dynamic leadership had returned it to its former  grandeur.
If toward the end he had given way to the folly of sorcery and allowed the world
to  swarm with  wizards, well,  it was   a forgivable  flaw for  a man  who  had
accomplished so much. Then  here was Confalume, not  yet a portrait on  the wall
but an actual breathing man, Pontifex these twenty years past and Coronal  forty
three more  before that,  who had  built on  Prankipin's glorious foundation and
seen to  it that  prosperity became  even more  general among Majipoor's fifteen
billion people. He, too,  needed to be forgiven  for his passion for  magic, but
that was easy enough, Prestimion thought.

And  now  it  was the  turn  of  Prestimion of  Muldemar,  Lord  Prestimion now,
Prestimion Pontifex one day to be. Would he be deemed a worthy successor to  the
great Prankipin and  the splendid Confalume?  Perhaps so. Majipoor  was thriving
under his  guidance. He  had made  mistakes, yes,  but so  had Prankipin, so had
Confalume. His own  greatest achievement was  that he had  saved the world  from
misrule  under  Korsibar; but  no  one would  ever  know that.  Had  he achieved
anything else worthwhile? Certainly he hoped  that he had; but he of  all people
was in no position to know. He was still young, though. He would eventually,  so
he profoundly hoped and believed, be  ranked with those other two as  architects
of a golden age.

'And is this Stiamot?' Taradath asked.

'He's farther down the row, boy. Of  course, the artist had to guess at  what he
really looked like, but there he is. Here - let me show you -'

Amazingly spry,  the damaged  left leg  dragging only  a little,  Confalume went
shuffling toward the  far side of  the room. Prestimion  watched him going  from
portrait to portrait with Taradath, calling off the names of the early emperors.

The boy remained down there, peering  up solemnly at the faces of  Pondfexes who
had  ruled  this  world  when  Stiamot  himself  was  a  thousand  years unborn.
Confalume, returning to  where Prestimion still  sat, refilled their  wine-bowls
and said, in a low, confidendal  tone, 'The true reason you came  scurrying down
here  was that  you thought  I was  dying, wasn't  it? You  wanted to  check  my
condidon out with your own eyes.'

'I don't know what I  thought. But the news out  of the Labyrinth about you  was
very worrisome. It  seemed appropriate to  pay you a  visit. A man  of your age,
suffering a stroke -'

'I actually thought I was dying myself, as I felt it hit. But only while it  was
happening. I'm a long way from finished, Prestimion.'

'May it truly be so.'

'Are you saying that for my sake, or yours?' the Ponufex asked.

'Do you know how unkind that sounds?'

Confalume laughed. 'But it's realisdc, yes? You don't at all want to be Pontifex
yet.'

Prestimion cast a wary glance toward Taradath, who was practically at the end of
the hall,  now, probably  beyond earshot.  There was  a touch  oftesdness in his
voice as he responded, 'All of Majipoor wishes you condnued good health and long
life, your majesty. I am no exception to  that. But I do assure you that if  the
Divine should choose to gather  you in tomorrow, I am  in every way ready to  do
what will be asked of me.'

'Are you? Well,  yes, you say  you are, and  I must take  that at face  value, I
suppose.'  The Pontifex  closed his  eyes. He  seemed to  be staring  into  some
infinite recess of  time. Prestimion studied  the tiny fluttering  pulses in the
old man's  veined eyelids,  and waited,  and continued  to wait.  Had he  fallen
asleep? But then, abruptly, Confalume was looking straight at him again, and the
keen gray eyes  were as penetrating  as ever. 'I  do remember sitting  down here
with you a  long while ago,  your first visit  here after becoming  Coronal, and
telling you that after you'd  had the job for forty  years or so you'd be  quite
willing to move on to the Labyrinth. Do you recall that?'

'Yes. I do.'

'You're halfway to that forty years, now.  So you must be at least half  sincere
when  you tell  me you're  ready to  take over.  But have  no fear,  Prestimion.
There's still twenty  years more to  go.' Confalume pointed  toward the tabletop
that bore his  collection of astrological  devices. 'It happens  that I cast  my
horoscope  only  last  week.  Unless   there  was  some  serious  error   in  my
calculations, I'm going to live  to the age of a  hundred and ten. I'm going  to
have the longest reign of any Pontifex  in the history of Majipoor. What do  you
say to that, Prestimion? You are  relieved, aren't you? Confess it! You  are! At
least right  now, you  are. -  But I  can tell  you, my  young friend, you'll be
utterly sick of being Coronal by the time I make my trip back to the Source. You
won't mind leaving the Castle at all.  A time will come when you'll be  eager to
be Pontifex, believe me. You'll be  more than ready to retire to  the Labyrinth,
believe me -more than ready!'


On the way back up the  Glayge Prestimion pondered Confalume's words. He  had to
admit that he had  been deceiving himself, if  nobody else, in claiming  that he
was fully ready to let the  Pontificate descend upon him. His relief  at finding
Confalume in this unexpected state  of well-being was the unanswerable  proof of
that. It was a  reprieve, unquestionably a reprieve;  which meant that he  still
thought of  becoming Pontifex  as a  grim and  inexorable sentence,  rather than
simply a matter of  duty. Though he very  much doubted the worth  of Confalume's
astrological calculations, the evidence seemed  to indicate that it still  would
be a matter of some years before the world had its next change of rulers.

There was no getting  around the fact that  his mood was very  much lighter now.
That told him all he needed to know about his insistent professions of readiness
for life in the Labyrinth.

Before departing for the Castle, he took  Taradath on a brief tour of the  city.
The boy had seen wonders aplenty already in his short life, but the  strangeness
of the Labyrinth was like nothing else in the world, these vast echoing halls of
curious  design  that lay  so  far underground.  'The  Pool of  Dreams,  this is
called,' Prestimion  said, gesturing  toward the  calm greenish  water in  whose
depths mysterious images constantly came and went, some of supernal beauty, some
of  nightmare  repulsiveness,  one  moment's  scene  altogether  different  from
another. 'No one knows how it works. Or even which Pontifex put it here.'

The Place of Masks, where huge bodiless blind-eyed faces rose on marble  stalks.
The  Court  of Pyramids,  a  zone of  thousands  of close-set  white  monoliths,
purposeless, inexplicable. The  Hall of Winds,  where cold air  emerged in great
bursting gusts from stone  grids, though they were  deep beneath the surface  of
the world. The Court of Globes - the Cabinet of Floating Swords - the Chamber of
Miracles - the Temple of Unknown Gods -

The next  day Prestimion  and his  son took  the swift  shaft to the surface and
returned to the Mouth of Waters, where the royal barge was waiting to carry them
upriver to the  Castle. But they  had only reached  Maurix, three days'  journey
north of  the Labyrinth,  when they  were overtaken  by a fast-moving rivercraft
that flew the Pontifical flag.

The messenger who came on board had  but to speak two words and Prestimion  knew
what had happened.

'Your majesty -'

It was the  phrase one used  when addressing a  Pontifex. The rest  of the story
followed  only too  quickly. Confalume  was dead,  most suddenly,  of a   second
stroke. Prestimion would  have to return  to the Labyrinth  to preside over  his
final rites and begin the process of taking over the Pontifical duties.



13

The resemblance was an astonishing one, Mandralisca thought.

Venghenar Barjazid, the dead one, he of the devilish mind-controlling  machines,
had been an evil-looking little man whose  eyes were not quite of the same  size
or color nor even set on a straight  line in his head, and whose lips slid  away
sideways toward the  left side to  give him a  permanent smirk, and  whose skin,
dark and leathery and thick from a lifetime of exposure to the ferocious Suvrael
sunlight, was as wrinkled and folded as a canavong's hide.

Mandralisca found this  new Barjazid just  as charmingly repellent  as his elder
brother had been. A powerful intuition told him, from his very first glimpse  of
the man, that  he had found  a significant ally  in the contest  for world power
that lay ahead.

This one was every bit as mean and scrawny of form and disagreeable of visage as
his late brother.  His eyes too  were mismated and  misaligned and had  the same
harsh brightness; his lips too were drawn off into a mocking grimace; he too had
the folded, blackened skin of one  who has lived too long in  barren sun-blasted
Suvrael. He looked a shade taller  than Venghenar had been, perhaps, and  just a
touch less self-assured. Mandralisca supposed  that he was around fifty:  older,
now, than Venghenar had been when he had brought his pack of devices to Dantirya
Sambail.

And he, too, seemed  to have come bearing  merchandise. He had brought  with him
into the  room a  shapeless, bulging  leather-trimmed cloth  bag, frayed  at the
center, which he set down very carefully by his side when he took the seat  that
Mandralisca  offered. Mandralisca  gave the  bag a  quick sidelong  glance.  The
things must be in there, he felt certain: the new collection of useful toys that
the Barjazid had brought here to sell to him.

But Mandralisca was never in a hurry  to enter into any sort of negotiation.  It
is essential, he believed,  that one must first  determine who is going  to have
the upper hand. And that one will be the one who has the greater willingness  to
delay getting down to the heart of the matter.

'Your grace,' said Barjazid, with a smarmy little bow. 'What a pleasure to  meet
at last. My late brother spoke of you to me with the highest praise.'

'We worked well together, yes.'

'It's my fervent hope that you'll say the same of me.'

'Mine as well. - How  did you know where to  find me? And why did  you think I'd
have any reason to want to see you?'

'In truth I thought you had perished long ago, on that same day in the Stoienzar
when my brother died.  But then word reached  me that you had  escaped, and were
alive and well and living somewhere in this region.'

'Word of my whereabouts reached as  far as Suvrael?' Mandralisca asked. 'I  find
that surprising.'

'Word travels, your grace. Also I have some knowledge of how to make  inquiries.
I learned that you were  here; that you were in  the employ of the five  sons of
one of  the Procurator's  brothers, and  that they  perhaps had  some thought of
regaining the power in Zimroel that  their famous uncle once had wielded;  and I
felt that I might be able to assist you in that enterprise. And so I sent you  a
message to that effect.'

'And  took  your  sweet  time  getting  here,'  Mandralisca  said.  'Your letter
indicated that you'd be here almost a year ago. What happened?'

'There were delays en route,' said  Khaymak Barjazid. The quick reply seemed  to
Mandralisca to be a shade too gift). 'You must understand, your grace, that it's
a long journey from Suvrael to here.'

'Not that long. I interpreted your letter  to mean that you wanted to meet  with
me right away. Obviously that was incorrect.'

Barjazid looked at him appraisingly. The tip of his tongue slipped into view for
an instant, flickering like a serpent's. Softly he said, 'I came here by way  of
Alhanroel, your grace. The shipping schedule favored that route. Besides, I have
a nephew, my only living kinsman, in the service of the Coronal at Castle Mount.
I wanted to see him again before I headed this way.'

'Castle Mount, as  I recall it,  lies some thousands  of miles distant  from the
nearest seaport.'

'The Mount is somewhat out of the way, I admit. But it has been many years since
I last had the pleasure  of speaking with my brother's  son. If I am to  give my
allegiance to you  here in Zimroel,  as is my  hope, I will  probably never have
another chance for that.'

'I know about that  nephew,' Mandralisca said. He  also had known about  Khaymak
Barjazid's visit to Castle  Mount; but it was  a point in Barjazid's  favor that
the man had volunteered to  reveal it himself. Mandralisca steepled  his fingers
and peered  contemplatively at  Barjazid over  their tips.  'Your nephew  turned
traitor  against his  own father,  is that  not so?  It was  with your  nephew's
invaluable assistance that  Prestimion was able  to weaken Dantirya  Sambail and
leave him vulnerable to the attack that cost the Procurator his life. One  might
even say that  your brother's death  in the same  battle was also  your nephew's
direct responsibility. What sort of love can you feel for such a person, kinsman
or no? Why would you want to visit him?'

Barjazid shifted  about uneasily.  'Dinitak was  only a  boy when  he did  those
things. He came under Prince Dekkeret's  influence, and let himself be swept  up
in  a  flight  of youthful  enthusiasm  for  Lord Prestimion,  and  that  led to
consequences  that I  know he  could not  have foreseen.  I wanted  to find  out
whether over the years he had come  to see the error of his ways:  whether there
could be any reconciliation between us.'

'And -?'

'It was  asinine of  me to  think that  such a  thing was  possible. He's  still
Prestimion's man through and through, and Dekkeret's. They own him completely. I
should have known better than to expect  to find any trace of family feeling  in
him. He refused even to see me.'

'How sad.' Mandralisca did  not even try to  sound compassionate. 'You went  all
the way to the Castle, and your visit was for nought!'

'Sir, I could get no  closer to the Castle than  the city of High Morpin.  By my
nephew's explicit orders,  I was denied  permission to approach  any nearer than
that.'

A very touching story, Mandralisca thought. But not an entirely convincing one.

It was  easy enough  to find  a more  likely explanation  for Khaymak Barjazid's
lengthy detour to Castle  Mount. Quite likely the  thought had occurred to  him,
after he had decided to sell his services to the Five Lords, that there might be
a better  price available  elsewhere. There  was no  question that  this man was
carrying valuable merchandise in that  worn bag. Obviously, too, he  was looking
to peddle it to the highest bidder; and the world's deepest pockets belonged  to
Lord Prestimion.

IfDinitak Barjazid had been willing to spend just five minutes listening to  his
uncle's blandishments, this conversation would not now be happening, Mandralisca
knew. A lucky thing for us, he  told himself, that the younger Barjazid has  the
good taste to want to have nothing to do with his disreputable uncle.

'An unhappy adventure,' he said. 'But at  least you have it out of your  system.
And now - perhaps somewhat later than I expected you would - you do at last show
up here.'

'No one regrets the delay more than  I do, your grace. But, indeed, I  am here.'
He smiled, revealing  a set of  nasty snags. 'And  I have brought  with me those
certain things to which I alluded in my letter.'

Mandralisca glanced once more at the bag. 'Which are contained in that?'

'They are.'

He took that as his  cue. 'Very well, my friend.  Has the point arrived, do  you
think, at which we can begin discussing our business?'

'We have already begun our business, your grace,' said Khaymak Barjazid  calmly,
making no movement toward  the bag. Mandralisca gave  him some points for  that.
Barjazid also knew the dangers of overeagerness, and was testing his ability  to
make Mandralisca wait. It was rare that he found himself outplayed like this.

Very well.  He would  allow Barjazid  a small  victory here.  He waited,  saying
nothing now.

Again the tongue-rip briefly flickered forth. 'You know, I think, that before my
lamented brother  came into  the employ  of the  Procurator Dantirya Sambail, he
operated a guide service in Suvrael,  among other enterprises. Prior to that  he
spent some years at  the Castle, serving as  an aide to Duke  Svor ofTolaghai, a
close friend  of Prestimion,  who was  merely Prince  ofMuldemar then. There was
also at the Castle then a certain Vroon, Thalnap Zeiifor by name, who -'

Mandralisca felt a burst of irritation. This was overdoing it. Having seized the
advantage,  Barjazid  was all  too  evidently reveling  in  his control  of  the
conversation. 'Where is this story heading?' Mandralisca demanded. 'Back to Lord
Stiamot, is it?'

'If I might have your indulgence one moment more, sir.'

Again he allowed himself to subside. There had been a won-drously oily way about
Barjazid's saying that  that Mandralisca was  forced to admire.  This man was  a
worthy adversary.

Barjazid continued  unruffledly. 'If  you are  aware of  these matters  already,
forgive me. I  want only to  clarify my own  role in my  brother's affairs, with
which you may not be familiar.'

'Go on.'

'Permit me to remind you that this Thalnap Zeiifor, a wizard by trade as  people
of his  race tend  to be,  was a  maker of  devices capable  of penetrating  the
secrets of  a person's  mind. Prestimion,  when he  became Coronal,  exiled this
Vroon for some reason to Suvrael,  and placed my brother in charge  of escorting
him there. Unfortunately the Vroon died  en route; but he had been  good enough,
first, to give my  brother some instruction in  the art of using  his devices, a
number of which he had brought with him from the Castle.'

'None of this is new to me, so far.'

'But you will not have known that I, since I have a certain gift for  mechanical
matters, assisted  my brother  in experimenting  with these  things and  gaining
knowledge of  their operation.  Later, I  even designed  some improved models of
them. All this was  in Tolaghai city in  Suvrael, many years ago.  Then came the
episode - perhaps you are aware of  it, sir - when Prince Dekkeret, then  a very
young man and not  yet a prince, visited  Suvrael about that time,  had a rather
unfortunate  encounter  with my  brother  and his  son,  and took  them  both as
prisoners to Castle Mount, along with much of the mind-reading equipment.'

'Your brother told me that, yes.'

'Likewise you know that  my brother, escaping from  the Castle, fled to  western
Alhanroel and made common cause with Dantirya Sambail.'

'Yes,' said Mandralisca. 'I was there  when he arrived. I was there,  also, when
Prestimion, using  one of  these devices  that had  been brought  to him by your
nephew Dinitak, made it possible for an army under Gialaurys and Septach  Melayn
to locate  our camp  and kill  both the  Procurator and  your brother,  and very
nearly  myself as  well. The  mind-reading devices  all fell  into  Prestimion's
hands. I assume he has them locked safely away somewhere at the Castle.'

'Very likely he does.'

Mandralisca looked yet  again, more pointedly  this time, at  Khaymak Barjazid's
battered, bulging  bag. Enough  of this  recitation of  ancient history: the sly
little man was carrying  the game too far.  Mandralisca would not be  toyed with
any longer.

In a brusque, cool tone he said,  'This is a sufficient prologue, I think.  Many
tasks await me today. Show me what you have for me, now.'

Barjazid smiled. He drew the bag up on his knees and pressed his fingers to  its
latch. From within he  drew a sheaf of  parchment sheets, which he  unrolled and
spread out  over the  open lid  of the  bag. 'These  are the  original plans for
Thalnap Zeiifor's various instruments of mind control. They have remained in  my
possession in Suvrael ever since the time when my brother was carried off to the
Mount as Dekkeret's prisoner.'

'May I see them?' Mandralisca reached forth a hand.

'Of course, your grace. Here are the sketches for three successive models of the
device, each one of greater power than  the one before. This is the first.  This
is the one that my nephew stole and delivered to Lord Prestimion for use against
my brother.  And this  is the  one that  my brother  himself was  wearing in the
climactic battle when Prestimion broke through his defenses.'

Mandralisca riffled through the parchment  sheets. Barjazid was safe in  showing
them to him: they made no sense to him whatever.

'And  those?' he  said, nodding  toward several  other sheets  still in  Khaymak
Barjazid's hands.

'The designs for later  models, still more powerful,  of which I spoke  a moment
ago. In  the intervening  years I've  continued to  play with  the Vroon's basic
concepts. I believe that I have made some important advances in the state of the
art.'

'You only believe?'

'I have not yet had the opportunity to perform tests.'

'Out of fear that you'd be detected by Prestimion's people?'

'In part, yes. But also -  these are  very expensive things to  manufacture, sir
you must bear in mind that I am not a wealthy man -'

'I see.' They  were being invited  to finance the  Barjazid's research. 'So  the
truth is you have no working models, then.'

'I have this,' Barjazid  said, and drew a  flimsy-looking metal helmet from  the
bag. It was a shimmering lacework  of delicate red strands interwoven with  gold
ones, with  a triple  row of  heavier bronze  cords running  over its crest. Its
design was far  simpler than that  of the one  Mandralisca remembered the  other
Barjazid wearing in the final struggle in the Stoienzar. That was probably  due,
to some degree, to a greater refinement of the concept. But the thing seemed too
simple. It seemed incomplete, unfinished.

'What can it do?' Mandralisca asked.

'In its present form? Nothing. The necessary connections are not yet in place.'

'And if they were?'

'If they were, the wearer of the  helmet could reach out to anyone in  the world
and place  dreams in  his mind.  Very powerful  dreams, your  grace. Frightening
dreams.  Painful  dreams,  if  that were  desired.  Dreams  that  could break  a
person'swill. That could beat him to the ground and make him beg for mercy.'

'Indeed,' Mandralisca said.

He ran his fingers slowly over  the lacy meshes, exploring them, fondling  them.
He draped the helmet over his head,  spreading it out, noting how light it  was,
scarcely noticeable. He took it off and folded it and folded it again, until  it
was  small  enough  to  fit  within  his  closed  hand.  He  weighed  it  on his
outstretched palm. He  nodded approvingly, but  did not say  anydiing. Perhaps a
minute went by. Perhaps more.

Khaymak  Barjazid  watched  the  entire  performance  with  what  could  only be
interpreted as mounting anxiety and concern.

Finally he  said, 'Do  you think  you would  have use  for such  a device,  your
grace?'

'Oh, yes. Yes, certainly. But will it work?'

'It can be made to. All of the  instruments shown on these plans can be made  to
work. It merely requires money.'

'Yes. Of course.' Mandralisca stood up, went to the door, stood staring out into
the brightness of the  desert morning for a  long while. He tossed  the Barjazid
helmet lightly from hand to hand. What would it be like, he wondered, to be able
to send dreams into the mind of one's enemy? Painful dreams, Barjazid had  said.
Nightmares.  Worse  than  nightmares.  A  host  of  terrifying  images.   Things
fluttering  by, dangling  on fine  metal wires.  An endless  army of  big  black
beetles marching across the floor, making ugly rustling sounds with their  feet.
Transparent fingers tickling the channels of the mind. Slow spirals of pure fear
congealing and twisting in  the tortured brain. And  - gradually - a  sobbing, a
whimpering, a begging for mercy -

'Come outside with me,' he said  to Barjazid over his shoulder, without  looking
back toward the other man.

They walked up the ridge  to a point where several  of the domed palaces of  the
Lords could be  seen in the  distance. 'Do you  know what those  buildings are?'
Mandralisca asked.

'They are the dwellings of the Five Lords. The boy who brought me to you told me
that.'

'So you know that they call themselves the Five Lords, do you? What else do  you
know about them?'

'That they are  the sons of  one ofDantirya Sambail's  brothers. That they  have
lately laid claim to power in certain sectors of central Zimroel. That they have
taken upon themselves the title of the Lords of Zimroel.'

'You knew all those things when you wrote me that letter?'

'All but the part about their calling themselves the Lords of Zimroel.'

'Why would  news of  any of  these matters  have traveled  all the  way down  to
Suvrael?'

'I told you, your grace, I have some skill at making inquiries.'

'Apparently you do. The Coronal himself, so far as I know, is ignorant of what's
been going on in this part of Zimroel.'

'But when he finds out -?'

'Why, there'll be war, I suppose,' Mandralisca said. He swung about to face  the
little man. 'I propose to speak very directly, now. These five Lords of  Zimroel
are stupid and vicious men. I despise everything about them. As you get to  know
them', so will you. Nevertheless, there  are millions of people here in  Zimroel
who regard them as the rightful heirs of Dantirya Sambail and will follow  their
banner, once it is openly raised, in a war of independence against the Alhanroel
government. Which I believe we can win, with your aid.'

'That would please me greatly. It was Prestimion and his people who destroyed my
brother.'

'You'll  have your  revenge, then.  Dantirya Sambail  tried twice  to  overthrow
Prestimion, but because he was already master of Zimroel he attempted both times
to carry the insurrection  into Alhanroel. That was  a mistake. The Coronal  and
Pontifex  can't be  beaten in  their own  territory by  invaders from   Zimroel.
Alhanroel is too big to be conquered from outside, and lines of supply can't  be
sustained across thousands of miles. But the opposite is also true. No army from
the other continent could ever subjugate all of Zimroel.'

'You intend to establish Zimroel as a separate nation, then?'

'Why not? Why  should we be  subservient to Alhanroel?  What advantage to  us is
there in being governed by a king and an emperor who live half a world away from
us? I  will proclaim  one of  the five  brothers, the  most intelligent  one, as
Pontifex of Zimroel. One of the others will be his Coronal. And we will be  free
of Alhanroel at last'

'There is a third continent, 'said Barjazid. 'Do you have some plan in mind  for
Suvrael?'

'No,' said Mandralisca. The question took  him by surprise. He realized that  he
had given Suvrael no thought at all. 'But if it cares to make itself independent
too, I suppose that could be managed easily enough. Prestimion's not such a fool
as to try to send an army down  into your horrifying deserts, and if he did  the
heat would kill them all in six months, anyway.'

An avid glitter appeared in Barjazid's mismatched eyes. 'Suvrael would have  its
own king, then.'

'It could. It could indeed.' He saw suddenly what Barjazid was driving at, and a
broad grin crossed his  face. 'Bravo, my friend!  Bravo! You've named the  price
for your assistance, haven't you? Khaymak the First of Suvrael! Well, let it  be
so. I congratulate you, your highness!'

'I thank you, your  grace.' Barjazid gave him  a warm smile of  appreciation and
fellowship. 'A Pontifex of Zimroel... a king of Suvrael... And what role do  you
see for  yourself, Count  Mandralisca, once  these brothers  are established  on
their thrones?'

'I? I'll be privy counsellor, as I  am now. They'll continue to need someone  to
tell them what to do. And I'll be the one who tells them.'

'Ah. Yes, of course.'

'We understand each other, I think.'

'I think we do. What's the next move, then?'

'Why, you have  to build us  your devilish machines.  That'll allow us  to start
making life difficult for Prestimion.'

'Very good. I propose to set up a workshop right away in Ni-moya, and -'

'No,' Mandralisca said. 'Not  Ni-moya. Here is where  you'll do your work,  your
highness.'

'Here? I'll need special equipment - materials - skilled workmen, perhaps. In  a
remote desert outpost like this, I can't possibly -'

'You can and will. A Suvraelinu like you shouldn't have any problem dealing with
desert conditions. We'll bring in whatever  you need from Ni-moya. But you  have
joined us now, my  friend. This is your  place, now. Here is  where you'll stay,
and live and do your work, until the war is won.'

'You make it seem as though you don't trust me, your grace.'

'I trust no one, my friend. Not even myself.'



14

Dekkeret  returned  to  the  Castle by  the  quickest  route,  taking the  Grand
Calintane Highway, which  terminated in the  broad open space  paved with smooth
green porcelain cobblestones  that was the  Dizimaule Plaza. His  floater passed
over the huge starburst  in golden tilework that  lay at its center  and carried
him through  the great  Dizimaule Arch,  the main  entrance to  the Castle,  the
gateway to  the southern  wing. The  guards stationed  in the  guardhouse on the
arch's left side waved  to him as he  passed through, and he  acknowledged their
salute with a brief, stiff one of his own.

There was an air of barely suppressed tension in the corridors of the Castle  as
he made his way  inward. The faces of  those who greeted him  at each checkpoint
were tightly drawn and solemn; lips were clamped, eyes were hooded.

'From the look  of them all,'  he said to  Dinitak, 'it would  be easy enough to
believe that the Pontifex has died in the time it took us to get back here  from
Normork.'

'You would know it already, I think,' said Dinitak.

'I suppose I would.'

Yes. They  would be  hailing him  as Coronal,  would they  not, if Confalume had
died? People kneeling, making the starburst salute, calling out the  traditional
cry:  'Dekkeret!  Lord Dekkeret!  All  hail Lord  Dekkeret!  Long life  to  Lord
Dekkeret!' Even though he would not  truly become Coronal until the Council  had
given its assent and Prestimion  had formally proclaimed him. But  everyone knew
who the next Coronal was going to be.

Lord Dekkeret. How strange  that sounded to him!  How difficult for his  mind to
encompass!

'It's simply a disquieting time for everyone,' Dinitak said. 'It must always  be
this way,  when a  change of  reign is  in the  air. The  old masters  leave the
Castle; new ones  arrive; nothing will  be the same  again for anyone  who lives
here.' They were at the threshold of the Inner Castle now. The Ninety-Nine Steps
rose before them. There they paused. Dinitak's rooms were on this level, far off
to the left; Dekkeret lived above, in the suite in the Munnerak Tower that  once
had  been occupied  by Prestimion.  'I should  leave you  here,' Dinitak   said.
'You'll need to meet with the Council - with the Lady Varaile, too, I imagine -'

'Thank you for accompanying me to Normork,' Dekkeret said. 'For sitting  through
those deadly banquets, and all the rest.'

'No need for thanks. I go where you ask me to go.'

They embraced quickly, and then Dinitak was gone.

Dekkeret mounted the ancient, well-worn steps  two at a time. Lord Dekkeret,  he
thought. Lord Dekkeret. Lord Dekkeret. Lord Dekkeret. Astonishing. Unbelievable.

It had not yet  happened, though. No new  bulletins had come from  the Labyrinth
since  he had  received the  message summoning  him back  from Normork.  Septach
Melayn, the first member of the Council Dekkeret encountered after entering  the
Inner Castle, was the one who provided him with that news.

The long-shanked swordsman was waiting for him in the little square outside  the
Prankipin Treasury, just at the top  of the Ninety-Nine Steps. 'You made  a fast
journey of it, Dekkeret! We didn't expect you until tomorrow.'

'I left as soon as I got the message. Where's Prestimion?'

'Halfway down the Glayge on his  way to the Labyrinth, I expect.  Came whistling
back from Fa the moment we got the news, spent about three minutes with the Lady
Varaile, and turned right around and headed south. Wants to pay his respects  to
old  Confalume, you  know, while  there's still  the chance.  I'm surprised  you
didn't pass him on the way up.'

'Then Confalume is still -'

'Alive? So far as we know, he is,' said Septach Melayn. 'Of course, it takes  so
damned long for us to find anything  out up here of what's going on  down below.
Phraatakes Rem says the stroke isn't a serious one.'

'Can we trust him? It's in his interest  to maintain as long as he can that  his
master the Pontifex is still running the  show. I know of cases where the  death
of a Pontifex has been covered up for weeks. Months.'

Septach Melayn said, with a shrug, 'Of that, my lad, what can I say? For my  own
part, I'd prefer that Confalume go on being Pontifex for the next fifty years. I
understand that you might very well hold a different position about that.'

'No,' Dekkeret  said, catching  hold of  Septach Melayn's  wrist and putting his
face very near to the older man's. He  was one of a very few Castle princes  who
came close to matching Septach Melayn in height. 'No,' he said again, in a  low,
dark tone. 'You are altogether mistaken  in that, Septach Melayn. If the  Divine
means me to be  Coronal someday, well, I'll  be ready for the  task, whenever it
comes to me. But I am in no way eager for it to come before its time. Anyone who
thinks otherwise is in great error.'

Septach Melayn  smiled. 'Easy,  Dekkeret! I  meant no  offense. N.one  whatever.
Come:  I'll see  you to  your rooms,  so you  can refresh  yourself after   your
journey. The  Council will  be in  session later  this afternoon  in the Stiamot
throne-room. You should attend, if you will.'

'I'll be there,' said Dekkeret.


But it  was a  pointless, useless  meeting. What  was there  to say? The highest
levels of the government were in a kind of paralysis. The Pontifex had  suffered
a stroke, perhaps was on the verge  of dying, might even already have died.  The
Coronal had gone off to the Labyrinth, as was appropriate, to attend the bedside
of  the  senior  monarch.  In  both  capitals  the  ordinary  functions  of  the
bureaucracy continued as usual, but  the ministers who directed those  functions
found themselves caught in stasis, not knowing from one day to the next how long
it would be before they would have to leave office.

Without any real information to work with, the members of the Council could only
offer up  high-minded statements  of hope  that the  Pontifex would  recover his
faculties and continue his long and glorious reign. But the uncertainty left its
mark on every  face. When Confalume  died, some of  these men would  be asked to
join the administration of the new Pontifex at the Labyrinth, and others, passed
over by the incoming Coronal, would  be forced into retirement after many  years
close to the mainsprings  of power. Either alternative  carried with it its  own
problems; and no one could be certain of what would be offered him.

All eyes were on  Dekkeret. But Dekkeret had  his own destinies to  consider. He
said little  during the  meeting. It  behooved him  to remain  quiet during this
ambiguous period. A Coronal-designate is a very different thing from a Coronal.

When it  was over,  he retreated  to his  private apartments.  He had a pleasant
suite, by no  means the grandest  of its kind;  but it had  been good enough for
Prestimion when he  was the Coronal-designate,  and Dekkeret found  it more than
satisfactory. The  rooms were  large and  well arranged,  and the  view, through
great curving multifaceted windows, the work of cunning craftsmen from Stee, was
a spectacular one  into the abyss  called the Morpin  Plunge that bordered  this
wing of the Castle.

He  met briefly  with his  personal staff:  Dalip Amrit,  the tactful   one-time
schoolmaster  from  Normork  who  was  his  private  secretary,  and   bustling,
hyperefficient Singobinda Mukund, the master of the household, a ruddy-faced  Ni
moyan, and Countess  Auranga ofBibiroon, who  served as his  official hostess in
the absence of  any consort. They  brought him up  to date on  the events of his
absence from the Castle. Then he sent them away, and slipped gratefully into the
great bathing-tub of black Khyntor marble for a long quiet soak before dinner.

It was his  thought to eat  alone and get  to sleep early.  But he had  scarcely
donned his dressing-gown after his bath  when Dalip Amrit came to him  with word
that the Lady Varaile requested his presence at dinner that evening in the royal
residence at Lord Thraym's Tower, if he had no other plans.

One did  not treat  invitations from  the Coronal's  consort casually.  Dekkeret
changed into  formal costume,  a long-waisted  golden doublet  and close-fitting
violet hose  trimmed with  velvet stripes,  and arrived  punctually at the royal
dining-hall.

He was, it seemed,  the only guest. That  surprised him just a  little; he would
have expected Septach Melayn, perhaps,  or Prince Teotas and the  Lady Fiorinda,
or some  other members  of the  inner court.  But Varaile  alone awaited him, so
simply dressed in a long green tunic and a wide-sleeved yellow over-blouse  that
he felt abashed by his own formality.

She presented her cheek for a kiss.  They had always been close friends, he  and
the Lady Varaile. She  was no more than  a year or two  older than he was,  and,
like him, had  been snatched up  suddenly out of  a commoner's life  to make her
home among the lords and ladies of  the Castle. But she had been born  to wealth
and privilege,  the daughter  of the  infinitely rich  merchant banker  Simbilon
Khayf of  the great  city of  Stee, whereas  he was  only the  son of  a hapless
itinerant salesman; and so Dekkeret had  always looked up to Varaile as  someone
who moved easily and  comfortably among the aristocracy  of the Mount, while  he
had had to master the knack of it slowly and with great difficulty, as one might
learn some advanced kind of mathematics.

Over bowls  of golden-brown  Sippulgar dates  and warm  milk laced  with the red
brandy of Narabal she asked him pleasantly about his visit to Normork. She spoke
fondly of his mother, whom she liked greatly; and she told him a few quick  bits
of  Castle  gossip that  had  reached her  ears  while he  was  away, lively  if
insignificant tales of tangled intrigues involving certain men and women of  the
court old enough to have known better.  It was as if nothing in any  way unusual
had taken place in the world lately.

Then she said, as a course of pale-fleshed quaalfish simmered in sweet wine  was
set  before  them,  'You  know,  of course,  that  Prestimion  has  gone  to the
Labyrinth?'

'Septach Melayn told me this afternoon. Will the Coronal be gone long?'

'As long as is necessary, I would think.' Varaile turned her huge, dark, glowing
eyes on him  with sudden unexpected  intensity. 'This time  he'll return to  the
Casde when he's done. But the next time he goes there -'

'Yes. I know, lady.'

'You have  no reason  to look  so stricken.  For you  it will  mean the  call to
greatness, Dekkeret. But for me - for Lord Prestimion - for our children -'

She stared at him reproachfully. That  struck him as unwarranted: did she  think
him so insensitive that he would not understand her predicament? But for love of
her he kept his voice gentle. 'Yet in truth, Varaile, the death of the  Pontifex
means the same thing for us  all: change. Huge and incomprehensible change.  You
and yours go to the Labyrinth; I don  a crown and take my seat on the  Confalume
Throne. Do you  think I'm any  less apprehensive than  you are about  what is to
come?'

She softened a little. 'We should not quarrel, Dekkeret.'

'Are we quarreling, lady?'

She left the  question unanswered. 'The  strain of these  anxieties has made  us
both edgy. I wanted only a friendly visit. We are friends, are we not?'

'You know that we are.'

He reached for the  wine-flask to refresh their  glasses. She reached for  it at
the same  moment; their  hands collided,  the flask  toppled. Dekkeret caught it
just before it overturned. They both laughed at the clumsiness that this present
unrest was  creating in  them, and  their laughter  broke, for  the moment,  the
tensions that had sprung up between them.

She was right, Dekkeret knew. She was facing the tremendous sacrifice of  giving
up her familiar  and beautiful surroundings  in order to  live in a  distant and
disagreeable place. He, though, would move  on to the post that would  bring him
fame and glory, the one for which he had been preparing himself for ten years or
more. What comparison was there, really, in their situations? He told himself to
be more gentle with her.

'We should  talk of  other things,'  she said.  'Have you  spoken with  the Lady
Fulkari since your return to the Castle?'

Dekkeret found it an unfortunate change of subject. Tautly he said, 'Not yet. Is
there some special reason why I should?'

Varaile seemed flustered. 'Why, only that - she is very eager to see you. And  I
thought that you - having been gone more than a week -'

'Would be just as eager to see her,' Dekkeret finished, when it became  apparent
that Varaile either could not  or would not. 'Well, yes,  I am. Of course I  am.
But not the first thing. I need  a little time to collect myself. If  you hadn't
summoned me tonight,  I'd have spent  the evening in  solitude, resting from  my
trip, pondering the future, contemplating the responsibilies to come.'

'I beg your  pardon for calling  you away from  your contemplations, then,'  she
said, and there was no mistaking the  acidity in her tone. 'I was very  specific
in saying  that you  were to  come to  me only  if you  had no  other plans  for
tonight. I thought perhaps that you might prefer to be with Fulkari. But even an
evening of quiet  solitary meditation is  a plan, Dekkeret.  You certainly could
have refused.'

'I certainly could not,' he said. 'Not an invitation from you. And so here I am.
Fulkari didn't send for me, and you did. Not that I understand why, Varaile. For
what purpose, exactly, did  you ask me here  this evening? Simply to  lament the
possibility that you'll have to go to the Labyrinth?'

'I think that we're quarreling again,' said Varaile lightly.

He would have  taken her hand  in his, if  he dared such  familiarities with the
Coronal's wife. Taking care to keep his tone temperate and mild, he said,  'This
is a difficult time for us both, and  the stress is taking its toll. Let me  ask
you a  second time:  why am  I here?  Was it  only because  you wanted someone's
company tonight? You could have invited Teotas and Fiorinda, then, or Gialaurys,
or Maundigand-Klimd, even. But you sent for me, even though you thought I  might
be spending the evening with Fulkari.'

She said,  'I asked  for you  because I  think of  you as  a friend, someone who
understands the emotions I feel as the possibility of a change in the government
begins  to  unfold,  someone  who  -  as  you  yourself  pointed  out  -  may be
experiencing similar  feelings himself.  But also  it was  a way  of finding out
whether you were going to be with Fulkari tonight.'

'Ah. How devious, Varaile.'

'Do you think so? In that case, I suppose it was.'

'Why is that something you would want to know?'

'There are tales around the Castle that you have lost interest in her.'

'Untrue.'

'Well, then, do you love her, Dekkeret?'

He felt heat surging to his cheeks. This was unfair. 'You know that I do.'

'And yet, your first night back, you preferred your own company to hers.'

Dekkeret toyed with his napkin, twisting it in his hands, crumpling it. 'I  told
you, Varaile: I wanted to be alone. To think about - what is coming for us  all.
If Fulkari had wanted to see me, she would only have had to say so, and I  would
have gone to her, just as I've come  to you. But no message came from her,  only
from you.'

'Perhaps she was waiting first to see what you would do.'

'And now she'll think I'm your lover, is that it?'

Varaile smiled. 'I doubt  that very much. What  she will think, though,  is that
she can't  be very  important to  you. Why  else would  you be avoiding her like
this, on your first night back? That's a mark of indifference, not of passion.'

'You heard me say that I love her. She knows that too.'

'Does she?'

Dekkeret's eyebrows rose. 'Have I left her in doubt of that, do you think?'

'Have you spoken with her of marriage, Dekkeret?'

'Not yet, no. Ah - new I see the true purpose of your calling me here!' Dekkeret
glanced away. 'She asked you to do this, eh?' he said coldly.

Anger flared a moment in Varaile's eyes. 'You come very close to the edge with a
question like  that. But  no, no,  Dekkeret: this  is none  of her  doing. I  am
entirely to blame. Will you believe that?'

'I would never challenge your word, milady.'

'All right, then, Dekkeret: here is the crux. You will soon become Coronal: that
is clear. The  custom among us  is for the  Coronal to have  a wife. The  king's
consort has important  functions of her  own at the  Castle, and if  there is no
consort who is to perform those functions?'

So that  was it!  Dekkeret did  not reply.  He cupped  his winebowl  and held it
without putting it to his lips, and waited for her to continue.

'You're no longer a  boy, Dekkeret. Unless I've  lost count, and I  doubt that I
have, you'll be forty soon. You've kept company with the Lady Fulkari for - what
is  it, three  years now?  - and   not said  a word  to anyone  about  marriage.
Including, apparently,  to her.  It's a  subject that  ought to  be on your mind
now.'

'It is. Believe me, Varaile, it is.'

'And will Fulkari be your choice, do you think?'

'You press me too hard here, lady. I ask you to give over this inquisition.  You
are my  queen, and  also one  of my  dearest friends,  but these  are matters  I
propose to keep to myself, if I  may.' Pushing back his chair, he looked  at her
in a way that set up a wall of silence between them.

Now it was her hand that reached  out for his. Affectionately she said, 'It  was
never my intention to cause you any discomfort, Dekkeret. I only wanted to speak
my mind about something that causes me great concern.'

'I tell you once again: I do love Fulkari. I don't know whether I want to  marry
her, nor am I sure if she  wants me. There are problems between Fulkari  and me,
Varaile, that I will not discuss even with you. Especially with you. - May we  |
once again change the subject, now? What can we talk about? Your children, shall
it be? Prince Akbalik:  he's been writing an  epic poem, isn't that  so? And the
Princess  Tuanelys  - is  it  true that  Septach  Melayn has  promised  to begin
training her in swordsmanship when she's a year or two older -?'


When he awoke  in the morning  he found that  a note had  been slipped under his
bedroom door during the night:

Can we go riding tomorrow? Into the southern meadows, perhaps? -F.

His household people told him that some Vroon had brought it in the small hours.
Dekkeret knew who that  had to be: little  GurjaraYaso, Fulkari's own magus,  an
inveterate caster of spells and brewer  of potions who was her usual  go-between
in such matters. Dekkeret suspected the Vroon of having used sorcery even on him
from time to time in an attempt to keep Fulkari in the prime place in his heart.

Not that any sorcery was needed: she was constantly in his thoughts. He was  not
in any way indifferent to Fulkari; and all through his sojourn in Normork he had
needed only to let  his mind drift briefly  away from whatever was  happening at
the moment  and there  she was,  burning like  a beacon  in his  brain, smiling,
beckoning to him, drawing him to her -

Certainly, after  a week's  separation, the  urge to  rush to  her side upon his
return had been a  powerful one. But Dekkeret  had felt it was  important to put
some distance between himself  and her for the  moment, if only to  give himself
time to begin to comprehend what it was he really wanted from her, and she  from
him. That resolution shattered  in an instant now.  He felt a torrent  of relief
and delight and keen anticipation go through him as he read her note.

'Do I have any official functions  this morning?' he asked Singobinda Mukund  at
breakfast.

'None, sir,' replied the master of the household.

'And no news has come from the Labyrinth, I take it?'

'Nothing, sir,' said  Singobinda Mukund. He  gave Dekkeret a  horrified look, as
though to indicate how astounded he was that Dekkeret should feel there was  any
need to ask.

'Send word to  the Lady Fulkari,  then, that I'll  meet her in  two hours at the
Dizimaule Arch.'

Fulkari was waiting for him when he arrived, a lovely, willowy sight in a riding
habit of soft green leather that clung  to her like a second skin. Dekkeret  saw
thM she had already ordered up two high-spirited sporting-mounts from the Castle
stables. That was Fulkari's way: she seized the moment, she moved swiftly to  do
what needed to  be done. Her  waiting, last night,  to see if  he would make the
first move had not been at all typical  of her. And indeed when he had not  done
so she had made the move herself, by having that note slipped beneath the door.

They had  been lovers  almost three  years now,  almost since  the first  day of
Fulkari's residence at the Castle. She was a member of one of the old Pontifical
families, a descendant of Makhario of Sipermit, who had ruled five hundred years
before.  The Castle  was full  of such  nobility, hundreds,  even thousands  who
carried the blood of bygone monarchs.

Though the monarchy could never  be hereditary, the offspring of  Pontifexes and
Coronals were ennobled forever, and had the right to occupy rooms at the  Castle
for as long as  they pleased, whether or  not they had any  official function in
the current  government. Some  chose to  take up  permanent residence  there and
became fixtures at the court. Most, though, preferred to spend much of the  year
on their family estates, elsewhere on the Mount, visiting the Castle only in the
high season.

Sipermit, where Fulkari had grown up, was one of the nine High Cities of  Castle
Mount that occupied the  urban band just downslope  from the Castle itself.  But
she had not actually set foot in  the Castle until she was twenty-one, when  she
and  her  younger  brother  Fulkarno  were  sent  by  their  parents,  as  young
aristocrats usually were, to dwell for some years at court.

Dekkeret had  noticed Fulkari  almost instantly.  How could  he not?  She looked
enough like his long-lost cousin Sithelle, who had fallen before the  assassin's
blade that terrible day  some twenty years before  in Normork, to be  Sithelle's
own ghost walking among them in the halls of the Castle.

She was lean and athletic, as Sithelle had been, a tall girl with arms and  legs
that were long in proportion to her  trunk. Her hair was the same sort  of fiery
red-gold cascade, her eyes were a similar rich gray-violet, her lips were  full,
her  chin a  strong one,  also like  Sithelle's. Her  face was  broader than  he
remembered  Sithelle's to  have been,  and there  was a  curious tiny  cleft  in
Fulkari's chin that Sithelle's had not had; but in the main the resemblance  was
extraordinary.

Dekkeret halted in his tracks and gasped  when he first saw her. 'Who is  that?'
he asked, and on being told that she was the newly arrived niece of the Count of
Sipermit, he quickly wangled for her  an invitation to a court levee  being held
the following week  by Varaile; and  arranged to be  there himself, and  had her
brought  up to  him for  an introduction,  and stared  at her  in such   intense
fascination that he must have seemed a little mad to her.

'Did any of your ancestors happen to come from Normork?' he asked her, then.

She  looked  puzzled.  'No,  excellence.  We  are  Sipermit  people,  going back
thousands of years.'

'Strange. You remind me  of someone I once  knew there. I am  of Normork myself,
you know. And there was a certain  person - the daughter of my father's  sister,
in truth -'

No, no, there  was no way  to link her  to Sithelle. The  resemblance was a mere
coincidence, uncanny though  it was. But  Dekkeret lost little  time drawing her
into his life. Fulkari was ten or  eleven years younger than he, and had  had no
experience in the  ways of the  court, but she  was quick-witted and  lively and
eager to  learn, and  fiercely passionate,  and not  the least  bit shy.  It was
strange, though, holding  her in his  arms, and seeing  that face, so  much like
Sithelle's, so  close to  his own.  He and  Sithelle had  never been lovers, had
never even dreamed of such a thing;  if anything, he had regarded her more  as a
sister than a cousin.

Now here he was embracing a woman who seemed almost to be Sithelle reincarnated.
At times  it felt  oddly incestuous.  And he  wondered: Was  he replicating with
Fulkari the  relationship that  he had  never had  with Sithelle?  Was it  truly
Fulkari that he loved, or was he in love, instead, with the fantasy of his  lost
Sithelle? That was a considerable problem for  him. And it was not the only  one
she posed for him.

He drew her to him and held  her close against him, cheeks touching first,  then
lips. It made no difference to him that the guardsmen who occupied the post just
inside the Dizimaule Arch were watching. Let them watch, he thought.

After a  time they  stepped back  from one  another. Her  eyes were shining; her
breasts rose and fell rapidly beneath the soft, pliant leather.

'Come,' she said, nodding toward the mounts. 'Let's go down into the meadow.'

She vaulted easily into her beast's natural saddle and took off without  waiting
for him.

Dekkeret's mountwas a fine  slim-legged one of a  deep purple color tinged  with
blue, of the sort specially bred for swiftness and strength. He settled  himself
easily in the  broad saddle that  was an integral  part of the  creature's back,
gripped the pommel that sprouted in the same way just in front of him, and  sent
the mount speeding forward after her with a quick urgent pressure of his thighs.
Cool sweet air streamed past him, lifting and ruffling his unbound hair.

He wondered  how many  more opportunities  he would  have to  slip away from the
Casde like  this, a  private citizen  bound on  a journey  of private amusement,
unattended,  unhindered.  As Coronal  he  would rarely  if  ever be  able  to go
anywhere by himself. His  visit to Normork had  shown him what was  in store for
him. There would always be bodyguards  about, except when he managed somehow  to
give them the slip.

But now - the wind in his  hair, the bright golden-green sun high overhead,  the
splendid mount thundering along beneadi him, Fulkari racing on ahead -

Below the southern wing of the Castle lay a belt of great open meadows,  through
the midst  of which  ran the  Grand Calintane  Highway, the  one traveled by all
wayfarers bound for the Castle. There was no day of the year when these  meadows
were not in bloom,  stunning bursts of blue  flanked by bright yellow  blossoms,
masses of white  and red, oceans  of gold, crimson,  orange, violet. The  riding
track Fulkari  had chosen  passed to  the left  of the  highway, into the gently
sloping countryside that lay above the nearby pleasure-city of High Morpin,  ten
miles away.

Dekkeret caught up with her after a time and they rode along side by side.  They
were far enough down the Mount now  that the long shadow of the Castle  could be
seen reaching out before them, tapering to a slender point. Soon the  meadowland
gave  way to  a forest  of hakkatinga  trees, small  and straight-trunked,  with
reddish-brown bark  and dense  crowns that  grew tightly  interlaced with  their
neighbors to form a thick canopy.

Here the mounts could  not go as swiftly,  and slowed to a  canter without being
told.

'I missed you so very much,' Fulkari said, as they rode along side by side.  'It
felt as if you were gone for a month.'

'For me also,'

'Did you have a lot  of important meetings to attend  as soon as you came  back?
You must have been terribly busy all day yesterday.'

He hesitated. 'I had meetings, yes. I don't know how important they were. But  I
had to be there.'

'About the Pontifex? He's dying, isn't he? That's what everybody's been saying.'

'No one knows,' Dekkeret said. 'Until  firm news comes from the High  Spokesman,
we're all in the dark.'

They had reached a part  of the forest now where  he and she had been  more than
once before. The treetops were so closely  woven together here that even in  mid
morning a  kind of  twilight dusk  prevailed. A  small stream  ran here, which a
colony of dam-building  granths had blocked  with gnawed logs  to form a  pretty
little  pond.  Along  its margin  was  a  thick, soft  azure  carpet  of sturdy,
resilient bubblemoss. It was a lovely little secret bower, sheltered, secluded.

Fulkari dismounted and tethered  her reins to a  low-hanging branch. He did  the
same. They faced each other uncertainly. Dekkeret knew that the wisest thing  to
do was to reach for  her now, quickly fold her  in his arms, draw her  down onto
that mossy carpet, before anything could  be said that would break the  magic of
the moment. But he  could see that she  wanted to speak. She  held herself apart
from him, moistened her lips,  paced restlessly about. Words were  struggling to
burst free within her. She had not brought him here merely for lovemaking.

'What is it, Fulkari?' he asked, finally.

She said, in a tone dark with tension, The Pontifex is going to die soon,  isn't
he, Dekkeret?'

'It's as I just told you: I don't know. No one at the Castle does.'

'But when he does - will you be made Coronal?'

'I don't know that either,' he said, hating himself for the cowardly evasion.

She was unrelenting. 'There can't be any doubt of it, can there? You've  already
been named Coronal-designate. The Coronal doesn't ever change his mind and  pick
someone else, once  he does that.  - Please, Dekkeret,  I want you  to be honest
with me.'

'I expect to be made Coronal  when Confalume dies, yes. If Lord  Prestimion asks
me, that is, and the Council ratifies.'

'If you're asked, you'll accept?'

'Yes.'

'And what will happen to us, then?' Her voice came to him as though from a great
distance.

He had  no choice  now but  to go  forward with  this. 'A  Coronal should have a
consort. I was discussing that very thing with the Lady Varaile last evening.'

'You make it sound so impersonal, Dekkeret. 'A Coronal should have a  consort.''
She seemed frightened at speaking to him so bluntly, him who soon would be king,
and yet there was an angry edge to  her tone all the same. 'Does it happen  that
there's anyone in particular whom you might select to be your consort, perhaps?'

'You know there is, Fulkari. But -'

'But?'

He said, 'You've made it clear in a thousand ways that you don't want to be  the
consort of a Coronal.'

'Have I?'

'Haven't you?  A minute  ago you  asked me  if I'd  accept the  throne if it was
offered to me. As though  it was a fairly common  thing for people to refuse  to
become Coronal, Fulkari. It  was last month, I  think, that you wanted  to know,
out of  the blue,  whether any  Coronal-designate had  ever turned  it down. And
before that, that time when you and I were in Amblemorn -'

'All right. That's enough. You don't need  to dredge up any more things of  that
sort.' She appeared close to tears, and yet her voice was still steady. 'I asked
you to be honest with me. Now I'll be just as honest with you.' Fulkari paused a
moment Then she  said, regarding him  evenly, 'Dekkeret, I  don'(want to be  the
consort of a Coronal.'

He nodded. 'I know that. But if you don't, why have you let yourself become  the
lover of the Coronal-designate? For the sake of excitement? Amusement? You knew,
when we met, what Prestimion had in mind for me.'

'You speak as  though these things  happen by design.  Did I come  to the Castle
expecting to fall in love with  Coronal-designate Dekkeret? Did I pursue you  in
any way  after I  arrived? You  saw me.  You sought  me out.  We talked. We went
riding together. We fell in  love. I could just as  easily ask you, why did  the
Coronal-designate choose as his lover a  woman who doesn't happen to think  it's
such a wonderful thing to be the wife of the Coronal?'

'I  didn't  realize  that I  had  done  any such  thing.  That  was something  I
discovered  only gradually,  as we  got to  know each  other. It's  troubled  me
tremendously ever since I figured it out.'

Her face  was flushed  with anger.  'Because our  little emotional  entanglement
stands in the way of your great ambition?'

'You can't call becoming Coronal my  ambition, Fulkari. I never asked for  it. I
never even imagined that it could be possible. It came to me by default, when an
earlier logical heir unexpectedly died.'  How could he make her  understand? Why
was it  such a  struggle? 'No  Coronal ever  sets out  to win  the throne. If it
doesn't descend on him out of inevitable logic, he doesn't merit it. For  years,
now, the logic has pointed to me.'

'And must you go along with that logic?'

He looked at her helplessly. 'It would be shameful to refuse.'

'Shameful! Shameful! That's all you men  are concerned with - pride, shame,  how
things will look!  You say you  love me. You  know how frightened  I am of  your
becoming  Coronal.  And  yet -  because  your  pride won't  let  you  say no  to
Prestimion -'

Now she was weeping. Awkwardly he took her in his arms. She did not resist,  but
her body was stiff, withdrawn.

Quietly he said, 'Explain to me why it is that you don't want to be my  consort,
Fulkari.'

'A Coronal  spends all  his time  reading official  documents, signing  decrees,
going  to meetings.  Or else  he's traveling  to some  far-off place  to  attend
banquets and make speeches. He has very  little time for his wife. How often  do
you see  Prestimion and  Varaile together?  The Coronal's  wife has banquets and
functions to go  to and speeches  to make, too.  It seems like  a hideous dreary
exhausting job. It would devour me. I'm only twenty-four years old, Dekkeret.  I
don't feel anywhere close to ready to taking on a life like that.'

'Hush,' he said, as though soothing a child. That was how she seemed to him now,
anyway: if not a  child, then still adolescent,  far from any real  maturity. He
saw now why Varaile was so  troubled over the present state of  his relationship
with Fulkari. Varaile hoped that Fulkari would be Majipoor's next royal consort,
and was afraid that Dekkeret was on the verge of discarding her. But Varaile had
no real understanding of the way things really stood.

Did  he,  though?  Fulkari's  beauty, her  eerie  resemblance  to  Sithelle, had
mesmerized him also into  thinking that she had  in her the material  of a royal
consort. But evidently she did not. A royal mistress, yes. But not a queen.  She
had been telling him that, indirectly  at first and now quite explicitly,  for a
long time now. 'Hush,' he said again, as her sobbing deepened. 'It's all  right,
Fulkari. The Pontifex may not be  dying  at all. He may  go on living  for years
years -'

He was saying things now that he did not believe in the slightest. But it seemed
more important to comfort her, just  then, than to try to address  the realities
of the situation.

For the realities of the situation were that he would become Coronal and that he
could not marry Fulkari, who plainly did not want to be a Coronal's wife; and so
he had  no choice  but to  break with  her forever,  here and  now. But that was
something he did not  think he could bring  himself to do. Certainly  not today;
perhaps not ever. It was an impossible situation.

He held her close.  He stroked her tenderly.  Gradually the sobbing ceased.  The
stiffness of her stance began to ease.

Then, by an almost imperceptible transition, they found themselves with a single
accord passing  from anguish  and confusion  and unreconcilable  conflict to the
rhythms of desire and need. This  was their special place, where they  had often
come to escape from the bustling  intrusiveness of Castle life; and here  beside
the sweet dark pond the granths  had built under the close-woven hakkatingas,  a
sudden  familiar  urgency  once  more   overcame  them  and  thrust  all   other
considerations aside.

Fulkari, as ever, took  the lead. She kissed  him lightly and moved  a short way
back from him. Touched  her hand to the  metal clasps of her  garment at breast,
hip, and  thigh. The  soft leather  gave way  as though  sliced by  an invisible
blade. She stepped quickly free of it and stood radiantly bare before him, pale,
slender, smiling, irresistible,  holding out her  hands to him.  Her eyes, those
gray-violet  Sithelle eyes  of hers,  were shining.  They beckoned  to him.  For
Dekkeret there was magic in that bright gleam. Sorcery.

At that moment the issue  of who would or would  not be the consort of  the next
Coronal of Majipoor seemed as far away to him, and as unimportant, as the  sandy
desert wastes of Suvrael. He could not think of such things now. He was helpless
against the magic of her beauty. That  smile, the sight of her slim naked  form,
the glow  of those  marvelous eyes,  brought back  to blazing  life all that had
caught him and gripped  him again and again  these three years past.  He reached
for  her  and  pulled her  lightly  toward  him, and  they  sank  down together,
intertwined, on the carpet of bubblemoss beside the pond.



15

'Today, I think, is  our day for the  singlestick baton,' said Septach  Melayn a
little doubtfully. 'Or is it the basket-hilt saber we do today?'

'Rapier,  excellence,' said  young Polliex,  the graceful  dark-haired boy  from
Estotilaup, Earl  Thanesar's second  son. Tomorrow's  the day  for singlesticks,
sir.'

'Rapier. Ah. Yes, of course, rapier.  No wonder you're all wearing your  masks.'
Septach Melayn put the error behind him with a shrug and a smile.

There was a time  when he had regarded  little errors of memory  as sins against
the Divine, and did  penance for them with  extra hours of sword  drills. But he
had lately made a treaty with  himself, and with the Divine as  well, concerning
such  errors.  So  long  as  his  eye  remained  keen  and  his  hand  was still
unfaltering, he would forgive  himself for these small  slips of his mind.  As a
man ages he must  inevitably resign himself to  the sacrifice of one  faculty or
another;  and  Septach  Melayn was  willing  to  give up  some  fraction  of the
excellence  of  his  memory  if  in  return  he  might  keep  the   unparalleled
(lawlessness of his coordination for another year or three, or five, or ten.

He selected a  rapier from the  case of weapons  against the wall  and turned to
face the class. They had already formed themselves in a semicircle, with Polliex
at his left and the new one, the  girl Keltryn, at the opposite end of the  row.
Septach Melayn always began the day's work with one end of the row or the other,
and Polliex always managed to position himself in a favorable place to be  among
the first chosen. The girl had very quickly picked up the trick from him.

There were eleven in the class; ten young men and Keltryn. They met with Septach
Melayn every morning for an hour  in the gymnasium in the Castle's  eastern wing
that had been his private drilling room since the earliest days of  Prestimion's
reign. It was a  bright, high-ceilinged room whose  walls were pierced by  eight
lofty octagonal  windows that  admitted copious  floods of  light until  shortly
after midday. Some  said that the  place had been  a stable in  the days of Lord
Guadeloom, but Lord Guadeloom's days had been very long ago indeed, and the room
had been used as a gymnasium since time out of mind.

'The rapier,' said  Septach Melayn, 'is  an exceedingly versatile  weapon, light
enough  to  permit  great  artistry  of  handling,  yet  capable  of  inflicting
significant injury when it is used as an instrument of defense.' He scanned  the
semicircle  quickly,   decided  not   to  choose   Polliex  for   today's  first
demonstration,  and  automatically  looked over  toward  the  other side,  where
Keltryn  was waiting.  'You, milady.  Step forward.'  He raised  his sword   and
beckoned to her with it.

'Your mask, sir!' came a voice from  the middle of the group. Toraman Kanna,  it
was, the prince's son of Syrinx, he of the dark smooth skin and seductive almond
eyes. He was ever one to point out things like that.

'My mask, yes,' Septach Melayn said,  grinning sourly. He unhooked one from  the
wall. Septach Melayn always insisted that his pupils wear protective  face-masks
whenever the sharper weapons were used, for fear that some novice's wild  random
poke would take out  a princely eye and  create an inconvenient hullaballoo  and
outcry among the injured boy's kinsmen.

One day, though, the suggestion had been made to him in class that he too should
wear a mask, by way of setting a proper example. It seemed wildly absurd to  him
that he of all people should be asked to take such a precaution - he whose guard
had never been broken by another swordsman, not even once, except only that time
at the Stymphinor engagement in the Korsibar war, when he had taken on four  men
at the same time on the battlefield  and some coward had sliced at him  from the
side,  beyond his  field of  peripheral vision.  But for  consistency's sake  he
agreed. Still, it was often necessary for his students to remind him to don  the
ungainly thing at the outset of each class.

'If you  please, milady,'  he said,  and Keltryn  moved into  the center  of the
group.

Septach Melayn still had not fully adapted to the concept of a female swordsman.
He was, of  course, much more  comfortable in the  company of young  men than in
that of  women or  girls: that  was simply  his nature.  There had always been a
circle of them  in attendance on  him. But the  fact that his  pupils had always
been male was not so much a  matter of his preference as theirs; Septach  Melayn
had never so  much as heard  of a woman's  wanting to wield  weapons, until this
one.

The odd thing was that this Keltryn seemed to have a natural gift for the sport.
She was seventeen or so, nimble and  swift, with a lean frame that might  almost
have been a boy's, and the exceptionally long arms and legs that were a mark  of
advantage in swordsmanship.  She had her  older sister's coloring  and her older
sister's sparkling beauty,  but Fulkari's every  motion was infused  with a soft
seductiveness  that was  apparent even  to Septach  Melayn, though  he did   not
respond  to  it,  whereas  this one's  movements  had  an  irrepressible coltish
angularity  that seemed  delightfully unfeminine  to him.  And one  could  never
imagine Fulkari  picking up  a sword.  The weapon  seemed not  in any way out of
place in Keltryn's hand.

She faced  him squarely,  holding her  rapier at  rest by  her side. The instant
Septach Melayn raised his  weapon she lifted hers  and turned sideways into  the
fencing position, ready to meet his attack. The profile she presented was a very
narrow one: from her first day in the class she had bound her breasts with  some
tight undergarment so  that it appeared  she had none  at all beneath  her white
fencing jacket.  Just as  well, Septach  Melayn thought.  He was unaccustomed to
fencing with someone who had breasts.

This was the  first rapier lesson  since she had  joined the group.  Keltryn was
holding the weapon oddly,  and Septach Melayn shook  his head and lighdy  tapped
her sword  downward. 'Let  us begin  by considering  the placement  of the hand,
milady. We use the Zimroel style of  handle here: the grip is a longer  one than
you may be familiar with, and we  hold it farther back from the guard.  You will
find it gives greater freedom of action that way.'

She made the adjustment. The mask  hid any sign of embarrassment or  displeasure
over the  correction. When  Septach Melayn  lifted his  sword again,  she raised
hers, waggling it as if to indicate that she was impatient to begin the lesson.

Impatience was something he would not tolerate. Deliberately, he made her wait.

'Let  us  consider certain  fundamentals,'  he said.  'Our  intention with  this
weapon,  as I  believe you  know, is   to lunge  and thrust,  and to  parry  our
opponent's counterthrust, and to make our  own riposte. The point of the  weapon
is all we  use. The entire  body is the  target. You should  be familiar already
with all of  that. The special  thing I teach  you here is  the division of  the
moment. Have you heard the term, milady?'

She shook her head.

'What we say  is, a good  fencer must seize  control of time,  rather than being
controlled by it. In  our daily lives we  perceive time as a  continuous flow, a
river that moves without cease from source to mouth. But in fact a river is made
up of tiny units of water, each distinct from every other one. Because they move
in the same direction they give the  illusion of unity. It is only an  illusion,
though.'

Did she understand? She gave no clue.

Septach Melayn continued, 'It is the same with time. Each minute of an hour is a
separate entity. The same with each second of a minute. Your task is to  isolate
the units within each second, and to view your opponent as moving from one  unit
to the next in  a series of discontinuous  leaps. It is a  difficult discipline;
but once you achieve it, it is a simple thing to interpose yourself between  one
of his leaps and the next. For example -'

He called  her on  guard, took  the offensive  immediately, lunged  and let  her
parry, lunged  again and  this time  countered her  parry by  beating her  blade
aside, so that he  had a clear path  to the tip of  her left shoulder, which  he
touched; and withdrew and thrust once more, before she had had time to  register
that  she had  been struck,  and touched  the other  shoulder. A  third time  he
slipped within her guard and touched her carefully, very carefully, at the  bony
middle of her chest, just above  the place where he imagined the  dividing point
between her flattened breasts to lie.

The entire  demonstration had  taken only  a handful  of seconds.  His movements
nowadays seemed  slow, terribly  slow, to  him, but  Septach Melayn  was judging
himself by the standards of twenty years  ago. There still was no one who  could
match his speed.

'Now,' he said, shoving his mask  back and relaxing his stance, 'the  purpose of
what I've just done was not to show  you that I am the superior fencer, which  I
think we all  can take for  granted, but to  indicate the way  the theory of the
division of the moment operates. What you experienced just now, I suspect, was a
perplexing  blur  of  action  in  which  a  taller  and  more  skillful opponent
heartlessly came at you  from all sides at  once and pinked you  again and again
while you  struggled to  comprehend the  pattern of  his moves.  Whereas what  I
experienced was  a series  of discrete  intervals, frozen  frames of action: you
were here and then you were over there, and I entered the interval between those
positions  and touched  your shoulder.  I withdrew  and returned  and found   an
opening between the next two intervals and penetrated your guard once again. And
so forth. Do you follow?'

'Not in any useful way, excellence.'

'No. I didn't suppose you would. But  let's replay the sequence, now. I will  do
everything in precisely the same way. This time, though, try to see me not as  a
whirlwind of continuous activity, but as  a series of still tableaus in  which I
hold this position and then this one and then the next. That is, you must see me
faster, so that I appear to be moving more slowly. That may make no sense to you
now, but I think that sooner or later it will. - On your guard, milady!'

He ran through it all a second  time. This time she was, if anything,  even more
ineffectual, though she knew the direction his moves would be coming from. There
was a desperation  to her parrying,  a frenzied hurry,  that pulled her  far off
form and forced him to stretch to full extension to touch her as he had  before.
But she did seem  also to be trying  to comprehend his enigmatic  talk about the
division of the moment. She appeared to be attempting somehow to slow the flight
of time by waiting until the last possible moment to react to his thrusts. Then,
of course, she had to rush her parries. Against a swordsman like Septach  Melayn
that had to be a recipe for disaster; but at least she was trying to  understand
the method.

Again he touched shoulder, shoulder, breastbone.

Again  he halted  and pushed  back the  mask. She  did the  same. Her  face  was
flushed, and she had a sullen, glowering look.

'Much better that time, milady.'

'How can you say that?  I was horrible. Or are  you simply trying to mock  me...
your grace?'

'Ah, no,  milady. I'm  here to  teach, not  to mock.  You handle  yourself well,
better, perhaps,  than you  know. The  potential is  definitely there. But these
skills are not mastered in  a single day. I wanted  to show you, only, the  area
within which you must work.' It was an appealing challenge, he thought, making a
great swordsman out of a girl like this. 'Now watch while I run through the same
maneuvers with someone to  whom my theories are  more familiar. Observe, if  you
will, how  calm he  remains in  the midst  of the  attack, how  he appears to be
standing still when actually he is in motion.' Septach Melayn glanced toward the
middle of the group. 'Audhari?'

He was the best  of Septach Melayn's pupils,  a Stoienzar boy with  red freckles
all  over  his face,  the  great-grandson of  the  former High  Counsellor  Duke
Oljebbin of Lord Confalume's reign and  therefore in some way a distant  kinsman
of Prestimion's. He was big and strong, with powerful forearms, and the quickest
reflexes Septach Melayn had encountered in a long time.

'On your guard,' said  Septach Melayn, and went  at once to the  attack. Audhari
stood no more chance than  anyone else of besting him,  but he was able to  make
the pauses, anyway, to hold back  the tumbling of the moments one  upon another.
And so he was able to anticipate, to parry, to find the opportunity between  one
instant and  the next  for a  counterthrust or  two, in  general to hold his own
commendably enough, all things  considered, as Septach Melayn  went methodically
about the task of breaking through his guard again and again and again.

Even as he  worked, Septach Melayn  was able to  steal a glance  at the watching
Keltryn. She was staring intently, in absolute concentration.

She will learn it, he decided. She could never be as strong as a man, she  would
probably not  be as  quick as  one, but  her eye  was good,  her will to succeed
excellent, her stance quite satisfactory in form. He still could not  understand
why a young woman would want to take up swordsmanship, but he resolved to  treat
her with as much seriousness as he did any of his other pupils.

'You  are not  yet able  to see,'  he told  the girl,  'how Audhari  goes  about
severing one moment from the next. It is done within the mind, a technique  that
requires long practice. But watch, this time, how he turns to meet each  thrust.
Pay no  attention to  me whatever.  Watch only  him. -  Again, Audhari.  On your
guard!'

'Sir?' The voice was that ofPolliex. 'A messenger has come, your grace.' Septach
Melayn became aware that someone had entered the room, one of the Castle  pages,
evidendy. He stepped back from Audhari and cast his mask aside.

The boy was carrying a note, folded in thirds, unsealed. Septach Melayn  scanned
it hastily from both ends at once, as was his way, taking in the scrawled 'V' of
the Lady Varaile's signature at the bottom even while he was reading the body of
the text. Then he read it more carefully, as though that might somehow alter the
content of the message, but it did not.

He looked up.

'The Pontifex Confalume  has died,' Septach  Melayn said. 'Lord  Prestimion, who
was on his way back from the Labyrinth, has turned about and returned to it  for
his majesty's  funeral. As  High Counsellor,  I am  summoned there  as well. The
class is adjourned. We will, I think, not meet again for some time.'

The class dissolved into a  buzzing hubbub. Septach Melayn walked  through their
midst as though they were invisible and went from the room.

So it has happened at last, he thought, and now everything will change.

Confalume gone; Prestimion Pontifex;  a new man on  the throne at the  Castle. A
new  High Counsellor  would have  to be  named, also.  True, Korsibar  had  kept
Oljebbin on in  that post after  seizing the crown,  but surely would  soon have
replaced him if  his reign had  lasted long enough  for him to  think about such
things;  and Prestimion,  after the  end of  the usurpation,  had lost  no  time
putting his own man in the spot.  Dekkeret, in all likelihood, would want to  do
the same. In any  case Septach Melayn knew  that he belonged with  Prestimion in
the Labyrinth. That was expected of him, and he would comply. But still -  still
- they had said that Confalume would recover, that he was in no imminent  danger
of dying -

All this was a great deal to have to wrap his mind around, so early in the day.

Turning the corridor that connected the east wing with the Inner Castle, Septach
Melayn went past the vaulted gray  building that was the new Prestimion  Archive
and  the wildly  swooping weirdness  of Lord  Arioc's Watchtower.  Entering  the
Pinitor Court,  he caught  sight of  Dekkeret coming  toward him  from the other
direction, with the Lady Fulkari at his side. They were wearing riding  clothes,
and had a rumpled, sweaty look about  them, as though they had been outside  the
Castle for a ride in the meadows and were just returning.

Now it begins, Septach Melayn thought.

'My lord!' he called.

Dekkeret looked toward him, open-mouthed with surprise. 'What was that you said,
Septach Melayn?'

'Dekkeret!  Dekkeret!  All  hail Lord  Dekkeret!'  Septach  Melayn cried,  hands
outstretched to make the starburst sign. 'Long life to Lord Dekkeret!' And then,
in a quieter tone: 'I am the first to utter those words, I think.'

They were both staring, Dekkeret  and the Lady Fulkari, frozen,  astounded. Then
Septach Melayn saw them exchange  stunned glances. Huskily Dekkeret said,  'What
is this, Septach Melayn? What are you doing?'

'Offering the proper salutation, my lord.  News has come from the Labyrinth,  it
seems. Prestimion has  become Pontifex, and  we have a  new Coronal to  hail. Or
will, as soon  as the Council  can meet. But  the thing is  as good as  done, my
lord. You are our king now; and so I salute you. - You seem displeased, my lord.
What could I have said to offend you?'




TWO:
THE BOOK OF LORDS

1

The moist, humid lands beyond the Kinslain Gap were Hjort territory. It was  the
sort of land where few other people cared to live, but the Hjorts were native to
a steamy world of spongy soil and constant torrid fog, and they found conditions
here ideal. Besides, they knew that they were not well liked by the other  races
that  inhabited  Majipoor, who  found  their appearance  unattractive  and their
manner abrasive and irritating,  and thus they preferred  to have a province  of
their own, where they could live their lives as they pleased.

Their  chief  center was  the  small, densely  packed  city of  Santhiskion.  It
contained two million of them, or perhaps even more. Santhiskion was a  breeding
ground for  minor bureaucrats,  for there  was something  in the  temperament of
urban, well-educated Hjorts that inclined them favorably toward becoming customs
collectors and census-takers and building  inspectors and the like. Hjorts  of a
different sort lived in the valley of the Kulit that lay to the west of the city
- people  who were  simpler folk  in the  main, villagers,  farmers, who kept to
themselves  and patiently  went about  the business  of raising  such crops   as
grayven and ciderberries and garryn that they shipped to the populous cities  of
western Alhanroel.

Just as the Hjorts of Santhiskion city were given by nature to painstaking  list
making and  record-keeping and  report-writing, the  rural Hjorts  of the valley
were lovers of ritual and ceremony. Their lives revolved around their farms  and
their  produce;  everywhere about  them  lurked invisible  gods  and demons  and
witches,  who  might  be  threats  to  the  ripening  fields;  it  was necessary
constantly to propitiate the benevolent beings and to ward off the  depredations
of unfriendly ones by acting out the  rites appropriate to the day of the  year.
In each village there was a certain official who kept the calendar of rites, and
every morning announced the proper propitiations for the week ahead. Knowing how
to keep the calendar was no easy matter; lengthy training was involved, and  the
calendar-keeper was  revered for  his skills  the way  a priest  would be,  or a
surgeon.

In the village ofAbon Airair the  calendar-keeper was named Erb Skonarij, a  man
so old that his  pebbly-textured skin, once ashen-colored,  had faded to a  pale
blue, and  whose eyes,  once splendidly  huge and  gleaming, now  were dull  and
sunken into his forehead. But his mind was as alert as ever and he performed his
immensely involuted calendrical tasks with undiminished accuracy.

'This is the tenth day  of Mapadik and the fourth  day of lyap and the  ninth of
Tjatur,' Erb Skonarij announced, when the  elders of the village came to  him in
the morning to  hear the day's  computations. 'The demon  Rangda Geyak is  loose
among us.  Thus it  is incumbent  on us  to perform  the play  of the contending
geyaks this evening.' And the storyteller whose responsibility it was to narrate
the play of the contending geyaks began at once to make ready for the show,  for
among the Hjorts of the Kulit Valley no distinction was made between ritual  and
drama.

They had brought with them from  their home world a complex calendar,  or series
of calendars, that bore no relation to the journey ofMajipoor around its sun  or
to the  movements of  any other  heavenly body:  their year  was two hundred and
forty days long, divided  into eight months of  thirty days by the  reckoning of
one  calendar,  but  also into  twelve  months  of twenty  days  by  a different
reckoning, and likewise six months of forty days, twenty-four months often days,
and one hundred twenty months of two days.

Thus any given day  of the year had  five different dates in  the five different
calendars; and on certain special conjunctions of days, especially involving the
months  named  Tjatur in  the  twelve-month calendar,  lyap  in the  eight-month
calendar, and Mapadik in the twenty-four-month calendar, particularly  important
holy rites had  to be celebrated.  And this night  the conjunction of  dates was
such that the rite of Ktut, the war between the demons, must be enacted.

The people of Abon Airar began to gather by the storytellers' mound at dusk, and
by the time the sun had  dropped behind Prezmyr Mountain the entire  village was
assembled, the musicians and actors  were in place, the storyteller  was perched
atop his high seat. A great bonfire blazed in the fire-pit. All eyes were on Erb
Skonarij;  and precisely  at the  moment when  the hour  known as  Pasang  Gjond
arrived, he gave the signal to begin.

'For many months  now,' the storyteller  sang, 'the two  factions of the  geyaks
have been at war...'

The old, old story. Everyone knew it by heart.

The musicians lifted  their kempinongs and  heftii and tjimpins  and sounded the
familiar melodies,  and choristers  with greatly  distended throat-sacs  brought
forth the familiar repetitive bass drone that would continue unbroken throughout
the performance, and  the dancers, elaborately  costumed, came forth  to act out
the dramatic events of the tale.

'Great has been the  sorrow of the village  as the demons make  war against each
other,' sang the storyteller. 'We have seen green flames darting by night  among
the gerribong trees. Blue flames  have danced atop gravestones in  the cemetery.
White flames move along our roof-beams. The  harm to us has been great. Many  of
us have fallen ill, and children have died. The garryn we have gathered has been
ruined. The fields ofgrayven are devastated. Harvest time is almost upon us  and
there will be  no grayven to  harvest. And all  of this has  befallen us because
there is sin in the village, and  the sinners have not given themselves over  to
be purified. The demon Rangda Geyak moves among us -'

Rangda Geyak  moved among  them even  as the  storyteller spoke:  a huge hideous
figure costumed to look like an ancient female of the human kind, with a  coarse
mop of white hair and long, dangling breasts and great yellow crooked teeth that
jutted like fangs. Red  flames darted from her  hair; yellow flames sprang  from
her fingertips. Back and forth she strode along the edge of the mound,  menacing
those who sat in the front rows.

'But now, the sorcerer Tjal Goring Geyak comes, and does battle with her -'

A second  demon, this  one a  giant equipped  with the  four arms  of a Skandar,
pranced forward out of the shadows  and confronted the first. Together now  they
danced in a  circle, face to  face, taunting each  other and jeering,  while the
storyteller recited the details of  their combat, telling how they  hurled fiery
trees at each other, and caused immense pits to open in the village square,  and
made the waters of the placid River Kulit surge above their banks and flood  the
town.

The essence of the tale was that  the contest of the geyaks brought great  grief
and woe  to the  village as  it raged,  for the  demons were  unconcerned by the
incidental damage they were  inflicting as they struggled  up and down the  town
and the surrounding fields. Only when the sinners who had brought this  calamity
upon the townsfolk  came forth to  confess their crimes  would the demons  cease
their warfare and turn against the evildoers, taking up flails and wielding them
as weapons to drive them out of the village.

The three dancers who were to play the guilty sinners sat to one side,  watching
the spectacle with everyone else. Their  time to take the stage was  still hours
away; the  storyteller must  first relate  in full  detail the  arrival of other
demons, the one-winged bird and the one-legged dragon and the creature that eats
its  own entrails,  and many  more. He  must speak  of demonic  orgies, and  the
drinking of blood. He must tell of transformations, the beasts that interchanged
shapes. He must tell  of the beautiful young  women who wordlessly make  obscene
overtures to young men on lonely roads late at night. He must -

As the old tale unfolded Erb Skonarij, watching from the seat of privilege  that
was his by virtue of his decades as the village's keeper of the calendars,  felt
a sudden searing pain within  his skull, as though a  band of hot iron had  been
clamped around his brain.

It was a fearful sensation. He had never known such pain.

He began to think that the hour of  his death had come at last. But then,  as it
went on and on without surcease, the  thought came to him that perhaps he  would
not die, that he would simply be forced to suffer like this forever.

And it  was, he  realized after  a time,  an agony  not of  the body, but of the
spirit.

Something  was  striking a  knife  into his  soul.  Something was  whipping  his
innermost self with a whip of fire. Something was hammering at the substance  of
his being with a massive jagged boulder.

He was the sinner. He had brought the fury of the demons down upon the  village.
He, he, he, the keeper of the calendars, the guardian of the ceremonies: he  had
failed  in his  task, he  had violated  his trust,  he had  betrayed those   who
depended on him, and unless he confessed his guilt right here and now the entire
village would suffer for his iniquities.

Rising from his place of honor, he came tottering forward into the center of the
stage.

'Stop!' he cried. 'I am the one! I must be punished! For me, the flails! For me,
the whips! Drive me out! Cast me from your midst!'

The music died away in a confusion of discordance. The humming of the choristers
ceased. The storyteller's  cadenced voice cut  off in mid-phrase.  They were all
staring at  him. Erb  Skonarij looked  out into  the audience  and saw  the wide
bewildered eyes too, the open mouths.

The throbbing in his skull was unrelenting. It was splitting him apart.

Someone's hand was around his arm. A voice close by his right ear-membrane said,
'You must sit down, old man. The ceremony will be spoiled. You of all people -'

'No!' Erb Skonarij pulled himself free. 'I  am the one! I bring the demons!'  He
pointed toward the storyteller, who was  gaping at him in amazement and  fright.
'Tell it! Tell  it! The treason  of the calendar-keeper,  tell it! Set  me free,
will you? Set us all free! I can no longer bear the pain!'

Why would they not listen to him?

A desperate lurch brought  him up before the  two demons, the Rangda  Geyak, the
Tjal Goring Geyak. They had halted  now in their dance. Erb Skonarij  scooped up
the flails that they were meant to use at the climax of the ceremony and  thrust
them into their hands.

'Beat me! Whip me! Drive me out!'

The two masked figures still stood motionless. Erb Skonarij pressed his hands to
his pounding forehead. The pain, the  pain! Did no one understand? They  were in
the presence of  real sin: they  must expel it  from the village,  and all would
suffer, he most of all, until it was done. But no one would move. No one.

He uttered a muffled cry of despair and rushed toward the roaring bonfire.  This
was wrong, he knew. The sinner must  not punish himself. He must be forced  from
their midst by  the united effort  of all the  villagers, or the  exorcism would
have no value to the village. But they  would not do it; and he could no  longer
bear the pain, let alone the shame or the grief.

He was amazed at how soothing the warmth of those flames was. Hands clutched  at
him, but  he knocked  them aside.  The fire...  the fire...  it sang  to him  of
forgiveness and peace.

He cast himself in.



2

Mandralisca lifted the  helmet from his  head. Khaymak Barjazid  sat facing him,
watching  him  avidly. Jacomin  Halefice  stood near  the  door ofMandral-isca's
chamber, with the Lord Gaviral beside him. Mandralisca shook his head, blinked a
couple of times, rubbed the center of his brow with his fingertips. There was  a
ringing in his ears, a tightness in his chest.

For a time no  one spoke, until at  last Barjazid said, 'Well,  your grace? What
was it like?'

'A powerful experience. How long did I have the thing on?'

'Fifteen seconds or so. Perhaps half a minute at most.'

'That's all,' Mandralisca said, idly  fondling the smooth metal mesh.  'Strange.
It seemed  like a  much, much  longer time.'  The sensations  that had just gone
coursing through him still reverberated in  his spirit. He realized that he  had
not yet entirely returned from his journey.

In  the  immediate aftermath  of  the experiment  an  odd jangling  restlessness
gripped him.  Every nerve  was sensitized.  He felt  the beating  of the hot sun
against the walls of the building, heard the whistling of the desert wind across
the plain of  pungatans far below,  had an oppressive  sense of the  thick musky
atmosphere of the air about him in here.

Rising, he roved the perimeter of the circular room, cruising it like some caged
beast. Halefice and even Gaviral stepped  to the side, scuttling out of  his way
as he strode past the place where they were standing. Mandralisca barely noticed
them. To his mind in its currently elevated state they seemed like nothing  more
than little scurrying  animals to him,  droles, mintuns, hiktigans,  unimportant
creatures of the forest. Insects, even. Mere insects.

He had gone  down into that  little metal helmet,  somehow. His entire  mind had
entered it; and  then, in a  way he could  not begin to  comprehend, he had been
able to hurl himself outward, like a burning spear soaring through the sky -

Barjazid said, 'Do you have any idea how far you went, or where?'

'No. Not at all.' How curious to  be holding a conversation with an insect.  But
he forced himself  to pay attention  to Barjazid's query.  'I perceived it  as a
considerable distance, but for all I know it was no farther than the city on the
other side of the river.'

'It was  probably much  farther, your  grace. The  reach is  infinite, you know:
there's no more effort involved in reaching Alaisor or Tolaghai or Piliplok than
there is in going next door. It's the directionality that we can't control.  Not
yet, anyway.'

'Could it reach the Castle, do you think?' asked the Lord Gaviral.

'As I have just told his grace the Count Mandralisca,' Barjazid said, 'the reach
is  infinite.'  Mandralisca noticed  that  Barjazid had  already  learned to  be
extremely patient with  Gaviral. That was  a very good  idea, when dealing  with
someone who is very stupid but who has a great deal of power over you.

'So we could reach out with it and hit Prestimion, then?' asked Gaviral  avidly.
'Or Dekkeret?'

'We might, in time,' Barjazid replied. 'As I have also just observed, we do  not
yet have real directionality. We can only strike randomly thus far.'

'But eventually,' Gaviral said. 'Oh, yes, eventually -!'

It was all that Mandralisca could  do to keep himself from cutting  Gaviral down
with some contemptuous remark. Reach out and hit Prestimion? The fool. The fool.
That was the last thing they wanted to do. The boy Thastain had a shrewder  grip
of political strategy than  any of these five  brainless brothers. But this  was
not the moment  to foment a  breach with one  of the men  who were, at  least in
theory, his masters.

He considered what  Barjazid's helmet had  just allowed him  to accomplish. That
was more interesting to him than anything these people might have to say.

He had cast  forth his mind  and hurt someone  with the helmet.  Of that he  was
certain. He had no clear idea of whom, or where; but he had no doubt that he had
encountered another mind someplace far away, a priest of some kind, perhaps,  at
any rate someone who was officiating at a ritual, and had penetrated it, and had
damaged it. Extinguished it, perhaps. Certainly done great harm. He knew what it
was  like to  injure someone:  a very  distinctive feeling  of pleasure,  almost
sexual in nature, which he had experienced  many times in his life. He had  felt
it  just  now, with  a  new and  astounding  intensity. Some  distant  stranger,
recoiling in pain and shock at his thrust -

- he had flown like a spear, a burning spear soaring halfway across the world -

Like a god.

'Your brother would never  let me try the  helmet,' Mandralisca said to  Khaymak
Barjazid. Returning to his desk, he tossed the device down in the middle of  it.
'I asked him more than once, while  we were camped there in the Stoienzar.  Just
to find out what it was like, you  know. The kind of sensation it was. 'No,'  he
said. T would not dare risk it,  Mandralisca. The power is too great.' He  meant
that I might injure myself, I assumed. But as I thought about it afterward I saw
a different meaning in the phrase. 'The  power is too great for me to  trust you
with it,' is  what he was  really saying. I  think he feared  I might go  poking
around in his mind.'

'He was constantly afraid of something like that - that the helmet might be used
against him.'

'Was I not his ally?'

'No. My brother never saw anyone  as an ally. Everyone was dangerous.  Remember,
his own son turned against him during Dantirya Sambail's rebellion, and  brought
one of the helmets to Prestimion and Dekkeret. No one could ever have  persuaded
Venghenar to let anyone else get near a helmet after that.'

'I watched  Prestimion destroy  him with  the helmet  that Dinitak brought him,'
Mandralisca said.

His voice sounded strange in his own ears. He understood that he must still  not
have fully shaken off the effect  of having donned that helmet. These  three men
still seemed like insects to him. They had no significance whatsoever.

'Your brother,' he said to Barjazid,  speaking as though the other two  were not
in the room,  'was standing right  next to me,  with his own  helmet on. He  and
Prestimion were having a duel of some sort with their helmets, hundreds of miles
apart, thousands,  maybe. I  saw your  brother collecting  himself for one final
thrust; but before he could unleash it, Prestimion hit him with the helmet-force
and knocked him to  his knees. 'Prestimion,' your  brother said, and started  to
moan, and Prestimion struck  him once or twice  more, and I could  see then that
his mind  was altogether  burned out.  An hour  or two  later Septach Melayn and
Gialaurys burst upon us. One of them came upon him and slew him.'

'As we will slay Prestimion,' said the Lord Gaviral grandly.

Mandralisca acted as though Gaviral had not said anything. Slay Prestimion? That
was no answer  to the problem  of attaining freedom  for the western  continent.
Constrain Prestimion, yes. Control him. Use him. That was what this helmet would
achieve, in the fullness of time. But why kill him? That would only put Dekkeret
into the high seat of power at the Labyrinth and bring some other Coronal to the
summit of Castle Mount, and they would have to start the process of  extricating
Zimroel from the grip of Alhanroel  all over again. It was hopeless,  though, to
expect  any  of  the Five  Lords  to  understand such  things  before  they were
explained to them.

'The helmet will give us our revenge, yes,' said Khaymak Barjazid.

Mandralisca ignored that too. It was such a commonplace thing to say. And it was
not even sincere, Mandralisca thought. Barjazid had no interest in revenge.  His
brother's death at Prestimion's hand did  not seem to matter greatly to  him. He
would just  as readily  have sold  himself to  his brother's  killers as  to his
brother's killers' enemies,  if the price  had been right.  The selling was  all
that mattered. What interested this Barjazid most was money, security,  comfort:
petty unimportant things, all three. There was a bright spark of malevolence  in
Barjazid that Mandralisca appreciated, a chilly malign intelligence, but the man
was fundamentally trivial, a little bundle of unusual marketable skills and very
ordinary hungers.

Mandralisca's restlessness had returned. The  stink of other human flesh  in the
room  was   becoming  unendurable   now.  The   heat.  The   pressure  of  other
consciousnesses too close against his own.

He gathered up the flimsy little helmet and tucked it like so much pocket-change
into a pouch at his hip. 'Going outside,' he said. 'Too warm in here. Some fresh
air.'

The long shadows of afternoon were beginning to creep westward across the ridge.
The palaces of the  Five Lords, up there  on the summit of  the hill overlooking
the village, were bathed in ruddy light. Mandralisca walked through the  village
in long strides, no particular destination in mind. The other three men followed
along behind, struggling to keep up with him.

Such small men, he thought. Gaviral. Halefice. Barjazid. Small of stature, small
of soul as well.  Halefice, for one, knew  it: he wanted only  to serve. Gaviral
dreamed of reigning  as a king  here in Zimroel,  and was no  more fitted for it
than a rock-monkey would be. And ugly little Barjazid - well, he had his merits,
he was tough and smart, at least. Mandralisca did not entirely despise him.  But
essentially he was nothing. Nothing.

'Your grace?' Halefice had caught  up with him. The aide-de-camp  said, 'Begging
your pardon, your grace, but perhaps your use of that device has tired you  more
than you realize, and you should rest for a time, instead of -'

'Thank you,Jacomin.  I'll be  all right.'  Mandralisca kept  on moving, not even
facing toward Halefice as he spoke. They were in the thick of the village,  now,
among the smiths and the pot-sellers, with the wine-shops just beyond, and  then
the market of breads and meats.

It had not been an easy  matter, building a self-sufficient village out  here in
this dry  desolate land,  where crops  had to  be coaxed  from the unwilling red
earth with the aid of water pumped drop by drop from the maddeningly unreachable
river just over the hill, but they had done it. He had done it. He knew  nothing
about farming, nothing about raising livestock, nothing about creating  villages
out of thin air, but he had done it, he had drawn the plans and given the orders
and made it happen, even to the lavish  palaces of the Five Lords at the top  of
the ridge, and now, striding through it this strange afternoon, he felt - what?

A sense of anticipation. A sense of standing at the threshold of a new place,  a
strange and wonderful place.

Already he held the Five Lords of Zimroel in his hands, whether they knew it  or
not. Soon he would hold Prestimion and Dekkeret as well. He would be the  master
of all  Majipoor. Was  that not  a fine  thing, for  a country  boy of the snowy
Gonghar land who had started out in life with no assets other than a quick  mind
and lightning-swift reflexes?

He passed the  wine-shops, shaking off  flasks that the  merchants there eagerly
implored him to take,  and went on  through the bread-market.  One of the  bread
sellers put a biscuit into his hand  with a reverent bow and a murmured  prayer.
There was awe in his eyes, as though he and not Gaviral were a Lord of  Zimroel.
The wine-merchants and bread-sellers understand, Mandralisca thought, where  the
real power resides in this  place. He bit into the  biscuit - it was one  of the
little round ones called a lorica, with a top-knot on the upper side to make  it
seem something like a crown. A good choice, thought Mandralisca. He devoured  it
in three bites.

On the far side of the bread-market the ridge rose sharply to a point where  one
could see  the river  far below,  boiling and  churning against  the foot of the
cliff. He strode toward it. Halefice still walked along beside him on the  left,
a step or two to the rear. Barjazid was on the other side. The Lord Gaviral  did
not seem to have followed them up the hill from the marketplace.

Mandralisca stood staring at the river  for a long while without speaking.  Then
he drew the helmet  from his pouch. It  rested in the palm  of his open hand,  a
bunched-up little  mass of  metal mesh.  Barjazid gave  him a  worried look,  as
though wondering if Mandralisca might have it in mind to hurl it into the  water
below.

To the  Suvraelinu Mandralisca  said suddenly,  'Barjazid, did  you ever want to
kill your father?'

That drew a startled glance. 'My father was a kindly man, your grace. A merchant
who dealt in hides and dried beef, in Tolaghai city. It would never have entered
my mind -'

'It entered mine, a thousand times a day. If my father were still alive now  I'd
put this helmet on and try to kill him with it right now.'

Barjazid was too astounded to answer.  He and Halefice were both peering  at him
strangely.

Mandralisca had never spoken of these things with anyone. But those few  seconds
of using the Barjazid helmet had opened something in his soul, apparently.

'He was a merchant too,' he said.  He looked straight out into the river  gorge,
and the hated past swam before his  eyes. 'In Ibykos, which is a muddy  trifling
little  town  in  the  scarp  country of  the  Gonghars,  a  hundred  miles west
ofVelathys. It rains there  all summer and snows  all winter. He dealt  in wines
and brandies, and was  his own best customer,  and when he was  drunk, as almost
always he was, he would hit you just as readily as look at you. That was how  he
talked to you, with his  hands. It was in my  boyhood that I learned to  move as
quickly as I do. To jump back fast - out of his reach.'

Even after nearly forty years Mandralisca could see that grim face, so much  now
like his own, in the eye of his  mind. The long lean jaw, the clamped lips,  the
black scowl, the gathering brow; and the merciless hand flashing out, swift as a
pungatan-whip,  to split  your lip  or swell  your cheek  or blacken  your  eye.
Sometimes the beatings had gone on and on and on, for the slightest of  reasons,
or for no reason  at all. Mandralisca barely  could summon up a  recollection of
his pallid, timid mother, but  the monstrous brutal irascible father  still rose
like a mountain in his memory. Year after year of that, the curses, the backhand
slaps, the  sudden pokes  and jabs  and smacks,  not only  from him but from the
other three too, his older brothers, who imitated their father by hitting anyone
smaller than themselves. There had never been a day without its bruise,  without
its little ration of pain and humiliation.

He shut his fist on the helmet, squeezing it tight.

'Each night I sent myself to sleep  by imagining I had murdered him that  day. A
knife in the  gut, or poisoned  wine, or a  trip-wire in the  dark and a  hidden
noose, I slew him fifty different ways. Until the day I told him out loud that I
would do it if I got the chance, and I thought he was going to kill me there  on
the spot. But I was too fast for him, and when he had chased me from one end  of
the town to the other he gave up, warning me that he'd break me in half the next
time he got his hands on me. But  there never was a next time. A carter  came by
who was setting forth to  Velathys, and he gave me  a ride, and I have  not seen
the Gonghars since. I  learned many years later  that my father died  in a brawl
with a drunken patron in his shop. My brothers too are dead, I believe. Or so do
I profoundly hope.'

'Did you go straight into the service of Dantirya Sambail, then?' Halefice asked
him.

'Not then, no.' His tongue was  loose, now. His face felt strangely  flushed. 'I
went first to the western lands, to Narabal in the south, on the coast -1 wanted
to be warm, I wanted never to see snow again - and then to Til-omon, and  Dulorn
of the Ghayrogs, and many another place, until I found myself in Ni-moya and the
Procurator chose me to  be his cup-bearer. I  was in his bodyguard  then, and he
saw me at a demonstration of the batons - I am quick with the singlesticks,  you
know, quick with any sort of dueling weapon - and he called me out to talk  with
me after I had beaten six of his guardsmen  in a row. And said to me, 'I need  a
cup-bearer, Mandralisca. Will you have the job?''

'One did not refuse a man like Dantirya Sambail,' said Halefice piously.

'Why would I have refused? Did I think the task was beneath me? I was a  country
boy.Jacomin. He was the master ofZimroel; and I would stand at his side and hand
him his wine,  which meant I  would be in  his presence constantly.  When he met
with the great ones of the world,  the dukes and counts and mayors, or  even the
Coronals and Pontifexes, I would be there.'

'And did you become his poison-taster then, also?'

'That came later. There was a  whispered tale, that season, that the  Procurator
would be done to death by one of the sons of his cousin, who had been regent  in
Zimroel when Dantirya Sambail was young, and had been put aside by him. It would
be by poison, they said, poison in his wine. This talk came to the  Procurator's
own ear; and when I  handed him his wine-bowl the  next time, he looked into  it
and then at me,  and I knew he  mistrusted it. So I  said, by my own  free will,
because I mattered not at  all to myself and he  mattered a great deal, 'Let  me
taste it  first, milord  Procurator, for  safety's sake.'  I have  no liking for
wine, on account of my father,  you understand. But I tasted it,  while Dantirya
Sambail watched, and we waited, and I  did not fall down dead. And after  that I
tasted his wine with every bowl, to the end of his days. It was our custom, even
though  there were  never any  threats against  him ever  again. It  was a  bond
between us, that I would sip a bit of his wine before I gave him the bowl.  That
is the  only wine  I have  ever had,  the wine  I tasted  on behalf  of Dantirya
Sambail.'

'You weren't afraid?' asked Khaymak Barjazid.

Mandralisca turned to him with a scornful grin. 'If I had died, what would  that
have mattered  to me?  It was  a chance  worth the  taking. Was  the life  I was
leading so precious  to me that  I would not  risk it for  the sake of  becoming
Dantirya Sambail's companion? Is being  alive such a sweet wondrous  thing, that
we should cling to it like misers  clutching their bags of royals? I have  never
found it  so. -  In any  case there  was no  poison in  the wine,  then or ever,
obviously. And I was at his side forever after.'

If  he had  ever loved  anyone, Mandralisca  thought, that  person was  Dantirya
Sambail. It  was as  if they  shared a  single spirit  divided into  two bodies.
Though the Procurator had already  managed to bring the entirety  ofZimroel into
his power  before Mandralisca  entered his  service, it  was Mandralisca who had
spurred him  on to  the far  greater enterprise  of encouraging  Confalume's son
Korsibar to seize the throne ofMajipoor. With Korsibar as Coronal, and  indebted
to Dantirya Sambail  for his crown,  Dantirya Sambail would  have been the  most
powerful figure in the world.

Well, it  had not  worked out,  and both  Korsibar and  the Procurator were long
gone.  Dantirya  Sambail  had  played  and lost,  and  that  was  that.  But for
Mandralisca there were other games yet to play. He gently stroked the helmet  in
his hand.

Other games to play, yes. That was  all existence was, really: a game. He  alone
had seen the truth of that, the  thing that others railed to realize. You  lived
for a time, you played the game of life, ultimately you lost, and then there was
nothing.  But  while  you  played,  you  played  to  win.  Great  wealth,   fine
possessions, grand palaces, feasting and the  pleasures of the flesh and all  of
that, those things meant nothing to  him, and less than nothing. They  were only
tokens of how well you had played; they had no merit in and of themselves.  Even
the wielding of power itself was a secondary thing, a means rather than an end.

All that mattered was winning, he thought,  for as long as you could manage  it.
To play and to win,  until the time came when,  inevitably, you lost. And if  it
had  meant  risking  the  chance  of drinking  poison  that  was  meant  for the
Procurator, if that was the price of entering the game, why, surely the risk was
worth the reward! Let other men wear the crowns and hoard up great stockpiles of
treasure.  Let other  men surround  themselves with  simpering women  and  drink
themselves blind with tingling wine. Those were not things that he needed.  When
he was a boy, everything  that had been of any  importance to him was denied  to
him, and  he had  learned to  live with  nothing whatsoever.  Now there was very
little that he wanted, except  to see to it that  no one could ever again  place
himself in a position to deny him anything.

Barjazid was staring at  him again as though  reading his mind. Mandralisca  saw
that he had, once again, revealed too  much of himself. Anger rose in him.  This
was a weakness  he had never  indulged in before.  He had said  enough, and more
than enough.

Swinging abruptly around, he said, 'Let's go back to my chamber.'

If I ever  catch him using  his helmet on  me, Mandralisca told  himself, I will
take him out into the desert and stake him down between two pungatans.

'I will try this toy of yours again, I think,' he said to Barjazid, and  quickly
slipped the helmet over his brow, and  felt its force seize hold of him;  and he
sent his mind soaring forth until it made contact with another, not troubling to
determine whether it belonged  to a human or  a Ghayrog, a Skandar  or a Liiman.
Probed it for a point of entry. Entered it, then, piercing it like a sword.

Slashed it.

Left it in ruins.

Mastery. Ecstasy.



3

Dekkeret said,  'So this  is the  imperial throne-chamber!  I've always wondered
what it was like.'

Prestimion made a  flamboyantly grandiose gesture.  'Take a good  look. It'll be
yours someday.'

With a rueful smile Dekkeret said,  'Have mercy, my lord! I'm barely  accustomed
to wearing a Coronal's robes and here  you are already opening the doors of  the
Labyrinth for me!'

'I see you still call me 'my lord.' That title is yours now, my lord. I am 'your
majesty.''

'Yes, your majesty.'

'Thank you, my lord.'

Neither man  made any  attempt to  smother his  laughter. This  was their  first
formal meeting as Pontifex and Coronal, and neither of them could deal with  the
magnitude of that fact without a certain leavening of amusement.

They were in the  uttermost level of the  Labyrinth, the site of  the Pontifex's
private residence and of the great public chambers of the imperial branch of the
monarchy, the throne-chamber and the Great Hall of the Pontifex and the Court of
Thrones and the rest. Dekkeret had arrived at the subterranean capital late  the
previous evening. He had never had reason to go to the Labyrinth before,  though
he had heard tales of it all his life: the grimness of it, the airlessness,  the
sense that it gave you of being  cut off from all life and nature,  condemned to
live down deep, out of  sight of the world, in  a realm of eternal night  lit by
harsh, glittering lamps.

At first view, though, the place struck  him as far less forbidding than he  had
anticipated.  The  upper rings  had  the rich,  bustling  vitality of  a  mighty
metropolis, which was, after all, what the Labyrinth in fact was: the capital of
the world. And then there were the architectural wonders deeper down, the myriad
strangenesses with  which ten  thousand years  of Pontifexes  had bedecked their
city.  Finally, there  was the  grandeur and  richness of  the imperial   sector
itself, where such magnificence had been lavished that even the opulence of  the
Castle was put in the shade.

Dekkeret had spent the night in the chambers reserved for Coronals during  their
visits to the court of the senior monarch. It was the first time he had occupied
any of the Coronal's residences anywhere. He had halted a moment, struck by  awe
at the sight of the great door to the suite that now was his, with its intricate
carvings and the swirling starburst symbols done in gold and the royal  monogram
repeated again  and again,  LPC, LPC,  LPC, Lord  Prestimion Coronal, which soon
would be replaced by  the LDC of his  own ascension. Only one  step remained for
that. He had  been proclaimed by  Prestimion, and he  had been confirmed  by the
Council; now he needed only to return to the Castle for his coronation ceremony.
But the funeral of  Confalume and the coronation  of the new Pontifex  must take
precedence over that.

The new Pontifex had already gone through the ancient rite of taking  possession
of his new home. Since Prestimion had already been traveling on the Glayge  when
the news had come to him  ofConfalume's death, he had returned to  the Labyrinth
by the river route; but instead of  entering the capital by way of the  Mouth of
Waters, the  customary entrance  from the  Glayge, he  was required by tradition
this time to go entirely around the city to the far side, the one that faced the
southern desert, and come in via the much less congenial Mouth of Blades.

That was simply a stark gaping hole in the desert floor, walled about with  bare
timbers to keep the  drifting sands from filling  it in. Across the  front of it
was a row of antique rusted swords, said  to be thousands of years old, set  tip
upward in  a matrix  of concrete.  Behind that  unwelcoming entrance  waited the
seven masked guardians of  the Labyrinth - by  custom, two Hjorts, a  Ghayrog, a
Skandar, and even a Liiman were  included among them - who soberly  went through
the   ritual  of   inquiring  after   Prestimion's  business   in  this   place,
ostentatiously conferred among themselves to  decide whether to let him  in, and
then demanded from him the traditional entry-offering, which had to be something
of his own choice. Prestimion had brought with him the cloak that the people  of
Gamarkaim had sent to him as a coronation gift when he became Coronal, woven  of
the  cobalt-blue feathers  of giant  fire-beetles and  said to  give its  wearer
protection  against harm  from flame.  By surrendering  it here,  to be   housed
forever in the museum where such gifts  were kept, he was declaring that in  the
Labyrinth he would always be safe from every external menace.

Then he  entered; and  custom now  obliged him  to descend  through each  of the
levels of the spiraling city on foot. That was no small journey. Varaile  walked
beside him all  the way, and  his three sons  and his daughter,  though the Lady
Tuanelys, too young to keep pace, was  borne on a Skandar guard's back for  much
of the distance.  At each stage  great crowds gathered  around him, tracing  the
Labyrinth symbol in the air with  their fingertips and crying out his  new name:
'Prestimion Pontifex! Prestimion Pontifex!' He was Lord Prestimion no longer.

Meanwhile his succession to the senior throne had been proclaimed at each of the
levels below, first  at the Court  of Columns, then  in the Place  of Masks, and
then the Hall of Winds, the Court of Pyramids, and upward as far as the Mouth of
Blades. So when he  reached each of these  places it was already  consecrated to
his reign. And at  last Prestimion came to  the imperial sector, where  he knelt
first beside  the embalmed  body of  his predecessor  Confalume where  it lay in
state  on the  dais of  the Court  of Thrones,  and then  went to  his own   new
dwelling-place, and there  received from the  High Spokesman of  the Pontificate
the spiral emblem of his office and the scarlet-and-black robes. The rest  could
not be done until Dekkeret arrived.

And now Dekkeret had come. The  age-old custom called for Prestimion to  receive
the  new Coronal  in the  imperial throne-chamber.  And so  the High   Spokesman
Haskelorn  called on  Dekkeret at  the Coronal's  suite the  morning after   his
arrival, and they rode together in a small floater through the long and  winding
passages of the imperial sector down  an ever-narrowing tunnel to a point  where
not  even  the little  vehicle  could enter.  Walking  side by  side,  now, they
advanced through a passageway that was sealed every fifty feet by bronze  doors,
until they came to  the final door, emblazoned  with the Labyrinth sign  and the
newly inscribed monogram of Prestimion Pontifex where Confalume's had been  only
hours before. Old Haskelorn touched his palm to the monogram and the door  swung
open and there stood Prestimion, smiling.

'Leave us,' he said to Haskelorn. 'This meeting involves just the two of us.'


Prestimion showed Dekkeret the throne-chamber itself, first.

It was a great globe of a room, its curving sides covered from floor to  ceiling
with smooth, gleaming yellow-brown tiles that seemed to burn with an inner light
of their  own. But  the throne-chamber's  only illumination  came from  a single
massive glowfloat that hovered in mid-air and emitted a steady ruby  luminosity.
Directly below it stood  the Pontifical throne, on  a platform reached by  three
broad steps:  an enormous  high-backed chair  with long,  slender legs that were
tipped with fierce claws, so that they seemed like those of some giant bird.  It
was entirely covered  over with sheets  of gold, or,  perhaps, for all  Dekkeret
could tell, made of one solid  mass of the priceless metal. Amid  the simplicity
of the huge room the throne itself blazed with a dreadful power.

One might easily  think Confalume had  designed this chamber,  since it was  the
Labyrinth's counterpart of the resplendent throne-room that Confalume had  built
for himself at the Castle when he was Coronal. But this room was not Confalume's
work. It bore no  sign of the late  monarch's taste for baroque  extravagance of
style. The throne-chamber  of the Labyrinth  was a room  so ancient that  no one
quite knew who had built it: the common  belief was that it went back to a  time
even before the reign of Stiamot.

The effect was awe-inspiring and somehow preposterous at one and the same time.

'What do you think?' Prestimion asked.

Dekkeret had to fight  back more giggles. 'It's  extremely - majestic, I'd  say.
Majestic, that's the word. Confalume must have loved it. You aren't really going
to use it, are you?'

'I have to,' Prestimion said. 'For certain high functions and sacred ceremonies.
Haskelorn's going to draw  up a guidebook for  me. We have to  take these things
seriously, Dekkeret.'

'Yes. I suppose we do. I noticed  long ago how seriously you take the  Confalume
Throne. How many  times have I  seen you sitting  in it, over  the years - five?
Eight?'

Prestimion looked  a bit  ruffled. 'I  took the  Confalume Throne very seriously
indeed. It is the symbol of the Coronal's grandeur and power. A little too grand
for my  own private  tastes, which  is why  I preferred  to use  the old Stiamot
throne-room  most  of the  time.  I would  never  have built  a  thing like  the
Confalume Throne, Dekkeret. But that doesn't mean I underestimate its importance
in sustaining the power and majesty of the government. Neither should you.'

'I didn't mean to imply that I would. Only that when I think of you sitting here
on this great golden chair, and me  up there at the Castle atop old  Confalume's
big block of opal -' He shook  his head. 'By the Divine, Prestimion, we're  just
men, men  whose bladders  ache when  we go  too long  without pissing  and whose
stomachs growl when we don't get fed on time.'

Quietly Prestimion said, 'Yes, we are that. But also we are Powers of the Realm,
two of the three. I  am this world's emperor, and  you are its king, and  to the
fifteen billion people over  whom we rule we  are the embodiment of  all that is
sacred here. And so they  put us up on these  gaudy thrones and bow down  to us,
and who are we to  say no to that, if  it makes our job of  running this immense
planet  any  easier?  Think  of  them,  Dekkeret,  whenever  you  find  yourself
performing some absurd ritual or clambering up onto some overdecorated seat.  We
are  not  provincial justices  of  the peace,  you  know. We  are  the essential
mainsprings of the  world.' Then, as  if realizing that  his tone had  grown too
sharp, Prestimion grinned broadly. 'We, and the fifty million unimportant public
officials who  actually have  the job  of doing  all the  things that  we in our
grandeur command them to do. - Come, let me show you the rest of this place.'

It was an  extensive tour. Prestimion  led him along  quickly. Though Dekkeret's
legs were considerably longer than Prestimion's, he was hard pressed to keep  up
with  the older  man, who  set a  pace that  was in  keeping with  the  lifelong
restlessness and impulsiveness of his nature.

They went first through a concealed door at the rear of the throne-chamber,  and
then down a long hallway into the vast dark space known as the Court of Thrones,
where  somber walls  of black  stone swept  together high  overhead to  meet  in
pointed arches. The only light within the Court of Thrones was provided by  half
a  dozen wax  tapers along  the walls,  set far  apart in  sconces shaped   like
upstretched hands. The two  large thrones of red  gamba-wood that gave the  room
its name, not so numbingly grand  as the one in the throne-chamber  but imposing
enough in their own way, rose side  by side on stepped platforms at the  rear of
the room.  One bore  the starburst  symbol of  the Coronal,  and the  other, the
greater one, the spiraling maze that was the Pontifical sign.

Shuddering, Dekkeret said, 'It appears more  fit to be a torture-chamber than  a
throne-room, if you ask me.'

'In truth I  do agree. I  have no good  memories of this  room: it is  the place
where Korsibar's sorcerers bamboozled us all,  and as we stood stunned by  their
magic he seized the crown and put it on his own head. I wince even now, whenever
I come in here.'

'It never happened,  Prestimion. Ask anyone,  and that's what  they'll tell you.
The whole  episode is  gone from  everyone's mind.  You should  thrust it out of
yours.'

'Would that I could. But I find  that some painful memories don't want to  fade.
For me  it's still  quite real.'  Prestimion ran  his hand  uneasily through his
thin, soft  golden hair.  His expression  was bleak.  He seemed  to be wrenching
himself by sheer force of will away from that moment of the past. - 'Well, there
is where we will sit, the two of us, a couple of days from now, and I'll put the
crown on you myself.'

'I should take this opportunity to tell you,' said Dekkeret, 'that once I am  on
the throne I plan to ask your brother Teotas to be my High Counsellor.'

'You say it as if you're  asking my permission. The Coronal chooses  whomever he
wishes for that post, Dekkeret.' There was a certain brusqueness in Prestimion's
tone.

'You know him better than anyone in the world. If you think there's some flaw in
him that I've overlooked -'

'He has a very short temper,' Prestimion said. 'But that's not a flaw anyone who
spends five  minutes in  his company  could possibly  overlook. Other than that,
he's perfect. A wise choice, Dekkeret. I approve. He'll serve you well. That  is
what you wanted me to say, isn't it?' It was clear from his impatience with this
discussion Prestimion had other things on his mind. Or perhaps merely wanted  to
conceal the pleasure he felt at having so great an honor descend on his brother.
- 'Look here, now. There's something else in here for you to see.'

Dekkeret followed Prestimion through  the shadows to an  alcove on the left,  in
which he perceived a  sort of altar covered  with white damask, and  then, as he
went closer, a  figure lying atop  it, facing upward,  hands clasped across  his
breast.

'Confalume,' said Prestimion in the lowest  of tones. 'Lying in the place  where
I'll lie  myself, twenty  or forty  years from  now, and  you yourself  will be,
twenty  or  forty years  after  that. They've  embalmed  him to  last  a hundred
centuries or more. There's a secret vault in the Labyrinth where the last  fifty
Pontifexes are buried - did you know that, Dekkeret? No. Neither did I. A  long,
long line of imperial  tombs, each with its  own little marker. Tomorrow  we put
Confalume in his.'

Prestimion knelt  and pressed  his forehead  reverently against  the side of the
altar. Dekkeret, after a moment, did the same.

'I met him once when I was a boy: did I ever tell you that?' Dekkeret said, when
they had  risen. 'I  was nine.  It was  in Bombifale.  We were  there because my
father was showing samples  of his goods -  agricultural machinery, I think,  is
what he was dealing in then -  to the manager of Admiral Gonivaul's estate,  and
Lord Confalume was Gonivaul's guest at the  same time. I saw them go out  riding
together in Gonivaul's big floater. They went  right past me in the road, and  I
waved,  and Confalume  smiled and  waved back.  Just the  sight of  him made  me
tremble. He seemed so strong, Prestimion, so radiant - practically godlike. That
smile of his: the warmth, the power of it. It's a moment I'll never forget.  And
then, that afternoon, I went with my father to Bombifale Palace, and the Coronal
was holding court, and once again he smiled at me -'

He broke off his story and looked toward the still, shrouded figure lying  there
atop the altar. It  was not easy to  accept die fact that  a monarch of so  much
force and grandeur could have vanished from the world between one moment and the
next, leaving only this husk behind.

Prestimion said, 'He may  have been the greatest  of them all. Flawed,  yes. His
vanity, his love of luxury, his  weakness for wizards and soothsayers. But  what
trifling faults those were, and  how wonderful his accomplishments! Guiding  the
world 'Tor sixty years - the heroic  power of him - as you say,  almost godlike.
History will be very kind to him. Let's hope we're remembered half as warmly  as
he will be, Dekkeret.'

'Yes. I pray that we are.'

Prestimion began to move  toward the exit of  the great hall. But  as he reached
the door he halted and once more indicated the two thrones, the entire length of
the room away, with a quick taut  nod, and then looked back at the  alcove where
the dead Pontifex  lay. 'The single  worst moment of  his reign took  place over
there, right  in front  of those  thrones, when  Korsibar grabbed  the starburst
crown.' Dekkeret followed Prestimion's pointing arm. 'I was looking straight  at
Confalume, just then. He seemed  numb. Staggered by it -broken,  shattered. They
had to take  him by the  elbows and lead  him up the  steps and seat  him on the
Pontifical throne, with his son sitting  up there beside him. There. Those  very
thrones.'

All so long ago, Dekkeret thought. Ancient history, buried and forgotten by  all
the world. Except Prestimion, it seemed.

Who was  caught up  now in  the grip  of his  own tale.  'I had an audience with
Confalume a day or two later, and he sdll appeared to be dazed by the thing that
Korsibar had done. He seemed old -  weak - beaten. I was furious at  having been
done out of the throne, and that he had acquiesced in the theft; yet, seeing him
in that state, I could only feel compassion for him. I asked him to call out the
troops against the usurper,  and I thought he  was going to weep,  because I was
asking him to launch a war against his  own son. He would not do it, of  course.
He told me that he agreed that I  was the one who should have been Coronal,  but
that now he had no  other path but to accept  Korsibar's coup. He begged me  for
mercy! Mercy, Dekkeret! And out of pity for him I went away without pressing him
further.' There was a sudden startling look of torment in Prestimion's eyes. 'To
see  that  great man  in  ruins, like  that,  Dekkeret -  that  this was  mighty
Confalume with whom I was speaking, now only the pathetic shadow of a king -'

So he  will not  let go  of it,  Dekkeret thought:  the usurpation  and all  its
consequences still resonated in Prestimion's spirit down to this very moment.

'What an awful thing that must have been to witness,' he said, since he felt  he
must say something, as they emerged into the vestibule.

'It  was an  agony for  me. And   for Confalume  also, I  would think.  -  Well,
eventually my sorcerers carved all  memory of Korsibar's little bit  of mischief
from his mind, and  from everyone else's as  well, and he returned  to being his
old self and lived on happily for  many years thereafter. But I still carry  the
memory of it in my soul. If only I could h'ave forgotten it too!'

'There are certain painful memories that  don't want to fade,. is what  you told
me only a minute ago.'

'True enough.'

Dekkeret realized in dismay  that a painful memory  of his own had  unexpectedly
"egun to stir in him. He tried to push it back down into the place from which it
had come. But it would not be pushed.

Prestimion, seeming  more cheerful  now, opened  another door.  A giant  Skandar
guard stood just within. Prestimion waved him aside. 'Beyond here,' he said,  in
an easier tone, 'the private dwelling of the Pontifex begins. It goes on and on:
dozens of rooms, three score of them, at least. I still haven't been all the way
through the whole place. Confalume's collections are here, do you see? - all his
toys of magic, his paintings and statues, the prehistoric artifacts, the ancient
coins, the stuffed birds  and mounted bugs. The  man scooped up every  manner of
thing  with both  hands throughout  his life,  and here  it all  is. He's   left
everything to  the nation.  We'll give  him an  entire wing  in the  new Archive
building at the Castle. Look - here, do you see this, Dekkeret -?'

Dekkeret, who  was barely  paying attention,  said, 'I  also have  an unpleasant
memory that refuses to fade.'

'And  what  is   that?'  Prestimion  asked.   He  seemed  disconcerted   by  the
interruption.

'You were there when it happened. That  day in Normork when the madman tried  to
assassinate you, and my cousin Sithelle was killed instead -?'

'Ah. Yes,' said Prestimion, sounding a little vague, as though he had not  given
the incident  a moment's  thought in  twenty years.  'That lovely  girl. Yes. Of
course.'

It all came rushing back yet again. 'I carried her through the streets, bleeding
all over me, dead in my arms. The worst moment of my life, bar none. The  blood.
That pale face, those staring eyes. And later in the day they brought me  before
you, because I had saved your life, and you rewarded me with a knight-initiate's
post, and everything began for me in that moment. I was just eighteen. But  I've
never fully been able to break free of the pain of Sithelle's death. Not really.
It was only after she was dead  that I realized how much I loved  her.' Dekkeret
hesitated. He was not sure, even after  having gone this far, that he wanted  to
share this with Prestimion,  for all that the  older man had been  his guide and
mentor hese nearly twenty years. But then the words came surging forth as if  by
their own volition: 'Do  you know, Prestimion, I  think that it's on  account of
Sithelle that I took up with Fulkari? I think I was drawn to her at the  outset,
and am held by her still, because when I look at her I see Sithelle.'

Prestimion still did not appear to comprehend the depth of his feelings. To  him
this was just so much conversation. 'You think so, do you? How interesting, that
the  resemblance  should be  so  strong.' He  did  not sound  interested  in the
slightest. 'But of  course I'm in  no position to  know. I saw  your cousin only
that once, and  for just an  instant. It was  a long time  ago - everything  was
happening so quickly -'

'Yes. How could you  possibly remember? But if  there were some way  of standing
them next to each other, I know  that you'd think that they must be  sisters. To
me, Fulkari looks more like Sithelle than she does her own actual sister. And so
- the root of my obsession with her -'

'Obsession?' Prestimion blinked in surprise. 'Wait, there! I thought you were in
love with her, Dekkeret. Obsession is something else again, something not  quite
as pretty  and pure.  Or are  you telling  me that  you think  the two terms are
synonymous?'

'They can be, yes.  Yes. And in this  case I know that  they are.' There was  no
turning back from this, now. 'I swear it, Prestimion, the thing that drew me  to
Fulkari was her resemblance to Sithelle, and nothing else. I knew nothing  about
her. I had never spoken a word with her. But I saw her, and I thought, There she
is, restored to me, and it was like a trap closing on me. A trap that I had  set
for myself.'

'Then  you don't  love her?  You've simply  been using  her as  a surrogate  for
someone you lost long ago?'

Dekkeret shook his head. 'I don't want to think that's true. I do love her, yes.
But it's very clear that she's the wrong woman for me. Yet I stay with her  even
so, because being with her seems  to call Sithelle back into life. Which is  no
reason at all. I've got to get free of this, Prestimion!'

Prestimion seemed puzzled. 'The wrong woman for you? Wrong in what way?'

'She doesn't want to be a Coronal's consort. The whole idea of it terrifies  her
- the duties, the demands on my time and hers -'

'She told you this?'

'In just so many  words. I asked her  to marry me, and  she said she would,  but
only if I didn't let myself be made Coronal.'

'This is astounding, Dekkeret. Not only  do you love her for the  wrong reasons,
you say, but she's not suited to be your queen in any case - and yet you  refuse
to break with her? You have to, man.'

'I know. But I can't find the strength.'

'Because of your memories of your lost Sithelle.'

'Yes.'

'These confusions of yours add up  to a very unhealthy business, Dekkeret.  They
are two different people, Sithelle  and Fulkari.' Prestimion's voice was  stern,
and as close to fatherly as  Dekkeret had ever heard it sound.  'Sithelle's gone
forever. There's no way  that Fulkari can be  Sithelle for you. Put  that out of
your mind. And  she's not even  a good choice  for a wife  on her own  terms, it
seems.'

'What am I supposed to do, though?'

'Part  with  her. A  complete  break.' Prestimion's  words  fell upon  him  like
boulders. 'There are plenty of other women at this court who'll be glad to  keep
company with you until  you decide you want  to marry. But this  relationship is
one that has  to be severed.  You should thank  the Divine that  Fulkari refused
you. She's obviously not right for you.  And it makes no sense to marry  a woman
simply because she reminds you of someone else.'

'Don't you think I know that? I do. I do. And yet -'

'Yet you can't free yourself of this obsession with her.'

Dekkeret looked away. This was becoming shameful, now. He had diminished himself
woefully in Prestimion's eyes,  he knew. In a  small and very unkingly  voice he
said, 'No. I can't. And you can't possibly comprehend it, can you, Prestimion?'

'On the contrary. I think I can.'

There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment or two. All this while they  had
continued to walk  between the rows  of Confalume's showcases  of treasures, but
neither of them was looking at anything.

In a different, more  intimate tone Prestimion said,  'I can understand how  the
line between love and obsession can become blurred. There was a woman in my life
once also,  whom I  loved and  who was  taken from  me by  violence -Confalume's
daughter, she was, the twin sister of Korsibar - it's a long story, a very  long
story -'  Prestimion seemed  to be  having trouble  finding the  words. 'She was
killed in  the last  hour of  the civil  war, slain  right on the battlefield by
Korsibar's treacherous magus. I mourned her for years, and then, more or less, I
put her behind me. Or thought I did.  In time I found Varaile, who is right  for
me in every respect, and all was well. Except that Thismet - that was her  name,
Thismet - haunts me still. Hardly a month goes by when I don't dream of her. And
wake up in a cold sweat, bellowing  in pain. I have never told Varaile  why that
is. No one has any knowledge of this. No one except you, now.'

Dekkeret had not expected any such confession. It was an astonishing thing.  'We
all have our ghosts, I see. Who will not quit their hold on our souls, no matter
how many years may go by.'

'Yes. I thank you for sharing these private things with me, Dekkeret.'

'You don't think the less of me for all that I've said?'

'Why would  I? You're  human, aren't  you? We  don't expect  our Coronals  to be
perfect in every regard.  We'd put marble statues  on the throne instead,  if we
did.  And  thi"  suffering  of  yours  can  be  healed,  perhaps.  I  could have
Maundigand-Klimd try to cleanse your mind of all memory of your dead cousin.'

'The  same way  he's cleansed  yours of  Thismet?' responded  Dekkeret  sharply,
without a moment's pause.

Prestimion gave him a startled look. Dekkeret realized that in the depths of his
shame he  had suddenly  felt impelled  to strike  back at  the very  man who was
striving to ease his pain, and his hasty words had been hurtful ones.

'Forgive me. It was a wicked thing to say.'

'No, Dekkeret. It was a truthful thing to say. You were well within your  rights
to say it.' Prestimion made as  if to slip his arm around  Dekkeret's shoulders,
but the younger man was too tall for that. He took Dekkeret lightly by the wrist
instead. 'This has been a valuable  conversation: one of the most important  you
and I have ever had. I know you  much better now than ever I did before,  in all
these years.'

'And do you  think that a  man who carries  a burden of  this sort is  worthy of
being Coronal?'

'I'll pretend you didn't say that, I think.'

'Thank you, Prestimion.'

'And my remark a  moment ago, about Maundigand-Klimd  - obviously it upset  you.
I'm sorry for that. As you say, we  all have our ghosts. And perhaps it is  true
that we're condemned to carry them around with us to the end of our days. But  I
meant only that your memories of your  dead cousin seem to be causing you  great
pain, and you  have a world  to govern, and  a consort to  choose, and much else
racing you now, for  which you'll need the  full powers of your  spirit, without
distraction. I think that perhaps Maundigand-Klimd could heal you of your  loss.
But you may very  well not want to  surrender your memories of  Sithelle despite
all the pain they cause you -just as I, I suppose, want to cling to what remains
to me of Thismet. So  let's say no more of  this, eh? I'm confident that  you'll
heal  yourself  in  your  own  way. And  will  deal  properly  with  this matter
ofFulkari, too.'

'I hope so.'

'You will. You're a king now. Indecision is a luxury allowed only to the  common
folk.'

'I was one of  those, once,' said Dekkeret.  'It's not something one  ever fully
escapes.' Then  he smiled.  'But you're  right: now  I must  learn to be a king.
That's a subject I fear I'll spend the rest of my life studying.'

'So you will, and you'll never feel you've mastered it all. Don't let that worry
you. I felt the same way,  and Confalume before me, and Prankipin,  very likely,
as well, and so on and so on back to Stiamot and the kings who came before  him.
It's a thing dial goes with the job. We are all common folk, Dekkeret, under our
crowns and robes.  The test for  us is how  well we rise  above that. But you'll
have me to call on, when doubts arise.'

'I know that, Prestimion. I give thanks daily for that.'

'And also I've arranged that you'll have my chamberlain Zeidor Luudwid for  your
own, when you get back to the Castle.  He knows more about how to behave like  a
Coronal than I do myself. If there's a problem, simply ask him. He's yours as my
gift.'

'Thank you - your majesty.'

'Say nothing of it - my lord.'



4

'Even a self-maintaining garden needs a certain degree of maintenance,' Dumafice
Moal told  his visiting  nephew, as  they set  out together  into the  uppermost
terrace of the magnificent park that Lord Havilbove had laid out three  thousand
years before. 'Hence my continuing employment, dear nephew. If the park were  as
really  perfect as  people commonly  believed, I'd  be selling  sausages in  the
streets of Dundilmir this day.'

The garden sprawled for forty miles  along the lower slopes of Castle  Mount. It
began at Bibiroon Sweep, below the city of Bibiroon in the Free Cities ring, and
angled down the  Mount in a  broad eastward-reaching curve  toward the uppermost
cities of the Slope Cities group, approaching at its downslope end the cities of
Kazkas, Stipool, and Dundilmir. The site  that the garden occupied was known  as
Tolingar Barrier, though nowadays it was  a barrier no longer. Once it  had been
an almost impenetrable zone of black sharp-edged spiky hillocks, the outcropping
remnants of a million-year-old flow of lava from some volcanic vein deep  within
the Mount. But the Coronal Lord Havilbove, who had devoted much of his reign  to
the construction  of this  garden, had  had the  lava hills  of Tolingar Barrier
ground down to fine black sand, which proved a fertile soil for the great garden
that would be planted there.

Lord Havilbove, a native of the  lowland city of Palaghat in the  Glayge Valley,
was a fastidious and orderly man who loved plants of all kinds but disliked  the
ease with which even  the finest of gardens  quickly became unruly and  departed
from its plan if not given constant finicky care. Therefore, while his  platoons
of brawny laborers were toiling to pulverize the lava beds of Tolingar  Barrier,
craftsmen in the workshops of  the Castle were striving, through  experiments in
controlled breeding, to create plants and shrubs and trees that needed no  touch
of a gardener's shears to maintain their graceful forms.

It was a time when the science of such biological miracles was still  understood
on Majipoor.  The efforts  of Lord  Havilbove's technicians  met with gratifying
success. The plants intended for his garden achieved a perfect symmetry as  they
grew, and when they reached a  size that was appropriate in relationship  to the
plants about them, they held that size ever after.

Superfluous leaves and even whole unnecessary boughs dropped away automatically,
and quickly  crumbled into  a compost  that enhanced  the fertility  of the lava
soil. Enzymes in their  roots suppressed the growth  of weeds. Every plant  bore
flowers, but the  seeds that those  flowers produced were  sterile; only when  a
plant reached the natural end of its life-cycle did it bring forth fertile ones,
so that it could replace itself with another that soon would have the same  size
and form. Thus the garden remained in unchanging balance.

Whenever he learned  of a beautiful  tree or shrub  anywhere in the  world. Lord
Havilbove sent for specimens of it, with roots and soil attached, and gave  them
to the genetic surgeons of  the Castle so that  they could be modified  for self
maintenance. Truckloads of  bright-hued ornamental minerals  came to the  garden
also - the yellowish-green stone known  as chrysocolla, and the blue one  called
heart-of-azure, and red  cinnabar, and golden  crusca, and dozens  more. Each of
these  was used  as a  ground-cover in  a different  level of  the garden,   the
differing colors being deployed  by Havilbove with a  painter's eye, so that  as
one stood upon the peak at Bibiroon  Sweep and looked down over the entirety  of
the garden one saw a great splash of pale crimson here, and one of vivid  yellow
there, and zones  of scarlet, and  blue, and green,  all of them  with plantings
complementary to the color of the ground.

Lord Havilbove's successor, Lord Kanaba, was equally devoted to the garden,  and
Lord Sirruth, who came after him, was sympathetic enough to it to keep its staff
in place and even expand its budget. Then came the Coronal Lord Thraym, who  was
at first preoccupied with ambitious building projects of his own at die  Castle,
but who was smitten with love  for Lord Havilbove's garden upon his  first visit
there. He saw to it that funds were  provided to carry it to its final state  of
perfection. Thus it took a century or more to bring the great garden into being;
but then it remained ever  after as one of the  treasures of the Mount, a  famed
sight  that  every inhabitant  of  Majipoor yearned  to  have the  privilege  of
beholding at least once.

Dumafice Moal had been born in Dundilmir, just downslope from the garden's lower
dp, and  from boyhood  on he  visited it  at every  opportunity he had. He never
doubted that it was his  destiny to be part of  the garden's staff; and now,  at
the age of sixty, he had more than forty years of devoted service behind him.

Self-maintaining though  the garden  was, it  nevertheless required  a staff  of
considerable size. Millions of people  visited the garden every year;  a certain
amount  of damage  was unavoidable;  paths and  fountains had  to be   repaired,
ornamental plazas tidied, stolen plants  replaced. Nor was the garden  safe from
marauding animals that came in from  outside. There was plenty of open  space on
Castle Mount  in the  districts between  the Fifty  Cities where  wild creatures
still thrived.  The forested  slopes of  the Mount  teemed with  beasts of  many
kinds, from hryssa-wolves and jakkaboles and slinking long-fanged noomanossi  to
such lesser creatures as sigimoins and mintuns and beady-eyed droles. Jakkaboles
and  hryssa-wolves, dangerous  things that  they were,  posed no  threat to  the
elegant plantings.  But a  pack of  little burrowing  droles, poking  their long
toothy snouts into  the ground in  search of grubs,  could uproot an  entire bed
ofeldirons or tanigales between midnight  and dawn. An infestation of  tentworms
could spread ugly canopies of coarse  silk over half a mile of  blooming thwales
and  swiftly  reduce the  plants  to naked  stubs.  A flock  of  hungry vulgises
settling in  the treetops   to build  their nests   - or  a swarm   of ganganels
spotted cujus -

So it was Dumafice Moal's daily  task to patrol the garden from  sunrise onward,
searching out the enemies of the  plants. It was constant warfare. For  a weapon
he carried a long-handled energy-thrower, tuned to its lowest power; and when he
came upon some work of destruction in progress, he would apply just enough  heat
to  drive  out  the  forces  of  destruction  without  damaging  the   plantings
themselves.

'Often it starts very inconspicuously,' he told his nephew. 'A trace of upturned
soil leads you to a tiny parade  of little red insects, and if you  follow along
it you discover a small mound,  something that a visitor wouldn't give  a second
look to - but those  of us who know what  to look for understand that  these are
the hatchlings of  the harpilan beetle,  which, if left  to its own  devices for
long, will - ah - see here, boy -'

He poked at  the border of  a row of  Bailemoona khemibors with  the tip of  his
energy-thrower. 'Do you see it, Theriax - right there -?'

The boy shook his head. The boy, Dumafice Moal was beginning to believe, was not
particularly observant.

He was his youngest  sister's child, from Canzilaine,  virtually at the foot  of
the Mount. Dumafice  Moal himself had  never married -  his devotion was  to the
garden -  but he  came from  a large  family, brothers  and sisters  and cousins
scattered from Bibiroon and Sikkal  down the Mount to Amblemorn,  Dundilmir, and
several other of the Slope Cities. From time to time some relative of his  would
come to see the garden. Dumafice Moal liked to take them on private tours, early
in the day  before the gates  were open to  the public, while  he was making his
morning rounds.

The khemibors were a southern species with bright blue flowers and glossy leaves
of the same color, and  they had been planted in  beds of vivid orange rock,  to
wondrous  visual  effect. Dumafice  Moal's  practiced eye  had  noted a  certain
dulling of  the gleaming  surfaces of  the leaves  of the  plants closest to the
path: a sure sign that himmis-bugs  had taken up residence on their  undersides.
He slipped  his energy-thrower  under the  nearest row,  checking its adjustment
slide carefully to make certain that the power was switched to the lowest level.

'Himmis-bugs,' he said, pointing. 'We used  to spray for them, but it  never did
much good. So we cook them instead.  Watch how I proceed to make things  hot for
the little vermin.'

Just as he began to move the long rod about, a curious sensation at the back  of
his skull started to afflict him.

It was a very odd thing. It was somewhat like an itch, though not quite. He felt
a mild warmth back there, and then something not so mild. A sharp stinging pain,
then, as if some disagreeable insect were attacking him. But when he brushed the
back of his head with his free hand he detected nothing.

He continued to prod the soil beneath the khemibors with his energy-thrower. The
stinging sensation grew  more intense. It  became a fierce  burning feeling now,
highly localized -  like a hot  beam of light  focused on a  single point of his
head, drilling, trying to cut its way through - 

'Theriax?' he said, lurching, nearly falling.

'Uncle? Are you all right?'

The boy  reached out  to steady  him. Dumafice  Moal shrugged  him away.  He was
beginning  to  feel a  different  sort of  pain:  an inward  one,  a bewildering
distress that he could only describe to  himself as a pain of the soul.  A sense
of his own inadequacy, of having performed his lifelong tasks poorly, of  having
failed the garden.

How odd, he thought. I always worked so hard.

But there was no hiding from the  feeling of shame that now was pervading  every
corner of his spirit. It engulfed him entirely; he was sinking into it as into a
dark deep pit, an abyss of guilt.

'Uncle?' the boy said,  from very far away.  'Uncle, I think you  may be burning
the -'

'Hush. Let me be.'

He  saw only  too clearly  how poorly   he had  done his  work. The  garden  was
hopelessly infested with ravenous enemies. Pests of all sorts lurked everywhere:
blights, molds, rusts, murrains,  chewing creatures, sucking creatures,  chafing
creatures, burrowing  creatures, biting  creatures. Swarms  of flies,  clouds of
gnats, armies of beetles,  legions of worms. The  thunderous sound of a  billion
tiny jaws chomping at once roared in his ears. Wherever he looked he saw more of
them, and even more on the  way: eggs, cocoons, nests, preparing to  release new
predators by the millions. And all of it his fault - his - his -

They all must burn.

'Uncle?'

Burn! Burn!

Dumafice Moal  turned the  energy-thrower to  a higher  level, and  a higher one
still. A dull rosy glow sprang up in the bed of khemibors. Burn! Let the  himmis
bugs cope with  that! He went  quickly from row  to row, from  bed to bed,  from
terrace  to terrace.  Spirals of  greasy blue  smoke began  to rise  from  newly
created heaps of ash. The trunks of  trees were turning black with the scars  of
combustion. Vines hung in angular, disheveled loops.

There was much to do. It was his duty to purify the garden, all of it, here  and
now. He  would work  at it  all day,  and far  into the  night if necessary, and
onward to the following dawn. How else could he cope with the unbearable  burden
of guilt that roiled the deepest recesses of his soul?

He moved on and  on, torching this, blasting  that. Clouds of ash  now leaped up
with every step he took. Black haze veiled the morning sun. An acrid  carbonized
taste  invaded  his nostrils.  The  boy followed  along  behind him,  astounded,
dumbstruck.

Someone was calling down to him from a higher terrace: 'Dumafice Moal, have  you
gone insane? Stop it! Stop!'

'I must,' he  called back. 'The  garden is shameful  to me. I  have failed in my
duties.'

Sparks were flying all around, now. Trees blossomed into bright flame. Here  and
there, huge blazing limbs broke free and toppled, shrouded in red, into the plan
tings below. He was aware that he was doing some damage to the gardens, but  not
nearly so much as these insects and animals and fungoid pests had achieved.  And
it was necessary damage, purgative damage. Only through fire could the garden be
purified - could he be absolved of his shame -

He went on, beyond the alluailes  and the flask-trees, deep into the  navindombe
bushes now. Behind him rose a dark, red-flecked mist of smoking embers. He aimed
the energy-thrower  here, here,  here. Trees  crashed in  the distance. Enormous
boughs landed  with the  soft sighing  impact of  wood that  has burned from the
inside out: dream-branches, dream-light. Cinders crunched underfoot. The ash was
a thick, soft black powder that rose in choking puffs. The sky was turning  red.
A savage gloom prevailed  everywhere. He no longer  felt the pain at  the top of
his skull, no longer felt the guilt, even, of his failure - only the joy of what
he was achieving now, the triumph  of having restored purity to what  had become
impure, of having negated negation.

Angry voices cried out behind him.

He turned. He saw stunned faces, goggling eyes.

'Do you see?' he asked them proudly. 'How much better it all is, now?'

'What have you done, Dumafice Moal?'

They came rushing through  the cinder-beds toward him.  Seized him by the  arms.
Threw him down, bound him hand and  foot, while all the while he protested  that
his work was still unfinished, that much remained yet to be done, that he  could
not rest until he had saved the entire garden from its foes.



5

Word was beginning to spread up and down Castle Mount and outward into the lands
beyond: the old  Pontifex Confalume was  dead. Lord Prestimion  had gone to  the
Labyrinth to take the  senior throne. Prince Dekkeret  of Normork was to  become
the new Coronal. Already the portraits  of the late Pontifex were being  brought
out of storage  and put on  display, bedecked now  with the yellow  streamers of
mourning: Confalume as a vigorous young  lord with bright keen eyes and  a thick
sweep of chestnut hair, Confalume the beloved gray-haired Coronal, Confalume the
regal old  Pontifex of  the past  two decades,  whatever people  could lay their
hands on. Soon portraits of the new Lord Dekkeret would be generally  available,
and they would go up too on every wall and in every window, and, alongside them,
pictures of  the former  Lord Prestimion,  now Prestimion  Pontifex, wearing the
scarlet-and-black robes of his newly assumed high office.

Everywhere,  preparations  for  great  celebrations  were  getting  under   way:
festivals, parades,  pyrotechnic displays,  tournaments, a  worldwide holiday of
joy. The arrival of a  new Coronal on the scene  was something of a novelty  for
modern-day Majipoor.

Over the thirteen thousand years of Majipoor's history it normally happened only
two or three times in a person's  life that a Pontifex died and new  rulers came
to the two capitals. But in the past century a change of monarchs had been  even
more of  a rarity  than that.  Confalume had  been Pontifex  for the past twenty
years, and Coronal for the forty-three before that. So more than sixty years had
gone by since  the Pontifex Gobryas  had died and  was succeeded by  the dashing
young Lord Prankipin,  who had chosen  Prince Confalume to  be his Coronal;  and
very few were still alive who remembered that day. Prankipin himself, dead  some
twenty years now, was only a name  to the billions of younger folk who  had come
into the world during the Pontificate of Confalume.

The new Lord Dekkeret was not  widely known  outside the confines of  the Castle
new Coronals rarely  were - but  everyone knew that  he was a  close and trusted
associate of Lord  Prestimion, and that  was good enough.  Lord Prestimion, like
Lord Confalume before  him, had been  a greatly beloved  Coronal, and there  was
general faith that he would choose a successor wisely and well.

Most people were aware that Dekkeret was of common birth, a young man of Normork
who had first come to the  attention of Lord Prestimion by thwarting  an attempt
on the Coronal's life, back at  the beginning of Prestimion's reign. That  was a
most unusual thing, a commoner chosen to be Coronal, but it did happen every few
hundred years. They knew that Dekkeret was a man of imposing stature and  lordly
mien, sturdy and handsome. Those who had had any contact with him in his travels
through the world  in his years  as Prestimion's designated  heir had discovered
that he was good-natured  and easy of spirit,  a man of open  heart and generous
soul. More than that,  what sort of Coronal  he would be, they  would learn soon
enough. Prestimion, throughout his  years as king, had  often left the Mount  to
visit cities far and wide. Very likely Dekkeret would do the same.

In the  city of  Ertsud Grand,  midway up  Castle Mount,  the custodians  of the
Summer Palace began to make plans for  an early visit by the new Coronal  to the
auxiliary residence that was maintained there for his use.

At this point such talk was, they knew, mainly wishful thinking. Ertsud Grand, a
city of nine  million people in  the circle of  the Mount known  as the Guardian
Cities, had been a favorite  secondary residence of Coronals for  centuries; but
Lord Gobryas, who had come to the  throne almost ninety years ago, had been  the
last one to make  any regular use of  the beautiful dwelling that  was set aside
for him there. Lord Prankipin had visited the Summer Palace no more than half  a
dozen times in his twenty years  on the Mount. Lord Confalume, though,  had gone
there only twice in a  reign two times as long.  As for Lord Prestimion, he  had
never been to Ertsud Grand at all, and seemed altogether unaware that the Summer
Palace existed.

Yet it was a beautiful palace in a beautiful city. Ertsud Grand was known as the
City of Eight Thousand Bridges, though its citizens would always tell  wondering
visitors, 'Of course,  that's an exaggeration.  Probably there are  no more than
seven or eight hundred.' Streams from  three sides of the Mount met  and mingled
there, providing the city with a watery underbedding before draining downward to
create the Huyn River, one of the six that descended the slopes of Castle Mount.

A network of canals  connected the various sectors  of Ertsud Grand, so  that it
was possible to go all about the city by boat. All the main canals flowed toward
the Central Market - which in fact  was in the eastern half of the  city, rather
than being truly central - where,  in a gigantic cobblestoned plaza bordered  by
tall warehouses of white  stone, luxury goods from  every part of Majipoor  were
bought  and sold.  Here were  dealers in  unusual meats  and fishes,  in  exotic
spices, in voluptuous  furs from the  cold northern marches  of Zimroel, in  the
green pearls  of the  tropical Rodamaunt  Archipelago and  the transparent topaz
that was mined by night at Zeberged,  in the wines of a hundred regions,  in the
small animals and  strange insects that  the people of  Ertsud Grand favored  as
pets, and much more besides.

To provide the western sector  of the city with a  focal point that would be  as
important an  attraction in  its way  as the  Central Market  was on the eastern
side, the ancient  planners of Ertsud  Grand had dammed  up half a  dozen of the
larger streams,  creating the  body of  water known  as the  Great Lake.  It was
perfectly circular and a rich sapphire blue in color, ten miles in circumference
and glinting like a giant mirror in  the midday sun. All around its shores  were
the palaces and  mansions of wealthy  merchants and the  city's nobility, and  a
host of pleasure-pavilions and sporting parlors. Boats and flat-bottomed  barges
of the most elaborate sort, painted in bright colors, went back and forth  among
these buildings all day long.

The Summer Palace, the masterwork  of the long-ago and otherwise  forgotten Lord
Kassarn, was situated on a large  artificial island in the Great Lake's  precise
center. It was, in fact, two palaces,  one within another: an outer one made  of
pink marble and an inner one fashioned entirely of bamboo canes.

The marble palace was  a kind of habitable  continuous wall: a joined  series of
pavilions, their roofs supported by  columns inlaid with gold and  lapis lazuli,
with a multitude  of apartments and  colonnaded cloisters and  banquet-halls and
courtyards. The guest  rooms -  there were  scores of  them, spacious  and  airy
were decorated with  fanciful murals of  the lives of  the early Coronal  Lords.
Here, once upon a time. Coronals seeking respite from the routines of the  daily
business of the Castle would come in summer to hold court and give lavish feasts
for their chief  lords, the nobility  of the cities  of the Mount,  and visiting
dignitaries.

Within this ring-like  marble building, which  occupied the entire  perimeter of
the island, was an extensive park where wild animals of many sorts were  allowed
to roam - gibizongs, plaars,  semboks and dimilions, shy and  dainty bilantoons,
prancing  spiral-horned  gambulons,  small furry  krefts  that  ran around  like
animated balls of  fluff with stiff  upraised tails, and  a herd of  fifty white
kibrils whose red eyes blazed in their broad foreheads like huge rubies. And  at
the  very heart  of the  park was  the Summer  Palace proper,  intended as   the
Coronal's private refuge.

It was most elegantly  designed, made of the  sturdy black bamboo of  Sippulgar,
which has canes nearly as hard as  iron. The canes were six inches in  diameter,
cut to twenty-foot lengths, gilded, and bound by silken cords. Not a single nail
had been used  anywhere. The roof  also was made  of bound lengths  of Sippulgar
cane, varnished annually with the red  sap of the grifafa tree, which  preserved
it against  all decay.  Interior columns,  these likewise  of bamboo  canes tied
three together, formed its supports.  Sea-dragon emblems in red surmounted  each
column.

The Summer Palace stood on a little hillock that lifted it above the rest of the
island, affording the Coronal a vista  of the distant shores of the  Great Lake.
So artfully had the building been constructed that it would be only the work  of
a single day, supposedly,  to dismantle it and  shift it to face  in a different
direction, in  case the  Coronal should  tire of  the view  from his bedroom and
request another. Those who had been  allowed to tour the palace in  modern times
visiting dukes and counts, members of the families of former Coronals, important
captains of industry who had come to Ertsud Grand leading trade missions -  were
inevitably told of this special feature of its design. In Lord Kassarn's day, so
the story  went, the  palace was  taken down  and repositioned  every year  just
before the Coronal came  to Ertsud Grand for  his summer retreat. Sometimes,  at
the Coronal's request, it  had been done more  frequently than that. But  no one
actually could remember the last such occasion.

Though visits by  Coronals to the  Summer Palace had  become uncommon events  in
modern times, and no Coronal at  all had gone there during the  past thirty-five
years,  the  municipality  of  Ertsud Grand  kept  both  structures,  the marble
pavilion  and the  one of  bamboo, constantly  in readiness  for his  lordship's
imminent arrival. Maintenance of the  buildings was entrusted to a  curator with
the title of Major-Domo of the Palaces,  and he had a staff of twenty  full-time
employees who swept the hallways, dusted the paintings and statues, trimmed  the
shrubbery, fed the beasts of the park, repaired what needed to be repaired,  and
each week put fresh linens on the beds in all the innumerable rooms.

The position of major-domo  was hereditary. For the  past five hundred years  it
had been a perquisite of the family of Eruvni Semivinvor, who had been a kinsman
of  a famous  ancient mayor  of Ertsud  Grand. The  current major-domo  -  Gopak
Semivinvor, the  fourth of  that name  - had  held the  post for  almost half  a
century, and so it had fallen to him to greet Lord Confalume on the occasion  of
the second of his two visits to the Summer Palace.

That visit, which had lasted four days, was the high point of Gopak Semivinvor's
life. Again  and again  he relived  it in  the years  that followed: hailing the
Coronal and his wife the Lady Roxivail as they disembarked from the royal barge,
conducting them through the marble outer palace and the game park to the  bamboo
palace, opening  their wine  for them  and personally  serving them  their first
meal, then leaving them together in splendid regal privacy. Public rumor had  it
that the Coronal's marriage was  a troubled one; Gopak Semivinvor  was convinced
that Lord Confalume and Lady Roxivail had come to Ertsud Grand in an attempt  at
reconciliation, and he  never ceased to  believe that such  a reconciliation had
indeed taken place during those  four days, despite all the  subsequent evidence
to the contrary.

During the  remaining years  of Lord  Confalume's reign  and the  whole of  Lord
Prestimion's, Gopak Semivinvor  had lived eternally  in expectation of  the next
royal visit. He arose each dawn -  the major-domo lived in a cottage in  a quiet
corner of the game  park - and conducted  a full inspection of  the outer palace
and then the inner one, compiling a long list of work for his staff to do before
the visiting Coronal's party arrived. It was a source of great disappointment to
him that that  visit never came.  But still the  inspections went on;  still the
bamboo roofs  received their  yearly coat  of varnish;  still the  stone-floored
halls of the outer palace  were swept and the marble  building-blocks repointed.
Gopak Semivinfor was eighty  years old, now. He  did not intend to  die until he
had once more played host to a Coronal in the Summer Palace of Ertsud Grand.

When news  of the  impending ascension  of Prince  Dekkeret to  the royal throne
reached the  ears of  Gopak Semivinvor,  his first  response was  to consult his
magus for a prognostication of the  likelihood that the new Coronal would  visit
the Summer Palace.

Like many  people of  the era  of the  Pontifex Prankipin  and the  Coronal Lord
Confalume, Gopak  Semivinvor had  developed a  profound faith  in the ability of
soothsayers to foretell the future. The particular school of shamans to which he
subscribed was  based in  Triggoin, the  capital city  of Majipoori  sorcery, in
northern Alhanroel  beyond the  desolate Valmambra  desert. It  was known as the
Advocacy of  the Four  Names; in  recent years  it had  won a  wide following in
Ertsud  Grand and  several neighboring  cities of  the Mount.  Gopak  Semivinvor
patronized  a  tall, preternaturally  pale  Four Names  sorcerer  named Dobranda
Thelk, who  was very  young for  a practitioner  of his  trade, but  had a  cold
intensity in his gaze that carried a sense of absolute conviction.

Would  the Coronal,  Gopak Semivinvor  asked, soon  come calling  at the  Summer
Palace?

Dobranda Thelk closed his glittering eyes for a moment. When he reopened them he
seemed to be peering deep into Gopak Semivinvor's soul.

'It is quite clear that he will  come,' said the magus. 'But only if  the Palace
is in in good order, and all is in full accordance with expectation.'

Gopak Semivinvor  knew that  it could  never be  otherwise so  long as he was in
charge of  the Palace.  And such  a wild  throb of  joy ran  through him that he
feared that his breast would burst.

'Tell me,'  he said,  laying a  royal on  the sorcerer's  tray and then, after a
moment's consideration, putting a  five-crown piece beside it,  'what particular
things must I do to ensure the  complete comfort of Lord Dekkeret when he  is at
the Summer Palace?'

Dobranda Thelk mixed the colored powders  that he used in divination. He  closed
his eyes again and  murmured the Names. He  spoke the Five Words.  He sifted the
powders through his hands, and said the Names a second time, and then the  Three
Words that could never  be written down. When  he looked up at  Gopak Semivinvor
those potent eyes of his were as hard as auger-bits.

'There is one thing above all else:  you must see to it that the  Coronal sleeps
in proper relationship to the powerful stars Thorius and Xavial. You are able to
locate those stars in the sky, are you not?'

'Of course. But how am  I to know which position  of the palace is the  one that
provides the proper relationship?'

'That will be revealed to you in dreams,' replied Dobranda Thelk.

'By a sending, do you mean?'

'It could be in that  form, yes,' said the magus,  and from the coolness of  his
tone Gopak Semivinvor knew that the consultation was at an end.

Three times in his  long life Gopak Semivinvor  had experienced sendings of  the
Lady of the Isle, or so he believed: dreams in which the kindly Lady had come to
him and  offered him  reassurance that  his life's  journey followed the correct
path. There  had been  no specific  information for  him to  use in any of those
three dreams, only a general feeling of  warmth and ease. But that night, as  he
made ready for  bed, he knelt  briefly and asked  the Lady to  grace him with  a
fourth sending, one that would guide him in his desire to serve the new  Coronal
in the best possible way.

And indeed, not long after he had given himself over to sleep, Gopak  Semivinvor
felt the sensation of warmth in his  scalp that he regarded as the portent  of a
sending.  He  lay perfectly  still,  suspended in  that  condition of  observant
receptivity that everyone learned  as a child, in  which the sleeper's mind  was
simultaneously lost  in slumber  and vigilantly  aware of  whatever guidance the
dream might bring.

This seemed different  from his previous  sendings, though. The  sensations were
not particularly benign. He felt a touch, definitely a touch, from outside,  but
not a kindly one.  The pressure against his  scalp was greater than  it had been
those other  times, was  even painful,  in a  way; the  air seemed to grow chill
around his sleeping body; and there  was no trace of that feeling  of well-being
that one always expected to have from  contact with the mind of the Lady  of the
Isle of Sleep. Yet  he maintained his receptivity  to what was to  come, holding
his mind open and allowing it to be flooded with an awareness of-

Of what?

Discontinuity. Disparity. Incongruity. Wrongness.

Wrongness,  yes. A  powerful sense  that the  hinges of  the world  were  coming
undone, that the joints  of the cosmos were  loosening, that the gate  of terror
stood open and a black tide of chaos was pouring through.

He awakened then,  sitting up, holding  himself tightly in  his own arms.  Gopak
Semivinvor was sweating and trembling so distemperately that he wondered if  his
last moments might be  upon him. But gradually  he grew calm. There  was still a
strange pressure in his brain, that feeling as of something pushing from without
- a disturbing feeling, a frightening one, even.

Some moments passed,  and then clarity  of mind began  to return, and  a certain
degree of ease of soul; and with that came the conviction that he understood the
meaning of the' oracle's words.

You  must see  to it  that the  Coronal sleeps  in proper  relationship to   the
powerful stars  Thorius and  Xavial. Plainly  the present  configuration of  the
bamboo palace  was an  improper one,  unluckily aligned,  out of  tune with  the
movements of the cosmos. Very well.  The building was designed to be  dismantled
and reconstructed along a different axis. That was what must be done. The palace
needed to be turned on its foundation.

That the palace had not been dismantled  and moved in hundreds of years -  maybe
as much as a thousand - did not trouble the major-domo for more than an instant.
Some small prudent  voice within him  suggested that the  project might be  more
difficult than he suspected, but against that tiny objection came the  insistent
clamor of his desire to get on with the work. Desperate haste impelled him:  the
magus had spoken,  the troubling dream  had somehow provided  reinforcement, and
now he must make the palace  ready, in accordance with the commandment  that had
been laid upon him, and  lose no time about it.  Of that he had no  doubt. Doubt
did not seem an option in this enterprise.

Nor did it concern him that he did not, at the moment, know which orientation of
the building would be more desirable than  the present one. It had to be  moved,
that was  clear. The  Coronal would  not come  unless it  was. And  he had every
reason to think that the appropriate positioning would be revealed to him as  he
set about the task. He was the Major-Domo of the Palace, and had been for nearly
fifty  years; it  had been  given into  his hands  to care  for this   wonderful
building and keep it ready at all times for the use of the anointed Coronal; one
might even say that destiny had chosen him to perform that special task. He  was
confident that he would perform it correctly.

Gopak Semivinvor rushed out into the night - a mild one and warm, Ertsud Grand's
climate being one of almost unending summer - made his way through the game park
to the bamboo palace's front  gate, scattering nocturnal mibberils and  thassips
as he ran, and sending big-eyed black menagungs fluttering up into the treetops.
Panting, dizzy with exertion, he leaned against the gatepost of the building and
stared upward until he located the  brilliant red star Xavial, which marked  the
midpoint of the sky,  the great axis of  the universe. Its mighty  counterpoise,
bright Thorius, lay not far to the left of it.

Now  - how  to determine  the right  position for  the building,  the one   that
represented the proper relationship to Thorius and Xavial -?

He turned, and turned, and, unsure, turned again, and yet again. His mind  began
to reel  and swirl.  It seemed  to Gopak  Semivinvor after  a time  that he  was
standing still, and the whole vault of the sky was whirling furiously about him.
East, west, north, south - which direction was the right one? This way, and  the
Coronal's bedroom would face the row  of great mansions along the eastern  shore
of the lake;  this, and he  would be looking  toward the pleasure-houses  of the
western shore; turn like this, and his rooms would yield the sight of the  dense
forest  of furry-leaved  kokapas trees  that rimmed  the lake's  southern  edge.
Whereas to the north -

To the north, equidistant between the stars Xavial and Thorius, was die  blazing
white star Trinatha, the  sorcerers' star, the star  that rested in the  heavens
above the city of wizards, Triggoin.

Into the soul of Gopak  Semivinvor came flooding the ineluctable  certainty that
Trinatha was the key to what the  magus Dobranda Thelk had meant by the  'proper
relationship.' He  must swing  the building  around until  the Coronal's bedroom
pointed along the line that ran between Thorius and red Xavial to holy Trinatha,
the white star of wizardry, Dobranda Thelk's own guiding star.

Yes. Yes.  It was  precisely the  midnight hour,  the Hour  of the Coronal. What
could be more auspicious? He caught  up a sharp stick and began  scratching deep
gouges in the soft velvet of the lawn that ringed the bamboo palace, ugly  brown
lines that  indicated the  precise configuration  to which  the building must be
shifted. He worked with frantic urgency, trying to finish the task of  sketching
his plan before the stars, as they journeyed through the night sky, had moved on
into some other pattern of relationship.

In the morning  Gopak Semivinvor summoned  his entire crew,  the twenty men  and
women who had worked under his supervision  for so long, some of them nearly  as
long as he himself had been major-domo. 'We will dismantle the building at once,
and reposition it by ninety degrees, a little more or a little less, so that  it
faces in this direction,' he said,  holding his hands out in parallel  along the
lines gouged in the lawn to indicate how he meant the palace to be turned.

They were obviously dismayed. They looked  at one another as though to  say, 'Is
he serious?' and 'Can the old man have lost his mind?'

'Come,' Gopak  Semivinvor said,  clapping his  hands impatiently.  'You see  the
patterns in  the grass.  These two  long lines:  they mark  the place  where the
Coronal's bedroom  window must  face when  the rebuilding  is complete.'  To his
foreman he said, 'Kijel Busiak, you will have a row of stakes driven immediately
into the ground  along the lines  I've drawn, so  that there'll be  no chance of
confusion later on. Gorvin Dihal, you will arrange at once for the weaving of  a
complete set  of new  binding-cords for  the canes,  since I  fear the ones that
exist will not survive the dismantling. And you, Voyne Bethafar -'

'Sir?' said Kijel Busiak timidly.

Gopak  Semivinvor  stared  toward  the  foreman  in  annoyance.  'Is  there some
question?'

'Sir, is it not true that the  story that the building was designed to  be taken
apart and quickly reassembled is nothing but a myth, a legend, something that we
tell to visitors but don't ourselves believe?'

'It is not,' Gopak  Semivinvor said. 'I have  studied the history of  the Summer
Palace deeply for  many decades, and  I have no  doubt not only  that it can  be
done, but  that it  has been  done, over  and over  again in  the course  of the
centuries. It simply has not been done recently, that is all.'

'Then you have some  manual, sir, which would  explain the best way  of carrying
out the work? For of a certainty no one alive has any memory of how the thing is
done.'

'There is no manual. Why would such a thing be necessary? What we have here is a
simple structure of bamboo canesjoined by  silken cords and covered with a  roof
of the same sort.  We unfasten the cords;  we part the roof-beams,  remove them,
and set them aside; we  take down the outer walls  cane by cane. Then we  draw a
careful plan of  the interior and  remove the interior  walls also, and  restore
them in the  same relative positions,  but facing the  new way. After  which, we
reinsert the canes  of the walls  in their foundation-slots  and reconstruct the
roof. It  is simplicity  itself, Kijel  Busiak. I  want the  work to commence at
once. There is no telling when Lord Dekkeret will choose to appear in our midst,
and I will not have a half-finished palace sitting here when he does.'

It did seem to him,  as he contemplated the task,  that the old tales of  taking
the building  down and  putting it  back together  in a  single day must be just
that: old tales. The job appeared rather more complicated than that. More likely
it would take a week, ten days, perhaps. But he foresaw no difficulties. In  the
heat of  the excitement  that suffused  his spirit  at the  thought that a royal
visit was at last imminent, he could not doubt that it would be child's play  to
dismantle the palace,  shift every orientation  by ninety degrees,  and re-erect
it. Any provincial architect should be capable of handling the job.

There were some other mild protests,  but Gopak Semivinvor was short with  them.
In the end his will prevailed, as he knew it must. The work began the next day.

Almost at once, unanticipated problems cropped up. The roof-beams turned out  to
be slotted together most intricately  at the building's peak, and  the jointures
by which they were fastened to the supporting columns and the upper tips of  the
canes that  formed the  building's walls  were similarly  unusual in design. Not
only was the style  of them antiquated but  the technique of fitting  the tenons
into  the  mortises was  oddly  and needlessly  baffling,  as if  they  had been
designed  by a  builder determined  to win  praise for  his originality.   Gopak
Semivinvor heard little  about this from  his workmen, for  they feared the  old
man's wrath  and suffered  under the  lash of  his impatience.  But the  work of
disassembling  the building  went on  into a  second week,  and a  third.  Gopak
Semivinvor now was heard to say that it might be best to dismiss the whole batch
of them and bring in younger workers who might be more cunning practitioners.

The ends of many of the beams broke as they were pulled apart. The unusual slots
cracked  and  could  not  be repaired.  An  entire  interior  wall crashed  down
unexpectedly and  the canes  were shattered.  Word went  forth to  Sippulgar for
replacements.

Eventually, though  - the  whole process  took a  month and  a half - the Summer
Palace had been transformed into a  heap of dismembered canes, many of  them too
badly damaged to be re-used. The foundation, laid bare now, proved to be also of
cane, badly disfigured by dry rot. A number of the slots into which the canes of
the wall had been inserted swelled through an uptake of humid air as soon as the
canes they had  held were removed,  and it did  not appear as  if the old  canes
could be inserted in them again.

'What do we do now?' Kijel Busiak asked, as he and Gopak Semivinvor surveyed the
site  of  the  devastation.  'How  do  we  reassemble  it,  sir?  We  await your
instructions.'

But Gopak Semivinvor had no idea of what to do. It was clear now that the Summer
Palace  of Lord  Kassarn was  by no  means as  simple in  form as  everyone  had
thought; that it was, rather, a complex and marvelous thing, a little miracle of
construction,  the  eccentric  masterpiece of  some  great  forgotten architect.
Taking  it  apart  had  inevitably caused  great  damage.  Few  of the  original
components of  the palace  could be  employed in  the reconstruction. They would
have to construct a new palace, a flawless imitation of the first one, from  the
beginning. Who, though, had the skill to do that?

He understood now that he had, driven by that strange and irresistible  pressure
at the back of his skull, that eerie sending which had not been a sending of the
benevolent Lady, destroyed the Summer  Palace in the process of  dismantling it.
It would not, could not, now be shifted to a more auspicious orientation.  There
was no Summer Palace at all,  any more. Gopak Semivinvor sank down  disconsolate
against one of the piles of roof-beams, buried his face in his hands, and  began
to sob.  Kijel Busiak,  who could  not find  any words  to speak, left him there
alone.

After a  time he  rose. Walking  away from  the ruined  building without looking
back, the major-domo took himself to the rim of the island, and stood for a long
while at the edge of the Great Lake with his mind utterly empty of thought,  and
then, very slowly, he  stepped out into the  lake and continued to  walk forward
until the water was over his head.



6

Septach Melayn said, 'Again, milady. Up with your stick! Parry! Parry! Parry!'

Keltryn met each  thrust of the  tall man's wooden  baton with a  quick, darting
response, successfully anticipating every time the direction from which he would
be coming  at her,  and getting  the baton  where it  needed to  be. She  had no
illusions about  her ability  to hold  her own  in any  sort of contest with the
great  swordsman. But  that was  not expected  of her,  or of  anyone. What  was
important was the  development of her  skills; and those  skills were developing
with remarkable speed. She could tell  that by the way Septach Melayn  smiled at
her now. He saw real promise in her.  More than that: he seemed to have taken  a
liking to her, he who was reputed to have no more interest in women than a stone
would. And so, since his return  from the Labyrinth, he had begun  affording her
the rare privilege of private tutoring in the art.

She had  done as  much as  she could  without him  throughout the  weeks of  his
absence at the Labyrinth for the funeral of the old Pontifex and the  ceremonies
that marked  Prestimion's succession  to the  imperial throne.  During that time
Keltryn had sought  out members of  Septach Melayn's class  in swordsmanship and
made them drill with her, one on one.

Some, who had never reconciled themselves  to the anomalous presence of a  woman
in the class,  simply laughed her  off. But a  few, perhaps for  no other reason
than that they saw it as an opportunity to spend some time in the company of  an
attractive  young woman,  were willing  enough to  humor her  in that   request.
Polliex, the Earl of  Estotilaup's handsome son, was  one of that group.  He was
tremendously good-looking -indeed, the   handsomest boy Keltryn  had  ever known
and only too aware of that fact himself. He interpreted Keltryn's invitation  to
practice at rapier and singlesticks with him as a portent of conquest.

But Keltryn, at the  moment, was not looking  to become anybody's conquest,  and
Polliex's flawlessly contoured face was  irrelevant anyway when hidden behind  a
fencer's mask. After several  sessions with him at  which he insisted on  asking
her, more than once in the face of her polite refusal, to join him for a weekend
in riding the mirror-slides and  enjoying other amusements at the  pleasure-city
of High Morpin, just downslope from the Castle, she canceled further drills with
Polliex and turned instead to Toraman Kanna, of Syrinx, the prince's son.

He was a striking-looking young man too, slim and sinuous, with olive-hued  skin
and long dark hair. In fact he had an almost feminine beauty about him, so  much
so that  it was  generally assumed  he was  one of  Septach Melayn's  playmates.
Perhaps he was;  but Keltryn quickly  found out that  he found women  attractive
too, or,  at at  any rate  found her  to be.  'You should  hold your weapon like
this,' Toraman Kanna said,  standing behind her and  lilting her arm. And  then,
after he had corrected her  position, he let his hand  slide up the side of  her
fencing jacket and rest lightly on her right breast. Just as easily, she  pushed
it aside. Possibly he thought it was his princely prerogative to touch her  like
that. They did not drill together a second time.

Audhari of Stoienzar provided  her with no  such complications. The  big freckle
faced boy seemed hearty  and normal enough, but  what concerned him when  he was
with  her in  the gymnasium  was fencing,  not flirtation.  Keltryn had  already
discovered that he  was the most  proficient fencer in  the class. Now,  meeting
with him  day after  day, she  concentrated on  learning from  him how to master
Septach Melayn's trick of dividing each moment into its component parts and then
subdividing those, until time itself was  slowed and one could step between  the
partitions  that kept  each moment  from the  next, thus  making oneself  easily
capable of matching and often of anticipating the actions of one'.s opponent. It
was not an easy science to master. But Audhari, because he was not the awesomely
perfect swordsman that  Septach Melayn was,  was able by  the very flaws  in his
technique to give Keltryn access to his considerable knowledge of the method.

By the time Septach Melayn returned  from the Labyrinth, she was nearly  as good
as Audhari, and superior  to all the rest  in the class. Septach  Melayn noticed
that  at once,  the first  time the  group met;  and when  she approached   him,
somewhat timidly, to ask for private instruction, he agreed without hesitation.

They met for an hour, every third day. He was patient with her, kindly, tolerant
of the mistakes that she inevitably made. 'Here,' he said. 'This way. Look  high
and thrust low, or vice versa. I  can read your intentions. You signal too  much
with your eyes.' Their blades met. His slipped easily past hers and touched  her
lightly on the clavicle. If this were in earnest she would have been slain  five
times a minute. Never once did she break through his own guard. But she did  not
expect to. He was the complete master.  No one would ever touch him. 'Here!'  he
cried. 'Watch! Watch! Watch! Hup!'

She worked at stopping time, tried to turn his smooth movements into a series of
discontinuous leaps so that she could enter the interval between one segment  of
time and its successor and finally touch the tip of her blade to him, and almost
managed  to do  it. But  even so  he always  eluded her,  and then  he had  that
wonderful knack of  seeming to come  back at her  from two sides  at once in the
counterthrust, and she had no way of defending against that.

She loved drilling with him. She loved him, in a way that had nothing to do with
sex. She was seventeen and he  was - what? Fifty? Fifty-five? Old,  anyway, very
old, though still dashing and elegant and extremely handsome. But he was not  at
all interested in women,  so everyone said. Not  in that way, anyhow,  though he
seemed to like women as friends, and was often seen in the company of them. That
was fine with Keltryn. All she wanted  from men, at this point in her  life, was
friendship, nothing more. And Septach Melayn was a wonderful friend to have.

He was charming  and funny, a  playful, buoyant man.  He was wise:  had not Lord
Prestimion chosen him to be  High Counsellor of the Realm?  He was said to be  a
connoisseur of wines, he knew much  about music and poetry and painting,  and no
one at the Castle, not even the Coronal, had a finer wardrobe. And of course  he
was the  best swordsman  in the  world. Even  those to  whom swordsmanship was a
meaningless pastime  admired him  for that:  you had  to admire  someone who was
better than everyone else at something, regardless of what the something was.

Also Septach  Melayn was  kind and  good, liked  by all,  as modest as his great
attainments permitted him to be, famously devoted to his friend the Coronal.  He
was altogether a paragon, the happiest and most enviable of men. But as she  got
to know him better, Keltryn began to wonder whether there might not be a core of
sadness somewhere within him that he worked hard to keep concealed. Doubtless he
hated  growing old,  he who  was such  a masterly  athlete and  so beautiful  to
behold. Perhaps  he was  secretly lonely.  And maybe  he wished  that there  was
someone, somewhere among  the fifteen billion  people of this  giant planet, who
could give him an even match on the dueling-grounds.

In the  third week  of their  private lessons  Septach Melayn  removed his  mask
suddenly,  after  she had  carried  out an  especially  well handled  series  of
interchanges, and said,  peering down at  her from his  great height, 'That  was
quite fine, milady. I've never seen anyone come along quite as fast as you have.
A pity that we'll have to bring these lessons to a halt very soon.'

He could not have hurt her more if he had slashed her across the throat with the
edge of his rapier.

'We will?' she said, horrified.

'The  Pontifex  will be  arriving  at the  Castle  shortly for  Lord  Dekkeret's
coronation ceremony,  and after  that the  real changes  of the  new regime will
begin. Lord  Dekkeret will  want his  own High  Counsellor. I  think he plans to
appoint Prestimion's brother Teotas. As for  me, I've been asked to continue  in
Prestimion's service, this time as High Spokesman to the Pontifex. Which  means,
of  course, that  I'll be  leaving the  Castle and  taking up  residence at  the
Labyrinth.'

Keltryn gasped. 'The Labyrinth - oh, how terrible, Septach Melayn!'

With a graceful shrug he  said, 'Ah, not so bad  as it's credited with being,  I
think.  There are  decent tailors  there, and  some estimable  restaurants.  And
Prestimion  doesn't plan  to be  one of  those reclusive  Pontifexes who   hides
himself away at the bottom of the whole thing and doesn't come out into daylight
for the rest of his life. The court  will do a good deal of traveling, he  tells
me. I imagine he'll be shuttling up and down the Glayge as often as any Pontifex
ever has, and  going farther afield,  too. But if  I'm down there  with him, and
you're up here, milady -'

'Yes. I see.'

He paused ever so slightly.  'It would not occur to  you, I suppose, to move  to
the Labyrinth yourself? We could continue our studies, of course, in that case.'

Keltryn's eyes widened. What was he saying?

'My parents sent me to the  Castle to get a broader education,  excellence,' she
replied, almost whispering it. 'I don't think they ever imagined - that I  would
go - that I would go there -'

'No.  The  Castle is  all  light and  gaiety;  and the  Labyrinth,  well, it  is
otherwise. This is the place for  young lords and ladies. I know  that.' Septach
Melyn seemed oddly  uncomfortable. She had  never seen him  other than perfectly
poised. But  now he  was fidgeting;  he was  tugging nervously  at his carefully
trimmed little beard; his pale blue eyes were having trouble meeting hers.

It could not be that he felt bodily  desire for her. She knew that. But all  the
same he plainly did not want to leave her behind when he followed Prestimion  to
the underground capital. He wanted the  lessons to continue. Was it because  she
was such  a responsive  pupil? Or  was it  their unexpected  friendship that  he
cherished? He MB lonely  man, she thought. He's  afraid that he'll miss  me. She
was astounded by  the idea that  the High Counsellor  Septach Melayn might  feel
that way about her.

But she could  not go with  him to the  Labyrinth. Would not,  could not, should
not.  Her life  was here  at the   Castle, for  the time  being, and  then,  she
supposed, she would  return to her  family at Sipermit,  and marry someone,  and
then - well, that was as far  as she could carry the thought. But  the Labyrinth
fit nowhere into the expected course of her future.

'Perhaps  I  could visit  you  there now  and  then,' she  said.  'For refresher
courses, you know.'

'Perhaps you could,' said Septach Melayn, and they let the subject drop.


Her sister Fulkari was waiting for her  in the recreation hall of the sector  of
the Castle's  western wing  known as  the Setiphon  Arcade, where  they both had
their apartments, and their brother Fulkarno as well. Fulkari used the  swimming
pool there almost every day. Keltryn usually joined her there after her  fencing
lesson.

It was  a splendid  pool, a  huge oval  tank of  pink porphyry  with an inlay of
bright malachite in starburst patterns running completely around it just beneath
the surface of the water. The water itself, which came warm and cinnamon-scented
from a spring somewhere far below the  surface of the Mount, was of a  pale rosy
hue and seemed almost like wine. Supposedly this sector of the Castle had been a
guest-house for visiting princes from distant worlds  in the reign of some  long
forgotten Coronal at a time when commerce between the stars was more common than
it had later become, and this was part of their recreational facilities. Now  it
served the needs of royal guests from closer at hand.

No one was at the pool but Fulkari when Keltryn arrived. She was moving back and
forth with swift, steady strokes, tirelessly  swimming from one end of the  pool
to the other,  turning, starting on  the next lap.  Keltryn stood at  the pool's
edge, watching her for a time, admiring the suppleness of her sister's body, the
perfection of  her strokes.  Even now,  at seventeen,  Keltryn still looked upon
Fulkari as  a woman  and saw  herself as  a mere  gawky girl.  The seven  years'
difference in their ages seemed an immense gulf. Keltryn coveted the ripeness of
Fulkari's hips, the greater fullness  of Fulkari's breasts, all those  tokens of
what she regarded as her sister's superior femininity.

'Aren't you coming in?' Fulkari called.

Keltryn stripped off her fencing  costume, threw it casually aside,  and slipped
into the water beside Fulkari. The water was silky and soothing. They swam  side
by side for some minutes, saying little.

When  they  wearied of  swimming  laps, they  bobbed  up together  and  floated,
paddling gently about. 'What's bothering you?' Fulkari asked. 'You're very quiet
today. Did badly in your fencing lesson, did you?'

'Quite the contrary.'

'What is it, then?'

Keltryn said in a stricken tone, 'Septach  Melayn told me that he's going to  be
moving to the Labyrinth. They're going to hold the coronation ceremony soon, and
then he'll become Prestimion's High Spokesman down there.'

'I suppose that ends  your career as a  swordsman, then,' said Fulkari,  with no
particular show of sympathy.

'If I  stay here,  yes. But  he's asked  me to  move to  the Labyrinth so we can
continue our lessons.'

'Really!' Fulkari exclaimed, and chortled. 'To move to the Labyrinth! You! -  He
didn't ask you to marry him, too, did he?'

'Don't be silly, Fulkari.'

'He won't, you know.'

Keltryn felt  anger rising  in her.  There was  no reason  for Fulkari  to be so
cruel. 'Don't you think I know that?'

'I just wanted to make sure you weren't getting any funny ideas about him.'

'Becoming Septach Melayn's wife is something  that has never entered my mind,  I
assure you. And I'm quite certain it's never entered his. - No, Fulkari, I  just
want him  to go  on training  me. But  of course  I'm not  going to  move to the
Labyrinth.'

'That's a  relief.' Fulkari  clambered from  the pool.  Keltryn, after a moment,
followed her. Putting  her hands behind  her, Fulkari leaned  back and stretched
voluptuously, like a big cat. Languidly she said, 'I never understood this thing
of yours  with swords,  anyway. What  good is  being a  swordsman? Especially  a
female one.'

'What  good  is being  a  lady of  the  court?' Keltryn  retorted.  'At least  a
swordsman has some skill with something other than her tongue.'

'Perhaps so. But  it's a skill  that can't be  put to any  purpose. Well, you'll
grow out of it, I suspect: let some prince catch your fancy and that's the  last
we'll all hear of your rapiers and your singlesticks.'

'I'm sure you're right,' said Keltryn tartly, and made a face. She leaped nimbly
to her feet, ran down the margin of the pool to the far end, and dived in again,
making such a  shallow jump that  the sting of  hitting the water  ran painfully
through her breasts and belly.  Swimming with short, choppy, angry  strokes, she
swam back to where Fulkari was sitting and popped her head up into view.

'Is that Coronal  of yours going  to get us  good seats at  the coronation?' she
asked, flashing a malicious toothy smile.

'My Coronal? In what way is he my Coronal?'

'Don't be cute with me, Fulkari.'

Primly Fulkari said, 'Prince Dekkeret - Lord Dekkeret, I should say - and I  are
simply friends. Just as you and Septach Melayn are friends, Keltryn.'

Keltryn scrambled  up over  the side  of the  pool and  stood above  her sister,
dripping on her. 'We're not exactly friends in the same way as you and Dekkeret,
though.'

'What ever could you mean by that?'

'You're domg-itwith him, aren't you?'

Flashes of color  appeared in Fulkari's  cheeks. But there  was only a  moment's
delay before she replied, almost defiantly, 'Well, yes. Of course.'

'And therefore you and he -'

'Are friends. Nothing more than friends.'

'You aren't going to marry him, Fulkari?'

'This is really none of your business, you know.'

'But are you?  Are you? The  Coronal's wife? Queen  of the world?  Of course you
are! You'd be a fool  to say no! And you  won't, because you're not a  fool. You
aren't a fool, are you?'

'Please, Keltryn -'

'I'm your sister. I have a right. I just want to know -'

'Stop it! Stop!'

Abruptly Fulkari stood up, searched about  her for a towel, slung it  around her
shoulders  as though  she felt  the need  for a  garment of  some sort,  however
useless, and began to pace stormily  about. She was obviously very annoyed,  and
flustered as  well. Keltryn  could not  remember the  last time  her sister  had
seemed flustered.

'I didn't mean to upset you,' she said, making an attempt to sound conciliatory.
'You're the best friend  I have in the  world, Fulkari. It doesn't  strike me as
being out  of line  for me  to ask  you if  you're going  to marry  a man you're
obviously in  love with.  But if  it bothers  you so  much to  talk about  these
things, I'll  stop. All  right?' Fulkari  cast the  towel aside  and walked back
toward her. She sat down once more beside her. The storm seemed to have  passed.
After a little bit Keltryn said,  eyes bright with fresh curiosity, 'What  is it
like, Fulkari?'

'With him, you mean?'

'With anyone. I don't have any real idea, you know. I haven't ever -'

'No!' said Fulkari, genuinely amazed. 'Are you serious? Never? Not at all?'

'No. Never.'

Fulkari appeared  to be  having trouble  believing that.  It had seemed harmless
enough a thing to admit, but  Keltryn found herself wishing that she  could call
back her own words. She felt herself blushing all over. Ashamed other innocence,
ashamed to be naked like this now  with her own sister, ashamed of the  thinness
of her thighs, the boyish flatness of her buttocks, the meagerness of her small,
high breasts. Fulkari, sitting here face to face with her, looked by  comparison
like some goddess of womanhood.

But Fulkari's tone was gentle, loving, tender  as she said, 'I have to tell  you
that this is a real surprise. Someone  as outgoing and lively as you -  taking a
fencing class with a  bunch of boys, no  less - I thought,  certainly she's been
with two or three by now, maybe even more -'

Keltryn shook her head. 'Not so. Not one. Nobody at all.'

With a twinkle Fulkari said, 'Don't you think it's time, then?'

'I'm only seventeen, Fulkari.'

'I was sixteen, the first time. And I thought I was getting a slow start.'

'Sixteen. Well!' Keltryn tossed her head, shaking water from the moist  red-gold
curls. 'But we've always been different, you  and me. I'm much more of a  tomboy
than you ever were, I bet.' She leaned close to Fulkari and said in a low voice,
'Who was it?'

'Madjegau.'

'Machegau?' The name emerged in such a derisive shriek that she clapped her hand
over her own mouth. 'But he was such a - nincompoop, Fulkari!'

'Of course  he was.  But they  can be  nincompoops and  still be attractive, you
know. Especially when you're sixteen.'

'I've never felt much attraction for nincompoops, I have to confess.'

'You wouldn't understand. It's a matter of hormones. I was sixteen and ripe  for
it, and Madjegau was tall and handsome and in the right place at the right time,
and - well -'

'I suppose.  I confess  I can't  see the  attraction. -  Does it hurt, the first
time, when they go inside you?'

'A little. It's  not important. You're  concentrating on other  things, Keltryn.
You'll see. One of these days, not too far in the future -'

They were both giggling now, all animosities gone, sisters and friends.

'After Madjegau, were there many others? Before Dekkeret, I mean?'

'There were - some.' Fulkari glanced over doubtfully at Keltryn. 'I don't really
think I ought to be talking about this.'

'You can tell me. I'm  your sister. Why should we  have secrets? - Come on.  Who
else, Fulkari?'

'Kandrigo. You remember him, I think. AndJengan Biru.'

'That's three men, then! Plus Dekkeret.'

'I didn't mention Velimir yet.'

'Four! Oh, you're shameless, Fulkari! Of course I knew there had to be some. But
four -!'  She threw  Fulkari a  flashing inquisitorial  look. 'There  aren't any
more, are there?'

'I can't  believe I'm  telling you  all this.  But no,  no others, Keltryn. Four
lovers. That's not really a lot, over the course of five years, you know.'

'And then Dekkeret.'

'And then Dekkeret, yes.'

Keltryn leaned  toward Fulkari  again, staring  raptly into  her eyes. 'He's the
best one, isn't  he? Better than  all the others  put together. I  know he is. I
mean, I don't know, but I think - I'm quite sure -'

'Enough, Keltryn. This is absolutely not something I'm going to discuss.'

'You don't need to. I see the  answer on your face. He's wonderful: I'm  certain
of that. And now he's  Coronal. And you're going to  be queen of the world.  Oh,
Fulkari - Fulkari, I'm so happy for you! I can hardly tell you how much I -'

'Stop it,  Keltryn.' Fulkari  rose in  one quick,  brusque motion  and began  to
gather up her clothing. Crisply, irritably,  she said, 'I think it's about  time
for us to go.'

Keltryn saw that she had struck a nerve. Something was wrong, definitely  wrong.
But she couldn't let matters drop here.

'You aren't going to marry him, Fulkari?'

A chilly silence. Then: 'No. I'm not.'

'He hasn't asked? He has someone else in mind?'

'No. To both questions.'

'He's asked,  and you've  turned him  down?' said  Keltryn incredulously.  'Why,
Fulkari? Why? You  don't love him?  Is he too  old for you?  Do you have someone
else in mind? - I can't help it, Fulkari. I know all this is bothering you.  But
I just can't understand how you can -'

To Keltryn's  amazement, Fulkari  suddenly seemed  close to  tears. She tried to
hide  it, turning  quickly away,  standing with  her face  toward the  wall  and
fumbling  furiously  with  her  clothes. But  Keltryn  could  see  the quivering
movements ofFulkari's shoulders, as of sobs barely being repressed.

In a dark, hollow voice Fulkari said, with her back still turned, 'Keltryn, I do
love Dekkeret.  I do  want to  marry him.  It's Lord  Dekkeret I  don't want  to
marry.'

Keltryn found that mystifying. 'But - what -'

Fulkari turned to face  her. 'Do you have  any idea what it  involves, being the
Coronal's wife? The  endless work, the  responsibilities, the official  dinners,
the speeches? You ought to  take a look at the  schedule they post for the  Lady
Varaile. It's  a nightmare.  I don't  want any  part of  it. Maybe  I'm foolish,
Keltryn, maybe I'm  shallow and silly,  but I can't  do anything about  what I'm
like. Marrying  the Coronal  seems to  me very  much like  volunteering to go to
prison.'

Keltryn stared. There was  real torment in Fulkari's  voice, and Keltryn had  no
doubt of  her pain.  She felt  a rush  of compassion  for her;  but then, almost
immediately after, came annoyance, anger, even outrage.

She had always thought  of herself as the  child, and Fulkari as  the woman, but
all of a sudden everything was reversed. At twenty-four, Fulkari seemed to think
that she was still a  girl. But did she believe  she was going to be  a girl all
the rest of her life? Did she want nothing more for herself than going riding in
the meadows,  and flirting  with handsome  men, and  sometimes making  love with
them?

Keltryn knew  that it  was best  not to  continue pressing  her sister on any of
this. But words came pouring out of her despite herself.

'Forgive me for saying  this, Fulkari. But I'm  amazed by what you've  just told
me. You're in love with the most  desirable and important man in the world,  and
he loves you and wants to marry  you. But he's about to become Coronal,  and you
say it's just too much trouble to be the Coronal's wife? Then I have to tell you
you are a fool, Fulkari, the biggest fool that ever was. I'm sorry if that hurts
you, but it's true. A fool. And I'll tell you something else: if you don't  want
to marry Dekkeret,  /will. If I  can ever get  him to notice  me, that is.  If I
could put on ten or fifteen pounds, I'd look just like you, and I'll learn to do
whatever it is that men and women do with each other, and then -'

Coldly Fulkari said, 'You're talking nonsense, Keltryn.'

'Yes. I know I am.'

'Then stop it! Stop! Stop!' Fulkari was crying now. 'Oh, Keltryn - Keltryn -'

'Fulkari -'

Keltryn rushed toward her. Held her right. Felt her own tears coursing down  her
cheeks.



7

Jacemon Halifice said, 'The Lord Gaviral respectfully requests your presence  at
his palace, Count Mandralisca.'

Mandralisca  looked  up.  'Is  that  how  he  said  it,  Jacemon?  'Respectfully
requests'?'

Halefice smiled for perhaps half a second. 'The phrase was my own, your grace. I
thought it sounded more courtly to say it so.'

'Yes. I dare say you  did. It didn't seem like  Gaviral's style at all. -  Well,
tell him I'll be there in five minutes. No, let's make it ten, I think.'

Let Gaviral respectfully wait. Mandralisca glanced down at the Barjazid  helmet,
lying before him on  his desk in a  little glittering heap. He  had been playing
with it  all afternoon,  donning it  and sending  his mind  out into  the world,
testing the powers of the thing, trying  to coax from it more knowledge of  what
it could do, and he wanted a little time to review What he had achieved.

He had so  little control over  it, so far.  He could not  direct it toward  any
particular region of  the world, nor  could he choose  to make contact  with any
specific individual.  Barjazid had  assured him  several times  that they  would
eventually solve the directionality problem.  Aiming the power of the  helmet at
any one person was a more difficult challenge, but Barjazid seemed to think that
in time that  could be achieved  also. Certainly both  things had been  possible
with earlier models,  such as the  one that Prestimion  had used to  strike down
Barjazid's brother Venghenar. This newer  one had greater range and  delicacy of
effect - it was a rapier, not a saber, capable not simply of inflicting  massive
injury but of inducing light deflections  in the minds it touched -  but certain
other qualities of precision had been lost.

Meanwhile, Barjazid said, it  would be a good  idea for Mandralisca to  practice
using the helmet  daily, to accustom  himself to its  operation, to build  up in
himself the mental resilience needed to withstand the strains it imposed on  the
operator. And so he had. Day after  day, he had visited citizens of Majipoor  at
random, sliding into  their minds, tickling  their souls with  little unpleasant
suggestions. It was interesting  to see what kind  of impact it was  possible to
have, even on a well guarded mind.

He had found that he was able  to enter almost anyone he chose, though  sleeping
minds  were much  more vulnerable  than waking  ones. He  could break  down  the
defenses of the soul with a few deftly placed jabs, just as he had been able  to
do so splendidly in his baton-dueling days, when his agility of movement and his
superior  reflexes  had  brought  him  championship  after  championship  in the
tournaments, and, what was even more valuable, the great approbation of Dantirya
Sambail. Using  the helmet  was very  similar. In  the tournaments,  one did not
wield the baton as  a bludgeon; one baffled  and bewildered one's opponent  with
it, besieging him so with lightning-swift flicks of the pliant  nightflower-wood
stick that he left himself open for the climactic attack. Here, too, Mandralisca
had discovered, it was best to  undermine the victim's own sense of  purpose and
security with a few light prods and nudges, and let him continue the process  of
destruction on his own. The gardener in Lord Havilbove's park, the custodian  of
the bamboo  palace at  Ertsud Grand,  the hapless  calendar-keeper at that Hjort
village, and  all the  rest of  them -  how easy  it had  been, really,  and how
pleasing!

Why, just today -

But the  Lord Gaviral  had respectfully  requested his  presence at  his palace,
Mandralisca reminded  himself. One  must not  keep the  Lords of Zimroel waiting
unduly long, or they grow petulant. He slipped the helmet into the pouch at  his
hip where it  resided whenever it  was not in  use, and set  out up the  path to
Gaviral's hilltop palace.

The palaces of the  Five Lords appeared impressive  from the outside, but  their
interiors reflected not only  the haste with which  the entire outpost had  been
constructed but  the general  tastelessness of  the brothers.  The architect - a
Ghayrog from Dulorn, Hesmaan Thrax by name - had designed them to inspire awe in
viewers approaching them from below: each of the five buildings was a huge  dome
of smooth and perfectly set tile, gray  with a red undercast, rising to a  great
height  and  topped  with the  red  crescent  moon that  was  emblematic  of the
Sambailid  clan.  Within,  though,  they  were  bare  echoing  halls  with rough
unfinished walls and oddly mismatched furnishings badly placed.

Gaviral's home was the best of the  sorry lot. Its main hall was a  vast soaring
space that  a great  man like  Confalume would  have expanded  easily into,  and
further enhanced with his own grandeur - he had never seemed out of place amidst
the immensity of the throne-room he had built for himself at the Castle - but  a
petty creature like Gaviral was diminished  by it. He seemed an irrelevance,  an
afterthought, in his own high hall.

As the eldest son of Dantirya Sambail's brother Gaviundar, he had been  entitled
to first choice of the rich  possessions that once had adorned the  Procurator's
superb palace in Ni-moya. To him  had fallen the most admirable of  the statuary
and hangings, the floor-coverings woven  from the pelts of haigus  and steetmoy,
the  strange  sculptures fashioned  of  animal bone  that  Dantirya Sambail  had
brought back from  some expedition into  the chilly Khyntor  Marches of northern
Zimroel.  But  all these  treasures  hdd suffered  some  abuse over  the  years,
especially  during  the  time  following  the  death  of  Dantirya  Sambail when
mountainous drunken Gaviundar  had inhabited the  Procuratorial palace. Many  of
the finest  things were  battered and  chipped and  stained, mountings  had come
unsprung, cracks had  developed in delicate  and irreplaceable objects.  And now
that  they had  descended to  Gaviral's custody  they were  negligently,  almost
randomly, displayed, strewn here and there about the echoing over-sized chambers
of the building like the neglected toys of some indifferent child.

Gaviral himself lounged in the midst of this shabby disheveled array in a  broad
throne-like chair that looked as though it had been designed for one of his four
brothers, all of whom were  much larger men than he  was. A couple of his  women
crouched at his feet. All five  of the Sambailids had furnished themselves  with
harems, in defiance of all custom and propriety. A flask of wine was clutched in
his hand. Compared with his brothers, Gaviral was a model of sobriety and polite
deportment; but he was a heavy drinker, nonetheless, like all his tribe.

Behind Gaviral's left shoulder stood a second of the brothers. The Lord  Gavdat,
this one was, the  plump, heavy-jowled, ineffably stupid  one who liked to  play
with sorcery and prognostication. He  was garbed today, absurdly, in  the manner
of a geomancer of the  High City of Tidias, far  away on Castle Mount: the  tall
brass  helmet,  the  richly  brocaded  robe,  the'  elaborately  figured  cloak.
Mandralisca could not recall when he had last seen anything so ludicrous.

He made a formal gesture of obeisance. 'Milord Gaviral. And milord Gavdat.'

Gaviral held out his flask. 'Will you have some wine, Mandralisca?'

After all this time  they had still not  succeeded in learning that  he detested
wine. But he declined politely, with thanks. There was no use trying to  explain
such  things  to  these  people.  Gaviral  himself  drank  deeply,  and,  with a
courteousness of which Mandralisca would have thought him incapable, handed  the
flask to his shambling uncouth brother. Gavdat tipped his head so far back  that
Mandralisca marveled that his brass helmet  did not fall off, drained the  flask
almost to the bottom, and indolently tossed it to the side, where it spilled its
last dregs on what once had been a dazzlingly white steetmoy rug.

'Well, then,' Gaviral said finally. His quick little eyes flickered from side to
side in that characteristic manner of his that was so like a small rodent's.  He
brandished some papers that he held crumpled in one hand. 'You've heard the news
from the Labyrinth, Mandralisca?'

'That the Pontifex is seriously ill following a stroke, milord?'

'That the Pontifex is dead,' Gaviral said. 'The first stroke was not fatal,  but
there was a second one. He died instantly, so say these reports, which have been
some  time  in  reaching  us.  Prestimion  has  already  been  installed  as his
successor.'

'And Dekkeret as the new Coronal?'

'His coronation will soon take place,' said Gavdat, intoning the words as though
he  were transmitting  messages from  some invisible  spirit. 'I  have cast  his
auspices. He will have a short and unhappy reign.'

Mandralisca waited. These remarks did not seem to call for comment.

'Perhaps,'  said the  Lord Gaviral,  running his  fingers through  his  thinning
reddish  hair,  'this would  be  an auspicious  moment  for us  to  proclaim the
independence of Zimroel under our  rule. The formidable Confalume gone  from the
scene,  Prestimion  preoccupied  with  establishing  his  administration  at the
Labyrinth, an untried  new man taking  command at the  Castle -what do  you say,
Mandralisca? We  pack up  and return  to Ni-moya,  and let  it be known that the
western continent has  lived long enough  under the thumb  of Alhanroel, eh?  We
present them with an accomplished fact, poof!, and defy them to object.'

Before Mandralisca could reply there came a loud clattering and crashing in  the
outside hall, and some hoarse shouts. Mandralisca assumed that these noises were
harbingers of the arrival  of the blustering bestial  Lord Gavinius, but to  his
mild surprise the newcomer was bulky thick-set Gavahaud, he who fancied  himself
a paragon of elegance and grace. The interruption was a welcome one: it gave him
a moment to find the most diplomatic way of framing his response. Gavahaud  came
in muttering  about encountering  an unexpected  obstacle in  the sculpture-hall
outside. Then, seeing  Mandralisca, he glanced  toward Gaviral and  said, 'Well?
Does he agree?'

No  question that  they were  seething with  the yearning  to unleash   theirwar
against Prestimion and Dekkeret. They wanted  only for him to pat them  on their
heads and praise them for their high ambitions and warlike souls.

All three brothers had their attention focused intently on him now:  gimlet-eyed
Gaviral, bloodshot Gavahaud, moist-eyed foolish Gavdat. It was almost  poignant,
Mandralisca thought,  how dependent  they were  on him,  how terribly eager they
were to have him confirm whatever pitiful shreds of strategy they had  contrived
to work out for themselves.

He said,  'If you  mean, milord,  do I  agree that  this is  the proper  time to
announce ourselves independent of the  imperial government, my answer is  that I
do not believe it is.'

Each of  the three  reacted in  his own  way to  Mandralisca's calm declaration.
Mandralisca observed  all three  reactions in  a single  glance, and  found them
instructive.

Gavdat seemed to recoil almost in shock, his head snapping back so sharply  that
his  soft cheeks  jiggled like  puddings. Very  likely he  had made  use of  his
instruments  of  prognostication  to arrive  at  a  very different  expectation.
Haughty  Gavahaud,   obviously  also   startled  and   disappointed,  glared  at
Mandralisca in astonishment,  as though Mandralisca  had spat in  his face. Only
Gaviral took Mandralisca's reply calmly,  looking first to one brother  and then
the other  in a  smug self-congratulatory  way that  could mean  only one thing:
There! Did I not tell you so?  It's important to wait and check things  out with
Mandralisca. It was the mark of Gaviral's intellectual preeminence, in this  mob
of loutish thickbrained  brothers, that  he alone  had some  glimmering of  self
awareness, some  knowledge, perhaps,  of how  stupid they  all really  were, how
badly  they  needed  their  privy   counsellor's  guidance  in  any  matter   of
significance.

'May I ask,' Gaviral said carefully, 'just why you feel as you do?'

'Several reasons, milord.' He enumerated  them on his fingers. 'The  first: this
is a time  of general mourning  throughout Majipoor, if  I recall correctly  the
reaction to the Pontifex Prankipin's death twenty years ago. Even in Zimroel the
Pontifex is a revered  and cherished figure, and  in this case the  Pontifex was
Confalume, the  most highly  regarded monarch  in centuries.  I believe it would
seem  tasteless  and  offensive  to undertake  a  revolutionary  break  with the
imperial government in the very hour when people everywhere are expressing, as I
have no doubt they are, their grief at the death of Confalume. It would  forfeit
us  a  great  deal  of  sympathy among  our  own  citizens,  and  would stir  an
unprofitable degree of anger among the people ofAlhanroel.'

'Perhaps so,' Gaviral conceded. 'Go on.'

'Second:  a  proclamation  of  independence   needs  to  be  accompanied  by   a
demonstration that we are  capable of making good  on our words. I  mean by that
that we  are only  in the  most preliminary  stages of  organizing our  army, if
indeed we have come as far even as the preliminary stages. Therefore -'

'You foresee a war with Alhanroel, do you?' the Lord Gavahaud asked, in a  lofty
tone. 'Is it possible that they would dare to attack us?'

'Oh, yes,  milord. I  very much  think they  would attack  us. The  much-beloved
Prestimion is in  fact a man  of strong passions  and no little  fury when he is
crossed: I  have ample  evidence of  that out  of the  experience of your famous
uncle Dantirya Sambail.  And Lord Dekkeret,  from what I  know of him,  will not
want to  begin his  reign by  having half  his kingdom  secede. You can be quite
certain that the imperials will send a military force our way as soon as they've
digested our proclamation and can levy a body of troops.'

Gavdat said,  'But the  distances are  so great  - they'd  have to sail for many
weeks just to reach Piliplok -  and then, to march across hostile  territory all
the way to Ni-moya -'

It was a reasonable point. Perhaps Gavdat was not quite so much of a fool as  he
seemed, Mandralisca thought.

'You're right, milord, that  operating a line of  supply that stretches all  the
way across the Inner Sea from Castle Mount to Ni-moya will be a very challenging
task. That is why I think we'll ultimately be successful in our revolt. But they
will have no choice, I think, but to try to regain their grasp of us. We must be
fully prepared. We must have troops waiting at Piliplok and all the other  major
ports of our eastern coast, possibly as far south as Gihorna.'

'But there's no  harbor good enough  for a major  landing in Gihorna!'  Gavahaud
objected.

'Exactly so. That's why they might  attempt it: to take us by  surprise. There's
no big harbor there, but there are minor ones all up and down the province. They
might make several landings at once in places so obscure they don't expect us to
think of them. We must  fortify the whole coast. We  must have a second line  of
defense inland,  and a  third at  Ni-moya itself.  And we'll  need to assemble a
fleet to  meet them  at sea  in the  hope of  preventing them  from reaching our
shores in the first place. All this  will take time. We should be well  along in
the task before we tip our hand.'

'You should know,' Gavdat said, 'that I have cast the runes very carefully,  and
they predict success in all our endeavors.'

'We expect no  other outcome,' said  Mandralisca serenely. 'But  the runes alone
won't ensure our victory. Proper planning is needed also.'

'Yes,' said Gaviral. 'Yes. You see that, brothers, do you not?'

The other two looked at him  uncomfortably. Perhaps they sensed in some  dim way
that quick little Gaviral was somehow outflanking them, allying himself suddenly
with the voice of caution now that he realized that caution might be required.

'There is a third point to be considered,' Mandralisca said.

He made them wait. He had no desire to overload their brains by piling too  many
arguments together too quickly.

Then he said, 'It happens that I am  testing a new weapon, one that is vital  to
our hopes  of victory.  It is  the helmet  that the  little man Khaymak Barjazid
brought to me, a version  of the one that was  used - unsuccessfully, alas -  by
Dantirya Sambail  in his  struggle against  Prestimion long  ago. We  are making
improvements in the  weapon. I am  extending my mastery  over it day  by day. It
will do terrible destruction, once I'm ready  to unleash it. But I am not  quite
ready, my lords. Therefore I ask you for more time. I ask you for time enough to
make the great victory that milord Gavdat so accurately predicts a certainty.'



8

As though in a dream Dekkeret roamed  the myriad halls of the Castle that  would
from now  on bear  his name,  examining everything  as though  seeing it for the
first time.

He was alone. He had  not made a special point  of asking to be left  alone, but
his manner, his expression, had left no doubt of his need for solitude. This was
the fourth  day since  Dekkeret's return  from the  festivities at the Labyrinth
that had confirmed Prestimion's ascent to the imperial throne, and every  moment
up till  now had  been taken  up in  planning for  his own coronation. Only this
morning had an opening developed in the press of business, and he had taken  the
opportunity to wander out into the Pinitor Court and go drifting off by  himself
through some few of the many levels of the Castle's topmost zone.

He had lived at the  Castle more than half his  life. He had been eighteen  when
his thwarting of the  attempt on Prestimion's life  had earned him the  award of
knight-initiatehood, and  now he  was thirty-eight.  Though he  still signed his
name, when official duties required it of him, 'Dekkeret ofNormork,' it would be
more accurate to call himself 'Dekkeret  of the Castle,' for Normork was  only a
boyhood memory and the Castle was his  home. The eerie tower of Lord Arioc,  the
harsh black mass of the Prankipin Treasury, the delicate beauty of the Guadeloom
Cascade, the pink granite blocks ofVildivar Close, the spectacular sweep of  the
Ninety-Nine Steps - he passed through these things every day.

He passed through them now. Down one hall and up the next. He turned a bend in a
corridor and found himself staring through  a giant crystal window, a window  so
clear as to be essentially invisible,  providing a sudden stunning view of  open
air - an abyss that descended mile  after mile until it was sealed at  its lower
end by a  thick layer of  white cloud. It  was a vivid  reminder that they  were
thirty miles  high, up  here at  the Castle,  sitting at  the tip of the biggest
mountain in the universe,  provided with light and  air and water and  all other
necessities by ingenious mechanisms thousands of years old. You tended to forget
that, when you  spent enough time  at the Castle.  You tended to  begin to think
that this was the primary level of  the world, and all the rest of  Majipoor was
mysteriously sunken far  below the surface.  But that was  wrong. There was  the
world, and then there was the Castle; and the Castle loomed far above all.

The  gateway  before  him led  back  into  the Inner  Castle.  On  his left  lay
Prestimion's archival building, rising behind the Arioc Tower; to his right  was
the white-tiled hall  where the Lady  of the Isle  resided when she  came to the
Castle to  visit her  son, and  just beyond  that Lord Confalume's garden-house,
with its bewildering collection of tender plants from tropical regions. He  went
through the gate that lay beside the  Lady's hall and found himself in the  maze
of hallways and galleries, so bewildering to newcomers, that led to the core  of
the Castle.

He avoided going near the halls of the court. They were all very busy in  there,
officials both  of the  outgoing regime  and his  own still  only partly  formed
administration  - discussing  matters of  protocol at  the coronation  ceremony,
making lists of guests according to  rank and precedence, et cetera, et  cetera.
Dekkeret had had enough of that, and  more than enough, for the moment. Left  to
his own devices, the coronation rite would have at best an audience of seven  or
ten people, and would take no  longer than the time necessary for  Prestimion to
take  the starburst  crown from  its bearer  and place  it on  the brow  of  his
successor, and cry, 'Dekkeret! Dekkeret! All hail Lord Dekkeret!'

But he knew better than to think it could be as simple as that. There had to  be
feasting, and  rituals, and  poetry readings,  and the  salutations of  the high
lords, and the ceremonial showing of  the Coronal's shield, and the crowning  of
his mother the Lady Taliesme as the new Lady of the Isle of Sleep, and  whatever
else was required  to invest the  incoming Coronal with  the proper majesty  and
awesomeness. Dekkeret  did not  intend to  interfere with  any of that. Whatever
innovations his reign would bring, and he certainly intended that there would be
some, he was not going to  expend his authority this early over  trivial matters
of ceremony. On  the other hand,  he took care  now to keep  away from the rooms
where the planning was taking place. He turned instead toward the very center of
the royal  sector, deserted  now in  this time  of transition  from one reign to
another.

A pair of great metal doors,  fifteen feet high, confronted him now.  These were
Prestimion's doing, a project that had been in progress for a decade or more and
was still  a long  way from  completion. The  left-hand door  was covered, every
square inch of it,  with scenes from the  events of Lord Confalume's  reign. The
door opposite it still presented only a smooth blank surface.

I will have that door engraved with the deeds of Prestimion, done in a  matching
style by the  same artisans, Dekkeret  told himself. And  then I will  have both
doors gilded, so that they will shine forever down the ages.

He  touched  one  of  the  heavy bronze  handles  and  the  door,  precisely and
delicately calibrated, swung back to admit him to the Castle's heart.

The simple little throne-room of Lord Stiamot was the first thing he came to. He
moved on past it, still wandering  without a plan, into yet another  hodge-podge
of  little corridors  and passageways  that he  could not  remember ever  having
ventured into before; he was just beginning to conclude that he was lost when he
turned to his  left and discovered  that he was  staring into the  grand vaulted
chamber that was Lord Prestimion's judgment-hall, with the numbing  extravagance
of the Confalume throne-room just beyond it.

It is wrong,  Dekkeret thought, to  have to approach  these great rooms  through
such a maze of chaos. Prestimion had carved his judgment-hall out of a dozen  or
so ancient little rooms; Dekkeret resolved now to do the same with the  hallways
he had just come through, clearing them all away to create some new formal room,
a Chapel of the Divine, perhaps, in which the Coronal might ask for the gift  of
wisdom before  going into  the judgment-hall  to dispense  the law. The Dekkeret
Chapel, yes.  He smiled.  Already he  saw it  in the  eye of  his mind,  a stone
archway  over  there,  and  the  passage  connecting  it  to  the  judgment-hall
emblazoned with brilliant mosaics in green and gold -

Bravo! he thought. Not even crowned  yet, and already launched on your  building
program!

It surprised  him, how  easily he  was taking  to this  business of becoming the
Coronal Lord of Majipoor. There still remained concealed within him,  somewhere,
Dekkeret the boy,  only child of  the struggling merchant  Orvan Pettir and  his
good wife Taliesme, the boy who  had roamed the hilly streets of  walled Normork
with his  lively young  cousin Sithelle  and dreamed  of becoming something more
than his father had managed to be - a Castle knight, perhaps, who one day  would
hold some high place in the government: how could that boy not be  flabbergasted
to find his older self about to accede to the very highest place of all?

He denied none of that. But his older self was less easily awed by such  things.
A Coronal, he knew  by now, is only  a man who wears  a green robe trimmed  with
ermine, and on certain formal occasions is permitted to don a crown and occupy a
throne. He is still a man, for  all that. Someone must be Coronal, and,  through
an unlikely chain of accidents, the  choice had fallen upon him. That  chain had
passed  through Prestimion's  long-ago visit  to Normork  and Sithelle's  death;
through his own  unhappy hunting-trip in  the Khyntor Marches  and the impulsive
journey of penance to Suvrael that had followed it, leading to his discovery  of
the Barjazids and  their mind-controlling helmets;  and through the  war against
Dantirya Sambail and Akbalik's death, which had removed the expected heir to the
crown. Thus it had come down to him. So be it, then. He will be Coronal. He will
nevertheless remain a man,  who must eat and  sleep and void his  bowels and one
day die.  But for  the time  being he  will be  Lord Dekkeret of Lord Dekkeret's
Castle, and  he will  build the  Dekkeret Chapel  over there,  and in Normork he
will, as he had told Dinitak Barjazid what was beginning to seem like a  hundred
years ago, eventually build the Dekkeret Gate, and perhaps also -

'My lord?'

The voice,  breaking into  his ruminations  this way,  startled him  more than a
little.

Nor did Dekkeret believe  at first that he  was the one being  addressed. He was
still not  used to  that title,  'my lord.'  He looked  around, thinking to find
Prestimion somewhere in the  vicinity; but then he  realized that the words  had
been intended  for him.  The speaker  was the  Su-Suheris Maundigand-Klimd, High
Magus to the court of Prestimion.

'I know I intrude on your privacy, my lord. I ask your forgiveness for that.'

'You do  nothing without  good reason,  Maundigand-Klimd. Forgiveness  is hardly
necessary.'

'I thank you,  sir. As it  happens, I have  something of importance  to bring to
your attention. May we confer in some place less public than this?'

Dekkeret signalled the two-headed being to lead the way.

He had  never quite  understood how  Prestimion, a  man of  the most  dogged and
ingrained skepticism when it came  to all matters mystical and  occult, happened
to maintain a magus among his circle of intimates. Confalume had been a man much
given over to  sorcery, yes, and  Dekkeret understood that  Prankipin before him
had had the same irrational leanings; but Prestimion had always seemed to him to
be someone who relied on the evidence of his reason and his senses, rather  than
on the conjurings  and prognostications of  seers. His High  Counsellor, Septach
Melayn, was if anything of a more realistic cast of mind yet.

Dekkeret did know that Prestimion, for  all his skepticism, had spent some  time
at the  wizards' capital  of Triggoin  in the  north, an  episode in his life of
which he was most unwilling to speak;  and that he had made use of  the services
of certain master wizards of Triggoin in his war against the usurping  Korsibar,
and from  time to  time on  other occasions  during his  reign. So his attitudes
toward the magical arts were more complex than it appeared at first glance.

And Maundigand-Klimd seemed never to be far from the center of things at  court.
Dekkeret did not get the  impression that Prestimion kept the  Su-Suheris around
simply as a  sop to the  credulity of all  those billions of  common folk in the
world  who  swore  by soothsayers  and  necromancers,  nor was  he  just  a mere
decoration. No, Prestimion actually consulted Maundigand-Klimd on matters of the
highest importance. That was something  that Dekkeret meant to discuss  with him
before the handover of  power was complete. Dekkeret  himself had only the  most
casual interest in the persistence of the mantic arts as a phenomenon of  modern
culture, and  no belief  whatever in  their predictive  value. But if Prestimion
thought it was useful to keep someone like Maundigand-Klimd close at hand -

And keep him close at  hand is what he had  done. The Su-Suheris led him  now to
the  private  apartments   that  he  had   occupied  since  the   earliest  days
ofPrestimion's  reign: just  across the  Pinitor Court  from the  Coronal's  own
residence, indeed.  Dekkeret had  heard that  these rooms  had belonged  to Lord
Confalume's forgotten son Prince Korsibar  before his usurpation of the  throne,
that dark deed that had been wiped  from the memories of almost everyone in  the
world. So they were important chambers.

Dekkeret had  never had  reason to  enter them  before. He  was surprised at how
starkly  they were  furnished. None  of the  claptrap gadgetry  of  professional
sorcery here, the ambivials and hexaphores, the alembics and armillary  spheres,
with which the charlatans in the marketplaces awed the populace; nor any of  the
thick  leather-bound  volumes of  arcane  lore, printed  in  black letter,  that
stirred such fear among  those who feared such  things. Dekkeret saw only  a few
small devices that might have been the calculating machines of a bookkeeper, and
quite probably  were, and  a small  library of  books that  had nothing whatever
mystical about their outer  appearance. Otherwise Maundigand-Klimd's rooms  were
virtually empty. Of beds, chairs, Dekkeret saw nothing. Did the Su-Suheris sleep
standing up? Evidently so.

And  carried on  conversations the  same way.  It was  going to  be an   awkward
business, Dekkeret saw. It always was, with a Su-Suheris. Not only were they  so
inordinately tall  - their  foot-long necks  and elongated  spindle-shaped heads
brought them to rival Skandars in height, if not in overall bulk - but there was
the weirdness of them,  the inescapable ahenness of  them, to contend with.  The
two heads, primarily: each each with its own identity, independent of the other,
its own  set of  facial expressions,  its own  tone of  voice, its own intensely
penetrating  pair  of  emerald-hued  eyes.  Was  there  another  two-headed race
anywhere in  the galaxy?  And their  pale skins,  hairless and  white as marble,
their perpetually  somber miens,  the hard-edged  lipless slits  that were their
unsmiling mouths - it was all too easy to perceive them as terrifying icy-souled
monsters.

Yet this one  - this two-headed  sorcerer- was Lord  Prestimion's counsellor and
friend. That required explanation. Dekkeret wished he had sought it long  before
this moment.

Maundigand-Klimd said, 'I've long been aware of your distaste for the  so-called
occult sciences, my lord.  Permit me to begin  by telling you that  I share your
attitude.'

Dekkeret frowned. 'That seems a very strange position for you to take.'

'How so?'

'Because of  the paradox  it contains.  The professional  magus claims  to be  a
skeptic? He speaks of the occult sciences as the 'so-called' occult sciences?'

'A skeptic  is what  I am,  yes, though  not quite  in the  sense that  you are,
lordship. If I read you correctly, you take the position that all prediction  is
mere guesswork, hardly more reliable than the flipping of a coin, whereas -'

'Oh, not all prediction, Maundigand-Klimd.'  It was unnerving, looking from  one
head to the other,  attempting to maintain eye  contact with only one  pair at a
time, trying to anticipate which head would speak next. 'I concede that  Vroons,
for example, have a  curious knack for choosing  the proper fork in  the road to
take, even  in completely  unfamiliar territory.  And your  own long affiliation
with Lord Prestimion leads me to  conclude that much of the advice  you've given
him has been valuable. Even so -'

'These are valid examples, yes,' said the Su-Suheris - it was the left head, the
one with the  deeper voice, that  spoke. 'And others  could be provided,  things
difficult  to  explain  except  by calling  them  magical.  Undeniably  they are
effectual, however mystifying that  is. What I refer  to, when I say  we share a
certain outlook toward  sorcery, involves the  multitude of bizarre  and, if you
will, barbaric cults that have infested the world for the past fifty years.  The
folk who flagellate  one another and  douse themselves in  the blood of  bidlaks
butchered alive.  The worshippers  of idols.  The ones  who put  their faith  in
mechanical devices or fanciful amulets. You and I both know how worthless  these
things  are.  Lord Prestimion,  throughout  his reign,  has  quietly and  subtly
attempted to  let such  practices go  out of  vogue. I'm  confident, my  lord -'
Somewhere along the way,  Dekkeret realized, the right  head had taken over  the
conversation. '- that you will follow the same course.'

'You can be sure that I will.'

'May I ask if it is your plan to appoint a High Magus when your reign officially
begins? Not that  I am applying  for the job.  You should know,  if you are  not
already aware of the fact, that the  new Pontifex has asked me to accompany  him
to the Labyrinth once the ceremonies of your coronation are behind us.'

Dekkeret nodded. 'I expected as  much. As for a new  High Magus, I have to  tell
you, Maundigand-Klimd,  that I  haven't given  the matter  a bit  of thought. My
present feeling is that I don't have any need of one.'

'Because you would regard whatever he told you as essentially useless?'

'Essentially, yes.'

'It is your  choice to make,'  said Maundigand-Klimd, and  from his tone  it was
clear that the matter  was one of utter  indifference to him. 'However,  for the
time being  there still  is a  High Magus  in the  Coronal's service, and I feel
obliged to inform the new Coronal  that I have had a perplexing  revelation that
might have some bearing on his reign. The former Lord Prestimion advises me that
it would be appropriate for me to bring this revelation to your attention.'

'Ah,' said Dekkeret. 'I see.'

'Of course, if your lordship prefers not to -'

'No,' Dekkeret said. 'If Prestimion thinks I should hear it, by all means  share
it with me.'

'Very well. What I have done is cast an oracle for the outset of your reign. The
omens, I regret to say, were somewhat dark and inauspicious.'

Dekkeret met that with  a smile. 'I'm grateful,  then, for my lack  of belief in
the mantic arts. It's easier to handle  bad news when you don't have much  faith
in its substance.'

'Precisely so, my lord.'

'Can you be more specific about these dark omens, though?'

'Unfortunately, no. I know my own limitations. Everything was shrouded in a haze
of ambiguities. Nothing  had real clarity.  I picked up  only a sense  of strife
ahead, of refusals to offer allegiance, of civil disobedience.'

'You saw no faces? You heard no names named?'

'These visions do not function on such a literal level.'

'I confess  I can't  see much  value in  a prediction  so murky  that it doesn't
actually predict anything,'  said Dekkeret. He  was growing impatient  with this
now.

'Agreed, my  lord. My  visions are  highly subjective:  intuitions, impressions,
sensations  of  the  most  subtle kind,  glimpses  of  probability,  rather than
concrete details. But you  would do well to  be on guard, all  the same, against
unexpected reversals of circumstance.'

'My historical studies tell me that  a wise Coronal should always do  just that,
with or  without the  advice of  mages to  guide him.  But I  thank you for your
counsel.' Dekkeret moved toward the door.

'There was,' said  Maundigand-Klimd, before Dekkeret  had quite managed  to take
his leave, 'just one aspect of my vision that was clear enough for me to be able
to describe  it to  you in  any meaningful  way. It  involved the  Powers of the
Realm, who  had gathered  at the  Castle for  a certain  ceremony of high ritual
importance. I sensed their auras, all clustered around the Confalume Throne.'

'Yes,' Dekkeret said. 'We  do have all three  Powers at the Castle  just now: my
mother, and Prestimion, and I. And what  exactly were we doing in this dream  of
yours, the three of us?'

There were four auras, my lord.'

Dekkeret looked puzzledly at the magus.  'Your dream misleads you, then. I  know
of  only  three Powers  of  the Realm.'  He  counted off  on  his fingers:  'The
Pontifex, the Coronal, the Lady of  the Isle. It's a division of  authority that
goes back thousands of years.'

'Unmistakably I felt  a fourth aura,  and it was  the aura of  a Power. A fourth
Power, my lord.'

'Are you  saying that  a new  usurper is  about to  proclaim himself? That we're
going to play out the Korsibar business all over again?'

From  the  Su-Suheris came  the  Su-Suheris equivalent  of  a shrug:  a  partial
retraction of the forked column of his neck, a curling inward of his long-clawed
six-fingered hands.  'There was  no evidence  in my  vision that  favors such  a
possibility. Or that denies it, either.'

'Then how -'

'I have one other detail to add.  The person who carried the aura of  the fourth
Power of the Realm carried also the imprint of a member of the Barjazid family.'

'What?'

'It  was  unmistakable, sir.  I  have not  forgotten  that you  brought  the man
Venghenar Barjazid, and of course his  son Dinitak, to the Castle as  prisoners,
though  it  was  twenty   years  ago.  The  pattern   of  a  Barjazid  soul   is
extraordinarily distinctive.'

'So Dinitak's going to be a Power!' cried Dekkeret, laughing. 'How he'll love to
hear that!' The nonsensical revelation, coming at the climax of this lengthy and
baffling conversation,  struck him  as wonderfully  laughable. 'Will  he push me
aside and make himself Coronal, do you think?  Or is it the post of Lady of  the
Isle that he's got his eye on?'

Nothing   disturbed    Maundigand-Klimd's.impenetrable   gravity.    'You   give
insufficient credence, lordship, to my statement that my visions are subjective.
I would not say that the Barjazid who was cloaked in a Power's majesty was  your
friend Dinitak, nor could I say that he was not. I can only tell you that I felt
the Barjazid  pattern. I  caution you  against too  literal an interpretation of
what I tell you.'

'There are other Barjazids, I suppose. Suvrael may still teem with them.'

'Yes. I remind you  of the man Khaymak  Barjazid, who not long  ago attempted to
enter Lord Prestimion's service,  but was turned away  at the advice of  his own
nephew Dinitak.'

'Right. Venghenar's brother - of course. He's the one who's going to be a Power,
then, you think? It still makes no sense, Maundigand-Klimd!'

'Again  I caution  you, lordship,  against seeking  so literal  an  explanation.
Obviously it's absurd that there can be  a fourth Power of the Realm, or  that a
member of the Barjazid clan could so much as aspire to that distinction. But  my
vision cannot be dismissed  out of hand. It  has symbolic meanings that  at this
point not even I can interpret. But one thing is clear: there will be trouble in
the early part of your  reign, my lord; and a  Barjazid will be involved in  it.
More than that, I cannot say.'



9

'Are you still awake?' Fiorinda asked.

Teotas, beside her, muttered an affirmative. 'What hour is it, anyway?'

'I don't know. A very late one. What keeps you up?'

'Too much wine, I suppose,' he said. The pre-coronation banquet that evening had
gone on and on, everybody carrying on like drunken roaring fools, Prestimion and
Dekkeret side by side at  the high table, Septach Melayn,  Gialaurys, Dembitave,
Navigorn, and half a dozen other members of the Council, everyone in a rare good
humor. Abrigant had come  up from Muldemar for  the occasion, bringing with  him
ten cases of wine of  a glorious vintage dating far  back into the time of  Lord
Confalume, and doubtless all ten cases contained nothing but empty bottles now.

But it was an evasive answer. Teotas knew that the wine was not to blame for his
wakefulness. He had had as much to drink as anybody, he supposed. The irony  was
that wine  was wasted  on him  - and  he a  prince of  Muldemar, a member of the
family  that made  the finest  wines in  the world!  He might  just as  well  be
drinking water.  His intense,  churning soul  burned the  alcohol as  fast as it
could enter him: it had no effect on him at all. He had never really been  drunk
in his life, never even pleasantly tipsy, and that was a heavy price to pay  for
being spared from hangovers as well.

What was bothering him, he knew, had nothing to do with last night's debauchery.
It was,  in good  part, uneasiness  over the  vastness of  the changes that were
about to come over his existence, now that Prestimion's time as Coronal was over
and his brother's new life in the Labyrinth was about to commence.

In theory, Teotas  thought, he himself  would feel no  great impact from  any of
that.  He was  the youngest  of the  four princely  Muldemar brothers,  with  no
hereditary obligations, free to live out his life as he pleased. Prestimion, the
eldest, had always been destiny's darling, rising swiftly and inevitably to  the
throne of the world. Taradath, the brilliant second brother, had perished in the
Korsibar war. To  sturdy Abrigant, the  third, the family  fief at Muldemar  had
descended, and he lived there now at Muldemar House, as princes of Muldemar  had
for  centuries, presiding  over the  winemakers and  dispensing justice  to  his
adoring citizens.

Teotas, though, had  lived the life  of a private  citizen until Prestimion  had
chosen him for the Council. He had  taken to himself a wife, the excellent  Lady
Fiorinda ofStee, a childhood friend  of Prestimion's wife Varaile, and  together
they had reared three admirable children;  and when Prestimion named him to  the
Council, he  made himself  one of  its most  useful members.  All in all, he had
created a satisfying life  for himself, though there  was that unhappy quirk  in
his character that  prevented him from  taking full pleasure  even in the  utter
fulfillment of all ambition and desire.

And now - now -

The to-ing and fro-ing of these  coronation ceremonies was finally coming to  an
end. Soon everyone would have settled  down in his proper place. For  Prestimion
and Varaile, that place would be the Labyrinth. And Varaile wanted Fiorinda -her
sister-in-law and chief lady-in-waiting - to live there with her.

Did Varaile understand that that would mean, for Fiorinda, the uprooting of  her
entire family? Of course she did. But the two women were inseparable friends. It
must seem to Fiorinda and to Varaile as well that it was far more preferable for
Fiorinda and her family  to move to the  subterranean capital in the  south than
for them to be parted from one another.

Teotas, though, had  lived at the  Castle since he  was a boy.  He knew no other
home, except only the family estate  at Muldemar House, and that was  Abrigant's
property now. The Castle's  thousands of rooms were  like extensions of his  own
skin. He roved far  and wide through the  meadowlands outside, he hunted  in the
forest preserves of  Halanx, he enjoyed  the giddy pleasures  of the juggernauts
and mirror-slides of High Morpin, he wandered now and again down to Muldemar  to
reminisce about old times with Abrigant. As his sons grew toward manhood he took
them with him in his wanderings among the cities of the Mount, bringing them  to
see the stone  birds of  Furible in  dieir mating  flight, and  the lovely burnt
orange towers of Bombifale, and the  festival of the flaming canals of  Hoikmar.
Castle Mount was  his life. The  Labyrinth held no  appeal for him.  That was no
secret to anyone.

He had always indulged Fiorinda in every whim. This was more than a whim; but he
would, if he could, indulge her in this too. But this one was very hard.

There  was a  final twist  in the  situation that  made his  yielding  well-nigh
impossible. Dekkeret, upon returning from Prestimion's coronation, had asked him
to serve  him as  High Counsellor  of the  Realm. 'It  will provide continuity,'
Dekkeret had said. 'Prestimion's own brother, taking the second highest post  at
the  Castle,  and  who else  is  better  qualified than  you,  a  key member  of
Prestimion's own Council -?'

Yes, it made sense. Teotas was honored and flattered.

But was  Dekkeret aware  that Varaile  had already  summoned Fiorinda  to be her
companion at the Labyrinth? Apparendy he was not. And the two appointments  were
irreconcilable.

How could he be Lord Dekkeret's High Counsellor at the Castle while Fiorinda was
the Lady  Varaile's chief  lady-in-waiting at  the Labyrinth?  Were Dekkeret and
Varaile expecting them simply to rip their marriage apart? Or were they supposed
to divide their time, half the year  at one capital and half at the  other? That
was plainly unworkable. The Coronal needed  his High Counsellor at his side  all
the time,  not off  for months  communing with  the Pontifex  in the  Labyrinth.
Varaile would not want to be parted that long from Fiorinda, either.

One of them would have to make a great sacrifice. But which one?

Thus far Teotas had shied away from discussing the matter with Fiorinda,  hoping
forlornly that some easy miraculous  solution would present itself. He  knew how
unlikely that was. It was ever his inclination to yield to her wishes, yes.  But
to decline the post of High Counsellor - it would be almost treasonous; Dekkeret
needed and wanted him; there was  no other obvious choice. Varaile could  surely
find other ladies-in-waiting. It was not as if - but then, on the other hand -

He saw no answer, and it was tearing him asunder.

That was one part of Teotas's anguish. But also there were the dreams.

Night after night, dreams  so terrible that he  had come by now  to fear falling
asleep, because once he plunged into that dark land beyond his pillow he  became
prey to the most monstrous horrors. It  helped not at all to tell himself  after
he had awakened that  it had merely been  a dream. There was  nothing mere about
dreams. Teotas knew  that dreams hold  powerful significance: that  they are the
harbingers of the  invisible world, tapping  for admission at  the boundaries of
our souls. And  dark dreams like  his could only  be the tappings  of demons, of
lurking forces beyond the clouds, the ancient beings that once ruled this  world
and might one day seize it from those who had come to possess it.

Sleep  now  terrified him.  Awake,  he could  defend  himself against  anything.
Sleeping, he was as  helpless as a child.  That was infuriating, that  he should
have no defense. But he could not fight off sleep forever, try as he might.

It was coming for him now, despite everything.

'Yes, Teotas, yes, sleep...' Fiorinda was stroking his forehead, his cheeks, his
throat. 'Relax. Let go, Teotas, let go of everything.'

What could he say? I dare not sleep. I fear demons, Fiorinda? I am unwilling  to
put myself at their mercy ?

Her embrace was  sweet and soothing.  He rested his  head against her  soft warm
breasts.  What  was  the  use  of  fighting?  Sleep  was  necessary.  Sleep  was
inevitable. Sleep was...

A tumbling downward, a free descent, a willy-nilly plummeting.


And then he is crossing a bare  blackened plateau, a place of clinkers and  ash,
of gaping crevasses, of gaunt dead  trees, and he is growing older,  much older,
with every step he takes. He is  inhaling old age like some poisonous fume.  His
skin puckers and becomes cracked and wrinkled. He sprouts a coat of coarse white
hair on his chest and belly and loins. His veins bulge. His ankles complain. His
eyes grow bleary. His  knees are bent. His  heart races and slows.  His nostrils
wheeze.

He struggles  forward, fighting  the transformation  and always  losing, losing,
losing.  The  pallid sun  begins  to slip  below  the horizon.  The  path he  is
following, he  knows not  why, is  ascending, now.  Every step  is torment.  His
throat is dry and his swollen tongue is  like a lump of old cloth in his  mouth.
Gummy rheum drips from the rims of his eyes and trickles across his chest. There
is a drumming in his temples and a coldness in his gut.

Creatures that are  little more than  filmy vapors dance  through the air  about
him. They point;  they laugh; they  jeer. Coward, they  call him. Fool.  Insect.
Pitiful creeping thing.

Feebly he  shakes his  fist at  them. Their  laughter grows  more raucous. Their
insults become  more vicious.  They lay  bare his  utter worthlessness  in fifty
different ways, and he lacks the  strength to contradict them, and after  a time
he knows that no contradiction is possible, because they are speaking the simple
truth.

Then, as though  they are no  longer able to  sustain interest in  any entity as
trivial and  contemptible as  he, they  melt away  and are  gone, leaving only a
trailing cloud of tinkling merriment behind them.

He staggers on. Twice he falls, and twice he claws his way to his feet,  feeling
the  harsh scratch  of bone  on bone,  the thick  rustle of  dark blood  pushing
through narrowed arteries. He  would not have believed  that being old could  be
such agony. Darkness comes swiftly.  He finds himself deep in  starless moonless
night  and  is grateful  that  he no  longer  has to  look  upon his  own  body.
'Fiorinda?' he croaks, but there is no response. He is alone. He has never  been
anything but alone.

A light,  now, blinks  into being  in the  distance, and  rapidly intensifies to
become a cone of luminous green, widening to fill the heavens, a geyser of  pale
radiance spurting aloft.  As the wind  sweeps through it,  it stirs swirls  of a
grayer color, whirlpools  of light within  light. Accompanying this  outburst of
brightness is a rushing, whispering sound, like the murmur of distant water.  He
also hears what sounds like  subterranean laughter, resonant, slippery. He  goes
forward, entering a sort of green cloud  that seeps from the ground. The air  is
electric. His pores tingle. A sour smell drifts upward in his nostrils. His bent
and aching body sweats and steams. There  is what seems to be a mountain  ahead,
but as he  moves on through  the cloud Teotas  realizes that what  he sees is  a
giant living thing, squat and enormous and incomprehensible, sitting upright  on
a kind of throne.

A god?  A demon?  An idol?  Its brown,  leathery skin  is thick  and glossy, and
ridged like a reptile's hide. Its  massive body is low and long,  blunt-snouted,
goggle-eyed, with a high vaulting back, fat sides, bulging belly,  pedestal-like
underparts. Teotas has never seen a creature so huge. That mouth alone -

That mouth -

That gaping mouth -

Teotas is  unable to  halt himself.  The mouth  yawns like  the entrance  to the
cavern of  caverns, and  he marches  onward, no  longer moving  with difficulty:
gliding, rather, speeding toward that mouth, rushing toward it -

Wider and wider.  That great cavern  fills the sky.  A terrible bellowing  comes
from  it, loud  enough to  shake the  ground. Landslides  begin; rocks  fall  in
thundering avalanches; there is no place to take refuge except within the  mouth
itself, that waiting mouth, that eternally gaping mouth -

Teotas rushes forward into the blackness.

'It's all right,' someone  is saying. 'A dream,  only a dream! Teotas  - please,
Teotas -'


He was bathed in sweat, shivering,  a huddled heap. Fiorinda cradled him  in her
arms, murmuring  an unending  flow of  soothing words.  Gradually he  could feel
himself coming back from the nightmare, though its residue, like an oily  slick,
still laps at the edges of his mind.

'Only a dream, Teotas! It wasn't real!'

He nodded. What could he say, how to explain? 'Yes. Only a dream.'



10

Prestimion  said,  'So  now it's  finally  over  and done  with,  all  the jolly
festivals and amusements. Now the real work begins, eh, Dekkeret?'

It had taken  him back to  earlier days, these  weeks of formal  ceremonies that
marked the  end of  the old  reign and  the beginning  of the  new. He  had been
through all this once before, only that time he was the one whose ascent to  the
throne was being celebrated.  The influx of coronation  gifts from all over  the
world - had he ever actually unpacked more than a fraction of those myriad boxes
and crates? - the rite of the passing of the crown, the coronation banquet,  the
recitals from  The Book  of Changes,  the chanting  of The  Book of  Powers, the
passing and repassing of the wine-bowls, the gathered lords of the realm  rising
to make the starburst salute and cry out the greeting to the new Coronal -

'Prestimion!' they had cried. 'Lord Prestimion! Hail, Lord Prestimion! Long life
to Lord Prestimion!' So long ago! It seemed to him now that his entire reign  as
Coronal had gone by in the twinkling of an eye, and now here he was mysteriously
transformed into a man of middle years, no longer as buoyant and impulsive as he
once had been, nor as good-humored, either - a little testy at times, indeed, he
would admit - and  now they had done  it all once again,  the immemorial rituals
played  out anew,  but this  time the  name they  called was  that of  Dekkeret,
Dekkeret, Lord  Dekkeret, while  he himself  looked on  from one  side, smiling,
willingly surrendering his share of glory to the new monarch.

But some part of him would always be Coronal, he knew.

His boyish younger self stood before him  in the mirror of his memory like  some
other person, that youthful, agile Prestimion of two decades ago: that endlessly
resilient young man who had survived the humiliation of the Korsibar  usurpation
and the ghastly bloodlettings of the civil war, to make himself Coronal  despite
all. How he had fought for it! It had cost him a brother, and a lover, and  much
bodily suffering  besides, nights  camped on  muddy shores,  days spent trekking
through the deadliest desert this side of Suvrael, mounts shot out from  beneath
him  on the  battlefield, wounds  whose scars  he still  carried. Dekkeret   was
fortunate to have been spared any of that, let alone anything like a  repetition
of it. His rise to the throne had been orderly and normal. It was a much simpler
way to become king.

Everything should have been simple for me, too, Prestimion thought. But that was
not the fate that the Divine had in mind for me.


He stood with Dekkeret - Lord  Dekkeret - in the Confalume throne-chamber,  just
the  two of  them, amid  the echoes.  As they  looked far  across the  floor  of
brilliant yellow gurna-wood  to the  throne itself,  that massive  block of ruby
streaked black opal  rising on its  stepped pedestal of  dark mahogany, Dekkeret
said, 'You'll miss it, I know. Go on, Prestimion: climb up there one last  time,
if you like. I'll never tell.'

Prestimion smiled. 'I never cared to sit on it when I was Coronal. It would feel
even wronger for me to sit on it now.'

'But you took your place on that throne often enough when you were king, and you
put a good face on it then.'

'It was my job to  put a good face on  it, Dekkeret. But now the  job's yours. I
have no business up there, even for sentiment's sake.'

He continued to ponder the great throne, though, for a time. He could not  help,
even  now, but  be amused  by the  pretentiousness of  the astoundingly   costly
throne-room Confalume had so  grandly thrust into the  heart of the Castle,  and
the throne itself thatwas  itsjewel. But at the  same time he honored  itfor the
symbol of rightful power that it was, and for the way it summoned up in his mind
the memory of Confalume himself, who in some senses had been more of a father to
him than his own.

At length  he said,  'You know,  Dekkeret, we  have to  take the old man's gaudy
throne very seriously while we're seated upon it. We need to believe with  every
fiber of our souls  in its majesty. Because  what we really are  are performers,
you know, and there's our stage. And for the little time we strut that stage, we
need to believe  that the play  is real and  important: for if  we don't seem to
believe it, who else will want to?'

'Yes. Yes, I do comprehend that, Prestimion.'

'But now I have a different stage for myself, and no one will see me moving back
and  forth  upon  it. -  Let's  get  ourselves out  of  this  place, shall  we?'
Prestimion gave the great throne a final, almost fond, glance.

They crossed  from the  throne-room into  the judgment-hall,  a room  of his own
making. It  was of  no trifling  degree of  splendor itself.  Would they  think,
someday,  that the  ancient Lord  Prestimion had  been a  man as  much given  to
ostentatiousness and grand display as his predecessor Lord Confalume? Well,  let
them think it, then. That was  nothing for him to concern himself  over. History
would invent its  own Prestimion, as  it had invented  its own Stiamot,  its own
Arioc, its own Guadeloom. It was a process with which no man could interfere. He
was probably well on his way toward becoming mythical already.

Dekkeret said,  'These rooms  beyond here  - I'm  going to  clear them away, and
build a chapel for the Coronal, I think. I feel it's needed here.'

'A good idea.'

'A chapel right here, you mean?'

'The general idea of  building things. I like  it that you already  have that in
mind.  If you  want a  chapel here,  build one.  Put your  mark on  the  Castle,
Dekkeret. Take it in your hands. Shape it as you will. This place is the sum  of
all the kings who have lived in it. We'll never be finished building it. So long
as the world lasts, there'll be new construction up here.'

'Yes. Majipoor expects it of us.'

It pleased Prestimion to be making this last tour of these sacred rooms with the
sturdy, strong-willed man who he had picked to succeed him. Dekkeret would be  a
splendid Coronal, of that he was sure. It was a necessary thing for him to  know
that he  had bestowed  such a  successor upon  the world.  However great his own
accomplishments had been, history would not forgive him if he provided  Majipoor
with a weakling or a fool as the next king.

Great Coronals had made such mistakes in the past. But Prestimion was  confident
that no one would  ever lay that charge  against him. Dekkeret would  live up to
all expectations. He  would be a  different sort of  king from his  predecessor,
yes, earnest and straightforward where Prestimion had often relied on craftiness
and manipulation.  And Dekkeret  cut a  grand and  heroic figure,  who commanded
respect merely by walking into a  room, whereas Prestimion, built by the  Divine
on a much  smaller scale, felt  that he had  had to achieve  kingliness by sheer
force of personality.

Well, these differences would make it easier for the people - j of future  years
to tell  one of  them from  the other,  anyway. 'In  the time  of Prestimion and
Dekkeret,'  they would  say, hearkening  back as  if to  a golden  age, the  way
sometimes  people spoke  of the  times of  Thraym and  Vildivar, or  Signer  and
Melikand, or  Agis and  Klain. But  those kings  existed only as interchangeable
paired names,  not as  individuals in  their own  right. Prestimion  hoped for a
kinder fate. So different was he from  Dekkeret that those who lived in time  to
come would of necessity always see in  the eyes of their minds the image  of the
quick, supple little Prestimion, the  master archer, the great planner,  and the
broad-shouldered big-bodied form  of Dekkeret beside  him, and they  would know,
forever, which one was which. Or so Prestimion hoped.

'Shall we stroll out to the  Morvendil Parapet?' he asked, gesturing toward  the
northwestern gate. 'The view from there by night is one I've often enjoyed.'

'And will again, many times,' said Dekkeret 'You mill come visiting often?'

'As often as  is appropriate for  a Ponrifex to  show his nose  at the Castle, I
suppose. But that's not often at all, is it? And you won't want me here, anyway.
However you may feel right now, you'll not want me snooping around the  premises
once you start believing that the place is really yours.'

Dekkeret chuckled, but made no other response.


They went quickly through the halls,  out into the dusk. Distant guards  saluted
them. Others, shadowy figures who might  have been princes of the realm,  peered
at them  from afar  also, but  no one  dared approach:  who would  interrupt the
private  conference of  the Pontifex  and the  Coronal? A  covered walkway  that
carried an  inscription from  Lord Dulcinon's  time took  them into the Gaznivin
Court, which had a balcony at its lower end that gave access to Lord Morvendil's
Parapet.

What sort  of ruler  Lord Morvendil  had been,  or even  when he had lived, were
matters of which Prestimion had no knowledge, but the parapet itself, a long and
narrow breastwork of black Velathyntu  stone, had long been one  of Prestimion's
private places of refuge from the cares of the crown. Here the Mount tapered  to
a narrow point,  falling away below  the Castle wall  in a steep  declivity that
gave a spectacular view of  several of the High Cities  and part of the band  of
Inner Cities just below. Darkness was coming on quickly down there, and  islands
of light were  springing up against  the giant mountain's  flank. It was  always
instructive  to consider  that this  small spot  of light  off to  the left  was
actually a  city of  six million  people, and  that dot  there the home of seven
million more. And that one down there, pressed up snugly against the side of the
mountain and surrounded by a semicircle of inky blackness, was Prestimion's  own
lovely Muldemar.

Memories stirred in him  of his youth in  that beautiful city, his  happy family
life, the warm and loving mother and the strong noble father, taken so early  by
death, who had seemed  as kingly as any  Coronal. What a warm  community, what a
satisfying existence! He had never known a moment of sadness or despair. If  die
Castle had  not called  to him,  he would  be Prince  of Muldemar  now, busy and
content among the grapes and wine-cellars.

But it had seemed a  natural and normal thing for  him to move outward from  the
bosom of his family and the  princely responsibilities of the city of  his birth
to the service of mankind. So the yearning had come over him to be Coronal,  and
thus  to  hold  all of  Majipoor  in  warm familial  embrace,  he  the focus  of
everyone's dreams, he the benign leader, he the father of the world.

Was  that how  he had  seen it  then, or  was it  simple power-hunger  that  had
impelled him to the  throne? He could not  say. There had, of  course, been some
component of the desire  for mastery in his  rise through the Castle  hierarchy.
But that  had been  far from  his dominant  motive, he  was certain  - very far.
Prestimion had learned that in the Korsibar war.

He had  fought then  for the  throne, yes,  fought desperately,  but not so much
because  he simply  wanted it,  as Korsibar  had, but  because he  was sure   he
deserved it, that he was needed for it, that he was the necessary and unique man
of his era. No doubt many a dread tyrant and monstrous villain had felt the same
way precisely about himself, in the  long course of human history going  back to
the all but forgotten times of Old  Earth. Well, so be it; Prestimion had  faith
in  his own  understanding of  his own  motives. And  so, he  knew, did  all  of
Majipoor. He was beloved by all, and that was the confirmation of everything. He
had served ably as Coronal; so would he serve now, now that he was Pontifex.

He looked toward Dekkeret, who was standing a little apart, plainly unwilling to
intrude on his reflections. 'Have you given thought yet to how you will begin?'

'New  decrees  and laws,  you  mean? Overturning  ancient  precedents, repealing
existing protocols, standing the world on its head? I thought I might wait  some
little while before setting out on that course.'

Prestimion laughed. 'A wise position, I think. The Coronal who governs wisest is
the one who governs  least. Lord Prankipin put  the world back on  its course by
lessening the grip of government; Confalume followed that course, and so have I.
The benefits  can be  seen on  every side.  - But  no, no,  I wasn't speaking of
legislative  matters, only  symbolic ones.  Is it  your intention  to  sequester
yourself here at the Castle until you've fully settled into your tasks, or  will
you show yourself to the people?'

'If I hide here until  I feel I've fully settled  into my tasks, I may  grow old
and die before  the world sees  my face. But  surely it's too  soon for a  grand
processional, Prestimion!'

'I would say that it is.  Save the processional for the traditional  fifth year,
unless circumstances force it  sooner. But once I  became Coronal I lost  little
time in visiting the nearby cities, if nothing farther. Of course, I was ever  a
restless man:  you are  more content  to see  the same  set of doors and windows
several  weeks running,  I think.  Still, there's  something to  be said  for  a
Coronal's getting himself away from the Castle as often as is seemly. One gets a
damned narrow view of the world from thirty miles up.'

'So I would think,' said Dekkeret. 'Where did you go, in your first months?'

'In the very beginning, I simply slipped away with Septach Melayn and Gialaurys,
saying nothing about it to anyone, going in the night to places like  Banglecode
or Creel or Bibiroon. We wore wigs  and false whiskers, even, and kept our  ears
open, and learned  much about the  world that had  been given us  to govern. The
Night Market of Bombifale - ah, now that was a time! We tasted foods no  Coronal
may ever  have eaten  before. We  visited the  dealers in  sorcery-goods. It was
there  that I  met Maundigand-Klimd,  who had  no difficulty  seeing through  my
disguise. - Not that I recommend such subterfuges to you.'

'No. Such things as wigs and false whiskers are not my style, I suspect.'

'A little later I journeyed in a more formal way. I would take Teotas orAbrigant
with  me, Gialaurys,  Navigorn, various  members of  my Council.  And visit  the
cities  of  the Mount  -  Peritole, Strave,  Minimool,  down the  Mount  even to
Gimkandale - never  imposing myself on  any one place  for long, because  of the
expense it would involve for them,  merely arriving and making a speech  or two,
listening to complaints,  promising miracles, and  moving along. It  was in this
phase of my reign that I came to Normork, you may recall.'

'How could I ever forget it?' said Dekkeret gravely.

'Finding Maundigand-Klimd on one trip, and you on another; and there was a third
journey, a visit to Stee, where I met the Lady Varaile. Fortuitous meetings, all
three, the merest of  accidents, and yet how  they transformed my reign,  and my
life! Whereas if you remain sequestered at the Castle -'

Dekkeret nodded. 'Yes. I do take the point.'

'One more question,  and then  we should  go in,'  Prestimion said.  'Maundigand
Klimd came to you, did he not, with his tale of perceiving a Barjazid as a Power
of the Realm? What did you make of that story?'

'Why, very  little, if  anything.' Dekkeret  indicated surprise  that Prestimion
would so much as mention anything so fantastic. 'The three positions are rilled,
and let us hope no vacancies develop for many years to come.'

'You take his words very literally, I see.'

'The Su-Suheris  made the  very same  comment. But  how else  am I  to look upon
words, other  than as  things with  meanings? You  seem to  find it diverting to
listen now  and then  to the  murmurings of  sorcerers, but  to me  they are all
worthless idlers and parasites, even your cherished Maundigand-Klimd, and  their
prognostications are mere vapor to me. If  a magus comes to me and says  that in
his dreams he has seen a Barjazid wearing the aura of a Power of the Realm,  why
should I search for hidden meanings  and buried subtleties? I look first  at the
message itself. That particular message strikes  me as foolishness. So I put  it
out of mind.'

'You do yourself an injustice by ignoring Maundigand-Klimd's warning.'

A certain note of  exasperation came into Dekkeret's  voice now. 'We should  not
quarrel on this happy day, Prestimion. But  - forgive me - what sense can  there
be  in his  prophecy? The  Barjazids are  all loathsome  scoundrels, my   friend
Dinitak aside. The world would never embrace them as kings.'

'But Dinitak might, you think?'

'It would be  very far-fetched. I  grant you I  could choose to  name him as  my
successor, which would  indeed make him  a Power of  the Realm, and  if I did, I
think he'd be a capable ruler, if perhaps somewhat stern. But I assure you  most
assuredly, Prestimion, that  it'll be many  years before I  begin fretting about
finding a replacement for myself, and when I do I doubt very much that my choice
would ever land on Dinitak. Two commoners  in a row may be more than  the system
can stand. Dinitak has  many virtues and is,  I suppose, my closest  friend, but
he's not, I think, generous  enough of soul to be  considered even in jest as  a
potential Coronal. He is a hard man, without much charity in him. Therefore -'

Prestimion held up one hand. 'Enough!  I beg you, Dekkeret, put aside  the Power
of the Realm part of this prophecy entirely.. You've just ruled Dinitak out, and
as for Khaymak Barjazid, I have as much trouble imagining him as Coronal as  you
would.  Focus  instead  on   Maundigand-Klimd's  warning  that  there   will  be
difficulties in the  early days of  your reign, and  that some Barjazid  will be
involved in them.'

'I'm prepared to deal with whatever arises. First let it arise, though.'

'You will remain alert, though?'

'Of course I  will. It should  go without saying.  But I will  not take up  arms
against phantoms, for all that you tell me about the wisdom of your magus. And I
tell you, Prestimion, I will be reluctant to take up arms at all, no matter what
troubles may arise, if there's a  peaceful solution available to me. -  Shall we
drop this  discussion now,  Prestimion? We  have our  farewell dinner to prepare
ourselves for.'

'Yes. So we do.'

In any case, Prestimion saw, there was no point in continuing this. It was clear
to him that what he was trying to  do was about as fruitful as butting his  head
against the great wall  of Normork. Butt all  you pleased; the wall  would never
yield. Neither would Dekkeret.

Perhaps I am too sensitive on this, Prestimion thought, having had two doses  of
insurrection  one  upon  another in  the  early  years of  my  own  reign. I  am
conditioned by my own unhappy experiences  always to expect trouble; when it  is
absent, as it has been these many  years since the death of Dantirya Sambail,  I
mistrust  its  absence.  Dekkeret  has  a  sunnier  spirit:  let  him  deal with
Maundigand-Klimd's gloomy prophecy as he pleases. Perhaps the Divine will indeed
grant him a happy start to his reign despite everything. And dinner is waiting.



11

Khaymak Barjazid said, 'I have a  thought, your grace. You mentioned, some  time
back, your difficult relationship with your father and your brothers.'

Mandralisca shot him  a startled, angry  look. For the  moment he had  forgotten
altogether that  he had  ever spoken  of his  painful childhood  to Barjazid, or
anyone else. And he was not at  all accustomed to being addressed in a  way that
ventured to breach the walls he had erected around his inner life.

'And if I did?' he said, in a voice tipped with blades.

Barjazid squirmed. Terror came into  the little man's mis-matched eyes.  'I mean
no offense, sir!  No offense at  all! Only that  I see a  way of intensifying  a
power of the  helmet you  hold in  your hands,  a way  which would  make use  of
certain of your - experiences.'

Mandralisca leaned  forward. The  sting of  the sudden  intrusion into  his soul
still reverberated in him, but he was interested all the same. 'How so?'

'Let me see how  to put this,' said  Barjazid carefully. He held  himself like a
man  setting out  to have  a philosophical  dialog with  a snarling,  infuriated
khulpoin,  all  yellow  fangs  and  blazing  eyes,  that  he  has   unexpectedly
encountered on a quiet  country road. 'When one  uses the helmet, one  generates
the power from within oneself,' said  Barjazid. 'It is my belief that  one would
be able to increase the device's power if one were to draw on some reservoir  of
pain, of fury, of-I could almost say 'hatred.''

'Well, say it, then. Hatred. It's a word I understand.'

'Hatred, yes. And so  certain things occurred to  me, sir, remembering what  you
had  told me  that day  concerning your  boyhood -  your father.  Your -   early
unhappiness -' Barjazid chose his  words painstakingly, obviously aware that  he
was treading on dangerous ground here. He understood that Mandralisca might well
not want to be reminded of the things  that he had blurted out, so very much  to
his  own surprise,  that day  that he  and Barjazid  and Jacemon  Halefice  were
walking through the marketplace. But Mandralisca, controlling himself, signalled
to him  to go  on. And  Barjazid most  artfully did:  he hinted,  he alluded, he
talked in euphemisms, all the while painting the portrait of the boy Mandralisca
eternally  in fear  of his  savage drunken  father and  his blustering  bullying
brothers,  suffering daily  at their  hands and  storing up  a full  measure  of
loathing for them that  would, one day, overflow  upon the world. Loathing  that
could be  turned into  an asset,  that could  be harnessed,  that could become a
source of great power. And offered some suggestions concerning how that might be
achieved.

This was all very valuable. Mandralisca was grateful to Barjazid for sharing  it
with him. But he  regretted, all the same,  having parted even for  a moment the
veil that shrouded  his early life.  He had always  found it useful  to have the
world perceive him  as a monster  carved out of  ice; there were  great risks in
giving  someone a  glimpse of  the vulnerable  boy of  long ago  who lay  hidden
somewhere behind that chilly facade. He would gladly call back, if he could, all
that he had told this little man that strange afternoon.

'Enough,' Mandralisca said, finally. 'You've made your point clear. Now go,  and
let me get down to work.' He reached for the helmet.


Late autumn in the Gonghars, shading  into early winter. The light but  unending
rain of the warm season  has begun to give way  to the cold and equally  endless
rain  of autumn,  heavy with  sleet, that  will yield  in another  few weeks  to
winter's first snows. This is the cabin,  the squalid shack, the tumbledown  ill
favored house, where the wine-seller Kekkidis  and his family live, here in  the
sad little  mountain town  of Ibykos.  The hour  is far  along in the afternoon,
dark, cold. Rain  drums on the  rotting lichen-encrusted roof  and drips through
the usual leaky  places, landing in  the usual buckets  with a steady  pong pong
pong. Mandralisca  does not  dare to  light a  fire. Fuel  is not wasted in this
household, and any fuel not consumed on  behalf of his father is deemed a  waste
of fuel; no one matters here but  his father, and fires are lit when  his father
returns from his day's toil, not before.

Today that may be hours from now. Or, perhaps - the Divine willing - never.

For three days  now Kekkidis and  his oldest son  Malchio have been  in the city
ofVelathys, a hundred miles away, arranging  to buy up the stock of  some fellow
wine-merchant who has died in an  avalanche, leaving half a dozen hungry  babes.
They are due back today; indeed, are already more than a little overdue, because
the floater that  runs between Velathys  and Ibykos leaves  at dawn and  reaches
Ibykos  by  mid-afternoon. It  is  almost dark,  now,  but the  floater  has not
arrived. No one knows why. Another of Mandralisca's brothers has been waiting at
the station since noon  with the wagon. The  third is at the  wine-shop, helping
their mother. Mandralisca  is alone at  home. He diverts  himself with luxurious
fantasies  of  cataclysms  befalling his  father.  Perhaps  - perhaps,  perhaps,
perhaps! -something bad has happened on the road. Perhaps. Perhaps.

His other way of passing the time,  and keeping warm, is by practicing with  the
singlestick baton that he has carved  from a piece of nightflower wood.  That is
the finest kind  of baton, a  nightflower-wood baton, and  Mandralisca saved all
last year, one  square copper at  a time, to  buy himself a  decent-sized stave,
which he has whittled and whittled until it is of the perfect length and weight,
and fits his hand so well that  one might think a master craftsman had  designed
the hand grip. Now, holding the baton  so that it rests lightly in his  palm, he
moves deftly  back and  forth through  the room,  feinting at  shadows, jabbing,
parrying. He is  quick; he is  good; his wrist  is strong, his  eye is keen;  he
hopes to be a champion someday. But right now he is mainly interested in keeping
warm.

He imagines that his opponent is his father. He dances round and round the older
man, mockingly  prodding at  him, tapping  him at  the point  of each  shoulder,
beneath  the  chin,  along  his cheek,  playing  with  him,  outmaneuvering him,
humiliating him. Kekkidis has begun to  growl with fury; he lashes out  with his
own baton with a two-handed grip, as though swinging an axe; but the boy is  ten
times as fast as he, and touches  him again and again and again, while  Kekkidis
is unable to land a single blow.

Perhaps Kekkidis will never come home at all. Perhaps he'll die somewhere on the
road. Let it be, Mandralisca prays, that he is already dead.

Let him have had an avalanche too.

The hills above Ibykos are snow-covered  already, the wet heavy snow typical  of
the  cusp  of the  season.  Mandralisca, closing  his  eyes, pictures  the  rain
pounding down, imagines  it striking the  black granite bed-rock,  slicing at an
angle into the accumulated snow-drifts,  working like little knives to  cut them
loose and send them gliding in billowy  clouds down the side of the hill  toward
the highway below, just as the  Velathys floater goes by - hiding  it altogether
from sight until spring - Kekkedis and Malchio buried beneath a thousand tons of
snow -

Or let a sudden sinkhole open in the highway. Let the floater be swallowed up in
it.

Let the floater swerve wildly off the road. Let it plunge into the river.

Let the engine die  halfway between Velathys and  here. Let them be  caught in a
blizzard and freeze to death.

Mandralisca punctuates each  of these hopeful  thoughts with furious  thrusts of
his baton. Jab -jab  -jab. He whirls, dances,  turns lightly on the  tips of his
toes, strikes  while his  body is  facing more  than halfway  away from his foe.
Comes in  overhead, a  descending angle,  impossible to  defend against, bolt of
lightning. Take that! That! That!

The sound  of the  wagon pulling  up, suddenly.  Mandralisca wants  to weep.  No
avalanche, no sinkhole, no fatal blizzard. Kekkedis is home again.

Voices. Footsteps outside, now. Coughing sounds. Someone stamping his feet,  two
someones, Kekkidis and Malchio knocking snow off their boots.

'Boy! Where are you,  boy? Let us in!  Do you have any  idea how cold it  is out
here?'

Mandralisca leans his baton against the  wall. Rushes to the door, fumbles  with
the latch. Two tall  men on the threshold,  one older than the  other, two bleak
scowling  lantern-jawed  faces,  long  greasy  black  hair,  angry  eyes shining
through. Mandralisca can smell the brandy on their breath. There is the smell of
fury about them, too: a sharp,  musky stink, boiling out from beneath  their fur
robes. Something must have gone wrong. They stomp past him, brushing him  aside.
'Where's the  fire?' Kekkidis  asks. 'Why  is it  so damnably  cold in here? You
should have had a fire ready for us, boy!'

No way  to deal  with that.  Denounced if  he prepares  a fire,  denounced if he
doesn't. The old story.

Mandralisca hurries to bring in some  kindling from the pile on the  back porch.
His father and  his brother, still  in their coats,  stand in the  middle of the
room, rubbing their hands  to warm them. They  are talking about their  journey.
Their voices are harsh and bitter. Evidently the venture has been a failure; the
agents for the  other wine-merchant's estate  have been too  sharp for Kekkidis,
the cheap and easy purchase of distress-sale merchandise has fallen through, the
whole trip has been a waste of  time and money. Mandralisca keeps his head  down
and goes about his business, asking  no questions. He knows better than  to call
attention to himself when his father is in a mood like this. Best to stay out of
his way,  cling to  the shadows,  let him  vent his  rage on  pots and  pans and
stools, not on his youngest son.

But it happens anyway. Mandralisca is half a step too slow performing some task.
Kekkidis is  displeased. He  snarls, curses,  abruptly sees  Mandralisca's baton
leaning against the wall  not far from where  he stands, grabs it  up, prods the
boy sharply in the gut with its tip.

That is unbearable. Not so much the pain of being prodded by the baton, although
it nearly  takes his  breath away,  but that  his father  should be handling his
baton at all. Kekkedis has no  business touching it, let alone using  it against
him. The baton is  his. His only possession.  Bought with his own  money, carved
into shape with his own hands.

Without stopping to think, Mandralisca reaches out for it as Kekkedis is drawing
it back for a second thrust. Lightning-fast, he steps forward, seizes the  baton
by the tip, pulls it toward him, trying to yank it from his father's hand.

It is a terrible mistake. He knows that even as he is committing it, but for all
his quickness he is unable to  stop himself. Kekkidis stares at him,  wild-eyed,
sputtering with  astonishment at  so flagrant  an act  of defiance.  He rips the
baton  from  Mandralisca's grasp,  twisting  laterally with  vicious  force that
Mandralisca's  slender  wrist  cannot  resist.  Grabs  the  baton  by  each end,
grinning, snaps it easily over his knee, grins again, holds the broken pieces up
to display them for him, and casually tosses them into the fire. All of it takes
only a moment or two to accomplish.

'No,' Mandralisca murmurs,  not yet   believing it  has happened.  'Don't  -  no
please -'

A year's savings. His beautiful baton.


Thirty-five years later and  a thousand miles or  so to the north  and east, the
man who calls himself Count Mandralisca of Zimroel sits in a small circular room
with an arched roof and burnt-orange mud-plastered walls on a ridge  overlooking
the desert wastes of the Plain of Whips. He wears a helmet of metal mesh on  his
brow; his  hands are  clenched beside  him as  though each  one grips one of the
sundered halves of the broken baton.

He sees his father's face before him. The triumphant vindictive grin. The pieces
of the baton held aloft - tossed into the flames -

Mandralisca's searching mind soars upward - outward - remembering - hating -

Don't- no- please -


Teotas, defeated by sleep yet again, sleeps. He can do nothing else. His  spirit
fears sleep but his body demands it. Each night he fights, loses, succumbs.  And
so now, despite the nightly struggle, once more he lies sleeping. Dreaming.

A desert, somewhere, nowhere real.  Hallucinations rise like heatwaves from  the
rocks. He hears groans and occasional sobs and something that could be a  chorus
of large black  beetles, a dry  rustling sound. The  wind is hot  and dusty. The
dawn has a blinding brilliance. The rocks are bright nodes of pure energy  whose
rich-textured red surfaces vibrate in  patterns that continually change. On  one
face of  every stony  mass he  sees golden  lights circling  gracefully. On  the
opposite face pale bluish spheres are unceasingly born and go bubbling into  the
air. Everything shimmers. Everything shines with an inner light. It would all be
marvelously beautiful, if it were not so frightening.

He himself has  been transformed into  something hideous. His  hands have become
hammers. His toes  are hooked claws.  His knees have  eyes but no  eyebrows. His
tongue is satin. His saliva is glass. His blood is bile and his bile is blood. A
brooding sense of  imminent punishment assails  him. Creatures made  of vertical
ribs of gray cartilage make dull  booming noises at him. Somehow he  understands
their meaning: they  are expressing their  scorn, they are  mocking him for  his
innumerable inadequacies.  He wants  to cry  out, but  no sound  will leave  his
throat. Nor can he flee the scene. He is paralyzed.

'Fi - o - rin - da -'

With a supreme effort he manages to  utter her name. Can she hear him?  Will she
save him?

'Fi - o - rin - da -'

He plucks at the twisted and disheveled coverlet. Fiorinda lies beside him  like
someone's discarded life-size doll, cut off  from  him behind the wall of  sleep
he knows she's there,  can't reach out to  her, can't make any  sort of contact.
One of them is on  some other world. He has  no way of telling which  of them it
is. Probably  me, he  decides. Yes.  He is  on another  world, asleep, dreaming,
dreaming that he  lies in his  bed in the  Castle, asleep, next  to the sleeping
Fiorinda, who is beyond his reach. And he is dreaming.

'Fiorinda?'

Silence. Solitude.

He realizes now that he must be  dreaming that he is awake. He sits  up, reaches
for the nightlight. By its faint green glow he sees that he is alone in the bed.
He  remembers, now:  Fiorinda has  gone to  the Labyrinth  with Varaile,  not  a
permanent separation, only a postponement of the decision, a short visit to help
Varaile get herself established in her new home. And then they will decide which
one of them is to take the  position that has been offered, whether Fiorinda  is
to  be  lady-in-waiting to  the  wife of  the  new Pontifex  or  he to  be  High
Counsellor to  Lord Dekkeret.  But how  can he  be High  Counsellor, when  he is
nothing more than the most loathsome of insects?

Meanwhile he is alone at the Castle. Assailed by merciless dreams.

Night after night... terror.  Madness. Where can he  hide? Nowhere. There is  no
place to hide. Nowhere. Nowhere.


'Do you hear something?' Varaile asked. 'One of the children crying, perhaps?'

'What? What?'

'Wake up, Prestimion! One of the children -'

He made a further  interrogative noise, but showed  no sign of being  willing to
awaken. After a moment Varaile realized that there was no reason why he  should.
The hour was very late. He  was exhausted; since their arrival at  the Labyrinth
his  days, and  many of  his nights  as well,  had been  taken up  in  meetings,
conferences, discussions. The officials of the departed Confalume's  Pontificate
had to be interviewed and assessed,  the new people that Prestimion had  brought
with him from the Castle had to  be integrated into the system here, there  were
applications for favor to study, petitions to grant -

Let him sleep, Varaile thought. This was something she could handle by herself.

And there it came again: aweird throttled sound that seemed to be trying to be a
shriek, but  was emerging  instead as  a moan.  From its  pitch, she thought she
recognized the  voice as  that of  Simbilon, who  although he  was nearly eleven
still had a clear, pure  contralto. So it was to  his room that she went  first,
making her way uncertainly through the bewildering complex of rooms that was the
imperial residence. A bobbing globe of orange slave-light drifted just overhead,
illuminating her path.

But Simbilon lay  sleeping peacefully amidst  his clutter of  books, a dozen  or
more scattered all around him on the bed and one still open, the pages flattened
across his  chest where  the book  had fallen  when sleep  overtook him. Varaile
lifted it from him and set it beside his pillow, and went from the room.

The strange  sound came  to her  again, more  urgent, now.  It frightened her to
think that one of  her children might be  making a sound like  that. Hastily she
crossed the hall and entered the room where Tuanelys slept in a tumbled heap  of
stuffed  animals, her  bed mounded  high with  furry blaves  and sigimoins   and
bilantoons and  canavongs and  ghalvars, and  even a  long-nosed manculain,  her
current favorite,  transformed by  the maker's  hand into  something cuddly  and
charming, though  the real  manculains of  the jungles  ofStoienzar, covered all
over by poisonous yellow spines, were as far from cuddly as animafs could be.

But no stuffed  animals surrounded her  now. Tuanelys apparently  had flung them
pell-mell in all directions, as if  they were nasty vermin that had  invaded her
bed. Even the beloved  manculain had been discarded:  Varaile saw it across  the
room, lying upside down  on the little girl's  dresser, where, as it  landed, it
had jostled aside a dozen or so of the pretty little glass vessels that Tuanelys
liked to collect. Several seemed to be broken. As for Tuanelys herself, she  had
kicked off her coverlet and lay in  a tight little huddled heap, knees drawn  up
almost to her chin,  her whole form rigid,  her nightgown pulled up  and bunched
under her arms so that  her small slim body was  bare. She was glossy as  though
with fever. A pool of sweat had stained the sheet about her.

'Tuanelys, love -'

Another  moan that  wanted to  be a  shriek. A  ripple of  convulsive force  ran
through the girl: she grimaced, shuddered and shivered, kicked out with one  leg
and then the other, clenched her fists, pulled her head down into her shoulders.
Varaile lightly touched her shoulder. Her  skin was cool, normal: no fever.  But
Tuanelys shrank away at the touch. She  began to moan again, a moan that  turned
swiftly into a  racking sob. Her  features were distorted  into a hideous  mask,
eyes tight shut, nostrils flaring, lips pulled back, teeth bared.

'It's only  me, sweetheart.  Shhh. Shhh.  Nothing's wrong.  Mother's here. Shhh,
Tuanelys. Shhh.'

She tugged  at the  girl's nightgown,  drew it  down over  her waist and thighs,
turned her so that she lay on her back, and gently stroked her forehead, all the
while continuing to murmur gently to her. Gradually the tension that had gripped
Tuanelys seemed to  ease a little.  Now and again  a ripple of  response to some
horrendous inner vision still went  through her, but such things  were beginning
to come farther apart,  and the terrible mask  that her face had  become relaxed
into her normal visage.

Varaile became  aware of  someone standing  over her  shoulder. Prestimion?  No:
Fiorinda, Varaile realized. She had awakened and come down the hall from her own
lodgings  to see  what was  the matter.  'A nightmare,'  Varaile said,   without
looking around. 'Fetch a bowl of milk for her, will you?'

Tuanelys's eyes fluttered open.  She seemed dazed, disoriented,  more bewildered
even than one might expect a child to be who had been awakened in the middle  of
the night. This was  only her second week  of living in the  Labyrinth. They had
tried to arrange her room  here to be as much  as possible like the one  she had
had at the Castle, but, even so  - the disruption of her life, the  magnitude of
the upheaval -

'Mommy -'

Her voice was  hoarse. The word  was one that  she hadn't used  in two years  or
more.

'It's all right, Tuanelys. Everything's all right.'

'They had no faces - only eyes -'

'They weren't real. You were dreaming, love.'

'Hundreds and hundreds of them. No faces. Just - eyes. Oh, mommy - mommy -'

She was quivering with fear. Whatever vision had impinged upon her sleeping mind
was still alive within her now. Bit by bit she began to describe to Varaile what
she had  seen, or  tried to,  but the  descriptions were  fragmentary, her words
largely incoherent. She had seen something awful, that was clear. But she lacked
the ability to make the nightmare real for Varaile. White creatures - mysterious
pallid things - a marching horde of  faceless men - or were they giant  worms of
some sort? -thousands of staring eyes -

The  details  scarcely  mattered.  A  little  girl's  nightmares  would  have no
significant meaning;  the thing  that was  significant was  that she  was having
nightmares  at  all. Here  in  the safety  of  the Labyrinth,  in  these coiling
chambers at the very bottom of  the imperial sector, something dark and  fearful
had succeeded in reaching down to touch the mind of the daughter of the Pontifex
of Majipoor. It was not right.

'They were so cold,'  Tuanelys was saying. 'They  hate everything that has  warm
blood in its veins. Dead men with eyes. Sitting on white mounts. Cold - so  cold
- you touched them and you froze -'

Fiorinda reappeared, bearing  a bowl of  milk. 'I warmed  it a little.  The poor
child! I wonder if we should put a drop of brandy in it.'

'Not this time,  I think. Here,  Tuanelys, let me  pull the covers  up over you.
Drink this, sweetheart. It's milk. Just sip it - slowly, a little at a time -'

Tuanelys sipped from the  bowl. The strange fit  seemed to be passing  from her.
She was looking  around for her  stuffed animals. Varaile  and Fiorinda gathered
them up and  arranged them beside  her on the  bed. She found  the manculain and
thrust it under the coverlet, up close against herself.

Fiorinda said, 'Teotas also, all last month, had the most horrible nightmares. I
wouldn't be surprised if he's having one of them right now. - Do you want me  to
stay with her, Varaile?'

'Go back to sleep. I'll look after her.'

She took the emptied milk bowl from Tuanelys's hand and lightly eased the little
girl's head down against  her pillow, holding her  there, stroking her to  guide
her onward,  back into  sleep. For  a moment  or two  Tuanelys seemed completely
calm. Then a fresh shudder went through her, as though the dream were returning.
'Eyes,' she murmured. 'No  faces.' That was where  it ended. Within minutes  she
was peacefully sleeping. Light little-girl  snores came from her. Varaile  stood
watch over her for a time, waiting  to be completely sure that all was  well. It
seemed to be. She tiptoed out and went back to her own bedroom, where she  found
Prestimion still sound asleep, and lay by his side, awake, until the Labyrinth's
sunless dawn arrived.


Standing  before  the  Lord  Gaviral in  the  great  hall  of Gaviral's  palace,
Mandralisca  idly tossed  the Barjazid  helmet from  one hand  to the  other,  a
gesture that had virtually become a tic for him in recent weeks.

'A progress report, my lord Gaviral,' he said. 'The secret weapon of which  I've
spoken, this little helmet here? I've gone far in mastering its use.'

Gaviral smiled. His smile  was not a heartwarming  thing: a quick twitch  of his
meager little lips, baring  a ragged facade of  largely triangular teeth, and  a
chilly glow flashing for an instant in his small deep-set eyes. He ran his  hand
through his coarse and thinning covering  of dull-red hair and said, 'Are  there
any specific results to report?'

'I've penetrated the Castle with it, milord.'

'Ah.'

'And the Labyrinth.'

'Ah. Ah!'

That had been a favorite locution of Dantirya Sambail, that double 'ah,' with  a
moment's pause between them and a  whiplash emphasis on the second one.  Gaviral
could not have been very old when  Dantirya Sambail died, but he had managed  to
copy  the Procurator's  intonation perfectly.  It was  odd and  not in  any  way
amusing to hear that double 'ah'  coming from Gaviral's lips, as though  by some
act of ventriloquy beyond the grave. The  Lord Gaviral had more than a touch  of
his famed uncle's ugliness,  but scarcely any at  all of his dark  wit and black
devious shrewdness, and it did not sit well with Mandralisca to be treated to so
accurate an imitation  of the Procurator's  manner. Those were  feelings that he
kept to himself, though, as he did so many others.

'I am ready now,' Mandralisca said, 'to propose an alteration of our strategy.'

'And that would be -?'

'To move  ourselves somewhat  more aggressively  into a  position of visibility,
milord. I suggest that  we quit this place  out here in the  desert and transfer
our center of operations to the city ofNi-moya.'

'You perplex  me. Count.  This is  a step  you have  warned us against since the
beginning of our campaign. It would,  you said, send an immediate signal  to the
Pontifical officials that swarm everywhere  in Ni-moya that a revolt  had broken
out in Zimroel against the authority of the central government. Only last  month
you warned us against tipping our hand prematurely. Why, now, do you  contradict
your own advice?'

'Because I have less fear of the central government now than I did last year, or
even last month.'

'Ah. Ah!'

'I still believe  we should proceed  with immense caution  toward our goal.  You
will not hear me counselling any  declarations of war against the government  of
Prestimion and Dekkeret: not yet, at any rate. But I see now that we can  afford
to take greater risks, because the weapons at our disposal -' and he hefted  the
helmet - 'are more  substantial than I had  earlier imagined. If Prestimion  and
Company attempt to harm us, we can fight back.'

'Ah!'

Mandralisca  waited  for  the  second  one,  glaring  fiercely  at  Gaviral   in
expectation. But it failed to come.

After a  moment he  said, 'We  will go  to Ni-moya  then. You  will reoccupy the
procuratorial palace, although you will not, at any time, attempt to reclaim the
title of Procurator. Your brothers  will take possession of dwellings  nearly as
grand. For the present you will live there purely as private citizens,  however,
claiming authority  only over  your family's  own estates.  Is that  understood,
milord Gaviral?'

'Does that mean we're  not to be regarded  as lords any more?'  said Gaviral. It
was evident from his expression that that possibility was distressing to him.

'In  the inwardness  of your  own households,  you will  still be  the Lords  of
Zimroel. In your  intercourse with the  people of Ni-moya  you will be  the five
princes of the House  of Sambail, and nothing  more - for the  time being. Later
on, milord, I have a finer title even than 'lord' for you, but that will have to
wait some while longer.'

An excited gleam came into Gaviral's ugly face. He leaned forward eagerly.  'And
what would that finer title be?' he asked, though he already knew the answer.

'Pontifex,' said Mandralisca.



12

'My lord,' Dekkeret's chamberlain said, 'Prince Dinitak is here.'

'Thank you, Zeidor Luudwid. Ask him to come in.'

It amused him to  hear the chamberlain promoting  Dinitak to the principate.  No
such title had ever been conferred  on him, and Dekkeret had no  particular plan
for doing so,  nor had Dinitak  shown the slightest  desire to be  raised to the
nobility. He  was still  Venghenar Barjazid's  son, after  all, a  child of  the
Suvrael  desert  who  once  had collaborated  with  his  disreputable  father in
swindling and  exploiting travelers  who had  hired them  as guides through that
forbidding land. The Castle Mount aristocracy had accepted Dinitak as Dekkeret's
friend, because Dekkeret gave them no choice in that. But they would never abide
Dekkeret's thrusting him in among them as a member of their own exalted caste.

'Dinitak,' Dekkeret said, rising to embrace him.

In recent weeks Dekkeret had adopted as his headquarters one of the segments  of
the Methirasp Long  Hall, which was  not a hall  at all, but  rather a series of
octagonal  chambers within  Lord Stiamot's  Library. The  library itself  was  a
continuous serpentine passageway that wound back and forth around the summit  of
Castle  Mount  to  a total  length  of  many miles,  and,  according  to legend,
contained every book that ever been  published in any world of the  universe. At
one point directly beneath the greensward  of Vildivar Close it opened out  into
the twelve chambers of  the Methirasp Hall. They  were set aside for  the use of
scholars; but it was a rare day when more than one or two of them were occupied.

Dekkeret, coming upon  the rooms in  one of his  explorations of the  Casde, had
taken an immediate  fancy to them.  They were lofty  chambers two stories  high,
their walls covered with mural  paintings of sea-dragons and fanciful  beasts of
the land, knights in tournament, natural wonders, and much else, all rendered in
a delightful medieval  style. Far overhead,  brightly colored ceilings,  done in
vermilion and yellow and green and  blue and covered with a fine,  clear varnish
that made  them gleam  like crystal,  provided warm  reflected light. Connecting
corridors lined  on both  sides with  rows of  books led  to the library proper.
Dekkeret found himself  coming back again  and again to  this pleasing sanctuary
within the Castle, and eventually had chosen to have the segment of it known  as
Lord Spurifon's Study closed off and made into an auxiliary office for  himself.
It was here that he received Dinitak Barjazid this day.

They talked quietly of idle things for a time - a visit Dinitak had lately  made
to the great city of Stee, and  Dekkeret's plans for a journey to that  city and
some of its neighbors on the Mount,  and the like. It was not hard  for Dekkeret
to see that some suppressed inner tension was at work within his friend's  soul,
but he  let Dinitak  set the  pace for  the conversation;  and gradually he came
around to the  matter that had  led him to  seek this private  audience with the
Coronal.

'Have you seen  much of Prince  Teotas of late,  your lordship?' Dinitak  asked,
with a new sort of intensity entering into his tone.

Dekkeret was jarred by the unexpected  mention of Teotas's name. The problem  of
Teotas had become a touchy one for him.

'I see  him now  and again,  but not  very often,'  Dekkeret replied.  'With the
business of who is  to be High Counsellor  still up in the  air, he seems to  be
avoiding me. Doesn't want to refuse the post, but can't bring himself to  accept
it, either. I blame Fiorinda for that.'

Dinitak's cool penetrating eyes registered surprise. 'Fiorinda? How is  Fiorinda
involved in your choice of a High Counsellor?'

'She's married  to the  man I've  chosen, isn't  she, Dinitak?  Which gives us a
layer of complication  that I never  took into account.  I suppose you're  aware
that she's gone off to the Labyrinth to be with the Lady Varaile, leaving Teotas
behind.' Dekkeret riffled irritatedly through  the piles of papers on  his desk.
It bothered him  to be discussing  the increasingly troublesome  Teotas problem,
even with Dinitak. 'I would never have supposed that she'd ask Teotas to  decide
between being High Counsellor and parting with his wife.'

'Is it as serious as that, do you think?'

Angrily Dekkeret swept the  papers into a stack.  'How do I know?  Teotas barely
speaks to  me at  all nowadays.  But why  else is  he hesitating  to accept  the
appointment? If Fiorinda has given him  some sort of ultimatum about her  living
at the Labyrinth, he can't very  well stay here and become High  Counsellor, not
if he wants to keep his marriage together. Women!'

Dinitak smiled. 'They are difficult creatures, are they not, my lord?'

'It never for an instant  occurred to me that  she'd place remaining as  lady-in
waiting to Varaile above her husband's  chance to hold a position at  the Castle
that's second only to my own. Meanwhile Septach Melayn has already taken himself
off to  the Labyrinth  to be  Prestimion's High  Spokesman and  the post of High
Counsellor goes unfilled here. - Teotas looks like a wreck, besides. All of this
must be pulling him apart.'

'He looks very bad, yes,' Dinitak  agreed. 'But it's my belief that  his problem
with Fiorinda is not the only thing that's at work on him.'

'What are you saying? What else is going on?'

Dinitak's gaze rested squarely on  Dekkeret. 'Teotas has sought my  company more
than once, recently. I think  you know that he and  I have never had much  to do
with each other. But now he is in pain and crying out for help, and he dares not
go  to you  because of  this High  Counsellor business,  for which  he sees   no
resolution. So he has come to me instead. Hoping, perhaps, that I will speak  to
you about him.'

'As you are  now doing. But  what kind of  help can I  provide? You say  he's in
pain. But if a man  can't make up his own  mind about something as important  as
the High Counsellorship -'

This has nothing to do with the High Counsellorship, my lord. Not in any  direct
way.'

Dekkeret, mystified and growing impatient now, said sharply, 'Then what else can
it be?'

'He  is receiving  sendings, Dekkerest.  Night after  night, the  most  terrible
dreams,  the most  agonizing nightmares.  It has  reached the  point where  he's
afraid to allow himself to sleep.'

'Sendings? Sendings are benevolent things, Dinitak.'

'Sendings of the Lady, yes. But these  are not from her. The Lady does  not send
dreams of monsters and demons who  chase people across a blasted landscape.  Nor
does the Lady send you dreams that convince you of your own total  worthlessness
and  make you  believe that  every act  of your  life has  been fraudulent   and
contemptible. He says that sortie nights he awakens actually despising  himself.
Despising.'

Dekkeret began  to toy  fretfully with  his papers  again. 'Teotas  should see a
dream-speaker, then, and  get his head  cleared around. By  the Divine, Dinitak,
this is maddening! I offer the most important post in my government to a man who
seems to me to be eminently qualified  for it, and now I discover that  he can't
accept it because his wife won't let him, and that he's all in a fluster over  a
few bad dreams besides  -! Well, it's simple  enough. I'll retract my  offer and
Teotas can go  scuttling down to  the Labyrinth to  be with Fiorinda.  Maybe old
Dembitave wants to be  High Counsellor. Or perhaps  I can drag Abrigant  up here
from Muldemar to take the  job. Or else I suppose  I can ask one of  the younger
princes, Vandimain, perhaps -'

'My lord,' said Dinitak, cutting in brusquely, 'I remind you that I said  Teotas
was receiving sendings.'

'Which is a statement that makes no sense to me.'

'What I mean is that someone is thrusting these terrible dreams into the mind of
Teotas from afar. You continue  to think that the Lady  of the Isle is the  only
person in the world with the capacity to enter someone's sleeping mind.'

'Well? Isn't that so?'

'Do you remember a certain helmet, Dekkeret, a little thing of metal mesh,  that
my late father used on you long  ago when you were trekking with us  through the
Desert of Stolen Dreams  in Suvrael? Do you  recall a later version  of the same
device that I myself used in your presence, and Lord Prestimion used also,  when
we were fighting against the rebel  Dantirya Sambail? That helmet gives one  the
capacity to enter  minds at a  great distance. Prestimion  himself could confirm
that, if you were to ask him.'

'But those helmets and all the documents associated with their construction  and
operation are kept under  lock and key in  the Treasury of the  Castle. No one's
been near those  things in years.  Are you trying  to tell me  that they've been
stolen?'

'Not at all, my lord.'

'Then why are we discussing them?'

'Because of the dreams Teotas is having.'

'All right. So Teotas is having very bad dreams. That's not a trivial thing. But
dreams, in the end, are just dreams. We generate them out of the darkness of our
own souls, unless they're put into us from outside, and the only one who's  able
to do that is the Lady of the Isle. Who certainly would never send anyone dreams
of the sort that  you say Teotas is  getting. And you yourself  have just agreed
that we control the only  other machine that can do  such a thing, which is  the
helmet that your father used to use.'

'How sure can you be,' Dinitak asked,  'that the devices you keep locked in  the
Treasury are the only ones in existence? I am familiar with the workings of  the
helmet, lordship. I know what it can do. What is happening to Teotas is the sort
of thing it can do.'

For the  first time  Dekkeret began  to see  where Dinitak  had been trying this
whole while to lead him. 'And just who is it, do you think, who owns this  other
helmet and is bedeviling poor Teotas with it?'

A gleam came into Dinitak's eyes.  'My father's younger brother Khaymak was  the
mechanicwho constructed  my father's  mind-controlling helmets  for him. Khaymak
has remained in Suvrael all these years, going about whatever slippery  business
it is that he goes about. But you  may recall that he turned up on Castle  Mount
only last year -'

'Of course,' said Dekkeret. 'Of course!' It was all starting to fall into  place
now.

'Turned up on  Castle Mount,' Dinitak  continued, 'seeking to  enroll himself in
the  service  of  Lord  Prestimion.  I   myself  saw  to  it  -  disliking   the
embarrassment, I will admit, of having such an unsavory kinsman around the place
- that he was denied permission to come anywhere near the Castle. I see now that
this was a huge mistake.'

'You think that he's built another helmet?'

'Either that,  or he's  designed one  and was  searching for  a patron who would
finance the construction of a working model. I was fairly sure that that was why
he was coming to Prestimion; and I saw nothing good coming from any of that, and
so the gates of the Castle were closed  to him. But I think he's found a  patron
somewhere else,  and has  fashioned a  new helmet  by now,  and is  using it  on
Teotas. And, it could be, on many others as well.'

Dekkeret felt a chill.

'Just before my coronation,' he said slowly, 'Prestimion's Su-Suheris magus came
to me and told me  that he had had some  sort of vision in which  some member of
the Barjazid clan  somehow made himself  a Power of  the Realm. The  whole thing
seemed nonsensical to me, and I put it out of my mind. I never said anything  to
you about it because to me it carried treasonous implications, that you might be
thinking  of overthrowing  me and  making yourself  Coronal in  my place,  which
seemed too absurd even to think about.'

'I am not the only Barjazid in this world, my lord.'

'Indeed. And Maundigand-Klimd cautioned  me against interpreting his  vision too
literally. But what if  it meant, not that  this Barjazid was going  to become a
Power - and what other Power could he become, if not Coronal? - but that he  was
going to attain power, power in the general sense of the word?'

'Or that he was going to sell  his helmet and his services to some  other person
who would wield that power,' Dinitak said.

'But who  would that  be? The  world's at  peace. Prestimion  dealt with all our
enemies years ago.'

'The poison-taster of Dantirya Sambail still lives, my lord.'

'Mandralisca? I haven't so much as thought  of him in years! Why, he must  be an
old man now - ifh^s still alive at all.'

'Not so  old, I  think. Perhaps  fifty, at  most. And  still quite  dangerous, I
suspect. I touched his mind with mine, you know, when I wore the helmet the  day
of that final battle in the Stoienzar.  Only briefly, but it was enough. I  will
never forget it. The hatred coiled within  that mind like a giant serpent -  the
anger aimed at all the world, the lust to injure, to destroy -'

'Mandralisca!' murmured Dekkeret,  shaking his head.  He was lost  in the wonder
and horror of the recollection.

Dinitak said,  'He was,  I think,  a greater  monster than  his master  Dantirya
Sambail. The Procurator knew when to  rein in his ambitions. There was  always a
certain point  that he  was unwilling  to go  beyond, and  when he  reached that
point, he would find someone else to undertake the task on his behalf.'

Dekkeret nodded. 'Korsibar, for example. Dantirya Sambail, though always  hungry
for more power, didn't try to make himself Coronal. He found a proxy, a puppet.'

'Exactly. The  Procurator preferred  ever to  remain safely  behind the  scenes,
avoiding the worst risks, letting others do his dirty work for him.  Mandralisca
was of a different  sort. He was always  willing to risk everything  on a single
throw of the dice.'

'Serving as a poison-taster, for instance.  What sane man would take a  job like
that? But he seemed heedless of the risk to his own life.'

'I think he must have  been. Or perhaps he felt  it was a risk worth  taking. By
letting his master know that he was willing to put his life on the line for him,
he would worm  his way into  Dantirya Sambail's heart.  That must have  seemed a
reasonable gamble to him. And once he found himself at the Procurator's elbow, I
think he led Dantirya Sambail on, from one monstrous deed to the next,  possibly
just for the sheer amusement of it.'

'Such a person is beyond my understanding,' said Dekkeret.

'Not mine, alas. I've had closer acquaintance with monsters than you. But you're
the one who will have to stop him.'

'Ah, but wait! We are moving  very quickly here, Dinitak, and these  conjectures
carry us a  great distance.' Dekkeret  jabbed a forefinger  at the smaller  man.
'What  are  you  telling  me,  in  fact?  You've  conjured  up  that  old  demon
Mandralisca; you've put your lather's thought-control weapon in his hands again;
you've  suggested that  Mandralisca is  gearing up  to launch  yet another   war
against the world.  But where's the  proof that any  of this is  real? To me  it
seems that  it's all  built out  of nothing  more than  Teotas's bad  dreams and
Maundigand-Klimd's ambiguous vision!'

Dinitak smiled. 'The original helmet is  still in our possession. Let me  get it
out of the Treasury and explore  the world with it. If Mandralisca  still lives,
I'll find out where he is. And for whom he's working. What do you say, my lord?'

'What can  I say?'  Dekkeret's head  was throbbing.  He had  been on  the throne
barely more than a month, Prestimion was far away and ignorant of all this,  and
he had  no High  Counsellor to  turn to.  He was  entirely on  his own, save for
Dinitak Barjazid. And now the possibility of an ancient enemy stirring somewhere
far  away  suddenly  lay before  him.  In  a voice  grim  with  apprehension and
frustration  Dekkeret said,  'What I  say is  this: Find  him for  me,  Dinitak.
Discover his intentions. Render him  harmless, in whatever way you  can. Destroy
him, if necessary. You understand me. Do whatever must be done.'



13

Fulkari was  crossing the  Vildivar Balconies,  heading in  the direction of the
Pinitor Court, when the moment she had been dreading for weeks finally  arrived.
Through the gateway from the Inner Castle and onto the Balconies at the far  end
came  the  Coronal  Lord  Dekkeret,  magnificent  in  his  robes  of  office and
surrounded, as he always was these days, by a little group of  important-looking
men, the inner circle of his court.  Her only path led her straight toward  him.
There was no avoiding it, now: they must inevitably confront each other here.

She and Dekkeret had not spoken at all  in the weeks that had gone by since  his
ascent to the throne. Indeed she had seen him just a handful of times, and  then
only at a  great distance, at  court functions of  the kind that  highborn young
ladies of Fulkari's sort, descendants of former royal families of centuries gone
by, were  expected to  attend. There  had been  no contact  between them. He had
scarcely looked toward  her. He behaved  as if she  were invisible. And  she had
sidestepped any possibility of contact as  well. One time at a royal  levee when
it seemed that his path across the great throne-room would certainly bring  them
face to face,  she had taken  care to slip  away into the  crowd before he  came
anywhere near her. She feared what he might say to her.

It was obvious to everyone  that whatever relationship once had  existed between
them was over. Perhaps he was unwilling to  say so to her in so many words,  but
Fulkari had no doubt that  it was at an end.  Only the fact that he  had not yet
brought himself to make a formal break with her kept it alive in her heart.  Yet
she knew how foolish  that was. They had  kept company for three  years, and now
they did not speak at all. Could anything be more clear than that? Dekkeret  had
asked her to marry him and she had refused him. That had ended it. Was it really
necessary, she  wondered, for  him to  acknowledge formally  something that  was
plain to all?

Yet there he was, no more than  a hundred yards away and coming straight  toward
her.

Would he continue to pretend she was invisible when they encountered each  other
on this narrow balcony? That would  be agony, Fulkari thought. To be  humiliated
like  that in  front of  Dinitak and  Prince Teotas  and the  Council  ministers
Dembitave and Vandimain and the rest of  those  men. An agony of her own  making
she had no doubts about that - but an agony all the same, marking her as nothing
more than a discarded royal mistress. And not even that, actually. Dekkeret  had
not yet become  Coronal the last  time they had  made love. So  all she was  was
someone who  had been  the lover  of the  new Coronal  when he  was still only a
private individual, one of  the many women who  had passed through his  bed over
the years.

She  resolved  to  address  the  situation  squarely.  I  am  no  mere discarded
concubine, she thought. I am Lady Fulkari of Sipermit, in whose veins flows  the
blood of the Coronal Lord Makhario,  who was king in this Castle  five centuries
ago. What had Lord  Dekkeret's ancestors been doing  five centuries ago? Did  he
even know their names?

She and Dekkeret were no more than fifty feet apart now. Fulkari looked straight
toward him.  Their eyes  met, and  it was  only with  great effort that she kept
herself from glancing aside; but she held her gaze.

Dekkeret appeared tense and weary. And wary, as well: gone now was the  cheerful
open countenance  of the  lighthearted man  who had  been her  lover these three
years past. He seemed under great strain now. His lips were closely clamped, his
forehead was furrowed, there  was a visible throbbing  of some sort in  his left
cheek. Was it the cares of his high office that had done this to him, or was  he
simply reacting to  the embarrassment of  this accidental encounter  in front of
all his companions?

'Fulkari,' he said, when they were closer. He spoke softly and his voice  seemed
as rigid and tightly controlled as was the expression of his face.

'My lord.' Fulkari bowed her head and offered him the starburst salute.

He halted before her. She was close enough to him, here in the tight confines of
the  little balcony  promenade, that  she was  able to  observe a  thin line  of
perspiration along his upper  lip. The two men  who had been walking  closest to
the Coronal, Dinitak  and Vandimain, stepped  back from him  and seemed to  fade
into the background. Prince Teotas, who looked terribly weary and tense himself,
bloodshot  and haggard,  was staring  at her  as though  she were  some sort  of
phantom.

Then Teotas  and Dinitak  and Vandimain  faded back  even further,  so that they
appeared to vanish altogether, and Fulkari could see only Dekkeret, occupying an
immense space at the center of  her consciousness. She faced him steadily.  Tall
woman though she was, she came barely breast-high to him.

There was a silence between  them that went on and  on and on. If only  he would
reach out his  hand to her,  she told herself,  she would hurl  herself into his
embrace  in front  of all  these others,  these great  men of  the realm,  these
princes and counts and dukes. But he did not reach out.

Instead he said  in that same  tight tone, after  what felt like  years but more
likely had been only  five or six seconds,  'I've been meaning to  send for you,
Fulkari. We need to speak, you know.'

Fatal words. The words she had hoped not to hear.

We need to speak? Of what, my lord? What is there left for us to say?

That was what she wished she could say. And then move past him and walk  swiftly
on. But she kept her gaze level and maintained a cool tone of high formality  in
her reply: 'Yes, my lord. Whenever you wish, my lord.'

Dekkeret's forehead was glistening now with sweat. This must be as hard for  him
as it was for her, Fulkari realized.

He turned to his chamberlain. 'You will arrange a private audience for the  Lady
Fulkari for tomorrow  afternoon, Zeidor Luudwid.  We will meet  in the Methirasp
Hall.'

'Very good, sir,' the chamberlain said.


'He wants  to see  me, Keltryn!'  Fulkari said.  They were  in Keltryn's modest,
cluttered  apartment in  the Setiphon  Arcade, two  flights down  from the  more
imposing suite that Fulkari herself occupied. She had gone straight to Keltryn's
place after  her encounter  with Dekkeret.  'I was  passing through  one of  the
Vildivar Balconies, and he was coming  the other way with Vandimain and  Dinitak
and a lot of  other people, and we  had no choice but  to walk right up  to each
other.' Quickly she described the brief meeting, Dekkeret's uneasiness, her  own
conflicting emotions,  the arm's-length  nature of  the quick  conversation, the
appointment for her to see him the following day.

'Well, why shouldn't he want to see you?' Keltryn asked. 'You aren't any  uglier
than you were  last month, and  even a busy  man like the  Coronal likes to have
someone next to him  in bed now and  then, I'd imagine. So  he saw you there  in
front of him, and he thought, 'Oh, yes, Fulkari - I remember Fulkari -''

'What a child you are, Keltryn.'

Keltryn grinned. 'You don't think I'm right?'

'Of course not. The whole notion is contemptible. Obviously you must think  that
both he and I are  completely trivial people - that  he sees nothing more in  me
than a handy plaything for lonely nights,  and that all it would take for  me to
go running to him is a quick snap of his fingers -'

'But you're going to go to see him, aren't you?'

'Of course.  Am I  supposed to  tell the  Coronal of  Majipoor that  I can't  be
bothered to accept his invitation?'

'Well, then,  you'll find  out fast  enough whether  I'm right  or not,' Keltryn
said. Her eyes were sparkling triumphantly.  She was enjoying this. 'Go to  him.
Listen to  what he  has to  say. I  predict that  within five  minutes he'll  be
sliding his hands all over you. And you'll turn to jelly when he does.'

Fulkari stared  at her  sister in  mingled fury  and amusement.  She was  such a
child, after all. What did she know  about men, she who had never given  herself
to one? And yet - yet - standing as she did outside the whole sweaty business of
men  and women,  Keltryn just  might have  a certain  perspective that   Fulkari
herself, caught in the thick of all this intrigue, did not.

After all, Keltryn at seventeen wasn't all that  callow and raw. There was a  no
nonsense wisdom about her that Fulkari was beginning to come to respect. It  was
a mistake to go on regarding her  as a little girl forever. Changes were  taking
place. You could see it in her face: Fulkari was startled to see that she looked
less boyish,  suddenly, as  though she  were finally  making the transition from
coltish girl to real womanhood.

Fulkari roamed around the room, restlessly  picking up and putting down one  and
another of  the cut-glass  bottles that  Keltryn liked  to collect.  A flood  of
contradictory thoughts roared through her.

At length she turned and said, the words coming out in a high-voiced fluty  tone
that gave her that odd feeling once  more that Keltryn was the older sister  and
she the  younger one,  'How can  he seriously  want to  start it all over again,
Keltryn? After what I said to him when he asked me to marry me? No. No, it  just
isn't possible. He  knows there's no  point in stirring  everything up a  second
time.  And  if he's  merely  interested in  a  bed-mate, with  no  complications
involved, the Castle is full of other women, much more suitable than I am, who'd
be happy to  oblige. He and  I have too  much history to  allow anything of that
sort to happen now.'

Keltryn gave her  a wide-eyed, serious  stare. 'And if  he does still  want you,
anyway? Isn't that what you want also?'

'I don't know what I want. You know I love him.'

'Yes.'

'But he's looking  for a wife,  and I've already  said I don't  want to marry  a
Coronal.' Fulkari shook her head. She felt some measure of clarity returning  to
her troubled mind. 'No, Keltryn, you're wrong. The last thing Dekkeret wants  is
to get entangled  with me again.  I think that  the reason he's  asked for me to
come to him is because he's realized that he never did get around to telling  me
formally that it's over, and he feels a little guilty about it, because he  owes
me that much  at a minimum.  He's been so  busy being Coronal  that he's left me
dangling, essentially, and it's time for him to do the right thing. And when  we
ran into each other like that on that balcony he must have thought, 'Oh, well, I
really can't let things drift on like this any longer.''

'Maybe so. And how do you feel about that? That he's summoned you just to finish
everything off? Truthfully.'

'Truthfully?' Fulkari hesitated only an instant. 'I hate it. I don't want it  to
be over. I told you: I still love him, Keltryn.'

'Yet you told him you wouldn't marry him.  What do you expect him to do? He  has
to get on with his life. He doesn't need mistresses now: he needs a wife.'

'I didn't refuse to marry him. I refused to marry the Coronal.'

'Yes. Yes. You keep saying that. But it's the same thing, isn't it, Fulkari?'

'It wasn't, when I said it. He hadn't been officially proclaimed, yet. I suppose
I hoped he'd give it all up for me. But of course he didn't.'

'It was a crazy thing to ask, you know.'

'I realize  that. He's  been preparing  himself for  the past  fifteen years  to
succeed Lord Prestimion, and when the moment comes I say, 'No, no, I'm much more
important than all that, aren't I, Dekkeret?' How could I have been so  stupid?'
Fulkari turned away.  This was giving  her a headache.  She had come  running to
Keltryn, she saw,  in some kind  of frenzy of  muddled girlish excitement  - 'He
wants to see me!' - and Keltryn had methodically exposed the full extent of  her
confusions. That was valuable, but also very painful. She wanted no more of this
discussion.

'Fulkari?' Keltryn  said, when  some time  had passed  in silence.  'Are you all
right?'

'More or less, yes. - What about going for a swim?'

'I was just going to suggest the same thing.'

'Fine,' Fulkari  said. 'Let's  go.' And  then, to  change the  subject: 'Are you
still  keeping up  with your  fencing, now  that Septach  Melayn's gone  to  the
Labyrinth?'

'Somewhat,' Keltryn said. 'I meet twice a week in the gymnasium with one of  the
boys from Septach Melayn's class.'

'Audhari, is it? The one from Stoienzar that you told me about?'

'Audhari, yes.'

That was  interesting. Fulkari  waited for  Keltryn to  say something more about
Audhari, but nothing was forthcoming. She scrutinized Keltryn's face with  care,
wondering  if  some telltale  sign  of embarrassment  or  discomfort would  show
through, something that would reveal  that her little virgin sister  had finally
taken herself a lover. But none of  that was visible. Either Keltryn was a  more
accomplished actress than Fulkari had given  her credit for being, or there  was
nothing  more than  innocent fencing  practice going  on between  her and   this
Audhari.

Too bad, she thought. It was time for a little romance in Keltryn's life.

Then abruptly Keltryn said, as they reached the pool, 'Tell me, Fulkari. Do  you
know Dinitak Barjazid at all well?'

Fulkari frowned. 'Dinitak? What makes you ask about him?'

'I'm asking because I'm asking.' And  now, to her immense surprise, Fulkari  saw
the signs of tension that had been  absent when Audhari's name had come up.  'Is
he a friend of yours?' Keltryn said.

'In a very casual  way, yes. You can't  spend much time around  Dekkeret without
getting  to  know Dinitak  too.  He's usually  to  be found  not  very far  from
Dekkeret,  you  know.  But  he  and  I  have  never  been  particularly   close.
Acquaintances, really,  rather than  friends. -  Will you  tell me  what this is
about, Keltryn? Or is it something I'm not supposed to know?'

Keltryn now  wore an  expression of  elaborate indifference.  'He interests  me,
that's all. I happened to run into him yesterday over by Lord Haspar's  Rotunda,
when I was on my way to fencing practice, and we talked for a couple of minutes.
That's all there is. Don't get any ideas, Fulkari! All we did was talk.'

'Ideas? What ideas would you mean?'

'He's very - unusual, I thought,'  Keltryn said. She seemed to be  measuring her
words very carefully. 'There's something fierce about him - something mysterious
and stern. I suppose it's because he's from Suvrael originally. Every Suvraelinu
I've ever met has been a little strange.  The hot sun must do that to them.  But
he's strange in an interesting way, if you know what I mean.'

'I think  I do,'  Fulkari said,  calibrating the  gleam that  had come  into her
sister's eyes just then. She knew as  well as anyone did what a gleam  like that
in the eyes of a seventeen-year-old girl meant.

Dinitak? How odd. How interesting. How unexpected.


Dekkeret said, 'I owe you an apology, Fulkari.'

Fulkari, out  of breath  after a  long frantic  sprint through  the interminable
coils and twists of Lord Stiamot's  Library, was slow to reply. She  had arrived
twenty minutes late for  her audience with the  Coronal, having taken one  wrong
turn after another in the endless miles of the collection. She had never seen so
many  books  in  her life  as  she  had just  now  while  running through  those
corridors. She had  no idea that  there were that  many books in  existence. Had
anyone ever  read any  of them?  Would there  be no  end to  these thousands  of
shelves? Finally an ancient, fossilized-looking librarian had taken pity on  her
and guided her through the maze to Lord Dekkeret's secluded little study in  the
Methirasp Long Hall.

'An apology?' she said at last, if only to be saying something at all.

Dekkeret's desk  was a  barrier between  them. It  was piled  high with official
documents, long parchment sheets formidably festooned in ribbons and seals. They
seemed to be marching  across the brightly polished  surface of the desk  toward
him, an encroaching army demanding his attention.

Dekkeret looked tired and ill at ease. Today he wore no fine regal robes, only a
simple gray tunic loosely belted at the waist.

'An apology, yes, Fulkari.' He appeared to be forcing the words out. 'For having
drawn you into such an unhappy, impossible relationship.'

She found his statement baffling. 'Impossible?  Perhaps. But I was the one  that
made it that way. Why should you  feel that you have to apologize for  anything?
And why call it 'unhappy,' Dekkeret? Was it really such an unhappy relationship?
Is that how it seemed to you?'

'Not for a long while. But you have to agree that it ended unhappily.'

The phrase went reverberating through her soul. It ended. It ended. It ended.

Yes. Of course it had ended. But she was unwilling to hear the words themselves.
Those few crisp syllables, spoken aloud, had the finality of a descending blade.

Fulkari waited a moment for the impact to lessen. 'Even so,' she said. 'I  still
don't understand what it is that you feel you need to apologize for.'

'You couldn't possibly know.  But that's why I  asked you to come  here today. I
can't conceal the truth from you any longer.'

Restlessly she said, 'What are you talking about, Dekkeret?'

She could see him groping for words, struggling to organize his reply.

He seemed to have  aged five years since  they had last been  together. His face
was  pale and  drawn, and  there were  shadows under  his eyes,  and his   broad
shoulders were hunched as though sitting  up straight was too much of  an effort
for  him today.  This was  a Dekkeret  she had  never seen  before, this  tired,
suddenly indecisive man. She wanted to reach out to him, to stroke his brow,  to
give him whatever comfort she could.

Hesitantly he said, 'When I first met you, Fulkari, I was instandy attracted  to
you. Do you remember?  I must have looked  like a man who  had been struck by  a
bolt of lightning.'

Fulkari smiled. 'I  remember, yes. You  stared and stared  and stared. You  were
staring so hard that I began to wonder if there was something wrong with the way
I was dressed.'

'Nothing was wrong. I simply couldn't stop staring, that was all. Then you moved
along, and I asked someone who you were, and I arranged to have you invited to a
levee that  the Lady  Varaile was  holding the  following week.  Where I had you
brought forward to be introduced to me.'

'And you stared some more.'

'Yes. Surely I did. Do you remember what I said, then?'

She had no clear memory of that. Whatever  he had told her then, it was lost  to
her  now, swept  away in  the confusion  and excitement  of that  first  moment.
Uncertainly she replied, 'You asked if you could see me again, I suppose.'

'That was later. What did I say first?'

'Do you really suppose that I can remember everything in such detail? It was  so
long ago, Dekkeret!'

'Well, I remember,' he said. 'I asked you if you were of Normork blood. No,  you
replied: Sipermit. I told you then that  you reminded me very much of someone  I
had known in Normork long ago -  my cousin Sithelle, in fact. Do you  recall any
of that?  An extraordinary  resemblance, your  eyes, your  hair, your  mouth and
chin, your  long arms  and legs  - so  much like  Sithelle that  I thought I was
seeing her ghost.'

'Sithelle is dead, then?'

'These twenty  years. Slain  in the  streets of  Normork by  an assassin who was
trying to reach Prestimion. I was there.  She died in my arms. I never  realized
until many years later how much I had  loved her. And then, when I saw you  that
day at  court -  looking at  you, knowing  nothing whatever  about you, thinking
only. Here is Sithelle restored to me -'

He broke off. He glanced away, abashed.

Fulkari  felt  her cheeks  flaming.  This was  worse  than humiliating:  it  was
infuriating. 'You weren't attracted to me for myself?' she asked. There was heat
in her  voice, too,  that she  could not  suppress. 'You  were drawn  to me only
because I looked like somebody else you  once had known? Oh, Dekkeret  -Dekkeret
!'

In a  barely audible  tone he  said, 'I  told you  that I  owed you  an apology,
Fulkari.'

Tears crowded into her eyes - tears of rage. 'So I was never anything to you but
a kind of flesh-and-blood replica of someone else you weren't able to have? When
you looked  at me  you saw  Sithelle, and  when you  kissed me  you were kissing
Sithelle, and when you went to bed with me you were -'

'No,  Fulkari.  That's  not how  it  was  at all.'  Dekkeret  was  speaking more
forcefully now. 'When I told you  I loved you, it was  you I was telling it   to
Fulkari of Sipermit. When I held you in my arms, it was Fulkari of Sipermit that
I was holding. Sithelle  and I never were  lovers. We probably never  would have
been, even if  she had lived.  When I asked  you to marry  me, it was  you I was
asking, not Sithelle's ghost.'

'Then why all this talk of apologies?'

'Because the thing I can't  deny is that I was  drawn to you originally for  the
wrong reason,  no matter  what happened  later. That  instant attraction I felt,
before we had  ever spoken a  word to each  other - it  was because some foolish
part of me was  whispering that you were  Sithelle reborn, that a  second chance
was being given to me. I knew even then that that was idiotic. But I was  caught
- trapped by my own ridiculous fantasy.  So I pursued you. Not because you  were
you, not at  first, but because  you looked so  much like Sithelle.  The woman I
fell in love  with, though, was  you. The woman  I asked to  marry me: you. You,
Fulkari.'

'And when Fulkari refused you, was that like losing Sithelle a second time?' she
asked. Her tone was  one of mere curiosity,  only. It surprised her  how quickly
the anger was beginning to fade.

'No. No. It wasn't like that at all,' said Dekkeret. 'Sithelle was like a sister
to me: I  never would have  married her. When  you refused me  - and I  knew you
would; you had already given me a  million indications that you would - it  tore
me apart,  because I  knew I  was losing  you. And  I saw  how my original crazy
notion of using you as a replacement  for Sithelle had led me step by  step into
falling in love  with a real  living woman who  didn't happen to  want to be  my
wife. I wasted three years of  our lives, Fulkari. That's what I'm  sorry about.
The thing that drew me to  you in the first place  was a fantasy, a  will-o'-the
wisp, but I  was caught by  it as though  by a metal  trap; and it  held me long
enough for me to fall in love  with the true Fulkari, who wasn't able  to return
my love, and so - a waste, Fulkari, all a waste -'

'That isn't so, Dekkeret.'  She spoke firmly, and  met his gaze evenly,  calmly.
Every trace of anger was gone from her now. A new assurance had come over her.

'You don't think so?'

'Maybe it was a waste for  you. But it was not for  me. What I felt for you  was
real. It still is.'  Fulkari paused only a  moment, then plunged boldly  onward.
What was there to lose? 'I love you, Dekkeret. And not because you remind me  of
anyone else.'

He seemed astonished. 'You love me still?'

'When did I ever tell you I had stopped?'

'You seemed furious, just a moment or two back, when I was telling you that what
first led me to pursue you was the image of Sithelle that I still carried in  my
mind.'

'What woman would be pleased to hear such a thing? But why should I allow it  to
continue to matter? Sithelle's long gone. And  so is the boy who may or  may not
have been in love with her - even he wasn't sure - a long time ago. But you  and
I are still here.'

'For whatever that might be worth,' said Dekkeret.

'Perhaps  it  could be  worth  a great  deal  indeed,' said  Fulkari.  -'Tell me
something, Dekkeret: just how difficult would it really be, do you think, to  be
the Coronal's wife?'



14

'My lord?' Teotas said, peering through the open door way.

He stood at the threshold of the Coronal's official suite, that great room whose
giant curving window revealed the breathtaking abyss of open space that  abutted
this side of the Castle.

Dekkeret, when Teotas had asked him  for this meeting, had proposed that  Teotas
come to him in the chamber in the Methirasp Long Hall that he seemed to be using
as his main office these days.  But Teotas had felt uncomfortable with  that. It
was irregular. This was the room that he associated with the grandeur and  might
of the Coronal Lord. Again and again during the reign of his brother  Prestimion
had he  met here  with the  Coronal in  some time  of crisis.  What he wanted to
discuss with Lord Dekkeret now was a  matter of the highest concern, and it  was
in this  room, only  in this  room, that  he wanted  to discuss  it. One did not
ordinarily make demands  upon Coronals. But  Dekkeret had yielded  gracefully to
his request.

'Come in, Teotas,' Dekkeret said. 'Sit down.'

'My lord,' Teotas said a second time, and offered the starburst salute.

The Coronal was seated behind the splendid ancient desk, a single polished  slab
of red palisander wood with a natural grain resembling the starburst emblem that
Coronals since Lord Dizimaule's day had used  - a span of five hundred years  or
more. For Teotas there was something of a shock in seeing Lord Dekkeret actually
sitting at that desk that Lord Prestimion had occupied for so many years. But he
needed  that  shock.  It  was  important for  him  to  remind  himself  at every
opportunity that  presented itself  that the  great imperial  shift had occurred
once more, that  Prestimion had gone  off to the  Labyrinth to become  Pontifex,
that  this  beautiful  desk,  which had  been  Lord  Confalume's  before it  was
Prestimion's,  and  Lord  Prankipin's  before  it  was  Confalume's,  was   Lord
Dekkeret's now.

Dekkeret fitted it  well: better, in  truth, than Prestimion  had. The desk  had
always seemed  too huge  for the  small-framed Prestimion,  but the  much bigger
Dekkeret was a more appropriate match for the desk's majestic dimensions. He was
dressed in the traditional royal way, robes of green and gold with ermine  trim,
and  he  radiated such  strength  and confidence  now  that Teotas,  weary  unto
exhaustion and  close to  the limits  of his  strength, felt  suddenly aged  and
feeble in the presence of this man who was only a few years younger than he  was
himself.

'So,' Dekkeret said. 'Here we are.'

'Here we are, yes.'

'You look tired,  Teotas. Dinitak tells  me that you've  been sleeping badly  of
late.'

'I'd rather have it that  I wasn't sleeping at all.  When I give myself over  to
sleep it brings me the most terrible  dreams - dreams so frightful I can  barely
believe that my mind is capable of inventing such things.'

'Give me an example.'

Teotas shook his head. 'No point  in trying. I'd have difficulty describing  it.
Not much remains in my mind after I awaken except a sense that I've been through
a terrifying experience. I see strange hideous landscapes, monsters, demons. But
I won't try to portray them. What seems so terrifying to the dreamer himself has
no power over anyone else. - And in any event I haven't come here to talk  about
my  dreams,  my lord.  There's  the matter  of  my pending  appointment  as High
Counsellor.'

'What about it?' Dekkeret asked, in so  cool and casual a way that Teotas  could
see that he had been anticipating some discussion of that very topic. 'I  remind
you, Teotas, I've had no formal acceptance of the post from you.'

'Nor will you,' Teotas said.  'I've come to you to  ask you to withdraw my  name
from consideration.'

Quite clearly Dekkeret had anticipated that. The Coronal's voice was still  very
calm as he said, 'I  would not have chosen you,  Teotas, if I didn't think  that
you were the man most suited for the post.'

'I'm cognizant of that. It's a matter  of the deepest regret to me that  I can't
accept this great honor. But I can't.'

'May I have a reason?'

'Must I provide one, my lord?'

'Not 'must,' no. But I do think some explanation would be appropriate.'

'My lord -'

Teotas could not go on, for fear of what he might say. He felt a stirring,  deep
within himself, of the  famous temper that once  had been so widely  feared. Why
would Dekkeret not  simply release him  from the offer  and let him  be? But the
heat of his fury had been much  diminished by time and the weariness that  comes
with despair. He was able now to find nothing more within himself than a crackle
of annoyance,  and that  quickly passed,  leaving him  drained and  desolate and
numb.

He covered  his face  with his  outspread hands.  After a  little while  he said
again, 'My lord -' in a faint, indistinct way. Dekkeret waited, saying  nothing.
'My lord, do you see  how I look? How I  conduct myself? Is this the  Teotas you
remember from earlier times? From six months ago, even? Do I seem to you like  a
man fit to undertake the duties of  the High Counsellor of the Realm? Can't  you
see that I'm half out  of my mind? More than  half. Only a fool would  choose an
unstable person like me for such an  important post. And you are anything but  a
fool.'

'I do see  that you seem  ill, Teotas. But  illnesses can be  cured. - Have  you
discussed this matter of refusing the post with his majesty your brother?'

'Not at all. I don't see any need to burden Prestimion with my troubles.'

'If the Divine  had granted me  a brother,' Dekkeret  said, 'I think  I would be
ready and willing  to hear of  any troubles of  his, at any  hour of the  day or
night. And I think it would be the same for Prestimion.'

'Nevertheless, I will not go to him.' This was becoming a torment, now. 'In  the
name of the Divine, Dekkeret! Find yourself some other High Counsellor, and  let
me be done with it! Surely I'm not indispensable.'

It seemed to occur to the Coronal, finally, that Teotas was in agony. Gently  he
said, 'No one is indispensable, including the Pontifex and the Coronal. And I'll
withdraw the appointment, if you give me no choice about it.'

'Thank you, my lord.' Teotas rose as if to go.

But Dekkeret was  not done with  him. 'I should  tell you, though,  that Dinitak
believes that these dreams of yours, which must truly be appalling, are not  the
work of your own brain at all. He thinks they're being sent in by an enemy  from
outside - a kinsman of his, a  Barjazid, he suspects, who is using some  version
of the thought-control helmet that we once employed against Dantirya Sambail.'

Teotas gasped. 'Can that be so?'

'At this moment Dinitak is searching for proof of his theory. And will take  the
necessary action, if he finds that what he suspects is true.'

'I find myself perplexed at this, my  lord. Why would anyone want to be  sending
me bad dreams? Your friend Dinitak wastes his time, I think.'

'Be that as it may, I've authorized him to look into it.'

Teotas felt that he was coming to the limits of his reserve of strength. He  had
to make  an end  of this.  'Whatever he  finds will  make no  difference to  our
discussion here,' he said.  'The real issue is  what has become of  my marriage.
You know, I think, that Fiorinda is at the Labyrinth with Varaile?'

'Yes.'

'She is as important to  Varaile as you claim that  I am to you. But  I will not
live apart from  her indefinitely, my  lord. There is  no solution, then,  other
than for one of  us to give up  the royal appointment, and  it has been my  rule
always to place Fiorinda's needs and desires above my own. Therefore I will  not
serve you as High Counsellor.'

'You may think differently about this,'  said Dekkeret, 'once we have freed  you
from these  dreams. Giving  up the  High Counsellorship  is no  light matter.  I
promise you, I'll release you if you feel, even after the dreams are gone,  that
you don't want the job. But can we hold the decision in abeyance until then?'

'You are inexorable, my lord. But I  am adamant. Dreams or no dreams, I  want to
be with my wife, and she wants to be with Varaile at the Labyrinth.'

He moved again toward the door.

'Give it one more week,' Dekkeret said.  'We'll meet again a week from now,  and
if you feel the same  way, I'll name someone else  to the post. Can we  agree on
that? One more week?'

Dekkeret's tenacity was maddening. Teotas could bear it no longer. 'Whatever you
say, my lord,' he  muttered. 'One week more,  yes. Whatever you say.'  He made a
hasty starburst salute and rushed from  the room before the Coronal could  utter
another word.


That night Teotas lies awake for hours,  too tired even to sleep, and he  begins
to hope thatjust this once he will be spared, that he will go through the  night
from midnight to  dawn without descending  even for a  moment into the  realm of
dreams. Better not to sleep at all,  he thinks, than to endure the torture  that
his dreams have become.

But somehow he passes without knowing it, once again, from wakefulness to sleep.
There is no sudden transition, no sense of crossing a boundary. Somehow, though,
he has entered yet another strange place, where he knows he will suffer. As  he.
moves forward into it, the power of the place only gradually makes itself  known
to him, gathering slowly, mounting with each step he takes, oppressing him  only
a little at first, then more, then much more.

And now Teotas  finds himself under  the full stress  of this place.  He is in a
region of thick-stemmed gray shrubs, broad-leaved and low. A thick mist  hovers.
The general tone here is  a colorless one: hue has  bled away. And there is  the
awful  pull  coming  from  the  ground,  that  clamp  of  gravity  clinging with
inexorable force to every part of  him. His eyelids are leaden. His  cheeks sag.
His gut droops. His  throat is a loosely  hanging sac. His bones  bend under the
strain. He walks with bent knees. What does he weigh here? Eight hundred pounds?
Eight thousand? Eight million? He is unthinkably heavy. Heavy. Heavy.

His weight nails his feet flat to  the ground. Each time he pulls one  upward to
take another step, he hears a reverberating sound as the planet recoils  against
the  separation. He  is aware  of the  blood lying  dark and  sleepy along   the
enfeebled arteries of his  chest. He feels a  monstrous iron hump riding  on his
shoulders. Yet he walks on. There must be an end to this place somewhere.

But there is no end.

Halting, Teotas kneels, just to regain  his breath. Tears of relief burst  forth
as some of the  stress is lifted from  his body's bony framework.  Like drops of
quicksilver the slow tears roll down his cheek and thump into the ground.

When he feels that he is ready to go on, he attempts to rise.

It takes him five tries. Then he succeeds, rocking himself, levering himself  up
on his knuckles, rump in air, intestines yanked groundward, spine popping,  neck
creaking. Up. Up. Another push. He stands. He gasps. He walks. He finds the path
he had been following  a little while ago:  there are his footprints,  nearly an
inch deep  on the  sandy soil.  He fits  his feet  into the  imprints and  moves
onward.

The gravitational drag continues to increase. Breathing has become a battle. His
rib cage will not lift except under duress; his lungs are stretched like elastic
bands. His cheeks hang  toward his shoulders. There  is a boulder in  his chest.
And it all keeps getting worse. He knows that if he remains here much longer  he
will be squeezed flat. He will be squeezed until he is nothing more than a  film
of dust coating the ground.

The effect continues to worsen. He  can no longer remain upright. He  has become
top-heavy, and  the mass  of his  skull turns  his back  into a  curved bow; his
vertebrae  slide about,  grinding and  cracking. He  yearns to  lie down   flat,
surrendering to the awful force, but he knows that if he does, he will never  be
able to rise again.

The sky is being pulled  down on top of him.  A gray shield presses against  his
back. His knees are taking root. He crawls. He crawls. He crawls. He crawls.

'Help me!' he cries. 'Fiorinda! Prestimion! Abrigant!'

His words are like pellets of lead.  They spill from his mouth and plummet  into
the ground.

He crawls.

There is a ghastly pain in his  side. He fears that his intestines are  breaking
through his skin. His bones are  separating at the elbows and knees.  He crawls.
He crawls.

He crawls.

'Pres - tim - i - on!'

The name emerges as an incoherent gargle. His gullet is stone. His earlobes  are
stone.  His lips  are stone.  He crawls.  His hands  sink into  the ground.   He
wrenches them free. He is at the  end of his resources. He will perish.  This is
the finish: he is about to die a slow and hideous death. The gray mantle of  the
sky  is  crushing  him.  He  is caught  between  earth  and  air.  Everything is
impossibly heavy. Heavy. Heavy.  Heavy. He crawls. He  sees only the rough  bare
soil eight inches from his nose.

Then, miraculously, a  gateway appears before  him, a shimmering  golden oval in
the air just ahead of him.

Teotas knows that if he  can reach it, he will  free himself from this realm  of
unendurable pressure. But  reaching it is  a challenge almost  beyond his means.
Every inch that he gains represents a triumph over implacable forces.

He reaches it.  Inch by inch  by inch he  pulls himself forward,  clawing at the
ground, digging his nails in and  hauling his impossibly heavy body toward  that
golden gateway, and then it hovers just  in front of him, and he puts  his hands
to its rim and drags himself to his feet, and thrusts one shoulder through,  and
his head and neck just afterward, and somehow manages to raise one leg and  move
it across the threshold.  And he is through.  He feels himself falling,  but the
drop is only a couple of feet, and  he lands all asprawl on a platform of  brick
and lies there gasping for breath.

His weight is normal, here on the  other side. This is the real world  out here.
He is still asleep, but he senses that he has left his bedroom and is  wandering
around on some outer parapet of the Castle.

Nothing looks familiar. He sees spires,  embrasures, distant towers. He is on  a
narrow winding path that appears to be going up and up, spiraling around a  tall
upjutting outbuilding of the Castle that  he cannot even begin to identify.  The
black sky is speckled with a dazzle of stars, and the cold light of two or three
of the moons shines along the  horizon. He continues to climb. He  imagines that
he can hear a dire shrieking wind whipping past the summit of the Mount,  though
he knows he should not hear any such thing in these privileged altitudes.

The brick pathway that  he is following grows  ever steeper, ever narrower.  The
steps are cracked and broken beneath his feet, as though no one has bothered  to
come up here in  centuries and the brickwork  has simply been left  to erode. It
seems to him that he is climbing up the external face of one of the  watchtowers
along the Castle's  periphery, ascending a  terrifying precarious track  with an
infinitely long drop on either side of him. He grows a little uneasy.

But there is no going back. Following  this track is like climbing the spine  of
some gigantic monster. The path is too narrow here to allow him to turn, and  to
try to descend it walking backward is inconceivable, so no retreat is  possible.
Icy sweat begins to trickle down his sides.

He turns a bend  in the path and  the Great Moon suddenly  fills the sky. It  is
crescent tonight, dazzlingly  brilliant, a gigantic  bright pair of  white horns
hanging in front of him. By its  frosty blaze he sees that he has  clambered out
onto a solitary spire  of the colossal Castle  and has reached a  point close to
its Up. Far away  to his right he  sees what he thinks  are the rooftops of  the
Inner Castle. To his left is only a black abyss.

There is no going higher from this  position. Nor is there any turning back.  He
can only stand here  shivering on this dizzying  upthrust point, whipped by  the
howling wind,  waiting to  awaken. Or  else he  can choose  to step out into the
emptiness and float downward to whatever awaits him below.

Yes. That is what he will do.

Teotas turns to his left and looks out toward the darkness, and then he puts one
foot over  the course  of bricks  that marks  the edge  of the  path, and  steps
across.

But this is no dream. He is really falling.

Teotas does not  care. It is  like flying. The  cool air from  below brushes his
hair  like a  caress. He  will fall  and fall  and fall,  a thousand  feet,  ten
thousand, perhaps all the way to the  foot of Castle Mount; and when he  reaches
the bottom, he knows, he will be at peace. At last. Peace.




THREE:
THE BOOK
OF POWERS

1

The Pontifex  Prestimion had  not been  expecting to  return to  Castle Mount so
soon, nor had he anticipated any such sad occasion as the funeral of a  brother.
Yet here he  was once more  hastening upriver from  the Labyrinth, choking  with
grief, for Teotas's burial rites. The  ceremony would not be held at  the Castle
itself, but rather at Muldemar House, the family estate, the place where  Teotas
had been born  and where he  would rest now  forever beside a  long line of  his
princely ancestors.

It was  years since  Prestimion had  last been  to Muldemar.  There was  no real
reason for him to visit it. He had often gone there during his days as a  prince
of the Castle to  visit his mother the  Lady Therissa, but his  accession to the
Coronal's throne had automatically brought her  the title and duties of Lady  of
the Isle of Sleep, and  she had been a resident  of that island ever since.  And
likewise Prestimion's coming to the  throne had made Muldemar House  his brother
Abrigant's domain,  and Prestimion  was not  eager to  overshadow his  brother's
authority in his own house.

But  then  had come  the  bewildering, agonizing  news  of Teotas's  death;  and
Prestimion had come  hurrying back to  the ancestral home.  Abrigant himself, an
imposing figure in a dark-blue doublet and a cloak striped with black and white,
with  a yellow  mourning badge  pinned to  his shoulder,  greeted him  when  the
Pontifical party arrived at  the gateway to Muldemar  city. His eyes looked  red
and raw from sorrow. He was a tall  man, the tallest by a head and shoulders  of
the  four brothers  who had  grown up  here together  decades ago,  and when  he
wrapped the Pontifex in a close  and long embrace it was a  well-nigh smothering
one.

He  released  Prestimion and  stepped  back. 'I  bid  you welcome  to  Muldemar,
brother. Think of this place as being as much your home now as ever it was.'

'You know how grateful I am for those words, Abrigant.'

'And now that you've come, we can proceed with our burying.'

Prestimion nodded grimly. 'Has there been word from our mother?'

'She sends a warm message  of love, and tells us  that she joins with us  in our
grief. But she will not be with us here.'

That news came as no surprise. There had never been any likelihood that the Lady
Therissa would attend the ceremony. She was too old now for the arduous  journey
by sea and  land from the  Isle of Sleep  to Castle Mount,  and in any  case the
distance was  so great  that she  could not  have arrived  here quickly  enough.
Abrigant  had delayed  the rite  considerably as  it was,  in order  to make  it
possible for Prestimion to be there. The Lady Therissa would mourn her  youngest
son from afar.

Prestimion was startled at  how much older Abrigant  seemed than when they  last
had met. That had been at the  crowning of Dekkeret, not very long ago.  Just as
Teotas had, Abrigant had begun very quickly to show his years. He stood a little
stoopingly, now. The luster ofAbrigant's glistening golden hair appeared to have
dimmed greatly in just the past few  months, and the vertical lines of age  that
had just been  beginning to emerge  on either side  of his nose  now seemed very
deeply  etched. Obviously  the death  of Teotas  had fallen  heavily upon   him.
Abrigant and Teotas,  the third son  and the fourth,  had been extremely  close,
especially in these  recent years when  Prestimion's royal responsibilities  had
kept him apart from the others.

'We are the  only two left  now,' Abrigant said,  with a kind  of wonder in  his
words, as though he could not believe his own statements. The tone of his  voice
was dark and sepulchral, like the gusting of a distant wind. 'And so strange, so
wrong, that our brothers should be dead this young! How old was Taradath when he
fell in  the Korsibar  war? Twenty-four?  Twenty-five? And  now Teotas,  who was
younger even than myself, and is gone so much before his time -!'

The haunted look in Abrigant's eyes was an awful thing to behold.

'Do you have any  idea what could have  driven him to it?'  Prestimion asked. He
had barely begun to come to terms with the whole thing himself.

In a guarded voice Abrigant  replied, 'It was a fit  of madness, of a kind  that
had been coming upon him more and more  often. That is all I would care to  say,
brother. Dekkeret will speak with you  about it in more detail later.  But come:
here are the floaters that will  take us to Muldemar House.' He  gestured toward
Varaile  and  Fiorinda, who  had  taken up  a  place just  to  Prestimion's left
throughout the  conversation, and  were standing  silently while  Prestimion and
Abrigant spoke. 'Here, my sisters -'

The two  women had  rarely left  each other's  side during  the journey from the
Labyrinth. Both of them were swathed  in the yellow robes of mourning,  and both
seemed so grief-stricken still that there was no way a stranger could have  told
which one was the widow of the late prince, and which merely the  sister-in-law.
Fiorinda's three small  children, two girls  and a boy  of five, huddled  behind
their mother,  peeping out  shyly, showing  little comprehension  of the tragedy
that had overtaken their family. 'This floater is yours,' Abrigant told them. He
ushered them toward it. The Lady Tuanelys and young Prince Simbilon would travel
with their mother and aunt and cousins also. 'And I will ride with the  Pontifex
in this one,' he  said, indicating his own  floater. Prestimion entered it,  and
his two  older sons  climbed in  beside him,  and Abrigant  gave the vehicle the
command to proceed.


Abrigant seemed  to unwind  and expand  during the  course of  the journey  from
Muldemar city to the estate itself. Perhaps he was relieved, at this dark  time,
to have his elder brother arrive to assume some of his burdens.

He complimented Prestimion on how much his children had grown and how well  they
looked. Young Taradath was indeed  beginning to look quite princely,  and Prince
Akbalik also, though Simbilon still seemed  far from getting his growth. And  it
did not seem to Prestimion that the Lady Tuanelys, who had been suffering lately
from nightmares that  had a troublesome  resemblance to the  dreams of the  sort
Teotas had  supposedly been  having, looked  at all  well. Disturbing dreams had
begun to afflict Varaile also, lately. But Prestimion said nothing about that to
Abrigant.

'And this year's wines!' Abrigant  was saying. He sounded almost  exuberant now.
'Wait undl you sample  them, Prestimion! A year  of years, a year  for the ages!
The red in particular, as I was saying to Teotas only - last - month -'

His voice slowed and then halted in midsentence. All exuberance vanished and the
haunted look abruptly returned to his eyes.

Prestimion  said  quickly,  'Ah,  look  there,  Abrigant:  Muldemar  House!  How
beautiful it is! How much I've missed  being here!' It was as though he  felt it
was his task,  not only as  Pontifex but as  the eldest of  the family, to  keep
Abrigant from sinking into despondency.

To his two sons he said: 'I was born here, you know. This evening I'll show  you
the rooms where I used to live.' As if they had never seen the place before; but
his concern now was merely to distract Abrigant from his sorrow.

Prestimion  himself, laboring  under his  own sharp  sense of  great loss,  felt
lifted from his dark mood by the sight of his boyhood home.

Who could fail to respond to  the extraordinary beauty of the vale  of Muldemar?
Amidst all the varied splendors of Castle Mount it stood out as a place of grace
and calm. It was bordered on one side by the broad face of the Mount itself, and
on  the other  by Kudarmar  Ridge, a  secondary peak  of the  Mount that  would,
anywhere else  in the  world, have  been regarded  as a  mountain of majesty and
grandeur in its own right. Lying as it did in the sheltered pocket between those
two lofty peaks, Muldemar  vale was favored all  the year round by  soft breezes
and gentle mists, and its soil ran rich and deep.

Prestimion's ancestors had settled here  even before the Castle itself  existed.
They were farmers, then, who had come up from the lowlands with cuttings of  the
grapevines they grew down there. Over the centuries their wines had  established
a  reputation for  themselves as  the foremost  ones of  Majipoor, and  grateful
Coronals, over the  centuries, had ennobled  the vintners of  Muldemar, bringing
them upward eventually to be dukes and then princes. Prestimion was the first of
his  line who  had gone  on to   hold the  Coronal's throne,  and after  it  the
Pontifical seat.

The family lands  ran for many  miles through the  choicest zone of  the vale, a
broad green realm  stretching from the  Zemulikkaz River to  the Kudarmar Ridge.
Deep within the estate lay the white walls and soaring black towers of  Muldemar
House itself, a domain of two hundred rooms laid out in three sprawling wings.

Abrigant had been  thoughtful enough to  provide Prestimion with  the rooms that
once had  been his,  a second-level  apartment that  looked out through gleaming
windows of  faceted quartz  to the  great vista  ofSambattinola Hill. Little had
changed here since he last had  occupied it, more than twenty years  before: the
walls still bore the  same subtle murals in  quiet shades of amethyst  and azure
and topaz pink, and the window-seat  in which the young Prestimion had  spent so
many pleasant hours was furnished with some  of the same books that he had  read
there long ago.

Household servants  whom Prestimion  did not  recognize, no  doubt the  sons and
daughters of the ones he  had known, were on hand  to help the Pontifex and  his
family settle in.  This caused a  minor clash with  Prestimion's own staff,  for
custom required that the  Pontifex bring his own  servants with him wherever  he
traveled, and they guarded that prerogative jealously. 'You may not enter,' said
sturdy strapping Faico,  who had the  title of First  Imperial Steward now,  and
took his promotion very seriously. 'These rooms belong to the Pontifex, and  you
may not  look upon  him.' It  saddened Prestimion  to see  these good  people of
Muldemar staring  timidly at  him over  Falco's shoulder  in awe  and wonder, as
though he were not a man of Muldemar himself but had descended into their  midst
from some other planet;  and he instructed Faico  that it was his  intention, in
this house, to waive the usual Pontifical prerogatives and allow ordinary common
citizens to have access to his presence. Faico did not like that at all.

Varaile and Prestimion would share the master bedroom; Varaile put Tuanelys, who
awakened often now  crying in the  night, in the  room just adjacent.  Taradath,
Akbalik, and Simbilon were left to  shift for themselves beyond. It was  a suite
of many rooms.

'I wish I could have Fiorinda nearby me as well,' Varaile said.

Prestimion smiled. 'I know you're accustomed to her presence close at hand.  But
this apartment was not  designed to provide space  for a lady-in-waiting when  I
lived in it. Would that it had been, but that was not how things were done.'

'It's not for  myself that I  want Fiorinda near,'  said Varaile, with  a bit of
snap in her voice. 'She's  the one in need of  comfort, and I wish that  I could
give it.'

'They'll have put  her in the  rooms she and  Teotas usually had  when they were
here. No doubt she'll have a maid other own to look after her there.'

But Varaile could not put Fiorinda from her mind. 'How she suffers,  Prestimion.
And I as well. Teotas would never have undertaken that walk in the night if  she
had been beside him. But Fiorinda  and Teotas were apart all those  weeks before
he - died, and the  fault was mine. I should  never have taken her with  me from
the Castle.'

'The separation was meant to be only temporary. And who could guess that  Teotas
had it in him to destroy himself?'

Varaile threw a strange look his way. 'Is that what he did?'

'Why would a man climb out onto a dangerous and almost inaccessible tower in the
middle of the night, if not to destroy himself?'

'The Teotas I knew was not a suicidal man, Prestimion.'

'I agree. But what was he doing out there, then? Sleepwalking? No one sleepwalks
like that.  Drunk? Teotas  was never  known as  a heavy  drinker. Under a spell,
perhaps?'

'Perhaps,' Varaile said.

His eyes widened. 'You sound almost serious.'

'Why not? Is it such an impossible idea?'

'Let's assume that  it isn't, then.  I'll grant you  that there are  some magics
that  actually  work. But  who  would lay  a  spell of  self-destruction  on the
Pontifex's brother, Varaile?'

'Who, indeed?' she replied sharply. 'Isn't that what you need to find out?'

Prestimion nodded absently. The mystery had to be unraveled, yes. But how?  How?
Who could look into dead Teotas's mind and produce the needed answers? They were
roaming into very  mysterious territory now.  'I need to  discuss all this  with
Dekkeret,' he said. 'Dekkeret  was the last person  to see Teotas alive,  only a
few  hours  before  his  death. Abrigant  says  he  knows  something about  what
happened.'

'You should speak to him, then. By all means, Prestimion.'


From Abrigant,  Prestimion learned  that Dekkeret  was still  at the Castle, but
would be  traveling down  to Muldemar  House. later  that day,  now that he knew
Prestimion had  arrived. And  in K*'  mid-afternoon came  hubbub and hullaballoo
from without,  as a  procession of  royal floaters  bearing the starburst emblem
drew  up  outside. Prestimion  looked  out to  see  the towering  figure  of the
Coronal, in full formal robes, entering the building. He noted with more than  a
little interest that the Lady Fulkari walked at his side.

Dekkeret seemed grim and determined, and  very much in charge of things.  It was
evident  that  he had  begun  already to  take  on the  intangible  qualities of
kingliness, here in  the early months  of his reign.  Prestimion was pleased  by
that. He had  never had any  doubt of the  wisdom of his  choice of Dekkeret  to
succeed him,  but that  look of  grandeur that  Dekkeret wore  now was a welcome
confirmation all the same.

There was no chance before dinner for a conference with him, nor during the meal
either.  Coronals had  not been  uncommon visitors  at Muldemar  House over  the
centuries, and the princes of Muldemar maintained guest quarters for them in the
east wing, as far from Prestimion's  present suite as was possible to  be. Their
first  opportunity for  a meeting  was at  the dinner  table, but  dinner was  a
somber, formal event at which private conversations were impossible.  Prestimion
and Dekkeret embraced, as  it behooved the Pontifex  and Coronal to do  whenever
they were present at the same event, and then they took their seats at  opposite
ends  of  the long  table.  Fulkari sat  beside  Dekkeret, Varaile  adjacent  to
Prestimion, with Fiorinda next to her.

The rest of the gathering that  was assembled in the great banquet-hall  was few
in  number.  Abrigant  and  his wife  Cirophan  were  accompanied  by their  two
adolescent boys.  Prestimion's two  older sons  were there  also. The only other
guests were  Septach Melayn  and Gialaurys,  who had  come with  the Pontifex to
Muldemar. Abrigant spoke  briefly of the  solemn occasion that  had brought them
together this  night, and  they lifted  their glasses  in Teotas's  memory. Then
dinnerwas served, a fine one; but it was an oddly assorted group, the prevailing
mood was a subdued one, and there was little conversation.

Afterward Dekkeret came  to Prestimion and  said, 'You and  I should talk  after
dinner, your majesty.'

'We should, yes. Shall I bring Septach Melayn?'

'I think it should just be the two of us,' said Dekkeret. 'You can share what  I
have to say with the High Spokesman later, if you wish. But Abrigant feels  that
you and I ought to discuss these things just between ourselves at first.'

'Abrigant knows what you're going to tell me?' Prestimion asked.

'Some. Not all.'

Prestimion chose  for the  site of  their meeting  the tasting-room  of Muldemar
House, a place that  had always exerted a  strange charm over him,  though there
were those who said that they found the  place gloomy. It lay at the mouth of  a
deep cool cavern of green basalt on the lowest level of the building,  extending
far underground  into the  bed-rock of  the Mount  itself. Along  both sides the
entire passage was lined from floor  to ceiling with a royal ransom  in Muldemar
wines, vintages  stretching over  hundreds of  years, back  through the mists of
time. An ancient iron  door sealed the room  off from the rest  of the building.
There was no  part of Muldemar  House where he  and Dekkeret could  find greater
seclusion.

He had requested that Abrigant's cellarmaster leave a bottle of brandy for  them
on the tasting-room table.  It was amusing to  see that the bottle  that the man
had chosen, a big-bellied hand-blown globelet, was an outrageously precious  one
with what was surely more than a century of dust on it and a faded label  dating
it to the reign of Lord Gobryas, predecessor of Prankipin as Coronal. Prestimion
poured two generous bowlfuls and they sipped for a time in silence, savoring the
brandy reflectively.

At length Dekkeret said, 'I feel great sadness at your loss, Prestimion. I loved
Teotas greatly. How sorry I am that this wondrous liquor, if I'm ever  fortunate
enough to taste it again, will always summon the memory of his death for me.'

Prestimion nodded gravely. 'I never thought that I'd outlive him. Even though he
was aging quickly, and looked so much  older than he was, there were many  years
between us. And then to have something like this happen - this -'

'Yes,' said Dekkeret. 'But  perhaps he was never  meant to live a  long life. As
you say, he was  aging quickly. There was  always a fire burning  within him. As
though he had a furnace inside  his breast, and was consuming himself  for fuel.
That temper of his - his impatience -'

'I have some of those qualities myself, you know,' Prestimion said. 'But only  a
tincture. He had the full dose.'  He applied himself thoughtfully to his  brandy
for a  time. Its  texture was  marvelously smooth,  but its  long-pent-up flavor
erupted within  one's mouth  like an  exploding galaxy.  Then he  said, when  he
judged the silence to have gone  on long enough, 'He killed himself,  didn't he,
Dekkeret? What else could it have been, but suicide? But why? Why? He was  under
great stress, yes, but what kind of stress is there that could possibly drive  a
man like Teotas to take his own life?'

Quietly Dekkeret said, 'I think he was murdered, Prestimion.'

'Murdered?'

Prestimion could not have been more astounded if Dekkeret had slapped him in the
face.

'Or, let us say, he was forced by something outside himself into a frame of mind
in  which dying  seemed more  attractive to  him than  living; and  then he  was
maneuvered into a place where death was a very easy thing to find.'

Prestimion hunched forward, staring intently. Dekkeret's words went through  him
like a whirlwind. This was not anything that he wanted to believe. But the world
does not let one believe only the things one chooses to believe.

'Go on,' he said. 'Let me hear it all.'


'He came to me in my office,' said Dekkeret, 'on the last afternoon of his life.
As you know, I  had invited him to  serve as my High  Counsellor - that was  how
much regard I had for him, Prestimion -  but he would neither say me yea or  nay
about taking the post, and finally I sent for him to press him on it.'

'Why was he so hesitant? Was it on Fiorinda's account?'

'That was the reason he gave, yes. That the Lady Varaile had requested the  Lady
Fiorinda to be her companion at the Labyrinth, and Teotas would not let his  own
ambitions stand  in the  way of  that. But  also there  were the  dreams he  was
having. Every night, apparently, a siege of nightmares beyond all describing.'

'Yes. Varaile heard about  that from Fiorinda. -  There are a lot  of bad dreams
going around these days, you know. My own daughter Tuanelys has been troubled by
them. And Varaile as well, lately.'

'Even she?'  Dekkeret said.  He seemed  to register  the news  with the  deepest
interest. 'Nothing so savage as the  ones that afflicted Teotas, I do  sincerely
hope. The man  was in ruinous  condition when I  met with him.  Pale, bloodshot,
trembling. He told me  straight out that he  dreaded going to sleep  each night,
for fear of  the dreams. Whatever  resolution of the  Fiorinda problem we  might
have tried to work out became impossible to discuss, because those dreams of his
had wrecked him so.  He said that he  had become convinced, through  his dreams,
that he was unworthy of being High Counsellor. He begged me to release him  from
the appointment.  Which I  suppose I  simply should  have done,  considering the
shape he was in. But I wanted  him, Prestimion, I wanted him badly. I  asked him
finally to put the whole matter aside for one more week, and it seemed to me  as
he was leaving that he had agreed to that.'

'But instead, feeling terrible shame and guilt over having told you he wanted to
decline the appointment,  and not wanting  to go through  the whole thing  again
with you the following week, he headed straight from your office to some  remote
spire of the Castle, clambered out to the edge, and jumped off.'

'No.'

'That was what I was told that he did.'

'He  jumped, yes.  But not  right after   his meeting  with me.  It was  in  the
afternoon that I saw him. It was in the middle of the night when he fell to  his
death.'

'Yes. I did  know that, actually.  There was talk  that he'd been  sleepwalking.
Which would make it an accident, rather than suicide.'

'It was neither, Prestimion.'

'You really believe that he was murdered?'

'There is a device -  a little metal helmet: do  you remember it? - that  allows
one to reach across great distances  and interfere with the workings of  someone
else's mind. With  my own eyes  I beheld you  using such a  helmet fifteen years
ago.'

'Of course. The one that your  friend Dinitak stole from his father  and brought
to us to use against Dantirya Sambail.'

'Which was a copy of an earlier one, you recall, that Dinitak's father Venghenar
had  stolen  from the  Vroon  who invented  it,  and which  he  employed in  the
Procurator's service.'

'All these deadly helmets have been  kept under seal in the Treasury  ever since
those days. Is it your notion that  someone's made off with one of them  and was
using it against Teotas?'

'The Barjazid helmets  are still at  the Castle, where  they belong, and  all of
them remain under our control,' Dekkeret replied. 'But there are other Barjazids
beside Dinitak in this world, Prestimion. And other helmets.'

'You know this to be a fact?'

'Dinitak is my source. His  father's younger brother, Khaymak Barjazid  by name,
still  lives, and  still understands  the making  of the  helmets. It  was  this
Khaymak who used to  construct the things for  Venghenar when they all  lived in
Suvrael long ago. He continues to possess the plans and sketches he used.  While
you were still  Coronal, he came  to the Castle  to offer some  new and improved
model to  you, but  Dinitak found  out about  it first  and turned him away, not
wanting anyone of his sort sniffing around at court. So Khaymak took himself off
to Zimroel and sold  the helmet plans to  a certain Mandralisca, whose  name you
will, I think, remember.'

Dekkeret's words  fell  upon Prestimion  with  devastating impact.  'The  poison
taster? He's still alive?'

'Evidently so. And in the service of five extraordinarily loathsome brothers who
happen to be the nephews of our old friend Dantirya Sambail. And they, as I have
only  just begun  to discover,  have launched  some sort  of local  insurrection
against our rule in a desert district of central Zimroel.'

'This is beginning to move too quickly for me,' Prestimion said. He poured fresh
bowls of brandy for them  both, and took a long,  slow sip. '- Let us  go back a
little. This Khaymak Barjazid has put a mind-controlling helmet in the hands  of
Mandralisca the poison-taster?'

'Yes.'

'And - surely this is where you have been heading with all of this - Mandralisca
has used the  helmet to reach  into Teotas's mind  and drive him  to the edge of
insanity. Over the edge, indeed, to the point where he would take his own life.'

'Yes, Prestimion. Precisely so.'

'What's your proof of this?'

'I authorized Dinitak to withdraw one  of the old helmets from the  Treasury and
conduct a little  investigation with it.  He reports that  mental broadcasts are
emanating from somewhere in the vicinity of Ni-moya. He believes the operator is
none other than Mandralisca, who appears to have been striking randomly all over
the world. And  not always randomly,  since one of  his broadcasts was  aimed at
Teotas, with the results that we all have seen.'

'You believe that what Dinitak says is true?'

'I do.'

'And how long have you known all this?'

'About three days.'

Once again  Prestimion felt  the whirlwinds  of chaos  roaring through his mind.
'You heard me say that my  little daughter Tuanelys has been having  bad dreams.
Varaile, occasionally, too.  My brother, my  daughter, my wife:  can it be  that
this  Mandralisca  has found  a  way of  making  the Pontifex's  own  family his
target?'

'That could be so.'

'And the Pontifex next? Or the Coronal?'

'No one is safe, Prestimion. No one.'

My brother. My daughter. My wife.

Prestimion closed his  eyes and pressed  the Ups of  his fingers to  the lids. A
tumultuous welter of emotions surged  through him: fury, foremost, but  sadness,
also, and  a bleak  sense of  exhaustion of  the spirit,  and even fear. Had the
Divine, he wondered, placed some curse  on his entire reign? First the  Korsibar
usurpation, and then the plague of madness that had been the consequence of  his
high-handed act in wiping out the entire world's memories of the civil war,  and
then the attempt by Dantirya Sambail to unseat him. Now these new vermin,  these
five brothers, spurred  to yet another  rebellion by this  devilish Mandralisca,
who seemed  to have  a dozen  lives -  and, worst  of all,  an invisible  threat
reaching even into his family itself -

When he looked at Dekkeret again he  saw that the younger man was regarding  him
worriedly, even tenderly.  In haste Prestimion  strove to restore  his mantle of
regal poise.

'I am reminded,' he said, slowly, calmly, 'of Maundigand-Klimd's prophecy that a
Barjazid would somehow make  himself a Power of  the Realm. I told  you of that,
did I not? Yes. You thought he might have been speaking of Dinitak, and  scoffed
at that, and I warned you not to take the prophecy too literally. Well, we  will
have no Barjazids as literal Powers of  the Realm, I think, but here is  one who
is certainly wielding power, in the abstract sense. We will locate him before he
does further harm, and take his helmets from him, and see to it that he is  able
to build no more of them. And we'll deal at last with that serpent  Mandralisca,
too, and pull his fangs.'

'That we will.'

'You  will report  to me  daily, Dekkeret,  concerning any  further  discoveries
Dinitak may make.'

'Absolutely.'  Dekkeret  finished the  last  of his  brandy.  'The uprising,  or
whatever it is, in Zimroel needs handling also. I may go there in person to deal
with it.'

Prestimion lifted an  eyebrow. 'Under the  pretext of a  grand processional, you
think? So early in your reign? And so far?'

'I should  do whatever  seems appropriate,  Prestimion. I've  only just begun to
consider what  that will  be. Let's  discuss this  further, shall  we, after the
funeral. - Do you plan to remain here at Muldemar for any length of time?'

'A few days, only. At most a week.'

'And then back to the Labyrinth, is it?'

'No. To the Isle of Sleep,' Prestimion replied. 'My mother remains in  residence
there. For the second time she has lost a son. It'll do her good to have a visit
from me in  such a dark  hour.' Rising, he  said, 'We should  rejoin the company
above, I think. Send for your Dinitak, and let's meet with him here somewhere in
the next few days.'

'I will, Prestimion.'

As they ascended the stairs Prestimion said, 'I note that you come here with the
Lady Fulkari. I found that somewhat surprising, after the conversation that  you
and I had had about her.'

'We are betrothed,' said Dekkeret, with a tiny smile.

'Even more of  a surprise. It  was my impression  that Fulkari had  rejected the
idea of becoming the consort of the Coronal, and you were searching for some way
to break with her. Am I wrong about that?'

'Not  at all.  But we  held further  discussions. We  explained ourselves   more
clearly to each other. - Of course, there'll be no announcement of any plans for
a royal marriage until the pain of this business with Teotas has had a chance to
fade.'

'Naturally not. But I hope you'll give  me proper notice when the time comes.  I
would have liked Confalume to officiate at my wedding, if events had permitted.'
Prestimion paused and caught Dekkeret for  a moment by the hand. 'It  would give
me great pleasure to officiate at yours.'

'Let it be the Divine's  will that you do,' said  Dekkeret. 'It would be a  good
thing, anyway, that the next time the Pontifex travels to Castle Mount from  the
Labyrinth it's for a happier occasion than the present one.'



2

'My lord, may I come in?' Abrigant said to Dekkeret, who had gone to the door to
answer his knock.

Teotas's funeral was three days in the past, now. Dinitak had come down from the
Castle at Prestimion's request. He and Prestimion and Dekkeret had been  meeting
for more  than an  hour. Things  had not  gone entirely  smoothly. Something was
amiss, though Dekkeret  had no idea  what it was.  Prestimion seemed to  be in a
dark, cold,  brooding mood,  saying little,  sometimes putting  a curious bit of
overemphasis on some otherwise innocuous statement. It was as if some change had
come over him the other day, once Dekkeret had raised the likelihood that it was
the Barjazid helmet that was to blame for what had befallen Teotas.

Abrigant's knock offered a welcome  break in the tension. Dekkeret  went quickly
to the  door of  Prestimion's suite  to see  who it  was, leaving Prestimion and
Dinitak huddled over the helmet that Dinitak had brought down to Muldemar  House
with him.  Prestimion was  examining the  helmet closely,  poking at  it with  a
fingertip and  muttering under  his breath,  staring at  it with  open hatred as
though it were some malevolent living thing that gave off poisonous exhalations.
The Pontifex was radiating such an  intensity of feeling that Dekkeret was  glad
to have an excuse to get away from him for a moment.

'It's your brother  you're looking for,  I suppose,' said  Dekkeret. He gestured
rearward with his thumb. 'Prestimion's back there.'

Abrigant seemed surprised and perhaps dismayed to discover Dekkeret answering at
Pra(timion's door. 'Am I interrupting official business, my lord?'

'There's a fairly  important meeting going  on, yes. But  I think we  can take a
break for  a little  while.' Dekkeret  heard footsteps  behind him.  Prestimion,
frowning, emerged from within. 'The Pontifex evidently feels the same way.'

Abrigant looked toward his brother and said, with some chagrin, 'I had no  idea,
Prestimion, that you and  the Coronal were having  a conference, or I  certainly
would never have presumed -'

'A little  intermission in  the proceedings  was in  order, anyway,'  Prestimion
said. His  tone was  affable enough.  But the  tight set  of his  mouth and jaws
showed exactly how displeased he was by the interruption. 'Is there some  urgent
news diat I need to know about, Abrigant?'

'News? No news, no. Only a little  bit of family business. A matter of  a minute
or two.' Abrigant seemed  off balance. He shot  a swift glance at  Dekkeret, and
then one at  Dinitak, who now  had come out  from within also.  'This really can
wait, you know. It was hardly my intention to -'

Prestimion cut him off. 'No matter. If we can take care of it as quickly as  you
say -'

'Shall Dinitak and I go back inside,  and leave this sitting-room to the two  of
you?' asked Dekkeret.

'No, stay,' said Abrigant. 'This isn't really anything that requires privacy,  I
suppose.  With  your  permission, my  lords:  I  will need  only  a  moment.' To
Prestimion he said, 'Brother, I've just been speaking with Varaile. She tells me
that you and she will  be leaving here in a  day or two: not for  the Labyrinth,
though, but for die Isle of Sleep. Is this so?'

'It is.'

'It was my  thought to go  to the Isle  myself, actually, as  soon as I've dealt
with all current business  here. Our mother should  not be alone at  a time like
this.'

Prestimion appeared irritated and confused.  'Are you saying that you'd  like to
accompany me there, Abrigant?'

Abrigant's face now mirrored Prestimion's puzzlement. 'That isn't exactly what I
had in mind.  One of us  must surely go  to her; and  I simply assumed  that the
responsibility for undertaking the trip would fall to me. The Pontifex, I  felt,
is likely to have important official duties at the Labyrinth that would  prevent
him from  making such  a long  journey.' And,  with increasing discomfort: 'It's
certainly not customary for Pontifexes to visit the Isle, as I understand it. Or
Coronals either, for that matter.'

'A great many things that aren't customary have been happening in recent years,'
Prestimion returned smoothly. 'And I can do my Pontifexing wherever I happen  to
be.' His face  darkened. 'I am  the eldest of  her sons, Abrigant.  I think this
task is one for me to handle.'

'On the contrary, Prestimion -'

Dekkeret  was  beginning  to find  it  more  than a  little  embarrassing  to be
listening to this  conversation between the  brothers. He had  been an unwilling
witness to  it in  the first  place; but  now that  it had  turned into  a tense
dispute, it  was something  that he  very much  did not  want to be overhearing.
Something  was going  on here  that only  a member  of the  family could   fully
understand, and that no outsider should see.

If Abrigant, who  had relinquished all  public duties upon  Dekkeret's ascent to
the throne and  had more leisure  for family matters  these days than  his royal
brother, believed  that he  should be  the one  to comfort  their mother in this
difficult hour - well, Dekkeret conceded,  he did have good reason for  thinking
that. But Prestimion was the older brother. Should he not be the one who decided
which one of them was to go to the Isle?

And Prestimion  was Pontifex  as well.  No one,  Dekkeret thought,  not even the
Pontifex's brother, should say something like 'Ow the contrary' to a Pontifex.

In the end that was the conclusive point. Prestimion listened for a few  moments
more, confronting Abrigant with folded arms and containing himself with an  only
too apparent show of elaborate patience as Abrigant argued his case; and then he
said simply,  'I understand  your feelings,  brother. But  I have other reasons,
reasons of state, for needing to be abroad at this present moment. The Isle will
be merely the first stop on my journey.' He was staring unwaveringly at Abrigant
now. 'What I  must deal with,'  Prestimion said, 'is  the matter that  was under
discussion  here when  you knocked  at the  door just  now. Since  it would   be
convenient as well as desirable  for me to go to  the Isle, there's no need  for
you to make the trip as well.'

Abrigant greeted that with an instant or two of silence and a baffled stare.  It
seemed to be gradually sinking in upon him that Prestimion's words amounted to a
command.

Dekkeret had  no doubt  that the  Pontifex's brother  was still  displeased. But
there could be no pursuing the issue beyond this point. Abrigant forced a  smile
that showed only a wintry warmth.  'Well, then, Prestimion, in that case  I have
to yield to you, don't  I? Very well, I yield.  Carry my love to our  mother, if
you will, and tell her that my thoughts have been with her from the first moment
of this tragedy.'

'That I will do. And your task now will be to comfort the Lady Fiorinda. I leave
her in your care.'

Abrigant did not seem  to be prepared for  that either. He was  already upset by
his  capitulation  to  Prestimion  on  the  journey  to  the  Isle,  and further
bewilderment appeared  on his  face at  this latest  statement of  Prestimion's.
'What? Fiorinda's going to stay here, then? She won't be accompanying Varaile on
these travels of yours?'

'That would not be a good idea, I think. Varaile will send for her when we  have
returned  to the  Labyrinth. Until  that time,  I prefer  to let  her remain  at
Muldemar.' Then - in a  gesture that seemed to Dekkeret  to be rather more of  a
display of imperial strength than  of fraternal affection - Prestimion  held out
his arms stiffly toward Abrigant and  said, 'Come, brother, give me an  embrace,
and then I must get on with this meeting.'


When Abrigant had  gone from the  room and they  had gone back  within, Dekkeret
turned to Prestimion and said, by  way of breaking the vacuum of  uneasy silence
that lingered in Abrigant's wake, 'What  exactly are these travels of which  you
were speaking a moment ago, majesty? If I may know.'

'I've made no final decision yet.' The sharpness remained in Prestimion's voice.
'But there's no  question but that  you and I  will be in  motion in the  months
ahead.' He gathered  up the helmet,  which he had  left lying on  the table, and
poured the soft metal meshes from his right hand to the left one like a hoard of
golden coins. 'Foh! I never thought I'd be handling this filthy thing again.  It
was almost the killing of me, once. You remember that, do you?'

'We can never  forget it, your  majesty,' Dinitak said.  'We saw you  brought to
your knees from  the effort of  using it, that  time when you  were sending your
spirit all through the world to heal people of the madness.'

Prestimion smiled a pale smile. 'So I was. And you said to Dekkeret, 'Get it off
his head,' as I recall it, and Dekkeret answered that it was forbidden to handle
a Coronal in such fashion,  and you told him to  remove it anyway, or the  world
would need a new Coronal in a very short while. And so Dekkeret removed it  from
my head.  - I  wonder, Dinitak,  would you  have taken  it from  me yourself  if
Dekkeret hadn't finally been willing to do it?'

Quickly Dekkeret said, not bothering to conceal the annoyance in his voice, 'The
question's unfair, Prestimion. Why ask him  such a thing? I did take  the helmet
off you when I saw what it was doing to you.'

But Dinitak turned to Dekkeret and said coolly, 'I have no objection to replying
to the Pontifex's question.' And, to Prestimion: 'I would have removed it,  yes,
your majesty. One holds the person of  a Coronal sacred, up to a point.  But one
doesn't stand idly by  while the Coronal's life  is in danger. I  understood the
power  of that  helmet better  than either  of you.  You were  pouring all  your
strength into it, majesty, and you had  used it long enough. It was placing  you
in great peril.' Dinitak's dark face  had grown very flushed. 'I would  not have
hesitated to pull it from your brow  if Dekkeret found himself unable to do  so.
And if Dekkeret had tried to prevent me, I would have pushed him aside.'

'Well spoken,' Prestimion said, with a  little gesture of applause. 'I like  the
way you said that:  '/ would have pushed  him aside.' You've never  gone in very
much for diplomacy or  tact, have you, Dinitak?  But you're certainly an  honest
man.'

'The only one  his family has  managed to produce  in ten thousand  years,' said
Dekkeret, and laughed. Dinitak, after  a moment, broke into laughter  also, with
unfeigned heartiness.

Only  Prestimion maintained  a sober  mien. The  strange tension  that had  been
settling  about him  since the  first moments  of this  afternoon's meeting  had
heightened after Abrigant's departure. Now there was a powerful undercurrent  of
edginess about him, as though he were contending with some explosive inner force
that he could barely hold in check.

But his voice was calm enough as he threw the helmet back down on the table  and
said, 'Well,  may the  Divine preserve  me from  ever having  to don  that thing
again! I  remember its  powers only  too vividly.  A man  my age has no business
going near it. When we need it again, it'll be you, Dinitak, who'll do the work,
eh?  Not  me.'  He looked  then  toward  his Coronal.  -  'And  not you  either,
Dekkeret!'

'The thought had not occurred to me, I assure you,' Dekkeret replied. He  wanted
very much to return to the theme that Prestimion had so casually brushed  aside.
- 'You said  a minute ago,  Prestimion, that the  two of us  would be in motion.
Where will you be going, do you think?'

'What I  intend to  do is  something Pontifexes  rarely have  done. Which  is to
travel hither and yon about the land,  according to no fixed plan. This for  the
sake  of  guarding my  family  against the  reach  of our  friend  Mandralisca's
malice.'

Dekkeret nodded. 'That seems wise.'

'I'll go to the Isle first, of course, probably by way of the northern route out
of Alaisor: they tell me that the  prevailing winds will be better this time  of
year, going that way. Once I've seen to my mother I'll return to the mainland by
way of the southern path, via Stolen or Treymone. Stolen, I think: that would be
best. If I  choose to go  back then to  the Labyrinth, that'll  provide the most
direct route. But where I go once I reach Alhanroel will depend on the doings of
Mandralisca  and his  five brutish  masters, how  much trouble  they intend   to
create, how much jeopardy I find myself in.'

'You will find yourself  in none, I pray,'  said Dekkeret fervently. He  studied
Prestimion  with care.  The Pontifex  still had  that strange  look about   him.
Something was ticking within Prestimion, ticking, ticking. - 'And what  journeys
do you have in mind for me, may I ask?'

'You said yourself, just before the funeral, that you were thinking of going  to
Zimroel and investigating the situation there yourself,' said Prestimion.  'Only
time will tell whether a step like that will be necessary. I hope that it won't:
a new Coronal has too much to do  at the Castle to be going jaunting off  to the
other continent.  But under  the present  circumstances   you surely should put
yourself  into a  position that  will allow  you to  get yourself  out there  as
swiftly as possible, if need be.'

'The western coast, you mean.'

'Exactly. While I'm sailing to the  Isle, you should be following in  my tracks,
zigzagging across the western lands to Alaisor also.'

'You want me to take the land route, then?'

'Yes. Go by land. Show yourself to the people. It always stirs up good  feelings
when the Coronal conies to town. Your overt pretext will be that you're making a
kind of processional - not the full thing with all the banqueting and  circuses,
but only a  preliminary sort, the  new Coronal making  a quick tour  of the most
important cities  of central  and western  Alhanroel. Take  Dinitak with  you, I
think. You'll want to  monitor events on the  other continent very closely,  and
that helmet of his will allow you to do that. Once you've reached Alaisor, start
down the coast, finishing up at Stoien, say, where you'll wait for me to  return
from visiting my mother. When I'm done  at the Isle, I'll meet you at  Stoien or
{hereabouts, and we'll confer and evaluate  the situation as we see it  then. It
may be necessary for you to go to Zimroel and bring matters under control there.
Or perhaps not. How does this sound to you?'

'In perfect conformity with my own ideas.'

'Good. Good.'  Prestimion seized  Dekkeret's hand  and wrung  it with  startling
force.

Then, at  last, his  icy self-control  broke. He  turned quickly  away and  went
striding  briskly  around  the  room in  quick  furious  steps,  fists clenched,
shoulders  rigid. Dekkeret  suddenly understood  the aura  of tension  that  had
surrounded Prestimion this day: the man had been overflowing all this while with
barely contained rage. That was only  too plain now. That his own  family should
be under attack  - his wife  and his daughter,  and of course  Teotas - that was
something he could not and would not abide. The Pontifex's face looked gray with
fatigue, but there was a bright spark of anger in his eyes.

A hot stream of words  that had been withheld too  long came boiling out of  him
now.

'By the Divine, Dekkeret, can you imagine anything more intolerable! Yet another
rebellion? Are  we never  to be  spared such  things? But  this time we'll put a
finish to the rebels and their rebellion both. We'll hunt down this  Mandralisca
and make an end to  him once and for all,  and these five brothers as  well, and
all who swear allegiance to them.'

Prestimion was moving agitatedly about the room all the while, barely pausing to
look in Dekkeret's  direction. 'I tell  you, Dekkeret, whatever  was left of  my
patience is  worn away.  I've spent  the twenty  years of  my reign, Coronal and
Pontifex  both, struggling  with enemies  such as  no ruler  of Majipoor   since
Stiamot's time has  had to cope  with. Drive my  brother to madness,  will they?
Enter the dreams of my little girl, even? No. No/ I've had enough and more  than
enough.  We'll cut  them down.  We'll abolish  them root  and branch.  Root  and
branch, Dekkeret!'

Dekkeret had never seen Prestimion in such rage. But then the Pontifex seemed to
regain some measure of poise. He halted his frenzied pacing and took up a stance
in the middle of the room, letting his arms dangle, breathing slowly in and out.
Then he waved Dekkeret  and Dinitak unceremoniously to  the door. His voice  was
calmer, now, but it was chilly, even harsh. 'Go, now, the two of you. Go! I need
to speak with Varaile, to let her know what's ahead for us.'


Dekkeret was more than  happy to be excused  from the Pontifex's presence.  This
was a new Prestimion,  and a frightening one.  He was aware that  Prestimion had
ever been an impulsive and passionate man, his intrinsic shrewdness and  caution
constantly at war with surging temper and impatience. But there had always  been
a leavening quality of  good humor and playful  wit about him that  gave him the
ability to  find sources  of fresh  strength even  in times  of the most arduous
crisis.

Moderation   in  the   face  of   adversity  had   been  Prestimion's   defining
characteristic throughout his long  and challenging reign. Dekkeret  had already
noticed  that  in  his  middle  years  he  seemed  to  have  grown  crusty   and
conservative, as men will often do, and had lost a good deal of that resilience.
Prestimion  appeared  to  be  taking this  Mandralisca  business  as  a personal
affront, rather than as the attack  on the sanctity of the commonwealth  that it
actually was.

Perhaps it is for this reason, Dekkeret thought, that we have a system of double
monarchy here. As  the Coronal grows  older and more  rigid, he moves  on to the
higher throne and is  replaced at the Castle  by a younger man,  and thereby the
wisdom and experience of  age is yoked to  the flexibility and vigor  of buoyant
youth.

Fulkari greeted Dekkeret with a warm embrace when he returned to their  quarters
after parting from Dinitak. She had just been bathing, it seemed, and wore  only
a thick furry robe and  a bright golden strand at  her throat. A sweet aroma  of
bathing-spices rose from her breasts and  shoulders. He felt some of the  stress
of his meeting with Prestimion beginning to ebb from him.

But clearly she was able to tell, just at a single glance, that things were  not
right. 'You look very strange,' she  said. 'Did things go badly between  you and
Prestimion?'

'Our meeting  covered a  lot of  difficult ground.'  Dekkeret flung himself down
carelessly on  a velvet-covered  divan. It  creaked in  protest as  his big form
landed on it. 'Prestimion himself is becoming rather difficult.'

'In what way?' said Fulkari, seating herself at the divan's foot.

'In a dozen ways. The long weariness  of holding high office has had its  effect
on him. He laughs much  less than he did when  he was younger. Things that  once
might have seemed funny to him no  longer amuse him. He gets angry very  easily.
He and  Abrigant had  a peculiar  little argument  that never  should have taken
place in front of me. Or at  all, for that matter.' Dekkeret shook his  head. 'I
don't mean  to speak  harshly of  him. He's  still an  extraordinary man. And we
mustn't forget that his youngest brother has just met a horrifying death.'

'Small wonder that he's behaving like this, then.'

'But it's painful to see. I feel for him, Fulkari.'

She grinned mischievously.  Taking one of  his feet in  her hands, she  began to
knead and  massage it.  'And will  you also  grow cranky  and ill-tempered  when
you're Pontifex, Dekkeret?'

He  winked at  her. 'Of  course. I'd  think something  was wrong  with me  if  I
didn't.'

For an instant she appeared, despite the wink, to have taken him seriously.  But
then  she  laughed  and  said,  'Good.  I  find  cranky,  ill-tempered  men very
attractive. Almost irresistible,  as a matter  of fact. Just  the thought of  it
excites me.'

She slithered up the divan toward him until she was nestling in the crook of his
arm.  Dekkeret pressed  his face  against her  copper-bright hair,  inhaled  its
fragrance, kissed her  lightly on the  nape of her  neck. Slipping his  one hand
into the front of  her robe, he lightly  traced the line of  her collarbone with
his fingers,  then let  the hand  slide lower  to cup  one of  her breasts. They
remained like that for a time, neither of them in a hurry to move onward to  the
next stage.

He said, after a while, 'We'll be returning tomorrow to the Castle.'

'Will we,  now?' said  Fulkari dreamily.  'That's nice.  Although it's very nice
here too. I  wouldn't mind staying  another week or  two.' She wriggled  against
him, fitting her body more snugly into place against his.

'There's plenty of work waiting  for me at home,' Dekkeret  persisted, wondering
why he was so perversely bound on shattering the developing mood. 'And once I've
caught up with that there'll be a little traveling for us to do.'

'A trip? Ooh, that's nice too.' She sounded almost on the edge of sleep. She was
coiled against him in a state of utter relaxation, warm and soft, like a  drowsy
kitten. 'Where will we be going, Dekkeret? Stee? High Morpin.'

'Farther. Much farther. - Alaisor, in fact.'

That woke her up quickly. She drew back her head and stared at him in amazement.
'Alaisor?' she said, blinking at him. 'But that's thousands of miles away!  I've
never been that far from the Mount in my life! Why Alaisor, Dekkeret?'

'Because,' he  said, wishing  most profoundly  that he  had saved  all this  for
later.

'Just because? Clear to the other side of Alhanroel, just because?'

'It's at the Pontifex's request, actually. Official business.'

'The matter that you and he were just discussing, you mean?'

'More or less.'

'And what  matter exactly  was that?'  Fulkari had  extricated herself  from his
embrace, now, and had swung around to face him, sitting crosslegged at the  foot
of the divan.

Dekkeret realized that caution was in order here. He was hardly in a position to
share  much of  the real  story with  her -  the rebellion  that was  supposedly
starting up in  Zimroel, the reappearance  of Mandralisca, the  possibility that
the Barjazid helmet had been used to  drive Teotas to his death. Those were  not
affairs that  he was  able to  speak of  with her.  Fulkari was  still a private
citizen. A Coronal might  share such things with  his wife, but Fulkari  was not
his wife.

Picking his words judiciously, Dekkeret said, 'A few odd things have been  going
on lately across the sea. What sort of things isn't particularly important right
now. But Prestimion wants me to head west and station myself somewhere along the
coast, so that if it  turns out to be necessary  for me to go to  Zimroel in the
near future, I'll already be well on the way there.'

'Zimroel!' She said  it as though  he were talking  about a voyage  to the Great
Moon.

'To Zimroel, yes. Perhaps. None of this may ever come to pass, you realize.  But
the Pontifex feels that  we need to look  into it even so.  Therefore he's asked
Dinitak and me to head out to Alaisor and -'

'Dinitak also?' Fulkari said, her eyebrows shooting upward.

'Dinitak will  be traveling  with us,  yes. Doing  special government  research,
using certain  detecting equipment  that -'  No, he  could hardly  speak of that
either.  'Using  certain  special  equipment,'  he  finished  lamely.  'He'll be
reporting to me on a daily basis. You do like Dinitak, don't you? You won't have
any problem about his accompanying us.'

'Of course not. - And Keltryn?' she asked. 'What about her?'

'I don't understand,' Dekkeret said. 'What in particular do you mean?'

'Is she going to be coming with us too?'

He felt lost. 'I'm not following  you, Fulkari. Are you saying that  whenever we
take a trip anywhere, you'll want Keltryn to come along with us?'

'Hardly.  But  we'll  be  gone  several months  at  the  very  least,  won't we,
Dekkeret?'

'At the very least, yes.'

'Don't you think they'll miss each other, having to be apart as long as that?'

This was  utterly incomprehensible.  'Dinitak and  Keltryn, you  mean? Miss each
other? I don't at  all understand what you're  talking about. Do they  even know
each other, except in passing?'

'You mean you don't know?' Fulkari  said, and laughed. 'He hasn't said  anything
about it to you? And you hon-esdy haven't noticed? Dinitak and Keltryn?  Really,
Dekkeret! Really!'



3

Keltryn was  in the  little bedroom  of her  apartment at  the Setiphon  Arcade,
laying out the cards for what she  thought must be her three thousandth game  of
solitaire since the Pontifex had summoned Dinitak to Muldemar House for Teotas's
funeral.

Four of Comets. Six of Starbursts. Ten of Moons.

Why was  it necessary  for Dinitak  to be  at Teotas's  funeral? Dinitak  had no
official  place in  the government  nor was  he a  member of  the Castle   Mount
aristocracy. His only role at the Castle was as Dekkeret's friend and occasional
traveling companion. And, so  far as Keltryn was  aware, Teotas and Dinitak  had
been only nodding acquaintances, nothing more, until very recently. There wasn't
any reason for him to be at the  funeral. No one had said anything at all  about
Dinitak's going down to Muldemar House when the funeral arrangements were  first
being set up.

And  then, right  on the  eve of  the funeral  itself, a  courier in  Pontifical
uniform  suddenly arriving  to say  that Prestimion  requested the  presence  of
Dinitak Barjazid  immediately at  Muldemar? Why?  On such  short notice, Keltryn
thought, it was unlikely that Dinitak would have been able to get down there  in
time for the ceremony. So  it must have had to  do with something else. And  why
had the message summoning Dinitak come  from the Pontifex, rather than from  his
own good friend Lord Dekkeret? Dekkeret was down there too, after all. The whole
thing was very  mysterious. And she  wished that Dinitak  would hurry back,  now
that the funeral was done with, she assumed, and Teotas safely deposited in  his
tomb.

Petulantly she dealt out the cards.

Pontifex of Nebulas. Damn! She had the Coronal of Nebulas on the table  already.
Couldn't the Pontifex have turned up  five minutes ago? Nine of Moons.  Knave of
Nebulas. She slipped the  Knave below the Coronal  of Nebulas. Three of  Comets.
Keltryn scowled. Even when  the cards turned up  in the right order  she took no
pleasure from it. She was sick of solitaire. She wanted Dinitak. Five of  Moons.
Queen of Starbursts. Seven of-

A knock!

'Keltryn? Keltryn, are you in there!'

She swept the cards to the floor. 'Dinitak! You're back at last!' She ran toward
the door, remembered  at the last  moment that she  was wearing nothing  but her
loinclout, and hastily  snatched up a  robe. Dinitak was  so terribly fastidious
about such  things, so  very moral.  Despite everything  that had passed between
them since they had become  lovers, he would be shocked  if she were to come  to
the door virtually naked. The robe had to be on her before it came off: that was
how he was. Besides, Dekkeret might be with him. Or the Pontifex Prestimion, for
all she knew.

She opened the door.  There he was: alone.  She caught his wrist  and tugged him
inside, and then she was in his arms, at last, at last, at last. She covered him
with kisses. It felt to her as though he had been gone at least six months.

'Well!' she said, releasing him, finally. 'Are you glad to see me?'

'You know I am.' His eyes gleamed fiercely, shining like beacons in his  narrow,
angular face. He moistened  his lower lip with  a quick movement of  his tongue.
Strait-laced  and  high-minded  as  he  might  sometimes  be,  he  seemed  quite
thoroughly ready right now to pull the robe from her.

A roguish mood seized her. She decided to make him wait a little while.  Itwould
be a test  of her own  fortitude as much  as his. 'Did  you and your  friend the
Pontifex have a lot  of interesting things to  talk about?' she asked,  taking a
couple of steps back from him.

Dinitak  looked very  uneasy. His  eyelids flickered  three or  four times  very
rapidly in what seemed almost  like a tic, and a  muscle twitched in one of  his
lean, sun-darkened cheeks. 'It's - not something I can really discuss,' he said.
'Not now, anyway.' His voice sounded strained and hoarse. 'We had meetings - the
Pontifex and the Coronal  and I - there  are some problems, political  problems,
they want me to provide some technical assistance -' He was still staring at her
hungrily all the  while. Keltryn loved  that, the fierce  way he looked  at her.
Those dark gleaming eyes, that powerful gaze, that tremendous intensity of  his,
the powerful magnetic force that emanated from him, that coiled-spring  tension:
those aspects of him had fascinated her from the first moment.

'And the funeral?' she said, deliberately  continuing to hold him at bay.  'What
was that like?'

'I got there too late for it. But that didn't matter. It wasn't for the  funeral
that they asked  me down, you  know. It was  for the other  thing, the technical
assignment.'

'The thing you won't tell me about.'

'The thing I can't tell you about.'

'All  right, don't  tell me.  I don't  care. It's  probably enormously   boring,
anyway. Fulkari's told me about the official things that Lord Dekkeret does  all
day  long, now  that he's  Coronal. They're  colossally boring.  I wouldn't   be
Coronal for anything in the world. They could wave the starburst crown in  front
of me and the  Vildivar necklace and Lord  Moazlimon's ring and all  the rest of
the crown jewels  and I still  wouldn't -' Abruptly  she had had  enough of this
game. 'Oh, Dinitak, Dinitak, I missed you  so horribly all the time you were  at
Muldemar! And don't say that it was  only a few days. It felt like  centuries to
me.'

'And to me,' he said. 'Keltryn - Keltryn -'

He reached for her, and she went willingly to him. The robe fell away. His hands
ran eagerly up and down her body as she tugged him to the carpeted floor.


They were  still new  enough as  a couple  so that  the physical  part of  their
intimacy had a ferocious, almost  compulsive urgency about it. Keltryn,  to whom
all of this was entirely unfamiliar, felt not only the excitement that came with
the release of pent-up desires but also  a powerful sense of wanting to make  up
for lost  time, now  that she  had at  last allowed  herself to  experience this
aspect of adult life.

There would be  sufficient opportunity later  on, she knew,  for deep, searching
conversations, long hand-in-hand strolls through quiet corridors of the  Castle,
dinners by  candlelight, and  such. Enough  of the  old tomboyish  Keltryn still
remained alive in her, the virginal student of swordsmanship who was so adept at
holding boys at  bay, that she  would tell herself  from time to  time that they
ought not to allow their relationship to be entirely one of sweaty grappling and
hot, wild copulation; but  yet, now that she  had had her first  taste of sweaty
grappling and hot, wild copulation, she found herself quite willing to  postpone
those  deep,  searching conversations  and  long hand-in-hand  strolls  for some
future phase of the affair.

Dinitak,  for all  the asceticism  that seemed  to be  an inherent  part of  his
makeup,  appeared  to  feel  the same  way.  His  own  appetite for  lovemaking,
unleashed now after  who knew how  long a period  of restraint, was  at the very
least as strong as  hers. Gladly they pushed  each other again and  again to the
edge of exhaustion, and beyond the edge.

But  establishing  that kind  of  relationship had  not  been at  all  simple to
achieve. For the first two weeks after their initial accidental meeting  outside
Lord Haspar's Rotunda  they had seen  each other practically  every day, but  he
never even came near to offering anything like a physical approach, and  Keltryn
had no idea how to  elicit one. She had become  only too well accustomed to  the
unwanted attentions of  classmates like Polliex  and Toraman Kanna;  but how did
one go  about inviting  wanted attentions?  She began  to wonder whether Dinitak
might be the  same sort of  man as Septach  Melayn, and whether  it would be her
peculiar  destiny to  fall in  love only  with men  who were  by innate   nature
unavailable to her.

She had no doubt that she was  in love with him. Dinitak was unlike  anyone else
she had  ever known,  both in  her girlhood  in Sipermit  and at the Castle. His
dark, brooding good looks, that lean, taut Suvraelinu look that came from having
grown  up under  the harsh,  unforgiving sun  of the  desert continent,  held  a
powerful,  almost irresistible,  appeal for  her. That  he was  slender,  almost
flimsy,  of  build and  hardly  an inch  taller  than she  was  herself made  no
difference to  her. When  she looked  at him  she felt  - in  her knees,  in her
breast, in  her loins  - a  sense of  overpowering attraction  of a sort she had
never experienced before.

He was  unusual in  other ways,  too. There  was a  bluntness, even a roughness,
about his way of dealing with people that must have come, Keltryn thought,  from
his upbringing  in Suvrael.  He was  a commoner,  for one  thing: that  made him
different  right there  from the  boys she  had grown  up with.  But there   was
something else. She knew very little about his background, but there were rumors
that his father had been a criminal  of some sort, that the rather had  tried to
play some sort of ugly trick on Dekkeret when Dekkeret was a young man traveling
in Suvrael,  and that  Dinitak, appalled  at his  father's schemings, had turned
against him and helped Dekkeret take him prisoner.

Whether that  was true  or not,  Keltryn had  no idea,  but it  felt true.  From
various things Dinitak had said, to  her and to other people around  the Castle,
she knew that he held  a hard, austere view of  things, that he had no  patience
with any sort of  irregular behavior along a  range that ran from  mere laziness
and sloppiness at one  end of the scale  to criminality at the  other. He seemed
driven by  a powerful  moral imperative:  a reaction,  someone said, against the
lawlessness of his father. He was an idealist, honest to the point sometimes  of
brutality. He  was quick  to denounce  lapses of  virtue in  others, and, to his
great credit, he did not seem to commit any such lapses himself.

Such a person, Keltryn knew, could  all too easily seem prudish and  preachy and
self-righteous. Yet, strangely, Dinitak did not strike her that way. He was good
company, lively,  entertaining, graceful  in his  manner, capable  of a  certain
sharp-edged  wit. No  wonder that  Lord Dekkeret  was so  fond of  him. As   for
Dinitak's powerful sense of right and wrong,  one had to admit that he lived  by
his own strictures:  he was as  hard on himself  as he was  on anyone else,  and
asked for no praise for that. He seemed naturally upright and incorruptible.  It
was simply the way he was. One had to take a person like that as he came.

But was  a person  like that,  she wondered,  too high-minded  to indulge in the
bodily passions? Because she herself had finally decided it was time to  indulge
in those passions herself, and she finally had found someone with whom she would
like to indulge, and he seemed utterly unaware that she felt that way.

In her desperation it occurred to her, at length, that she had an expert in such
matters right within her own family. And so she consulted her sister Fulkari.

'You  might try  putting him  in a  situation where  he really  has very  little
choice, and see what he does,' Fulkari suggested.

Of course Fulkari would  know how to go  about it! And so  one afternoon Keltryn
invited  Dinitak to  join her  for a  swim in  the Setiphon  Arcade's pool  that
evening. Hardly anyone seemed to be using the pool these days, and no one at all
- Keltryn had checked - went there  in the evening. Just to be certain,  though,
she took  the trouble  to lock  the door  to the  pool from  within once she and
Dinitak arrived.

He had brought a swimsuit with him, naturally.

Now or never, Keltryn  thought. As he started  off to one of  the dressing rooms
she said, 'Oh,  we don't really  need'to wear suits  here, do we?  I never bring
one. I  haven't brought  one tonight.'  And she  slipped quickly  out of the few
garments she was wearing, trotted blithely past him with her heart thundering so
violently that she thought it would crack her ribs, and executed a perfect  dive
into the pink porphyry tank. Dinitak  hesitated only a moment. Then he  stripped
also - she looked up from the pool,  staring in wonder and awe at the beauty  of
his trim, narrow-waisted body - and leaped in after her.

They  splashed around  for a  while in  the warm,  cinnamon-scented water.   She
challenged him to  a race, and  they streaked side  by side from  one end of the
pool to the other, ending  in what they could only  call a tie. Then she  hauled
herself up out of the pool, found some towels to spread out on the tiled margin,
and beckoned to him to join her.

'What if someone comes?' he asked.

She made no attempt to conceal  the mischievous mirth she felt. 'Nobody  will. I
locked the door.'

She could not have made  it more plain, lying there  naked on this pile of  soft
towels in this warm, humid room  that they had entirely to themselves,  that she
had brought him here to give herself  to him. If he disdained her now,  it would
be the clearest possible  message that he  had no interest  in being her   lover
that  he  found her  physically  unattractive, or  that  he was  not  a man  who
responded to women, or else that his own hyperdeveloped moral sensibility  would
not permit him to enjoy the pleasures of the body in any free and easy way.

None of those things were true.  Dinitak lay down alongside her, and  easily and
capably gathered her into his arms and put his lips to hers and sent one of  his
hands roving over her firm little  breasts and downward then to the  juncture of
her thighs, and Keltryn knew  that it was going to  happen to her at last,  that
she was about to cross the great boundary that separated girls from women,  that
Dinitak would initiate her  this evening into the  mysteries that she had  never
dared to experience before.

She wondered if it  would hurt. She wondered  if she would do  things, the right
way.

But it turned  out that there  was no need  to think about  right ways and wrong
ways. Dinitak obviously knew what he was doing, and she followed his lead easily
and after a time she was able just to let her own instincts take charge. As  for
pain, there was only a moment of it, nothing like what she had feared, though it
was a bit  startling for an  instant and she  did let a  little gasp escape  her
lips. After that there  were no problems. What  had happened felt strange,  yes.
But very fine. Fantastic. Unforgettable. It  seemed to her that she had  stepped
just now through a doorway which had admitted her to some altogether  unfamiliar
new world where everything glowed with bright auras of delight.

That one little gasp  led to difficulties afterward,  though. When it was  over,
Keltryn  lay  back  in a  dazed  haze  of pleasure  and  astonishment,  and only
gradually did she realize that Dinitak was staring at her with a stunned look on
his face that could almost have been one of horror.

'Is something wrong?' she whispered, close to tears. 'Was I displeasing to you?'

'Oh, no, no,  no! You were  wonderful!' he said.  'More than wonderful.  But why
didn't  you tell  me it  was your  first time?'  His forehead  was knotted  with
anguish.

So that was it! His damned morals again!

'It never would have occurred to me.  If you were wondering about it, I  suppose
you always could have asked.'

'One doesn't ask about things like that,' he said sternly. It was as if she  had
done something dreadfully improper, she thought. How had this become her  fault?
'Anyway,' he went on, 'I had no reason to suspect it. Not when you inveigled  me
down to this pool like this, and flung your clothes aside so shamelessly, -  and
-' He struggled for words, did not seem  to be able to find the right ones,  and
finally blurted, 'You should have said something, Keltryn! You should have  told
me!'

This  was bewildering.  She began  to feel  anger rising.  'Why? What   possible
difference could knowing it have made?'

'Because I feel  so guilty for  what's happened, now.  Unknowingly or not,  I've
done  something  that  I can't  forgive  myself  for. To  take  a  young woman's
virginity, Keltryn - it's a kind of theft, in a way -'

This was getting farther and farther from anything that made sense to her.  'You
didn't take anything. I gave.'

'Even so - one simply doesn't do such things.'

'One doesn't? You mean, you don't. You sound positively prehistoric, Dinitak. Do
you think the Castle  is some sacred sanctuary  of purity? I've spent  months in
the midst of a pack of silly  boys who were absolutely slavering to do  the very
thing with me that you and I just did, and I said no to them all, and the  first
time I decide  to say yes  I get blamed  for not having  informed you in advance
that I - that -'

Tears were surging up again, but this fame they were tears of rage, not of fear.
The idiot! How could he dare feel guilty in such a wonderful moment? What  right
did he have to expect her to give him details of her past sexual history?

But she knew  that she had  to put her  anger aside and  do something to  repair
this, and fast, or their friendship would never survive it.

In the gentlest tone she could find Keltryn said, 'I don't want you to think you
did  anything wrong,  Dinitak. So  far as  I'm concerned  what you  did was  one
hundred percent right. Yes, I  was a virgin - and  I can't tell you how  tired I
was of continuing to be one, and I think I would have gone right out of my  mind
if I had gone on being one an hour longer.'

But that only made things worse. Now he was the angry one. 'I see. You wanted to
get  rid  of  that  tiresome  innocence of  yours,  and  therefore  you  found a
convenient implement to help you dispose of  it. Well, I'm glad to have been  of
use.'

'Implement? No! No! What an awful  thing to say. You don't understand  anything,
do you?'

'Don't I?'

'Please.  You're spoiling  everything. All  this pious  outrage of  yours.  This
blustering righteous indignation. I know that  you can't help it, that you  take
all these issues of morality tremendously seriously. But look at the mess you're
making between us! It's all so terribly stupid and unnecessary.'

He started to reply, but she put her hand over his mouth.

'Don't you realize I  tow you, Dinitak? That  that's the reason why  you're here
with me  tonight, and  not Polliex,  or Toraman  Kanna, or  some other  boy from
Septach Melayn's fencing class? All these weeks we were together, and you  never
once made a move,  and I sat there  praying desperately that you  would, but you
were either too shy or too pure or too something else to do it, and so,  finally
- finally - tonight, the  two of us at the  swimming pool, I thought -  I'll put
him in a position where he can't resist me, and see what happens -'

At last he understood.

'I love you, Keltryn. That's the only  reason I was waiting. What I thought  was
that the time for that part of things hasn't come yet. I didn't want to  cheapen
our friendship by behaving like all those others. And I'm very sorry now that  I
miscalculated everything so badly.'

Keltryn grinned. 'Don't be. All that's over and done with. And now -'

'Now -'

He reached for  her. She eluded  his grasp, rolled  past him to  the side of the
pool, threw herself in  with a resounding splash.  He came splashing after  her.
She swam down the middle of the pool  with all the speed at her command, a  pink
streak cutting a line through the  pink water, and Dinitak came barreling  after
her. At the far end she pulled herself up to the tiles again, laughing, and held
out her arms to him.


That was the beginning.  It was all much  less complicated for them  after that.
Keltryn began to comprehend  that that odd puritanical  side of him had  its own
set of  boundaries, that  the harsh  code of  values by  which he  lived was not
something that could be delineated in  simple tones of black and white.  Dinitak
was no ascetic. Far from it; passion and lust were certainly no strangers to his
makeup. But things had to happen in accordance with his unique sense of what was
proper, and Keltryn  realized that she  would not always  be able to  anticipate
what that was.

In the weeks that followed, they  spent night after night in each  other's arms,
until it  actually began  to seem  desirable to  have some  time off to get some
sleep. Dinitak's trip to Muldemar provided that. Provided rather too much of it,
Keltryn thought, by the second day of  his absence. She could not get enough  of
him - nor, it seemed, he of her.

She continued her twice-weekly fencing sessions with Audhari of Stoienzar. After
Septach Melayn's departure  for the Labyrinth  the fencing class  had dissolved,
but she and  Audhari went on  meeting, even so.  Fulkari, for a  while, had been
convinced that a  romance was budding  there; but Fulkari  had been wrong  about
that. Keltryn  had never  regarded big,  good-natured Audhari  as anything but a
friend.

He guessed right away that something had changed in her life. Perhaps it was the
dark semicircles under her  eyes, or perhaps a  certain slowing of her  reflexes
that had set in, now that she was getting so little sleep. Or, Keltryn  thought,
maybe there's some kind of emanation given off by girls who have begun going  to
bed with men,  a visible aura  of unchastity, that  every man is  easily able to
detect.

And finally he mentioned it. 'There's something different about you these days,'
Audhari observed, as they went at each other with their foils.

'Is there? And what would that be, then?'

He laughed. 'I couldn't really say.'

They dropped the subject there. He appeared to regret having brought it up,  and
she certainly was not eager to pursue the conversation.

She wondered, though,  about his ambiguous  words. Why couldn't  he say? Was  it
because he genuinely didn't know what it was that had changed about her? Or  did
he feel uncomfortable about talking to  her about it? Though he made  no further
references to it, it seemed to her that a more personal tone had begun to  steal
into his remarks to her: a flirtatious  one, even. He noted that she seemed  not
to be getting  as much sleep  as she needed.  He observed that  there was a  new
sexiness in  the way  she walked.  He had  never said  things like  that to  her
before.

She asked Fulkari about it. Fulkari replied that men often changed their way  of
speaking to a woman  once they decided that  she had become more  available than
she had been before.

'But I'm not available!' she said, indignant. 'Not to him, anyway.'

'Even so. Your whole manner's different, now. He may be picking that up.'

Keltryn didn't much like the idea that  all the men of the Castle might  be able
to figure out at a glance that she was sleeping with somebody. She was still too
new to the world  of mature men and  women to feel entirely  at home in it;  she
wanted to clutch her affair with Dinitak close to herself, sharing the knowledge
of her transition into  adulthood with no one  except, perhaps, her sister.  The
idea that Audhari, or just about anyone  else, could look at her and know  right
away that she had been Doing It with someone, and therefore she might somehow be
interested in doing it with him as well, was offensive and disturbing to her.

Possibly, Keltryn thought, she was  misunderstanding things. She hoped that  she
was. The last thing she wanted, now, was for her kind, earnest friend Audhari to
begin making romantic overtures to her.

At a suggestion from  her serving-maid, though, she  went down one Starday  into
the lower reaches of the Castle, the market area, and bought from a purveyor  of
wizard-goods a tiny amulet of fine knitted wire known as a focalo, that had  the
property of warding  off the unwanted  attentions of men.  She pinned it  to the
collar of her fencing jacket the next time she met with Audhari.

He noticed it at once, and laughed. 'What's that thing for, Keltryn?'

She flushed a flaming scarlet. 'It's just something I've started wearing, that's
all.'

'Has somebody been bothering you?  That's why girls usually wear  focalos, isn't
it? To send a keep-away message.'

'Well -'

'Come on. It can't be me you're worried about, Keltryn!'

'As  a matter  of fact,'  she said,  feeling unutterably  embarrassed now,   but
realizing that she had no choice but  to tell him, 'I've been starting to  think
that things  have been  getting a  little peculiar  between us  lately. Or so it
seems to me. Your telling  me that I walk in  a sexier way now, and  things like
that. Maybe  I'm completely  wrong, but  - oh,  Audhari, I  don't know  what I'm
trying to say -'

He was more amused than annoyed. 'I  don't think I do either, actually. But  one
thing I'm sure of: you don't need that focalo around me. I could tell right from
the start that you weren't interested in me.'

'As a friend, I am. And as a fencing partner.'

'Yes. But not anything beyond that. That was very easy to tell. - Anyway, you've
got a lover now, don't you? So why would you want to get involved with me?'

'You can tell that too?'

'It's written all over  your face, Keltryn. A  ten-year-old could see it.  Well,
good for you, is what I say!  He's a very lucky fellow, whoever he  is.' Audhari
slipped his fencing mask  into place. 'But we  really ought to get  down to work
now, I think. On your guard, Keltryn! One! Two! Three!'


Dekkeret said,  'I don't  mean to  intrude on  your personal  life, Dinitak. But
Fulkari tells me that  you've been seeing a  great deal of her  sister in recent
weeks.'

'This is true. Keltryn  and I have been  spending a great deal  of time together
lately. A very great deal of time.'

'She's a lovely girl, Keltryn is.'

'Yes. Yes. I confess that I find her extremely fascinating.'

They were dining together at Dekkeret's invitation, just the two of them, in the
Coronal's  private  chambers. Dekkeret's  steward  had laid  a  magnificent meal
before them,  bowls of  spiced fish,  and the  sweet pastel-hued  fungi ofKajith
Kabulon,  and  roast leg  of  bilantoon cooked  in  thokka-berries from  far-off
Narabal, accompanied by a rich,  earthy wine of the Sandaraina  region. Dekkeret
ate robustly; Dinitak, restless and edgy, scarcely seemed hungry at all. He  did
little more than pick at his food and did not taste his wine at all.

Dekkeret studied him closely. From time to time over the years, he knew, Dinitak
had struck up some casual relationship with this woman or that one, but they had
never come to anything.  He had the feeling  that Dinitak did not  want them to,
that he was  a man who  had little need  of ongoing feminine  companionship. But
from what Fulkari had told him,  something quite different appeared to be  going
on now.

'As a  matter of  fact,' said  Dinitak, 'I  expect to  be seeing  her this  very
evening, after I leave you. So if you have business to discuss with me, Dekkeret
-'

'I do. But I promise  not to keep you here  very late. I wouldn't want  business
matters to get in the way of true love.'

'Such sarcasm isn't worthy of you, my lord.'

'Was I being sarcastic? I thought I was speaking the simple truth. But let's get
on to our business, at any rate. Which involves Keltryn, in fact.'

Dinitak responded with a puzzled frown. 'It does? In what way?'

Dekkeret said, 'The plan now,  as I understand it, is  for us to depart for  the
western provinces on Threeday next. Since we'll be away for a few months or even
more, maybe  a good  deal more,  what I  asked you  here tonight  to discuss was
whether you'd like to invite Keltryn to accompany us on the trip.'

Dinitak looked astounded. He rose halfway out of his seat and his face turned  a
blazing crimson beneath his dark Suvraelinu tan. 'I can't do that, Dekkeret!'

'I don't think I understand you. What do you mean, you can't?'

'I mean it's completely out of the question. The idea's outrageous!'

'Outrageous?' Dekkeret repeated, narrowing his eyes to a mystified squint. After
more than twenty years of their friendship, he still was unable to tell when  he
was likely to strike some odd  vein of moral fastidiousness in Dinitak.  'Why is
that? What am I failing to see  here? According to Fulkari, you and Keltryn  are
absolutely mesmerized by each  other. But when I  offer you a way  of avoiding a
long and undoubtedly painful separation from  her, you flare up at me  as though
I've suggested something hideously obscene.'

Dinitak seemed to grow  calmer, but he was  still visibly upset. 'Consider  what
you're saying, Dekkeret. How can I possibly bring Keltryn along with me on  this
trip? It  would say  to everyone  that I  look upon  her as  nothing more than a
concubine.'

Dekkeret had never  seen him as  obtuse as this.  He wanted to  reach across the
table and shake him. 'As a companion, Dinitak. Not a concubine. I'm going to  be
bringing Fulkari with  me, you know.  Do you think  I regard her  as a concubine
too?'

'Everyone understands that you will marry Fulkari after the mourning period  for
Teotas is over. For  all intents and purposes  she is already your  consort. But
Keltryn and I - nothing is established between us. I'm twice her age,  Dekkeret.
I'm not even sure that  it's proper for us to  have been doing what we're  doing
now. There's  no way  I could  countenance taking  an extended  trip across  the
continent in the company of a young single girl.'

Dekkeret shook his head. 'You astound me, Dinitak.'

'Do I? Well,  then, I astound  you. So be  it. She can't  come with us.  I won't
allow it.'

This was not in any way what Dekkeret had expected. Indeed at the outset of  the
meal he had been wondering whether Dinitak, in some hesitant, awkward way, would
eventually bring  the conversation  around to  a request  for permission to have
Keltryn join them on the journey. Having her come with them made perfectly  good
sense to him. The girl was  very young, yes, but by  all accounts she was  level
headed beyond her years and growing  up fast. Besides, she and Fulkari  were not
only sisters but the closest of friends, and it would be useful to have  Keltryn
keeping Fulkari company while he and Dinitak were occupied in the real tasks  of
the mission.  And one  would assume  that Dinitak  would relish  the prospect of
having her close at  hand while they traveled.  But he could not  have been more
wrong about that.

Beyond all doubt Dinitak was serious about this concubine business, crazy as  it
sounded. Dekkeret knew better than to try to argue with him in the area of moral
niceties. Where matters of that  sort were concerned, Dinitak inhabited  a world
of his own.

Dekkeret sighed.

'As you wish,' he said. 'The girl stays home.'


The job of breaking the news to Keltryn became Fulkari's responsibility. She and
Dekkeret agreed that if they left the matter to Dinitak, his clumsy explanations
would infuriate Keltryn to the point where the relationship could not survive.

But she became infuriated anyway. 'The fool!' she cried. The preposterous little
prig! So holy that I can't travel  with him, is that it? Well, then.  I'll spare
him the shame of it. I never want to see him again!' -

'You will,' Fulkari said.



4

This would be Prestimion's fifth visit to the Isle of Sleep. That was unusual in
itself, and  more so  because he  was Pontifex  now. But  Prestimion had been an
unusual monarch since the earliest days of his reign.

A Coronal might visit the Isle once or twice during his reign, generally in  the
course of making a grand processional: the post of Lady of the Isle, after  all,
was normally held by  the mother of the  Coronal, and it was  reasonable for the
Coronal to want to visit his mother now and then.

But for him to go to the Isle  once he had become Pontifex was a very  different
matter. The  Pontifex normally  would have  no official  reason for going there.
Pontifexes did relatively little traveling in  general, and such as they did  do
was usually confined to the continent of Alhanroel.

If the  Pontifex's prior  reign as  Coronal had  been a  lengthy one, his mother
might well not have survived to the end of it: that had been the case with  Lord
Confalume, whose elder sister  Kunigarda had served as  Lady of the Isle  during
the latter  half of  his incumbency  at the  Castle. Any  Lady who did live long
enough to see her son's ascent to the senior throne customarily would remain  on
the Isle even  after she had  retired from her  duties to make  room for the new
Coronal's mother. Former Ladies of the Isle dwelled at the capacious estate that
was provided for them in the Terrace of Shadows on the Isle's Third Cliff.

Perhaps her son the Pontifex might choose to pay a call on her there once he had
settled fully into the responsibilities of his new post. But more often than not
he would  neglect to  make the  journey until  it was  too late: his mother died
before he could find an opportunity to go, or he himself grew too old to want to
travel. Whole centuries had gone by without a visit by a Pontifex to the Isle.

Prestimion, who had always had the closest and warmest of relationships with his
mother the Lady Therissa, had journeyed to the Isle of Sleep in his early  years
as Coronal Lord in  order to introduce his  bride Varaile to her,  and to enlist
his mother's aid in the struggle against the rebellious Dantirya Sambail. He had
gone there again in the fifth year of his reign, having decided then to make his
first grand processional for the sake of presenting himself to the world in  the
aftermath  of the  chaos that  had been  engendered by  the Procurator  Dantirya
Sambail's two insurrections. That time he had crossed Alhanroel by land, just as
he had done now, and  had taken ship at Alaisor  for the Isle, and gone  on from
there to Zimroel, making stops at  Piliplok on the eastern coast and  at Ni-moya
inland.

In his eleventh year Prestimion had  chosen to make a second processional,  this
one following  a similar  route, but  carrying him  onward beyond Ni-moya, clear
across Zimroel to  the crystalline city  of Dulorn and  beyond it to  the remote
western cities of Pidruid and Narabal and Til-onion, where visits from a Coronal
were few and far between. Prestimion  had found occasion on that trip  for still
another visit to his mother. And in  the sixteenth year of his reign as  Coronal
he had  undertaken the  third and  last of  his grand  processionals, this one a
truly extraordinary one  that had taken  him across the  bottom of Alhanroel  to
Stolen, thence to the Isle yet again, and from there, to the astonishment of all
the world, southward to the forbidding desert continent of Suvrael, that had not
seen a Coronal's face in three hundred years.

Now here he  was arriving at  the Isle once  again. There before  him in the sea
reared  the  familiar  colossal  bulk of  the  place,  that  phenomenal wall  of
glittering white chalk rising high above the water, its three great tiers  going
up and up in diminishing circles to the holy sanctuary at the top, Inner Temple,
where the Lady and  her millions of acolytes  dwelled. The sun, at  this time of
day, lay nearly overhead, and the smooth face of the Isle gleamed with an almost
unbearable reflected brilliance in its intense light.

Large as the Isle was - and on any planet but Majipoor it would have been deemed
a continent, not an island - it was accessible to shipping only at two  harbors,
Taleis  on  the  western  side  facing  Zimroel,  and  Numinor,  in  the  Isle's
northeastern corner, looking toward Alhanroel. Prestimion had always come to the
Isle by  the Numinor  entrance. Taleis  port was  a place  he had never seen. He
realized now, standing on the deck of the swift vessel that had brought him here
this  time  and  peering out  yet  again  at the  brilliant  white  rampart that
surrounded the harbor at Numinor, that he probably never would.

This, so Prestimion expected, would be the last visit he would ever make to  the
Isle of Sleep. Nor would  he go on to Zimroel  when he was finished here,  which
might have justified a brief stop at Taleis to satisfy his curiosity. The  world
was Dekkeret's now; Pontifexes did  not undertake grand processionals; in  years
to come,  as he  aged, he  would settle  ever more  deeply into  his life at the
Labyrinth.

A warm,  sweet breeze  blew toward  them as  their ship  glided toward  Numinor.
Eternal summer was the rule in  these latitudes. The Isle was forever  in bloom:
even from this  distance Prestimion fancied  that he could  make out the  bright
colors of the groves of eldirons and tanigales and purple-blooming thwales  that
grew so profusely on its multitude of chalky terraces.

As they neared the Isle Varaile stood at Prestimion's side, with Septach  Melayn
and Gialaurys,  who had  accompanied the  Pontifex on  this voyage,  nearby. The
princes Taradath and Akbalik and Simbilon flanked their father and mother on the
deck. The young Lady Tuanelys, who had no liking for ocean travel, had  remained
below in her cabin, as she had for most of the journey.

The ship's captain,  a massive Skandar  with grayish-purple fur,  called out for
the anchor to be lowered.

'Why are we dropping anchor all the way out here?' Prince Simbilon asked.

Prestimion began to reply;  but Taradath, who had  made the journey to  the Isle
with his  father on  Prestimion's last  processional, spoke  first: 'Because any
ship that's fast enough to get us across from Alaisor to here in any decent time
is going to be too big to fit into the harbor,' he said, a bit too patronizingly
for Prestimion's taste. 'Numinor port's a tiny litde place, and they'll have  to
take us in by ferry. You'll see.'

The protocol for a visiting Coronal upon landing at Numinor was for him to  stop
first at the royal guest-house known as Seven Walls, a single-story building  of
gray-black stone  situated right  on the  sea wall  at the  rampart of the port.
There  he  was  required  to  perform  various  rituals  of  purification before
beginning the  ascent to  the uppermost  of the  diree terraces,  where the Lady
would be  waiting for  him. It  was generally  the custom  for the Coronal to go
upward to die Lady, rarely for the Lady to come down to the shore to meet him.

But Prestimion was Pontifex  now, not Coronal, and  he had no idea  what kind of
arrangements would be made. Nor had  he asked. Perhaps Seven Walls was  reserved
only for Coronals, and Pontifexes  were taken elsewhere. It made  no difference.
Let it come as a surprise, he thought.

Everything seemed to be going as usual, at first. The transfer to the ferry  was
carried out smoothly; the ferry pilot steered them efficiently through the reefs
and shallows of the channel to their landing at Numinor port; a little group  of
the Lady's hierarchs, solemn in their golden robes with red trim, was waiting as
always to greet him. They made the spiraling Labyrinth sign of reverence to him,
formally greeted the LadyVaraile and  the High Spokesman Septach Melayn  and the
Grand Admiral  Gialaurys, and  led them  ashore, conducting  Prestimion and  his
family in the customary fashion to Seven Walls, and the others to a hostelry off
in the opposite direction.

Then things began to vary from the old routine. 'The Lady herself awaits you  in
the guest-house, your majesty,' one of the hierarchs told him, as they drew near
the building.

Prestimion's first response was surprise that his mother, who on his last  visit
had seemed at  last to be  beginning to succumb  to the inevitabilities  of age,
would have subjected herself to the effort of descending from her sanctuary high
up atop this mountainous island when it  would be so much easier on her  for him
to go upward to her. Then he reminded himself that his mother was no longer Lady
of the Isle. The person who was waiting for him at Seven Walls would be the  new
incumbent, Dekkeret's mother, the Lady Taliesme.

Why, he wondered, had  Taliesme come here to  him? Perhaps she did  not yet feel
firmly established in the  grandeur that now was  hers, and found herself,  when
confronted here with die arrival of a visiting Pontifex, impelled by the awe his
office inspired to go down the mountain to him rather than require him to go  up
to her. But then another possibility,  a much more troublesome one, leaped  into
Prestimion's mind as he saw Taliesme coming toward him through the courtyard  of
Seven Walls.

His mother Therissa had always been a woman of unconquerable strength of spirit.
But the  years were  doubtless taking  their toll.  She must  surely have  found
Teotas's death  a mighty  blow. Perhaps  her health  had given  way beneath  it.
Perhaps, hard as  it was to  believe, she had  undergone some kind  of emotional
collapse, or even a physical one.  She might be seriously ill -dying,  maybe. Or
possibly already dead.  And Taliesme had  not wanted him  to make the  ascent to
Inner Temple unaware of  the Lady Therissa's condition.  So she had come  to him
here for the sake of breaking the news to him.

Yet Prestimion did not sense any atmosphere of stark calamity about Taliesme  as
she came forward  to greet him.  She moved with  quick birdlike steps:  a small,
energetic woman robed in white, with the silver circlet of her office about  her
forehead. Her eyes were bright and sparkling, her hands readily outstretched.

'Your majesty,' she said.  'I offer you and  your family the warmest  welcome to
our island.'

'For that we thank you, your ladyship.'

'And you have, of course, my deepest sympathies on your great loss.'

He could not wait any longer. 'My mother, I hope, has borne it well?'

'As well as could be expected, I should say. She looks forward eagerly to seeing
you.'

'I'll find her in good health, then?' Prestimion asked tensely.

There was just the tiniest moment of hesitation. 'You'll find her not as  strong
as you remember her, your majesty. The  death of Prince Teotas has been hard  on
her. I will not pretend otherwise. And there have been other troublesome  little
difficulties, of which we  should speak before you  ascend to Inner Temple.  But
first, I think, perhaps  some refreshment is in  order. - Will you  come within,
your majesty?'

A light meal had been laid out  for them in Seven Walls: flasks of  golden wine,
trays of oysters and smoked fish,  bowls of fruit. It seemed to  Prestimion that
Taliesme was as comfortable  playing hostess to the  Pontifex as she might  have
been entertaining  some long-time  neighbors in  her old  home in Normork, which
Dinitak had told him once was a very humble little place indeed.

He was fascinated by the way  she had been transformed, and yet  not transformed
at all, in the course of her elevation to the Ladyship.

She could not have been more different in her manner from her predecessor at the
Isle. There was a world of contrast between Taliesme's simplicity and unassuming
modesty and the aristocratic stateliness of the Lady Therissa. Yet an undeniable
nobility had settled over her since she had assumed her duties here.

From the moment of her first visits  to the Castle in the days when  Dekkeretwas
merely   Coronal-designate,  Prestimion   had  been   impressed  by   Taliesme's
confidence,  her poise,  her serenity.  Now that  she was  Lady of  the Isle,  a
certain aura of grace and assurance  of the sort that almost invariably  came to
typify every woman who held the post of Lady had been added to those  qualities.
But  her  essential  self  seemed  fundamentally  unchanged,  not  in  any   way
overwhelmed by the greatness that had come to her with Dekkeret's ascent to  the
throne.

Prestimion felt his judgment of her son confirmed anew in her. Once again, as so
often in the past, it had proved to  be the case that the mother of the  man who
was deemed worthy of the title of Coronal Lord of Majipoor was herself a fitting
candidate for the role of Lady of the Isle.

The conversation, which Prestimion allowed her to lead, traveled easily  through
a wide range of topics. They spoke  first of all of the tragic death  of Teotas:
how startling, how mystifying, that a man of his abilities and character  should
undergo such a breakdown. 'All the world mourns your brother, your majesty,  and
feels great sadness on your behalf and on your family's,' Taliesme assured  him.
'I sense their grief and sorrow  constantly.' She touched the circlet that  kept
her  in contact  with the  dreaming minds  of Majipoor's  billions, night  after
night.

Then, when it was appropriate to change the subject, she turned it deftly to her
son Dekkeret, asking for news of him in his new role as Coronal. 'He will be one
of  the greatest  of our  kings,' Prestimion  told her,  and offered  a  sketchy
summary of the plans Dekkeret had made, as much of them as he had revealed  thus
far, for his reign.  He touched also -lightly,  very lightly - on  the matter of
Dekkeret and  the Lady  Fulkari, indicating  only that  their often  complex and
sometimes stormy relationship appeared to be entering a new and sunnier period.

Finally, after Taliesme had taken the opportunity to praise the handsomeness  of
Prestimion's three sons and the blossoming beauty of his pretty young  daughter,
Prestimion judged it was  time to return to  the topic that was  of the greatest
interest to him.

A quick sidelong  glance at Taradath  was sufficient to  convey to the  boy that
this would be a good  moment for him and his  brothers and sister to go  outside
for a  stroll along  the Numinor  sea wall.  When they  were gone  he said, 'You
mentioned,  when we  arrived, certain  troublesome little  difficulties that  my
mother has been having. I would like to speak of those now, if we may.'

'Indeed I think we should, your  majesty.' Taliesme drew herself up in  her seat
as though fortifying herself for  what was to be said.  - 'I regret to tell  you
that your mother has  been afflicted, for some  months now, by dreams.  Very bad
dreams: dreams that I can only  describe as nightmares. Which have had  a fairly
serious effect on her general well-being.'

Prestimion caught his breath in shock  and amazement. His mother too? There  was
no limit  to Mandralisca's  audacity. He  had already  shown himself  willing to
strike almost anywhere in the royal family.

But now  his mother  also? His  mother? She  who for  twenty years  had been the
world's beloved Lady, and now wanted  to live only in peaceful retirement?  This
was intolerable.

Before  he could  reply, though,  Varaile said,  breaking a  long silence,   'My
daughter Tuanelys  has had  troubled dreams  recently as  well, your  ladyship.'
Though  she had  addressed the  Lady Taliesme,  she was  looking at  no one   in
particular. She was hollow-eyed and haggard, having had yet another bleak  dream
herself in  the night  just past.  'She cries  out, she  shivers in  fright, she
bursts into sweat.  It was dreams  of this sort,  night after night,  that drove
Prince Teotas to take his life. And even I - I, too -'

Varaile was trembling. Taliesme looked   toward her in shock  and  surprise. 'Oh
my dear woman - my dear -'

Prestimion went  to his  wife and  rested his  hands gently  on her shoulders to
soothe her. But he maintained a calm tone of voice as he said, as though  musing
over the irony of it, 'The Lady of the Isle receiving dreams instead of  sending
them? The former Lady, I mean. But even so: it seems so strange. - Has my mother
described these dreams to you?'

'Not very clearly, majesty. Either she  is unable to be specific, or  unwilling.
All  I get  from her  is vague   talk of  demons, monsters,  dark images  -  and
something else,  something deeper  and more  subtle and  powerfully distressing,
which she absolutely will not describe at all.' Taliesme touched the tips of her
fingers to her silver circlet. 'I've offered to enter her mind and probe for the
source, or to have one of the more experienced hierarchs of the Isle do it.  But
she will not allow it. She says that one who was once the Lady of the Isle  must
not open herself  to the circlet  of the Lady.  Is that true,  majesty? Is there
some prohibition against doing that?'

'Not that I know  of,' said Prestimion. 'But  the Isle has its  own customs, and
few outside it know anything about them. I'll speak of this with her when I  get
to see her.'

'You  should,'  Taliesme  said.  'I'll  mince  no  words,  majesty.  She suffers
terribly. She should avail  herself of whatever aid  can be had, and  she of all
people should know that we stand ready here to help her.

'Yes. Absolutely.'

'And another  thing, majesty.  These dreams,  which have  entered your family so
freely - they are widespread throughout  the world. Again and again I'm  told by
my acolytes that as they monitor the minds of sleeping people they detect  pain,
shock, torment. I tell  you, your majesty, we  spend nearly all of  our time now
with  such people,  seeking them  out, trying  through sendings  to heal   their
suffering -'

So it  was even  worse than  he had  expected. Prestimion  let his eyelids drift
shut, and sat in silence for a time.

When he spoke  again, it was  in the quietest  of voices. 'It  is almost like an
epidemic of madness, would you not say, your ladyship?'

'An epidemic indeed,' said Taliesme.

'We've had such a thing  on Majipoor before. In the  early years of my reign  as
Coronal, it was. I found out what was  causing it, and I took steps to bring  an
end to it. This is, I think, a plague of a somewhat different sort, but I  think
I know what is causing this one too, and I tell you in the most solemn way  that
I'll bring an  end to this  one as well.  An old enemy  of mine is  loose in the
land.  He will  be dealt  with. -When  will I  be able  to see  my mother,  your
ladyship?'

'It is too  late in the  day now to  make the ascent  to Third Cliff,'  Taliesme
answered. Her face was set and somber and there was no sparkle in her eyes  now.
She and he had passed far beyond the pleasant courtesies of an hour before. Each
now understood  that a  serious challenge  lay ahead  for them  all. The note of
fierce determination in Prestimion's tone  seemed to have had a  powerful effect
on her. With  just a few  words he had  conveyed a sense  of present crisis,  of
impending large events that would require  her participation at a time when  she
had only begun to take command of  the great powers of the Isle. 'I  will escort
you to her in the morning.'



5

Prestimion had dreams himself, that night.

Not nightmares, not him, for he  was certain that the scheming poison-taster  in
Zimroel would not dare to approach  the mind of Prestimion Pontifex. These  were
dreams of his own mind's devising. But they were wearisome dreams all the  same,
for in them he  went up and up  the white cliffs of  the Isle of Sleep  over and
over again, forever ascending, never reaching the summit, an endless frustrating
day-long journey past  terrace after terrace  that invariably culminated  in his
finding himself, at  the end, at  the very place  from which he  had set out. By
morning Prestimion felt as though he  had been climbing the wall of  this island
all his life. But he concealed his  night of uneasy sleep from Varaile. She  was
preoccupied with Tuanelys: had gone to the little girl's bedroom more than  once
during the night, although it had  turned out, each time, that Varaile  had been
imagining Tuanelys's cries, and the child had been sleeping soundly.

And now it  was time for  them to begin  the upward journey  in earnest. May the
Divine grant us  an easier trip,  Prestimion prayed, than  the ones I  have been
making all night.

He held the  Lady Tuanelys on  his lap aboard  the floater-sled that  would take
them up the vertical wall that was  the face of First Cliff. Varaile sat  to one
side of him, the Lady Taliesme to the other, and the boys in back. When the sled
began its giddy climb, Tuanelys, frightened, wriggled about so that her face was
buried in  her father's  chest; but  Prestimion heard  a whistle of appreciation
from Prince Akbalik as they  shot silently and swiftly upward  against gravity's
pull. He  smiled at  that: Akbalik  was usually  so restrained  and serious. But
perhaps the boy was beginning to change as he entered adolescence.

At the landing pad at the summit, Prestimion pointed out Numinor port far below,
and the jutting  arms of the  breakwater where the  ferry had delivered  them to
land. Tuanelys did  not want to  look. The two  younger boys were  wonderstruck,
though, at the height  of the ascent they  had made. 'That's nothing,'  Taradath
said scornfully. 'We've only begun to go up.'

Prestimion found that  the children were  a welcome distraction  during the long
journey. It  worried him  that Taliesme  might have  held back  some of the most
disquieting details of the Lady Therissa's health, and he did not want to  think
too deeply about what  waited for him above.  So he derived great  pleasure from
watching Taradath, who had seen all this  before, don the role of tour guide  to
his brothers and sister,  loftily telling them, whether  they wanted to know  or
not, that this  was the Terrace  of Assessment, where  all pilgrims to  the Isle
were brought first, and this was the Terrace of Inception, and this the  Terrace
of Mirrors, and  so on and  so on throughout  the day. It  was amusing, too,  to
observe how little the other three  cared to be instructed by their  know-it-all
oldest brother.

'We always stop  for the night  here at the  Terrace of Mirrors,'  said Taradath
grandly, as if this were a trip he made every six months or so. 'First thing  in
the morning we go up to Second Cliff. It makes you dizzy, you do it so fast. But
the view from up there is fantastic. Just you wait.'

Out of the corner of his eye Prestimion caught sight of Prince Simbilon making a
face at Taradath behind Taradath's back, and smiled.

Taradath would be seventeen soon, Prestimion  thought. He made a mental note  to
talk with Varaile about sending him back to the Castle next year, enrolled as  a
knight-initiate. There  was no  reason why  the grown  son of  a Pontifex had to
remain with his family at the Labyrinth; and it would probably do Taradath  some
good to  have the  other young  men of  the Castle  take him  down a peg or two.
Prestimion had done his  best to teach Taradath  that once he had  entered adult
life he would enjoy  no special privileges or  deferences simply because he  was
the Pontifex's son, but perhaps that was a lesson better learned at the hands of
one's own peers.

Floaters were waiting to transport them  from the Second Cliff landing stage  to
the final sled station  at the base of  Third Cliff. Quickly they  traversed the
Second Cliff terraces, where the pilgrims completed their training so that  they
could move on as acolytes to the highest  level of the Isle and aid the Lady  in
her task.  Up there  on Third  Cliff the  Lady's vast  staff of acolytes nightly
donned the silver circlets that permitted  one mind to touch another across  any
distance, and sent their spirits forth to heal through benign dreams those whose
souls  were  in pain:  to  guide, to  counsel,  to console.  On  previous visits
Prestimion, wonderstruck,  had watched  the Lady's  legions at  their work.  But
there would be no time for such diversions now.

The travelers reached  the last of  the floater-sled depots  by mid-morning. Now
came the final upward  leap, to the flat  summit of the Isle,  thousands of feet
above their starting point down at sea level.

The younger boys  were excited by  the astonishing clarity  of the air  of Third
Cliff  and the  brilliance of  the sunlight,  which made  everything take  on  a
strange unworldly glow. As soon as the sled had landed they came rushing out and
began to chase each  other around the sled  depot, while Taradath called  out to
them, 'Hey, careful, you two! The air  is really thin, up this high!' They  paid
no attention.  The summit  of Castle  Mount was  ever so  much higher than this,
after all. But the air of Castle Mount was artificial; what they were  breathing
here was the  real thing, depleted  of oxygen by  the altitude, and  before long
Simbilon and Akbalik were feeling the  effect of it, slowing down, panting  hard
now, staggering dizzily about.

Prestimion, who was standing beside Taradath, leaned close and whispered, 'Don't
say it.'

Taradath did not seem to understand at all. 'Don't say what, father?'

'I told you so.'  Just don't say it.'  Prestimion put a little  crackle into his
voice. 'All right? They know now that the air is different up here. No need  for
you to rub it in.'

Taradath blinked a couple of times. 'Oh,' he said, and his cheeks reddened as he
began to grasp Prestimion's meaning. 'Of course I won't, father.'

'Good.'

Prestimion turned  away, covering  his mouth  with his  hand to  hide his  grin.
Another small step  in the boy's  education, he thought.  But there was  still a
long way to go.


The Terrace of Shadows, where the  Lady Therissa had made her home  since giving
up  the powers  that had  been hers,  lay within  the wall  that separated   the
sheltered sanctuary that was Inner Temple from the rest of Third Cliff.  Varaile
and the children remained behind at the Third Cliff guest-house. 'Your  mother's
house is on the far side of Inner Temple,' Taliesme told Prestimion. She led him
through  the immaculate  garden that  surrounded the  lovely eight-sided  marble
building that  was now  her home,  across a  close-cut grassy  lawn, and  into a
forested zone beyond that Prestimion had never entered before.

No buildings were visible here: only a  curving row of smallish trees of a  sort
he did not recognize, rising directly  in front of him. They had  thick, smooth,
reddish-brown  trunks that  bulged oddly  in the  middle, and  bushy crowns   of
shining  blue-green leaves  that were  lobed so  that they  looked almost   like
upturned hands. The trees  had been planted so  closely, one fat swelling  trunk
nuzzling up against  the next, that  they constituted what  amounted to a  wall.
Only in  a single  place had  a narrow  space been  left, marked by white marble
flagstones, by means of which one  could enter the very private sector  that lay
behind the grove.

'Come, majesty,' Taliesme said, and beckoned Prestimion to follow her through.

It was dark and mysterious  within. Prestimion found himself in  another garden,
less regular in form and not as carefully manicured as the one surrounding Inner
Temple.  It was  planted mainly  with what  looked like  palm trees  - they  had
slender, ribbed trunks that rose to a phenomenal height without branching - that
exploded far overhead into tremendous clusters of fan-shaped leaves so huge that
it seemed they would prevent any sunlight from breaking through the shield  that
they formed. Yet  these gigantic leaves  were attached to  wiry, tremulous stems
that moved  about freely  in the  slightest breeze,  so that openings constantly
were made in the leafy roof overhead, and bright shimmering shafts of light  did
penetrate in  quickly darting  bursts, creating  a shifting  pattern of  shadows
beneath.

'There is your mother's home,' Taliesme said, pointing to a low, sprawling villa
directly ahead. It was a handsome flat-roofed structure that had been  fashioned
of the same smooth white stone as  had been used in the making of  Inner Temple.
Secondary buildings, similar in design, flanked it: servants' homes,  Prestimion
supposed. Other houses were  dimly visible farther in.  Those were the homes  of
senior hierarchs, Taliesme  told him. 'The  Lady Therissa is  expecting you. The
hierarch Zenianthe, who is her companion, will take you to her.'

Zenianthe, a slim, dignified  white-haired woman who seemed  to be of about  his
mother's age, was waiting for him on a portico lined with potted ferns. She made
the Labyrinth symbol to Prestimion and gracefully signalled for him to enter.

The  house  was smaller  within  than it  appeared  from outside,  and  modestly
furnished: the home of someone who has put aside the outer glories of life.  The
hierarch took  Prestimion down  a starkly  simple corridor,  past several little
rooms that appeared at a quick glance to be virtually empty, and into a kind  of
conservatory at the heart of the house, glass-roofed, with a small round pool at
its center and pots of  greenery arranged along its margin.  Prestimion's mother
stood quietly to one side of the pool.

His eyes met hers. The jolt he got  at his first sight of her was a  far greater
shock than he was expecting.

He had done as much  as he could to prepare  himself for this meeting. The  Lady
Therissa was five years older now than  she had been at their last meeting;  she
had suffered a crushing loss in the death of her youngest son; and she had  been
assailed besides by  whatever sort of  diabolical torments Mandralisca  had been
sending against her by night. Prestimion knew that the effects of all that would
surely be a doleful thing to behold.

He thought,  though, that  he had  succeeded in  fortifying himself  against the
worst of surprises; but now that he was in her presence at last, struggling with
the impact of  what he was  seeing, he realized  that no degree  of preparation,
perhaps, could have been sufficient.

The curious thing was  that her great beauty  appeared to have survived  despite
everything. She had always seemed much younger than her years: a slender,  regal
woman of superb grace  and elegance, famous for  her pale smooth skin,  her dark
gleaming hair, her calm unshakable spirit.

Those things, Prestimion knew, were the outward manifestations of the perfection
of her soul.  Other women might  maintain eternal youthfulness  with the aid  of
sorcerers' incantations and potions, but never the Lady Therissa. She looked the
way she looked, over the years, because  she was who she was. Neither her  early
widowhood nor the civil war that had nearly denied her eldest son Prestimion the
crown that was rightfully his, nor the death of her second son Taradath in  that
same war, nor the great responsibilities that had devolved upon her when she had
become Lady of the Isle, nor the  later convulsion that had come over the  world
during the time of the plague of madness, had been able in any way to leave  any
sort of external mark on her.

Now, wondrous to behold, her hair was nearly as dark as ever - and naturally so,
Prestimion was certain. Her face, though the lines of age had begun to enter  it
years  ago, was  still unwithered:  the face  of the  most beautiful  of  women,
rendered even more lovely, if that was possible, by the work of time. And as  he
moved around the side of the pool and went forward to greet her, her posture  as
she awaited him was as erect as ever, her entire bearing as queenly. In all ways
the Lady Therissa seemed to be a  woman twenty or thirty years younger than  she
actually was.

Then, looking close into her eyes, he saw where the real change had occurred.

Her eyes. That was  the only place: nowhere  else but her eyes.  Another person,
not ever having looked into those  eyes before, might not have noticed  anything
amiss at all. But  to Prestimion the transformation  of his mother's eyes  was a
thing of  such stunning,  overwhelming magnitude  that he  was scarcely  able to
believe what he saw.

In  that  still-beautiful  face  her eyes  had  taken  on  a blazing,  frightful
strangeness that contradicted the very beauty in which they were set. They  were
the eyes of a woman who had lived a hundred years, or a thousand. Deeply  sunken
now, rimmed by an intricate webwork of fine lines, those transformed eyes stared
out  at  him in  a  cold, rigid,  unblinking  way, unnaturally  bright,  weirdly
intense, the eyes of someone  who had seen the walls  of the world peel back  to
reveal some realm of unimaginable horrors that lay behind them.

Gone now was that incredible look  of serenity, the marvelous radiance that  was
the outer  display of  the inner  perfection that  had been,  for him,  her most
significant  characteristic. Prestimion  saw the  most terrible  anguish in  his
mother's eyes now. He saw enormous  pain in them: pain that was  unbearable, but
which was being borne nonetheless. It took all the force of will he could muster
to keep himself from  flinching away from the  dreadful gleaming stare of  those
appalling eyes.

He took her hands in his. There was a tremor in her fingers that had never  been
there before. Her hands  were cold to the  touch. He realized fully  now how old
she was, how worn.

This  weakness of  hers stunned  him. He  had always  looked to  her to  be  his
ultimate reservoir  of strength.  It had  been that  way in  the time of the war
against Korsibar;  it had  been that  way when  he had  crushed the rebellion of
Dantirya Sambail. Now he understood that that strength was exhausted.

I will have vengeance/or this, Prestimion told himself.

'Mother -' His voice was hoarse, muffled, indistinct.

'Do I frighten you, Prestimion?'

Determined  to give  her no  sign of  the consternation  he felt,  he forced  an
unnaturally hearty  tone, and  a sort  of grin.  'Of course  you don't, mother.'
Leaning forward, he kissed her lightly. 'How could you ever frighten me?'

She was not  deceived. 'I could  see it in  your face as  soon as you  came near
enough to get a  good look at me.  A quick little movement  at the side of  your
mouth, it was: it told me everything.'

'Perhaps I was a bit surprised,' he conceded. 'But frightened^ No. No. You  look
a little older, I suppose. Well, so do I. So does everyone. It happens. It's not
an important thing.'

She  smiled, and  the icy  harshness other  gaze softened  just a  little.  'Oh,
Prestimion, Prestimion, Prestimion, is  this any time of  your life or mine  for
you to begin  lying to your  mother? Don't you  think there are  mirrors in this
house? I frighten myself, sometimes, when I look into them.'

'Mother - oh, mother -' He gave up all pretense, and drew her close against him,
folded her in his arms, held her in a gentle embrace, sending to her whatever he
could of comfort.

She had  become very  thin, Prestimion  realized. Almost  brittle, as though she
were all bones: he was afraid of holding her too tightly for fear that he  would
injure her in  some way. But  she pressed herself  gladly against him.  He heard
something that almost might have been a sob, a sound that he had not heard  from
her before in all the years of his life; but perhaps it had only been an  intake
of breath, he thought.

When he released her and stepped back he was pleased to see that the fixed  hard
stare had relaxed a little further, and something of the old warm glow had  come
back into her eyes.

She nodded to him to follow her,  and led him into a simple antechamber  nearby,
where a flask of wine and two bowls were waiting on a small stone table with  an
inlaid  border  of  bright mother-of-pearl.  Prestimion  noticed  that her  hand
quivered just a little as she poured the wine for them.

They took their  first sips in  silence. He looked  straight at her  and made no
attempt now to avert his eyes, painful as that was for him.

'Was it losing Teotas that did this to you, mother?'

The tone  other reply  was a  steady, unwavering  one. 'I've  lost a son before,
Prestimion. There's nothing worse for a mother than to outlive her child; but  I
know how to handle  grief.' She shook her  head. 'No, Prestimion. No.  It wasn't
Teotas alone that aged me like this.'

'I know something about the dreams you've been having. Taliesme told me.'

'You  know  nothing  about  those dreams,  Prestimion.  Nothing.'  Her  face had
darkened, and  her voice  seemed an  octave deeper  now. 'Until  you've directly
experienced one yourself, you  can't possibly know. And  I pray that the  Divine
will spare you from anything of the kind. - You've not had one, have you?'

'I don't think so. I dream  of Thismet, sometimes. Or that I'm  wandering around
lost in some strange part of the Castle. A couple of nights ago I dreamed that I
was traveling up and  up and up to  Third Cliff in a  floater-sled, without ever
getting there.  But everybody  has dreams  of that  sort, mother.  Just ordinary
irritating dreams that you'd  rather not be having,  but you know you'll  forget
them five minutes after you awake.'

'My dreams are of a different kind. They cut deep; and they linger. Let me  tell
you about my dreams, Prestimion. And then perhaps you'll understand.'

She took a slow sip ofherwine and stared down into the bowl, swirling it slowly.
Prestimion waited,  saying nothing.  He knew  a little  of what  Teotas's deadly
dreams must have been like, and Varaile's, and even, to some degree, Tuanelys's.
But he  wanted to  hear what  his mother  had to  say of  her own dreams, first,
before he spoke to her of those other ones.

She was silent for a time. Then  at last the Lady Therissa looked across  at him
again. Her eyes had taken on once more the cold, hard, ferocious glare they  had
had when he had first stared into  them. But that he knew better, he  might have
thought those eyes were the eyes of a madwoman.

'Here is how it happens, Prestimion. I  lie down, I close my eyes, I  let myself
slide off into sleep as  I have done every night  for more years than I  care to
think  about.'  She spoke  quietly,  calmly, impersonally,  as  though she  were
telling a  mere story,  some fable  about a  person who  had lived five thousand
years before. 'And - it happens once a week, perhaps, or twice, sometimes  three
times - not long after sleep comes,  I feel an odd warmth behind my  forehead, a
warmth that grows and grows  and grows until I think  my brain must be on  fire.
There is a throbbing in my head,  here, here -' She touched her temples  and the
roof of her skull. 'A sensation, also, as of a bright, hot beam of light cutting
into my forehead and going deep within. Going into my soul, Prestimion.'

'Oh - mother - how dreadful, mother -'

'What I've told you so far is the easy part. After the heat, the pain, comes the
dream itself. -  I am in  court. I am  on trial before  a shouting mob.  I stand
accused of the most loathsome betrayals  of trust, of the filthiest of  lies, of
treachery against those I was chosen to serve. It is an impeachment, Prestimion.
I am being removed from my post as Lady of the Isle for having been negligent in
my tasks.'

She paused, then, and took some more wine, and sipped it unhurriedly. The effort
of telling him these things was obviously a drain on her energies.

Prestimion was  all but  certain, now,  that what  was afflicting  her had to be
sendings from  Mandralisca. But  some part  of him  wanted not  to believe that:
wanted to  cling to  the wan  hope that  the poison-taster  had not succeeded in
making contact with his mother's mind.

Grasping at shadows,  he said, 'Forgive  me for this,  mother, but I  see little
difference here between this dream and any of mine in which I chase Thismet down
a corridor of a thousand slamming doors. Our sleeping minds generate  ridiculous
absurdities to torture us. But when I awaken from the Thismet dream I know  that
she's long dead, and the dream evaporates like the empty thing it was; and  when
you awaken from  your dream of  being placed on  trial you should  know that you
were never -'

'No.' The single  syllable cut through  his words like  a knife. 'Your  dream, I
agree, is nothing more than the  floating upward of the crumbling debris  of the
past, like something  drifting on the  tide. You awaken  and it's gone,  leaving
only a troubling  residue that remains  just a little  while. Mine is  something
quite other, Prestimion. It carries the force of reality. I awaken convinced  of
my  own guilt  and shame,  utterly and  unshakably convinced.  And that  feeling
lingers on and  on. It penetrates  me like the  venom of a  serpent. I lie there
sweating, shivering, knowing that I have failed the people of Majipoor, that  in
my term as Lady of the Isle  I did nothing that was good, but  only incalculable
harm, to millions of people.'

'You are convinced of this.'

'Beyond all possibility of argument. It becomes more than a dream. It becomes  a
fact of my existence, as real to me as your father's name and face. A basic part
of me that nothing could eradicate.'

Prestimion's last doubts of  the nature and source  of his mother's dark  dreams
fell away  from him.  How could  he resist  the truth  any longer?  He had heard
things much like this before,  from Dekkeret, speaking ofTeotas's dreams.  Guilt
shame - an overriding sense of unworthiness, a/failure, of having betrayed those
whom one had sworn to serve -

She was watching him. Those eyes - those eyes -!

'You aren't saying anything, Prestimion. Do  you understand in any way what  I'm
telling you?'

He nodded wearily. 'Yes. Yes, I  do. I understand very well. These  are sendings
that you're  receiving, mother.  A malevolent  force is  reaching into your mind
from without and implanting  things, more or less  the way the Lady  of the Isle
implants dreams in those she serves. But the Lady brings only benevolent  dreams
that have no more than the force of suggestion. These dreams of yours carry  far
greater power. They have the force of reality. They are something that you  have
no choice but to believe is true.'

The Lady Therissa seemed a little surprised. 'So you know these things  already,
then!'

Again he nodded. 'And I know who's sending them, too.'

'As do I.' She touched her fingertips to her forehead. 'I still have the circlet
I wore when I was Lady of the Isle. I used it to reach out toward the source  of
my dreams and identify it. It is Mandralisca, back at his evil work again.'

'I know.'

'He has killed Teotas, I think, by sending him dreams that were beyond his power
to endure.'

'I know that  too,' Prestimion said.  'Dekkeret has worked  it out, bit  by bit,
with the help of his friend Dinitak Barjazid. There is another Barjazid loose in
the land, the brother  of the one I  killed at Stoienzar. He  has allied himself
with the poison-taster, who  himself is in league  with the kinsmen of  Dantirya
Sambail, and these  hellish thought-control helmets  are being made  again. They
have been used against Teotas, and against you, and also, I think, Varaile,  and
even, it may be, against my little daughter Tuanelys.'

'But not, so far, against you.'

'No. Nor do I expect that. I think he may be afraid to challenge me outright. To
attack the Pontifex is to attack Majipoor itself: the people will not follow him
there. No, mother, what  he wants is to  intimidate me by striking  at those who
are closest to me, I  think, hoping that he can  force me into making a  deal of
some kind with him and the people he serves. To grant them political control  in
Zimroel, perhaps. To  restore to them  the authority that  I took away  from the
Procurator Dantirya Sambail.'

'He will kill you, if he can,' the Lady Therissa said.

Prestimion  rejected that  idea with  a sweeping  gesture of  his hand.  'That's
something that I  don't fear at  all. I doubt  that he would  attempt it; I know
that if he tried, he  would not succeed.' He left  his seat and crouched at  her
side, resting one hand lightly over her forearm and staring up into her  ravaged
eyes. Tautly he said, 'The one who will die, mother, is Mandralisca. You can  be
certain of that. I would slay him for what he did to Teotas, alone. But now that
I know what he has done to you -'

'It's  your plan  to make  war against  him, then,'  she said,  stating it,  not
asking.

'Yes.'

'And raise an army and invade Zimroel and destroy this man with your own hand? I
hear it in your voice. Is that what you mean to do, Prestimion?'

'Not I myself,' Prestimion said quickly, for he could see where she was  heading
with this.  The patterns  of conflict  crossing her  features were  obvious, her
fierce loathing for Mandralisca and all he represented playing against her fears
for her eldest son's  life. 'Oh, what I  would give to be  the one who cuts  him
down! I won't attempt to deceive you about that. But my days on the battlefield,
I'm afraid, have been  over for a very  long time, mother. Dekkeret  is my sword
now.'



6

It was the sixteenth day of Dekkeret's journey across the broad central plain of
Alhanroel to the great city of  the northwestern coast, Alaisor. He had  arrived
now at the  city of Shabikant  on the River  Haggito, a muddy  southward-flowing
stream that came down from the lyann. The one and only thing Dekkeret knew about
Shabikant was that it was  the place where the famous  Trees of the Sun and  the
Moon grew.

'We should visit them while we have the chance,' he told Fulkari. 'We may  never
pass this way again.'

As Prestimion had suggested, the Coronal and his party had taken the land  route
to Alaisor. It would have been far quicker to go by riverboat down Castle  Mount
via the Uivendak and its tributaries to the swift River lyann, which would carry
them onward to  the shores of  the Inner Sea.  But there was  no need for haste,
since Prestimion would be making the  long trip to the Isle before  returning to
Alhanroel, and he and Dekkeret were both agreed that there were advantages to be
gained  in having  the new  Coronal present  himself formally  at various  major
cities while on his way west, rather than hurrying by them by riverboat, with no
more than a wave and a smile for the millions of people whom he would pass.

Therefore he had gone by way of the Great Western Highway to the grim mercantile
center of Sisivondal  in the midst  of the dusty  Camaganda drylands, a  journey
that was exceedingly ugly but spared them the troublesome crossing of the rugged
Trikkala  Mountains,  and from  Sisivondal  across the  great  curving bosom  of
Majipoor  through Skeil  and Kessilroge  and Gannamunda  and Hunzimar  into  the
grassy Vale of Gloyn, where enormous herds of bizarre animals grazed placidly in
huge  savannas of  copper-colored gattaga-grass,  and onward  beyond Gloyn,  the
halfway point between  Casde Mount and  Alaisor, in a  gendy north-northwesterly
direction, stopping  here and  there to  confer the  honor of  the new Coronal's
presence on this provincial duke and that  rural mayor. With not a word said  to
anyone along the way, of course, of the growing disturbance in Zimroel. That was
no one's business except the Coronal's, thus far. Certainly these good people of
west-central Alhanroel had no need to  know about the minor unrest on  the other
continent.

Dinitak, by donning his helmet daily, was keeping Dekkeret apprised of what  was
going on  over there.  The five  nephews of  Dantirya Sambail  had returned from
their wanderings in the desert and set up a headquarters in the city of Ni-moya,
something that they were  not exactly forbidden to  do, but provocative all  the
same. And  it appeared  that they  had taken  control of  Ni-moya and the region
immediately surrounding it, which, if the reports that Dinitak's  mind-trollings
had  brought  back were  correct,  was definitely  a  violation of  Prestimion's
twenty-year-old decree stripping Dantirya Sambail  and his heirs forever of  any
and all political power in Zimroel.

Dekkeret  did not  feel that  any of  this required  an immediate   governmental
response. He expected that he soon would have confirmation of Dinitak's  reports
arriving by way  of more orthodox  channels, along with  greater detail of  what
actually was taking place, and he would wait until those reports had come.  Then
he and Prestimion together, when they met as planned a month or two from now  at
the coastal city of Stoien, could  work out a fitting strategy for  dealing with
these troublesome Ni-moyans.

The  royal party  reached Shabikant  a short  while past  noon, when  the  city,
spreading before them for many miles to  the north and south on the broad  sandy
plain that bordered the eastern bank  of the Haggito, lay basking in  the warmth
of the bright mid-country sunlight.

Shabikant was a  city of four  or five million  people, evidendy something  of a
metropolis  as  the cities  of  this region  went  -a pretty  place  of graceful
buildings of  pink or  blue stucco  topped with  ornate roofs  of green die. The
mayor and a party of municipal  officials came riding out to greet  Dekkeret and
his companions, and much bowing and starburst-making and speechifying took place
before they finally were escorted into town.

The mayor - his  tide was hereditary and  largely ceremonial, one of  Dekkeret's
aides whispered to  him - was  a rotund, red-faced,  green-eyed litde man  named
Kriskinnin Durch, who appeared generally overwhelmed at finding himself  playing
host  to  the Coronal  Lord  ofMajipoor. Apparendy  Lord  Dekkeretwas the  first
Coronal to have visited Shabikant in several centuries. Kriskinnin Durch  seemed
unable to get over  the fact that this  great event was taking  place during his
own administration.

But  he nevertheless  wasted no  opportunity in  letting Dekkeret  know that  he
himself was descended on his mother's  side from one of the younger  brothers of
the Pontifex Ammirato  - a not  very significant monarch  of four hundred  years
before, as Dekkeret  recalled. 'Then you  are of far  more distinguished lineage
than I am,' Dekkeret told him  amiably, amused rather than annoyed by  the man's
bare-faced pretentiousness.  'For I  am descended  from no  one in particular at
all.'

Kriskinnin Durch seemed not to have the slightest idea of how to respond to such
a bland statement of humble origins coming from the Coronal Lord of Majipoor. He
chose, therefore, to pretend that Dekkeret had not uttered it.

'You will, of course, pay a call on the Trees of the Sun and die Moon while  you
are among us?' the mayor went on.

'That was my very intention,' said Dekkeret.

Fulkari,  speaking so  that only  he could  hear, said,  'They all  seem to   be
descended from the brothers ofPontifexes on dieir mother's side, these backwoods
mayors. And from beggars and  thieves and counterfeiters on dieir  fadier's; but
it all averages out, doesn't it?'

'Hush,' said Dekkeret, with a quick wink and a light squeeze of her hand.

By way of a  royal hostelry he  and Fulkari were  provided with a  pleasant pink
walled lodge right at die river's  edge, which probably was usually employed  to
house the  mayors of  nearby cities  and other  such regional functionaries when
they came calling on Kriskinnin Durch. Dinitak and the rest of Dekkeret's  staff
were taken off to lesser lodgings nearby.

'I most sincerely hope you will  find everything here to your liking,  my lord,'
said  the mayor  obsequiously, and,  backing away,  bowed himself  out of  their
presence.

His chambers, Dekkeret saw, were large but lacking in grace of design. They were
furnished in the overstuffed style that had been popular nearly a century ago in
the  early years  of Lord  Prankipin's reign  - everything  covered with   heavy
brocaded upholstery and  resting on squat,  ungainly legs. A  scattering of drab
crude paintings that surely  had to be the  work of local artists  decorated the
walls, most of them hanging slightly  askew. The whole place was almost  exactly
as he would have expected. Quaint, Dekkeret thought: very quaint.

The  mayor had  tactfully given  Lord Dekkeret  and the  Lady Fulkari   separate
suites, since no reports of any royal marriage had reached the city of Shabikant
and  people  tended  to be  quite  fasddious  about such  matters  out  in these
agricultural provinces. But the two  suites were, at least, adjacent,  and there
was a connecting  door, bolted closed,  that was not  at all difficult  to open.
Dekkeret began to think the mayor might not be quite as stupid as he had  seemed
on first encounter.

'What are these  Trees of the  Sun and the  Moon?' Fulkari asked  him, when they
were  finished  installing   themselves  in  their   rooms  and  their   various
chamberlains and ladies-in-waiting had gone off to their own quarters.  Dekkeret
had thrown the bolt and come into her suite, where he found Fulkari lolling in a
great tub of blue stone, lazily scrubbing her back with a huge brush whose  long
handle was of  such a strange  zigzag design that  it might just  as easily have
been some kind of implement of witchcraft.

'As I understand it,'  he said, 'they're a  pair of fantastically ancient  trees
that are supposed to have the power of oracular speech. Not that anyone's  heard
them say anything for the past diree thousand years or so, I hasten to add.  But
a Coronal  named Kolkalli  came here  somewhere back  then while  making a grand
processional and went to  see the trees, and  precisely at sunset the  male tree
spoke, and said -'

'These trees have sexes?'

'The Tree of the Sun  is male and the Tree  of the Moon is female.  I don't know
how they can tell. Anyway, the Coronal came to the trees at sunset and  demanded
that they predict his future, and at  the moment the sun sank below the  horizon
the  male tree  said thirteen  words in  a language  that the  Coronal  couldn't
understand. Kolkalli became very excited and  asked the priests of the trees  if
they would translate it for him,  but they claimed that nobody in  Shabikant was
able to speak the  language of the trees  any more. In fact  they did understand
it, but they were afraid to say anything, because what the tree had uttered  was
a prophecy  of the  Coronal's imminent  death. Which  happened three days later,
when he was stung on the finger  by a poisonous gijimong and died in  about five
minutes,  which is  essentially the  only thing  that is  remembered about   the
Coronal Lord Kolkalli.'

'You believe this?' Fulkari asked.

'That the Coronal was stung  on the finger by a  gijimong and died? It's in  the
history books. One of the shortest reigns in Majipoor's history.'

'That the tree actually spoke, and it was a prophecy of his death.'

'Verkausi tells the story in one of his poems. I remember studying it in school.
I confess I don't quite see how a  tree would be capable of speech, but who  are
we to quarrel about  plausibility with the peerless  Verkausi? I take a  neutral
position on the subject, myself.'

'Well, if  the trees  do say  anything tonight,  Dekkeret, you  mustn't let  the
locals slither out of translating the message.' Fulkari brandished her fists  in
a pose of mock  ferocity. 'Translate or else,'  you'll tell them! 'Translate  or
die! Your Coronal commands it!'

'And if they tell  me that the tree  has just said that  I've got three days  to
live? What do I do then?'

'I'd  keep  away from  gijimongs,  just for  a  starter,' Fulkari  replied.  She
extended one long, slender  arm toward him. 'Help  me out of the  tub, will you?
It's got such a slippery bottom.'

He took her hand  and she leaped lithely  over the rim of  the tub and into  the
huge towel that he held open for her. Gently, lovingly, he rubbed her dry as she
nestled against him. Then he tossed the towel aside.

For the fiftieth  time that day  Dekkeret was struck  by the luminous  beauty of
her, the radiance of her hair, the  sparkle of her eyes, the strength and  vigor
of her features, the elegant compromise that her body had made between  athletic
trimness and  feminine voluptuousness.  And she  was such  a splendid companion,
besides: clever, alert, perceptive, lively.

It amazed him constantly how  close they had been to  a parting of the ways.  He
still could  hear, all  too often,  echoes of  words that  had once been spoken:
Dekkeret, I don't want to  be the consort of a  Coronal, she had said to  him in
that forest grove on Castle Mount. And he to Prestimion, in the Court of Thrones
of the Labyrinth: It's very clear that she's the wrong woman for me. It was hard
now to believe that they had ever  said such things. But they had. They  had. No
matter, Dekkeret thought:  time had passed  and things were  different now. They
would marry as soon as this annoying business of Mandralisca was behind them.

His eyes encountered hers, and he saw the mischief glinting in them.

'But there's no  time now,' he  said plaintively. 'We  have to get  dressed. His
excellence the mayor is awaiting us for lunch, and the tour of the city, and  at
sunset we go to see the celebrated talking trees.'

'You see? You see? It's business all the time, for the Coronal and his consort!'

'Not all the time,' Dekkeret said, speaking very softly, burying his face in the
hollow of  her shoulder.  She was  warm and  fragrant from  the bath. He ran his
hands lightly down her long lean back, across her smooth rump, along her flanks.
She trembled against him. But she was  holding herself in check just as he  was.
'When today's speechifying is  over,' he said, 'there'll  be just the two  of us
here, and we'll have all night to ourselves. You know that, don't you?'

'Yes. Oh, yes, Dekkeret, I know! But  first - duty calls!' She brushed her  lips
lightly against his to tell him that she had made her peace with that, that  she
understood that a king's pleasure must wait until a king's work was done.

Then she slipped from his grasp and held the door between their suites open  for
him, grinning, making litde  shooing gestures to send  him off to his  own place
while she went about the task of dressing for the public events that lay  ahead.
He blew her a kiss and went  through to get dressed himself: the royal  robes in
the green and gold colors emblematic of his high status, the ring, the  pendant,
all the little outward signs and symbols that marked him as king of the world.

She has changed, he thought. She has grown into her role. We will be very  happy
together.

But first, as Fulkari had said, duty called.

It was  late in  the afternoon  before all  the public  formalities of the royal
visit to Shabikant  were behind them  - the mayor's  lunch at the  town hall had
turned out to be, of course, an interminable banquet attended by all the  city's
notables, with speech after speech of welcome and expressions of hope for a long
and glorious reign -  and Dekkeret and Fulkari  at last, accompanied by  Dinitak
and several of Dekkeret's aides, were being conducted back down to the river  to
view Shabikant's greatest attraction, the Trees of the Sun and the Moon.

Mayor Kriskinnin  Durch, almost  beside himself  with excitement,  trotted along
beside them. With him came half a  dozen of the dignitaries who had been  at the
banquet, now wearing broad purple ribbons across their breasts that marked them,
so the  mayor explained,  as officials  of the  priesthood of  the trees. It was
strictly an honorary  distinction nowadays, he  added: since the  trees had been
silent for  thousands of  years and  the cult  of theirworship  had fallen  into
disuse, the 'priesthood' had in fact become a social society for the leading men
of Shambikant.

Fulkari, letting  a litde  flash of  wickedness go  flickering across  her face,
claimed now to be having second thoughts about the visit. 'Do you diink this  is
so wise, Dekkeret? What if they decide to speak again, after all this time,  and
they tell you something you'd just as soon not have heard?'

'I think the  language of the  trees has probably  been forgotten by  now, don't
you? But we can always opt not  to hear the translation, if it hasn't  been. And
if  it's  a really  bad  prophecy the  priests  will surely  pretend  they can't
understand what the tree is saying, just as they did for Kolkalli.'

Twilight was not far off now. The sun, bronzy-green at this hour, hung low  over
the Haggito, and in these latitudes  gave the illusion of being oddly  broadened
and flattened in  the final moment  of its nightly  descent through the  western
sky.

The trees were contained in a small oblong park at the river's edge. A  palisade
of black metal posts terminating in sharp spikes protected them. They stood side
by side, two solitary figures outlined against the darkening sky in an otherwise
empty field.

The Mayor made a great show of  unlocking the gate and ushering the guests  from
Castle Mount inside.

'The Tree of  the Sun is  on the left,'  he declared, in  a tone tfirobbing with
pride. 'The Tree of the Moon is the one on the right.'

The trees were myrobolans, Dekkeret realized,  but they were by far the  biggest
ones he had  ever seen, titans  of their kind,  and must surely  be very ancient
indeed.  Very likely  they had  been strikingly  impressive, too,  back in  Lord
Kolkalli's time.

But it was easy to see that the  two great trees were finally coming to the  end
of their days.

The  vivid, distinctive  patterns of  alternating green-and-white  stripes  that
marked the trunks  of healthy myrobolans  had faded and  collapsed on these  two
into  blurry  formless  blotches,  and  the  tall  thick  trunks  themselves had
developed alarming curvatures, the Tree of the Sun leaning distressingly off  to
the south, the Tree of the Moon going the other way. Their many-branched  crowns
were nearly bare, with only a scattering of crescent-shaped gray leaves to cover
them. Soil  erosion at  the two  trees' bases  had exposed  their gnarled  brown
roots, though  an attempt  had been  made to  hide that  by strewing  the region
around each tree  with little banners  and ribbons and  heaps of talismans.  The
entire look of the place seemed sad, even pathetic, to Dekkeret.

He and Fulkari had  been provided with talismans  of their own to  contribute to
the pile. Precisely at the moment of sunset they were supposed to go forward and
offer  them to  the trees,  which might  then respond  - here  the mayor  winked
broadly -with oracular statements. Or, he said, they might not.

The sun's lower rim  was just touching the  river, now. It began  to sink slowly
into it. Dekkeret waited, picturing in his mind the immense mass of the world as
it rolled ponderously onward along  its axis, carrying this district  inexorably
into darkness. Now the sun was half  gone. And now nothing but the copper  glint
of its upper  curve remained. Dekkeret  held his breath.  All conversation among
the townsmen had ceased.  The air suddenly seemed  strangely still. There was  a
certain drama about all this, he had to admit.

The mayor  indicated with  a nod  that they  should get  ready to  go forward in
another moment.

Dekkeret glanced at Fulkari and they  advanced solemnly to the trees, he  to the
female tree, she  to the male  one, and knelt  and added their  talismans to the
mounds just as the last glimmer of the sun vanished in the west. Dekkeret  bowed
his head. The mayor had instructed him  to speak to the trees in the  privacy of
his heart and ask them for guidance.

An intense silence ensued as the last light of day disappeared from the sky.  No
one  in  the  group  of  townspeople standing  behind  them  seemed  even  to be
breathing.

And in that silence Dekkeret, in  astonishment, thought that he did indeed  hear
something -  a rusty,  grinding sound,  so faint  that it  scarcely crossed  the
threshold of his hearing,  a sound that might  have been rising from  the ground
out of the roots  of the tree before  which he knelt. Was  it the huge old  tree
swaying in the  first breeze of  evening? Or had  the oracle -  how could it  be
possible?  - actually  spoken, offering  the new  Coronal a  couple of  groaning
syllables of unintelligible wisdom?

He glanced again toward Fulkari. There was a strange look in her eyes, as if she
had heard something too.

But then Kriskinnin Durch  broke the spell with  a cheerful, robust clapping  of
his hands. 'Well done, my lord,  well done! The trees have welcomed  your gifts,
and have, I hope, imparted  their wisdom to you! What  an honor for us this  is,
after all these years,  a Coronal paying homage  to our marvelous trees!  What a
wonderful honor!'

'You didn't really hear anything, did you?' asked Fulkari in a low voice, as she
and Dekkeret moved away.

Had he? No. No. Of course not, he decided.

'The murmuring of the wind is what  I heard,' he said. 'And maybe some  shifting
of the roots. But it's all very dramatic, isn't it? And spooky, even.'

'Yes,' said Fulkari. 'Spooky.'



7

'Sabers today?' Audhari asked, surprised, as he entered the gymnasium room where
he and Keltryn held their twice-weekly fencing session. 'You and I haven't  ever
dueled with sabers before.'

'We will today,' said Keltryn, in a voice tight and hard with anger.

She had arrived at the fencing-hall five minutes early to select her weapon  and
make  herself familiar  with its  greater length  and heft.  Septach Melayn  had
thought she was too light-framed to  work with the saber. Probably he  was right
about that. She had  tried it a couple  of times without much  show of aptitude,
and he had excused her from saber drills thereafter.

But she had no desire today for the elegant posing and prinking of  rapier-work.
Today she  wanted the  big weapon.  She wanted  to slash  and bash and crash, to
inflict damage and if necessary to be damaged herself. None of this had anything
to  do with  Audhari. It  was her  boiling fury  over Dinitak,  mounting up  and
mounting up  and mounting  up until  it overflowed  within her,  that drove  her
actions today.

Keltryn had lost track by  now of how many weeks  it was since Dinitak had  gone
off into  the west-country  with the  Coronal and  Fulkari. Four  weeks, was it?
Five? She could not say. It seemed like an eternity and a half. However long  it
was, it felt like a far longer  span of time than her entire litde  romance with
Dinitak had covered.

It all seemed like nothing more than a dream, now, those few strange weeks  with
Dinitak. Before  he came  along she  had guarded  her body  as though  it were a
temple and she were its high priestess. Then - she was not even sure why; had it
been real physical attraction,  or the impatience of  her own maturing body,  or
even something as trivial  as wanting to step  forward finally into the  kind of
existence that her sister had had so long? - she had opened herself to  Dinitak,
and permitted  him to  penetrate in  more senses  than one  the sanctuary of her
self, and  he had  led her  into realms  of pleasure  and excitement  far beyond
anything she had imagined in her virginal fantasies.

But there had been  more to it than  sex, or so she  had thought. For those  few
weeks she had ceased at last to think of herself as / and had begun to be a we.

And then - as casually as though she were a worn-out garment - he had  discarded
her.  Discarded. No  other word  applied, so  far as  she was  concerned. To  go
jaunting off into the west-country like  that with Dekkeret and Fulkari, and  to
leave her behind because it  was - what had Fulkari  told her? - because it  was
'politically inappropriate'  for him  to be  accompanied by  an unmarried  woman
while he was traveling in the Coronal's entourage -

It was hard  to believe that  any man in  the early throes  of a passionate love
affair would take such a position. Dinitak was famous for his bluntness, for his
rugged honesty:  he was  surely capable  of speaking  up even  to Lord Dekkeret,
telling him, 'I'm sorry,  your lordship, but if  Keltryn doesn't go, I  don't go
either.'

But he hadn't said any such thing. She doubted that the Coronal would have  been
troubled in the slightest by her presence on the journey. It had been  Dinitak's
idea to leave her behind, Dinitak's, Dinitak's, Dinitak's. How could he do  such
a thing? Keltryn asked herself. And the ugly answer came too fast: Because  he's
grown tired of me already. I must be too eager, too demanding, too - young.  And
this is his way of dumping me.

'You've got it all wrong,' Fulkari  had said. 'He's crazy about you,  Keltryn. I
assure you, he hates leaving you at the Castle like this. But he's just too prim
to bring a young woman like you  along with him on an official journey.  He said
it would be degrading to you, that it would make you seem like a concubine.'

'A concubine!'

'You know he has some extremely old-fashioned ideas.'

'Not so old-fashioned that he wouldn't steep with me, Fulkari.'

'You told me yourself that he seemed pretty hesitant even about that.'

'Well -'

Keltryn had to admit that Fulkari  was right on that score. She  had practically
had to throw herself at Dinitak, that day at the pool, before he was willing  at
last to  accept what  she was  offering. And  even then  there had been that odd
reaction of dismay and chagrin, afterward,  when he realized that she had  given
him her virginity. He is just  too complicated for me, Keltryn had  decided. But
that did not help her get over her fury at being excluded from the  west-country
trip, or at being separated for so many weeks from the man she loved while their
romance was still in its full early heat.

In  the days  that followed  her anger  with him  came and  went. Sometimes  she
thought that she had ceased to care, that Dinitak had merely been a phase in her
late adolescence that she would  look back toward eventually with  amusement and
nostalgia. At such times  she would feel entirely  calm for hours at  a stretch.
But then she grew  furious with him for  having wrecked her life.  She had given
him more than her innocence, she told  herself: she had given him her love.  And
he had thrown it mockingly back in her face.

This was one of the angry days, today. Keltryn had dreamed a vivid dream of him,
of the two of them together; she had imagined that he was in her bed beside her;
she had reached hungrily for him,  only to find herself alone. And  had awakened
in a red haze of frustration and rage.

She would be fencing with Audhari this day. Sabers, she thought. Yes. Slash  and
bash  and  crash.  Work  the  anger out  of  her  system  with  some heavyweight
swordplay.

'The tall freckle-faced young man  from Stoienzar seemed baffled and  bemused by
her desire to use  the big weapon. Not  only was she inexperienced  with it, but
his advantage of height and  strength would be enormously more  significant with
sabers than it was  with rapiers or batons,  where technique and quick  reaction
time mattered as much as simple force. But she would not be gainsaid.

'On your guard!' she cried.

'Remember, Keltryn, the saber  uses the cutting edge  as well as the  point. And
you have to protect your arm against -'

She lowered her  mask and let  her eyes blaze  at him. 'Don't  condescend to me,
Audhari. On your guard, I said!'

It was an  impossible match, though.  The saber was  a little too  heavy for her
slender arm. And she had only the sketchiest idea of the correct technique.  She
knew  that the  fencers had  to keep  farther apart  than they  did when   using
rapiers, but that  meant it was  impossible for her  to reach him  with a simple
lunge. She had to resort to crude inelegant back-alley lateral swings that would
surely have brought  yelps of outrage  from Septach Melayn  had he been  here to
witness her performance.

It was satisfying, in its way. It did  allow her to vent some of her wrath.  But
what she was doing was not fencing at all. It had no style, no manner, no  form.
She would have accomplished just as much by grabbing up a hatchet and hacking up
some firewood. Audhari,  perplexed by her  frantic assaults, had  to abandon his
own  well-developed  technique and  parry  whatever way  he  could. Whenever  he
intercepted  the  attack  of her  blade  with  his own,  the  collision  sent an
agonizing shiver of pain through Keltryn's hand and arm. And finally he  blocked
one onslaught of hers so ringingly that her saber flew clattering to the floor.

She  knelt  to pick  her  saber up  and  remained kneeling  for  a moment  more,
struggling to catch her breath.

'What's going on here  today?' Audhari asked. He  tossed his fencing mask  aside
and went closer to her. 'You seem  all worked up over something. Is it  anything
I've done?'

'You? No - no, Audhari -'

'Then what is it? You've chosen a weapon that's obviously too heavy foryou,  and
you're swinging it around like a  battleaxe instead of trying to fence  properly
with me. The best saber  men deploy it almost like  a rapier, you know. They  go
for lightness and speed, not for brute power.'

'I suppose I'll never be a  good saber man, then,' she said  sullenly, accenting
the man. She was maskless now too.

That's hardly  anything to  be ashamed  of, though.  Look, Keltryn, let's forget
this saber business and start over with something lighter, and -'

'No. Wait.'  She shut  him up  with an  impatient wave  of her  hand. A  new and
strange thought was coming into her mind.

It's time to move on beyond Dinitak.

Dinitak had served his  purpose in her life.  Whatever had existed between  them
was over and done with,  as he was going to  find out whenever he returned  from
his trip to the west-country. She didn't need him any more. She would be a  fool
to go on pining as she had for a man who could abandon her so lightheartedly.

To Audhari she said,  'Maybe we should just  forget about fencing this  morning.
There are other things we could be doing.'

Her tone  was sly  but not  ambiguous. Audhari  looked at her uncomprehendingly,
blinking as though  she had spoken  in the tongue  of some other  world. Keltryn
stared straight into  his eyes and  gave him a  hot, intense smile  that she was
certain he could interpret in only one way. Now it seemed that understanding was
dawning in him.

Her own  boldness amazed  her. But  it was  very pleasing  to be doing this, and
doing  it all  on her  own initiative,  without relying  for once  on  Fulkari's
advice. She was  glad now that  Fulkari was away  from the Castle.  The time had
come, she knew, for her  to leam to make her  own way through the whirlpools  of
life.

'Come on, Audhari!' she cried. 'Let's go upstairs!'

'Keltryn -'

Audhari appeared totally  astounded. He was  bright red from  the collar of  his
fencing jacket to the roots of his hair. His lips moved, but no reply emerged.

'What's wrong?' she asked, finally. 'You don't want to, is that it?'

He shook his head. 'How weird you are this morning, Keltryn!'

'I'm not  attractive, is  that it?  Do you  think I'm  ugly? Do  you, Audhari? I
wouldn't want to impose myself on a man who thinks I'm unattractive, you know.'

All too obviously Audhari felt as though he would rather be in the depths of the
Labyrinth  right now  than having  this conversation.  'You're one  of the  most
beautiful girls I've ever seen, Keltryn.'

'Then what's the problem?'

'The  problem is  that that's  not enough.  Whatever we  did upstairs  would  be
completely  meaningless.  You've  never  shown  the  slightest  interest  in me,
thatway, and I've known it and I've respected it. Now you change your mind  just
like that? That isn't right. It doesn't make sense. It feels like you just  want
to use me.'

'And if I do, what of it? You can use me too. Would that be so terrible?'

'I'm not like that,  Keltryn. And it wouldn't  be any good. Any  more than your^
trying to fence with a saber was.'

Now it was her turn  to look astounded. After all  that she had heard while  she
was growing up about how men were nothing but mere monsters of lust, why was  it
her bad luck to  keep running into ones  who worried so much  about morality and
respectability  and  propriety?  Why  was   it  so  difficult  to  find   simple
uncomplicated debauchery when she wanted some?

Audhari, still  red-faced, went  on: 'Please,  can we  just drop  this talk, all
right? Please. If  you want to  fence, let's fence,  and if not,  not. But we've
been such good friends for so long, and now - what you're doing now is so damned
confusing, Keltryn! I beg you, stop it. Just stop it.'

She glowered at him. This was the  last thing she would have expected. 'Oh,  I'm
confusing you, am I? Well, then. I  humbly beg you to forgive me for  that,' she
said frostily. 'I'd never want to feel  that I was guilty of having confused  my
dear sweet friend Audhari.'

Putting her  saber back  in the  weapons rack,  she went  from the  room without
another word.

She knew that she was being cruel, and that she was the confused one. It  didn't
matter. She hated him for having refused her in a moment of -

Need? Spite? She didn't know what it was. What she knew was that she  understood
a great deal less about men than she had thought a few months ago.

She was still simmering with rage half  an hour later when she was crossing  the
Pinitor Court and  caught sight  of Polliex  of Estotilaup,  her former  fencing
class partner, coming from the opposite direction. As he drew near he smiled  at
her in a mechanical,  impersonal way, but showed  no sign of wanting  to stop to
talk. Since her last and most emphatic refusal of his invitations to her to join
him for a weekend of fun and frolic at the pleasure-city of High Morpin, he  had
maintained an attitude of the most rigorous properness in such sporadic  contact
as they had had. He was, after all, a duke's son, and knew how to behave once he
had been turned down.

But Polliex also  knew how to  behave when an  attractive young woman,  even one
that had treated him earlier with disdain, indicated at some later time that his
attentions would not be  unwelcome. Keltryn greeted him  with a warmth that  she
doubted he would misinterpret, and he very smoothly responded without  revealing
the faintest  trace of  surprise when  she began  to speak  of High  Morpin, its
power-tunnels and mirror-slides and  juggernauts, and expressed regret  that she
had never found time to go there even once since coming to Castle Mount.

Polliex  was  remarkably good-looking  and  his courtly,  polished  manners were
extremely pleasing in comparison with Audhari's awkward boyishness and Dinitak's
stern rigorous virtue. Her  three days and nights  with him at High  Morpin were
filled with delight. But why, she wondered, was she holding herself back, as she
found herself again  and again doing,  from full enjoyment  of all that  Polliex
offered? And why did thoughts of Dinitak keep stealing into her mind, even  now,
even here, even when she was  with someone else? She was finished  with Dinitak.
And yet - Oh, damn him! she thought. Damn him!



8

In Thilambaluc, a medium-sized city four hundred miles farther along the road to
Alaisor, Dekkeret,  remembering something  that Prestimion  had told  him he had
done  in  the first  months  of his  own  reign, went  out  at midday  into  the
marketplace in the gray clothes of an ordinary wayfaring man to hear what  might
be heard. It is useful, Prestimion had said, for the Coronal sometimes to  learn
at first hand what  people were saying in  the marketplace. The Castle  atop its
Mount was  too far  up in  the sky  to provide  a clear  enough view of the real
world.

Dinitak was the only one who went with him. They slipped away in a quiet  moment
of the morning, Dekkeret saying nothing about  what he had in mind to anyone  on
his staff. As for Fulkari, she had  been feeling slightly ill that day, and  had
retired to her  room at their  hostelry. He did  not mention his  journey to her
either.

Although  Prestimion  had  told  him  that he  had  gone  in  disguise  on these
excursions, even to the extent of wigs and false mustaches, Dekkeret saw no need
for  any  such  intricate  subterfuges.  Prestimion,  because  he  was  such   a
distinctive-looking man, easily identifiable by the curious contrast between his
surprisingly unprepossessing stature  and his overwhelmingly  kingly, commanding
presence, would have run some risk of being recognized even among people who had
not yet had a chance to see his portrait. The look in his eyes alone marked  him
for what he was.

But Dekkeret believed he was less likely  to be discovered out here so far  from
the Castle. The new coinage showing his features had not yet been released,  and
in any case who would be able to identify a Coronal from his stylized face on  a
coin? Nor were the portraits of  the new Coronal that hung in  every shop-window
particularly  realistic;  Dekkeret  barely  recognized  his  own  image  in them
himself. Wearing rough casual garb that  he had borrowed from one of  the grooms
traveling with the royal party, and with a shapeless cloth cap slouching  across
his head, he  would seem like  nothing more than  just another brawny  itinerant
laborer, a big simple man who had come to town looking for work as a  roadmender
or a logger or something  else equally fit for a  man of his size and  strength.
He'd not  get a  second glance.  And no  one would  have any reason to recognize
Dinitak Barjazid at all.

The marketplace in  Thilambaluc was a  double-lobed oval with  a cobbled roadway
running up  the middle  between the  two sectors.  Everything within was crowded
together higgledy-piggledy, each  booth jammed up  against its neighbor.  In the
eastern half  of the  market were  dozens of  stalls devoted  to vegetables  and
fruits, and the butchers' tables, fresh red meat piled everywhere and streams of
blood running off. A zone given over  to the sale of litde sweet cakes  and mild
frothy beverages led to  one where the tables  were heaped with mounds  of cheap
clothing, and that was fronted by a row of rickety little cooking-stoves  tended
by the ubiquitous Liiman sausage-sellers.

Across the way, on the far side of the center roadway, the merchandise was of an
even more varied  sort: barrels and  sacks of spices  and dried meats;  tanks of
live fish; booths hung with  simple glittery necklaces and bracelets;  stacks of
second-hand books and pamphlets, worn and frayed; mounds ofwickerwork chairs and
flimsy lacquered tables of  the same sort, piled  ten or twelve feet  high; pots
and pans and other kitchen implements of every kind; a corner where jugglers and
other  entertainers  were performing;  another  where public  scribes  had their
tables set out; another advertising the wares of sorcerers and wizards. Both the
marketfolk and buyers were of a wide mixture of races other than human - a  good
many scaly  Ghayrogs here,  a sprinkling  of ashen-hued  Hjorts, the  occasional
towering Skandar or Su-Suheris moving through the throng.

Dekkeret could not remember the last  rime he had been in a  public marketplace.
The richly cluttered texture  of this place fascinated  him. It was so  full, so
busy. He vaguely remembered the one in Normork from his childhood as having been
more spacious, the  merchandise generally finer,  the customers better  dressed,
but of  course Normork  was a  city of  Castle Mount  and this was a nondescript
provincial town in the middle of nowhere.

'Well, shall we go in?' he said to Dinitak.

As he expected, nobody showed any sign of knowing who he was. He moved  casually
through the place, pausing at this stand to examine a cunningly arranged pyramid
of smooth-skinned blue melons, at this one to sniff at some unfamiliar  custardy
looking yellow fruit,  at this to  accept a sample  pinch of savory  smoked meat
from its vendor. Where the crowds  were particularly dense, they opened for  him
as crowds  ordinarily will  when a  man ofDekkeret's  height and  mass is coming
through, but without any sort of deference except to his superior bulk.

He listened wherever he  went, hoping to pick  up someone's opinions of  the new
Coronal, or some reference to having had unusually unpleasant dreams lately,  or
complaints about high taxation, or anything else at all that might guide him  to
a better understanding of daily life in  the world over which he now ruled.  But
these people had not gone to  the market for the sake of  holding conversations.
Aside from the constant interchanges between buyer and seller having to do  with
the price and quality of the merchandise, they said very little.

On  the far  side from  where he  and Dinitak  had entered,  where the   various
entertainers were performing, they saw fifteen or twenty people gathered  around
a gaunt, gray-bearded man in red-and-green robes who seemed to be a professional
storyteller,  judging by  his clear,  firm voice  and the  conspicuously  placed
begging-plate  full of  coins sitting  on the  ground beside  him. 'This   man's
servants,' he was saying as Dekkeret and Dinitak approached, 'would set out fine
golden bowls filled to the brim with  good wine, and at a signal from  the great
wizard the  bowls would  fly through  the air,  and offer  themselves to all the
passers-by, and anyone who  chose could drink of  them at will. I  saw also that
the wizard was able to make statues  walk, and could leap into the fire  without
being burned, and assume two faces at once, and sit in the air many minutes at a
time with his legs folded beneath him without falling, and do many another thing
that defied my understanding.'

A stocky  red-haired man  with a  tanned, seamed  face stood  just to Dekkeret's
left, listening in slack-jawed awe. Dekkeret turned to him and asked, 'Who is he
speaking of, friend?'

'The master magus Gominik Halvor of the city of Triggoin, master. Has just  come
back from Triggoin himself, that one  has, and is telling tales of  the wondrous
things he saw there.'

'Ah,' said Dekkeret. He knew that name, Gominik Halvor: from Triggoin indeed, he
was,  an  adept  of  adepts  among sorcerers,  who  had  served  as  a magus  at
Prestimion's court at the Castle long ago, before Dekkeret's own time there. But
to the best of  Dekkeret's knowledge Gominik Halvor  had been dead ten  years or
more. Well, Dekkeret thought,  a good storyteller does  not have to worry  about
such petty factual details, so long  as he pleases his audience. And  the steady
clink of copper coins into the  man's plate, even the occasional flashing  glint
of a silver piece, testified that he was doing just that.

'One day I stood in the marketplace  of Triggoin, just as you are standing  here
with  me,' the  storyteller went  on, 'and  a sorcerer  appeared, a  blue-furred
Skandar half the size of a mountain,  and took a wooden ball with several  holes
in it, and long ropes of sturdy twine passing through the holes, and threw it up
so high that it went out of sight altogether, while he stood holding the end  of
the rope. Then he beckoned to a  boy of twelve years who was his  assistant, and
ordered him to climb the rope; and  up the boy went, higher and higher  until he
too was gone from view.

'The Skandar then called out three times  to the boy to return, but the  boy did
not reappear. So  the Skandar took  from his waistband  a keen-edged knife  of a
size like this' - and the storyteller indicated with his hands a blade that  was
more like a sword - 'and slashed fiercely through the air with it, once,  twice,
three times, four, five. On the fifth  slash one of the boy's severed arms  fell
to the ground in front of him, and a moment later a leg, and then the other arm,
and the other leg, and then, as we all gasped in amazement and horror, the  head
of the boy. The Skandar put the knife aside then and clapped -his hands, and the
boy's torso came plummeting down out of, the sky: and as we watched, the severed
limbs and head at once reattached themselves to the trunk, and the boy stood  up
and bowed!  And we  were so  astounded by  this that  we rushed forward to press
whatever coins we had upon this  sorcerer, not just weights or crowns,  but some
of us contributed five-royal  pieces, even, which was  the least we could  offer
for such a remarkable performance.'

'I think  he may  be giving  us a  subtle hint,'  said Dinitak. 'But five royals
would be too ostentatious, perhaps. Let's  see if I have something smaller.'  He
scooped a handful of coins from his purse, selected a bright one-royal coin, and
tossed it into  the bowl. There  was a little  round of applause  from the other
onlookers. Here in the provinces, even a single royal had substantial purchasing
power.

'On  another  day,'  the  storyteller continued,  with  a  grateful  look toward
Dinitak, 'I saw a demonstration of  a related kind performed by the  great magus
Wiszmon Klemt, who produced  a thick bronze chain  of fifty yards in  length and
hurled it into the air as easily  as you would toss your hat aloft.  It remained
standing rigidly upright,  as though fastened  to something invisible  overhead.
Then animals were brought  forward: a jakkabole, a  morven, a kempile, a  gleft,
even a haigus.  One by one  they scrambled up  the chain until  they came to the
very top, and there  they immediately disappeared. When  the last of the  beasts
had vanished, the magus snapped his fingers and the chain came tumbling down  to
land neady coiled at his feet; but of the animals that had disappeared,  nothing
was seen again.'

'This is  very entertaining,'  said Dekkeret,  'but not,  I think,  particularly
useful. Shall we move on?'

'I suppose we should,' Dinitak agreed.

As they started up the pathway that ran past the aisle of entertainers a  plump,
oily-skinned man in a  soiled crimson robe detached  himself from the crowd  and
stepped in front of them. Dekkeret saw that he had a little astrological  amulet
of the kind called  a rohilla pinned to  his breast, strands of  blue gold wound
around a lump of pink jade.  Confalume, that superstitious man, had worn  one of
those constandy. Around this man's throat was an amulet of some other sort  that
Dekkeret  could  not  name.  A  flat  triangular  ivory  pendant  inscribed with
mysterious  runes dangled  below it.  That he  was a  professional magus  was  a
reasonable guess.

Which was swiftly confirmed.  'Tell you your future,  my master?' the man  said,
looking up at Dekkeret.

'Nay,  I  think  not,'   Dekkeret  replied,  affecting  a   coarse  east-country
inflection. The last thing  he wanted in this  place was a magus,  even one who,
like this one, was most likely a charlatan, peering into his soul. 'I have me no
more than a few  coppers to my name,  and you'd want more  than that Q| me,  eh,
master?'

'Perhaps your rich friend, then. I saw him throw that big coin in the pot.'

'Nay, he is na' interested neither,' said Dekkeret. And, to Dinitak: 'Come along
now, will ye?'

But the magus was not  so easily put off. 'The  two of you for fifty  weights! A
mere half a crown, a  third my usual price, because  the fees have been so  slow
today. What do you say, my masters?  Fifty weights, the two of you? A  trifle. A
pittance. And I will sketch for you a map of the road diat lies ahead.'

Again Dekkeret shook his head.

Dinitak, though,  laughed and  said, 'Why  not? Let's  see what's  in our stars,
Dekkeret!' And  before Dekkeret  could protest  further Dinitak  pulled out  his
purse again, plucked  five square copper  coins, ten-weight pieces,  from it and
pressed them into the sorcerer's hand. The magus, grinning triumphandy,  clamped
his hand around Dinitak's wrist, peered close into Dinitak's eyes, and began  to
murmur something intended to pass for a formula of divination.

Despite his misgivings Dekkeret found  himself wondering what the man  was going
to tell them. Given his own skepticism toward all things magical and the general
look ofdisreputability about  this marketplace magus,  he had no  expectation at
all of anything of value coming forth. But the degree of inaccuracy in the man's
predictions might be amusing.  If he saw Dinitak  opening a shop in  Alaisor and
becoming a successful merchant, say.  Or undertaking a journey to  some fabulous
place that he had always dreamed of seeing, like Castle Mount.

The baffling thing that happened next was not amusing in the slightest,  though.
Halfway through the mumbled recitation of the formula the grin disappeared,  and
the magus abruptly halted his chant and clapped a hand over his mouth as  though
he  were  about to  be  sick. His  bulging  eyes stared  out  at Dinitak  in  an
expression of absolute shock and horror and fear. It was the way one might  look
at someone who has just revealed himself to be the carrier of a deadly plague.

'Here,' the astrologer said.  His voice was thick  with dread. 'Keep your  fifty
weights, my master! I am unable to perceive your horoscope. I have no choice but
to return your money.' From a pocket  of his robe he drew Dinitak's five  coins.
Then, seizing Dinitak's wrist, the magus dumped the coins back into his palm and
went  scuttling hastily  away, glancing  back a  couple of  times in  that  same
horrified way before losing himself in the crowd.

Dinitak's swarthy  face was  weirdly pale,  and he  was biting  down hard on his
lower lip. His  eyes were wide  with amazement. Dekkeret  had never seen  him as
rattled as  this. Dinitak  looked stunned  by the  consultation's abrupt end. 'I
don't understand,' he said. 'Am I so frightening? What did he see?'



9

'Thastain, with  someone who's  here to  meet with  Count Mandralisca,' Thastain
announced to the cold-eyed Ghayrog guard who stood in front of the building that
once had been the procuratorial palace.

The Ghayrog gave him only  the most perfunctory of flickering  glances. 'Enter,'
he said automatically, and stepped aside.

After all this time Thastain still could  not fully accept the fact that all  he
needed to do was speak his name and he would be admitted to the fabulous  palace
that once  had been  the home  of the  Procurator Dantirya  Sambail. It was hard
enough for him to believe that he  was actually living in the city ofNi-moya  at
all. For a boy  who had grown up  in an unimportant little  provincial town like
Sennec, merely to iw( Ni-moya was  the ambition of a lifetime. 'See  Ni-moya and
die,' the proverb went, in  the part of the country  that he came from. To  find
himself right in  the heart of  that greatest of  all cities, living  just a few
hundred yards from the palace and able to walk in and out of that  extraordinary
building unchallenged, was a stunning thing.

'Have  you ever  been in  Ni-moya before?'  he asked  the stranger  that he  was
escorting to the Count.

'This is my first time,' the man  said. He had an odd thick-tongued accent  that
Thastain was unable to place: lies eesz may vfeerst tiyme. His documents  listed
his place of residence  as Uulisaan. Thastain had  no idea where that  might be.
Perhaps it was  in some remote  district on the  southern coast, far  down below
Piliplok. Thastain knew that people  from Piliplok spoke with a  strange accent,
and maybe those who lived even farther down the coast spoke even more strangely.

But there was very little about this visitor that Thastain did not find strange.
In recent  months a  whole procession  of curious  characters had  come here  on
business with Mandralisca. It was Thastain's responsibility to meet them at  the
hostelry  where  most such  visitors  were put,  conduct  them to  the  official
headquarters of  the Movement  on Gambineran  Way, check  out their  appointment
documents there,  and lead  them into  the palace  for their  meetings with  the
Count.  He had  grown accustomed  to seeing  all sorts  of marginal  types  pass
through, an odd assortment  of individuals who all  too plainly moved along  the
weirder, more dimly  lit edges of  society. Mandralisca seemed  to have a  great
appetite for people of that sort. This one, though, was perhaps the most curious
of them all.

He was very tall and thin, almost flimsy-looking, and dressed in a peculiar way,
a coarse and heavy black overjacket thickly padded with down above a light tunic
of faded green silk. The look in  his eyes, somehow both arrogant and uneasy  at
the  same time,  was peculiar.  The eyes  themselves were  peculiar too,  almost
yellowish where  they ought  to have  been white,  and an  eerie purple at their
centers. Peculiar  also was  his face,  broad and  pale with  small features all
jammed together in the middle. The way he held his shoulders, hunched up against
his ears.  The way  he walked,  as if  he suspected  diat his  head might  be in
imminent danger of coming loose at the neck. Even his name: Viitheysp Uuvitheysp
Aavitheysp.  What  kind  of  name  was  that?  Everything  about  this  man  was
mystifying. But  it was  not Thastain's  job to  pass judgment  on Mandralisca's
visitors, only to show them to the Count's office.

'Is an excellent  city, Ni-moya,' Viitheysp  Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp remarked,  as
Thastain led him down the inland side of the palace. They were passing through a
gallery linking one wing and the next that had one long window of clear  quartz,
affording a stunning view of the metropolitan core that rose in level upon level
up into the hills. 'Much  have I heard concerning it.  Is one of best cities  in
world, I think.'

Thastain nodded. 'The best, they say. Nothing to rival it even on Castle Mount.'
He slipped easily into his tour-guide mode. Somehow that eased the tensions that
this unsettling stranger had evoked in him. '- Have you had much of a chance  to
see the place yet? That's the Museum of Worlds, over on that hill up there.  And
the Gossamer Galleria, down there to the left. You can just barely make out  the
dome of the Grand Bazaar from here, with the beginning of the Crystal  Boulevard
beyond it.'

He felt almost like a native,  casually pointing out the great attractions  like
that to this visitor from afar. In truth Thastain was as much in awe of  Ni-moya
and its wonders now as when the Five Lords had moved their capital here from the
Gornevon desert many months before. But in his heart he liked to pretend that he
was  a  genuine child  of  the great  city,  quick-witted and  worldly-wise  and
sophisticated.

When they came to the end of the quartz gallery Thastain turned left and  headed
out onto the covered walkway that would bring them to the riverfront side of the
palace,  which was  Mandralisca's sector  of the  building. 'We  go this   way,'
Thastain said, as the visitor started to stray off into the private quarters  of
the  Lord  Gaviral.  Officially  the  procuratorial  palace  now  was  Gaviral's
residence, but Mandralisca had taken half the southern wing, with the best river
views, for his own uses. There had  been a time when the Five Lords  had treated
Mandralisca more or less as they treated their servants, but that time was  over
now. It seemed to Thastain that  these days Mandralisca gave the orders  and the
Five Lords did pretty much as he said.

Another guard waited at  the end of the  walkway: a Skandar, he  was, none other
than Thastain's old nemesis Sudvik Gorn, who had made such a nuisance of himself
long ago when  they had gone  up north to  burn the keep  of the Vorthinar lord.
Thastain gave him the merest glance, now. The course of time had raised Thastain
up to become a member of  Count Mandralisca's inner circle of aides,  and Sudvik
Gom was nothing but a hallway guard.

'Visitor for the Count,' Thastain told the Skandar. And, to Viitheysp Uuvitheysp
Aavitheysp, once again:  'We go this  way.' He indicated  a spiral ramp  leading
toward a dizzying series of elbow-bend staircases that went up and up and up.

At the beginning Thastain had feared he would never learn his way around  inside
the procuratorial palace. But, huge though  it was, he had taken the  measure of
it by this time.

The first time he saw it from the river it had seemed as immense as he  imagined
the Coronal's castle  to be, but  he knew now  that much of  the palace's height
came from the  shining white pedestal  that lifted it  far above the  riverfront
level. The host of external galleries and staircases that one viewed from  below
gave the place the appearance of a formidable maze, but that was misleading. The
building itself, a  complex series of  interlocking pavilions and  balconies and
porches, was certainly a vast one, but its interior plan was strikingly  logical
and Thastain had quickly mastered the routes that traversed its interior.

Mandralisca  had taken  for his  office the  magnificent chamber  in which   the
Procurator Dantirya Sambail had lorded it in the days when he ruled with  almost
regal splendor  over the  continent of  Zimroel. Dantirya  Sambail had been dead
more than  twenty years  now -  longer than  Thastain had  been alive  - but the
presence of  that larger-than-life  man still  seemed to  linger in the enormous
room. The splendor of its gleaming floor, a burnished slab of pink marble inlaid
with crisscrossing swirling  slashes of some  dazzling jet-black stone,  and the
shining  crescent  arc  of the  great  curving  desk of  crimson  jade,  and the
brilliant white wall-hangings of thick  rich steetmoy fur, all spoke  eloquently
of the Procurator's fabled taste for luxury.

The entire wall of the chamber on its riverfront side was a single great  bubble
of quartz of the finest  quality, as clear as air  itself. Through it one had  a
view of the great sweeping curve of  the River Zimr, which at this point  was so
wide that  one was  just barely  able to  see all  the way  across to  the green
suburbs on the farther bank. A string of huge brightly-painted riverboats  laden
with passengers  and freight  coursed serenely  along the  river's main channel.
Directly below the window,  a long row of  low buildings with brilliantly  tiled
roofs and  ornate mosaic  ornaments on  their walls  lined the  river quay for a
considerable distance, glittering in the midday sun: humble customs-houses, they
were, which Dantirya Sambail had had redecorated at a cost of many thousands  of
royals so that they would be more pleasing  to his eye as he looked out on  them
from high overhead.

The Count  Mandralisca was  behind his  desk when  Thastain entered.  The little
helmet of bright metal mesh that he always kept close by him was at the  Count's
elbow. His other two constant companions  were beside him: to his left,  sorting
through  a  pile  of documents,  the  little  bandy-legged aide-de-camp  Jacemon
Halefice, and to his right that shifty-eyed Suvraelinu, Khaymak Barjazid, he who
designed and built Mandralisca's thought-helmets for him.

We three, Thastain  told himself, are  the only people  in the world  that Count
Mandralisca trusts - as much as he trusts anyone at all.

'Well,'  Mandralisca said,  with the  false joviality  that he  often liked   to
affect. 'It is  Duke Thastain. And  who have you  brought me this  time, my good
duke?'

Back  in  the  earliest  weeks  of  Thastain's  time  in  the  service  of Count
Mandralisca, when he was  nothing more than a  green boy up from  the provinces,
the  Count, in  that darkly  playful way  of his  that could  sometimes seem  so
threatening, had  arbitrarily bestowed  an honorary  title of  nobility on  him:
Count ofSennec and Horvenar. And  thereafter he would often address  Thastain as
'Count  Thastain.'  It  was  a  meaningless  thing,  just  another  example   of
Mandralisca's mocking, sardonic sense of humor. Thastain knew better than to  be
offended by it. That was simply  Mandralisca's style, cold and often cruel,  and
always capricious. Thastain had quickly come to see that for the Count, coldness
and cruelty and capriciousness were  simply useful ways of sustaining  his power
and authority. There was no way  he could make people love him,  but engendering
fear through unpredictability could be just about as effective.

Lately, though, Mandralisca had taken  to calling Thastain 'duke' instead.  More
of his capriciousness, Thastain wondered,  or was it something else?  Perhaps it
could be a sign  that he was advancing  in Mandralisca's favor. Or  maybe it was
simply an indication that Mandralisca remembered  only diat once upon a time  he
had amused himself by giving the  boy from Sennec a make-believe title,  but had
forgotten which title it was.

More likely the latter, Thastain decided: though he had reason to regard himself
as one ofMandralisca's special favorites, he knew it was foolish to believe that
he had any more  real significance for the  Count than his leather  boots or the
cutlery he used  at dinner. Thastain  understood quite well  by now that  he was
here simply as something for Mandralisca to use. The only person whose existence
held any sustained importance in Mandralisca's mind was Mandralisca himself.

'This isViitheysp UuvitheyspAavitheysp,'  declared Thastain, stumbling  over the
difficult name, though he tried his best to prolong and roll the double  letters
as the visitor had done. 'Of Uulisaan.'

'Ah. From Uulisaan,' Mandralisca repeated, savoring the word with real  delight.
He seemed to disappear into a  mood of meditative contemplation for a  moment or
two. Then, to Thastain: - 'Do you know where Uulisaan happens to be, dear duke?'

Thastain kept his  face expressionless. This  duke thing was  beginning to annoy
him now.

'Not at all, your excellence.'

Mandralisca glanced  toward Viitheysp  Uuvistheysp Aavitheysp,  who had remained
just within the arching  doorway, standing hunched up  against the wall in  that
weird awkward  stiff-bodied way  of his.  'It is  in Piurifayne,  is it  not, my
friend? The southwestern part of the province, over on the Gonghar side?'

'That is correct, milord Mandralisca,' said Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp.

Piurifayne?

The word  ran through  Thastain's mind  like a  fiery sword.  Piurifayne was the
province  of the  Metamorphs, the  Shapeshifters, the  race that  had ruled  the
planet before  the first  human settlers  arrived. Piurifayne,  yes. Nobody ever
went there;  but everyone  knew about  it, that  wild primordial  rain-forest in
central Zimroel, lying between the mountains of the interior and the swift River
Steiche, where the Shapeshifters had been  compelled to live for the past  seven
thousand years. Lord  Stiamot had ordered  them to be  penned up in  there after
completing  his  conquest  of  them in  the  Shapeshifter  War;  and there  they
remained, mysterious and aloof, dwelling  completely apart from the other  races
that had come to  colonize the planet that  once had been theirs,  and generally
feared by them.

How  could  this man  be  from Piurifayne?  No  one but  Shapeshifters  lived in
Piurifayne.  And  Shapeshifters  were  forbidden by  ancient  law  to  leave it,
although it was common knowledge that  from time to time they did,  disguised as
humans or  sometimes as  Ghayrogs, to  move surreptitiously  on shadowy  errands
through the cities of the settled world.

So that could only mean -

'Now do  you understand,  my good  duke?' said  Mandralisca, giving Thastain his
most icy smile.  And, to Viitheysp  Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp: 'Perhaps  it would be
more comfortable for you to take another form, my friend -'

'If it would  be safe to  do so here  -' said the  Metamorph, with quick glances
toward Thastain, toward Jacemon Halefice, toward Khaymak Barjazid.

'They are  my colleagues,'  said Mandralisca  grandly. 'Have  no fear.' And with
that assurance Viitheysp  Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp at  once began to  undertake the
shift out of human guise.

It was something that Thastain had never seen before. He had never even  dreamed
that he would. Like  nearly everyone he knew,  he looked upon the  Shapeshifters
with horror and  a kind of  dread: terrifying, archaic  creatures, unfathomable,
unknowable, lurking out there in  their jungles full of poisonous  resentment of
the people  who had  displaced them  from their  world, plotting  who knew  what
ultimate revenge  for that  displacement. The  thought of  actually being in the
same room with one made his flesh creep.

But he watched in astonishment, unable  to turn his eyes away, as  the Metamorph
writhed  and  shivered within  his  odd, ill-fitting  clothing  like a  creature
preparing to molt its skin, and the features of his curious face seemed to  grow
soft and blurry and indistinct-  they were actually flowing- and  his hunched-up
shoulders commenced a weird  dance of their own,  jerking and twisting about  as
though trying to turn at right angles to his spine -

A few moments more  and the transformation was  finished. The man whom  Thastain
had brought  to this  room was  gone, and  in his  place was  a different being,
frail-looking, elongated  and angular,  with sallow,  faintly greenish  skin and
inward-sloping eyes that had no pupils and knife-sharp cheekbones and  slit-like
lips and a tiny, almost invisible nose.

A Metamorph. A Shapeshifter.

Thastain still had trouble believing it: a creature out of forbidden Piurifayne,
standing no more than a  dozen feet away from him.  Here in the office of  Count
Mandralisca, by express invitation of the Count himself.

The Vorthinar lord, up there in the north, had been in league with Shapeshifters
- Thastain had seen one up there  himself, walking patrol in front of the  keep,
the  first and  only time  before this  that he  had. But  that was  one of  the
reasons, so he thought, that the Five Lords had deemed it desirable to break the
Vorthinar lord's power. One did not consort with Metamorphs. It was like allying
oneself with demons. But now -  Mandralisca himself - a Shapeshifter right  here
in the procuratorial palace -

Thastain looked toward Jacemon Halefice,  and then toward Khaymak Barjazid.  But
they betrayed no signs of surprise  or dismay. Either they had mastered  the art
of concealing such feelings  in the presence of  the Count, or they  had already
been aware of the identity of the mysterious visitor.

Mandralisca gathered the Barjazid helmet into his two cupped hands, the way  one
might gather up a little  pile of treasured coins, and  held it out in front  of
him. 'This is  our little weapon,'  he said to  the Metamorph, 'the  device with
which we will  free our continent  from the grip  of our Alhanroel  masters. Our
experiments  with it  have been  quite fruitful  so far.'  He nodded  across  at
Khaymak Barjazid. 'We are indebted to this man for making it available to us.'

'And  with this  small device,'  said Viitheysp  Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp,  'it  is
possible to reach  into any mind  in the world,  you say?' The  thick, contorted
accent was gone, now that the Metamorph had resumed his own form. His voice  had
become silken-smooth. 'And to wield power over that mind?'

'So it would appear.'

'The Coronal's mind? The Pontifex's?' The Metamorph paused. 'Or the  Danipiur's,
say?'

'It seemed to me altogether too  dangerous, too provocative, to meddle with  the
minds of the Coronal or  the Pontifex,' Mandralisca replied smoothly.  'I assure
you that I could do it  if I chose; but I have  not so chosen. I will tell  you,
though,  that I've  successfully reached  the minds  of certain  members of  the
Pontifex's family:  his brother,  his mother,  his wife,  his child.  By way  of
letting him know our capabilities, so to speak. -You understand that this is  in
the strictest  confidence, to  be shared  with no  one other  than the  Danipiur
herself. And as for the Danipiur -  no, no, of course, I would never  attempt to
tamper with the mind of the great queen whose ambassador you are.'

'But you could, if you wanted to?'

'Very likely I could. But to what  purpose? It would only offend and repel.  The
Piurivars are our  friends. As you  know, we regard  you as allies  in our great
struggle.'

Thastain was as thunderstruck by that calm statement as he had been by the first
revelation of the  Shapeshifter's identity. Allies  ? Was that  what Mandralisca
had in mind? Human  and Metamorph, fighting side  by side against the  forces of
the Pontifex and the Coronal?

He must, Thastain thought. Why else  was this creature here? And why  else would
Mandralisca  be  speaking  so  respectfully of  the  Shapeshifter  queen,  or so
politely calling the Shapeshifters by their own name for themselves?

'Would you like to see a little demonstration of our helmet?' Mandralisca  asked
pleasantly. He dangled the device in Thastain's direction. 'Here, Duke Thastain.
Suppose you slip this over your head and show our friend how it functions.'

'Me?'

'Why not? You're a quick-witted lad. You'll  pick up the trick of it in  no time
whatever. Here. Here.'

Thastain was aghast. He had  never so much as touched  the helmet. So far as  he
knew, no one  but Mandralisca himself,  and, he supposed,  Khaymak Barjazid, was
allowed to go near  it. Using it required  special training, and was  said to be
difficult and exhausting besides, and very risky for anyone inexperienced in its
handling. He held up both his  hands, palms facing outward, and said  numbly, 'I
beg that you excuse me from this, your grace. I have no skill for such things.'

But Mandralisca was insistent. Once more he extended the hand holding the helmet
toward Thastain. There was a chilly determination in his eyes that Thastain  had
seen all too many times before, but never aimed at him. 'Here, my little  duke,'
Mandralisca said again. 'Here.'

It would be suicide for  him to put the helmet  on. Was that what the  Count was
trying to achieve? Or was this merely one more of those little capricious  games
that he so very much enjoyed playing?

Thastain was still  debating how to  handle the situation  when Khaymak Barjazid
leaned toward Mandralisca and said, in a quiet, almost murmuring tone, 'If I may
interject something here,  your grace, allow  me to point  out that it  could be
possible for a user  unfamiliar with the helmet's  functions to damage it  if he
uses it improperly.'

That seemed to come as  news to the Count. 'Indeed,  is that so? Well, then:  we
wouldn't want to do  any harm to our  helmet, would we?' He  caressed the little
device in  that fondling,  loving way  he had  with it.  'Perhaps we'll skip the
demonstration. I'm not in the mood for working with the helmet just now  myself.
Unless you, Barjazid -  no, never mind. No  demonstration.' To the Metamorph  he
said, 'I'll  gratify your  curiosity about  our helmet  another time.  What I've
asked you  here to  discuss today  is the  precise nature  of the  alliance I've
proposed to the Danipiur.'

'She is eager to hear your offer,' said Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp.

Thastain listened in amazement verging  on disbelief as Mandralisca swiftly  set
forth his plan for establishing the independence of the continent of Zimroel. He
meant very shortly to issue a proclamation  in the name of the Lord Gaviral,  he
said, dissolving the ancient bonds  that linked Zimroel to the  dominant eastern
continent. At the same time a new constitution would be promulgated under  which
Zimroel would become a separate entity with Ni-moya as its capital and the heirs
of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail as its monarchs. The Lord Gaviral would  take
the title of  Pontifex of Zimroel,  and one of  his brothers, yet  to be chosen,
would be designated as  Zimroel's Coronal. The continent  ofSuvrael, Mandralisca
added, would proclaim its own independence at the same time, and would institute
a separate government for itself with Khaymak Barjazid as its first king.

It was, said Mandralisca, the Lord Gaviral's great hope that the new governments
of Zimroel and Suvrael would be swiftly recognized by the leaders of  Alhanroel,
and that  peaceful relationships  among the  three continents  would continue as
they had  since time  immemorial. But  the Lord  Gaviral was  not so naive as to
think that men like Prestimion and Lord Dekkeret would greet the secession  with
any such benign  response. On the  contrary, Mandralisca continued:  it was much
more probable that the Alhanroel government would launch a military invasion  of
Zimroel and attempt to restore its supremacy by force.

'That could never succeed,' Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp said unhesitatingly.
'The supply-line  distances are  too great.  It would  take every  crown in  the
imperial treasury to cover the cost of sending an army here big enough to do the
job.'

'Precisely,' said  Mandralisca. 'And  even if  they tried  it anyway,  that army
would find itself confronting the angry opposition of the billions of  patriotic
citizens of  Zimroel. Who  are loyal  to the  family of  the Procurator Dantirya
Sambail and unalterably  hostile to the  exploitative rule of  the Pontifex. The
armies of Prestimion would have to battle every step of the way, from the moment
of their landing on our coast onward.'

'Ah,' said  the Metamorph  reflectively. 'So  the traditional  allegiance of the
people of Zimroel to the  Pontifical government will melt away  overnight, then.
You are certain of that, Count Mandralisca?'

'Completely.'

'Perhaps you are correct.' The Metamorph indicated by his tone that such  things
as the loyalties of the people of Zimroel were a matter of complete indifference
to him. 'But in what way, I must ask, does all this concern the Danipiur and her
subjects?'

'In this way,' replied Mandralisca.  He leaned forward intently and  pressed the
tips of his  fingers together. 'What  is the most  likely place for  an invading
force from Alhanroel  to land here?  Piliplok, of course:  the main port  on our
eastern coast. It's the  gateway to all of  Zimroel, as everyone is  well aware.
Therefore  Prestimion and  Dekkeret will  expect us  to fortify  it against   an
attack. And for the  same reason, they'll not  choose to make their  landfall at
Piliplok at all.'

'There is no other place for an army to come ashore,' said the Metamorph.

'There is Gihorna.'

An inflection that Thastain interpreted as surprise entered Viithesp  Uuvitheysp
Aavitheysp's voice. 'Gihorna? There are no first-class ports anywhere along  the
whole Gihorna coast.'

'But there are some third-class  ones,' said Mandralisca. 'Prestimion has  never
been known for doing things the easy  way, or the expected way. I think  they'll
land at five  or six  places in  Gihorna at  once, and  begin marching toward Ni
moya. They will have  two possible routes. One  lies straight up the  coast, via
Piliplok, and up the  Zimr from there to  the capital. But that  will bring them
into confrontation with the armies that they must know will be waiting there  to
defend against just such a Piliplok landing. The only other route, as you surely
already see, is by  way of the River  Steiche and its surrounding  valley. Which
would bring them up against the borders of the province ofPiurifayne.'

Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp  received that statement  with the same  show of
indifference as before. The slitted eyes  displayed a look of what could  almost
have been boredom.

'I  ask  you again,  what  is that  to  us?' said  the  Shapeshifter. 'Not  even
Prestimion would dare cross into Piurifayne  for the sake of making war  against
Ni-moya.'

'Who knows what Prestimion would or would  not do? But this I do know:  that any
incursion into the  jungles of Piurifayne,  a difficult proposition  at best for
any army no matter  how well equipped, would  be made fifty times  harder if the
Piurivars were to engage in a campaign of guerilla warfare to keep the  imperial
forces away from their villages.  Indeed a line of Piurivar  warriors positioned
up  and down  the Steiche  itself would  quite probably  be able  to succeed  in
preventing the  imperial'army from  entering Piurifayne  at all.  Eh, my friend?
What do you think?'

Viitheysp Uuvitheysp  Aavitheysp responded  with a  silence so  long and intense
that Thastain, listening  to the colloquy  in mounting disbelief,  felt his ears
ringingwith  it. Was  Mandralisca serious?  Was the  Count actually  telling  an
ambassador from the Danipiur that he wanted Metamorphs to go into battle in  the
service of the Five Lords against the Alhanroel government? Thastain's mind  was
reeling. This was all like some very strange dream.

Then at last the  Shapeshifter said calmly, 'If  Prestimion or Dekkeret were  to
send an army marching  through our province, that  would, of course, concern  us
greatly. But I tell you once more, I think that they would not do that. And  for
us to fortify our Steiche boundary  for the sake of preventing them  from coming
across it would be an act of war against the imperial government that would have
serious consequences for my people. Why  should we risk it? What interest  do we
have in taking  sides in a  struggle between the  Pontifex of Alhanroel  and the
Pontifex of Zimroel? They are equally detestable to us. Let them fight it out to
their heart's content. We will go  on living our own lives in  Piurifayne, which
your Lord Stiamot kindly granted to us long ago as our little sanctuary.'

'Piurifayne is  in Zimroel,  my friend.  An independent  government of  Zimroel,
grateful  for Piurivar  assistance in  the war  of liberation,  might show   its
gratitude in interesting ways.'

'Such as?'

'Full citizenship for your people? The right to move freely wherever you please,
to hold property outside Piurifayne, to engage in any form of commerce? - An end
to all forms of discrimination against your race, is what I'm offering. Complete
equality throughout the continent. Does that interest you, Viitheysp  Uuvitheysp
Aavitheysp? Would it be worth putting troops along the Steiche for?'

'It would be if we could trust your promise, Count Mandralisca. But can we?  Ah,
can we. Count Mandralisca?'

'You will have my oath on it,' said Mandralisca piously. 'And as my good friends
here will testify, my oath is  my sacred bond. Is that not  so,Jacemon? Khaymak?
Duke Thastain, I call upon  you to speak on my  behalf. I am a man  of honor. Is
that not so, my friends?'



10

At Kesmakuran, a neat little city  of perhaps half a million souls  five hundred
miles  deeper into  the west-country,  with row  upon tow  of low  square-roofed
houses built mainly of a handsome pinkish-gold stone, Dekkeret halted to perform
an act of homage at the tomb of Dvorn, the first Pontifex. Visiting the tomb was
Zeidor  Luudwid's  idea.  'Dvorn  is  greatly  venerated  in  these  parts,' the
chamberlain said. 'It might well be taken  as sacrilege, or at the very least  a
serious insult, if the Coronal were to come this way and not lay a wreath on his
tomb.'

'The tomb of Dvorn,' Dekkeret repeated in wonder. 'Can it really be? I've always
thought of Dvom as a purely mythical character.'

'Someone had to be the first Pontifex,' Fulkari pointed out.

'I grant  you that.  He may  even have  been named  Dvorn, I suppose. That still
doesn't mean  that anything  we think  we know  about him  has any foundation in
reality, though. Not after thirteen thousand years. We're talking about  someone
who lived almost as long before Lord Stiamot's time as Stiamot is before ours.'

But Zeidor Luudwid was a persuasive person in his quiet, self-effacing way,  and
Dekkeret knew better than to ignore his advice. As the prime carryover from Lord
Prestimion's administration, he was better  versed in the minutiae of  the realm
than anyone else in the new Coronal's entourage.

And, according to Zeidor Luudwid, the Pontifex Dvorn was worshipped  practically
as a god in this region, the alleged  place of his birth. The cult of Dvorn  had
adherents  for  a  thousand  miles  in all  directions.  It  was  right  here in
Kesmakuran, so  it was  claimed, that  Dvorn had  launched his  uprising against
whatever chaotic pre-Pontifical government had  existed in the earliest days  of
the occupation of Majipoor by human settlers; and here he had been buried  after
a distinguished reign of nearly a hundred years. Pilgrims came constantly to his
tomb, said Zeidor Luudwid, and knelt before the sacred vessels in which some  of
his  hair and  even some  of his  teeth were  preserved, and  begged the   great
Pontifex to intercede with the Divine for the continued welfare and security  of
the citizens of Majipoor.

Dekkeret had heard nothing about any  of that before. But it was  impossible for
any Coronal to make himself familiar  with all the multitudinous cults that  had
sprung up in the world since Prankipin had first begun his policy of encouraging
superstitions of every variety.

What Dekkeret did know were the legendary tales: how in a troubled time, five or
six hundred years  after the first  human colonists had  arrived on Majipoor,  a
provincial leader  named Dvorn  had  assembled  an army  somewhere in   the west
country and marched across province after province, preaching a gospel of  world
unity and stability and gaining the  allegiance of all those who had  wearied of
the strife  between one  district and  another, until  he was  the master of the
entire continent of Alhanroel. He had given himself the title of Pontifex, using
a word that had meant 'bridge-builder' in one of the languages of Old Earth, and
had chosen Barhold,  a young army  officer, to govern  the world in  association
with him, with the title of Coronal Lord. It was Dvorn who had decreed that upon
the death  of each  Pontifex the  Coronal Lord  would succeed  to that title and
would select a new  Coronal to take his  own place. Thus he  saw to it that  the
monarchy  would  never become  hereditary:  each Pontifex  would  pick the  best
qualified member of his  staff as his successor,  ensuring that the world  would
remain in capable hands from generation to generation.

All of that was  told in the third  canto of the vast  epic poem that was  every
schoolchild's bane, Aithin Furvain's The Book of Changes. But it was significant
that Dvorn  was merely  a name  even to  Furvain. Nowhere  in the third canto or
anywhere else did the poet make the slightest attempt to depict him as a person.
He provided no hint of what Dvorn  might have looked like; he told no  anecdotes
that gave insight into Dvorn's character; Dvorn existed in the poem only in  his
function as founder of the government and primordial giver of laws.

So far  as Dekkeret  was concerned,  Dvorn was  entirely mythical, a traditional
culture-hero, a symbolic figure that someone had invented to explain the origins
of  the  Pontifical system.  Dekkeret  suspected that  the  medieval historians,
feeling a need to attach a name to that otherwise unknown warrior who had helped
to bring that system into being, and whose life and deeds and even identity  had
long since  been lost  in the  mists of  early history,  had chosen  to call him
'Dvorn.'

As Fulkari had suggested, someonehad to be the first Pontifex. Let him, then, be
called Dvorn. It would  never have occurred to  Dekkeret that an actual  tomb of
Dvorn might exist in some  remote part of west-central Alhanroel,  complete with
actual physical relics of the first Pontifex (several of his teeth, they said, a
knucklebone or  two, and  also -  after thirteen  thousand years!  - some of his
hair), or that he was worshipped in a quasi-godlike fashion by the people of the
area.

Yet here was the Coronal Lord Dekkeret in Kesmakuran, standing just outside  the
veritable tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn, making ready to present himself before the
statue of the ancient monarch and humbly ask for Dvorn's blessing on his reign.

He felt incredibly foolish. Prestimion  had never warned him that  being Coronal
might involve his traveling around the land kneeling before provincial idols and
sacred oracular trees  and all manner  of other fantastic  idiocies, begging for
the mercy of  inanimate things. He  was annoyed with  Zeidor Luudwid for  having
pushed him into this thing. But there was  no backing out of it now: it was  his
duty as Coronal, he supposed, to  participate in the beliefs and observances  of
his people whenever he chose to  leave the tranquility of Castle Mount  and come
out  here  among  them; and  it  did  not matter  how  inane  those beliefs  and
observances might be.

The tomb was a deep artificial cave that had been carved, no one seemed to  know
how  long ago,  into the  side of  a good-sized  mountain of  black basalt  just
outside town. A pair of odd  wooden structures that looked very much  like cages
were affixed to the cave wall on  either side of the entrance to the  tomb, high
off the ground and reachable only by a narrow ladder of wooden struts  connected
by ropes. Each cage contained a  vertically mounted wooden wheel, much like  the
water-wheel that a miller might use.

Two young women wearing only  loincloths were marching constantly upward  on the
paddles of these  wheels, causing them  to revolve without  cease. Their slender
naked bodies  gleamed with  perspiration, but  they moved  tirelessly, keeping a
steady rhythmic  pace, as  though they  were mere  parts of  the machinery about
them.  Their faces  showed the  fixed expressions  of sleepwalkers;  their  eyes
stared far off into other worlds.

Two other  women dressed  just as  skimpily stood  below, near the rope-ladders,
looking up vigilantly at the pair toiling on the wheels. Dekkeret had been  told
earlier that  a corps  of consecrated  women, numbering  eight all told, labored
here  day and  night to  keep these  wheels eternally  in motion.  Each of   the
operators of  the wheel  walked a  shift that  was many  hours in  length, never
pausing for meals or even a sip of water. The two at the ladders were the  women
of the next team, waiting here ready to jump into service ahead of time in  case
one of the women in the cages should tire and falter even for a moment.

Dekkeret understood that it was a  matter of the highest honor in  Kesmakuran to
serve on the  wheel. Every young  woman of the  city aspired to  be one of those
chosen for  a one-year  term inside  the wooden  cages. The  rite was, so he had
learned, an ongoing prayer to the Pontifex Dvorn, imploring him to maintain  the
continuing  tranquility  of  the  commonwealth that  he  had  created.  Even the
smallest interruption in  their unending climb,  the most trivial  alteration in
the rhythm of their steps, might jeopardize the survival of the world.

Dekkeret could not linger long  to observe this remarkable performance,  though.
The time had come  for him to   enter the tomb.  The six Guardians  of  the Tomb
they did not call themselves priests  - stood flanking him, three to  his right,
three  to his  left. The  Guardians were  big men,  nearly as  big as   Dekkeret
himself, who  wore black  robes with  scarlet trim,  the Pontifical colors. They
were brothers, apparently, ranging from fifty to sixty years in age,  resembling
one  another so  closely that  Dekkeret had  trouble remembering  which one  was
which. He was able  to tell the Chief  Guardian from the others  only because he
was the one holding the ornately  woven wreath that Dekkeret was going  to place
before the statue of Dvorn.

He himself had donned his robes of  office for the occasion, and he was  wearing
the little golden circlet  that was serving him  in lieu of the  full version of
the  starburst  crown  on  this  journey.  Fulkari  and  Dinitak  would  not  be
accompanying him into the tomb; he gave  them each a glance as he made  ready to
enter,  and  was  grateful  to  them both  for  keeping  their  faces  frozen in
expressions of the highest seriousness. One  sly little wink from Fulkari, or  a
quick  grimace of  skepticism from  Dinitak, would  instantly destroy  the  high
solemnity of bearing that Dekkeret was working so hard to sustain.

He entered the tomb  by way of an  imposing rectangular entranceway some  twenty
feet high and at  least thirty feet wide.  A thick carpet of  sweet-smelling red
petals had  been laid  down underfoot.  Dozens of  glowfloats drifting  overhead
provided  a  gentle  greenish light  that  illuminated  the elaborate  pictorial
reliefs that  had been  cut into  the walls  from floor  to ceiling. Scenes from
Dvorn's  life,  Dekkeret guessed:  depictions  of the  great  monarch's military
triumphs, of his coronation as Pontifex, of his raising ofBarhold to the rank of
Coronal. They seemed quite well done  and Dekkeret wished he could get  a closer
look at them. But the six Guardians were marching in a steady lockstep alongside
him, faces turned rigidly forward, and it seemed best to him to do the same,  so
that all he saw of the reliefs was  what he could glimpse out of the corners  of
his eyes.

And then Dvorn himself  in all his grandeur  and royal magnificence rose  before
him, a colossal figure  of mellow cream-colored marble  set in a great  niche at
the back of the cave.

The seated image of the Pontifex was ten feet high, or even more, a noble statue
with its left hand  resting on its knee  and the right hand  raised and extended
toward the mouth of the cave. The  expression on Dvorn's carved face was one  of
great placidity and benevolence: not merely a regal face but a downright godlike
one, the  serene  smiling features  perfectly  composed, calm,  reassuring,  all
consoling.

It was,  thought Dekkeret,  an utterly  magnificent piece  of sculpture.  He was
surprised that such a masterpiece was so little known beyond its own district.

This was the way  one might portray   the face of  the Divine, he  told  himself
provided some artist had  decided to regard the  Divine as a human  being rather
than as the abstract and forever unknowable spirit of creation. But no one  ever
attempted to depict the Divine in such a literal guise. Was something like  that
what the unknown maker of this great work had had in mind - to show Dvorn as  an
actual  deity?  Certainly  there was  something  almost  sacrilegious about  the
godlike serenity with which  the sculptor had endowed  the face of the  Pontifex
Dvorn.

To the right and left of the immense statue were two smaller niches, set high on
the wall of the cave, that contained large round mirror-bright bowls of polished
agate. These, Dekkeret suspected,  were the vessels in  which the relics of  the
Pontifex Dvorn were kept,  the hair and the  teeth and the knucklebones  and the
rest. He did not propose to inquire about those things, though.

The Chief Guardian handed Dekkeret the  wreath. It was fashioned of dried  reeds
of several  colors and  textures, braided  together in  a bewilderingly  complex
pattern that must have taken the  weaver many hours to achieve, and  bound every
four inches or  so by thin  metal bands inscribed  with lettering of  an antique
kind that was unintelligible to Dekkeret. He was supposed to place the wreath in
a shallow pit that had  been carved in the cave  floor directly in front of  the
statue and set fire to it with  a torch that the Chief Guardian would  hand him.
Then,  while  it  smoldered,  he  was instructed  to  kneel,  enter  a  state of
contemplation, and place his soul in the care of the great founding Pontifex.

That would be an odd thing for him to do, a man who put no faith in supernatural
things. But Prestimion's words of months ago, as the two of them stood  together
in the vastness of the Pontifical throne-chamber in the depths of the Labyrinth,
came drifting back to him now:

To the fifteen  billion people over  whom we rule  we are the  embodiment of all
that is sacred here. And so they put us up on these thrones and bow down to  us,
and who are we to  say no to that, if  it makes our job of  running this immense
planet  any  easier?  Think  of  them,  Dekkeret,  whenever  you  find  yourself
performing some absurd ritual or clambering up onto some overdecorated seat.  We
are  not  provincial justices  of  the peace,  you  know. We  are  the essential
mainsprings of the world.

So be it,  Dekkeret thought. This  was the task  that faced the  Coronal Lord of
Majipoor today. He would not question it.

He laid the wreath in its pit,  accepted the torch from the Chief Guardian,  and
touched the tip of the flame to the edge of the reeds.

Knelt, then. Bowed his head before the statue.

The Guardians stepped  back, disappearing into  the shadows behind  him. Quickly
Dekkeret lost all awareness of  their presence. Even the endless  click-clack of
the turning  prayer-wheels outside  the cave,  which he  still had been noticing
only moments before, faded from the screen of his perceptions.

He was alone with the Pontifex Dvorn.

Now what,  though? Pray  to Dvorn?  How could  he do  that? Dvorn  was a myth, a
creature  of fable,  a vague  figure out  of the  early cantos  of The  Book  of
Changes. Even in the  privacy of his own  thoughts Dekkeret was unable  to bring
himself to pray to a myth. He was not really accustomed to prayer at all.

He had faith in the Divine, yes. How could he not? He was his mother's son.  But
it was not a faith that ran very deep. Like ' everyone else - even  Mandralisca,
perhaps - he would make small requests of the Divine in casual conversation, and
give thanks to the Divine  for this or that favor  granted. But all of that  was
just in the ordinary  manner of speaking. To  Dekkeret the Divine was  the great
creative force  of the  universe, a  distant and  incomprehensible power, hardly
likely to pay attention to the trifling individual requests of any one  creature
of that universe. Neither the urgent prayers of the Coronal Lord of Majipoor nor
the panicky cries of a frightened bilantoon pursued by a ravening haigus in  the
forests  would  stir  the special  mercy  of  the Divine,  who  had  brought all
creatures into being for purposes beyond  the knowing of mortal beings, and  had
left them to make their own way throughout their lives, until the hour had  come
for them to be recalled to the Source.

But still - he felt that something was happening here -something strange -

The  wreath was  burning now,  sending up  flickering bluish-purple  flames  and
twisting coils of dark  smoke. A sweet fragrance  that reminded Dekkeret of  the
aroma of  the pale  golden wine  of Stoienzar  filled his  nostrils. He breathed
deeply of it. It seemed the proper thing to do. And as it flooded down into  his
lungs a potent dizziness came over him.

He stared  for an  endless timeless  time at  the serene  stone face that loomed
there before  him. Stared  at that  wondrous face,  stared, stared,  stared. And
suddenly it seemed necessary for him to close his eyes.

And now it seemed to him that he  heard a voice within his head, one that  spoke
not with words but with abstract patterns of sensation. Dekkeret could not  have
translated any of it  into specific phrases; but  he was certain that  there was
some sort of conceptual meaning there even so, and a definite sense of  oracular
power.  Whoever,  whatever, was  speaking  to his  mind  had recognized  him  as
Dekkeret of Normork, Coronal Lord of Majipoor, who one day would be Pontifex  in
the direct line of succession from Dvorn.

And it was telling him that great labors lay before him, and at the end of those
labors he was destined  to bring about a  transformation of the commonwealth,  a
change in the  world nearly as  great as the  one that Dvorn  himself had worked
when he brought into  being the system of  Pontifical government. The nature  of
that change was not made clear. But it would be he himself, the voice seemed  to
indicate, he, Dekkeret of Normork, who would work that great transformation.

What was streaming into his mind had the force of true revelation. Its force was
overwhelming. Dekkeret  remained motionless  for what  might have  been weeks or
months or years, bowed down before the statue, letting it fill his soul.

After a time the power of it began to ebb. He no longer sensed any substance  to
what he felt. He  was still in contact,  somehow, with the statue,  but what was
emanating  from  it  now  had  become  nothing  more  than  a  far-off  inchoate
reverberation that went echoing off into the recesses of his mind, bourn, bourn,
bourn, a sound that was emphatic and powerful and somehow significant, but which
carried with  it no  meaning that  he could  understand. It  came less  and less
frequently and then not at all.

He opened his eyes.

The wreath was nearly burned, now. The  slim metal rings that once had bound  it
lay scattered amidst a thin, acrid-smelling sprinkling of ash.

Boum, once again. And after a time, again, boum. And then no more. But  Dekkeret
remained where he was,  kneeling before the statue  of Dvorn, unable or  perhaps
unwilling to rise just yet.

It was all very  strange, he thought: coming  in here feeling like  an idiot for
taking part in such  mummery, and then, as  the event unfolded, finding  himself
overcome by something very close to religious awe.

As his mind began to clear he  found himself reflecting on what a weird  journey
this trip across the continent had been. The oracle trees of Shabikant that  had
spoken  to  him,  perhaps,  at  the moment  of  sunset.  The  astrologer  in the
marketplace of Thilambaluc  who had taken  that single look  into Dinitak's eyes
and  fled  in  horror.  And  now this.  Mystery  upon  mystery  upon  mystery, a
procession of  puzzling omens  and forebodings.  He was  out of  his depth here.
Suddenly Dekkeret longed to  leave this place, to  move onward to the  coast and
join up widi Prestimion, good sturdy skeptical Prestimion, who would explain all
this to him  in rational terms.  But still -  still - he  was held spellbound by
what  he had  just experienced,  that feeling  of overwhelming  awe, that  eerie
silent wordless voice tolling in his brain.


When he emerged from the cave it was obvious that Fulkari and Dinitak were  able
to tell at a  glance that something unusual  had happened to him  in there. They
came quickly to  his side the  way one goes  to a man  who seems to  be about to
topple to the ground. Dekkeret shook them away, insisting that he was all right.
Fulkari, looking worried, asked him what had happened in the cave, but his  only
response was a shrug. It was not  anything he wanted to talk about so  soon, not
with her, not with anyone. What was there to say? How could he explain something
that he barely understood himself? And even that, he thought, was inaccurate. It
had been, in fact, something that he had not understood at all.



11

'This very room,' said  Prestimion bleakly, looking out  over the sea, 'was  our
battle headquarters in the campaign against Dantirya Sambail. Dekkeret, Dinitak,
Maundigand-Klimd and my mother and I right here, with the Barjazid helmet, while
you two were out in the jungle, closing in on his camp. But we were still  young
then, eh? Now we are these many years older, and we must fight that war all over
again, it seems. How my soul rebels  against the thought! How I boil with  anger
at those mischievous monstrous men who refuse to let the world dwell in peace!'

From behind him came the flat, broad, Piliplok-accented voice of Gialaurys:  'We
destroyed the master, my lord, and we will destroy the lackeys as well.'

'Yes. Yes. Of course we will. But what a filthy waste, fighting yet another war!
How wearisome! How needless!' Then Prestimion  managed a thin smile. - 'And  you
really must stop calling me 'my lord,' Gialaurys. I know it's an old habit,  but
I remind you I am Coronal no  longer. The title is 'your majesty,' if  you must.
Everyone else seems to have learned that by now. Or simply 'Prestimion' will do,
between you and me.'

'It is very hard for me to remember these courtly niceties,' Gialaurys said in a
sour growling tone.  His wide meaty-jowled  face, ever innocent  of deception of
any kind, showed his annoyance plainly. 'My mind is not as keen as it once  was,
you know, Prestimion.' And from another corner of the room came the sly  chuckle
of Septach Melayn.

It was a week, now, since the Pontifical party had made the ocean crossing  from
the Isle of Sleep to the Alhanroel mainland for Prestimion's intended rendezvous
with Lord Dekkeret. The Coronal himself  was still well up the coast,  according
to the latest word - somewhere a little way south ofAlaisor, in the-vicinity  of
Kikil or Kimoise -  but was heading toward  Stoien city as quickly  as possible.
Another day or two, perhaps, and he would be here.

The three of them had gathered this  afternoon in one of the lesser chambers  of
the royal suite  atop the Crystal  Pavilion, which was  the tallest building  in
Stoien city, rising high up above the heart of that lovely tropical port. A  two
hundred-foot-long wall  of continuous  windows afforded  spectacular views  from
every room, the city and all its startling multitude of pedestals and towers  on
one side, the immense glass-blue breast of the Gulf of Stoien on the other.

This was  one of  the gulfside  rooms. For  the past  ten minutes Prestimion had
stood by that great window, staring fiercely out to sea as though he could reach
all the way to Zimroel and strike  Mandralisca and his Five Lords dead with  his
glaring eyes alone. But of course Zimroel, unthinkably far off in the west,  was
beyond the range of even the most terrible of glances. He wondered how high this
building would have to be in order to let him actually see that far. As high  as
Castle Mount, he suspected. Higher.

All he could see from here was water and more water, curving away into infinity.
That  distant point  of brightness  on the  horizon -  could it  be,  Prestimion
wondered, the Isle  of the Lady,  from which he  had so recently  come? Probably
not. Probably even the Isle was too far to glimpse from here.

Once again he found  it a burden to  contemplate the vast size  of Majipoor. The
mere thought of it was  a weight on his spirit.  What madness it was to  pretend
that a planet so huge could be governed  by just a couple of men in fancy  robes
sitting on  splendid thrones!  The thing  that held  the world  together was the
consent of the governed,  who by voluntary choice  yielded themselves up to  the
authority  of  the Pontifex  and  the Coronal.  And  that consent  seemed  to be
breaking  down  now, at  least  in Zimroel.  It  would, apparently,  need  to be
restored by  military force.  And, Prestimion  asked himself,  just what sort of
consent was diat?

Prestimion's mood had  been prevailingly dark  for days, a  darkness that rarely
left him more than moments at a time. He could not tell how much of that he owed
to the strain of so much recent travel, he who was finally being forced to admit
that he was no longer young, and how  much to the despair that he felt over  the
inevitability of a new war.

For there would be a war.

So he had told  his mother weeks ago  at the Isle of  Sleep, and so he  believed
with every atom of his being. Mandralisca and his faction had to be  eliminated,
or the world would  split asunder. The great  final battle against the  villainy
that those people represented  would be fought, if  he had to lead  the march on
Ni-moya himself. But Prestimion hoped it would not come to that. Dekkeret is  my
sword now, is what he had told  the Lady Therissa, and that was true  enough. He
himself longed for the peace of the Labyrinth. That thought astonished him  even
as it formed in his mind. But it was the truth, the Divine's own truth.

A hand touched his shoulder from  behind, the lightest and quickest of  touches.
'Prestimion -?'

'What is it, Septach Melayn?'

'Is time, I would like to suggest, for  you to stop staring at the sea and  come
away from  that window.  Is time  for a  little wine,  perhaps. A  game of dice,
even?'

Prestimion grinned. So  many times,  over the  years, had  Septach Melayn's well
timed frivolity pulled him back from the brink of despondency!

'Dice! How fine that would be,' he said: 'The Pontifex of Majipoor and his  High
Spokesman down on their knees on the floor of the royal suite like boys, rolling
for the triple eyes, or the hand and the forks! Would anyone believe it?'

'I remember a time,' said Gialaurys, speaking as though to the empty air,  'when
Septach Melayn and I were playing tavern dice on the deck of the riverboat  that
was taking us  up the Glayge  from the Labyrinth  after Korsibar had  stolen the
throne, and just as he rolled the double  ten I looked up and there was the  new
star blazing in  die sky, the  blue-white one, so  very bright, that  for a rime
people called it Lord Korsibar's Star. And  Duke Svor came out on deck -  ah, he
was a slippery one, that little Svor!  - and saw the star, and said,  'That star
is our salvation. It means the death of Korsibar and the rising of  Prestimion.'
Which was the Divine's  own truth. That star  is still shining brightly  to this
very time. I  saw it just  last night, high  above, between Thorius  and Xavial.
Prestimion's Star! The star of your ascendance, it is, and it still shines! Look
you for it tonight, your majesty, and it will speak to you and lift your heart.'
Now he was facing directly toward the Pontifex. 'I pray you, put all this  gloom
of yours aside, Prestimion. Your star is still there.'

'You are very kind,' said Prestimion gently.

He  was more  deeply touched  than he  could say.  In the  thirty years  of  his
friendship with the  massive, slow-moving, inarticulate  Gialaurys he had  never
heard anything like such eloquence out of him.

But of course  Septach Melayn had  to puncture the  moment. 'Only a  moment ago,
Gialaurys, you told us your fine  mind was losing its keen edge,'  the swordsman
said. 'And yet here you are recalling  a game of dice we played half  a lifetime
ago, and accurately quoting to us the exact words Duke Svor spoke that  evening.
Is this not most inconsistent of you, dear Gialaurys?'

'I remember what is important to me, Septach Melayn,' Gialaurys replied. 'And so
I recall things of half a lifetime ago more clearly than I do what I was  served
last night at dinner, or the color of the robe I wore.' And he glared at Septach
Melayn as though, after all these decades of having been on the receiving end of
the quicker man's banter, he would  gladly catch Septach Melayn up in  his tinge
hands and snap his slender  body in half. But it  had ever been thus with  those
two.

Prestimion said, laughing now for the first rime in much too long, 'The wine  is
a good idea, Septach Melayn. But not, I think, the game of dice.' He crossed the
room to the sideboard, where a  few wine-flasks sat, and after a  moment's inner
deliberation chose the creamy young golden  wine of Stolen, that grew so  old so
fast it was  never exported beyond  the city of  its manufacture. He  poured out
three bowls' full, and they sat quietly for a while, slowly drinking that thick,
rich, strong wine.

'If there ts to be  a war,' said Septach Melayn  after a time, and there  was an
odd tension in his voice, 'then I have a favor to ask of you, Prestimion.'

'There will be a war. We have no alternative but to eradicate those creatures.'

'Well, then, when  the war begins,'  Septach Melayn went  on, 'I trust  you will
permit me to play a part in it.'

'And me as well,' said Gialaurys quickly.

Prestimion did not find these requests at all surprising.

Of course  he had  no intention  of granting  them; but  it pleased him that the
fires of valor still burned so  strongly in these two. Did they  not understand,
he wondered, that their fighting days were over?

Gialaurys, like so many big-bodied men of enormous physical strength, had  never
been famous for his suppleness or  agility, though that had not mattered  in his
years as a warrior. But,  as also tends to happen  to many men of his  build, he
had thickened greatly with age, and he moved now in a terribly slow and  careful
way.

Septach Melayn, whip-thin and eternally limber, seemed as quick and lithe as  he
had been long ago, essentially unchanged  by the years. But the network  of fine
lines around his  penetrating blue eyes  told a different  story, and Prestimion
suspected that that famous cascade of  tumbling ringlets had more than a  little
white hair mixed now with the gold.  It was hardly possible that he still  could
have the lightning-swift reflexes that  had made him invincible in  hand-to-hand
combat.

Prestimion knew that the battlefield was no place for either of them these days,
any more than it was for him.

Delicately he said, 'The  war, as I know  you understand, will be  Dekkeret's to
fight, not  mine or  yours. But  he'll be  apprised of  your offers. I know that
he'll want to draw on your skill and experience.'

Gialaurys chuckled heavily.  'I can see  us entering into  Ni-moya now, sweeping
all opposition aside. What a day that  will be, when we go marching six  abreast
up Rodamaunt Promenade! And  it will have been  my great pleasure personally  to
lead the troops north from Piliplok. The invasion army will land in Piliplok, of
course. - And  you know, Prestimion,  what we rough  men from Piliplok  think of
those soft Ni-moyans and their eternal pursuit of pleasure. What joy it will  be
for us to knock  down their flimsy gates  and march into their  pretty city!' He
rose and walked about the room,  making such effeminate mincing gestures that  a
roar  of  delighted laughter  came  from Septach  Melayn.  'Shall we  go  to the
Gossamer Galleria today to buy a fine robe,  my dear?' said Gialaurys in a  high
pitched strangled voice. 'And then, I  think, dinner at the Narabal Island.  The
breast of gammigammil with thognis sauce,  how I adore iti The Pidruid  oysters!
Oh, my dear -!'

Prestimion too was holding his sides. This sort of performance was nothing  that
he would ever have expected from the gruff Gialaurys.

Septach Melayn said  in a more  serious way, when  the merriment had  subsided a
little, 'What do you think, Prestimion?  Will Dekkeret really choose to land  in
Piliplok, as Gialaurys says? I think there are some difficulties in that.'

'There are difficulties in anything we  do,' said Prestimion, and his mood  grew
grim again as he  contemplated the realities of  the war he was  so passionately
determined to launch.

It was a fine brave thing to cry out for an end, at long last, to the iniquities
of the Sambailids and their venomous chief  minister. But he had no idea of  the
true  depth  of the  Five  Lords' support  in  Zimroel. Suppose  it  was already
possible for Mandralisca to assemble an army of a million soldiers to defend the
western continent against an attack by  the Coronal? Or five million? How  would
Dekkeret raise an army big enough to meet such a force? How would the troops  be
transported to Zimroel? Would transporting that many men even be possible?  And,
if so, at what a cost? The armaments needed, the ships, the provisions -

And then, the  invasion itself -  the glint in  Gialaurys's eyes as  he spoke of
rough men  of Piliplok  knocking down  the flimsy  gates of  Ni-moya brought  no
corresponding thrills of delight to  Prestimion. Ni-moya was one of  the wonders
of the world. Was  it worth putting that  incomparable city to the  torch merely
for the sake of maintaining the world's present system of laws and rulers?

He  would not  let himself  waver from  his belief  that it  was necessary   and
inevitable to go to war. Mandralisca was a blight upon the world, a blight  that
could only spread and spread and spread if it were left unchecked. He could  not
be tolerated; he could not be appeased; he must be destroyed.

But, Prestimion thought gloomily, would the people of future times ever  forgive
him for it? He  had wanted his reign  to be known as  a golden age. He  had bent
every effort toward that goal. And yet, somehow, the years of his ascendance had
been marked by catastrophe  upon catastrophe - the  Korsibar war, the plague  of
insanity that followed it, the rebellion of Dantirya Sambail - and now it seemed
certain that the final achievement of his reign would be either the  destruction
of Ni-moya or else the partition of  what had been a peaceful world into  a pair
of mutually hostile independent kingdoms.

Both choices seemed equally hateful. But then Prestimion reminded himself of his
brother Teotas, terror-stricken to the point of suicidal madness and  scrambling
about in a panicky haze atop  some precarious parapet of the Castle.  His little
daughter Tuanelys, writhing in fear in her own bed. And how many other  innocent
people across the world, random victims of Mandralisca's malevolence?

No. The thing had to  be done, no matter the  cost. He forced himself to  harden
his soul around that thought.

As  for  Gialaurys  and Septach  Melayn,  they  were already  caught  up  in the
anticipation of the glorious military  campaign that they hoped would  cap their
years. And  were, as  usual, disagreeing:  Prestimion heard  Septach Melayn, his
eyes agleam,  saying, 'Is  utterly idiotic,  my dear  friend, the  whole idea of
landing at  Piliplok. Don't  you think  Mandralisca can  figure out  that that's
where we'd  have to  come ashore?  Piliplok's the  easiest port  in the world to
defend. He'll have half  a million armed men  waiting for us at  the harbor, and
the river behind them blockaded by a thousand ships. No, sweet Gialaurys,  we'll
have to put our troops ashore well  south of there. Gihorna's the place, say  I.
Gihorna!'

Gialaurys screwed his face  into a mask of  contempt. 'Gihorna's a wasteland,  a
dismal swamp, uninhabitable, altogether abominable. The Shapeshifters themselves
won't go near the place. Mandralisca won't even need to fortify it. Our men will
sink into the mud and vanish as soon as they step out of their landing-craft.'

'On the contrary, my dear Gialaurys. It's precisely because the Gihorna coast is
so unappealing that Mandralisca  is unlikely to think  we'll land there. But  we
can, and will. And then -'

'- And then we march north for  thousands of miles up the side of  the continent
to Piliplok,  which according  to you  we should  avoid doing  because it is the
easiest port in the world to  defend and Mandralisca's army will be  waiting for
us there,  or else  we have  to turn  west right  into the  dark jungles  of the
Shapeshifter reservation and head for Ni-moya that way. Do you really want that,
Septach Melayn? To send the whole army into the perils of unknown Piurifayne  on
its way north? What kind  of insanity is that? I'd  rather take my chances on  a
straightforward Piliplok  landing and  fight whatever  battle we  have to  fight
there. If we follow the jungle route the filthy Metamorphs will pounce on us and
-'

'Stop it, both of you!' Prestimion  said, in a tone of such  vehement insistence
that Septach Melayn  and Gialaurys both  turned toward him  wide-eyed. 'All this
arguing  is completely  pointless. Dekkeretis  the commanding  general who  will
fight this  war. Not  you. Not  me. These  matters of  strategy are  for him  to
decide.'

They  continued  to  stare  at  him. They  both  looked  shaken;  and  not only,
Prestimion thought, on account of the harshness with which he had just spoken to
them. It was his abdication of command, he suspected, that amazed them so.  That
was not at all like  the Prestimion they had known  all these years, to cut  off
this kind of debate by saying that such a matter of high policy was outside  his
jurisdiction. He was amazed at it himself.

But Dekkeret was  Coronal now, not  Prestimion; Dekkeret was  the one who  would
have to prosecute this war; it was up  to Dekkeret to devise the best way to  go
about it. Prestimion, as the senior monarch, could offer advice, and would.  But
it was Dekkeret to whom the  ultimate responsibility for the war's success  must
fall, and the final word on strategy had to be his.

Prestimion told himself that he was content with that. The system of  government
to which  he was  dedicated, the  age-old system  that had  worked so well since
Dvorn the Pontifex had devised it, required it of him. So long as Dekkeret,  his
chosen successor as Coronal, conducted  the war bravely and effectively,  it was
right and proper for Prestimion himself,  as Pontifex, to retire to a  secondary
role in the conflict. And Prestimion had no doubt that Dekkeret would.

In a quieter tone he said, 'A little more wine, gentlemen?'

Someone was knocking at the door, though. Septach Melayn went to open it.

It was the Lady Varaile,  who had gone off for  a time to be with  the children.
Tuanelys was still troubled by  dreams; and Varaile herself looked  careworn and
weary, suddenly older than  her years. Merely to  see her in this  condition was
enough to inflame Prestimion's wrath  all over again: he would  kill Mandralisca
with his own hands, if ever he had the chance.

She was holding  a slip of  paper. 'There's been  a message from  Dekkeret,' she
said.  'He's in  Klai, less  than a  day'sjourney away.  And hopes  to be   here
tomorrow.'

'Good,' Prestimion said. 'Excellent. Did he have anything else to say?'

'Only that he sends the Pontifex his love and respect, and looks forward to  his
reunion with him.'

'As do I,' said Prestimion warmly.

He realized, suddenly, how  very tired he was  of the responsibilities of  great
power, and  how much  he had  come to  depend on  Dekkeret's youthful  vigor and
strength. It would be good to see him, yes. And especially good to discover  how
he, Dekkeret, planned to cope with this crisis. For that is not my task but his,
thought Prestimion, and how glad I am of that!

A time will come when  you 'II be eager to  be Pontifex, Confalume had told  him
once, in the old  Pontifex's rooms in the  Labyrinth just a few  days before his
death. Yes.  And now  it had.  For the  first time  Prestimion understood to the
depths of his spirit what the old man had been talking about that day.



12

The last time Dekkeret had been in  Stoien city had been in the second  or third
year ofPrestimion's reign as Coronal, a time when he was merely an earnest young
newcomer to the inner circles  of Castle Mount without the  faintest expectation
of becoming Coronal himself. Stoien awakened  old memories for him, and not  all
of them were fond ones.

The  eerie,  unforgettable beauty  of  the city,  matchlessly  situated along  a
hundred  miles  of  lovely  white  beaches here  on  the  rim  of  the Stoienzar
Peninsula: that had remained fresh in  his mind all these years. Nor  had Stoien
changed  in any  way. Its  skies were  still cloudless.  Its curious  buildings,
rising from the peninsula's flat  terrain on artificial platforms anywhere  from
ten feet in height  to hundreds, still dazzled  the eye as they  had before; its
lush vegetation, the omnipresent denseness of bushes with leaves brilliant  with
irregular bursts  of indigo  and topaz  and sapphire,  of cobalt  and claret and
vermilion, still set the soul ablaze with delight. Such damage as had been  done
by the fires  that madmen had  set during the  chaos of the  insanity plague had
long since been repaired.

But it was in Stoien that Dekkeret had taken leave for the last time of his dear
friend and mentor  Akbalik of Samivole,  Akbalik who had  been his guide  in his
earliest years in Prestimion's service at the Castle. Akbalik whom Dekkeret  had
loved more than any other man, even Prestimion - Akbalik who in all  probability
would be Coronal now, if he had lived  - it was here to Stoien that Akbalik  had
come, limping and in  pain from the swamp-crab  bite that he had  suffered while
hunting for the fugitive  Dantirya Sambail in the  steaming jungles east of  the
city, and  which would  kill him  not long  afterward. 'The  wound is  nothing,'
Akbalik told  Dekkeret when  Dekkeret arrived  in Stoien  after a  voyage to the
Isle, to which  he had gone  bearing urgent messages  for Lord Prestimion.  'The
wound will heal.'

But perhaps Akbalik had already known that it would not, for he had also exacted
from Dekkeret an oath  promising that he would  speak out against anything  that
Lord Prestimion  might want  to do  that would  put his  life at  risk, such  as
chasing after  Dantirya Sambail  into the  same jungles  where Akbalik  had been
bitten: 'No  matter how  angry you  make him,  no matter  what risks to your own
career you run, you must keep  him from doing anything so rash.'  Which Dekkeret
had sworn, though inwardly he felt it should be Akbalik's task, not his, to  say
such things to the  Coronal; and then Akbalik  had set out eastward  from Stoien
across Alhanroel,  escorting the  Lady Varaile  - pregnant  then with the future
Prince  Taradath  -  back to  Castle  Mount.  But he  made  it  no farther  than
Sisivondal on the inland plateau before the poison in his wound killed him.

All that  was long  ago. Now  the winds  of fortune  had made  Dekkeret Coronal.
Prince Akbalik  ofSamivole was  remembered only  by middle-aged  folk. The  only
Prince Akbalik of whom most people were aware was Prestimion's second son, named
in the other  Akbalik's honor. But  the sight of  Stoien's strange and  wondrous
myriad of towers brought that first Akbalik, that calm, wise, gray-eyed man  who
had meant so much to Dekkeret, vividly  back to life in his memory, and  a great
sadness came over him at the recollection.

To make it even worse, Prestimion and  his family were settled in the very  same
lodgings they had had on that  earlier occasion, the royal suite of  the Crystal
Pavilion, and they had  put Dekkeret and his  companions up there also.  Nothing
could have  been better  designed to  force him  to relive  the final exhausting
moments of the war against Dantirya Sambail, when Prestimion, making use of  the
Barjazid helmet,  had struck  against the  Procurator from  this very  building,
aided wherever possible  by Dinitak and  Maundigand-Klimd and the  Lady Therissa
and Dekkeret himself.

But there was no other choice, really. The Crystal Pavilion was Stoien's premier
building, the only place in the city suitable to house a visiting monarch. - Or,
in this  case, a  pair ofmonarchs:  for here  were Coronal  and Pontifex both in
Stolen at the same time, a thing  that never had happened before, and that  had,
so Dekkeret learned before he had  been in Stoien more than ten  minutes, thrown
the city administration into such a  state of panicky confusion that they  would
need the rest of their lives to recover from it.

It was fairly late  in the evening when  Dekkeret and his party  arrived. He was
caught a little off balance by the discovery that Prestimion wanted to meet with
him at once. Dekkeret had had a hectic journey down the coast from Alaisor -  he
had not anticipated that Prestimion would  come so quickly from the Isle  to the
mainland - and he begged an hour's respite, or two, to rest and cleanse  himself
from the dust of the road before seeing the Pontifex.

Fulkari wondered why it was necessary to have such an immediate conference.  'Is
it really  so urgent?  Can't we  be allowed  some time  for dinner  first, and a
night's sleep?'

'Perhaps  there have  been developments  in Zimroel  that I  don't know  about,'
Dekkeret said. 'But I think not. This is simply his nature, love. Everything  is
urgent to Prestimion. He is the most impatient man alive.'

She  accepted  that grudgingly,  and  when he  had  bathed he  went  upstairs to
Prestimion's rooms.  Septach Melayn  and Gialaurys  were there  with him,  which
Dekkeret had not expected.

Nor did he  expect the swiftness  with which the  Pontifex swept him  toward the
point of the meeting. Prestimion embraced him warmly, as a father might  embrace
a long-lost  son, but  almost at  once they  were deep  into a discussion of the
matter  of Zimroel.  Prestimion cared  hardly at  all to  hear about  Dekkeret's
journey across the  continent, his odd  adventures in Shabikant  and Thilambaluc
and the  other obscure  stops along  his westward  route. Two  or three  brusque
questions, followed by quick interruptions of Dekkeret's replies, and then  they
were talking ofMandralisca and the  Five Lords, and how Prestimion  believed the
crisis in Zimroel must be resolved.

Which was, Dekkeret rapidly learned, by sending a great army across the sea - an
army led in person by the Coronal Lord Dekkeret - to set things to rights  there
by force, if need be.

'At long last we must break this Mandralisca, and break him so that he can never
recover  from it,'  said Prestimion.  As he  uttered those  words his   features
underwent  an  extraordinary  transformation,  his  intense  sea-green  eyes now
strangely aflame with a cold fury  that Dekkeret had never seen in  them before,
his thin  lips tightening  into a  taut grimace,  his nostrils  flaring with  an
astonishing vindictive  rage. 'Let  there be  no mistake  about it:  we have  to
destroy him,  regardless of  the cost,  and all  those who  follow his banner as
well. There is no hope  of peace in the world  so long as that man  continues to
breathe.'

Prestimion's  tone  was  an  extraordinarily  belligerent  one,  uncompromising,
fierce. Dekkeret was  taken aback by  that, though he  did his best  to hide his
surprise and dismay from the  Pontifex. Surely Prestimion knew, better  than any
man alive, what it meant for there to be civil war on Majipoor. Yet here he was,
trembling with  barely contained  wrath, instructing  his Coronal  to set all of
Zimroel ablaze, if necessary, for the sake of ending the Sambailid rebellion!

Perhaps  I  am  misunderstanding  him,  Dekkeret  thought,  hoping  against  all
probability.

Perhaps he is  not advocating actual  warfare at all,  but only a  grand show of
imperial pomp  and force,  under cover  of which  Mandralisca can  be peacefully
encircled and removed.

Itwas Dekkeret  himself who  had first  suggested, some  months earlier, that it
might be necessary for him  to go to Zimroel and  make an end to such  unrest as
was brewing there. And Prestimion had agreed that that might be a good idea. But
it was Dekkeret's impression that they had both been thinking of something along
the lines of a  grand processional: the Coronal  making a formal state  visit to
the  western  continent,  with all  the  pageantry  that a  visit  of  that sort
entailed, and thereby  reminding the people  of Zimroel of  the ancient covenant
under which all regions of the world lived together in peace. During that  visit
Dekkeret would be able to  determine the strength of Mandralisca's  insurrection
and, through  the  power  and   authority  of his  mere  presence,   take  steps
political steps, diplomatic steps - to bring it to a halt.

But Prestimion  had spoken  just now  of sending  an army  - a  great army  - to
Zimroel to deal with Mandralisca.

There had never been any talk,  so far as Dekkeret recalled, of  his undertaking
the  Zimroel  journey at  the  head of  any  sort of  military  force. When  had
Prestimion's thinking shifted from the use of peaceful means against the  rebels
to  one  of all-out  war?  Dekkeret wondered  what  had turned  the  Pontifex so
suddenly into such a fire-breather. No  one had greater reason to hate  war than
Prestimion, and yet -  yet - that look  in his eyes -  the angry crackle of  his
voice - could  there be any  doubt of his  meaning? There must  be war, was  the
essence of what Prestimion was saying. And  you are the one who will wage  it/or
us.  It sounded  very much  like an  order: a  direct command  from the   senior
monarch.

Dekkeret wondered how he was going to cope with that.

Certainly Mandralisca had to be removed: no question of that. But was war really
the only way? Suddenly Dekkeret found his mind aswirl with a torrent of  roiling
conflicts. War  was as  repugnant a  concept to  him as  it was  to any sensible
being. It had never occurred to him that his reign might begin, as  Prestimion's
had, on the battlefield.

He glanced quickly about for  guidance toward Septach Melayn, toward  Gialaurys.
But  Gialaurys's  jowly  face  was  rigidly set,  a  bleak,  stony  mask  of icy
determination, and even the flippant  and sportive Septach Melayn had  a strange
look of seriousness about him just now. They were both of them resolved on  war,
Dekkeret realized. Perhaps these two, Prestimion's oldest friends, were the very
ones who had turned the Pontifex onto that course.

Cautiously Dekkeret said,  hoping Prestimion would  not notice the  ambiguity of
his phrasing, 'I give you my pledge, your majesty, that I will do whatever  must
be done to restore the rule of law in Zimroel.'

Prestimion nodded. He looked calmer now, his face less flushed than it had  been
a moment before, some of the tension gone from it. 'I'm confident that you will,
Dekkeret. And so far as a specific plan of action goes -?'

'As soon as possible, majesty.' More ambiguity, but Presdmion did not appear  to
find that troublesome. 'It would be unwise for me to rush toward decisions  just
now. Your brother's  death deprived me  of my High  Counsellor, and I've  had no
opportunity to choose another. And therefore, your majesty -'

'You are being very formal with me today, Dekkeret.'

'If I am, it is  because we are discussing great  matters of war and peace.  You
have been my  friend for many  years; but you  are also my  Pontifex, Presdmion.
And' - he gestured toward Septach Melayn - 'we are in the presence of your  High
Spokesman as well.'

'Yes. Yes, of course. This is  serious business,  and calls for a  serious tone.
By all means, Dekkeret, take a few days to think things over.' Presdmion  smiled
for the first time in the course of the meeting. 'Just so long as the path  that
you choose is one that will rid me of Mandralisca.'


Fulkari must have  seen at once,  when Dekkeret returned  to their rooms  on the
floor just below Presdmion's, what an effect his meedng with the Pondfex had had
on him.  Quickly she  drew a  bowl of  wine for  him and waited without speaking
while he drank it down.

Then she said, 'There's trouble, isn't there?'

'Apparently so.'

He could barely bring himself to  speak. He felt a little dizzy  from weariness,
from hunger, from the strain of the strange, tense encounter.

'In Zimroel?'

'In Zimroel, yes.'

Fulkari was  staring at  him oddly.  He had  never seen  such a look of profound
concern in  those lovely  gray eyes  of hers.  Dekkeret knew  that he  must be a
terrible sight. His whole body felt  clenched. A throbbing had begun behind  his
eyes. His jaw-muscles were aching:  too much insincere smiling, he  supposed. He
accepted a second bowl of wine from her and drank it nearly as swiftly as he had
the first.

'Do you want to talk about it at all?' she asked gently, when some dme had  gone
by in silence.

'No. I can't. I can't, Fulkari. These are high matters of state.'

Dekkeret had moved to  the window now, and  stood with his back  to her, looking
out into  the night.  All the  mysterious beauty  of Stoien  city lay spread out
before him, the slender buildings on their lofty brick pedestals, the variations
of high  and low,  the artificial  hills rising  in the  distance, the  dazzling
abundance of tropical  vegetation. Fulkari, somewhere  on die other  side of the
room, said nothing. He  knew that he had  wounded her with the  sharpness of his
words. She was his  life's companion, after all.  She was not yet  his wife, but
she would  be, whenever  the pressures  of this  unexpected crisis relented long
enough for a royal wedding to take place. And yet he had spoken to her as though
she were some casual amusement of the evening, with whom it would be unthinkable
to share the slightest  detail of what had  passed between the Pontifex  and die
Coronal. He realized that he was asking her to bear all the burdens of being die
royal consort without  making her privy  to any of  the daily challenges  of his
task.

He let a couple of moments go by.

Then  he said,  'All right.  There's really  no sense  in hiding  it from   you.
Presdmion is so upset about this  Mandralisca affair - dlis rebellion -  that he
intends to put it down by force. He's talking about sending an army into Zimroel
to crush it. Not  even an ultimatum first,  if I understood him  correctly: just
invade and attack.'

'And you disagree, is that it?'

Dekkeret swung around to  face her. 'Of course  I disagree! Who would  lead that
army, do you think?  Who'd be in charge  of putting troops down  in Piliplok and
heading  up the  river to  Ni-moya? It  isn't Presdmion  who'll be  doing  that,
Fulkari. It isn't Presdmion  who'll stand in front  of Uie gates of  Ni-moya and
demand that they be thrown open, and who will have to smash them down if they're
not.'

She was regarding  him now in  a steady, level  way. Her voice  was calm as  she
said,  'Of  course.  Such  things  would  be  the  Coronal's  responsibility.  I
understand that.'

'And do you think the people of Zimroel are going to greet an invading army with
open arms, and love and kisses?'

'It would be an  ugly business, I agree,  Dekkeret. But what choice  is there? I
know a  little of  what Dinitak's  been telling  you -  the helmet that this man
Mandralisca uses, the things he does with it, the way he's stirred up those five
ghastly brothers  to proclaim  the independence  of Zimroel.  What else  can the
Pontifex do, in the  face of open rebellion,  but send an army  in to straighten
things out?  And if  there are  casualties -  well, how  can that be helped? The
commonwealth must be preserved.'

Now it was his turn to stare.

What he saw was a Fulkari that he had never fully seen before, the Lady  Fulkari
ofSipermit, a woman of high aristocratic pedigree, who traced her ancestry  back
through the generations to Lord Makhario. Of course she would see nothing  wrong
with putting down the Sambailid rebellion by the use of armed might. It came  to
him with the sudden  force of revelation that  after all these years  of life at
the Castle,  even after  having become  Coronal himself,  he was  seeing for the
first time, really seeing, the  essential difference between the aristocrats  of
the Mount and a commoner like himself.

But he said  nothing of that.  He replied simply,  'I don't want  to make war on
Zimroel. I don't want  to kill innocent people,  I don't want to  burn towns and
villages, I don't want to knock down the gates ofNi-moya.'

'And Mandralisca?'

'Must be stopped. Destroyed,  to use Prestimion's word.  I have no quarrel  with
that. But I want to  find some other way to  bring it about, something short  of
waging total  war against  the people  of Zimroel.'  Dekkeret looked  toward the
sideboard and the remaining wine, but decided against taking a third bowl.  'I'm
going to send for Dinitak. I need to talk with him.'

'Now?' Fulkari asked, giving him a look of mock horror.

'He'll have valuable things to say. He's as close to a High Counsellor as anyone
I have right now, Fulkari.'

'You also have me. And I give you this bit of high counsel: it's two and a  half
hours now  since we  arrived in  this place,  or a  little more,  and we haven't
managed to find time to have anything to eat yet. Food is a good thing when  one
is hungry. Food is important. Food is a pleasing concept.'

'We'll invite him in to join us, then.'

'No, Dekkeret! No.'

'What's  this? Do  we have  open defiance  here?' he  said, more  amused by  her
audacity than annoyed.

Fulkari's eyes also were  flickering with a gleam  of amusement. 'That might  be
the word for it. Outside this  room  you are my Coronal  Lord, yes, but  in here
here - oh, Dekkeret, don't be so foolish! You can't be Coronal your every waking
moment. Even a Coronal needs some rest, and we've been traveling all day. You're
too tired  to think  usefully about  these things  now, or  to discuss them with
Dinitak. I say  let's have dinner  sent in, at  long last. And  then let's go to
bed.' A different sort  of gleam entered her  eye now. 'Sleep on  all this. Pray
for a useful dream. You can talk to Dinitak in the morning.'

'But Prestimion is expecting -'

'Shush.' Her hand covered his mouth. She pressed herself close against him,  and
despite himself he  slipped his arms  around her and  let himself melt  into her
embrace. Her lips rose  to meet his. His  hands traveled down the  length of her
smooth, slender back.

Fulkari is right, he thought. Nothing requires me to be Coronal my every  waking
moment.

Dinitak can wait. Prestimion can wait. And Mandralisca can wait as well.


In the night, as Dekkeret slept, fragments of memory came floating up out of the
deep well  of his  spirit and  went dancing  about in  his mind,  stray bits and
pieces out of the  recent past that seemed  to be trying to  assemble themselves
into some coherent whole.


- He is in Shabikant, kneeling before the two oracular trees, the ancient  Trees
of the Sun and the  Moon. And from those trees  comes the faintest of sounds,  a
far-off rusty grinding sound, as though the trees after the silence of ages  are
trying to muster their powers once more and speak out to the newly crowned  king
and tell him something he must know.


- He  is in  Kesmakuran, at  the tomb  of Dvorn  the first  Pontifex, this  time
kneeling before the ancient monarch's  great smiling statue, and the  sweet hazy
smoke of the herbs burning in the pit before him fills his lungs and invades his
mind, and he closes his eyes and hears a voice within his head speaking in  some
strange wordless  way, telling  him, until  it all  dissolves into a meaningless
bourn, bourn, bourn, that  he is destined to  bring about great change,  that he
will work a transformation in the world nearly as great as that which was worked
by Dvorn himself when he created the Pontificate.


-  He  is in  the  marketplace at  Thilambaluc,  he and  Dinitak,  and a  tawdry
marketplace  astrologer  is  telling  Dinitak's fortune  for  a  price  of fifty
weights, but the fortune-telling has hardly begun when the man's eyes bulge with
shock and alarm  and he thrusts  Dinitak's coins back  into his hands,  claiming
that he is  unable to offer  a prediction of  his future and  will not take  his
money, and  runs swiftly  away. 'I  don't understand,'  Dinitak says.  'Am I  so
frightening? What did he see?'


- He has been wandering the Castle alone in the first days of his reign, and  he
is standing outside  the judgment-hall  that Lord  Prestimion built,  and the Su
Suheris magus Maundigand-Klimd comes upon  him and asks for a  private audience,
and tells him that he has had a mysterious revelation in which he saw the Powers
of the Realm gathered before the Confalume Throne to perform some ritual of high
importance, but a mysterious fourth Power was present in the Su-Suheris's vision
along with the Pontifex  and the Coronal and  the Lady of the  Isle. Dekkeret is
perplexed  by that,  for how  can there  be a  fourth Power  of the  Realm?  And
Maundigand-Klimd says, 'I have  one other detail to  add, my lord.' The  aura of
that unknown fourth, the Su-Suheris declares, carries the imprint of a member of
the Barjazid family.


In Dekkeret's dreaming  mind these fragments  of memory drifted  round and round
and round again, until  suddenly they were united  into a single strand  and the
pattern came clear -the mysterious distant sound coming from the shifting  roots
of the oracular trees, the wordless  words of the statue of the  first Pontifex,
the fear in the eyes of the marketplace astrologer, the revelation that had been
visited upon Maundigand-Klimd -

Yes.

He sat upright, wide awake, as awake as he had ever been, heart pounding,  sweat
streaming from every pore.

'A fourth Power!' he cried. 'A King of Dreams! Yes! Yes!'

Fulkari, lying beside  him, stirred and  opened her eyes.  'Dekkeret?' she asked
foggily. 'What is it, Dekkeret? Is something wrong?'

'Up! Bathe yourself, dress, Fulkari! I need to speak with Dinitak immediately.'

'But it's the middle of the night. You promised, Dekkeret-'

'I promised to sleep on it, and to  pray for a useful dream. And so I  have, and
the dream has come. And brought me something that can't wait until morning.'  He
was  out  of bed  and  searching for  his  robe. Fulkari  was  sitting up,  now,
blinking, rubbing her eyes, muttering to  herself. He kissed her lightly on  the
tip of the nose and went out into the hall to find the steward of the night.

'Get me Dinitak Barjazid,' Dekkeret called. 'I want him right away!'

It seemed to take no time at all for Dinitak to arrive. He was fully dressed and
entirely awake. Dekkeret wondered whether he  had been to sleep at all.  Dinitak
was such an ascetic in so many ways: sleep must seem a waste of time to him.

'I would have summoned you right  after I met with Prestimion,' Dekkeret  began,
'but Fulkari was able to talk me into waiting until I had had a chance to rest a
little while. It was just as well I did.'

Quickly he sketched for Dinitak a summary of his conference with Prestimion  the
night  before. Dinitak  seemed surprised  at none  of it,  neither  Prestimion's
unconcealed hatred for Mandralisca nor  the Pontifex's fierce desire to  destroy
the Sambailid  rebellion by  force of  arms. It  was, he  said, exactly what one
would expect of a man who had  been tried by the Sambailid clan as  the Pontifex
Prestimion had been tried.

'I  tell you  bluntly, I  detest the  idea of  going to  war against   Zimroel,'
Dekkeret said. 'The  Lady Taliesme surely  will be opposed  to it also.  I think
Prestimion secretly feels the same way.'

'I suspect you may be right there. He has no love for war.'

'But  he's  so troubled  by  the attacks  on  his own  family  that obliterating
Mandralisca is his highest priority and  he doesn't care how the job  gets done.
Go to  Zimroel, Dekkeret,  he said  to me.  Take the  biggest army  you can. Set
things to rights there. And destroy Mandralisca. War is what he means,  Dinitak.
It's my hope that I can get him to soften his mind on this.'

'You will have a struggle there, I think.'

'I think so too. The Pontifex is not famous for his patience. He feels that  his
reign as Coronal was  stained by the scheming  of his enemies, and  he believes,
probably rightly, that this man Mandralisca has been behind most or perhaps  all
of the trouble.  Now that trouble  has burst out  again, he wants  to be rid  of
Mandralisca, once  and for  all. Well,  who doesn't?  But war,  to me, is a last
resort. And I'd be the one who would have to command the troops, after all,  not
Prestimion.'

'That would not matter to him. You are the Coronal. The Pontifex decrees policy,
and the Coronal carries out the decrees. It has always been thus.'

Dekkeret shrugged. 'Nevertheless, if I can avoid this war, I will, Dinitak. I'll
go  into  Zimroel,  yes.  And  I'll  see  to  it  that  Mandralisca's  days   of
troublemaking are brought to an end, just as Prestimion wants. It's what happens
after Mandralisca's out of the picture that I want to discuss with you now.'

The bedroom door opened and Fulkari emerged, dressed in a handsome green morning
robe. She gave Dinitak an amiable smile, as if to say that she saw nothing wrong
with Dekkeret's holding a policy conference at this hour of the night.  Dekkeret
threw her  a grateful  wink. Quietly  she took  a seat  by the window. The first
faint purplish streaks of dawn were visible in the east.

'Peacefully  or otherwise,'  Dekkeret said,  'the Mandralisca  problem has  been
solved, let us assume. The uprising of the five Sambailids has been curbed,  and
they've been made to see that they had better not get such ideas again.  Without
Mandralisca to do their thinking for  them, they probably won't. All right.  The
question that will remain,  Dinitak, is this: what  can we do to  prevent future
Mandraliscas from  arising? He  and his  master Dantirya  Sambail have given the
world an  entire generation  of trouble.  We can't  let that  anything like that
happen again. And so - an idea, a very strange idea, in the middle of the  night
-'



13

'You are a duke?' the Shapeshifter asked, as Thastain led him from Mandralisca's
office. 'Truly, a duke? You are so young to be a duke.'

Thastain grinned. 'It amuses him to call me that. Or count, sometimes: he  calls
me that too.  I'm not a  duke or a  count of anything,  though. My father  was a
farmer in a place called Sennec, west  of here. He died and we couldn't  pay the
debts and we lost the farm, and I went into the service of the Five Lords.'

'But he  calls you  a duke,'  said Viitheysp  Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp.  'You are a
farmer's son, and he  calls you a duke.  It is only a  joke, you say. A  strange
joke, is  what I  think. It  seems almost  to be  a kind  of mockery.  I do  not
understand human jokes. But, then, why should I? Am I in any way human?'

'Only in your appearance right now,'  Thastain replied. 'But of course that  can
change. - Come this way, sir. Down these steps, if you will.'

I am having  a polite conversation  with a Metamorph,  he thought, astounded.  I
just called him 'sir.' Life held no end of amazements, it seemed.

As his meeting with  Mandralisca ended, the ambassador  from the Danipiur -  for
that was what  he was, Thastain  realized, the ambassador  from the Shapeshifter
queen -  had reverted  to his  assumed human  form for  the journey  back to his
lodgings.  So now  he was  a peculiar-looking  long-legged man  once again,  who
walked as though  he had learned  how to walk  only last week  and spoke with  a
thick buzzing accent that was a struggle for Thastain to penetrate. It seemed to
him that Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavistheyp  was almost as strange in  pseudo-human
guise as when he was wearing his own form.

Like any  farm boy  of northern  Zimroel, Thastain  had been  raised to fear and
loathe the  Shapeshifters. They  were the  dread alien  beings of the Piurifayne
jungles to the southeast, who seethed  with hatred over the loss of  their world
to human  invaders thirteen  thousand years  before, and  would never rest until
they had somehow recaptured control of it. Though Lord Stiamot had confined them
to  their  rain-forest  reservation,  everyone  knew  that  their  form-changing
abilities made it  possible for them  to slip out  of Piurifayne at  will and go
secretly  among  humans,  working every  manner  of  mischief: poisoning  wells,
stealing mounts and blaves,  kidnapping babies to be  raised as slaves in  their
jungle villages. Or so Thastain had grown up believing.

He had never spoken to a Metamorph  before, not knowingly. He had never so  much
as seen one at close  range. And now -Come this  way, sir. Down these steps,  if
you will. Wonder of wonders. Come this way, sir.

They  emerged from  the procuratorial  palace into  the clear,  bright light  of
another perfect Ni-moyan  day. The  hostelry where  Mandralisca kept  his out-of
town visitors was  a ten-minute walk  away from the  river-up the hill  past the
Movement headquarters and the  apartment building where Thastain  himself lived,
turn left,  enter an  underground passageway  that quickly  turned into  a broad
stone staircase going up to the next level inland. And there was the hostelry, a
great white  tower, as  most of  the buildings  of this  sector of Ni-moya were,
standing in a row of similar towers that formed a solid phalanx along the street
known as Nissimorn Boulevard. Four of  the Five Lords had mansions farther  down
Nissimorn  Boulevard,  where  the  apartment  towers  gave  way  to  the private
dwellings of the very wealthy. Everyone knew Nissimorn Boulevard. It was such  a
famous street  that when  he first  saw it  Thastain wondered  if his feet would
begin tingling as they came in contact with its pavement.

'The  Count Mandralisca  makes jokes  of you,'  the Metamorph  went on  as  they
ascended the stone  staircase, 'but even  so you are  one of his  most important
people. Is that not so, that you are a close aide?'

'One of the closest.  You saw the other  two just now.Jacemon Halefice,  Khaymak
Barjazid, and I: we are his inner circle, the people he most trusts.' It was the
truth, more or less, Thastain thought. The Count was more at ease with  Halefice
and Barjazid and him than with anyone else. He had told them things that he  had
kept secret from  everyone all his  life, about his  childhood, his father,  his
service with Dantirya Sambail. That had to signify a certain closeness.

But Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp  said, startling Thastain with  the accuracy
of his perception, 'You are the people he most trusts, yes, but how much does he
trust you? Or anyone? And how much do you trust him?'

'I can't speak to any of that, sir.'

'He is  a difficult  man, I  think, your  Count Mandralisca.  Proud, suspicious,
dangerous. He offers us an alliance. He makes us promises.'

Thastain saw what was going on now. He maintained an uneasy silence.

The Shapeshifter said, 'We have not done well by the promises of your people  in
the past. There were Pontifexes and Coronals who swore to make our lives better,
to grant us this privilege  and that one that had  been taken from us by  Lord ,
Stiamot, to permit us to come forth  freely from our lands. You see how  we live
now.'

'Count Mandralisca is neither a Pontifex nor a Coronal. The thing that he  seeks
is to free the people of this continent from the rule of such kings as those. He
means all the people of this continent, your people included.'

'Perhaps so,' the Shapeshifter said. 'And he is an honorable man, would you say,
your Count Mandralisca?'

Honorable?

That word was not,  thought Thastain, the first  one that would come  to mind in
describing Mandralisca.  Cold-hearted, yes.  Cruel, maybe.  Frightening. Fierce.
Determined.  Ruthless.  But  honorable?  Honorable?  Thastain  had  known  a few
unquestionably honorable  men in  his Sennec  days, good,  strong, uncomplicated
men, whose word was their bond.  Liaprand Strume, for one, the storekeeper,  who
would  always allow  more credit  to someone  in trouble.  Safiar Syamilak,  his
father's bailiff, the devoted guardian  of their lands. And the  big red-bearded
man with the  farm just upriver  from theirs, the  one who had  cracked his back
lifting the wagon that had fallen on that little boy - Gheivir Maglisk, that was
his name. Three honorable men, no doubt  of that. It was hard to see  what Count
Mandralisca had in common with those three.

On the  other hand  it was  not his  business to  be speaking  harshly of  Count
Mandralisca to this  Metamorph, or to  anyone else. It  was Mandralisca whom  he
served, not the Metamorphs. If this creature wanted to find out how  trustworthy
Mandralisca might or might not be, he would have to do it on his own.

'The Count  is an  extraordinary man,'  Thastain replied  finally. No lie, that.
'When this land of ours is freed at last from the oppression of the  Pontifexes,
you'll see how well  Count Mandralisca keeps his  promises.' Which was also  the
truth, for what it  was worth. - 'Look  there, sir,' Thastain said,  desperately
searching  for some  distraction. 'How  the early  afternoon light  strikes  the
Crystal Boulevard.'

'Is  so  very beautiful,  yes,'  said Viitheysp  Uuvitheysp  Aavitheysp thickly,
shading his strange eyes against the brilliant stream of radiance that batteries
of revolving reflectors  summoned from  the Crystal  Boulevard's shining  paving
stones. 'Is the greatest  of cities, your Ni-moya.  I am thankful to  your Count
for permitting me to come here. Is my hope someday to bring my clansfolk here to
see it as  well, when your  Count has won  his war against  the Pontifex and the
Coronal. For such his promise is, that we will be allowed to come.'

'Such his promise is, yes,' Thastain agreed.


Jacemon  Halefice  was  in  the  Movement  headquarters  building  when Thastain
returned to it after delivering  the Shapeshifter to his hostelry.  Thastain was
glad  to see  him. Lately  a friendship  of sorts  had come  into being  between
Thastain  and  the  aide-de-camp, based,  apparendy,  on  Halefice's fears  that
Khaymak  Barjazid was  supplanting him  in Mandralisca's  affections.  Halefice,
Thastain knew, went a long way back with Mandralisca - back to the days when the
two  of them  had been  in the  service of  Dantirya Sambail.  They had   fought
together against the army of Prestimion in the Procurator's rebellion.

But  it  was  Barjazid, whom  Mandralisca  had  known only  a  short  while, who
controlled the all-important helmets. Often, nowadays, the Count seemed to favor
the  little man  from Suvrael  over Halefice;  and so,  evidently, Halifice  had
decided to cultivate  the friendship of  the young and  swiftly rising Thastain,
forming an unstated  alliance against a  further increase in  Khaymak Barjazid's
influence with Mandralisca.

Thastain, young as  he was, was  clever enough to  know that Halefice  was being
foolish. There  was no  need for  anyone to  worry about  the place  he held  in
Mandralisca's  'affections.'  Mandralisca  had  no  affections,  only   schemes,
desires, goals; he kept people about  him who would help him in  the fulfillment
of those things, saw them entirely as instruments toward his intended  purposes,
discarded them if they were no longer useful. You were deluding yourself if  you
imagined that you were any kind of friend to Mandralisca, or he to you.

Even so, Thastain welcomed Halefice's overtures. It was a nerveracking business,
working for Count Mandralisca. You never knew when you would make some  critical
mistake, or even  a minor one,  and he would  turn on you  with all his terrible
ferocity. Thastain had not really  anticipated being thrust into such  proximity
with the terrifying Count  when he had chosen  to enter the service  of the Five
Lords. Jacemon Halefice softened that proximity for him. The aide-de-camp was  a
genial, easy-natured man, whose company was  a pleasant relief after an hour  or
two with the Count. And perhaps  Jacemon Halefice might even be able  to protect
him against Mandralisca's wrath should  he someday become its target.  Sooner or
later, after all, everyone did.

'Took the Shapeshifter home, did you?' Halefice asked. 'That was a surprise, eh,
seeing the Count invite one of those in for a conference! But he'll ally himself
with anyone and anything, will our Count, if he thinks it'll serve his needs.'

'And will it serve his needs, do you think, to bring in the Shapeshifters in the
struggle against Alhanroel? How can you trust such creatures?'

'They are a bunch of slippery serpents,  yes,' Halefice said, with a grin and  a
nod. 'I love  them no more  than you do,  boy. But I  see why Mandralisca  would
attempt to  make common  cause with  them, just  the same.  They have  much more
reason to hate  the Pontificate than  he does, you  know. And the  enemy of your
enemy, remember, is your friend. Mandralisca believes that when the time  comes,
the Piurifayne  folk will  do everything  they can  to make  life difficult  for
Prestimion and Dekkeret.'

'So we have Metamorphs as  our friends, now!' Thastain shuddered.  'Stranger and
stranger every day. -  The Metamorph doesn't trust  the Count very much,  by the
way. Doesn't entirely think he's going to keep his promises about granting  them
equality once the war is won.'

'He told  you that,  did he?  Very confiding  of him.  I wouldn't pass that word
along to Mandralisca, though, if I were you.'

'Why not?'

'What  good  will   it  do?  If   Mandralisca's  planning  to   doublecross  the
Shapeshifters when he no longer has any use for them, he'll do it regardless  of
what they  might suspect.  He doesn't  expect anyone  to trust  him anyway, does
Mandralisca. And  if you  tell him  that the  Shapeshifter's been pouring things
such as you've just told me into  your ears, the Count' 11 start worrying  about
how chummy you're getting with his  new Metamorph friends. Keep it to  yourself,
is what I say. Don't even tell me. You haven't told me. Understood?'

'Understood,' Thastain said.

'What  about  going out  on  the Promenade  for  some sausages  and  beer, now?'
Halefice suggested.

Thastain welcomed the return to the bright warm sunlight. His head was spinning.
He  had  not  been  expecting any  sort  of  conversational  intimacy with  that
Shapeshifter, and the fact that Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had appeared  to
want to use him as a confidant was disturbing and unsettling. If the  Metamorphs
mistrusted  Mandralisca's  promises,  let them  take  that  up with  Mandralisca
himself, he thought, not whisper  it in the ear  of his youngest and  least sure
footed aide.

And, though he had not found his brief moments of contact with the  Shapeshifter
as horrifying  and repugnant  as he  had expected  - had,  indeed, begun in that
brief conversation to look upon  the Shapeshifters as actual people  with actual
grievances,  rather  than dread  monsters  - he  still  resented the  fact  that
Mandralisca had thrust him so blithely into that contact. It had not been  right
to ask that of  him. His old conditioning  was still powerful. He  did not crave
the companionship of Metamorphs. He was not  at all sure that he cared to  be in
the service of a man who thought it would be desirable to form an alliance  with
them.

Thastain was,  in fact,  getting weary  of Mandralisca  and his icy-souled ways.
Mandralisca  treated  him  reasonably  well, even  seemed  to  find  his company
somewhat amusing, but he knew how  little that really meant. Even the  Metamorph
had been able to see  the contempt behind the Count's  use of the mock title  of
'duke' for him.

'Do you notice,'  Jacemon Halefice said,  as they stood  by the riverfront  walk
eating their sausages, 'how tense the  Count has become these days? Not  that he
was ever a man  of easy spirit. But  the slightest provocation now  is enough to
set him twanging like a tightly strung harp-string.'

'Indeed,' said Thastain noncommittally. He had learned long ago the great  value
of  listening  and  nodding  and  saying  very  little  of  his  own  when Count
Mandralisca was the subject of the discussion.

'Khaymak thinks  he is  overusing the  helmet,' Halefice  went on.  'Night after
night he roves the world with it, entering people's minds and doing what he does
to them. Barjazid says that the helmet is a wearying thing to use, when one uses
it as much as that. And who would know better?'

'Who, indeed,' said Thastain.

'But  I think  more than  the helmet  is involved.  This is  no trifling  thing,
proposing to make war against the Coronal. I think the Count sometimes fears  he
may have overreached himself. He must do all the planning himself, you know. The
Five Lords  are worthless  creatures. And  now, this  business of  enlisting the
Metamorphs in our cause - it is always dangerous, dealing with them, of  course.
You must watch your  back at every moment.  The Count knows that.  And, I think,
the Danipiur's ambassador knows he must look to the Count in the same fashion. A
wondrous pair, they are! - Another round of sausages, eh, Thastain?'

'What a good idea,' Thastain said.

'Of course,'  said Halefice,  'the important  question is  not whether the Count
intends to doublecross the Shapeshifters, but whether they will doublecross  us.
If the Count has not convinced  the Shapeshifter that his promises are  sincere,
how likely are  they to help  our cause, when  the day of  action comes? Suppose
they decide  that his  talk of  civil equality  is no  more to  be believed than
anything else the Unchanging  Ones have said over  the years, and abandon  us to
fight our own battles among ourselves.'

'Unchanging Ones?'

'Their term  for us.  The Count  may be  making a  grievous error  if he  places
overmuch reliance on the good will of his new Metamorph friends. - But of course
we  are  not having  this  discussion, Thastain.  We  are simply  standing  here
enjoying our sausages.'

'Indeed,' said Thastain.

And thought: So  Halefice also thinks  they mistrust each  other, do Mandralisca
and Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp? Surely he is right about that. They are  of
the same kind, in a sense: slippery treacherous serpents, just as Halefice says.
Well, they deserve each other.

But do I really deserve either one of them?



14

'A breakfast meeting is  what he wants,' Prestimion  said. 'A discussion of  the
highest  priority, he  says, just  the -A.  A-two of  us, Pontifex  and  Coronal
together. Not  Septach Melayn,  not Gialaurys,  not even  you, Varaile. And only
last evening he was asking for  more time to prepare his invasion  plan, because
he's operating without a High Counsellor.  What could have come over him  in the
night, do you think?'

Varaile smiled. 'He knows  you very well, Prestimion.  How little you enjoy  any
sort of delay.'

'I don't think  that's it. I  may be an  impatient, impulsive man,  but Dekkeret
certainly  isn't.  And  this time  I  wasn't  rushing him,  for  once.  I agreed
yesterday that it would be all right for him to take three or four days to think
things over. Instead he's coming back at me the very next morning. There has  to
be a reason for that. And I'm not sure I'm going to like it when I discover what
it is.'


The meeting  took place  in a  private dining  room adjacent  to the  Pontifex's
quarters, on the eastern side of the building facing into glorious  golden-green
morning sunlight. At Prestimion's orders the meal was served all at once, plates
of  fruit,  steamed  fish,  a stack  of  sweet  brown  stajja-cakes, some  light
breakfast wine. Neither of them touched much  of it. Dekkeret seemed to be in  a
very strange mood,  tense, wound up  very tight, and  yet with a  glowing, oddly
exalted look  in his  eyes, as  though he  had had  some rapturous vision in the
night.

'Let me tell you my plan,' he said, when the brief social pleasantries were done
with. 'With  the alterations  that I've  made in  it as  a result  of a  night's
thinking.'

There was been something almost theatrical about the way Dekkeret had said that.
Prestimion was mystified by it.

'Go on,' he said.

'What  I  intend,' Dekkeret  said,  'is at  once  to undertake  the  first grand
processional of  my reign.  That will  give me  a convenient and uncontroversial
pretext for visiting  Zimroel. Since I'm  already here on  the west coast,  I'll
announce that that will be my first stop. I'll set out as soon as possible. Sail
right across to Piliplok, journey up  the Zimr to Ni-moya, continue on  into the
far western  lands, stopping  at Dulorn,  Pidruid, Narabal,  Til-omon, all those
cities of the west where 'Lord Dekkeret' is nothing more than a name.'

He paused then, as though to give Prestimion a chance to express his approval.

Prestimion, growing more and more bewildered by his Coronal's words and  manner,
said, 'I remind you, Dekkeret, there's an insurrection going on over there. What
we spoke of yesterday was your invading Zimroel with a major army, in order that
the uprising can be put down. A campaign of war against the rebels who defy  our
authority. War. That's something quite different from a grand processional.'

Serenely Dekkeret said, 'Prestimion, you were the one who spoke of an  invasion.
I never did. Invading  Zimroel, raising my hand  in war against its  people, who
are my own people: these are not policies with which I can agree.'

'So you oppose the idea of dealing with the rebellion by force?'

'Most emphatically, majesty.'

Prestimion felt the blood  beginning to leap in  his veins. He was  astounded as
much  by   Dekkeret's  air   of  bland   calm  assurance   as  by  the  outright
insubordination embodied in his words.

He controlled himself with some effort. 'I think you have no choice in this,  my
lord. How can you even think of a grand processional of the usual sort at a time
like this? For  all you know,  you'll arrive in  Piliplok and find  that they've
sworn  allegiance to  one of  these Sambailid  brothers, hailing  him as   their
Procurator or  even, maybe,  as their  Pontifex, and  won't even  let you  land.
Imagine that: the Coronal of Majipoor  turned away at the harbor! What  will you
do dien, Dekkeret? Or you'll get to Ni-moya and the river will be blockaded by a
hostile fleet, and you'll  be told that this  is Sambailid territory and  you're
not welcome in it. What then? Won't you regard that as a cause of war?'

'Not necessarily. I'll remind them of the covenant that binds them in loyalty.'

Prestimion stared. 'And  if they laugh  at you, what  course of action  will you
take?'

'I  promised you,  Prestimion, that  I would  do whatever  needs to  be done  to
restore the rule of law in Zimroel. I intend to keep that promise.'

'By measures that nevertheless fall short of outright war.'

'I've never said that. I'll have troops with me. I'd use them if I had to. But I
don't think a war will be necessary.'

'If I tell you that  I see it as the  only solution, that will put  us in direct
conflict, you and I, won't it?'  Prestimion still spoke in a measured  tone, but
his anger was rising from moment to moment. This was a development he had  never
envisioned. In all  the years since  Dekkeret had first  emerged as the  obvious
choice to become the next Coronal, Prestimion not once had imagined that he  and
Dekkeret would ever find themselves differing on any great matter of state. This
seemed the final betrayal, to have his own protege rise up against him in a time
of such crisis. 'I urge you, Dekkeret, rethink what you've just said.'

'You are Pontifex, majesty. I obey you in all things and always will. But I tell
you, Prestimion, I oppose this war of yours with all my soul.'

'Ah,' said Prestimion. 'With all your soul.'


Prestimion had not felt so baffled since the moment long ago when he had watched
Confalume's son Korsibar placing  the starburst crown on  his own head with  his
own hands and  proclaiming himself king.  What is the  Pontifex to do,  he asked
himself, when  his Coronal  throws his  orders back  in his  face? Confalume had
never prepared  him for  something like  this. Prestimion  saw the  relationship
between himself as Pontifex and Dekkeret as Coronal, suddenly, much as the aging
and increasingly ineffectual Confalume,  grudgingly yielding power to  the young
firebrand Coronal Lord Prestimion, must once have seen it in his own day.

He fought to contain his surging temper. In another moment he would be  shouting
and snarling. That  must not be  allowed to happen.  To win time  for himself he
broke a stajja-cake in half, nibbled at it without interest, washed it down with
cool golden wine.

'Very well,' Prestimion said at last. 'You think you can avoid war. No doubt you
can, if you're resolved not to start  one. But that still leaves the problem  of
Mandralisca  and  his uprising.  You've  pledged to  bring  both of  them  under
control. Just how do you plan to do that if not by military force?'

'The same way we did in  the campaign against the Procurator. Mandralisca  has a
helmet. We have helmets also. He has a Barjazid: I have a Barjazid. My  Barjazid
will outmaneuver his  Barjazid and take  him out of  the picture; and  diat will
leave Mandralisca at my mercy.'

'I think this is naive of you, Dekkeret.'

Now anger flared  for an instant  in the younger  man's eyes. 'And  I think your
thirst for  war against  your own  citizens is  an unbecoming  thing for one who
fancies himself a great monarch,  Prestimion. Especially when it's a  war you'll
be waging by proxy, many thousands of miles from the battlefield.'

It was difficult for Prestimion to believe that Dekkeret had actually said  such
a thing. 'No!' he roared, slamming his  open hand against the table so that  the
cutlery  jumped high  and the  wine-flask went  flying over  the edge.  'Unfair!
Unfair! Wrongheaded and unfair!'

'Prestimion -'

'Let me speak,  Dekkeret. This must  be answered.' Prestimion  realized that his
hands were clenched into fists. He put them out of sight. 'I have no thirst  for
war,' he said, as calmly as he could manage it. 'You know that. But in this case
I think war is unavoidable. And I will wage it myself, Dekkeret, if you have  no
stomach for it. Do you  think I've forgotten how to  fight? Oh, no, no: you  get
yourself back to the Castle, my lord, and I will take the troops to Zimroel, and
I'll take my place proudly in the front lines with Gialaurys and Septach Melayn,
as we did in the  old days.' His voice was  rising again. 'Who was it  who broke
Korsibar's armies that day at Thegomar Edge, when you were not much more than  a
boy? Who was it who put the thought-helmet on his own head in this very building
and reached out to  smash Venghenar Barjazid with  it in the Stoienzar  jungles?
Who was it who -'

Dekkeret raised  both his  hands in  appeal. 'Gently,  your majesty.  Gently. If
there is to be another  war, and may the Divine  spare us from that, you  know I
will lead it, and I will win it. But let this rest a moment, I pray you. There's
more to tell you, and it has implications that reach far beyond the problems  of
the moment.'

'Speak, then,' Prestimion said in a hollow voice. His furious outburst had  left
him numb. He wished he had not knocked the wine over, now.

Dekkeret said, 'Do you remember,  Prestimion, when we spoke in  the tasting-room
at Muldemar House, just the two of  us as we are this morning, and  you reminded
me of that  strange prophecy ofMaundigand-Klimd's  that a Barjazid  would become
the fourth Power of the Realm? Neither of us could make any sense of that  then,
and  we  put it  aside  as an  impossibility.  But in  this  night just  past  I
understood its meaning. A fourth Power  is needed. And with your consent  I will
create Dinitak Barjazid as  that Power, once the  matter of Mandralisca and  the
five Sambailids is behind us.'

'I see that you have gone  mad,' said Prestimion, all rancor gone,  only sadness
in his tone now.

'Hear me out, I pray. Judge my madness for yourself when I've spoken.'

Prestimion's only response was a resigned shrug.

'We have never known such prosperity on Majipoor as we have in the modern  era,'
said Dekkeret. 'The era of Prankipin and Lord Confalume - of Confalume and  Lord
Prestimion - of  Prestimion and Lord  Dekkeret, if you  will. But we  have never
known such turbulence, either. The coming  of the mages and sorcerers, the  rise
of the strange new cults, the troublemaking of Dantirya Sambail and  Mandralisca
- all these  things are new  to us. Perhaps  the one thing  goes with the other,
prosperity and turbulence, the uncertainties of new wealth and the mysteries  of
magic. Or perhaps we have simply grown too populous, now - with fifteen  billion
people on one world,  huge though it is,  perhaps there must inevitably  be some
discord, even strife.'

Prestimion sat quietly, waiting to see where this was going. It was evident that
Dekkeret had rehearsed this speech over and over in his mind for half the night:
it behooved him, especially after his angry outburst of a few moments before, to
give it  some show  of attention  before rejecting  whatever demented irrational
idea it was that his chosen Coronal had managed to spawn.

Dekkeret went on: 'In the earlier time of troubles that we speak of as the  time
ofDvorn, the first two Powers were created, with joint command: the Pontifex the
older, wiser monarch to whom  the responsibility for devising policy  was given,
and the Coronal  the younger, more  vigorous man who  had the task  of executing
those policies. Later, when a wonderful new invention made it possible, came the
third Power, the Lady of the  Isle, who with her multitude of  associates enters
the minds  of great  numbers of  people each  night and  offers them  solace and
guidance and healing. But the equipment  the Lady uses has its limitations.  She
can speak with minds, but she is unable to direct or control them. Whereas these
helmets that the Barjazids have invented -'

'Have stolen, rather. A sniveling treacherous little Vroon named Thalnap Zeiifor
invented the things. One of the many  errors for which I will be someday  called
to account is that I put that Vroon and his helmets into the hands of  Venghenar
Barjazid, to our great injury ever since.'

'The  Barjazids,  especially  Khaymak Barjazid,  have  built  upon that  Vroon's
designs and greatly increased their abilities. I was one of the first, you  will
recall, to  feel the  force of  the helmet,  long ago  when I  was traveling  in
Suvrael. But  what I  felt then,  strong as  it was,  was nothing like the power
available in the later version of  the helmet you used to strike  down Venghenar
Barjazid in  the Stoienzar  twenty years  ago. And  the helmet  that drove  your
brother into  insanity, and  has harmed  so many  others lately  up and down the
land, is far stronger yet. It is a formidable weapon indeed.'

Dekkeret leaned forward, his gaze intently focused on Pres-timion.

'The world,' he said, 'needs more stringent government than it had in years gone
by, or else we will have new Mandraliscas all the time. What I propose is  this:
thatwe  take  the helmets  into  the government,  giving  them over  to  Dinitak
Barjazid and  making it  his responsibility  to search  out malefactors,  and to
control and punish them by using his helmet to transmit powerful mental sendings
with his helmet. He will monitor the minds of the world, and keep the wicked  in
check. For  this he  will require  the status  and authority  of a  Power of the
Realm. We will call him, let us say, the King of Dreams. His rank will be  equal
to our own. Dinitak will be the first of that title; and it will descend through
the  generations  to his  descendants  thereafter. -  There  you have  it,  your
majesty.'

Astonishing, Prestimion thought. Unbelievable.

'Dinitak, as  I understand  it, has  no descendants  at present,'  he replied at
once. 'But  that's the  least of  the things  I see  wrong with  this scheme  of
yours.'

'And the others?'

'It's tyranny, Dekkeret. We  rule now by the  consent of the people,  who freely
make us their kings. But  if we have a weapon  that permits us to control  their
minds -'

'To guide their minds. Only the wicked  need fear it. And the weapon is  already
loose in the land. Better that we make it exclusively ours, forbidden to  anyone
else, than to leave it out there  for future Mandraliscas. We, at least, can  be
trusted. Or so I prefer to think.'

'And your Dinitak? Can he? He's a Barjazid, I remind you.'

'Of the same blood,' said Dekkeret, 'but  not of the same nature. I saw  that in
Suvrael, when he urged his father Venghenar to go with me to the Castle and show
you the first  helmet. Later we  saw that again  when he came  to us at  Stolen,
bringing a helmet  we could use  against his father  in the rebellion.  You were
suspicious of him then, do you remember? You said, 'How can we trust him?'  when
he showed up bearing the helmet. You thought it might be all some intricate  new
scheme of Dantirya Sambail's. 'Trust him, my lord,' is what I said to you  then.
'Trust him!' And you did. Were we wrong?'

'Not then,' Prestimion said.

'Nor will we  be now. He  is my closest  friend, Prestimion. I  know him as I've
never known anyone  else. He's driven  by a set  of moral beliefs  that make the
rest of us seem  like pickpockets. You said  it yourself at Muldemar,  remember,
that time when he gave you an answer that was truthful, but a little too  blunt?
'You are  no diplomat,  Dinitak, but  you are  an honest  man,' or words to that
effect. - Did  you notice that  although he came  with me on  this trip, Keltryn
didn't?'

'Keltryn?'

'Fulkari's younger sister. She and Dinitak  have had a little romance -  but why
would you know that, Prestimion? You were off at the Labyrinth when it  started.
Anyway, he wouldn't take Keltryn with him. Said it was improper to be  traveling
with an unmarried woman. Improper! When did you last hear a word like that?'

'A very holy young man, I agree. Too holy, perhaps.'

'Better that than otherwise. We'll marry him off to Keltryn sooner or later - if
she'll have him, that  is; Fulkari tells me  she's furious with him  for leaving
her behind - and they'll begin a  tribe of holy young Barjazids who can  succeed
their great ancestor as Kings of Dreams in the centuries ahead. And fear of  the
harsh dreams that the  King of Dreams can  send will maintain peace  in the land
forever after.'

'A nice fantasy, isn't it? But it makes me very uneasy, Dekkeret. I once took it
upon myself to meddle with the minds of everyone on Majipoor in one great swoop,
at Thegomar  Edge, when  I had  my mages  wipe out  all memory  of the  Korsibar
uprising. I thought then it was a good thing to do, but I was wrong, and I  paid
a bitter price for it. Now you  propose a new kind of mind-meddling, a  constant
ongoing monitoring. -I  won't allow it,  Dekkeret, and that  ends it. You  would
need to have the approval of the Pontifex to establish any such system, and that
approval  is  herewith  withheld.  Now,  if we  can  return  to  the  problem of
Mandralisca -'

'You doom us all to chaos, Prestimion.'

'Do I, now?'

'The world has become too complicated to be governed from the Labyrinth and  the
Castle any longer.  Zimroel has grown  wealthy and restless  under Prankipin and
Confalume and you. And they know how long it takes to ship troops from Alhanroel
to deal  with any  sort of  trouble there.  The rise  of the Procurator Dantirya
Sambail as a sort of quasi-king  in Zimroel was the beginning of  a secessionist
movement there. Now it's gone another  step. There'll be the constant threat  of
divisiveness and  insurrection across  the sea  unless we  have some  direct and
immediate way of intervening. The whole structure will come apart.'

'And you actually think that using the  Barjazid helmet is the only way we  have
of holding the world government together?'

'I do. The only  way short of turning  Zimroel into an armed  camp with imperial
garrisons stationed in every city, that  is. Do you think that would  be better?
Do you, Prestimion?'


Abruptly Prestimion rose  and went to  the window. He  yearned for nothing  more
than to bring this maddening discussion to an end. Why would Dekkeret not yield,
even in the face of a Pontifical refusal? Why would he not see the impossibility
of his great idea?

Or am I, Prestimion wondered, the one who refuses to see?

For  a long  time he  stared out  silently into  the streets  ofStoien city.  He
remembered a time when he had stared out another window of this very building at
pillars of smoke rising from the fires set by lunatics at the time of the plague
of madness, a  plague that he  had, however indirectly  he had done  it, brought
upon the world himself.

Did he,  he asked  himself, want  to see  fires such  as those  in the cities of
Majipoor again? In Zimroel: in wondrous Ni-moya, and magical crystalline Dulorn,
and tropic Narabal of the sweet sea breezes?

You doom us all to chaos, Prestimion -

A fourth Power of the Realm.

A King of Dreams.

Young  Barjazid wearing  the helmet,  roving the  night to  seek out  those  who
threatened to break the peace, and warning them sternly of the consequences, and
punishing them if they disobeyed.

Of the same blood but not of the same nature -

It would be a mighty transformation. Did  he dare? How much less risky it  would
be simply to apply the Pontifical veto to this wild scheme and put it away,  and
send Dekkeret off  to Zimroel to  crush this new  uprising and hurl  Mandralisca
finally into his grave. While he himself returned to the Labyrinth and lived out
the  rest  of his  days  pleasandy there  amid  imperial pomp  and  ceremony, as
Confalume had done for so long, never needing to grapple with the hard questions
of governance, for he had a Coronal who could grapple with such things for him.

A constant  threat of  divisiveness and  insurrection across  the sea. The whole
structure will come apart -

From somewhere behind  him Dekkeret said,  'I want to  point out, your  majesty,
that we have that  vision of Maundigand-Klimd's to  take into account here.  And
also, on my journey here across  Alhanroel, there were several occasions when  I
had  visionary experiences  of my  own, to  my great  surprise, that  seemed  to
indicate -'

'Hush,'  Prestimion said  softly, without  turning. 'You  know what  I think  of
visions and oracles and thaumaturgy and all  the rest of that. Be quiet and  let
me think, Dekkeret. I pray you, man, just let me think.'

A King of Dreams. A King of Dreams. A King of Dreams.

And finally he said,  'The first step, I  think, is to speak  with Dinitak. Send
him to me, Dekkeret. The powers you want to entrust to him are greater even than
our own, do you realize that? You  say we can trust him, and very  likely you're
right, but I can't act  just on your say-so. I  suspect that I need to  find out
just how holy he is. What if he's too holy, eh? What if he thinks that even  you
and I are miserable sinners  who need to be brought  in check? What would we  be
loosing on the world, in that case? Send him to me for a little chat.'

'Now, you mean?' Dekkeret asked.

'Now.'



15

'The plan is this,' Dekkeret told Fulkari,  two hours later. 'We are to call  it
simply  a grand  processional. It  won't be  labeled in  any way  as a  military
expedition. But it'll be a grand  processional that looks a lot like  a military
expedition. The Coronal will be accompanied  not only by his own guardsmen,  but
by a contingent of Pontifical troops -a substantial number of Pontifical troops.
Which  gives the  whole enterprise  something of  the aspect  of a  peacekeeping
mission,  since a  grand processional  would normally  involve Castle  personnel
only, and the forces of the Pontifex would have no role in it. The message we'll
be sending, then, is this: 'Here is your new Coronal, and hail him as your king.
But if anyone among you has treasonous thoughts of insurrection, you are  warned
that there  is an  army standing  here behind  him that  will bring  you to your
senses.'

'Was this Prestimion's idea, or yours?'

'Mine. Based on his  suggestion long ago that  one good way I  could investigate
the situation in Zimroel at first hand was to go there under the guise of making
a grand processional. I  managed to convince him  just now that we'd  do best by
holding back the option of actual warfare to be our last resort, one that we can
always call upon if I get the wrong sort of reception when I'm over there.'

'Zimroel!' Fulkari said,  shaking her head  in wonder. 'That's  a place I  never
dreamed I'd see.' There was no mistaking the sheen of excitement in her eyes. It
was as though she had not  heard him mention the prospect of  becoming embroiled
in warfare at all.  'We'll go to Ni-moya,  of course. And Dulorn?  They say that
Dulorn looks  like something  out of  a fairytale,  an entire  city built out of
white crystal. What about Pidruid? Til-omon? - Oh, Dekkeret, when do we sail?'

'Not for some while, I'm afraid.'

'But if it's such an urgent situation -'

'Even so. Alaisor's where the ships  bound for Zimroel embark, so we'll  need to
go back up there first The fleet will have to be assembled, the imperial  troops
mustered. That'll take time, all the rest of the summer, perhaps. Meanwhile  the
official proclamations  of a  processional have  to be  drawn up  and shipped to
every city of  Zimroel that I'll  be visiting, so  that they'll be  on notice to
receive me with  the splendor that  Coronals are customarily  received with when
they come  to town.'  He smiled.  'Oh, one  more thing:  you and  I have  to get
married,  also.  Toward  the  end  of this  week,  is  probably  the  best time.
Prestimion himself has agreed to perform -'

'Married? Oh, Dekkeret -!' There was mingled delight and perplexity in her tone.
But it was the  perplexity that predominated. Her  lower lip trembled a  little.
'Here, in Stolen? We aren't going to have a Castle wedding? You know I'll do  it
wherever you want. But why such short notice, though?'

He took her hands between his. 'They tend to be very conventional people over in
Zimroel, I understand. It simply won't  look right to them if the  Coronal shows
up on his first grand processional accompanied by - by a -'

'A concubine?  Is that  the word  you want?'  Fulkari stepped  back and laughed.
'Dekkeret, you sound exactly like Dinitak now! Improper! Unseemly! Shameful!'

'Let's say 'awkward,' then. The situation in Zimroel's so delicate that I  can't
risk  any  sort of  political  embarrassment when  I'm  over there.  But  if the
answer's no, Fulkari, you'd better tell me now.'

'The answer's yes,  Dekkeret,' she replied  unhesitatingly. 'Yes, yes,  yes! You
knew that.' Then the jubilant gleam went from her eyes and she looked away  from
him, and in quite a different tone  she went  on, 'But still - I  always thought
the  way these  things are  done, you  know, at  the Castle,  in Lord  Apsimar's
Chapel,  where Coronals  are supposed  to get  married, and  then the  reception
afterward in the courtyard by Vildivar Close -'

Dekkeret  understood.  This was  Lord  Makhario's many-times-great-granddaughter
speaking. Lady Fulkari of Sipermit, to  whom the ways of the Castle  aristocracy
were second nature. Fearing  now that she would  be inexplicably cheated of  the
grand and  glorious wedding  ceremony that  she had  assumed would  be hers ever
since the moment of their betrothal.

Gently he  said, 'We  can get  married again  at the  Castle later  on. The full
business, I promise  you, Fulkari, the  total grand event,  with your sister  as
your bridesmaid and  Dinitak my best  man, and the  whole court watching,  and a
second honeymoon in  High Morpin at  the lodge the  Coronal keeps there  for his
private holidays. But we'll have our  first honeymoon in Ni-moya. And a  wedding
performed by the Pontifex himself, right  here and now, before he sets  off back
to the Labyrinth. - What do you say?'

'Well, of course,  we can't have  the Coronal Lord  ofMajipoor making the  grand
processional in the  company of some  little tart, can  we? By all  means, let's
make it official, then. I'll marry you wherever, whenever you want, whatever you
think is best.'  There was that  lovely sparkle of  delight and mischief  in her
eyes again. 'But  afterward, my  lord, when  we are  home at  the Castle   again
satin and velvet, and Lord Apsimar's Chapel, and the courtyard by Vildivar Close
-'


It was a simple ceremony, almost  perfunctory, absurdly so for so solemn  a rite
of  state as  a Coronal's  wedding: held  in Prestimion's  suite, the   Pontifex
presiding,  Varaile  and  Dinitak as  witnesses,  Septach  Melayn and  Gialaurys
looking on.

The whole thing took no more than five minutes. Prestimion did wear his  scarlet
and-black robes of office, and the  starburst crown was on Dekkeret's brow,  but
otherwise it could just  as well have been  the wedding of a  shopkeeper and his
pretty young clerk at the office of the municipal Justiciar. All those who  were
present understood  the reasons  for this  haste. A  proper royal  wedding would
follow in the fullness of  time, yes - once the  challenge of the Five Lords  of
Zimroel had been met. But for now the basic proprieties would be satisfied. Lord
Dekkeret and  the Lady  Fulkari would  go off  to Zimroel  with wedding bands on
their fingers, and let no one in the western continent breathe a word about  the
wickedness of Castle morality.

The wedding feast, at any rate,  was a properly luxurious affair, with  wines of
five colors, and plate upon plate of Stoienzar oysters and smoked meats and  the
pungent pickled fruits that  they doted on here  in the tropical lands.  Septach
Melayn sang  the ancient  wedding anthem  in a  creditable if  reedy tenor,  and
Fulkari, a little tipsy, gave Prestimion so unexpectedly passionate a kiss  that
the Pontifex's eyes  went wide and  the Lady Varaile  clapped her hands  in mock
admiration; and  at the  appropriate moment  Dekkeret gathered  up his bride and
carried her off to their suite on the floor below, making such a lively show  of
boyish eagerness that one might readily think this would be the first night that
she and he had ever spent together.

A few  days later  the Pontifical  party set  out on  the return  journey to the
Labyrinth: by ship along the north shore of the Stoienzar Peninsula to  Treymone
of the famous tree-houses, and overland from there through the Velalisier Valley
and the Desert  of the Labyrinth  to the imperial  capital. Dekkeret stood  with
Prestimion at the royal  quay on the Stoien  waterfront for a brief  farewell as
Varaile and  the Pontifex's  children boarded  their vessel.  Septach Melayn and
Gialaurys remained tactfully to one  side. At Dekkeret's request, they  would be
accompanying him into Zimroel on the grand processional.

Dekkeret spoke  briefly of  his regrets  over the  harsh words  that had  passed
between them not long before; but Prestimion brushed that aside, saying that  he
regretted his own anger at that breakfast meeting at least as much, and that the
whole episode was best put  out of mind. Out of  it, he pointed out, had  come a
general agreement between them on some of the greatest matters of state that any
Coronal and Pontifex had ever had to contemplate.

Prestimion did  not need  to add  that the  specific set  of tactics  to use  in
handling the Zimroel problem was  something he was leaving in  Dekkeret's hands.
They both knew that: this was a Coronal's task, not a Pontifex's.

As for the advent of the fourth Power of the Realm and Dinitak's designation  as
King of Dreams, they left any recapitulation of that unsaid also. Dekkeret  knew
that Prestimion was still uncomfortable with the concept, but that he would  not
stand  in  the way  of  implementing it  -  eventually. Prestimion  had  had his
conference with  Dinitak, although  neither man  chose to  discuss with Dekkeret
what  had taken  place. Evidently  all had  gone well,  Dekkeret concluded.  The
campaign against Mandralisca came first, though.

At the end they embraced, and it  was a warm embrace, though it was,  as always,
an awkward business  on account of  the difference in  their heights. Prestimion
bade Dekkeret  farewell, and  congratulated him  once more  on his marriage, and
wished him well in his grand processional, and told him they would meet again at
the Castle once the work at hand had been consummated. Then he turned and walked
in all  imperial dignity  aboard the  vessel that  would carry  him to Treymone,
without looking back.


Dekkeret himself, his bride, his companions Dinitak Barjazid and Septach  Melayn
and Gialaurys, and the rest of the  royal entourage were on their way five  days
later.  They too  began their  journey by  ship, sailing  northward from  Stoien
across the Gulf to the quiet little  port of Kimoise on the western coast.  Fast
floaters were waiting there that took them up the coast to Alaisor via Klai  and
Kikil and Steenorp, a retracement in reverse of the route they had followed down
to Stoien for Dekkeret's rendezvous with the Pontifex. But there would be a long
wait in Alaisor while the fleet was assembled and the troops mobilized.

For it was a mobilization. Dekkeret had no illusions about that. He knew he  had
to go across to Zimroel prepared to fight a war. But the great test of his reign
would lie in whether  he could succeed in  sidestepping that war. Would  that be
possible? He profoundly hoped so. He was the Coronal Lord of Zimroel as well  as
that ofAlhanroel, but he did not want to win the loyalty of the citizens of  the
western continent by the sword.

This was Dekkeret's  fourth visit to  Alaisor, the major  metropolitan center of
the western coast. But he had never had time on the other three journeys to  see
the great city properly.

On his first visit, traveling  to Zimroelwith Akbalik ofSamivole years  ago when
he was still just a young knight-initiate, he had stopped there only long enough
to catch  the ship  that would  take them  across the  Inner Sea.  He had passed
through Alaisor again a couple of years later, this time an even shorter  visit,
for that was the frenzied time when  he was racing across the world to  the Isle
of Sleep to bring  word to Lord Prestimion  that Venghenar Barjazid had  escaped
from prison at the Castle and intended to turn his thought-control helmets  over
to the rebel Dantirya Sambail. And on this most recent visit, just a few  months
before, Dekkeret had been there only a couple of days before receiving word that
Prestimion had arrived  in Stoien and  requested his immediate  presence. He had
barely had an opportunity to place a  wreath on the tomb of Lord Stiamot  before
it was necessary to move onward.

Now,  though,  there was  more  than ample  time  to experience  the  marvels of
Alaisor. Dekkeret would gladly  have been on his  way to Zimroel without  delay.
But  there were  ships to  call in  from other  ports, new  ones to   construct,
soldiers to levy  from the surrounding  provinces. Like it  or not, his  stay in
Alaisor was going to be an extended one this time.

It was  a superbly  located city,  an ideal  seaport. The  River lyann,  running
westward through upper Alhanroel, reached the sea here. By carving a deep  track
through the  lofty palisade  of black  granite cliffs  that ran  parallel to the
shore, the river had  created a link between  the districts of the  interior and
the great crescent bay at  the base of the mountains.  That bay at the mouth  of
the  lyann had  become the  harbor of  Alaisor. The  city itself  had sprung  up
primarily along the  coastal strip, with  tendrils of urban  settlement reaching
behind it into the  hills to form the  spectacularly situated suburb of  Alaisor
Heights.

Dekkeret and  Fulkari were  housed in  the four-level  penthouse suite  atop the
thirty-story Alaisor Mercantile Exchange where visiting royalty usually  stayed.
From their windows they could see  the dark spokes of the grand  boulevards that
ran toward the waterfront  from all corners of  the city, converging just  below
them in the circle marked by six colossal black stone obelisks that was the site
of Lord Stiamot's tomb. Stiamot had been en route to Zimroel in his old age, the
story went, to ask the pardon of  the Danipiur of the Metamorphs for the  war he
had waged against her people, when he fell mortally ill in Alaisor. He had asked
to be buried facing the sea. Or so the story went.

'I wonder if he's  really buried there,' Dekkeret  said, as they looked  down on
the  ancient  tomb. Some  people  of Alaisor  were  moving among  the  obelisks,
strewing handfuls of bright flowers. The tomb was freshly bedecked with blossoms
every day. 'For that matter, did he ever exist at all?'

'So you doubt him too, the way you doubted Dvorn, when we were at his tomb.'

'It's the same thing.  I agreed that someone  whose name was Dvorn  probably was
Pontifex at some  time or other  long ago. But  was he the  one who founded  the
Pontificate? Who knows? It was thirteen thousand years ago, and at that distance
in time do we  have any good way  of distinguishing history from  myth? Likewise
with Lord Stiamot: so ancient that we can't be sure of a thing.'

'How can  you say  that? He  lived only  seven thousand  years ago. Seven's very
differentfrom thirteen. Comparedwith Dvorn, he's practically our contemporary!'

'Is he? Seven thousand years - thirteen thousand - these are incredible numbers,
Fulkari.'

'So there never was a Lord Stiamot at all?'

Dekkeret smiled.  'Oh, there  was a  Lord Stiamot,  all right.  And either he or
somebody else of the same name probably was the one who conquered the Metamorphs
and sent them  off to live  in Piurifayne, I  suppose. But is  he the man  who's
buried under those black obelisks? Or did they just bury someone there, five  or
six thousand years ago, someone important  at that time, and gradually the  idea
took hold that the person in that tomb is Lord Stiamot?'

'You're terrible, Dekkeret!'

'Simply realistic. Do you  believe that the real  Stiamot was anything like  the
man the poets tell us about? That superhuman hero, striding from one end of  the
world to the other the  way you or I would  walk across the street? My  guess is
that the Lord Stiamot of The Book of Changes is ninety-five percent fable.'

'And will the same thing happen to you, do you think? Will the Lord Dekkeret  of
the poems  that will  be written  five thousand  years from  now be  ninety-five
percent fable too?'

'Of course. Lord Dekkeret and Lady Fulkari both. Somewhere right in The Book  of
Changes Aithin Furvain himself tells us that Stiamot once heard someone  singing
a  ballad about  one of  his victories  over the  Metamorphs, and  wept  because
everything they were saying about him in  that song was wrong. And even that  is
probably a fable too. Varaile once told  me that they were singing songs in  the
marketplace  about  Prestimion's  struggle   with  Dantirya  Sambail,  and   the
Prestimion they sang about  was nothing like the  Prestimion she knew. It'll  be
the same with us someday, Fulkari. Trust me on that.'

Fulkari's eyes  were glistening.  'Imagine it:  poems about  us, Dekkeret,  five
thousand  years  from  now!  The heroic  saga  of  your  great campaign  against
Mandralisca and the Five Lords! I'd love to read one of those - wouldn't you?'

'I'd love to know what  the poet tells us about  how things turned out for  Lord
Dekkeret, anyway,' said Dekkeret, staring  down somberly at the ancient  tomb in
the plaza  below. 'Does  the saga  finish with  a happy  ending for  the gallant
Coronal, I wonder? Or  is it a tragedy?'  He shrugged. 'Well, at  least we won't
have to wait five thousand years to find out.'


There was no escaping a  second ceremony at the tomb  this time, and a visit  to
the temple of the  Lady atop Alaisor Heights,  the second holiest shrine  to the
Lady in the world, and  a formal dinner at the  celebrated Hall of Topaz in  the
palace of the Lord Mayor of Alaisor, Manganan Esheriz. And as the weeks went  by
there were  other official  events as  well, a  numbing succession  of them,  as
Alaisor took full advantage of the unusual fact of a Coronal's extended presence
in the city.

But Dekkeret spent as much of his time as possible planning his tour of Zimroel:
the landing at  Piliplok, the journey  up the Zimr,  the entry into  Ni-moya. He
learned the names  of local officials,  he studied maps,  he sought to  identify
potential trouble-spots along the way. The trick would be to arrive at the  head
of a huge army while still managing to carry off the pretense that this was only
a peaceful grand processional undertaken for the purpose of introducing the  new
Coronal to  his western  subjects. Of  course, if  he should  find a  rebel army
waiting for him when he landed at Piliplok, or if Mandralisca had gone so far as
to blockade the sea against him, he would have no choice but to meet force  with
force. But that remained to be seen.

The summer  ticked along.  The time  soon would  come, Dekkeret  knew, when  the
season changed and the winds turned  contrary, blowing so vigorously out of  the
west that departure would have to  be postponed for many months. He  wondered if
he had misjudged the  timing, had spent so  much time assembling his  fleet that
the invasion must be delayed until spring, and his enemies given that much  more
time to dig themselves in.

But at last everything seemed propitious for departure, and the winds still were
favorable.

His flagship was called the Lord Stiamot. Of course: the local hero, the Coronal
whose name was a synonym for  triumph. Dekkeret suspected the ship had  formerly
borne some less resounding name and had hastily been renamed on his behalf,  but
he saw  no harm  in that.  'Let that  name be  an omen  of our  coming success,'
Gialaurys said with  gruff exuberance, pointing  to the golden  lettering on the
hull as they went aboard. 'The conqueror! The greatest of warriors!'

'Indeed,' said Dekkeret.


Gialaurys was exuberant also - indeed, he was the only one -when Piliplok harbor
finally came into view, many weeks later, after a slow and windy crossing of the
Inner Sea  made notable  by the  presence of  a great  band of  sea-dragons that
stayed  close at  hand much  of the  way. The  huge aquatic  beasts frisked  and
frolicked  about  Dekkeret's  fleet with  alarming  playfulness  day after  day,
lashing the choppy blue-green sea with their immense fluked tails and  sometimes
rising  from  the water,  tail-first,  to display  nearly  their entire  awesome
bodies. The sight of them was exhilarating and frightening at the same time. But
at last the dragons vanished to  starboard, disappearing into the next phase  of
whatever mysterious journeys the sea-dragons were wont to make in the course  of
their endless circlings of the world.

Then the  sea changed  color, darkening  to a  muddy gray,  for the voyagers had
reached  the point  off shore  where the  first traces  of the  silt and  debris
carried into the  ocean by the  Zimr could be  detected. The huge  river, in its
seven-thousand-mile  journey across  Zimroel, transported  untold tons  of  such
stuff eastward. At its  gigantic mouth, sixty miles  across and wider, all  that
tremendous  load was  swept into  the sea,  staining it  for hundreds  of  miles
outfrom shore. The sight of that stain meant that Piliplok city could not be far
away.

And then, finally,  the shore of  Zimroel came into  view. The chalky  mile-high
headland just north of Piliplok that  marked the place where the great  mouth of
the Zimr met the sea stood out brightly against the horizon.

Gialaurys was  the first  to spy  the actual  city. 'Piliplok  ho!' he bellowed.
'Piliplok! Piliplok!'

Piliplok, yes. Was a hostile fleet waiting there for him, Dekkeret wondered?

It did  not appear  that way.  The only  vessels in  view were  mercantile ones,
moving  about their  business as  though nothing  at all  were amiss.  Evidently
Mandralisca - unless he had some surprise up his sleeve - did not intend to deny
the Coronal  of Majipoor  the right  to land  on Zimroel's  soil. To  defend the
continent's entire perimeter against invasion was, after all, an enormous  task,
possibly  beyond  the rebels'  resources.  Mandralisca must  be  drawing a  line
somewhere closer to Ni-moya, Dekkeret decided.

Gialaurys could  barely contain  his delight  as his  birthplace came into view.
Joyfully he clapped  his hands. 'Ah,  there's a city  for you, Dekkeret!  Take a
good look, my lord! Is that a city, or isn't it, eh, my lord?'

Well,  he had  every reason  to smile   at the  sight of  his native  city.  But
Dekkeret, who had been to Piliplok before on his trip with Akbalik, knew what to
expect of  it, and  he greeted  the place  with none  of the old Grand Admiral's
glee. Piliplok was  not his idea  of urban beauty.  It was a  city that only its
natives could love.

And Fulkari gasped in outright shock at her first glimpse of it as they  entered
the harbor. 'I knew it wasn't  supposed to  be beautiful, but even  so, Dekkeret
even so - could it have been  some lunatic who laid this place out?  Some crazed
mathematician in love with his own insane plan?'

That had been Dekkeret's reaction too,  that other time, and the city  had grown
no lovelier in the  twenty-odd years of his  absence. From the central  point of
its splendid  harbor its  eleven great  highways fanned  out in rigidly straight
spokes, crossed with unerring precision  by curving bands of streets.  Each band
delimited  a  district  of  different  function  -  the  marine  warehouses, the
commercial quarter, the  zone of light  industry, the residential  areas, and so
forth - and within  each district every building  was of an architectural  style
unique to that  district, every structure  looking precisely like  its neighbor.
Each district's prevailing style had only one thing in common with the styles of
its  neighbors,  which  was  that they  all  were  characterized  by a  singular
heaviness and brutality of design that oppressed the eye and burdened the heart.

'In Suvrael, where  hardly any trees  or shrubs of  the northern continents  can
survive our heat and  powerful sunlight,' said Dinitak,  'we plant what we  can,
palms, tough succulents,  even the poor  scrawny things of  the desert, for  the
sake of  giving our  cities some  beauty. But  here in  this benevolent  coastal
climate, where  anything at  all will  grow, the  good folk  of Piliplok seem to
choose to grow nothing at all!'  Shaking his head, he pointed toward  shore. 'Do
you  see  a  stem anywhere,  Dekkeret,  a  branch, a  leaf,  a  flower? Nothing.
Nothing!'

'It is all like that,' said Dekkeret. 'Pavement, pavement, pavement.  Buildings,
buildings, buildings. Concrete, concrete, concrete. I remember seeing a shrub or
two, last time. No doubt they've had those removed by now.'

'Well, we aren't coming here as settlers, are we?' said Septach Melayn  lightly.
'So let us pretend that we adore the place, if they should ask us, and then  let
us get ourselves far from it as soon as we can.'

'I second the motion,' Fulkari said.

'Look,' said Dekkeret. 'Here comes our reception committee.'


Half a dozen vessels  had put out from  the harbor. Dekkeret, still  uneasy, was
relieved  to  see that  they  did not  have  the look  of  military ships  -  he
recognized them  as the  strange-looking fishing  vessels of  Piliplok that were
known as dragon-ships, lavishly  ornamented with bizarre fanged  figureheads and
sinister spiky tails, with  garish painted rows  of white teeth  and scarlet-and
yellow eyes along their sides,  and intricate many-pronged masts carrying  their
black-and-crimson sails - and that they flew ensigns of welcome that showed  the
green-and-gold colors symbolic of the power and authority of the Coronal.

It could, of course, all  be some deceptive maneuver of  Mandralisca's, Dekkeret
supposed. But he doubted that. And he felt further reassurance when a huge voice
came booming across the  waters to him through  a speaking-tube, crying out  the
traditional salute:  'Dekkeret! Dekkeret!  All hail  Lord Dekkeret!'  It was the
unmistakable deep rumble of a Skandar's voice. There was a greater concentration
of the giant four-armed beings in Piliplok than anywhere else in the world.  The
Lord Mayor of Piliplok himself, Kelmag  Volvol by name, was a Skandar,  Dekkeret
knew.

And that was unquestionably Kelmag  Volvol now, an immense shaggy  figure nearly
nine feet high in the  red robes of mayoralty, standing  in the bow of the  lead
dragon-ship  making  clusters of  starburst  signs, four  at  a time,  and  then
signalling that he wished to come aboard the Lord Stiamot for a parley. If  this
were a trap, Dekkeret thought, would the mayor of the city have been willing  to
bait it with his own person?

The two flagships lined up broadside. Kelmag Volvol clambered into a  wickerwork
transport basket. A thick rope that culminated in a massive curved blubber-hook,
normally used in the butchering of sea-dragons, was lowered from the rigging and
the hook was  fastened to the  basket. The rope  then was hoisted  by pulleys so
that the basket containing Lord Mayor  Kelmag Volvol was lifted aloft and  swung
outward over the rail of the  ship. Slowly and steadily it traveled  through the
gap separating  the vessels,  Kelmag Volvol  standing solemnly  upright all  the
while, and neatly deposited him beside the capstan head on the deck of the  Lord
Stiamot.

Dekkeret lifted both  his hands in  greeting. The towering  Skandar, nearly half
again as tall as the Coronal, knelt before him and saluted once more.

'My lord, you are welcome to Piliplok. Our city rejoices at your presence.'

Protocol now called- for an exchange  of small gifts. The Skandar had  brought a
surprisingly  delicate  necklace  fashioned  from  finely  interwoven sea-dragon
bones, which Dekkeret placed around  Fulkari's neck, and Dekkeret offered  him a
rich brocaded  mantle of  Makroposopos manufacture,  purple and  green with  the
royal starburst and monogram at its center.

The ceremonial  sharing of  food in  the Coronal's  cabin was  the next order of
ritual. This posed  certain technical difficulties,  since the Lord  Stiamot had
not been designed with Skandars in  mind, and Kelmag Volvol could barely  manage
to negotiate the companionway that led belowdecks. And he had to stoop and crane
his  neck to  fit within  the royal  cabin itself,  which was  roomy enough  for
Dekkeret and Fulkari but which  the Lord Mayor Kelmag Volvol  filled practically
to overflowing. Septach  Melayn and Gialaurys,  who had accompanied  them below,
were forced to stand in the passage outside.

'I must begin this meeting with troublesome news, my lord,' the Skandar said  as
soon as the formalities were over.

'Concerning Ni-moya, is it?'

'Concerning Ni-moya, yes,' said Kelmag Volvol. He threw an uneasy glance  toward
the two men outside. - 'It is a highly sensitive matter, my lord.'

'Nothing that needs to be hidden  from the Grand Admiral Gialaurys and  the High
Spokesman Septach Melayn, I think,' Dekkeret replied.

'Well, then.'  Kelmag Volvol  looked acutely  uncomfortable. 'It  is this, and I
regret to be the bearer of such tidings. Your journey onward to Ni-moya: I  must
advise  you  against it.  A  cordon has  been  placed around  the  city and  the
territory immediately surrounding it, to a distance of some three hundred  miles
in all directions.'

Dekkeret  nodded.  It was  as  he had  guessed:  Mandralisca had  reined  in his
original grandiose plans to claim all of Zimroel at the outset, and was limiting
the sphere of his rebellion to an area he was easily capable of defending. But a
rebellion was still a rebellion, even so.

'A cordon,' Dekkeret repeated thoughtfully, as though it were a mere nonsensical
sound that conveyed nothing to him. 'And what, I pray, does that mean, a  cordon
around Ni-moya?'

The pain  in Kelmag  Volvol's great  red-rimmed eyes  was unmistakable. His four
shoulders shifted about  in keen embarrassment.  'A zone, my  lord, protected by
military force,  which officials  of the  imperial government  are forbidden  to
enter, because it is now under the administration of the Lord Gaviral,  Pontifex
of Zimroel.'

A snort of astonishment came from Septach Melayn. 'Pontifex, is he! Of Zimroel!'

And from Gialaurys: 'We will flay him and  nail his hide to the door of his  own
palace, my lord! We will -'

Dekkeret motioned to them both to be still.

'Pontifex,' he  said, in  the same  wondering tone.  'Not merely Procurator, the
title his uncle  Dantirya Sambail was  content to hold,  but Pontifex? Pontifex!
Ah, very fine! Very bold! - He  makes no claim to Prestimion's own throne,  does
he? He is  content only to  rule over the  western continent, our  new Pontifex,
beginning  with  the  territory  around  Ni-moya?  Why,  then,  I  applaud   his
restraint!'

Skandars, Dekkeret remembered a moment  too late, had virtually no  capacity for
irony.  Kelmag  Volvol reacted  to  Dekkeret's lighthearted  words  with such  a
sputtering  display  of  astonishment  and  distress  that  it  was  immediately
necessary to assure him that the  Coronal did indeed regard the developments  in
Ni-moya with the greatest concern.

'Which brother is this, this Gaviral?' Dekkeret said to Septach Melayn, who  had
lately been gathering information concerning these nephews of Dantirya Sambail.

'The eldest one. A small scheming man, with a certain rudimentary  intelligence.
The other four are little more than drunken beasts.'

'Yes,' said Dekkeret. 'Like their father Gaviundar, the Procurator's brother.  I
met  him once,  when he  came to  the Castle  in Prestimion's  time as  Coronal,
sniveling after some favor  having to do with  land. An animal, he  was. A great
huge coarse vile-smelling hideous animal.'

'Who  betrayed  us  at the  battle  of  Stymphinor in  the  Korsibar  war,' said
Gialaurys darkly, 'when Navigorn nearly cut our army to pieces and Gaviundar and
his other brother  Gaviad, our allies  then, shamefully held  back their troops.
And his seed comes back to haunt us now!'

Dekkeret turned again to the Skandar. 'Tell me the rest of it. What  territorial
claims  is this  Gaviral actually  making? Just  Ni-moya, or  is that  only  the
beginning?'

'As we understand it down here,' Kelmag Volvol went on, 'the Lord Gaviral - that
is  the title  he uses,  the Lord  Gaviral -has  decreed this  entire  continent
independent of the imperial government. Ni-moya is apparently already under  his
control. Now he  has sent ambassadors  to the surrounding  districts, explaining
his purposes and asking for oaths of allegiance. A new constitution will shortly
be announced. The Lord Gaviral soon will select the first Coronal of Zimroel. It
is believed that he will name one of his brothers to the post.'

'Has the name of a certain Mandralisca been mentioned?' Dekkeret asked. 'Does he
figure in this in any way?'

'His signature was on the proclamation we received,' said Kelmag Volvol.  'Count
Mandralisca  of  Zimroel, yes,  as  privy counsellor  to  his majesty  the  Lord
Gaviral.'

'Count, no less,' muttered Septach Melayn. 'Count Mandralisca! Privy  counsellor
to his majesty the Pontifex Lord Gaviral! Has come a long way from the days when
he was tasting the Procurator's wine to see ifit'd been poisoned, that one has!'



16

'You asked for me, your grace?' Thastain said.

Mandralisca nodded  curtly. 'Bring  me the  Shapeshifter, if  you will,  my good
duke.'

'But he is gone, sir.'

'Gone? Gone?'

Mandralisca felt a momentary surge of fury and dismay so wildly intense that  it
astounded him  with its  force. Only  for a  moment; but  in that  moment it had
seemed  to him  that he  was being  swept through  the air  in the  teeth of   a
hurricane. It was a frightening overreaction,  and not the first of its  kind in
recent days.

He hated these spells of soul-vertigo that had begun coming over him lately.  He
hated himself for succumbing to them. They were a mark of weakness.

The boy must see it, too. He was staring.

Mandralisca forced himself to say more calmly, 'Gone where, Thastain?'

'Back to Piurifayne, I think, sir. Summoned home by the Danipiur to deliver  his
report, I believe.'

Stunning news. Mandralisca felt another whirlwind go roaring through his mind.

He groped for the  riding-crop that always lay  on his desk, gripped  its handle
until his knuckles were white, shoved it aside. To quiet himself he went to  the
window and stared  out. But that  only made things  worse, for he  found himself
looking  into the  rain. For  the past  three days  Ni-moya had  been pelted  by
surprising rains, a deluge beyond all expectation this late in the summer,  when
the long dry season of autumn and winter should be coming on. Everything  beyond
the window was a blank gray wall. The river, though it lay just below, could not
be seen at all. Nothing there but gray, gray, gray. And die unending drumming of
the rainfall against the great quartz window of his office had already begun  to
be maddening. Another day and it would have him screaming.

Calm. Stay calm.

But how? Dekkeret - the word had  just come in - had landed safely  in Piliplok,
with many troops. And Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had taken himself back  to
Piurifayne for a chat with his queen.

'He left,' Mandralisca said,  'and I wasn't told?  Why not? We had  an important
meeting scheduled  for today,  he and  I.' The  red tide  of anger  was mounting
again.  'The  Metamorph  ambassador  unexpectedly  sets  out  for  home  without
troubling to stop in at my office to take his leave of the privy counsellor, and
no one says anything to me!'

'I had - no idea, sir - I never thought -'

'You never thought! You never thought! Exactly, Thastain: you never thought.'

He had  wanted the  words to  sound icy-cold,  but they  came out  as a  kind of
throttled screech. Mandralisca  thought his head  was going to  explode. Khaymak
Barjazid had  told him  just the  other day  that it  was risky  to be using the
helmet as much as he was. Perhaps  that might be so; perhaps it could  be making
him just a little  unstable, he thought. Or  maybe it was simply  the tension he
felt now that the hour of  the long-dreamed-of war of independence was  at hand.
But he had never had so  much difficulty maintaining his self-control. And  this
was no moment to be losing control.

Not with Dekkeret in Piliplok. And the Metamorph ambassador gone.

For the  second time  in a  minute and  a half  Mandralisca fought  back his own
overloaded emotions and struggled to think things through.

The plan to  fortify the entire  coast against the  Coronal had long  since been
scrapped. In the end Mandralisca had  abandoned the idea on the grounds  that it
was one thing to invite the people of Zimroel to join the rulers of Ni-moya in a
general declaration of independence, and something else again to ask them,  this
early in the uprising, actually to lift their hands against an anointed Coronal.
Better to  let the  vengeance-hungry Shapeshifters  handle Dekkeret, Mandralisca
had decided, finally,  after weeks of  inner debate. But  suddenly that decision
was beginning to look like a significant strategic error, a gamble that had gone
wrong. The force ofShapeshifter guerillas that Mandralisca had been  negotiating
to place in the forests along  Dekkeret's likely route north did not  yet exist.
And now the  Shapeshifter ambassador himself  had vanished. His  essential ally.
His secret weapon against the Alhanroel government.

The Danipiur had already been  told the essence ofMandralisca's proposal,  civil
freedom  for her  people in  return for  their military  aid against   Dekkeret.
Perhaps Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had simply gone home to discuss with the
Danipiur the  final details  involved in  deploying the  troops Mandralisca  had
requested.

Perhaps.

Why, though, had  the Shapeshifter not  said anything about  that to him  first?
Possibly something  much more  disquieting was  going on:  something more like a
Shapeshifter change  of heart  about the  entire enterprise.  What had seemed so
simple earlier was now beginning to present unexpected challenges.

But anger was the wrong response, he knew. Fear, despair, anxiety - all useless.
It was  much too  early in  the campaign  to give  panic a  foothold. There were
always going to be surprises, setbacks, miscalculations.

In  the softest  tone he  could manage  Mandralisca said,  'I should  have  been
informed right away, Thastain. I regret that I wasn't. But there's nothing  that
can be done about that now, is there? - Is there, Thastain?'

'No, your grace.' The merest whisper.

The boy was white-faced and trembling. It  seemed to be all he could do  to meet
Mandralisca's  gaze. Was  he expecting  to be  beaten for  his negligence?   The
riding-crop, maybe? Mandralisca had not seen Thastain so fear-stricken since the
early days at the desert headquarters out by the Plain of Whips.

But terrorizing  the underlings  would serve  no useful  purpose now. The sudden
departure of  Viitheysp Uuvitheysp  Aavitheysp might  or might  not be a serious
development,  though  at the  very  least it  raised  the possibility  of  major
complications and confusions. But, no  matter what the Shapeshifter might  be up
to, Mandralisca told himself, it was far from sensible just now to be alienating
valuable members of his own staff. And Thastain was valuable. The boy was loyal;
the boy was helpful; the boy was intelligent.

Mandralisca said, 'What I want you to  do now, Thastain, is to get yourself  out
into the Grand Bazaar, talk to one of the shopkeepers, tell him that I want  him
to put you  in contact with  some senior member  of the Guild  of Thieves. - You
know about the guild of official thieves of Ni-moya, Thastain? How they  operate
in the  bazaar in  cooperation with  the merchants,  taking a  certain regulated
percentage of  goods for  themselves in  return for  guarding the  place against
greedy free-lance thieves who don't understand when enough is enough?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Good.  Talk  to  the  thieves,  then.  They  have  connections  with  the local
Shapeshifter community. This city's swarming with Shapeshifters, you know. There
are more of them here than you'd ever believe, lurking all around the place. Get
in touch with them. Use my name.  If you have to throw money around,  then throw
it freely. Tell them that I have urgent  need to send a message via one of  them
to  the Danipiur  - urgent  need, Thastain  - and  when you  find someone  who's
willing to carry that message, bring him here to me. Is that clear, Thastain?'

Thastain nodded. But there was an odd look on the boy's face.

Mandralisca said,  'You don't  much care  for Shapeshifters,  do you,  Thastain?
Well,  who  does?  But  we  need  them.  We  need  them,  you  understand? Their
cooperation is necessary to the cause. So hold your nose and get yourself off to
the bazaar, and don't waste any time about it.' He smiled. The inner storm seeme
to be passing;  he felt almost  like himself again.  '- Oh, and  on your way out
tell Khaymak Barjazid that I want to see him in here, right away.'


Barjazid looked at the bunched-up mass of metal mesh in Mandralisca's hand  that
was the thought-control helmet, then  at Mandralisca, then at the  helmet again.
He had not replied at all to the request Mandralisca had just made.

'Well, Khaymak?  You aren't  saying anything,  and I'm  waiting. Here:  take the
helmet. Get to work.'

'A direct  attack on  the mind  of Lord  Dekkeret? Do  you think  this is  wise,
excellence?'

'Would I have asked you to do it if I didn't?'

'This is a  considerable change of  plan. We had  agreed, I thought,  that there
would be no attempts undertaken against the Powers themselves.'

'There've been several considerable  changes of plan lately,'  Mandralisca said.
'Certain concessions to financial and  political realities have had to  be made.
We didn't blockade the sea to  keep the Coronal's fleet from landing,  though at
one time we were talking about that.  We didn't set up military outposts up  and
down the coast, either.  And we assumed we  would be getting valuable  help from
Shapeshifter  troops,  but suddenly  that  seems to  be  in doubt  also.  And so
Dekkeret is now in Piliplok and very soon will be heading this way. He's brought
an army with him.'

'May I remind you, your grace, we have an army too.'

'Ah, and will  it fight? That's  the question, Khaymak:  will it fight?  What if
Dekkeret comes marching  up to our  borders and says,  'Here I am,  your Coronal
Lord,' and our men fall down and start making starbursts to him? That's a risk I
don't feel comfortable taking. Not while  we have this.' He opened his  clenched
hand and held the helmet forth. 'By the use of this I drove Prestimion's brother
over the edge  of madness, and  many another also.  It's time to  go to work  on
Dekkeret. Take it, Khaymak. Put it on. Send your mind down to Piliplok and latch
it onto Dekkeret's, and begin taking him apart. It may be our only hope.'

Once more Khaymak Barjazid  looked at the helmet  in Mandralisca's hand, but  he
made no move to reach out for it. Mildly he said, 'It has been very clear for  a
long time, excellence, that your own powers of operating the helmet are superior
to mine. Your greater intensity of spirit - your stronger force of character -'

'Are you telling me that you won't do it, Khaymak?'

'Against such a powerful  center of energy as  the mind of Lord  Dekkeret surely
must be, it would perhaps be desirable that you be the one who -'

Mandralisca felt the whirlwinds starting up  again within him. I must not  allow
that, he thought, clamping down. Stay calm. Calm. Calm.

Coldly, cuttingly, he said, 'You told me only a few days ago that I may be using
the helmet too  much. And I  do see certain  signs of strain  in myself that may
very well be the result of just that.' His hand strayed toward the  riding-crop.
'Don't waste any more of my energy in discussing this, Khaymak. Take the helmet.
Now. And go to work on Dekkeret with it.'

'Yes, your grace,'Barjazid said, looking very unhappy indeed.

Carefully he affixed the  helmet, closed his  eyes, seemed to  enter the  trance
like state with which one operated the device. Mandralisca watched,  fascinated.
Even now the Barjazid helmet still seemed like a miraculous thing to him: such a
flimsy little webwork  of golden wires,  and yet one  could use it  to reach out
over thousands of miles, enter other minds, any minds, even those of a  Pontifex
or a Coronal, and impress one's will - take control -

Several minutes  had passed,  now. Barjazid  was perspiring.  His face had grown
flushed beneath its heavy Suvrael tan. His head was bowed, his shoulders hunched
together in a sign  of obvious stress. Had  he reached Dekkeret? Was  he sending
beams of red fury into the Coronal's helpless mind?

Another minute - another -

Barjazid looked up. With trembling hands he lifted the helmet from his brow.

'Well?' Mandralisca demanded.

'Very strange, your grace. Very.' His voice was hoarse and ragged. 'I did  reach
Dekkeret. I'm sure I did. A Coronal's  mind - surely it's like no other.  But it
was - defended. That's the  only term I can use.  It was as if he  was shielding
himself in some way against my entry.'

'Is this possible, technically speaking?'

'Yes, of course - if he's wearing a helmet too, and knows how to use it. And  he
does, of course, have  access to helmets, the  ones confiscated from my  brother
long ago, that have been locked away at the Castle. It's certainly possible that
Dekkeret has brought one of those with  him. But that he could use it  with such
mastery - that he would so much as know how to use it at all -'

'And that he would happen to be wearing it at the exact moment when you tried to
attack  him,'  Mandralisca said.  'Yes.  A coincidence  like  that is  the  most
unlikely thing of  all. Maybe you  were right, just  now, that you  simply don't
have  enough inner  force, mental  strength, whatever  it is,  to break  through
Dekkeret's defenses. Let me try, I suppose.'

Barjazid surrendered the helmet only too gladly.

Mandralisca held it  cupped in both  his hands for  a moment, wondering  whether
this was really a good idea. It  had been obvious all day that the  pressures of
this campaign had begun significantly to deplete his vitality. Using the  helmet
involved a great  drain on one's  energies. A further  expenditure of spirit  at
this time could well be damaging.

But it could be even more damaging to let Barjazid see how weary he was. And  if
he could manage, in one great stroke of mental force, to shatter the mind of the
enemy who would otherwise soon be coming toward him out of Piliplok -

He put the helmet on. Closed his eyes. Entered the trance.

Sent his mind roving, southward, eastward, Piliplokward.

Dekkeret.

Surely that was he. A fiery red globe of power, like a second sun, out there  by
the coast.

Dekkeret. Dekkeret. Dekkeret.

And now - to strike -

Mandralisca summoned every  bit of strength  within him. This  was the act  from
which he  had held  back so  long, the  direct attack  on his  primary foe,  the
outright onslaught against  the single man  who held the  royal forces together.
For reasons that had never been  clear even to him - caution,  strategy, perhaps
even fear? - he had not struck at Prestimion when he was Coronal, and he had not
struck at  Dekkeret, either.  He had  sought to  win his  goals by more indirect
means, gradually, rather than through one outrageous coup. It was, he  supposed,
his nature: silence, patience, cunning.  But all those hesitations dropped  away
now. This was the moment to reach Dekkeret and destroy him -

The moment -

To - strike -

The moment - the moment -

He was striking, but nothing was happening. That fiery red globe was  impossible
to hit. It was not a matter of insufficient force, of that he was sure. But  his
angry  lightning-bolts were  glancing aside  like feeble  darts striking  stone.
Again, again, again he thrust; and each time he was rebuffed.

And then his last  reservoir of energy was  empty. He swept the  helmet from his
forehead and leaned forward against his desk, taut, quivering, resting his  head
on his arms.

After a moment he glanced up. The look on Khaymak Barjazid's face was frightful.
The little man was staring at him with eyes bulging with shock and horror.

'Your grace - are you all right, your grace?'

Mandralisca nodded. He was numb with exhaustion.

'What happened, your grace?'

'Shielded - just as you said. Impossible to get near him. Completely  defended.'
He pressed his fingertips to his aching eyes. 'Can he be some kind of  superman,
do you think? I know this Dekkeret, this Coronal, only by repute - we have never
met - but nothing I've  ever heard about him would  lead me to think he  has any
special powers of mind. And yet - the way he deflected me - the ease of it -'

Khaymak Barjazid  shook his  head. 'I  know of  no power  of the human mind that
would let it fend off  the thrust of the helmet.  More likely they have come  up
with some  new form  of the  device. My  nephew Dinitak,  you know,  is with the
Coronal's party. He understands the helmets. And may have modified one in such a
way that he can use it to protect his master.'

'Of course,' said  Mandralisca. It was  all completely clear  now. 'Dinitak, who
sold his own father out to Prestimion  by bringing him the helmets, and who  has
done it again these twenty years afterward. He has ever been a thorn in my side,
that nephew of  yours. Great is  the mischief he's  done: and great  will be his
suffering, Khaymak, when I finally begin to pay him back for it!'


Thastain returned toward nightfall, rumpled and soiled from his day in the  maze
of tunnels and galleries and narrow arcades that was the Grand Bazaar ofNi-moya,
and soaked through and through by the inexorable rain. Mandralisca could see  at
once that the boy must have failed  in his mission, for he looked both  glum and
fearful, and he had returned  alone, instead of bringing some  Shapeshifter with
him as Mandralisca had ordered. But he listened with a sort of weary patience to
Thastain's  long  recitation: his  tour  of the  vast  labyrinthine market,  his
conversations with  this merchant  and that  one until  finally he  had won  the
cooperation of a certain Gaziri Venemm, a dealer in cheeses and oils, who  after
much  hesitation and  circumlocution agreed,  upon payment  of a  purse full  of
royals, to arrange for Thastain to  be conducted to one of his  fellow merchants
who was believed - believed - to be a Shapeshifter masquerading as a man of  the
city of Narabal.

And indeed, Thastain reported, the supposed man of Narabal did appear, from  his
shifty ways and uncertain  accent, to be a  Metamorph in disguise. But  he would
not, not for any price, agree to undertake a mission to the Danipiur.

'I mentioned your name, your grace.  He was indifferent I mentioned the  name of
Viitheysp Uuvitheysp  Aavitheysp. He  tried to  pretend that  he had never heard
that name before. I showed him a purse of royals. It was all no use.'

'And is he the only Shapeshifter in the bazaar?' asked Mandralisca.

'I spoke with four more of them  all told,' said Thastain, and from the  look of
distaste on his face Mandralisca knew that it was true, and that it had not been
a pleasant task.  'They will not  do it. Two  denied, very indignant,  that they
were Metamorphs at all; and I could see that they were lying, and that they knew
I knew they were lying, and that they did not care. A third pleaded poor health.
A fourth simply  refused, before I  had spoken six  words. I can  go back to the
bazaar tomorrow, excellence, and perhaps then I can find -'

'No,' Mandralisca said. 'There's no  point in that. Something has  happened. The
Danipiur's ambassador has decided not to help us, and has returned to Piurifayne
to tell her  that. I'm certain  of it.' He  was surprised at  his own composure.
Perhaps he  had passed  beyond the  whirlwind zone,  now. 'Get  me Halefice,' he
said.

When the  aide-de-camp arrived  Mandralisca said  at once,  'There are  some new
difficulties, Jacemon.'

'Other than  the arrival  of Dekkeret  and the  disappearance of  the Metamorph,
excellence?'

'Other  than  those, yes.'  Mandralisca  provided a  crisp  summary of  his  own
thwarted  attempts against  Dekkeret with  the helmet  and Thastain's  fruitless
search in the  bazaar for a  cooperative Metamorph. 'Very  soon, I suppose,  the
Coronal will be marching  this way. The Shapeshifter  aid I had counted  on will
evidently not materialize. As for the  military forces we've been able to  raise
ourselves, they are sufficient to defend  Ni-moya, I suppose, but not to  permit
us to go beyond the perimeter of the lands we already hold.'

There was a stricken look on Halefice's face. Then what will we do, your grace?'

'I have a new plan.' Mandralisca looked from Halefice to Barjazid, from Barjazid
to Thastain, letting his gaze linger  on each of them, assaying them  carefully,
seeking to measure their trustworthiness. 'You  three are the first to hear  it,
and you will also be the last. The scheme is this: the Lord Gaviral will  invite
Dekkeret to a parley at a place midway between Piliplok and Ni-moya, telling him
that we want to arrive at a peaceful solution to our disputes, a compromise that
will  treat the  grievances of  Zimroel without  damaging the  structure of  the
imperial government. I know  that that will appeal  to him. We'll sit  down at a
table together and try to work  things out. We'll offer our terms.  We'll listen
to his.'

'And then?' Halefice asked.

'And then,' said Mandralisca, 'just when the talks are going as smoothly as  can
be, Jacemon, we'll kill him.'



17

'A parley,' Dekkeret said,  fascinated by the strangeness  of the idea. 'We  are
asked to a parley!'

'First he tries  to strike at  you with his  helmet, and then  he asks you  to a
parley?' Septach Melayn said, laughing. 'I  see that the man will try  anything.
You will refuse, of course.'

'I think not,' said Dekkeret. 'He has been testing us. And now that we've  shown
him that Dinitak can beat back his  attacks, I think he's found out what  we are
made of,  and wants  to change  his tune  for a  new and  sweeter one. We should
listen to it, and see what it sounds like, eh?'

'But a parley?  A parley^ My  lord, the Coronal  does.not negotiate peace  terms
with those who deny his sacred  authority,' said Gialaurys in his deepest,  most
sternly ponderous  tone. 'He  simply destroys  them. He  sweeps them  aside like
gnats. He does not enter  into discussions with them concerning  the concessions
he is being asked  to make, the territory  he is expected to  yield, or anything
else. A  Coronal can  concede nothing  at all,  ever, to  any such  creatures as
these.'

'Nor will I,' said Dekkeret, smiling a little at the old Grand Admiral's staunch
and  earnest  rigor.  'But  to  refuse  outright  to  hear  the  virtuous  Count
Mandralisca's proposals  - or,  rather, those  of the  great and mighty Pontifex
Gaviral, since I see that  it's Gaviral who invites us  to this meeting - no,  I
think it would be wrong to take that position. We should listen, at least.  This
parley will draw them out of Ni-moya, which will spare us the need to lay  siege
to that city, and perhaps to do harm to it. We will talk with them; and then, if
we must, we will fight; but all the advantage lies on our side.'

'Does it?' Dinitak asked. 'We have an army, yes. But I remind you, Dekkeret,  we
are on enemy soil, very far from  home. If Mandralisca has been able to  collect
forces anywhere near the size of our own -'

'Enemy soil?' Gialaurys cried. 'No! No! What are you saying? We are in  Zimroel,
where his majesty the Pontifex's coinage  still is legal tender, and I  mean the
Pontifex Prestimion, not this foolish puppet of Mandralisca's. The imperial writ
is law here still, Dinitak. Lord Dekkeret here is king of this land. And also  I
was born here, no more than fifty miles from this spot that you call enemy soil.
How can you even speak such words? How -'

'Peace,  good  Gialaurys,' said  Dekkeret,  close to  laughter  now. 'There's  a
certain truth to what Dinitak says. This  may not be enemy soil right here,  but
we  don't know  how far  upriver we  can go  before that  changes. Ni-moya   has
proclaimed its independence: by the Lady, has named its own Pontifex! Has  begun
striking its own coins with Gaviral's silly face on them, for all we know. Until
we have put things to rights, we need to think of Ni-moya as an enemy city,  and
the lands surrounding it as hostile territory.'

They were camped on the northern bank of the Zimr, not far inland from Piliplok,
in a pleasant, unspectacular countryside of rolling hills and well-tended farms.
The air was  warm here, a  dry wind blowing  from the south,  and from the tawny
look of the vegetation  it was clear that  in this district the  rains of spring
and early summer  had long since  ended. A host  of small thriving  cities lined
both sides of the river in this district, and in each of them, so far,  Dekkeret
had  been greeted  with pleasure  and excitement  by the  populace. Of  whatever
strange thing was going on in  Ni-moya, the local officials seemed to  have only
the faintest idea, and they spoke  of it to Dekkeret with obvious  embarrassment
and uneasiness. Ni-moya  was thousands  of miles  away, in  another province; Ni
moya, to these country people, was  sophisticated to the point of decadence;  if
Ni-moya  had  decided to  involve  itself in  some  sort of  peculiar  political
upheaval, that was a  matter between Ni-moya and  the Coronal, and no  doubt the
Coronal would very  quickly take steps  to restore the  natural order of  things
there.

Septach Melayn said, 'Read me the  Sambailid lord's demands again, will you,  my
lord?'

Dekkeret riffled through the  elegandy lettered parchment sheets.  'Mmmm... here
it is. Not demands, exactly. Proposals. The Lord Gaviral - an interesting title;
who  ever made  him lord  of anything?  - deplores  the possibility  that  armed
conflict might break out between the  forces of the people of Zimroel  and those
of the Coronal Lord  Dekkeret ofAlhanroel - notice,  I am Coronal of  Alhanroel,
here, not  of Majipoor  - and  calls for  peaceful negotiations  to resolve  the
conflict between  the legitimate  aspirations of  the people  of Zimroel and the
equally legitimate authority of the imperial government of Alhanroel.'

'At least he concedes that  it's a legitimate government,' said  Septach Melayn.
'Even  if he  does keep  talking about  it as  Alhanroel's government,  and  not
Majipoor's.'

'Be that as it may,' Dekkeret said, with a shrug. 'He's taking the approach that
this  is to  be a  discussion between  powers of  equal standing,  and that,  of
course, we  can't allow.  But let  me go  on: he  wants -  ah -  here, yes - the
primary thing that he wants to discuss at our meeting is the restoration of  the
title of Procurator of Zimroel, hereditary to his family. Hopes we can come to a
peaceful agreement concerning  the powers of  said Procurator. Implies  that his
current title of Pontifex of Zimroel is merely provisional, and that he would be
willing  to  abandon  all claim  to  a  separate Pontificate,  in  return  for a
constitutional compromise granting  greater autonomy to  Zimroel in general  and
the  province  of  Ni-moya  in  particular,  all  of  this  under  a   Sambailid
procuratorship.'

'Well, then,' Septach  Melayn said, 'is  somewhat less fuss  here than at  first
report. Sounds to me as though he'd be willing simply to settle for the name  of
Procurator and  political control  over Ni-moya  and its  surroundings. Which is
more or less what Dantirya Sambail had.'

'A title  which Prestimion  stripped him  of,' said  Gialaurys. 'And vowed there
would never  be Procurators  in Zimroel  again.' The  Grand Admiral's jowly face
reddened, and growling sounds  came from somewhere deep  within him. He had  the
look, Dekkeret thought,  of some great  volcano preparing to  erupt. 'Are we  to
hand to the worthless nephew that which Prestimion took from the uncle, just  on
the nephew's say-so?  Dantirya Sambail, at  least, was a  great man in  his way.
This one's a stupid pig and nothing more.'

'Dantirya Sambail a great  man?' Dinitak said, startled.  'From all I heard,  he
was a monster of monsters!'

'That too,' said Dekkeret. 'But a  shrewd and brilliant leader. He was  no small
instrument in the bringing  of Zimroel into the  modern world, in the  days when
Prankipin  and Confalume  ruled, and  this continentwas  a patchwork  of  little
principalities. He worked well with Castle and Labyrinth for forty years,  until
the time came  when he took  it into his  head to be  the one who  named the new
Coronal, and after that nothing was ever the same.' And, to Gialaurys: 'You know
better than to think that we'd actually be handing power to this Gaviral anyway,
my lord Admiral. This letter's Mandralisca's work. It's Mandralisca who'd be the
real Procurator, if ever we let the title come back into being.'

'And  neverthless  you  intend to  parley,  my  lord, knowing  you  are  in fact
parleying with the serpent Mandralisca, who has tried once already to take  your
life?' Gialaurys asked.

Septach Melayn stroked his little  curling beard and laughed. 'Do  you remember,
Gialaurys, when  we were  all of  us drawn  up at  Thegomar Edge just before the
final battle of the Korsibar war, and a herald under a white flag came out  from
Prince Gonivaul, who was Grand Admiral then, saying that Lord Korsibar still had
hope of a peaceful resolution of all disputes and was calling for a parley?'

'Yes, and  suggested that  Duke Svor  should be  the one  we send out to discuss
terms with him?' said Gialaurys, grinning at the memory.

To Dinitak Septach Melayn said, 'Svor was  the least warlike of us all, and  the
trickiest. And had been a good friend of Korsibar's before the factions divided.
We saw  no purpose  in the  parley, but  Prestimion said,  'It does  no harm  to
listen,' mst as  Dekkeret has said  here today. And  so Svor rode  forth and met
with Gonivaul in the middle of  the open field, and Gonivaul made  his proposal,
which was that Svor wait  until the battle had begun  and at that time go  among
Prestimion's captains to say  that Lord Korsibar would  make them all dukes  and
princes  if they  would abandon  Prestimion in  mid-struggle and  defect to  the
usurper. And also  he offered little  Svor Korsibar's own  sister, the beautiful
Thismet, to be his wife, as the fee for his treason. That was Korsibar's idea of
a parley.'

'And what did Svor do?' Dekkeret asked.

'Rode back to our camp and told us what had been offered, and we all had a  good
laugh, and then the  battle began. In which  Svor died bravely, as  it happened,
fighting well on Prestimion's behalf, though  the sly little man had never  been
much known for his valor before that day.'

'And will we all have a good  laugh also,' said Dinitak, 'when we find  out what
Mandralisca's idea of a parley is?'

'That do I hope,' said Dekkeret.

'So you are resolved to go through with this thing?' Gialaurys asked.

'Indeed I am,' Dekkeret  said. 'Where's the herald  from the Lord Gaviral?  Tell
him I accept the invitation. We will set out at once for the appointed place.'


The appointed  place was  three thousand  miles up  the Zimr  near a town called
Salvamot, where in the old days the Procurator Dantirya Sambail had maintained a
country retreat, Mereminene Hall by name. The domain had remained in the  family
after the Procurator's  downfall, and was  now, apparently, the  property of the
Sambailid who called himself the Lord Gavahaud.

'Which one is that?' Dekkeret asked Septach Melayn. 'Their names all sound alike
to me. Is he the big drunken one?'

'That is Gavinius,  my lord. Gavahaud  is the popinjay,  the pompous paragon  of
style and taste,  a veritable Castle  Mount of vanity  and foolish arrogance.  I
look forward to taking instruction from him in the niceties of fashion.'

Dekkeret chuckled. 'We all have much to learn from these people, I think.'

'And they will learn a little from us, my lord,' said Gialaurys.

It was not  a usual thing  for seagoing vessels  to engage in  river travel, but
there would not have  been riverboats enough to  carry all of Dekkeret's  force,
and the  Zimr was  so deep  and wide  it could  handle the  larger ships  of the
Coronal's maritime fleet without difficulty. The only problem had to do with the
regular commercial shipping  on the Zimr,  which was unprepared  to find such  a
host  of huge  ocean-craft taking  up the  preponderance of  the channel.   They
scattered this way and that as the great phalanx of Lord Dekkeret's armada moved
northward.

It  was virtually  a changeless  landscape here,  a broad  riparian plain,   low
rolling hills  beyond, and  a succession  of little  bustling agricultural towns
strung along both banks, with day  after day of bright skies and  warm sunlight.
There were reports of heavy rains in Ni-moya, unseasonal downpours, but  Ni-moya
was far away, and here in the Zimr's lower valley there was only dry weather and
unending warmth.

This was,  in theory,  Dekkeret's inaugural  grand processional,  but he paid no
visits to any of the  river towns, merely stood in  the bow of the Lord  Stiamot
and waved  to the  assembled populace  as he  went sailing  by. Even  on a grand
processional it  was impossible  for the  Coronal to  call at  any but the most
major cities, or else he would spend  all the rest of his days going  from place
to place, growing fat on mayors'  banquets, and never see the Castle  again. And
the business of Mandralisca  and the Five Lords  was too pressing to  permit any
such stops  now, even  at such  relatively important  places as  Port Saikforge,
Stenwamp, or Gablemorn.

On and on they went, town after town, through the placid Zimr valley:  Dambmuir,
Orgeliuse,  Impemond,   Haunfort  Major;   Cerinor  and   Semirod  and  Molagat;
Thibbildorn, Coranderk, Maccathar. Septach Melayn, who had appointed himself the
keeper of the maps, called off each  name as the towns came into view.  But they
all looked alike, anyway - the  waterfront promenade, the pier where throngs  of
riverboat passengers waited for the next vessel, the warehouses and bazaars, the
dense  plantings of  palms and  alabandinas and  tanigales. As  one place  after
another flowed by him in a pleasant blur, Dekkeret found himself reflecting  yet
again on the sheer immensity of the great world that was Majipoor: the multitude
of its provinces,  its myriad cities,  its billions of  people, spread out  over
three great  continents so  huge that  it would  be a  lifetime's task, and then
some, to traverse them all. Here in  this densely populated valley, what did  Ni
moya matter, or  the Fifty Cities  of Castle Mount?  To these people,  the lower
Zimr valley was a world unto itself, a little universe, even, swarming with life
and  activity.  And yet  there  were dozens,  scores,  hundreds of  such  little
universes everywhere in the world.

It was a miracle, he thought, that a planet so vast and populous had managed  so
well to  live at  peace with  itself, at  least until  these troublesome  recent
times. And would live peacefully  again, he swore, once the  poisonous irruption
of  evil  into the  world  that Mandralisca  and  his ilk  represented  had been
contained and cauterized away.

'This is Gourkaine,'  said Septach Melayn  one bright cloudless  morning, as yet
another river town came into view.

'And  of what  significance is  Gourkaine, then?'  Dekkeret asked,  for  Septach
Melayn had uttered the name with a certain emphasis and flourish.

'Of  none at  all, my  lord, except  that it  is the  town just  downriver  from
Salvamot, and Salvamot is where our friends the Five Lords of Zimroel await  us.
So we are almost atour goal.'


Salvamot was a town  just like all the  others, except that no  throngs of eager
citizens had  gathered at  the piers  to hail  the Coronal  when his  armada was
nearing their  city, as  had been  the case  everywhere else  thus far,  even at
nearby Gourkaine. Nor  were there any  banners flying that  bore Lord Dekkeret's
portrait on them and the royal colors. Only a small group of municipal officials
could be seen, collected in a tight and uneasy-looking knot by the main quay.

'It is as though  we have crossed some  sort of border,' said  Dekkeret. 'But we
are still  thousands of  miles from  Ni-moya. Does  the power  of the Five Lords
reach all the way down to here, I wonder?'

'Bear in  mind, my  lord, that  Dantirya Sambail  was a  frequent visitor to his
lands here,' Septach Melayn said, 'and his kinsmen also, I'd wager. These people
here must feel a special loyalty to that tribe now. And also, look you there -'

He indicated a quay just upriver from  the town. A dozen or more big  riverboats
were docked there, and  from their masts fluttered  the long crimson banners  of
the Sambailid clan,  with their blood-red  crescent-moon emblem emblazoned  upon
them. It appeared that other such ships lay just to ' the north, around a slight
bend that the Zimr made here. ^ So the Five Lords, or some of them, at any rate,
were already on  the scene here  in Salvamot, and  with an armada  of their own.
Small wonder that the local citizenry would greet the arriving Coronal with some
degree of restraint.

A detachment of the Coronal's  guard preceded Lord Dekkeret ashore.  Shortly the
guard-captain returned accompanied by a  short, thick-necked man in black  robes
and a golden chain of office,  who announced himself to be Veroalk  Timaran, the
Chief Justiciar of  the Municipality of  Salvamot - 'I  would hold the  title of
mayor, in another place, my lord,' he informed Dekkeret gravely - and  expressed
his great delight and satisfaction that his city had been chosen as the site  of
this historic meeting. He bowed so extravagantly to the Lady Fulkari that  veins
bulged out on the broad column of his neck and his face turned red. He would, he
said, escort the Coronal and his  companions to the estate of the  Lord Gavahaud
in person. The Lord Gavahaud had provided floaters for the royal party, said the
Justiciar Veroalk Timaran, and they were waiting a little way beyond.

There  were  just three  small  vehicles, with  a  capacity of  perhaps  fifteen
occupants, and scarcely any room for the Coronal's bodyguard.

Dekkeret said amiably. 'We have brought our own floaters, your honor. We  prefer
to travel in those. I would be pleased to have you ride beside me in my own.'

The Chief Justiciar  had not been  prepared for this,  and he seemed  flustered,
perhaps not so much at the distinction  of being asked to ride in the  Coronal's
personal floater as at the realization  that the day was already departing  from
the script  that had  been provided  him. But  he was  in no  position to  place
himself in opposition to the Coronal's wishes, and he watched in what seemed  to
be  mounting consternation  as Dekkeret's  men proceeded  to unload  a score  of
floaters from the flagship, and as many more from the second vessel, and went on
to unload still more from the third: enough vehicles to transport the  Coronal's
entire corps of guardsmen, and a good many of the imperial troops as well.

'If you will, your honor,' said Dekkeret, beckoning the Chief Justiciar  Veroalk
Timaran toward a floater bearing the starburst crest.

Salvamot - city, town, whatever it was - thinned out swiftly once they were away
from the river, and very shortly Dekkeret found himself riding through flat open
country studded with sparse stands of  slender trees that had russet trunks  and
purple leaves, and then making a winding ascent in more heavily forested terrain
toward a  low plateau  to the  east. The  domain of  the Lord Gavahaud, said the
Justiciar, lay up there.

Fulkari rode at  Dekkeret's side, and  Dinitak also. Dekkeret  would gladly have
left her behind  to wait for  him at Piliplok,  for he had  no idea what  danger
awaited him at this  conference, or whether it  would end in some  sort of armed
conflict. But she would not hear of it. The Five Lords, she said, would not dare
touch an anointed Coronal. And  even  if they attempted  any violence, she  said
and it was clear that she saw the  peril too - what sort of royal consort  would
she be, to shrink back into safety while her lord was at risk? She would  rather
die bravely with him, she said, than carry a cowardly widowhood back with her to
the Castle.

'There will be no  widowhoods for you just  yet,' Dekkeret told her.  'These are
men who lack all courage, and we will quickly have them kneeling to us.'

Privately he was not  so certain of that.  But that made no  difference. Fulkari
would not be denied,  and, come what may,  she would be with  him to the end  of
this.

Septach Melayn was in  the second floater, and  Gialaurys in the third,  and the
others followed  close behind.  It was  a considerable  force, hundreds of armed
men, and others ready at the pier should any signal of distress go up. If we are
riding into ambush,  Dekkeret thought, we  will make them  pay a good  price for
their treachery.

But all seemed peaceful enough as the floaters entered the great arched  gateway
of Mereminene Hall. There were crescent-moon banners galore here, and a host  of
men in the green Sambailid livery, some of them armed, but only in the  ordinary
way of men-at-arms who guard a great estate. Dekkeret saw no lurking battalions,
no cache of waiting weaponry.

A tall thick-set red-haired man, strikingly ugly, a preening strutting figure in
sweeping maroon cloak and foppish yellow  tights that were much too tight,  came
forward  with a  clanking of  golden spurs.  He made  a grand  excessive bow  to
Dekkeret  and  Fulkari,  culminating  in  exaggerated  starburst  salutes  as he
straightened up.  'My lord  - my  lady -  you do  us great  honor. I am the Lord
Gavahaud, whose pleasure it  is to show you  to the accommodations that  will be
yours during  this your  stay. My  lordly brother  will be  pleased to greet you
after-ward, when you are installed.'

'What kind  of accent  is that?'  Fulkari asked,  under her  breath. 'He  utters
everything through  his nose.  Is that  the Ni-moyan  way of  speech? I've never
heard the like.'

'False grandeur is what they speak here,' said Dekkeret. 'We must be careful not
to snicker, whatever the provocation.'

The guest-lodge of Mereminene Hall was a place of shining adamantine floors  and
vermilion-tiled walls and faceted windows intricately set in lead, easily worthy
of housing  a visiting  Coronal. The  main house  must surely  be even  grander,
Dekkeret thought. And this was a  mere country estate. Old Dantirya Sambail  had
not been one to stint, it seemed. But why would he? In his time he had been king
of Zimroel, effectively, and no doubt had wanted to equal in a single generation
all that the Coronals of Castle Mount had built for themselves over thousands of
years.

Nor was there any  stinting of hospitality by  this Gavahaud, either. The  lodge
swarmed with platoons of bowing  servants; rare wines and exotic  fruits aplenty
were  supplied  for the  delectation  of the  guests  if they  cared  to refresh
themselves  upon  arrival;  their bed-linens  were  of  the finest  manufacture,
glowing warm-hued silks and satins.

A chamberlain came within an hour with word that there would be a formal  dinner
that  evening,  adding  that  it  was the  wish  of  the  Lord  Gaviral that  no
discussions of serious matters should be expected until the following day.

The Lord  Gaviral -  he who  styled himself  Pontifex of  Zimroel -  came to the
guest-lodge an  hour after  that, alone,  simply dressed,  unarmed, and on foot.
Dekkeret was  surprised at  how small  a man  this Gaviral  was, no  taller than
Prestimion  and  much  less  solidly built:  flimsy-framed,  in  fact,  with the
constantly moving eyes and twitching lips of a man who is uneasy in his  spirit.
He had  heard that  these Sambailids  were massive  hulking ugly  men as the old
Procurator  and  his  brothers  had  been,  and  certainly  Gavahaud  fit   that
description, but  not this  one, who  had some  of the  ugliness but none of the
size. Only by his  rank plume of orange-red  hair and his broad,  wide-nostriled
nose was his kinship with the tribe of Dantirya Sambail confirmed.

But he was courtly  enough, speaking well and  making every show of  respect for
his royal  visitor, and  behaving not  in any  way like  one who  has proclaimed
himself to be a lord and even a Pontifex in defiance of all the natural order of
things. He inquired merely whether the Coronal found his lodgings suitable,  and
hoped that his lordship's appetite would be equal to the feast that awaited him.
'I regret that two of my brothers have been unable to join us for this meeting,'
said Gaviral. 'The  Lord Gavinius is  unwell, and could  not leave Ni-moya.  The
Lord Gavdat, who  practices the study  of magery, has  remained behind as  well,
because he  is in  the midst  of important  prognosticatory calculations that he
feels must not be interrupted even for so important a gathering as this.'

'I regret their absence,' said Dekkeret courteously, although Septach Melayn had
already told him that Gavinius was a revolting drunken fool, and the other  one,
Gavdat, evidently was a fool of  a different kind, forever lost in  the claptrap
of geomantic studies. But courtesy would  cost him nothing; and he was  only too
well aware that it made no difference whether he met with one Sambailid brother,
or five,  or five  hundred. Mandralisca  was the  force to  reckon with.  And of
Mandralisca nothing at all so far had been said.

It was evening, now. Banquet time.

As Dekkeret had suspected, the late Procurator had indeed lived here on a  truly
regal scale.  The main  house was  a massive  stone pile  with some seven or ten
great-windowed  halls radiating  from its  core, and  the banquet-hall  was  the
greatest of all, a  tremendous gallery of rugged  antique design, with bare  red
beams of bright thembar-wood, and  rough heavy walls of mortared  boulders piled
to  an  astounding  height. And  this  at  the country  estate  of  a provincial
lordling; what was the procuratorial palace at Ni-moya like, Dekkeret  wondered,
if Dantirya Sambail's mere country retreat had been a place of this sort?

The big room was full: the entire court of the Five Lords must be here, Dekkeret
thought. Protocol was somewhat strained at the high-table seating. Dekkeret,  as
Coronal, was entitled to the center position, with Fulkari at his side. But  the
Lord Gaviral  claimed at  least for  the time  being to  be the Pontifex of this
continent, whatever that meant, and the Lord Gavahaud his brother, as the actual
owner of Mereminene  Hall, was the  putative host of  the meeting. Which  one of
them would sit at the Coronal's right hand? There was much murmuring, and in the
end Gavahaud  deferred to  Gaviral, and  let him  take the  seat of honor beside
Dekkeret, but not before some further confusion involving the third brother, the
Lord Gavilomarin, who had appeared now  also, a blinking, watery-eyed lump of  a
man with a blithering smile and a general air of witlessness about him. He  took
the central seat without asking, apparently choosing it at random, and had to be
moved along toward the  end of the dais,  down by Septach Melayn  and Gialaurys.
Dinitak was seated at the opposite end.

Where, Dekkeret asked himself, was the infamous Mandralisca?

His name had not so  much as been mentioned thus  far. That seemed very odd.  In
the awkward first moments after taking his seat Dekkeret said to Gaviral,  byway
of having anything to say at all, 'And your privy counsellor, of whom I've heard
so much? Surely he is here tonight, but where?'

'He dislikes the prominence of the dais,' said Gaviral. 'You will find him  over
there on the left, against the wall.'

Dekkeret glanced in the direction Gaviral  indicated, far across the room to  an
ordinary table set amidst many others. Though he had never seen Mandralisca,  he
recognized him at once. He stood out  from all those around him like death  at a
wedding feast: a pallid, somber, harsh-faced, thin-lipped man garbed in a  tight
fitting  suit of  shining black  leather that  was altogether  without  ornament
except for some large, bright pendant of gold, no doubt an emblem of office,  on
a chain  around his  neck. His  hard, glittering  eyes were  trained directly on
Dekkeret, nor did he flinch away as the Coronal's gaze came to rest on him.

So that is Mandralisca,  Dekkeret thought. After all  this dme, he and  I are no
more than a hundred feet apart.

He found  himself fascinated  by the  man's chilly,  repellent face and sinister
aura.  There was  an unquestionable  magnetism about  him, a  diabolical  force.
Tremendous  demonic  power  of  will  was  evident  in  his  features.  Dekkeret
understood now how this man, the embodiment of all that had bedeviled Prestimion
throughout the years of his otherwise glorious reign, could have caused so  much
trouble in the world for so many years. Here was a truly dark soul; here was one
whose very existence made one wonder about the Divine's purpose in creating him.

After a  long moment  the contact  between Majipoor's  Coronal and  the Lord  of
Zimroel's privy counsellor broke,  and it was Mandralisca  who was the first  to
look away,  in order  to make  some remark  to his  table-companions. There were
three of those:  a round-faced common-looking  man of middle  years or a  little
more, a handsome, open-faced lad with golden-white hair who could not have  been
more  than  eighteen or  nineteen,  and a  small,  swarthy-skinned, squinch-eyed
fellow who beyond any question had to be Dinitak's despised helmet-making uncle,
Khaymak Barjazid of Suvrael.

Servitors brought  wine around,  and filled  all their  bowls. Dekkeret wondered
idly whether Dantirya  Sambail's old custom  of taking a  poison-taster with him
wherever he went might not have been appropriate here. Though it seemed  absurd,
he put  his hand  over Fulkari's  when she  reached in  an automatic way for her
wine-bowl, and held her back.

She gave him a questioning look.

'We must wait for the toast,' he whispered, not knowing what else to say.

'Oh. Of course,' she said, looking a little abashed.

The Lord  Gaviral was  on his  feet, now,  wine-bowl in  his hand. The hall grew
silent. 'To amity,' he said. 'To harmony. To concord. To the eternal  friendship
of the continents.'

He looked toward Dekkeret and drank.  Dekkeret, realizing now that his wine  had
been poured from the same flask  as Gaviral's, rose and returned the  toast with
equally empty generalities,  and drank also.  It was superb  wine. Whatever else
would happen here at  Mereminene Hall, they were  not going to be  poisoned this
evening, he decided.

All around the room, the  Sambailid folk were on their  feet - all of them  men,
Dekkeret  noted  - holding  high  their bowls  and  calling out,  'To  amity! To
harmony! To concord!'  Even Mandralisca had  joined the toast,  although what he
held in his hand was a water-glass, not a wine-bowl.

'Your privy counsellor doesn't care for wine, eh?' Dekkeret said to Gaviral.

'Abhors it, in fact. Will  not touch the stuff. Had  to drink too much of  it, I
suppose, when he was taster to my uncle the Procurator.'

'I take your point. If I thought  there might be poison in every wine-bowl  that
was handed me,  I might lose  my taste for  drink myself, after  a year or two,'
said Dekkeret, and laughed, and took another sip of his own.

It  still  seemed very  odd  to him  that  Mandralisca had  not  come up  to  be
introduced. The merest  provincial mayor was  ever eager to  force his name  and
pedigree on a visiting Coronal;  and here was a man  who held the rank of  privy
counsellor to someone who gave himself the title of lord, and claimed  authority
over all of Zimroel, and he chose instead to nest among his own companions at  a
far  table.  But  that  was Mandralisca's  style,  apparently:  to  lurk in  the
background  and  allow someone  else  the visible  glory.  That was  how  he had
operated in Dantirya Sambail's time, and that seemed to be how he operated now.

Dekkeret did  remark again  on Mandralisca's  evident shyness  to Gaviral at one
point in the  evening, saying that  it was strange  that he was  not at the high
table.

'He is a man of very humble birth, you know,' Gaviral said piously. 'He feels it
is not his place to be up here  with those of us whose ancestry is so  splendid.
But you will  meet him tomorrow,  my lord, when  all we gather  in the meadow to
explore the details of the treaty we wish to propose.'



18

It was midday, bright  and warm, when the  summons came to gather  in the meadow
for the conference  that had brought  the Coronal to  this place. When  Dekkeret
reached  the site,  a broad  grassy plain  far from  the main  houses that   was
bordered on three sides by a dark, dense forest and on the fourth by a  pleasant
stream, he saw that a meeting-table made of broad planks of polished black wood,
mounted on a foundation  of thick yellowish beams  that tapered to a  point, had
been erected parallel to the stream. A neat array of paper and parchment was set
out on it, weighed down by crystal globes to keep them from blowing away in  the
gentle breeze, and also inkpots, milufta-feather pens, and various other writing
gear. Dekkeret  saw also  an assortment  of wine-flasks,  wine of  half a  dozen
different colors, and a row of bowls  waiting to be filled. Once the treaty  had
been presented and -  as Gaviral so plainly  hoped - agreed upon,  the signatory
parties would no doubt  be expected to celebrate  the event right here  upon the
spot.

The Lord Gaviral,  resplendent in a  metallic jerkin that  seemed almost like  a
suit of armor and richly tooled  scarlet leggings piped with golden thread,  was
already  at the  site, standing  beside the  table. His  brothers Gavahaud   and
Gavilomarin, splendidly dressed also, flanked him.

As for Mandralisca, he  stood just at his  master's elbow, clad now  not in last
night's skin-tight black  leathers but in  a far gaudier  costume: a knee-length
red-and-green jacket with a wide, flat collar decked with white steetmoy fur and
hanging sleeves that were slashed to  allow his arms to come through,  over dark
gray hose of the finest weave, and a broad meshwork belt at his waist supporting
a fancy tasseled pouch. It was the sort of dandyish costume that Septach  Melayn
might have chosen,  though the sight  ofMandralisca's pale, hard,  sinister face
rising  above  that flaring  collar  muted the  outfit's  flamboyance more  than
somewhat. Mandralisca's  own threesome  of companions,  the pudgy  little  bandy
legged aide-de-camp and the tall fair-haired youth and the scrawny, evil-looking
Barjazid, were only a short distance behind him.

Dekkeret had  worn his  green-and-gold robes  of state  to the  meeting, and the
slender golden circlet that he often  used in the place of the  starburst crown.
Gialaurys, beside him, was in full armor, but without a helm. Septach Melayn was
content with a doublet and  bright leggings. The spiral Labyrinth-symbol  on his
breast was his only ornament. Dinitak  wore his usual simple tunic, and  Fulkari
had chosen  simple garb  also. A  row of  Dekkeret's hand-picked guardsmen stood
some distance to the rear. Gaviral had an honor-guard behind him as well, at the
same distance.

'An auspicious day, my lord!' cried Gaviral, as Dekkeret approached. 'A day when
harmony is to be attained!'

His voice was cheery, but sounded forced and strained; and there was a generally
edgy look about him,  a fidgeting of his  lips, a flickering instability  of his
gaze. Well, thought Dekkeret, he has a great deal at stake here: he has  brought
the  Coronal  Lord  far  into this  unfamiliar  territory  to  demand unheard-of
concessions from him, and  the Coronal has given  every indication that he  will
listen to the Sambailid demands seriously  and perhaps even accede to them,  but
he has no certain assurance of what  the Coronal actually has in mind. Nor  do I
of him, Dekkeret thought. We are both playing here with closely guarded hands.

'Harmony,  yes. Let  us hope  that that  is what  we fashion  here today,'  said
Dekkeret, giving Gaviral the warmest of smiles.

As  he spoke  he allowed  his eyes  to rest  steadily on  Gaviral's, which  were
bloodshot and uneasy; but the Sambailid looked quickly away, and busied  himself
fussing among the papers and writing apparatus laid out on the table, as  though
he were some sort of amanuensis rather than the self-styled Pontifex of Zimroel.
Dekkeret's  gaze  moved onward  toward  Mandralisca, who  offered  an altogether
different response, a cold, unwavering stare, full of menace and loathing, which
Dekkeret admired' for its unconcealed sincerity if for nothing else.

'Shall we drink to a successful conclusion to our talks, lordship, before we get
to the work of setting forth  our proposals and hearing your response?'  Gaviral
said.

'I see no reason why not,' replied Dekkeret, and the winebowls were filled. Once
again -  he could  not help  himself -Dekkeret  kept surreptitious  watch to see
whether his bowl and Gaviral's were filled from the same flask, which once again
they were. Indeed, the bowls were  being filled so indiscriminately up and  down
the  table that  there was  no way  that poison  could be  involved, not  unless
Gaviral cared to take some of his own men down with the visitors.

Gaviral offered the same toast to amity and concord as he had the night  before,
and they all took light sips  of their wine, mere symbolic tastes.  Mandralisca,
as before, did not drink.

Then Gaviral  said, 'We  have prepared  this document  for your  examination, my
lord. - This  is our privy  counsellor, as you  know, the Count  Mandralisca. He
will show you the  text, of which he  is the author, and  he will deal with  any
questions that may arise, clause by clause.'

Dekkeret nodded.  Mandralisca, followed  as ever  by his  three minions, marched
ostentatiously around the end  of the long table  and up Dekkeret's side  of it.
Dekkeret saw  now that  the aide-de-camp  was carrying  tucked under  his arm  a
rolled parchment scroll, which he  brought forth and handed to  Mandralisca. The
privy counsellor, opening it, held it out in front of himself and studied it  as
if wishing to ascertain that the aide-de-camp had indeed brought the right  one;
and finally, seemingly satisfied, leaned forward  and laid it down on the  table
in front of Dekkeret.

'If you will, my lord,' said Mandralisca, with an odd tone in his voice that was
a mixture, Dekkeret thought, of willed obsequiousness and barely throttled rage.

There was  a great  silence all  around as  Dekkeret began  to read the document
through.

It was not an easy business, reading that scroll. The text was close-packed  and
verbose, and the calligraphy was ornate and of an antiquarian sort, with many an
irritating curlicue  and decorative  swirl. It  called for  close concentration,
verging almost on  decipherment. Dekkeret, struggling  with it, soon  discovered
that it opened  with a lengthy  and circumlocutory preamble,  implying, perhaps,
that the Sambailids were asking for nothing more than provincial autonomy and  a
revival of the procuratorial  title. But it was  followed by other clauses  that
contradicted that, clauses seeming to assert that what they actually wanted  was
a  good deal  more -  in fact  an end  to all  imperial rule  everywhere in  the
continent of Zimroel,  complete independence, total  withdrawal of the  existing
regime.

'Is  there  a  problem,  my lord?'  asked  Mandralisca,  hovering  by Dekkeret's
shoulder and leaning close.

'A problem? No. But I find a certain lack of clarity in your opening statements.
I'll look at them again, I think.'

Frowning,  he went  back to  the beginning,  sought to  disentangle clause  from
clause, separating each  statement from its  carefully mated opposite.  It was a
task that called for the deepest concentration, and deep concentration was  what
Dekkeret endeavored to give it.

Not so deep, though, that he failed to see from the corner of his eye the bright
flash of the blade that Mandralisca had suddenly pulled from that tasseled pouch
at  his waist,  nor heard  Fulkari's immediate  gasp of  alarm. But  it was  all
happening so swiftly that he could do nothing more than lean backward, away from
the thrust that was heading his way from the rear.

But  then in  one split  second the  long-haired boy,  Mandralisca's own   aide,
reached his  hand forward,  swooped up  the wine-bowl  at Dekkeret's  elbow, and
hurled its contents into his master's eyes. At the same time with his other hand
he made a grab at  Mandralisca's descending arm. Mandralisca, eluding  the boy's
grasping hand,  whirled about  blindly and  swept the  dagger-blade in a furious
gesture across  the boy's  throat, drawing  a spurt  of red.  The boy  seemed to
crumple  and  disappear.  And  then, amid  the  general  uproar,  Septach Melayn
appeared at Dekkeret's side, his  drawn sword in his hand,  ordering Mandralisca
in a terrible roaring cry to stand back from the Coronal's presence.

Mandralisca, half blinded, his face streaming with wine, did back away, but only
as far as  the place where  the Lord Gavahaud  stood gaping in  astonishment and
terror. From Gavahaud's  scabbard he yanked  the elaborately chased  dress-sword
with  which the  vain Sambailid  had furnished  his outfit,  and swung   quickly
around, still  trying to  blink the  wine out  of his  eyes as he confronted the
onrushing Septach Melayn.

'Here,'  said  Septach  Melayn  coldly, halting  and  tossing  to  Mandralisca a
kerchief that he was carrying tucked in his sleeve. 'Wipe your face. I will  not
kill a man who is unable to see.' He gave the surprised Mandralisca a moment  to
blot away the wine; and then he came forward again, his rapier in swift motion.

Dekkeret, still stunned and  bewildered by all that  had taken place, half  rose
from his seat at the conference table. But no intervention was possible. Septach
Melayn and  Mandralisca were  already hard  at it,  moving steadily  out in  the
meadow as they  fought. Dekkeret had  never seen two  swords moving so  swiftly.
Septach Melayn was the swiftest man alive with a sword; but Mandralisca met  him
thrust for thrust,  parry for parry,  a wild display  of virtuoso swordsmanship,
feinting, pivoting, moving always with lightning speed. There was no stroke that
Septach Melayn  could not  deal with  and deflect,  but still  - still  - to see
Septach Melayn held at a standstill, unable to break through the other's defense
-

And then Mandralisca,  turning abruptly away  from Septach Melayn,  reached down
and snatched  up a  handful of  the soft,  loose meadow  soil and  flung it into
Septach  Melayn's face.  Unlike Septach  Melayn, he  had no  compunctions  about
fighting with a man who  could not see. The earthen  clod broke up as it  struck
Septach Melayn, some going to his eyes, some to his nostrils, some to his mouth;
and as he stood  baffled for a moment,  coughing and spitting and  wiping at his
eyes, Mandralisca rushed  forward in a  furious frenzied onslaught,  driving his
blade toward the center of Septach Melayn's chest.

Dekkeret watched in horror. Mandralisca's sword and Septach Melayn' s moved with
blurring speed. For an instant it was impossible to see what was happening. Then
Dekkeret  caught  sight  of  Septach  Melayn  parrying  a  desperate  attack  of
Mandralisca's, sweeping Mandralisca's sword aside  with a grand upstroke of  his
own. An  instant later  Septach Melayn  lunged and  thrust, and took Mandralisca
through the throat with his stroke.

The two men stood frozen for an instant.

There was  an utterly  weird look,  a strange  thing that  was almost  a look of
triumph, on Mandralisca's face as he died. Septach Melayn pulled his blade  free
of the toppling  Mandralisca and swung  about so that  he was facing  toward the
conference table and Dekkeret. But then Dekkeret realized that somewhere in  the
final melee Septach Melayn had been  wounded also. Blood was streaming down  the
front of his  doublet, a trickle  at first, then  more, so much  that the little
golden Labyrinth emblem was completely hidden in the weltering flow.

The whole  meadow was  in chaos  now, concealed  Sambailid troops  emerging from
their  hiding places  in the  forest, Dekkeret's  own guard  rushing forward  to
protect  him,  and the  rest  of Dekkeret's  soldiers,  coming in  now  from the
outskirts of the field where they had been waiting for a signal from their king,
joining  the fray  also when  they heard  the bellowed  command that  came  from
Dekkeret. In the midst  of all this the  Coronal ran toward Septach  Melayn, who
was staggering and lurching, but still contriving somehow to remain on his feet.

'My lord -' Septach Melayn began. And  halted, for some spasm of pain seemed  to
overtake him; but  then he recovered  himself a little  and said, smiling,  'The
beast is dead, is he not? How glad I am of that.'

'Oh, Septach Melayn -'

Dekkeret would have caught  him then, for it  seemed that he was  about to fall.
But  Septach Melayn  waved him  away. 'Take  this, my  lord,' he  said,  handing
Dekkeret his sword. 'Use it to defend yourself against these barbarians. I  will
not need it again.' And added, with a glance at the fallen Mandralisca: 'I  have
achieved what I was put into this world to do.'

Now Septach  Melayn tottered  and began  to topple.  Dekkeret seized  him by the
shoulders  and held  him upright  in a  tender embrace.  It seemed  to him  that
Septach Melayn weighed  next to nothing,  tall as he  was. He held  him that way
long enough to  hear a  quiet little  sigh come  from him,  and then  the  death
rattle. And then he eased him gently to the ground.

Swinging about, now,  Dekkeret took in  the madness all  around him in  a single
glance. One swarm of  his guardsmen stood in  a circle of swords  about Fulkari;
she was safe. A  second group had formed  a wall around his  own self. Gialaurys
loomed like a mountain beside  the conference table, clutching the  Lord Gaviral
by the throat with one  huge hand, and the Lord  Galahaud the same way with  the
other. Dinitak  had found  a poniard  somewhere and  was brandishing  it at  his
uncle's breast, and Khaymak Barjazid had  his hands raised high to show  that he
was his nephew's prisoner. All over the field the Sambailid warriors,  realizing
now that their leaders were taken, were throwing down their weapons and  lifting
their hands in similar gestures of surrender.

Then  Dekkeret  looked  down  and  saw  the  boy  who  had  thrown  the  wine in
Mandralisca's  face, lying  practically at  his feet,  with Mandralisca's  plump
little aide-de-camp  kneeling over  him. He  was streaming  with blood from that
terrible wound to the throat.

'Is he alive?' Dekkeret asked.

'Barely, my lord. He has only moments left.'

'He saved me  from death,' said  Dekkeret, and an  eerie chill came  over him as
there  entered  into his  mind  the recollection  of  another day  long  ago, in
Normork, and  another Coronal  faced with  an assassin's  blade, and  the casual
unthinking swipe of that blade that had taken his cousin Sithelle's life and  in
a strange way simultaneously set  him on his path to  the throne. So it had  all
happened  again, a  life sacrificed  so that  a Coronal  might live.   Dekkeret,
looking across to Fulkari, saw the  ghost of Sithelle instead, and trembled  and
came close to weeping.

But the boy was still alive, more or less. His eyes were open and he was staring
at Dekkeret.  Why, Dekkeret  wondered, had  he mysteriously  turned against  his
master in this fatal  way in that decisive  moment? And had his  answer at once,
exactly as if he had asked his question aloud. For in the softest of voices  the
boy said, 'I  could not bear  it any longer,  my lord. Knowing  that he meant to
kill you here today - to kill the lord of the world -'

'Hush, boy,' Dekkeret said. 'Don't try to speak. You need to rest.'

But he did  not appear to  have heard. 'And  knowing also that  I had taken  the
wrong turn  in life,  that I  had foolishly  given myself  to the  most evil  of
masters -'

Dekkeret knelt by him and  told him again to rest;  but it was no use,  now, for
the  faint  voice had  trickled  off into  silence,  and the  staring  eyes were
unseeing. Dekkeret glanced up at the aide-de-camp and said, 'What was his name?'

'Thastain, my lord. He came from a place called Sennec.'

Thastain of Sennec. And yours?'

'Jacemon Halefice, lordship.'

Take him to the  lodge, then, Halefice, and  have his body laid  out for burial.
We'll give him  a hero's funeral,  this Thastain of  Sennec. The sort  one would
give a duke  or a prince  who fell fighting  for his lord.  And there will  be a
great monument in his name erected in Ni-moya, that I vow.'

He walked across then  to the place where  Septach Melayn lay. Gialaurys,  still
gripping the two Sambailids  as though they were  mere sacks of grain,  had gone
there  too,  dragging his  captives  with him,  and  stood looking  down  at his
friend's body. He was weeping great terrible silent tears that flowed in  rivers
down his broad fleshy face.

Quietly  Dekkeret  said, 'We  will  take him  away  from this  loathsome  place,
Gialaurys, and return him  to the Castle, where  he belongs. You will  carry his
body there, and see to  it that he is given  a tomb to match those  of Dvorn and
Lord Stiamot, with an inscription on  it saying, 'Here lies Septach Melayn,  who
was the equal in nobility of any king that ever lived.'

'That I will do, my lord,' said Gialaurys, in a voice that itself seemed to come
from beyond the grave.

'And also we will find some bard of the court - I charge you with this task too,
Gialaurys - to  write the epic  of his life,  which schoolchildren ten  thousand
years from now will know by heart.'

Gialaurys nodded. He gestured to a pair  of guardsmen to take charge of his  two
prisoners, and dropped to  his knees, and scooped  up Septach Melayn and  slowly
carried him from the field.

Dekkeret pointed next at the body of Mandralisca, face down in the grass.  'Take
this away,' he  said to his  captain of guards,  'and see that  it is burned, in
whatever place the  kitchen trash of  this place is  burned, and have  the ashes
turned under in the forest, where no one will ever find them.'

'I will, my lord.'

Dekkeret went at last to Fulkari,  who stood white-faced and stunned beside  the
conference table. 'We are done here, my lady,' he said quietly. 'A sad day  this
has been, too. But we  will never know a sadder  one, I think, until we  come to
the end of our own days.' He slipped his arm around her. She was trembling  like
one who  stands in  an icy  wind. He  held her  until the  trembling had  abated
somewhat, and then he said, 'Come, love.  Our business here is done, and I  have
important messages to send to Prestimion.'



19

From  her  many-windowed room  high  up atop  the  Alaisor Mercantile  Exchange,
Keltryn  stood staring  out to  sea, watching  the great  red-sailed ship   from
Zimroel as it entered the harbor. Dinitak was aboard that ship. They had hurried
her by swift royal floater in a breathless chase across the width ofAlhanroel so
that she would be here in Alaisor when he arrived, and they had installed her in
royal magnificence  in this  huge suite  that they  said was ordinarily reserved
only for Powers  of the Realm;  and now here  she was, and  there he was, aboard
that majestic vessel just off shore and coming closer to her with every  passing
moment.

It still amazed her that she was here at all.

Not just that she was in the  fabled city of Alaisor, so far from  Castle Mount,
with those extraordinary  black cliffs behind  her and the  gigantic monument to
Lord Stiamot in the  plaza just below her  room. Sooner or later,  she supposed,
she would have found  some reason to see  the world, and her  travels might well
have brought her to this beautiful place.

But that  she had  come running  here at  Dinitak's behest,  after all  that had
passed between them -

She could remember only  too well saying to  Fulkari, upon learning that  he was
leaving her behind when he went to Zimroel, 'I never want to see him again!'

And Fulkari smugly saying, 'You will.'

She had  thought then  that Fulkari  was wrong,  simply wrong.  She could  never
swallow such humiliation. But time had  passed, days and weeks and months,  time
in which she had the leisure to dwell in memory on those hand-in-hand strolls in
the hallways of the Castle, those candlelit dinners, those nights of  astounding
passion. Time  to reflect,  also, on  Dinitak's unique  ' nature,  his strangely
intense sense of right  and wrong. Time to  think that perhaps she  could almost
comprehend his reasons for going to Zimroel without her.

And then, by special courier, those two messages from abroad -

Dinitak Barjazid, to Keltryn of Sipermit,  saying, in that odd formal manner  of
his, / am returning by way of Alaisor,  and I beg you most urgently to be  there
when I arrive, my dearest one, for we have things of the greatest importance  to
discuss, and they will be best discussed there. 'I beg you most urgently!'  That
did not sound much like Dinitak, to  beg at all, and most urgently at  that. 'My
dearest one.' Yes.

The second message, in the same  pouch, was from Fulkari, and what  Fulkari said
was. He will ask you to meet him  at Alaisor. Go to him there, sister. He  loves
you. He loves you more than you could possibly believe.

She  could not  repress the  instantaneous flare  of anger  that was  her  first
reaction. How dare he? How dare she?  Why fall into the same old trap  again? Go
all the way to Alaisor, no less,  at his behest, for his convenience? Why?  Why?
Why?

He loves you.

He loves you more than you could possibly believe.

And Dinitak:

I beg you most urgently.

My dearest one. My dearest one. My dearest one.

A knock at her door. 'My lady?' It was Ekkamoor, the chamberlain from the Castle
who had looked after her on  this frantic journey to the continent's  edge. 'The
ship is about to dock, my lady. Is it your wish to be at the pier when it does?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, of course!'

It flew the Coronal's green-and-gold banner, and the Coronal's starburst  emblem
was on its prow. But there was a yellow flag of mourning flying from its mast as
well, and Keltryn, watching from the waiting-room as the gangplank was fixed  in
place, stared frowning as a solemn-faced honor-guard came from the vessel first,
bearing a coffin, by the looks of  it a coffin of the most costly  make. Walking
behind it  was a  heavy-shouldered, powerfully  built man  whom she  recognized,
after a moment, as the Grand Admiral Gialaurys, Septach Melayn's old friend  and
companion-in-arms, but a Gialaurys who seemed to have aged a hundred years since
she last had seen him at the  Castle at the time of Lord Dekkeret's  coronation.
His head was bowed,  his face was dark  and grim. As the  procession bearing the
coffin went past her, he did not appear to notice her at all. But why should he?
If he knew her at all, it was only as one of the innumerable young ladies of the
court. And he was obviously so preoccupied with his grief that he could spare no
attention for those he passed while coming ashore.

But who is it that is dead? she wondered, looking back at the somber  procession
as it vanished from view.

And then a familiar voice cried, 'Keltryn! Keltryn!'

'Dinitak!'

He had changed, somehow.  Not outwardly: he was  the same slender, compact  man,
with the same sun-darkened face and the same look of taut-coiled intensity.  But
something was different. There was - what?  - a kind of grandeur about him  now,
an almost regal air  of attainment and purpose.  Keltryn saw it right  away. She
ran to him, and he opened his arms to her, and he pressed herself tight  against
him, and the sensation  of contact brought warm,  good memories to life  in her,
but there  was also,  even now,  that puzzling  sense of  changes that had taken
place within him.

Of course. He had gone  to Zimroel with the Coronal.  He had taken part in  some
kind of terrible struggle against the enemies of the throne.

After a time she stepped back from him and said, 'Well, here I am, Dinitak!'

'Here you are, yes. How wonderful that is.'

'And Zimroel - you'll tell me all about it -?'

'In time. It is  a very long story.  And there is so  much else to tell  too.' A
curious smile traveled like a flickering  flame across his dark features. 'I  am
to be a Power of the Realm, Keltryn. And if you will have me, you will be,  like
your sister, the consort of a Power.'

The words made  no sense at  all to her.  She stood there,  saying them over and
over in her mind, and in no way could she draw a meaning from them.

He said, 'It is agreed,  by Dekkeret and Prestimion and  the Lady. I am to  wear
the helmet, and enter minds  as the Lady does, and  seek out those who would  do
harm to others.  And with the  helmet I am  to warn them  of the consequences of
their actions, and to punish them if  they proceed in spite of the warning.  The
King of Dreams is to be my title; and it will descend to my children, and to  my
children's children forever, who will be  trained in the helmet's use. So  there
will be no more Mandraliscas  in the world. You see,  then, I am to be  a Power.
But will you be a Power's wife, Keltryn?'

'You're asking me to marry you?' she said, dumfounded.

'If the King of Dreams is to  have children who will inherit his tasks,  he must
have a queen, is that  not so? - We will  live in Suvrael. That is  Prestimion's
decision, not mine, that the new Power must make his home far from those of  the
other three; but it is  not the worst place in  the world, Suvrael, and I  think
you will get used to it much quicker than you think. If you like, we can  return
to the Castle to be married, or go to the Labyrinth and have Prestimion  perform
the ceremony, but  Dekkeret and I  are agreed that  it is best  for me to  go to
Suvrael as quickly as I can, in order that I can -'

She was  barely listening,  and scarcely  understanding at  all. A  Power of the
Realm? King of Dreams? Suvrael? It was all whirling madly in her mind.

'Keltryn?' Dinitak said.

'So much - so strange -'

'Tell me this, at least: will you marry me, Keltryn?'

That much she could focus on. There  would be time later to comprehend the  rest
of it, King of Dreams and Suvrael  and all of that, and what had  happened while
he and Dekkeret and the others were over in Zimroel, and whose body it was  that
Gialaurys had escorted from the ship.

'Yes,' she said, understanding that much. He laws you. He lows you more than you
could possibly believe. 'Yes, Dinitak, yes, yes, yes, yes!'


Prestimion said, glancing  down at the  despatch that had  just been brought  to
him,  'Gialaurys has  come from  Alaisor to  Sisivondal with  the body,  and  is
setting out on his way back to the  Mount. So we will have to set out  ourselves
for the Castle in a day or two also, Varaile.'

She smiled. 'I knew you'd have to find some excuse to get yourself away from the
Labyrinth before much longer, Prestimion. I don't think we've ever spent as many
consecutive months anywhere as we have since we got back here from Stoien.'

'In  truth  I've grown  quite  accustomed to  life  in the  Labyrinth,  my love.
Confalume said I would, sooner or later; and he was right in that, as he was  in
so many things. It's when you're Coronal  that you're a rover. The blood is  hot
in you, then. The Pontifex prefers a  quieter life, and the Labyrinth has a  way
of growing on  one, don't you  think?' He gestured  about him with  one hand and
then  the  other,  indicating  all  the  familiar  possessions  of  their Castle
household,  everything  now  comfortably  installed  in  the  apartments  of the
Labyrinth that once  had been Confalume's  and now were  theirs, and looking  as
though they had been in place for decades rather than months. '- In any case, it
wasn't my decision to bury Septach  Melayn at the Castle. It was  Dekkeret's. To
which I gladly defer.'

'He was your friend,  Prestimion. And High Spokesman  to the Pontifex, as  well.
Wouldn't  it  be more  appropriate  for him  to  be laid  to  rest here  at  the
Labyrinth?'

Prestimion shook his  head. 'He was  never a man  of the Labyrinth,  was Septach
Melayn. He came here only out of loyalty to me. Castle Mount was his place,  and
there  he  will lie.  I  will not  overrule  Dekkeret on  that.  He died  saving
Dekkeret's life; that act alone gives Dekkeret claim on where to bury him.'

He  realized that  he was  speaking quite  calmly of  these details  of  Septach
Melayn's burial, as though it were merely some ordinary piece of business of the
realm,  and  for a  moment  Prestimion actually  thought  that the  pain  of his
friend's death might actually be starting to heal. But then it all came sweeping
back upon him,  and he grimaced  and turned away.  His eyes were  stinging. That
Septach  Melayn, of  all men,  should have  been lost  in the  struggle  against
Mandralisca - that he should have given up his own life for the sake of  ridding
the world of that - that -

'Prestimion -' said Varaile, reaching a hand toward him.

He  fought to  regain his  control, and  succeeded. 'We  needn't discuss   this,
Varaile. Shouldn't. Dekkeret has decreed  a Castle funeral and a  Castle burial,
and Gialaurys is bringing him there, and the monument is already being designed,
and I will officiate at the ceremony, and so you and I should start packing  for
our trip up the Glayge. And so be it.'

'I wonder what sort of burial Dekkeret decreed for Mandralisca.'

'I'll ask him, if I think of  it whenever he returns from his processional.  I'd
have fed the body to a pack of hungry jakkaboles, myself. Dekkeret's a  kindlier
man than I am, but I like to think he'd do the same.'

'He is a kingly man, is Dekkeret.'

'Yes. Yes, that he  is,' said Prestimion. 'A  king among kings. I  have left the
world in  good hands,  I think.  He told  me he  would crush Mandralisca without
going to war, and he has done that, and pushed those five ghastly brothers  back
into the box  out of which  they sprang, and  all Zimroel sings  Lord Dekkeret's
praises, now, apparently.' Prestimion  laughed. The thought of  Dekkeret's deeds
in Zimroel had brightened his spirit. 'Do  you know, Varaile, what it is that  I
will be famous for, in the years ahead? The great thing that they will  remember
about me? It will be that I came  upon the boy who was to become Lord  Dekkeret,
one day while I was in Normork, and  that I had the good sense to gather  him to
me and make him my Coronal. Yes. What they will say of me is that I was the king
who gave the world Lord Dekkeret. - And now let us get ourselves ready for  this
journey to the  Castle, love, and  for the one  bit of sad  business we must  do
there, before we enter into the happy times of our reign.'


They had been traveling up the Zimr for weeks and weeks, city upon city,  Flegit
and Clarischanz, Belka and Larnimisculus and Verf, and now they were in  Ni-moya
at last, were Dekkeret and Fulkari, installed in the great palace that once  had
belonged to Dantirya  Sambail, wandering in  amazement through its  multitude of
rooms, exclaiming over the splendor of its design.

'He  did  indeed live  like  a king,'  Fulkari  murmured. They  had  reached the
westernmost wing  of the  building, where  a colossal  window of  a single  pane
provided a sweeping view that ran from the waterfront on their left to the white
towers of  the Ni-moyan  hills on  the right,  and the  great bosom of the giant
river rolling on before them far into the remote regions of the continent. 'What
will you  do with  this place  now, Dekkeret?  You aren't  going to have it torn
down, are you?'

'No. Never. I can't hold this building guilty of the crimes of Dantirya  Sambail
and his five pitiful nephews. Those  crimes will be forgotten, sooner or  later.
But what a crime against beauty it would be to destroy the Procurator's palace.'

'Yes. Quite so.'

'I'll appoint a duke to  reign over Ni-moya - I  don't know who it will  be, but
he'll be someone without a drop of Sambailid blood in him - and he and his heirs
can live here, knowing they do so by grace of the Coronal's generosity.'

'A duke. Not a procurator.'

'There'll be no  more procurators here,  Fulkari. That was  Prestimion's decree,
which I will renew.  We'll remake the government  of Zimroel to decentralize  it
again: a single authority here's too dangerous, too threatening to the  imperial
government  itself.  Provincial  dukes, loyalty  to  the  crown, frequent  grand
processionals to  underscore  the  allegiance of   Zimroel to  the  constitution
that's how it will be, yes.'

'And the Five Lords?' she asked.

'Lords no more, you can be sure of that. But it would be a sin to put such fools
to death. When they've done enough  penance for their little uprising, they  can
go back to their palaces in the desert, and there they'll stay forever. I  doubt
they'll make any further trouble. And if the thought of it even comes into their
minds, the King of Dreams will take care of that.'

'The King of Dreams,' Fulkari  said, smiling. 'Our brother Dinitak.  A brilliant
scheme,  that was.  Although you've  cost me  a sister  by sending  him off   to
Suvrael.'

'And  cost myself  a friend,'  said Dekkeret.  'It can't  be helped.  Prestimion
insisted: the King  of Dreams must  make his headquarters  down there. We  can't
have three of the four Powers clustered  in Alhanroel. He'll do the job well,  I
think. He was born for it. - Did you ever think, Fulkari, that your wild  tomboy
of a sister would marry a Power of the Realm?'

'Did I ever  think / would?'  she asked, and  they laughed, and  moved closer to
each other by the great window. Dekkeret stared outward. Night was beginning  to
fall, now. Somewhere out there to the  west was a further world of marvels  that
they were yet to visit: Khyntor  of the great steaming geysers, and  crystalline
Dulorn where the Perpetual Circus offered its carnival of wonders night and day,
day and  night, and  ancient cobblestoned  Pidruid beyond  it on  the coast, and
Narabal,  Til-omon, Tjangalagala,  Cibairil, Brunir,  Banduk Marika,  all  those
fabled cities of the distant west.

They would visit them all. He  was determined to go everywhere. To  stand before
the people and say, Here I am,  Dekkeret your Coronal Lard, who will devote  his
life to your service.

'What a beautiful sunset,' Fulkari  said softly. 'So many colors:  gold, purple,
red, green, all swirling together.'

'It is. Very beautiful.'

'But it's still only the middle of the day in Khyntor, isn't it? And morning  in
Dulorn. And the middle  of the night before,  out in Pidruid. Oh,  Dekkeret, the
world is so very big! The Castle seems so far away, just now!'

'The Castle is far away, my sweet.'

'How long will we be gone on this processional, do you think?'

Dekkeret shrugged. 'I don'tknow. Five years? Ten? Forever?'

'Seriously, Dekkeret.'

'I tell you,  Fulkari: I don't  know. As long  as it takes.  The Castle will get
along without us, if it has to. I am the Coronal Lord wherever I happen to be on
Majipoor. And we have  an entire world to  visit.' The sky was  changing as they
watched, the colors deepening, red giving  way to bronze, purple shading into  a
dark maroon. Soon it  would be night here,  and twilight in the  west. The stars
were beginning  to appear.  One of  the lesser  moons came  into view and cast a
silver strand  of light  on the  waters of  the river.  Dekkeret's arm tightened
around  Fulkari's shoulders,  and they  stood silently  for a  time. 'Look   you
there,' he said then, when at last all the colors had faded to black. 'There  is
Majipoor before us, and the night is as beautiful as the day.'
