"My lord, was that really you, that time at our house in Stee?"

"Do you have any doubt of that?"

"And just why was it, may I ask, that you came?"

"To meet you," he said, and knew there would be no turning back from there.

The Labyrinth of Majipoor was a joyless place at best: a huge underground city, level upon level descending into the depths of the planet, with the hidden lair of the Pontifex at its deepest point, at the level farthest from the warming rays of the sun.

Prestimion had experienced some of the blackest moments of his life here.

It was in the great hall of the Labyrinth known as the Court of '17hrones that Korsibar, in the moment of the announcement of the death of the Pontifex Prankipin, had carried out his astounding seizure of the starburst crown that was to have been Prestimion's, right before Prestimion's eyes and those of the highest figures of the realm.

And it was in the suite of rooms set aside for the Coronal's use at the Labyrinth that Prestimion had come before Korsibar's father, Lord Confalume, who had now become the Pontifex Confalume, to demand of him the throne that Confalume had promised to him; and had heard from the bewildered and broken Confalume that nothing could be done, that the usurpation was an irrevocable act, that Korsibar was Coronal now and Prestimion must slink away to make whatever he could out of his life without further hope of attaining the throne.

Confalume had wept, then, when Prestimion had pressed him to take action against this outrage-Confalume, weeping! But the Pontifex was paralvzed by fear. He dreaded a bloody civil war, which would certainly be the outcome of any challenge to Korsibar, too greatly to want to set himself in opposition to his son's amazing and unlawful act. The thing is done, Confalume had said, Korsibar holds the power now.

Well, the thing that had been done had now been undone, and Korsibar had been blotted from existence as though he had never been, and Prestimion was Lord Prestimion now, returning in glory to this place from which he had crept away in shame and defeat. No one but he and Gialaurys and Septach Melayn knew anything of the dark events that had taken place in the subterranean metropolis in the days immediately after the death of the Pontifex Prankipin. But the Labyrinth was full of painful memories for him. If he could have avoided this journey, he would have. He had no wish to see the Labyrinth again until the day-let it be far in the future, he hoped!-when Confalume at last was dead and he himself must take up the title of Pontifex.

Staying away from the Labyrinth entirely, though, wasimpossible.

The new Coronal must present himself, early in the reign, to the Pontifex from whom he had received his throne.

Here he was, then.

Confalume awaited him.

"Your journey was a pleasant one, I hope?"

"Fair weather all the way, your majesty," Prestimion said. "A good breeze carrying us southward down the Glayge."

They had had the introductory formalities, the embraces and the feasting, and now it was just the two of them together in quiet conversation , Pontifex and Coronal, emperor and king, nominal father and adoptive son.

The river route was what Prestimion had taken to get here: the usual one for a lord of the Castle who was making a visit to the Labyrinth. He had traveled aboard the royal barge down the swift, wide Glayge, which rose in the foothills of the Mount and made its way south through some of the most fertile provinces of Alhanroel to the imperial capital. All along the river's banks the populace had been assembled to cheer him on his way: at Storp and Mitripond, at Ninrivan and Stangard Falls, Makroposopos and Pendiwane and the innumerable towns along the shores of Lake Roghoiz, and the cities of the Lower Glayge beyond the lake, Palaghat and Terabessa and Grevvin and all the rest. Prestimion had made this journey in reverse not many years before, returning from the Labyrinth to the Castle after the usurpation, and a far more somber trip it had been, too, with banners portraying the newly proclaimed Lord Korsibar fluttering in his face at every port. But that was then, and this was now, and as he went past each city the cry of "Prestimion! Prestimion! All hail Lord Prestimion!" echoed in his ears.

There were seven entrances to the Labyrinth; but the one that Coronals used was the Mouth of Waters, where the Glayge flowed past the huge brown earthen mound that was the only part of the Labyrinth visible aboveground. Here, a line so sharp that a man could step across it in a single stride marked the division between the green and fertile Glayge Valley and the lifeless dusty desert in which the Labyrinth lay.

Here Prestimion knew he must put behind him the sweet breezes and soft golden-green sunlight of the upper world and enter into the mysterious eternal night of the underground city, the sinister descending coils of its densely populated levels, the hermetic and airless-seeming realm far below that was the home of the Pontifex.

Masked officials of the Pontificate were on hand to greet him at the entrance, with the Pontifex's pompous white-haired cousin, Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar, at the head of the group in his new capacity as High Spokesman to the Pontifex. The swift shaft reserved only for Powers of the Realm took Prestimion downward, past the circular levels where the Labyrinth's teeming millions of population dwelled, those who served the Pontifical bureaucracy and those who simply performed the humble tasks of any great city, and onward to the deeper zones where the Labyrinth's famed architectural wonders lay-the Pool of Dreams, the mysterious Hall of Winds, the bizarre Court of Pyramids , the Place of Masks, the inexplicable gigantic empty space that was the Arena, and all the rest-and with breathtaking swiftness delivered him to the imperial sector, and to the Pontifex. Who immediately dismissed his entire entourage from the room, even Oljebbin. Prestimion's meeting would be with Confalume alone.

Nor was the Confalume who faced him now the Confalume that Prestimion was expecting to see.

He had feared that he would find the feeble ruined hulk of a man, the sorry and dismal remnant of the great Confalume of yore. 'The beginning of that collapse had already been in evidence at their last meeting.

The Confalume with whom he had that fruitless, despondent meeting in the grim aftermath of the thunderbolt force of Korsibar's power-grab, the man who had wept and trembled and begged most piteously to be left in peace, had been only a shadow of the Confalume whose fortyyear reign as Coronal had been marked by triumph after triumph.

Although the later obliteration of specific knowledge of the usurpation and the civil war that had ensued would have spared Confalume from the grief he felt over his son's actions, there was no reason to think he would ever recover from the damage that had been inflicted on his spirit. Even at Prestimion's coronation, with thewhole Korsibar event now relegated to oblivion, Confalume had seemed little more than an empty shell, still physically strong but befuddled of mind, haunted by phantoms whose identity he could not begin to understand.

And, according to Septach Melayn, who had met with the legate Vologaz Sar during Prestimion's absence in the east-country, the Pontifex now was still a greatly troubled man, confused and depressed, plagued by sleeplessness and nebulous free-floating distress.

And so Prestimion had thought that that charismatic Confalume of old surely would be gone, that he would meet a frail trembling man who stood at the edge of the grave. It was frightening to think that Confalume might not have much longer to live, for Prestimion himself had hardly commenced his own reign. He was far from ready to be pulled away from the Castle prematurely in order to immure himself in the dark pit that was the Labyrinth, although that was a risk that any Coronal faced when he succeeded one who had held his Castle throne as long as Confalume had.

But it was a Confalame reborn and revivified to whom Prestimion presented himself now in the Court of Thrones, that hall of black stone walls rising to pointed arches where Pontifex and Coronal were meant to sit side by side on lofty seats-the very place in which Korsibar had staged his coup-d'etat. Here before him was Confalume, and he seemed to be the robust and forceful man Prestimion remembered from former days: jaunty and erect in the scarlet-and-black Pontifical robes, with a miniature replica of the ornate Pontifical tiara glittering bravely on one lapel and the little golden rohilla, the astrological amulet that he was so fond of wearing, mounted on the other. Nothing about him had the aspect of imminent death. When they embraced, it was impossible not to be impressed by the strength of the man.

Confalume was himself again, rejuvenated, thriving. He had always been a man of tremendous physical vigor, not tall but powerfully built, with keen gray eyes and a full thick sweep of hair that had maintained its chestnut hue far into his later years. In any gathering at the Castle, the former Lord Confalume had automatically been the center of attention, not solely because he was Coronal, but because there emanated from him such personal magnetism, such a potent puff of inherent force, that you could not help but turn toward him. And clearly more than a vestige of that Confalume still remained.'Ibat innate vigor of his hadpulled him through the crisis. Good, Prestimion thought He felt a tide of immense relief go flooding through him. But at the same time he realized that he would be dealing now not with a shattered, weary old man to whom he could say whatever he thought most useful, but rather with one who had spent better than forty years on the Coronal's throne, and who understood the wielding of high power better than anyone else in the world.

"You look well, majesty. Remarkably well!"

"You seem surprised, Prestimion."

I had heard rumors of a troubled mood-restlessness, difficulty sleeping-"

"Pah! Rumors, nothing more. Fables. I had a few hard moments at the beginning, perhaps. There's a necessary period of adjustment, coming down from the Castle to live in this place, and I won't pretend that that part's easy. But it passes; and then you feel quite at home here."

"Do you, then?"

"I do. And you should take comfort from it. There's never been a Coronal yet who hasn't been appalled by the necessity of moving along eventually to the Labyrinth. And why not? To wake each morning in the Castle, and look out at that great airy expanse all around, and to be able to descend from the Mount whenever you please to go wherever you like, Alaisor or Embolain or Ketheron if the whim takes you, or Pidruid or Narabal, for that matter-all the while knowing that one of these days the old emperor's going to wake up dead, and when that happens they're going to come for you and ship you down the Glayge to this place and point nine miles straight down and say, Here's your new home, Lord So-and-So-" The Pontifex smiled. 'Well, it's not all that terrible to be here, let me assure you. It's different. Restful."

"Restful?" That hardly seemed the word for this sunless cheerless place.

"Oh, yes. There's definitely something to say for the seclusion, for the peace and quiet of it. No one can even speak to you directly, you know, no one but your Spokesman and your Coronal. No pestilent petitioners plucking at your sleeve, no crowds of ambitious lordlings flocking around hoping for favors, no backbreaking journeys to undertake across thousands and thousands of miles because your Council has decided that it's time to show your face in some distant province. No, Prestimion, you sit down here in your cozy underground palace, and they bring you legislation to read and you glance at it and say yes or no or maybe, and they take it away and you no longer have to give it a thought. You're young and full of vitality, and you can't begin to comprehend the merits of being sequestered in the Labyrinth. I admit that I felt the same way, thirty years ago. But you'll see. Have yourself forty-odd years as Coronal, as I did, and I promise you you'll be more than ready for the Labyrinth, and no anguish about it at all."

A forty-year reign as Coronal? Well, there was no probability of that, Prestimion knew. Confalume was past seventy already. A decade or so at the Castle was about the best the new Coronal could hope for, and then he would find himself Pontifex. But the older man seemed sincere in what he was saying, and there was great comfort in that.

No doubt all you tell me about life in the Labyrinth is true,"

Prestimion said, smiling. "I'm quite willing to wait forty years to find out, though."

Confalume looked pleased. His return to something approaching his old strength was neither a pretense nor an illusion, Prestimion realized.

Confalume seemed rejuvenated, brimming with life, settling in for a long stay in his strange new home.

He filled their wine-bowls with his own hand-for once, no oversolicitous servants were lurking about-and swung around in his seat to face Prestimion. "And you?" he said. "Not overwhelmed, are you, by all your new tasks?"

"So far I hold my own, your majesty. Although it's been a busy time."

"It must have been, yes. I hear so little from you. You leave me in the dark, you know, about all the affairs of the realm, and that's not so good."

It was said very pleasantly, but there was no mistaking the implicit sting of the words.

Prestimion's reply was a cautious one. "I realize, sir, that I've been remiss in reporting to you. But there's been a great many problems to take care of all at once, and I wanted to be able to come to you with some evidence of real progress to show."

"Problems such as what?" the Pontifex asked.

"Dantirya Sambail, for one."

'The bloody Procurator, yes. But he's all noise and no push, is that not so? What's he been up to?"

"Contemplating setting up a separate kingdom for himself in Zimroel, apparently."

Confalume's hand leaped as if of its own accord to the rohilla in his lapel and rubbed it in a counterclockwise way. He gave Prestimion an incredulous stare. "Are you serious? And is he? Where is he now? Why haven't I been told of any of this?"

Prestimion stirred uneasily in his seat. They were entering into perilous territory here. "I was waiting, sir, until I could interrogate the Procurator myself about his intentions. He was at the Castle for a time'-that was true enough--"but then he left, supposedly on a journey into the east-country."

'Why would he go there?"

'Who can know any reason for anything Dantirya Sambail does? At any rate, I gathered a small force and went out thereafter him."

"Yes," said the Pontifex tartly. "So I understand. You might have informed me of that, too."

"Forgive me, sir. I've been remiss in many ways, I see. But I assumed your own officials would notify you of my departure from the Castle."

"As they did, yes. -Dantirya Sambail eluded you in the east-country, apparently."

"He's in southern Alhanroel now, and intends, I assume, to take ship shortly for his homeland. When I leave here, I'll be going down toward Aruachosia to try to seek him out." Prestimion hesitated a moment.

"The Grand Admiral has blockaded the ports."

Confalume's eyes flashed surprise. "What you're telling me, then, is that you regard the most powerful man in the world, other than yourself and me, as a dangerous threat to the integrity of the realm. Am I correct ? That he has eluded your attempts to take him into custody. 'That he is currently a fugitive running hither and thither around Alhanroel as he seeks to get back overseas. What is it we have here, Prestimion, a civil war in the making? Over what? Why should the Procurator suddenly be talking about setting up an independent government? He's been content with the present power-sharing arrangements all these years. Is it that he looks upon the new regime as weak, and feels safe in making his move? By the Divine, he won't succeed at it! -You're his kinsman, Prestimion. How can he dare think of launching an uprising against his own kin?"

He already has launched one, Prestimion thought, which has been fought and settled at a terrible cost, and the world will never be the same for it. But it was impossible for him to speak of that in any way.

And Confalume's face had grown troublesomely red with rage.

This topic had to be put quickly to rest.

Calmly Prestimion said, "These rumors may all be overblown, sir. I need to find Dantirya Sambail and discover from him myself whether he feels that his present high position is insufficiently eminent. And if he does, I'll convince him, I assure you, that he's mistaken. But there'll be no civil war."

The Pontifex appeared to be satisfied by that reply. He busied himself with his wine for a time; and then he began to question Prestimion quickly about other matters of state, moving with great efficiency from one subject to another, the rebuilding of the dam on the Iyann, the problem of inadequate harvests in places like Stymphinor and the valley of the Jhelum, the puzzling reports of outbreaks of insanity in many cities across the land. It was obvious that this man was no feeble and illinformed recluse huddled away here in the dark recesses of the Labyrinth to wait out the final years of his Iffe: plainly Confalume intended to be an active and dynamic Pontifex, very much the strong emperor to whom the Coronal would be the subordinate king, and even in the absence of detailed reports from Prestimion he had managed to keep abreast of much of what was taking place in the world. More, probably, Prestimion suspected, than he was bringing up for discussion now. It was common knowledge when Confalume was in his prime that underestimating him was a dangerous game to play; Prestimion knew that it would be rash to underestimate him even now.

The meeting, which Prestimion had hoped would be brief and even perfunctory , proved to be a lengthy one. Prestimion replied to everything in great detail, but always choosing his words with extreme care. It was a tricky thing to tell Confalume how he proposed to go about solving the current spate of problems, when he could not allow himself even to reveal to Confalume any knowledge of why these problems happened to exist in their happy and harmonious world at all.

The shattering of the Mavestoi Dam, for example. That had been the doing of Confalume's own son Korsibar, at Dantirya Sambail's suggestion : one of the most frightful calamities of the civil war. But how could he ever explain that to Confalume, who no longer knew even of Korsibar, let alone of the war? There was famine inplaces like the Jhelum Valley and Stymphinor because great battles had been fought there, thousands of soldiers quartered on the land, granaries emptied to feed them, whole plantations trampled underfoot. The battles were forgotten; the consequences remained. And the madness? Why, there was every likelihood that that was the result of the vast witchery called down upon the world by Heszmon Gorse and his crew of sorcerers at Prestimion's own order! But any attempt to explain that would also entail speaking of the war, and of its bloody conclusion, and then of his decision-which now looked so reckless even to him-to blot the whole thing from the minds of billions of people.

A deep longing arose in him to reveal the truth to Confalume here and now: to share the terrible burden, to throw himself on the older man's mercy and wisdom. But that was a temptation he dared not yield to.

He did have to give the Pontifex some sort of answers to his questions , or he would risk seeming incompetent in the eyes of the one who had nominated him for the throne. But there was so much that simply could not be spoken. All too often it seemed that he could respond to Confalume either by telling outright lies, which he mostprofoundly hoped to avoid doing, or else by revealing the unrevealable.

Somehow though, by dint of half-truth and subterfuge, he succeeded in threading his way through the maze of the Pontifex's queries without speaking of that which could not be told, and yet without resorting to any truly shameful deception. And Confalume appeared to accept what he had been told at face value.

Prestimion hoped so, anyway. But he was much relieved when the meeting reached its apparent end and he could take his leave of the older man without further cause for uneasiness.

"You won't be so long in coming the next time, will you?" Confalume asked, rising, letting his hands rest on Prestimion's shoulders, looking squarely into Prestimion's eyes. "You know what pleasure it gives me to see you, my son."

Prestimion smiled at that phrase, and at the warmth of the Pontifex's tone, though he felt a sharp pang also.

Confalume went on, "Yes, 'my son,' is what I said. I always wanted a son, but the Divine would never send me one. But now I have oneafter a manner of speaking. For by law the Coronal is deemed the sonby-adoption , of course, of the Pontifex. And so you are my son, Prestimion. You are my son!"

It was an uncomfortable, even painful moment. The Divine had sent Confalume a son, a fine noble-looking one at that. But he was Korsibar, who now had never been.

Worse was to come.

For then, even as Prestimion was edging uneasily toward the door, Confalume said, "You should marry, Prestimion. A Coronal needs a partner for his labors. Not that I did all that well myself with my Roxivail, but how was I to know how vain and shallow she was? You can manage it better. Surely there's a woman somewhere who'd be a fitting consort for you." And once again Thismet's image blazed in Prestimion's mind, and brought him the unfailing stab of agony that came with any thought of her.

Thismet, yes. Confalume had never known of the late-blooming romance that had sprung up between Thismet and him on the battlefields of western Alhanroel.

But what did that matter now? It would have been lawful for Prestimion to marry Confalume's daughter, yes, despite the technicalities of the adoptive relationship. Only Confalume had no daughter. Her name itself had been canceled from the pages of history. Prestimion's brief and swiftly extinguished alliance with Thismet was simply one thing more of which he could say nothing. Now there was Varaile; but she and he were still strangers. Prestimion had no way of knowing whether the promise of their early meetings would ever be fulfilled. He was oddly unwilling, besides, to mention Varaile at all to Confalume for another reason: out of some perverse and, he realized,wholly ridiculous fidelity to the memory of the murdered daughter of whose existence Confalume had no clue.

So he smiled and said, "Surely there is, and may it be that I find her, some day. And if and when I do, I'll marry her quickly, you can be sure of that. But let us say no more on that subject now, shall we, father?"

And saluted and hastily took his leave.

Dekkeret had learned about Ni-moya when he was a boy at school, of course. But no geography lesson could possibly have prepared him for the reality of Zimroel's greatest city.

Who could believe, after all, that the other continent could have any city so grand? As far as Dekkeret knew, Zimroel was mainly an undeveloped land of forests and jungles and enormous rivers, with much of its central region given over to the impenetrable wilderness to which the aboriginal Metamorphs had been banished by Stiamot, and where they still had their largest concentration of population. Oh, there were some cities out there, too-Narabal and Pidruid and Piliplok and such-but Dekkeret imagined them to be muddy backwaters inhabited by hordes of coarse, ignorant yokels. As for Ni-moya, the continental capital, one heard impressive population figures, yes-fifteen million people were said to be living there, twenty million, whatever the number was. But many cities of Alhanroel had reached such proportions hundreds of years ago, so why get excited over the size of Ni-moya when Alaisor and Stee and half a dozen other cities of the older continent were at least as big, or bigger? In any event, population size itselfwas no guarantee of distinction. You could readily cram twenty million people into one area, or fifty million, if you cared to, and create nothing better than an enormous squalid urban mess, noisy and dirty and chaotic and close to intolerable for any civilized person who had to spend more than half a day in it. And that was what Dekkeret was expecting to find at his journey's end.

He and Akbalik had sailed from Alaisor, the usual port of embarkation for travelers bound to the western continent from central Alhanroel. After an uneventful but interminable-seeming sea journey they made their landfall at Piliplok on Zimroel's eastern coast.

Which proved to be a city that lived up in every way to Dekkeret's expectations of it: he had heard that Piliplok was an ugly place, and ugly it was, brutal and rigid of design. People often said of his own native city of Normork that it was dreadfully dark and somber, a city that only someone born there could love. Dekkeret, who found Normork's appearance quite pleasing, had never understood that criticism before.

But he understood it now: for who could possibly love Piliplok except someone native to the place, to whom Piliplok's brutal and rigid look was the norm of beauty?

One thing that it wasn't, though, was a muddy backwater. A backwater , maybe, but not at all muddy; Piliplok was paved, every last inch of it, a hideous metropolis of stone and concrete with barely a tree or a shrub to be seen. It was laid out with mathematical and indeed almost maniacal precision in eleven perfectly straight spokes radiating outward from its superb natural harbor on the Inner Sea, with curving bands of streets crossing the axis of the spokes in disagreeably exact rows. Each district-the mercantile quarter close to the waterfront, the industrial zone just beyond it, the various residential and recreational areas-was uniform throughout itself in architectural style, as though fixed by law, and the buildings themselves, clumsy and heavy, were not much to Dekkeret's taste. Normork was an airy paradise by comparison.

But their stay there was blessedly brief. Piliplok was not just the main harbor for the ships that sailed between Alhanroel and Zimroel, and for the fleet of sea-dragon hunters that plied the waters of the Inner Sea in quest of the gigantic marine mammals that were so widely prized for their meat. It was also the place where the River Zimr, the greatest of all Majipoor's rivers, reached the sea after its seven-thousand-mile journey across Zimroel; and so, by virtue of its position at the huge river's mouth, Piliplok was the gateway to the whole interior of the continent.

Akbalik bought passage for them aboard one of the big riverboats that plied the Zimr between Piliplok and the river's source at the Dulorn Rift in northwestern Zimroel. The riverboat was enormous, far larger than the ship that had carried them across the Inner Sea; and whereas the oceangoing vessel had been simple and sturdy of design, intended V as it was to bear up under the stresses involved in crossing thousands of miles of open sea, the riverboat was an ungainly and complicated affair, more like a floating village than a ship.

What it was, actually, was a broad, squat, practically rectangular platform with cargo holds, steerage quarters, and dining halls belowdecks, a square central courtyard bordered by pavilions and shops and gaming pavilions at deck level, and, at the stern, an elaborate many-leveled superstructure where the passengers were housed. It was decorated in an ornate and fanciful way, a jagged scarlet arch over the bridge, grotesque green figureheads with painted yellow horns jutting out like battering-rams at the bow, and a bewildering abundance of eccentric ornamental woodwork, a whimsical host of interlacing joists and scrolls and struts sprouting on every surface.

Dekkeret stared in wonder at his fellow passengers. The largest single group of them were humans, of course, but also there were great numbers of Hjorts and Skandars and Vroons, and a handful of Su-Suheris in diaphanous robes, and some scaly-skinned Ghayrogs, who were reptilian in general appearance although in fact they were mammals . He wondered if he would see Metamorphs too, and asked Akbalik about that; but no, Akbahk said, the Shapeshifter folk rarely left their inland reservation, even though the ancient prohibition against their traveling freely through the world had long since ceased to be firmly observed. And if there were any on board, he added, they would probably be wearing some form other than their own, to avoid the hostility that Metamorphs aroused whenever they mingled with other folk.

The Zimr, at Piliplok, was dark with the silt it had scoured from its bed in the course of its long journey east, and where it met the sea the river was some seventy miles across, so that it hardly looked like a river at all, but rather like a gigantic lake beneath which a vast stretch of the coast lay drowned. Piliplok itself occupied a high promontory on the river's southern bank; as they set out on their journey Dekkeret could just barely make out the uninhabited northern bank, plainly visible even across that great distance because it was a massive white Cliff of pure chalk, a mile high and many miles long, brilliant in the morning light. But soon, as the riverboat left Piliplok behind and began to make its way upriver, the Zimr narrowed somewhat and took on more a riverlike appearance, though it never became truly narrow.

For Dekkeret this was like a journey to another world. He spent all his time on deck, staring out at the round-topped tawny hills and busy towns that flanked the river, places whose names he had never heard before-Port Saikforge, Stenwarnp, Campilthorn, Vem. The density of population along this stretch of the river astonished him. The riverboat rarely traveled more than two or three hours before pulling into some new port to discharge passengers, pick up new ones, unload cargo crates, take new cargo on. For a time he jotted the names of them in a little notebook he carried-Dambemuir, Orgeliuse, Impemond, Haunfort Major, Salvamot, Obliorn Vale-until he realized that if he kept on writing down all these towns, there would be no room left in the book for anything else long before he reached Ni-moya. So he was content simply to stand by the rail and stare, drinking in the constantly changing sights. After a time they all blurred pleasantly together, the unfamiliar landscape started to look very familiar indeed, and he no longer felt such a sense of overwhelming strangeness. When dreams came to him in the night, though, they very often were dreams in which he was flying through the endless midnight of space, moving in utter ease from star to star.

There were two disturbing events during the voyage, both of them occurring within a few days after the departure from Piliplok, one comic, the other tragic.

The first involved a red-haired man just a few years older than Dekkeret, who seemed to spend much of his time wandering the decks muttering to himself, or chuckling unaccountably, or pointing at some spot in the empty air as if it held mysterious significance. A harmless lunatic, Dekkeret thought; and, remembering that other madman, not at all harmless, who had killed his beloved cousin Sithelle in the course of a crazed attempt to assassinate the Coronal, he made a point of keeping his distance from the man. But then, on the third day, as Dekkeret stood near the starboard rail looking out at the passing towns, he suddenly heard maniacal laughter coming from his left-or perhaps they were frantic shrieks; there was no way of telling-and looked about to see the red-haired man run wildly across the riverboat's central concourse , arms flailing, and mount the steps that led to the upper decks, and stand for a moment at the edge of the observation portico up there, and then, uttering a cascade of grotesque giggles and cackles, hurl himself over the side and into the river, where he began to thrash about in a frantic, frenzied way.

Immediately a loud cry of "Man overboard!" went up, and the riverboat halted and swung around in its path. Two burly crewmen went out in a dinghy and without much difficulty hauled the hapless lunatic from the water. They brought him back on board, dripping and spurning, and took him down belowdecks. That was the last Dekkeret saw of him until the riverboat pulled in, a day later, at a town called Kraibledene, where the fellow was put ashore and, so it appeared, turned over to the local authorities.

A day later came an even stranger thing. In early afternoon of a clear, warm day, as the riverboat was traversing a stretch of the river without settlements, a gaunt stern-faced man of about forty in a stiff, thickly brocaded robe descended from the passenger deck carrying a large and obviously heavy suitcase. He set the suitcase down in an unoccu- pied section of the main deck, opened it, and drew from it a series of odd-looking instruments and implements, which he proceeded to arrange with meticulous care in a perfect semicircle in front of him.

Dekkeret nudged Akbalik. "Look at all that weird stuff! It's sorcerer's equipment, isn't it?"

"It certainly looks like it. I wonder if he's going to cast some sort of spell right here in front of us all."