Prince Thaszthasz, a supple, olive-skinned man of unknowable age who had governed in Kajith Kabulon as far back as Prestimioncould remember, took the unheralded arrival of the Coronal in his province as calmly as he seemed to take everything else. He provided a lavish feast for Prestimion at his wickerwork palace at the heart of the jungle, an open and airy structure that he said was patterned after a style favored by the Metamorphs of Iliryvoyne, far off on the other continent. "I build a new one every year," Thaszthasz explained. "It saves on housekeeping costs." They dined on the sweet fruits and smoked meats of the rain-forest, a procession of flavors wholly unfamiliar to the men from Castle Mount, but the wine, at least, was of the north, a touch of home at last. 'There were musicians; there were jugglers; three sinuous girls wearing next to nothing performed an intricate, provocative dance.

Prestimion and the prince discussed the pleasures of the Coronation festivals, the vigorous health of the Pontifex as Prestimion had lately observed it, and the fascinations of the jungle about them, which Thaszthasz unsurprisingly thought the most beautiful district in all of Majipoor.

Gradually, as the night wore on, the talk came around to more serious matters. Prestimion began gradually to move toward thetopic of Dantirya Sambail; but before he had quite managed to be specific about his reasons for coming south, Prince Tbaszthasz deftly interjected that he had a grave problem on his hands himself, which was the growing incidence of inexplicable insanity among the people of his province.

'We are in general very well balanced folk here, you know, my lord.

The unvarying mildness and warmth of our climate, the beauty and tranquility of our surroundings, the steady music of the rain-you have no idea, your lordship, how beneficial all of that is for the soul."

'This is true. I have no idea of it indeed," said Prestimion.

"But now-in the past six months, or eight, perhaps--quite suddenly , there has been a change. We see the most solid citizens suddenly rising up and going off by themselves, entirely unprepared, into the forest . Leaving the main roads, you understand, which is a perilous thing, for the forest is huge-you would call it a jungle, I suppose-and it can be unkind to those who flout its requirements. There have been eleven hundred such disappearances so far. Only a handful of those who have gone have returned. Why did they go? What were they seeking? They are unable to tell us."

"How strange," said Prestimion uncomfortably.

"Then, too, we've had a great many unusual episodes of irrational behavior, even violence, in the city itself-actual fatalities, even-"

Thaszthasz shook his head. A look of pain appeared on his smooth, normally serene face. "It goes beyond my understanding, my lord. 'There have been no changes here that might have brought about such upheavals. I confess I find it distasteful and disturbing. -Tell me, lordship , have you heard similar reports from other districts?"

"From some, yes," said Prestimion, who, distracted by the strange new scenery all about him, had managed to put this entire issue out of mind since leaving the Labyrinth. It was unpleasant to have to confront it once again. "I agree: the situation is troublesome. We are conducting investigations."

"Ah. And no doubt will have important conclusions to share with us shortly. -Can it be some kind of sorcery, do you think, that has caused all this, my lord? That is my theory, and a sound one, I think. What else could have robbed so many people of their reason all at once, if not a eat witchcraft that some dark force has cast across the land?"

gr "We are giving it our closest attention," said Prestimion, this time putting enough sharpness into his tone so that Thaszthasz, long experienced in the ways of power, could see that the Coronal wished to end the discussion. "Let me turn to another matter, now, Prince Tbaszthasz, which is in fact the purpose for which I have ventured into your lovely forest-"

He certainly was quite cool about it," said Septach Melayn in some dudgeon, as they were making their way out the southern end of the rain-forest country. "Oh, yes, of course, the celebrated Procurator," he said, in devastating high-pitched mimicry of Prince Thaszthasz's bland, unperturbable style of speech. "'What a remarkable person he is! And what a season this has been for unexpected . visits by the greatest citizens of the realm!' Hadn't he heard a thing about the coastal blockade? Or the interdiction line that we've run from Bailemoona to Stoien?"

"He knew," said Abrigant harshly. "Of course he knew! He just didn't want to get himself into a quarrel with Dantirya Sambail. Who would?

But it was his responsibility to detain the Procurator until-"

"No," Prestimion said. "We were too dainty in our announcements.

We sent word to port officials to detain him if they saw him, but we never said any such thing to people like Thaszthasz who hold authority inland across Dantirya Sambail's most probable route to the sea. And now we see the result of our delicacy. By failing to name Dantirya Sambail openly as a fugitive from the law, we've made it possible not only for him to slip through to the coast, but for him to enjoy the hospitality of princes along the route."

But Abrigant persisted. "Maszthasz should have known that we wanted him. He should be punished for his negligence in-"

"In what?" Gialaurys demanded. "In inviting the ruler of the entire western continent to sit down and have a meal in his palace? If we don't come out and say that Dantirya Sambail's a criminal who needs to be brought to trial, why should we expect anybody to assumethat he is?"

Gialaurys shook his head heavily. "Even if he knew, why would he meddle ? Dantirya Sambail's big trouble for anyone, and 'Masthasz obvi ously has no stomach for trouble. He may not even have had an inkling of the whole affair. He lives out here in his jungle listening to the lovely rain come down, and nothing else matters to him at all."

"There is still the hope," said Maundigand-Klimd, "that someone has been bold enough to seize Dantirya Sambail. at one of the coastal ports."

And, since no one cared to deny that possibility, they put the subject aside.

They were entering the territory of Aruachosia, now, along the southern coast of Alhanroel. The sea was only a few hundred miles away, and every breeze brought them its salty tang and sultry warmth.

This was a humid, steamy land; great stretches of it, swampy and insectplagued and covered by tangled thickets of saw-edged manganoza p ms, were virtually uninhabitable. But in the western part of the al province there was a cone-shaped domain of relatively temperate country leading down to Sippulgar, the main seaport of the southern coast, which lay athwart the boundary between Aruachosia and its neighbor to the west, the province of Stoien.

Golden Sippulgar, it was always called. This has been a golden journey indeed, thought Prestimion: the golden bees of Bailemoona, the yellow sands of Ketheron, the golden hills of Arvyanda, and now golden Sippulgar as well. All very picturesque; but thus far they had little to show for their efforts other than fool's gold. Dantirya Sambail had hopped blithely on and on ahead of them, unhindered in any way, and by now very likely had slipped through the port blockade as well and was on the high seas, heading home for his own private kingdom in Zimroel, where he would be virtually impregnable.

Did this continued pursuit make any sense? Prestimion wondered.

Or should he halt at this point and hasten back to the Castle? The duties of kingship awaited him there. Dantirya Sambail's defiance was not the only problem confronting him; there was a real crisis in the land, evidently , a plague, an epidemic. But the Coronal and his closest advisers were off once again in outlying districts engaged in a fruitless search that might better be carried on by other means.

And then-Varaile-the great unanswered question of his lifeFor a moment, then and there, Prestimion resolved to turn at once from his quest for the Procurator. But no sooner had the thought come to him than he thrust it from him. He had followed Dantirya Sambail's track this far, through desert and jungle, through one golden land after another: he would keep going, he decided, at least until he reached the coast, where he might obtain some reliable account of the Procurator's movements. Golden Sippulgar would be the last point on his journey. To Sippulgar it was, then; and then homeward, homeward to the Castle, homeward to his throne and his tasks, homeward to Varaile.

Sippulgar was called "golden" because the facades of its multitude of sturdy two-and three-story buildings were fashioned without exception from the golden sandstone that was quarried in the hills just to its north. Just as the metallic leaves of the trees of Arvyanda, gleaming under the potent tropical sun, turned that region into a realm of brilliant gold, so too did the warm mellow stone of Sippulgar, glinting with bits of micaceous matter, yield a dazzling golden glow in the full brightness of the day.

It was in every way a city of the far south. 'The air was moist and heavy; the plantings that fined the streets and clustered about the houses were superabundantly lush, and offered up a riot of bewilderingly colorful blooms in a hundred different shades of red, blue, yellow, violet orange, even dark maroon and a pulsating, shimmering black so intense that it seemed the quintessence of color rather than the totalabsence of it. 'The people were black, too, or, at least dark, their faces and limbs all showing evidence of the sun's hot touch. Sippulgar was beautifully situated, in a curving bay along the blue-green shore of the Inner Sea, crowded with ships from every part of the world. This stretch of southern Alhanroel was known as the Incense Coast, for everything that grew here was fragrant in one way or another: the low plants tight along the shore that produced khazzil and the balsam known as himmam, and the forests not far inland of cumarnon trees and myrrh, thanibong trees, scarlet fflifis. All of these exuded such a plenitude of aromatic oils and gums that the air itself about Sippulgar seemed perfumed.

Prestimion's arrival in Sippulgar was not unexpected. He had known from the beginning of this southern journey that no matter which route he took from the Labyrinth, he would eventually have to reach the coast here, unless information were to reach him along the way that led him to follow Dantirya Sambail in some other direction. And so the city's highest official, who bore the title of Royal Prefect, had a majestic suite ready for him in the governmental palace, a substantial building of the local sandstone with a sweeping view of the bay.

"We are, my lord, prepared to meet your every need, both material and spiritual," the Prefect said at once.

Kameni Poteva was his name: a tall, hawk-faced man with not an ounce of fat on him, whose white robe of office was decorated with a pair of jade amulets of the kind known as rohillas and a sewn band of holy symbols. Sippulgar was a superstitious city, Prestimion knew. They worshipped a god who represented Time here, in the form of a winged serpent with the ferocious toothy snout and blazing eyes of the little omnivorous beast called a jakkabole: Prestimion had seen representations of it in several great plazas on his way into the city. There were exotic cults here, too, for Sippulgar was home to a colony of various expatriate beings from the stars, folk whose entire populations on Majipoor were no more than a few hundred all told. One entire street of the Sippulgar waterfront, he had heard, was given over to a row of temples to the gods of these alien people. Prestimion made a mental note to have a look at them before he moved along.

Septach Melayn came to him that evening as he was making ready for the formal dinner that the Prefect was giving in his honor. "A message from Akbalik, in Ni-moya," he said, holding out an already-opened envelope. "Very strange news. Young Dekkeret has signed on with the Pontifical bureaucracy and taken himself off to Suvrael."

Prestimion stared in bewilderment at the paper in Septach Melayn's hand without reaching for it. 'What did you say? I don't think I understand."

"You remember, don't you, that we sent Akbalik out to Zimroel to check on whether Dantirya Sambail was fomenting troubleover there?

And that at the last moment I suggested that Dekkeret go with him to pick up a little diplomatic experience?"

"Yes, yes, of course I remember. But what's this about his taking a job with the Pontifical people? And why Suvrael, of all places?"

"He's doing it as a penance, apparently-"

"A penance?"

Septach Melayn nodded. He gave Akbalik's letter a quick glance.

' They went hunting steetmoy up in the Khyntor Marches, apparentlythat was my idea too, I have to admit-and there was some sort of accident , a local guide-woman killed during the course of the hunt, through some negligence of Dekkeret's, I gather. Or at least that's what Dekkeret believes is what happened. Anyhow, Dekkeret felt so bad about it that he decided to go off to the most unpleasant place he knew of in the entire world and carry out some difficult task under conditions of extreme physical discomfort, by way of atoning for whatever it was he felt responsible for causing while he was hunting in the northlands.

So he bought himself a ticket to Suvrael. Akbalik tried to talk him out of it, of course. But it happened that the Pontifical people in Ni-moya were looking for some young official willing to undertakea ridiculous mission to Suvrael to find out why the Suvraelinu hadn't been meeting their quota of beef exports, lately, and when one of Dekkeret's friends who worked for the Pontificate found out that Dekkeret was going to Suvrael anyway, he arranged to get him a temporary commission on the Pontifical staff, and off he went. He's probably landed in Tolaghai by now. The Divine only knows when he'll be back."

"Suvrael," Prestimion said, shaking his head. Fury was mounting in him. "An act of penance, he says. The young idiot! By all the demons of Triggoin, what's wrong with him? He belongs at the Castle, not running around in that blasted desert wasteland! If he felt some need to atone, the Isle of Sleep's the usual place for such things, isn't it? And a much shorter trip, too."

"I suppose the Isle seemed like too tame a place for him. Or maybe going there never occurred to him."

'nen Akbalik should have suggested it. Suvrael! How could he have done that? I had plans for that boy! I'll hold Akbalik responsible for this!"

"My lord, Dekkeret is very headstrong. You know that. If he had his mind made up to go to Suvrael, you could not have dissuaded him your99 self.

"Perhaps so," said Prestimion, trying now without much success to get his irritation under control. "Perhaps." Scowling, he swung about and stared out the window. "All right. I'll deal with young Dekkeret when and if he gets back from this mission of penance of his. I'll give him something to be penitent about! Reporting on Suvraelu beef exports for the Pontifex! There's been a drought in Suvrael for years, and the pastures have burned out, and they've butchered all their cattle because they can't feed them, that's why the beef exports have fallen off What need does the Pontificate have of sending a man all the way down there just to find out about the obvious? The drought is over, anyway , so I understand. Give them two or three years to rebuild their herds, and they'll be shipping as much beef as they ever-"

"The point, Prestimion, isn't what sort of information the Pontificate thought it needed to gather. The point is that Dekkeret has an exaggerated sense of personal honor and felt obliged to expiate what he believed to be a terrible sin by undergoing prolonged personal suffering . There are worse failings for a young man to have, you know. You're being really unfair to him."

"Am I? I suppose you may be right," said Prestimion reluctantly, after a little while. "What about Akbalik? What else does he have to report, and where is he now?"

"He's heading back from Ni-moya by way of Alaisor at the moment and says hell rejoin us at any place you care to name. As for the Procurator, there's been no sign of him in Ni-moya, and from what Akbalik's been able to find out he doesn't seem to be anywhere in Zimroel yet"

"I suppose he's somewhere on the high seas, then, between here and there. Well, so be it. We'll deal with him when the time comes. Anything else?"

"No, my lord."

Septach Melayn handed the despatch to Prestimion, who took it without looking at it and tossed it to a nearby table. Turning his back on Septach Melayn once again, he glared toward the water as if he could see all the way to Suvrael from here.

Suvrael! Dekkeret has gone to Suvrael!

Such foolishness, Prestimion thought. He had thought so highly of the boy, too, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Normork assassination attempt, when Dekkeret had seemed so stalwart, so quick, so fundamentally capable. And now this! Well, perhaps it could be chalked off to youthful romanticism. Prestimion almost felt sorry for the young man, off there in the sun-baked southern continent, which from all reports was a miserable and place of sand dunes and stinging insects and scorching winds.

The memory awoke in Prestimion of his own disagreeable wanderings in the Valmambra Desert of the north after the great defeat at Mavestoi Dam, the darkest hour of the Korsibar war. He had suffered grievously in the Valmambra: had dropped finally into a delirium of fatigue and starvation, and would surely have perished if another two or three days had gone by before he was found. That journey through the Vahnambra had been the most arduous event of Prestimion's life.

And yet they said that Suvrael, any part of it, was ten times worse than the Valmambra. If so, then Dekkeret would certainly find there the ordeal that he craved for the sake of purifying his soul. But what if it took him the next five years to get himself out of Suvrael and back to the Castle? What would become of all his youthful promise, then? For that matter, what if he were to die down there? Prestimion had heard tales-everyone had-of inexperienced wayfarers who had strayed from some desert path and, lost without drinking water in Suvrael's blast-furnace heat, met their deaths within just a few hours.

Well, Dekkeret was probably able to look after himself. And Septach Melayn was right: it was a pardonable exploit, at least in one so young.

The Suvrael adventure might be the making of him, if he survived it. It would toughen him; it would give him a deeper perspective on life and death, on responsibility and obligation. The best hope Prestimion had was that the boy came quickly to forgiving himself, down there, for his northlands mishap, and returned to the Castle in a reasonable period of time ready to take on the duties that were waiting for him.

The main issue for Prestimion, here in golden Sippulgar, was Dantirya Sambail. And the Prefect Kameni Poteva lost no time sharing such news as he had of the Procurator's whereabouts, although it was, alas, no news at all.

"At your request, my lord, we have raised an embargo against him at every port along the coast. Since we received word from you concerning the emergency, no ship has left Sippulgar bound for Zimroel without a complete check of the entire passenger manifest being undertaken by MY port officials. Dantirya Sambail was not seen. We have also run checks on any ship leaving here for other ports along the Alhanroel coast that serve the Zimroel trade. The result was the same."

"What ports are those?" Prestimion asked. The Prefect spread a map of southern Alhanroel before them. "They all lie west of here. We can eliminate the other direction. As you see, my lord, here is Sippulgar near the provincial border separating us from Stoien, and this, here, is eastern Aruachosia. Running onward still farther to the east lie the provinces of Vrist, Sethem, Yinorn, and Lorgan. The only port of any significance along that entire coastal stretch is Glystrintai, in Vrist, and the only ships that sail out of Glystrintai come here. So if the Procurator had been foolish enough to go eastward when he reached the coast, he would only have come back here anyway, and we would have taken him into custody."

"And to the west?"

"To the west, my lord, is the province of Stoien, developing into the Stoienzar Peninsula. We find just a few widely spaced ports along the southern Stoien coast, because the great heat, the insects, the impenetrable saw-palm jungles, have discouraged settlement. In a span of close to three thousand miles we have only the towns of Maximin, Karasat, Gunduba, Slail, and Porto Gambieris, none of them of any consequence . If the Procurator had emerged from Kajith Kabulon at any of those and attempted to buy passage to some port farther west, we would certainly have had word of it; but no one resembling Dantirya Sambail has been seen in any of them."

"What if he didn't come as far overland as the southern coast, though?" Septach Melayn wanted to know. "What if he simply turned in a westerly direction farther up, and headed for one of the ports on the northern side of the peninsula? Would that have been possible?"

"Possible, yes. Difficult, but possible." The Prefect traced a line across the map with the tip of one long, bony finger. "Here is Kajith Kabulon. The only good road that comes out of the rain-forest is the one going due south, which brought you here. But there are some country roads, badly maintained and not easy to use, that might have more appeal for a man trying to escape justice. This one, for instance, which leaves Kajith Kabulon at its southwest corner and passes through north-central Aruachosia heading west toward the peninsula. If he managed things successfully, the Procurator would have been able to reach any one of a dozen ports on the peninsula's Gulf side. And from there things would be much easier for him."

"I see," said Prestimion, with a sinking feeling within. He stared at the map. The Stoienzar peninsula, Duke Oljebbin's domain, came thrusting westward out of the lower part of Alhanroel like a gigantic thumb, reaching far out into the ocean. South of the peninsula was the main body of the Inner Sea, leading to Suvrael. On the north side of the peninsula lay the calm, tropical waters of the Gulf of Stoien; and Stoienzar's Gulf coast was one of Majipoor's most heavily populated regions, with a major city every hundred miles and a string of resort towns and agricultural centers and fishing villages occupying nearly all the open territory between them. If Dantirya Sambail had succeeded in reaching any part of the Gulf coast, he might well have been able to find some rogue mariner who would transport him to Stoien city, the most important port along that coast, from which ships traveled constantly back and forth between Zimroel and Alhanroel.

They had, of course, placed an interdiction on Stoien, and on all the other ports of that part of the continent that engaged in intercontinental shipping. But how reliable would that interdiction be? These easygoing tropical cities had always been notorious hotbeds of official corruption.

Prestimion, in his years of training at the Castle, had studied the lively case histories. The governor Gan Othiang, who had flourished in the peninsula port of Khuif in the reign before Prankipin's, had been in the habit of imposing a personal levy as well as the regular harbor taxes on all merchants whose ships called there; at his death, his private coffers, laden with ivory, pearls, and shells, held more wealth than the municipal treasury. Up the way at Yarnik, the mayor, one Plusiper Pailiap, had been in the habit of confiscating the property of deceased merchants whose heirs did not file a claim within three weeks. Duke Saturis, Oljebbin's grandfather, had several times been accused of draining off a percentage of all customs revenues for his own benefit, though the governmental inquiries that followed had always been quashed for reasons that no longer were clear. A prefect of Sippulgar about a thousand years ago had covertly maintained his own fleet of pirate ships to raid local shipping. And so on. It was as if there was something in the sultry air down here that eroded rectitude and piety.

Prestimion shoved the map aside. To Kameni Poteva he said, "How long, do you think, would it have taken Dantirya Sambail, traveling by floater, to reach the port of Stoien from-"

The Prefect's demeanor, though, had suddenly become exceedingly peculiar. Kameni Poteva was a tightly wound man at his best-that had been obvious from the start-but the inner tension that must perpetually have gripped him appeared now to have heightened to a degree that was very close to the breaking point. His lean, sharp--featured face, from which the tropic sun seemed to have burned away all superfluous flesh, was drawn so tight that the skin looked to be in danger of cracking . A muscle was leaping about in his left cheek and his thin lips were twitching, and his eyes stood out fiercely, a pair of huge, bulging white orbs, below his dark forehead. Kameni Poteva's hands were clenched into taut fists; he held them pressed together, knuckle tight against knuckle, over the two rohillas on the breast of his robe.

"Kameni Poteva?" Prestimion said, in alarm.

From the Prefect came a hoarse gasp: "Forgive me, my lord-forgive me-"

"What is it?"

Kameni Poteva's only reply was a shake of his head, more like a shudder than anything else. His whole body was trembling. He seemed to be fighting desperately for control over it.

'Tell me, man! Do you want some wine?"

"My lord-oh, my lord-your head, my lord-?

'What about my head?"

"Oh-I'm sorry-so sorry-"

Prestimion glanced about at Septach Melayn and Gialaurys. Was this the madness, striking right at the Coronal's own elbow? Yes. Yes. Surely it was.

In this moment of mounting strangeness Maundigand-Klimd stepped forward quickly and extended his hands so that they rested on the Prefect's shoulders; inclining both his heads until they were no more than inches from Kameni Poteva's forehead, the Su-Suheris uttered a few quiet words, unintelligible to Prestimion. A spell, no doubt. Prestimion imagined that he saw a white mist appear in the air between the two men.

A few seconds passed without apparent change in KameniPoteva's state. Then a low hissing sound came from the Prefect's lips, as though he were a balloon that had been inflated almost to the breaking point, and there was a perceptible easing of his posture. The crisis seemed to be ending. Kameni Poteva looked up for an instant at Prestimion, eyes wild, face livid with shame and shock, and then looked away again.

After a moment he said, in a hollow, barely audible voice, "My lord, this is unbearably humiliating-I humbly ask your pardon, my lord-"

"But what was it? What happened? -Something about my head, you said."

A long anguished pause. "I was hallucinating." The Prefect groped for the wine-flask. Quickly Septach Melayn refilled his bowl for him.

Kameni Poteva drank greedily. "These things come, two, three times a week, now. There is no escaping them. I prayed that there would be none while I was with you, but it happened anyway. Your head, sire-it was monstrous, swollen, about to explode, I thought. And the High Counsellor-" He looked at Septach Melayn and shuddered. "His arms, his legs, they were like those of some giant spider!" He closed his eyes.

"I must be dismissed from office. I am no longer qualified to serve."

"Nonsense," said Prestimion. "You need a little rest, that's all. By all reports you've been doing a fine job. -Are they something new, these hallucinations?"

"A month and a half. Two months." The man was in misery. He was unable now to look directly at Prestimion at all, but sat with his head bowed and shoulders hunched, staring at his feet."It is like a fit that comes over me. I see the most dreadful things. Nightmare visions, monstrosities, one after another for five, ten, sometimes fifteen minutes . Then they go away, and each time I pray that it will be the last. But there is always another time."

"Look at me," said Prestimion.

4MY lord-"

"No. Look at me. Tell me this, Kameni Poteva. You aren't the only one in Sippulgar who's been suffering these disturbances, have you?"

"No. I am not." A very small voice. "I thought so. Has there been very much of it recently? Normally stable people breaking down, behaving oddly?"

"Some of that, yes. A great deal, I would have to say."

"Deaths?"

"Some, yes. And destruction of property. My lord, I must have sinned very grievously, to have brought this thing upon-"

"Listen to me, Kameni Poteva. Whatever's going on, it isn't your fault do you understand me? You mustn't take it personally, and you mustn't regard it as a disgrace that the attack happened to hit you in my presence. just as you're not the only one in town experiencing hallucinations, Sippulgar is not the only city where its happening. Ifs everywhere, Kameni Poteva.

Bit by bit it seems, the whole world is going crazy. I want you to know that."