The usual route from Castle Mount to the port of Alaisor on Alhanroel's western coast was by river: downslope by floater by way of Khresm and Rennosk to Gimkandale, where the River Uivendak had its source, and then by riverboat down the Uivendak past the Slope Cities of Stipool and Furible and the foothills of the Mount via Estotilaup and Vilimong into the great central plain of the continent. 'The Uivendak, which after a thousand miles changed its name to the Clairn, and a thousand miles farther on became the Haksim, eventually was joined by the Potent Iyann, which came flowing down out of the moist green country northwest of the Valmambra Desert and met the Haksim at a place known as Three Rivers, though no one knew why, since there were only two rivers there. From there to the coast the united livers took the name of thelyann.

'That final stretch of the Iyarm had once been famous for its sluggishness , and travelers heading westward on it had needed to resign themselves to an unhurried final leg of their journeys; but since the breaking of the Mavestoi Dam upriver from the joining with the Haksim the waters of the western Iyarm were far more vigorous than they had been in previous centuries, and the riverboat that carried Prestimion and Varaile moved along toward Alaisor at a speed that Prestimion would have found more heartening if it did not constantly remind him of the infamous tragedy of the breaking of the dam.

Now they were just a few days' journey from the coast, passing swiftly through warm, green, fertile agricultural landswhose inhabitants lined the shore, waving and cheering, shouting his name and sometimes Varaile's also, as the Coronal's ship went by. Prestimion and Varaile stood side by side at the rail, acknowledging the greeting with waves of their own.

Varaile seemed amazed by the strength and depth of the outpouring of affection that came from them. "Listen to it, Prestimion! Listen! You can practically feel their love for you!"

"For the office of the Coronal, you mean. It has nothing much to do with me in particular. 'They haven't had time to learn anything more about me than that Lord Confalume picked me to succeed him, and therefore I must be all tight."

"There's more to it than that, I think. Ifs that there's a new Coronal, after all those years of Confalume. Everybody loved and admired Lord Confalume, yes, but he'd been there so long that everyone had come to take him for granted, the way you would the sun or the moons. Now there's a new man at the Castle, and they see him as the voice of youth, the hope of the future, someone fresh and full of vitality whoT build on Lord Confalume's achievements and lead Majipoor into a glorious new era."

"Let's hope they're right," said Prestimion.

They were silent for a time after that, looking out toward the west, ere the golden-green sphere of the sun had begun to slip toward the horizon. 'The land was flat, here, and the river very wide. Fewer people could be seen along the shore.

Then Varaile said, 'Tell me something, Prestimion. Is it possible under the law for a Coronal's son ever to become Coronal after him?"

'The question astounded him. "What? What are you talking about, Varaile?" he said sharply, whirling about to face her with such a furious glare in his eyes that she backed away, looking a little frightened.

'Why, nothing! I was only wondering-"

'Well, don't. It can never happen. Never has, never will! We have an appointive monarchy on Majipoor, not a hereditary one. I could show you historical records going back thousands of years to prove it."

"You don't need to do that. I believe you." She still looked alarmed at the vehemence of his reaction. "But why do you seem so angry, Prestinfion? I was simply asking a question."

"Avery strange one, I have to say."

"Is it? I didn't grow up at the Castle, you know. I'm not an expert on constitutional law. I do know that the new Coronal usually isn't the son of the one before. But then I found myself wondering,well, what if--'

The question, Prestimion realized, had been entirely innocent. She had no way of knowing of Korsibar and his ill-fated revolt. He tried to cahn himself. She had found him off his guard, that was all, seeming to probe into a sensitive, even a forbidden, area but in fact meaning nothing of the kind.

'Well," she said, "if he can't be Coronal-and not Prince of Muldemar either, I guess, because Abrigant's bound to have children of his own some day and they'll inherit that title-well, then, maybe he can be a prince of something else, I suppose."

"He?" Prestimion was completely bewildered now.

"Oh, yes," Varaile said, patting her stomach. "Definitely a he, Prestimion. I knew that weeks ago. But I had Maundigand-Klimd do a divination, all the same, and he confirmed it."

He stared. Suddenly this all made sense.

gTaraile?"

"You look so amazed, Prestimion! As if it's never happened before in the history of the world."

"Not to me, it hasn't But that's not the thing, Varaile. You told Maundigand-Klimd about it weeks ago, and not me? And told Septach Melayn too, I suppose, and Gialaurys, and Nilgir Surnanand, and your ladies-in-waiting, and the Skandar who sweeps the courtyardin front of--2'

"Stop it, Prestimion! You mean you hadn't figured it out?"

He shook his head. "It never occurred to me at all."

"I think that you really ought to pay closer attention, then."

"And you ought not to wait so long before telling me important news like this."

"I waited until now," she said, "because Maundigand-Klimd told me to. He cast my horoscope and said that it would be more auspicious for the child if I mentioned nothing about him to you until we were west of the ninetieth meridian. We are west of the ninetieth meridian, aren't we, Prestimion? He said it was where the land flattened out and the river gotverywide."

"I'm not the captain of the ship, Varaile. I haven't really been keeping track of the latitude."

"I was speaking of longitude, I believe."

"Latitude-longitude-what difference does it make?" Were they really past the ninetieth meridian yet? he wondered. Probably so. But either way what difference did it make, eightieth meridian, ninetieth, two hundredth? She should have told him long ago. But it seemed to be his destiny, he thought, to find himself entangled with some sort of wizardry at every turn. His head was throbbing with anger. "Sorcerers! Mages!

They're the ones who rule this world, not me! It's outrageous, Varaile, completely outrageous, that this information has been circulating all over the Castle for weeks, and ifs been kept from me all this time simply because-because some magus happened to tell you-" He was practically sputtering with indignation. She was looking at him, wide-eyed with amazement. A smile crossed her face, and gave way to a giggle.

Then Prestimion began to laugh as well. He was being very foolish, he knew. "Oh, Varaile-Varaile-oh, I love you so much, Varaile!" He slipped his arms around her and drew her close against him. After a long while he released her, and smiled, and kissed the tip of her nose.

-"And no, Varaile, no, he can't possibly become Coronal after me, and don't ever even think about such an idea. Is that understood?"

"I was just wondering, that's all," she said.

At any other time it would have been appropriate for Prestimion to spend at least a week at Alaisor. As Coronal, he certainly would have to be guest of honor at a banquet with Lord Mayor Hilgimuir in the famous Hall of Topaz and make the obligatory visit to the celebrated temple of the Lady on Alaisor Heights. And if he still had been only Prince of Muldemar, there would be a meeting with the great wine-shippers with whom his family had had commercial connections for so many generations; and so on.

But these were not ordinary times. He had to get quickly to the Isle.

And so, although he would meet with the lord mayor, it would be only for an hour or two. He would skip the visit to the hilltop temple, since he would be seeing the Lady herself soon enough. As for the winemerchants , they were irrelevant now that he was Coronal and no longer could be concerned with the family wine business. A single night in Alaisor was all that he could allow himself, and then they would be on their way.

The lord mayor had provided Prestimion and Varaile with the sumptuous four-level penthouse suite reserved exclusively for Powers of the Realm atop the thirty-story tower of the Alaisor Mercantile Exchange.

All of Alaisor could be seen from its windows. Maundigand-Klimd and the rest of the Coronal's entourage had been given lesser but still quite luxurious quarters nearby.

It was a city of high imperial grandeur, the greatest metropolitan center of the western coast. A line of massive towering cliffs of black granite ran parallel to the shore here. The Iyann had carved a deep canyon through that wall of black cliffs long ago in order to reach the sea; and Alaisor lay outspread like a giant fan at their base, spreading far along the shore to north and south, with the bay created by the Iyann's mouth forming the city's magnificent harbor. Grand boulevards ran on great diagonals through Alaisor city from its northern and southern extremities , converging in a circle at the waterfront. At that meeting-point stood six gigantic obelisks of black stone, marking the place where Stiamot, the conqueror of the Metamorphs, had been buried seven thousand years before. Prestimion pointed the monument out to Varaile from the balcony on the west side of the building, which gave them a view that overlooked the harbor.

The story was, he told her, that Stiamot, after becoming Pontifex, had decided in extreme old age to undertake a pilgrimage to Zimroel, to the Danipiur, the Metamorph high chieftain, for the sake of begging her forgiveness for the conquest. But his journey had ended here at Alaisor, where he fell ill and could not continue; and as he lay dying, looking outward toward the sea, he had asked to have his body laid to rest here instead of being carried thousands of miles eastward to the Labyrinth.

"And the temple of the Lady?" Varaile asked. "Where is that?"

They were on the uppermost floor of their suite. Prestimion led Varaile to the great curving eastern window, whichfaced the dark vertical wall of the cliffs. At this hour of the afternoon the westering sun bathed them in a bronzy-green sheen. "There," he said. "Right below the rim-do you see?"

"Yes. Like a white eye staring at us out of the forehead of the hill.

Have you ever been there, Prestimion?"

"Once. I visited Zimroel about a dozen years ago and spent a couple of weeks in Alaisor on the way, and Septach Melayn and I went up there. It's a wonderful building, a slender curve of white marble one story high that seems to be hanging from the face of the cliff. You see the entire city laid out like its own map before you, and the sea beyond it, on and on halfway to the Isle."

"It sounds marvelous. Couldn't we go there just for a little while tomorrow?"

Prestimion smiled. "The Coronal can't go anywhere 'just for a little while.' That building up there's the second most sacred site on Majipoor. If I visited it at all, I'd have to stay overnight at the very least and meet with the Hierarch and her acolytes, and there'd be ceremonies and such, and all manner of other-well, you see how it is, Varaile. Whatever I do has heavy symbolic importance. And the ship to the Isle can't wait: the winds are favorable to the west, and we need to leave tomorrow. Once the wind turns against you here, it can cause delays of many months, and I can't risk that now. We can visit the temple the next time we're in Alaisor."

"And when will that be? The world is so big, Prestimion! Is there time for us ever to see the same place twice?"

"In four or five years," he said, "when things are a little more settled in the world, iflI be appropriate for me to make a grand processional, and we'll go everywhere. I mean everywhere, Varaile. Even over to Zimroel: Piliplok, Ni-moya, Dulorn, Pidruid, Til-omon, Narabal. We'll come through Alaisor again then, and we'll stay longer. I promise you we will. Whatever we've missed on this trip we'll see then."

"'We,'you say. Does the Coronal's wife go with him on the grand processional ? Lord Confalume's wife didn't, when he came to Stee on his last processional."

"Different Coronal. Different sort of wife. You'll be at my side, Varaile, wherever I go."

'That's a firm promise?"

"A solemn vow. I swear it by Lord Stiamot's whiskers. Here in the very shadow of his tomb."

She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. "I guessit's settled, then,"

she said.

He had never been to the Isle of Sleep. Indeed in his days as a prince of the Castle it had never occurred to him to go there. One did not ordinarily go to the Isle unless one had some special need to undergo a rite of purification. It was not even customary for Coronals to visit it unless they were making a grand processional, and it was too soon in his reign for that.

But now the Isle was rising before him on the horizon like a wondrous white wall, and the sight of it set strange excitement churning within him.

"You will be surprised at how big it is," everyone who had been there constantly said. And so, having been duly warned, Prestimion expected not to be surprised; but he was, all the same. An island, he had always thought, was a body of land that was completely surrounded by water, and islands were usually fairly small. 'The Isle of Sleep was a big island, everyone said, and he interpreted that to mean a very large body of land that was completely surrounded by water. But he still visualized it as something whose borders could be perceived as curving away on I sides to the ocean. In fact,ough, the Isle was immense, so big that on any other world it would have been called a continent . Seen from out here in the sea, it certainly seemed to have a continent's vast extent. It was only by comparison with Alhanroel, Zimroel, and Suvrael, the three officially designated continents of Majipoor, that anyone could have thought of giving the Isle any lesser designation.

One of the many wonderful stories that they told about the Isle was that in distant ancient times-millions of years ago, before there had been Shapeshifters, even, on Majipoor-it all had lain far below the surface of the sea, but had been thrust upward into the air in a single day and a single night by some awesome convulsion of the world's interior.

Which was why it was so sacred a place: the hand of the Divine had taken hold of it and brought it forth from the waters.

The undersea origin of the Isle could not be doubted. It was attested to by the fact that the entire place was a single enormous mass of chalk many hundreds of miles across and more than half a mile high, having the form of three giant circular tiers set one atop the next; and chalk is a substance made up of the shells of microscopic creatures of the sea.

Those great chalk ramparts gleamed now with overpowering whiteness in the bright blaze of the sun, filling all the sea before them like an impassable barrier. Varaile and Prestimion stood staring in wonder. "I think I can make out two of the three levels from here, and maybe just a hint of the third," he said. "The big one that forms the base of the island is called First Cliff. There's a forest along its rim., hundreds of feet above sea level. Do you see? And that must be Second Cliff that begins there, set back a goodly way from the one below. If you follow the white wall up and up, you'll see a second line of green-that's the boundary between Second Cliff and Third Cliff, I suppose. Third Cliff itself begins several hundred miles inland. You can't really see it from below, except perhaps a suggestion of its summit. That's where Inner Temple is: the place of the Lady."

"It dazzles my eyes. I knew the Isle was made of white stone, but I never thought it would shine like that! Will we be going all the way to the top?"

"Probably. The Lady rarely descends to meet her son; it's always the other way around. The custom is for her hierarchs to meet the Coronal at the harbor and take him first to the lodge they maintain for him there. He's the representative of the world of action, you see, all noise and masculine bluster, and he needs to go through some transitional rituals before he can be admitted to his mother's contemplative domain.

Then they conduct him upward to her through the various terraces of the three cliffs. Eventually we'll arrive at InnerTemple itself, up at the top, where my mother will receive us."

So steeply did the Isle's tremendous white rampart rise from the sea that there were only two harbors where ships could land, both of them difficult of access: Taleis on the Zimroel side, and Numinor here, facing Alhanroel. To these, at certain specified times of the year, came pil gnms from the mainland, some merely to retreat from the world for a year or two of meditation and ritual cleansing, others to join the Lady's realm and spend the rest of their lives in her service.

The swift vessel that had carried Prestimion and Varaile across from Alaisor was too big to enter Numinor harbor. It had to anchor well out at sea, where its passengers were transferred to a waiting ferry whose pilot knew the secrets of the narrow channel, much beset by swift currents and treacherous reefs, through which the shore could be approached.

Three tall, slender elderly women of great dignity and gravity of bearing, clad identically in golden robes trimmed with red, were waiting at the pier when the ferry arrived. They were hierarchs of the Isle, lieutenants whom the Lady Therissa, had sent to greet him. "We are instructed to conduct you first," the senior one toldthem, "to the house called Seven Walls."

Prestimion was expecting that. Seven Walls was the traditional guesthouse for newly arrived Coronals. It turned out to be a low, sturdy building of dark stone that stood atop the rampart of Numinor port, at the very edge of the sea. "But why is it called Seven Walls?" Varaile asked, as they were shown to their chambers within it. "It looks perfectly square to me."

"No one knows," Prestimion replied. 'This place is as old as the Castle itself, and most of its history is lost in legend. They say that the Lady Thiin, Lord Stiamot's mother, had it built for him when he came to the Isle to give thanks for his victory at the end of the Metamorph Wars. Supposedly seven Metamorph warriors were entombed in its foundations-warriors that Lady Thiin killed with her own hands while defending the Isle against an army of Shapeshifter invaders. But the building's foundations have often been reconstructed and nobody's ever found any Metamorph skeletons down there. Then there's a notion that Lord Stiamot had a seven-sided chapel constructed in the courtyard while he was here, but there's no trace of that, either. I've also heard it said that the name's just our version of ancient Shapeshifter words meaning 'the place where the fish scales are scraped off,'

because there was a Metamorph fishing village here in prehistoric times."

"I like that one the best," said Varaile.

"So do L"

Certain rituals of purification were required of him before he could proceed higher on the Isle, and he spent several hours that evening performing them under the instruction of one of the hierarchs. He and Varaile slept that night in a splendid chamber overlooking the sea, amidst dark weavings of a style so antique that Prestimion found himself wondering whether Lord Stiamot himself had selected them. He imagined that the ghosts of all the kings of bygone years who had slept in this room would be crowding around him in the night, offering anecdotes of their reigns, or advice on how to deal with the problems of his o, vn, but in fact he dropped almost instantly into the deepest of sleeps, and the dreams that came to him were peaceful ones. The Isle was a place of tranquility and harmony: all anxiety was banished here.

In the morning began the journey upward to the Lady. Varaile and Prestimion alone would go, not any of the others who had made the journey with them from the Castle. Permission to ascend to Third Cliff and the Inner Temple was not ordinarily granted to those who had not passed through the full rite of initiation.

The hierarchs led them to the terminal along the waterfront from which the floater-sleds in which they would make their ascent departed.

Looking up at the glittering white wall of First Cliff, rising skyward virtually in a straight line, Prestimion was unable to see how it could be possible to traverse it. But the sled rose silently and easily, making the steep climb without effort, and nestled into its landing pad at the summit of the cliff like a great gihorna folding its wings. When they looked back, they could see Numinor port like a toy town below them, and the two curving arms of its stone breakwater jutting out into the sea like a pair of fragile sticks.

'We are at the Terrace of Assessment, where all novices come first.

They are evaluated there, and their destinies are decided," one of the hierarchs explained, "Beyond it, a short distance inland, is the Terrace of Inception, where those who will be allowed to continue to a higher level undergo their preliminary training. After a time-weeks, months, sometimes years-they go on to the Terrace of Mirrors, where they are brought into confrontation with their own selves, and make their preparations for what Res ahead."

A floater-wagon was waiting to carry Prestimion and Varaile onward.

Quickly they left the pink flagstone streets of the Terrace of Assessment behind and journeyed across a seemingly endless realm of cultivated fields to the Terrace of Inception, whose entrance was marked by pyramids of dark blue stone ten feet high. Here they saw some novices working at menial farming tasks, and othersgathered in outdoor amphitheaters receiving holy instruction. There was no time to pause for a closer look, though, for the distances here were great, and Second Cliff's formidable white bulk, standing large in the sky before them, still was very far away.

Indeed, the afternoon was beginning to wane before they reached the cliff's base. They halted for the night at the third of First Cliff's terraces , the Terrace of Mirrors, which lay right below the mighty facade of the new wall that reared up over them. At this terrace huge slabs of polished black stone were set edgewise into the ground all about, so that wherever you turned you saw your own image looking back at you, transformed and intensified by the mysterious light of this place. And in the early hours of morning it was upward for them once again, a second dizzying floater-sled climb to the rim of the next level.

There atop Second Cliff they could still see the sea, but it seemed very far away, and Numinor itself lay tucked out of sight, hidden from view just beyond the perimeter of the Isle. They could barely make out the pink rim of First Cliff's outermost terrace. The Terrace of Mirrors, directly below them, seemed to be aglow with green flame wherever its monumental stone slabs were struck by the morning sun. "The outer terrace where we stand now," a hierarch told them, "is known as the Terrace of Consecration. From here we will come to the Terrace of Flowers, the Terrace of Devotion, the Terrace of Surrender, and the Terrace of Ascent." Prestimion felt a touch of awe as he contemplated the complexity and richness of the system by which the realm of the Lady was constructed. He had never suspected so elaborate a structure of preparation for the tasks that were carried out here.

But there was no time to linger and learn. The holiest sanctuary of all, Third Cliff, the abode of the Lady of the Isle, still had to be attained.

One more breathtaking vertical sled-ride and they were there.

Prestimion was struck at once by the singular quality of the air up here, thousands of feet above the sea. It was cool and amazingly clear, so that every topographic detail of the Isle below them stood out as though magnified in a glass. The unfamiliar quality of everything-the light, the sky, the trees-so enthralled him that he paid no attention as the hierarchs called off the names of the terraces through which they were passing, until at last he heard one say, "And this is the Terrace of Adoration, the gateway to Inner Temple."

It was a place of low, rambling buildings of whitewashed stone, set in gardens of surpassing beauty and serenity. The Lady, they were informed, awaited them; but first they must refresh themselves from their journey. Acolytes conducted them to a secluded lodge in a garden of venerable gnarled trees and arbors of serpentine vines laden with many-petaled blue flowers. A sunken tub lined with cunningly interwoven strips of smooth green and turquoise stone seemed irresistible.

They bathed together, and Prestimion, smiling, ran his hand lightly over the swelling curve of Varaile's abdomen. Afterward they dressed themselves in soft white robes that had been provided for them, and servitors brought them a meal of grilled fish and some delectable blue berries, which they washed down with chilled gray wine of a kind Prestimion was unable to identify; and then, only then, did one of the hierarchs who had accompanied them on their ascent tell them that they were summoned to the presence of the Lady. It was all very much like a dream. So solemn and majestic had the entire process been, and so beautiful, that Prestimion found it almost impossible to realize that what he was actually doing was paying a visit to his own mother.

But she was much more than just his mother, now. She was mother to all the world: mother-goddess, even.

They reached Inner Temple, where she was waiting for them, by crossing a slender arch of white stone that carried them over a pond of big-eyed golden fish into a green field where every blade of grass seemed to be of precisely the same height. At its far end was a low flatroofed rotunda, its facade completely without ornamentation, that had been fashioned from the same translucent white stone as the bridge.

Eight narrow wings, equidistantly placed, radiated from it like starbeams .

The hierarch gestured toward the rotunda. "Enter. Please."

The simple room at the heart of the rotunda was octagonal in design, a white marble chamber without furnishings of any kind. In its center was a shallow pool, also eight-sided. The Lady Therissa stood beside it, smiling , holding out her hands in welcome.

"Prestimion. Varaile."

She seemed, as ever, miraculously youthful, dark-haired and graceful and smooth of skin. Some said that all that was achieved through sorcery , but Prestimion knew that that was untrue. Not that the Lady Therissa had ever shown any disdain for the services of sorcerers: she had long had a magus or two in her employ at Muldemar House. But she kept them there to predict the fortunes of the grape harvest, not to cast spells that would guard her from the ravages of age. Even now she had a magical amulet about her wrist, a golden band inscribed in emerald shards with runes of some kind, but that too, Prestimion was certain , was there for some reason other than vanity's sake. He was unshakably convinced that it was by her own inner radiance and not any kind of wizardry that his mother had preserved her beauty so far into her middle years.

But her ascent to the Ladyship had given her a new kind of lustre, an unfamiliar queenly aura that enhanced and deepened her great beauty.

The silver circlet about her forehead that was the Lady of the Isle's badge of office enshrined her in a wondrous glowing aura.

He had heard tales of that, how the silver circlet inevitably transformed its wearer, and thus it must have happened to the Lady Therissa. Plainly this was the role she had waited all her life to play. Her chief claim to distinction, once upon a time, had been that she was the wife of the Prince of Muldemar, and when that title passed to Prestimion she had been known for being the mother of the Prince of Muldemar; but now at last she had become someone of distinction in her own right, holder of the title of Lady of the Isle, one of the three Powers of the Realm. A position for which, Prestimion thought, she had quietly been preparing herself all the time that he had been heir presumptive to Confalume's throne, and which now provided her with the duties that she had been born to perform, for years not in any way knowing that she had been born for them, but born for them all the same.