Dekkeret gave Varaile an uncertain look. She responded with a firm nod.

To Prestimion he said, after a moment's further hesitation, "At first it was just a nightmare. I thought I was being summoned to the Lady, and that was a glorious thing; but as I ran toward her she disappeared and I was left looking down into the crater of a burned-out volcano. It's never possible for one person to feel the real force of someone else's dream, is it, my lord? You must experience it from within. I can describe it to you as a bad nightmare, very bad, and you may think you understand, remembering certain bad dreams of your own. But no one else can ever understand how terrifying another person's dream actually was. Still, I tell you, sir, this was the worst imaginable experience. I felt invadeddrained-violated . Barjazid knew what had happened. He tried to question me, afterward, to get details of my dream from me. He was carrying out experiments on people's minds, you see: testing his equipment, sir."

"That was it, then? He sent you a nasty dream?"

"If only that were all, my lord. But a nasty dream was only the beginning . I dreamed again the next time I slept. There was this woman I met in Tolaghai, someone in the Pontifical service. She came to me in my dream; we were both naked; she was leading me through a lovely garden . I should say that in Tolaghai this woman and I were lovers for a little while. So I followed her gladly enough; but once again everything changed, and the garden became a frightful desert with ghostly figures lurking in it, and I thought I would die there of the heat and the ants that had begun to sting me. So I woke up and found that Barjazid had caused me to walk in my sleep and I was lost in the desert at the worst time of the day, naked, far from camp, without any water, sunburned and swollen from the heat. A Vroon who was traveling with us found me and rescued me, or else I would have died. I am no sleepwalker, sir.

Barjazid made it happen. He gave me the command to get up in my sleep and walk, and I got up. I walked."

Prestimion, frowning deeply, nibbling at his lower lip, gestured without a word for Dekkeret to go on. 'There was more, he knew. He was certain of it.

Yes. "Then, my lord, the third dream. In the Ehyntor Marches, that time when I was hunting steetmoy with Prince Akbalik, I committed an atrocious sin. We had guides with us, March-men, and myguide was struck down by the steetmoy I was hunting, but I was so obsessed with the hunt that I left her lying where she fell and ran off after the animal I was chasing. And when I came back to her much later I discovered that she had been killed and partly eaten by some scavenger-beast."

"So that was it," Prestimion said.

"That was what, sir?"

"The thing you did. The reason you went to Suvrael. Akbalik sent word that you had done something in Ehyntor that you felt great shame about, and had gone off to Suvrael hoping that somehow you would suffer enough there to make atonement."

Dekkeret's face was bright red. "I would rather not have spoken of this. But you asked me to tell you what Barjazid's machine did to my mind. With its help he went into it, my lord, and found the tale of the steetmoy hunt there, and made me live through it again; only it was ten times as painful as the real event had been, because this time I knew all along what was going to happen, and had no way of preventing it from happening again anyway. At the climax of the dream Barjazid was there with me in the snowy forest, questioning me about my having ignored the guide-woman for the sake of following after my steetmoy. He wanted to know every detail of it, what I felt about putting the pleasures of hunting ahead of a human life, was I ashamed, how was I going to cope with my guilt. And I said to him, still in the dream, 'Are you my judge?' And he said, 'Of course I am. See my face?' And pulled his own face apart, removing it the way you'd remove a mask; and under it there was another face, a mocking laughing face, and the face was my own, my lord. The face was my own."

He hunched his shoulders high and looked away. He seemed appalled even now by the mere recollection.

Varaile said, "You didn't go into these details the first time you told me the story. The hunt, the guide-woman, the removal of the mask."

"No, milady. I thought it was all too horrible to speak of. But it was the Coronal's request that I-that I tell-"

"Yes. It was," Prestimion said. "What happened then?"

"I awoke. In great pain. Saw Barjazid with the machine still in his hands. Seized him, forced an explanation out of him, told him that I was taking him into custody and bringing him back to the Castle so that I could make all of this known to you."

"But I was too busy with other things to listen," said Prestimion.

"And now Barjazid's on the verge of handing this thing over to Dantirya Sambail."

"I have explained everything to the lord Septach Melayn, sir. He has given orders for Barjazid and his son to be intercepted if at all possible."

"If at all possible, yes. But he's equipped with a machine that lets him fool around with realities, isn't he? He'll walk through the patrol lines the way he walked out of the tunnels, and then out of the Castle itself."

Prestimion rose. "Come with me, both of you. It would be a good idea for me to discuss this business with my mother, I think."

The Lady Therissa, sitting at her desk in her little private study, listened in sober silence as Prestimion sketched the outlines of Dekkeret's story for her. She was quiet for a time even after he had finished.

'Then she said, '"ere is real danger here, Prestimion.

"Yes. I see that."

"Has he joined forces with the Procurator yet?"

'That's something I have no way of knowing. But I suspect that he hasn't. Even with that diabolical gadget of his to help him, he'll still have a difficult job getting down through Kajith Kabulon and locating Dantirya Sambail on the Stoien coast."

Varaile said, "I think you're right. He probably isn't there yet If he had reached Dantirya Sambail, they'd be using the mind-control machine to amplify the madness by now. We'd be hearing about whole cities going crazy, don't you think?"

"I'm sure of it," said Dekkeret, who had been stan ing to one si e, visibly awed at finding himself in the innermost sanctuary of the Lady of the Isle. Even as he spoke, he seemed astonished by his own audacity at opening his mouth unbidden in the presence of two of the three Powers of the Realm, and he made a little gesture withhis head and neck as if to pull himself back out of view. But the Lady Therissa smiled and beckoned him to continue, and he said, "I don't know much about the Procurator, though nothing I've heard about him is anything but bad; but I know Baijazid only too well. I think he's capable of using the machine in any way that Dantirya Sambail would want him to."

'The Lady said, "Can it really be as powerful as you make it seem, though? We have devices here at the Isle, you know, that can reach very deeply into minds. But nothing that can compel someone to rise up in his sleep and walk out into a lethal desert. Nothing that can take a dream of one kind and transform it into another."

"The one you allowed me to try, mother-the silver circlet that I wore, when we had the dream-speaker wine-is that the most powerful instrument you have here?"

"No," said the Lady Therissa. "There are stronger ones, ones which not only can make contact with minds but also are able to instill sendings in them. I didn't dare allow you to experience their power, not without the months of training that their use requires. But even those things aren't nearly as powerful as the device that this Barjazid evidently uses."

"You've used the equipment of the Isle?" Dekkeret asked him. 'Tell me what it was like, my lord!"

'What it was like," Prestimion said, in a musing tone. He cast his mind back to that strange journey, feeling the potent memory of it returning to him. "What it was like. Oh, Dekkeret, that gets us into the same problem you raised when you said that no one can really feel the force of someone else's dream. 'The only way you could really know that was to wear the circlet yourself."

"But tell me, my lord, anyway. Please."

Prestimion stared far into the distance, as though looking through the walls of Inner Temple, out across the three cliffs of the Isle, off to the sea beyond, glittering golden in the midday light. Very quietly he said, "It was like being a god, Dekkeret. It gave me the power of having mental communion with millions of people at once. It allowed me to be everywhere on Majipoor at the same time. The way the atmosphere is everywhere, the way weather is, the way gravity is."

He narrowed his eyes to slits. The room, his mother, his wife, Dekkeret, all disappeared from his ken. It seemed to him that he heard the sound of a rushing wind. For a dizzying moment he imagined that he had the circlet on his forehead again and was soaring upward and outward, rising higher than the Mount itself, expanding into the vastness of the world by taking on an incomprehensible vastness of his own, touching minds everywhere, thousands of minds, hundreds of thousands, minions, billions, the healthy minds of the world and the poor sad sick disrupted ones also, reaching into them, offering a word here and a caress there, the comfort of the blessed Lady, the healing power of the Isle.

Everyone in the room was looking at him now. He realized that he had drifted off into some strange remote state of consciousness while standing here before them. Another moment passed before he felt that he had fully returned.

Then to Dekkeret he said, "What I learned, wearing that silver circlet , is that when the Lady is at her tasks she ceases to be an ordinary human being and becomes a force of nature-a Power, a true Power, in the way that neither the Coronal nor the Pontifex, mere elected monarchs that we are, could ever be. I haven't said this to you, mother. But the day I wore the circlet I saw very clearly, and now can never forget, how important your function is to the world. And I understood how it must have transformed your life to become the Lady of theIsle."

"But," Dekkeret persevered, "as you traveled around the world using the power of the circlet, did you ever think there might be some way to implant dreams in people's minds? Or to have such power over them that they would automatically have to obey your commands."

"No. I don't think so." Prestimion turned toward the Lady. "Mother?"

She shook her head. "It is as I said: the sending of dreams, yes.

Commands, no. Not even with our most powerful devices can I do that."

Dekkeret nodded grimly. "Then what Bujazid has, and is about to give to Dantirya Sambail, is the deadliest of weapons, my lord. And if those two are not stopped they will shatter the peace of the world. Which is why I brought my message in person, sir, instead of using the ordinary channels of communication. For no one who has not felt the force of the Barjazid device could possibly understand the threat that it holds. And I am the only one who has done that and lived to tell the tale."

From his office high above the Stoien waterfront Akbalik watched the royal fleet arrive. Three swift ships, flying the Coronal's banner and the banner of the Lady of the Isle.

"I should go down there and be waiting on the pier when they land,"

he said. "I will go down there. I have to."

"Your leg, sir-" said Odrian Kestivaunt.

"Damn the leg! The leg's no excuse! 'The Coronal is coming, and the Lady with him. My place is down there on the pier."

"At least let me change the poultice, sir," said the little Vroon mildly.

"There's time enough for that."

It was a reasonable request. Akbalik lowered himselfto the stool next to the window and offered his injured calf to the Vroon's ministration . Deftly, tentacles flying so swiftly that Akbalik could scarcely follow their busy motions, Kestivaunt stripped away yesterday's bandage, laying bare the angry red wound. It looked worse than ever: puffy, swollen, the area of its jurisdiction over his leg expanding steadily despite the medication. Kestivaunt bathed it in some cool and faintly astringent pale-blue fluid, gently probed the raw place surrounding the wound with the tip of a tentacle, very carefully spread the lips of the cut and peered within.

Akbalik hissed. "That hurts, fellow."

"I ask your pardon, Prince Akbalik. I need to see-"

'Whether any baby swamp-crabs are hatching in there?"

"I told you, sir, there is very little likelihood that the one that bit you was old enough to-"

"Ow! For the love of the Divine, Kestivaunt! just give it a new poultice and make an end to this poking around, will you? You're torturing me."

The Vroon apologized again and bent low over his toil. Akbalik could not see, now, what the small creature was doing; but it hurt less than what he had been doing a moment before, at any rate. Applying some mental emanation with those little wriggling tentacles, a Vroonish spell of healing? Perhaps. And a sprinkle of dried herbs, and more of that cooling blue fluid. The clean bandage, next. Better, yes. For the time being, anyway. Momentary surcease from the furious throbbing, the burning pain, the stomach-turning sense that slender tendrils of infection and corruption were gliding along the hidden pathways of his leg, reaching up toward his groin, his gut, ultimately his heart.

"All done," Kestivaunt said. Akbalik rose. Gingerly he put his weight on the troubled leg, grimacing a little, catching his breath. He felt shafts of pain running up the entire left side of his body into his neck and onward to his cheek, his jawbone, his teeth. For the millionth time he saw the great purple swamp-crab, the hideous domed bulgy-eyed thing half as big as a floater, rising up menacingly out of the sandy muck before him. Saw himself adroitly turning away from the monster, smugly pleased with his swift response-stepping back fromperil so quickly that he failed entirely to notice the other and much smaller crab, not much bigger across than the palm of his hand, slyly reaching one razor-sharp nipper toward his leg from its shelter in the crotch of a stinkflower bush- "The cane," he said. 'I"ere's my damned cane? They're practically in port already!"

The Vroon indicated the cane, leaning against the wall by the door in its usual place. Akbalik limped across and took it and went out. As he reached the ground floor he paused, looking out into the bright sunlight , breathing deeply, composing himself. He didn't want to seem like a cripple. The Coronal depended on him. Needed him.

It was no more than fifty yards across a broad cobbled plaza from the doorway of the customs-house where Akbalik maintained his office to the gateway of the piers. Akbalik moved slowly, carefully, holding the head of his cane with a tight grip. Today the distance felt like fifty miles.

Midway to his goal he became aware of the greasy tang of smoke in the air. He looked off to the north, saw the curling black strand climbing into the spotless sky, then the little red tongue higher up, licking out of a smallish building that stood atop a brickpedestal at least sixty feet high. Now he heard the sirens, too. So the crazies were at it again, Akbalik thought-first fire in three or four days, wasn't it? And today of all days, with the Coronal's ship landing at this very moment!

A line of Hjort customs-men stood across the entrance to the wharf, blocking access. Akbalik, not bothering to produce his identification, simply scowled at them and waved them out of his path with a sharp backhanded sweep of his hand. Moving past them without a glance, he went limping out toward Pier 44, the royal pier, draped for the occasion today in green and gold bunting.

Three ships, yes, the big cruiser Lord Hostbin and two escorts. Ile Coronal's honor guard had come down the gangplank and was lining up along the pier. A little gaggle of Mayor Bannikap's people was stationed just beyond them as a welcoming committee, with Bannikap himself visible in the midst of the crowd. "Prestimion!" they were crying. "Prestimion! Lord Prestimion! Long life to Lord Prestimion!" 'The usual chant. How tired he must be of it!

And there he was, now, at the rail, with Varaile beside him and the Lady Therissa a short distance to their left, half hidden behind her son.

To their rear, rising up out of the shadows, Akbalik saw the lofty figure of Prestimion's two-headed magus Maundigand-Klimd. How ironic, Akbalik thought, that Prestimion, who once had no belief in sorcery at all, never seemed to go anywhere any more without that Su-Suheris magus at his side.

There in the group too-Akbalik was startled to see him-was young Dekkeret, hovering at the Lady Varaile's elbow. That was a surprise . What was Dekkeret doing aboard a ship coming in from the Isle?

Shouldn't he still be off in Suvrael, seeking in the discomfort of the desert heat the Divine's pardon for letting that guide-woman die-or else, what was more likely, have gone back to the Castle by this time?

But maybe Suvrael hadn't supplied him with a sufficiently graWng degree of the atonement the penance, that he had so desperately seemed to want when Akbalik last saw him in Ziniroel, and that strange spiritual hunger of his had led the boy to go from the bleak southern continent to the sanctuary of the gentle Lady for further repairs to his soul. Where Prestimion had encountered him during the course of his own visit to the Lady, and now was bringing him back. Yes, Akbalik thought 'That must be it.

He hurried forward, wincing again and again as the stress of hurried movement brought him fresh pain. Shouldering his way into the midst of the scene, he took up a position right in front of the honor guard.

This was Bannikap's city, yes, but it was at Akbalik's request that Lord Prestimion was here, and Akbalik wanted to cut through the official folde-rol as quickly as possible. He had hardly any patience at all left any more, not with that fiery pain gnawing at his left leg all the time.

"Lordship!" he called. "Lordship!"

The Coronal saw him and waved. Akbalik offered him a starburst.

And then, as the Lady came into clearer view, he gave her her special sign of respect too. They began their descent to the pier. Mayor Bannikap came forward, his jaws already moving in the preamble to his speech of welcome, but Akbalik cut him off with a stinging glance and went to the Coronal's side first.

Presiimion held out his arms for an embrace. Akbalik, not knowing what to do with his cane, tucked it under his arm and clasped it awkwardly to his side as he returned the Coronal's greeting.

"What's this thing?" Prestimion asked.

Akbalik tried to seem casual about it. "A minor leg injury, my lord.

Annoying, but not particularly serious. There are many more important matters than this for us to discuss."

"Yes," Prestimion said. "As soon as I can get the stupid formalities out of the way." He indicated Mayor Bannikap with a quick toss of his head and winked.

Akbalik turned from him and offered his homage to the Lady, and to the Lady Varaile. Dekkeret gave him a shy, uncomfortable grin. He was still keeping to the background.

At a quick glance it seemed to Akbalik that the Lady Varaile was with child. Her manner of dress indicated that. She had that radiant maternal look already as well. That was interesting, the thought of Prestimion as a father so soon after taking on the tasks of the crown. And in these troubled times, too. But he should have expected it.This was a new Prestimion, deepened by responsibility, plainly eager for greater stability in his life, continuity, the ripeness that was maturity.

The Lady Tberissa looked magnificent: serene, graceful, steady of soul. All the things that Akbalik himself had been before his ill-fated expedition into the depths of the Stoienzar. He felt better simply from being this near to her.

"Is that smoke I smell?" Prestimion asked.

"A building's on fire up the street a little way. There's been a lot of that lately." Akbalik lowered his voice. "Crazy people carrying bales of straw up to rooftops and setting fire to them. A very popular pastime, suddenly. The mayor will be able to give you more information."

The mayor, a portly red-faced man related in some remote way to Duke Oljebbin and every bit as self-important, was already asserting his place anyway, coming forward to loom over Prestimion's slight figure in a fashion that the Coronal was highly unlikely to enjoy. But protocol was protocol, and this was Bannikap's moment. Akbalik deferred to him. He told Prestimion, who was staring pensively at that black curl of smoke spreading across the sky, that he would attend him later at his suite at the Crystal Pavilion, and made his limping exit.

A wall of continuous windows two hundred feet long gavethe Crystal Pavilion its name. It was a relatively young building, put up by Duke Oljebbin during Prankipin's time as Coronal, that stood in a magnificently solitary position in central Stoien atop a colossal pedestal of whitewashed brick. From Lord Prestimion's splendid three-level suite atop the pavilion the view took in the entire city, which unfortunately made it all too easy today to see the pillars of smoke arising from the nine or ten fires that were burning in the downtown area.

"This happens every day, these fires?" Prestimion asked.

Akbalik and the Coronal sat before platters of small cubes of smoked sea-dragon meat. Lady Varaile, weary after the hasty and sometimes turbulent voyage, had retreated to her bedchamber. The LadyTberissa was in a suite four levels down from Prestimion's, resting also. Akbalik had no idea where Dekkeret and the Su-Suheris had gone.

"More or less. It's a little unusual to have this many going at once."

"The madness, is it?"

"The madness, yes. This is the dry season: there's a lot of fuel sitting around. Those pretty vines that flower all summer long turn to immense mounds of straw. As I told you, the crazies gather up bundles of it and go up on rooftops to set it afire. I don'tknow why. I suppose there are more fires today than usual because they heard the Coronal and the Lady were coming, and that excited them."

"Bannikap tried to tell me that the damage is generally pretty minimal . I.

"Generally it is. Not always. There's been a big effort, the past two weeks, to demolish and clear away the really seriously ruined buildings , so you won't have to look at them while you're here. Wherever you see a little park about big enough to have held a single building, with freshly planted flowering shrubs, you're looking at a place where they had a bad fire. -May I have more wine, my lord?"

"Yes, of course." Prestimion pushed the flask across. "Tell me what you did to your leg."

:We should discuss Dantirya Sambail, sir."

'We will. What about the leg?"

"I hurt it while I was out hunting for Dantirya Sambail. The Procurator's been moving around very freely within that hell-hole where he's been making camp, pulling up stakes every few days, going up and down through the jungle as it pleases him. He's become very good, lately, at covering his tracks. We're never quite sure where he is on any given day. Using a magus, I suppose, to cast a cloud of unknowingingness all around himself. Last month I took a few hundred men and went looking for him, just a reconnaissance mission, to make sure he wasn't going to slip out of our reach altogether . I saw the place where he had been. But he had moved along, a day or two before."

,,He's definitely aware that we're on to him?"

"He must be, by now. How could he not? And if we lose him in there for more than a day or two at a time, finding him again will be the old needle in a haystack problem. He's been amazingly tricky about staying beyond our reach. Anyway, about the leg-"

"The leg, yes."

"The scouts said that they thought the Procurator's current location was about two hundred miles inland from the town of Karasat, which is on the southern coast between Maximin and Gunduba, if those names mean anything to you. So I sailed over from Stoien to have a look. -You know, my lord, people speak of the Suvrael desert as being the most unpleasant place in the world, with the Valmambra a distant second. But no, no, we've got the prize winner right here in lower Alhanroel. I've never been to Suvrael, or the Valmambra either, but I tell you, sir, they can't possibly be a patch on the southern Stoienzar for sheer nastiness.