The effect of the wine was instantaneous and unexpectedly powerful. Valentine swayed dizzily. Fogs and cobwebs assailed his mind. Was this stuff stronger than what the dream-speaker Tisana had given him in Falkynkip so long ago — some special demon-brew of Narrameer’s? Or was it simply that he was more susceptible at this moment, weakened and drained as he was by his using of the circlet? Through eyes that were becoming unwilling to focus he saw Narrameer down her own wine, toss the empty cup to an aide, and slide swiftly out of her robe. Her naked body was supple, smooth, youthful — flat belly, slender thighs, high round breasts. A sorcery, he thought. A sorcery, yes. Her skin was a deep shade of brown. Her nipples, almost black, stared at him like blind eyes.

He was already too deeply drugged to manage his own disrobing. The hands of his friends plucked at the catches and hasps of his clothing. He felt cold air about him and knew he was naked.

Narrameer beckoned him to the dream-rug. On wobbly legs Valentine went to her, and she drew him down. He closed his eyes, imagining he was with Carabella, but Narrameer was nothing at all like Carabella. Her embrace was dry and cold, her flesh hard, unresilient. She had no warmth, no vibrance. That youthfulness of hers was only a cunning projection. Lying in her arms was like lying on a bed of smooth chilly stone.

An all-engulfing pool of darkness was rising about him, a thick warm oily fluid growing deeper and deeper, and Valentine let himself slip easily into it, feeling it slide up comfortingly about his legs, his waist, his chest.

It was much like the time the great sea-dragon had smashed Gorzval’s ship, and he had found himself being sucked down by the whirlpool. Not resisting was so easy, so much easier than fighting. To yield all will, to relax, to accept whatever might befall, to allow himself to be swept under — so tempting, so very appealing. He was tired. He had struggled a long time. Now he could rest and allow the black tide to cover him. Let others battle valiantly for honor and power and acclaim. Let others—

No.

That was what they wanted: to ensnare him in his own weaknesses. He was too trusting, too guileless; he had supped with an enemy, unknowingly, and had been undone; he would be undone once more if he abandoned the effort now. This was not the moment for slipping into warm dark pools.

He began to swim. At first the going was difficult, for the pool was deep and the black fluid, viscous and heavy, tugged at his arms. But after a few strokes Valentine found a way to make his body more angular, a blade slicing deep. He moved rapidly and more rapidly yet, arms and legs pistoning in smooth coordination. The pool that had tempted him with oblivion now offered him support. Buoyant, firm, it bore him up as he swam swiftly toward the distant shore. The sun, bright, immense, a great purple-yellow globe, cast dazzling rays, a track of fire over the sea.

"Valentine."

The voice was deep, rolling, a sound like thunder. He did not recognize it.

"Valentine, why are you swimming so hard?"

"To reach the shore."

"But why do that?"

Valentine shrugged and kept swimming. He saw an island, a broad white beach, a jungle of tall slender trees growing one up against the next, with tangled vines binding their crowns into a dense canopy. But though he swam and swam and swam he came no closer to it.

"You see?" The great voice said. "There’s no sense in bothering!"

"Who are you?" Valentine asked.

"I am Lord Spurifon," came the majestic resonant reply.

"Who?"

"Lord Spurifon the Coronal, successor to Lord Scaul now Pontifex, and I tell you to give up this folly. Where can you hope to get?"

"Castle Mount," answered Valentine, swimming harder.

"But I am Coronal!"

"Never — heard of — you—"

Lord Spurifon made a shrill shrieking sound. The smooth oily surface of the sea rippled and then grew puckered, as though a million needles were piercing it from below. Valentine forced himself onward, no longer trying to be angular, but rather now transforming himself into something blunt and obstinate, a log with arms, battering through the turbulence.

Now the shore was within reach. He lowered his feet and felt sand below, hot, squirming, writhing sand that ran in trickles away from him wherever he touched it, making walking a chore, but not so grave a chore that he was unable to push himself to land. He scrambled up on the beach and knelt a moment. When he looked up, a pale, thin man with worried blue eyes was studying him.

"I am Lord Hunzimar," he said mildly. "Coronal of Coronals, never to be forgotten. And these are my immortal companions." He gestured, and the beach was filled with men much like himself, insignificant, diffident, trifling. "This is Lord Struin," declared Lord Hunzimar, "and this Lord Prankipin, and Lord Meyk, and Lord Scaul, and Lord Spurifon. Coronals of grandeur and puissance. Bow down before us!"

Valentine laughed. "You’re all completely forgotten!"

"No! No!"

"Such a squeaking!" He pointed at the last in the row.

"You — Spurifon! No one remembers you."

"Lord Spurifon, if you please."

"And you — Lord Scaul. Three thousand years have entirely evaporated your fame."

"You are mistaken in this. My name is inscribed on the roster of the Powers."

Valentine shrugged. "So it is. But what does that matter? Lord Prankipin, Lord Meyk, Lord Hunzimar, Lord Struin — nothing but names, now — nothing — but — names—"

"Nothing — but — names—" they echoed, in high thin wailing tones, and began to dwindle and shrink, until they were drole-high on the beach, small scurrying things that ran about pitifully, crying out their names in sharp little squeaks. Then they were gone, and in their place were small white spheres, no bigger than juggling-balls, which, Valentine realized, as he bent down to inspect them, were skulls. He scooped them up and tossed them blithely in the air, and caught them as they descended and threw them again, arraying them in a gleaming cascade. Their jaws clicked and chattered as they soared and fell. Valentine grinned. How many could he juggle at once? Spurifon, Struin, Hunzimar, Meyk, Prankipin, Scaul — that was only six. There had been hundreds of Coronals, one every ten or twenty or thirty years for the past eleven thousand years or thereabouts. He would juggle them all. From the air he plucked more of them, greater ones, Confalume, Prestimion, Stiamot, Dekkeret, Pinitor, a dozen, a hundred, filling the air with them, hurling and catching, hurling and catching. Never since the days of the first settlement had there been such a display of juggling skill on Majipoor! No longer was he throwing skulls; they had become glittering many-faceted diadems, orbs, indeed a thousand imperial orbs that cast sparkling light in every direction. He juggled them flawlessly, knowing each for the Power that it represented, now Lord Confalume, now Lord Spurifon, now Lord Dekkeret, now Lord Scaul, keeping them all aloft, spreading them out through the air so that they formed a great inverted pyramid of light, all the royal persons of Majipoor dancing above him, all converging toward the fair-haired smiling man who stood with legs planted firmly in the warm sand of that golden beach. He supported them all. The entire history of the world was in his hands, and he sustained it in its flight.

The dazzling diadems formed a great starburst of radiance overhead.

Without missing a beat, Valentine began to walk inland, over the smoothly rising dunes toward the dense jungle wall. The trees parted as he approached, bowing to left and right, clearing a track for him, a scarlet-paved way leading to the unknown interior of the island. He looked ahead and saw foothills before him, low gray hills that rose in slow ascent to become steeply rising granite flanks, beyond which lay jagged peaks, a formidable sharp-tipped cordillera stretching on and on and on to the heart of a continent. And on the highest peak of all, on a summit so lofty that the air about it shimmered with a pale luminous glow seen only in dreams, sprawled the buttressed walls of the Castle. Valentine marched toward it, juggling as he went. Figures passed him along the path, coming the other way, waving, smiling, bowing. Lord Voriax was one, and his mother the Lady another, and the tall solemn figure of the Pontifex Tyeveras, all greeting him cordially, and Valentine waved back to them without dropping a diadem, without breaking the smooth serene flow of his juggling. He was on the foothill trail now, and effortlessly moving upward, with a crowd growing about him, Carabella and Sleet close at hand, Zalzan Kavol and the whole juggling band of Skandars, Lisamon Hultin the giantess and Khun of Kianimot, Shanamir, Vinorkis, Gorzval, Lorivade, Asenhart, hundreds of others, Hjorts and Ghayrogs and Liimen and Vroons, merchants, farmers, fishers, acrobats, musicians, Duke Nascimonte the bandit chieftain, Tisana the dream-speaker, Gitamorn Suul and Dondak-Sajamir arm in arm, a horde of dancing Metamorphs, a phalanx of dragon-captains merrily brandishing harpoons, a skittering cavorting troop of forest-brethren swinging hand over hand through the trees alongside the path, everyone singing, laughing, prancing, following him toward the Castle, Lord Malibor’s Castle, Lord Spurifon’s Castle, Lord Confalume’s Castle, Lord Stiamot’s Castle, Lord Valentine’s Castle — Lord Valentine’s Castle—