At least ten thousand militia waited at the gate.

They filled the road, and spilled over into the lanes of the marketplace that nestled against the outer wall of Pendiwane. They were armed with energy-throwers, though not a great many, and with simpler weapons, and those in the front line were standing in a tense, stiff manner, holding themselves self-consciously in soldierlike poses that surely were altogether unfamiliar to them. Valentine ordered the floater-cars to halt a few hundred yards from the nearest of them, so that the roadway between formed a wide clear space, a kind of buffer zone.

He stepped forth, crowned and robed and cloaked. The hierarch Lorivade walked just to his right, clad in the glowing vestments of the Lady’s high ministry, and Ermanar was to his left, wearing on his breast the glittering Labyrinth emblem of the Pontifex. At Valentine’s rear were Zalzan Kavol and his formidable brothers, glowering and massive, followed by Lisamon Hultin in full battle regalia, with Sleet and Carabella flanking her. Autifon Deliamber rode on the arm of the giantess.

In a slow, easy, unmistakably majestic way, Valentine advanced into the open space before him. He saw the citizens of Pendiwane stirring, exchanging troubled glances, moistening their lips, shifting their feet, rubbing their hands over their chests or arms. A terrible silence had fallen.

He paused twenty yards from the front line and said, "Good people of Pendiwane, I am the rightful Coronal of Majipoor, and I ask your aid in regaining that which was granted to me by the will of the Divine and the decree of the Pontifex Tyeveras."

Thousands of wide eyes stared rigidly at him. He felt wholly calm.

Valentine said, "I call forth from among you Duke Holmstorg of Glayge. I call forth from among you Redvard Haligorn, Mayor of Pendiwane."

There were movements in the crowd. Then came a parting, and out from the midst emerged a rotund man in a blue tunic trimmed with orange, whose heavy-fleshed face seemed gray with fear or tension. The black sash of mayoralty lay across his broad chest. He took a few steps toward Valentine, hesitated, signaled furiously behind his back in what was meant to be a gesture unseen by those facing him; and after a moment five or six lesser municipal officials, looking as abashed and reluctant as children commanded to sing at a school assembly, came warily out behind the mayor.

The plump man said, "I am Redvard Haligorn. Duke Holmstorg has been summoned to Lord Valentine’s Castle."

"We have met before, Mayor Haligorn," said Valentine amiably. "Do you recall? It was some years ago, when my brother Lord Voriax was Coronal, and I journeyed to the Labyrinth as emissary to the Pontifex. I stopped in Pendiwane and you gave me a banquet, in the high palace at river’s edge. Do you recall, Mayor Haligorn? It was summer, a year of drought, the river was very much shrunken, nothing at all like it is today."

Haligorn’s tongue traversed his lips. He tugged at a jowl.

Hoarsely he said, "Indeed he who became Lord Valentine was here in the dry year. But he was a dark man, and bearded."

"True. There has been a witchery of fearful nature, Mayor Haligorn. A traitor now holds Castle Mount and I have been transformed and cast out. But I am Lord Valentine and by the power of the starburst you wear on your sleeve I call upon you to accept me as Coronal."

Haligorn looked bewildered. Clearly he would prefer to be almost anywhere else at this moment, even in the trackless corridors of the Labyrinth, or the burning wastes of Suvrael.

Valentine continued, "Beside me is the hierarch Lorivade of the Isle of Sleep, closest of the companions of my mother your Lady. Do you think she deceives you?"

The hierarch said icily, "This is the true Coronal, and the Lady will withdraw her sublime love from those who oppose him."

Valentine said, "And here stands Ermanar, high servitor of the Pontifex Tyeveras."

In his blunt straightforward way Ermanar said, "You have all heard the decree of the Pontifex that the fair-haired man must be hailed as Lord Valentine the Coronal. Who among you will stand up against the decree of the Pontifex?"

Haligorn’s face showed terror. Dealing with Duke Holmstorg might have been harder for Valentine, for he was of high blood and great haughtiness, and might not have been so easily intimidated by one who came before him wearing a home-made crown and leading a little band of such oddly assorted followers. But Redvard Haligorn, a mere elected official, who for years had dealt with nothing more challenging than state banquets and debates over flood-control taxes, was far beyond his depth.

He said, almost mumbling it, "The command has come down from Lord Valentine’s Castle that you are to be apprehended and bound over for trial."

"Many commands lately have come down from Lord Valentine’s Castle," said Valentine, "and not a few have been unwise, unjust, or ill-timed, eh, Mayor Haligorn? They are the commands of the usurper, and worthless. You have heard the voices of the Lady and the Pontifex. You have had sendings urging you to give allegiance to me."

"And sendings of the other kind," said Haligorn feebly.

"From the King of Dreams, yes!" Valentine laughed. "And who is the usurper? Who is it that has stolen the throne of the Coronal? Dominin Barjazid is the one! The son of the King of Dreams! Now do you comprehend those sendings out of Suvrael? Now do you see what has been done to Majipoor?"

Valentine let the trance-state come over him, and flooded the hapless Redvard Haligorn with the full force of his soul, the full impact of a waking sending from the Coronal.

Haligorn tottered. His face reddened and grew blotchy. He reeled and clutched at his comrades for support, but they had received the outflow from Valentine as well, and were barely able to sustain themselves.

Valentine said, "Give me your support, friends. Open your city to me. From here I will launch the reconquest of Castle Mount, and great will be the fame of Pendiwane, as the first city of Majipoor to turn against the usurper!"

SO PENDIWANE FELL, without a blow being struck. Redvard Haligorn, wearing the expression of a man who has just swallowed a Stoienzar oyster and feels it squirming in his gullet, dropped down and offered Valentine the starburst gesture, and then two of his vice-mayors did the same, and suddenly there was a contagion of it, thousands of people giving homage, and crying out, first without much conviction, then more lustily as they decided to commit themselves to the idea: "Valentine! Lord Valentine! Long life to the Coronal!" And the gates of Pendiwane were opened.

"Too easy," Valentine muttered to Carabella. "Can it continue this way right up Castle Mount? Browbeat a fat mayor or two and win back the throne by acclamation?"

"If only you could," she said. "But the Barjazid waits up there with his bodyguards, and browbeating him will take more than words and fine dramatic effects. There will be battles, Valentine."

"Let there be no more than one, then."

She touched his arm lightly. "For your sake I hope no more than one, and that one just a small one."

"Not for my sake," he said. "For the sake of all the world. I want none of my people to perish in repairing what Dominin Barjazid has brought upon us."

"I had not thought kings would be so gentle, my love," Carabella said.

"Carabella—"

"You look so sad just now!"

"I fear what comes."

"What comes," she said, "is a necessary struggle, and joyous triumph, and the restoration of order. And if you would be a proper king, my lord, wave to your people, and smile, and put that tragic look from your face. Yes?"

Valentine nodded. "You speak the truth," he said, and catching up her hand, brushed his lips quickly but tenderly across her small sharp knuckles. And turned to stare at the multitudes who shouted his name, and lifted his arms to them and acknowledged their greeting.