There was noble austere music in the heavens now, awesome choirs of brass playing solemn and somber melodies suitable for the robing-ceremony of a Coronal. And, indeed, they were robing him, a dozen crouching servants placing on him the cloak of office and the starburst crown, but he shook his head lightly and brushed them away, and with his own hands he removed the crown and handed it to his brother of the menacing saber, and shrugged off his fine robes and distributed them in strips to the poor, who used them to make bindings for their feet, and word went out to all the provinces of Majipoor that he had resigned his high office and given up all power, and once more he found himself on the flagstone steps, descending the mountain trail, seeking that valley of mists that lay in the unattainable beyond.

"But why do you go downward?" asked Carabella, blocking his path, and he had no answer to that, so that when little Deliamber pointed upward he shrugged meekly and began a new ascent, through fields of brilliant red and blue flowers, through a place of golden grass and lofty green cedars. He perceived that this was no ordinary peak he had been climbing and descending and climbing anew, but rather Castle Mount itself, that jutted thirty miles into the heavens, and his goal was that bewildering all-encompassing ever-expanding structure at its summit, the place where the Coronal dwelled, the castle that was called Lord Valentine’s Castle but that had, not long before, been Lord Voriax’ Castle and before that Lord Malibor’s Castle, and other names before that, names of all those mighty princes who had ruled from Castle Mount, each putting his imprint on the growing castle and giving his name to it while he lived there, all the way back to Lord Stiamot the conqueror of the Metamorphs, he who was the first to dwell on Castle Mount and built the modest keep out of which all the rest had sprouted. I will regain the Castle, Valentine told himself, and I will take up residence.

But what was this? Workmen by the thousands, dismantling the enormous edifice! The work of demolition was well under way, and all the outer wings were taken apart, the place of buttresses and arches that Lord Voriax had built, and the grand trophy-room of Lord Malibor, and the great library that Tyeveras had added in his days as Coronal, and much else, all those rooms now mere piles of bricks laid in neat mounds on the slopes of the Mount, and they were working inward toward more ancient wings, to the garden-house of Lord Confalume and the armory of Lord Dekkeret and the archive-vault of Lord Prestimion, removing those places brick by brick by brick like locusts sweeping over the fields at harvest-time. "Wait!" Valentine cried. "No need to do this! I am back, I will take up my robes and crown once again!" But the work of destruction continued, and it was as if the castle were made of sand and the tides were sweeping in, and a gentle voice said, "Too late, too late, much too late," and the watchtower of Lord Arioc was gone and the parapets of Lord Thimin were gone and the observatory of Lord Kinniken was gone with all its star-watching apparatus, and Castle Mount itself was shuddering and swaying as the removal of the castle disrupted its equilibrium, and workmen now were running frantically with bricks in their hands, seeking flat places on which to stack them, and a dread eternal night had come and baleful stars swelled and writhed in the sky, and the machineries that held back the chill of space atop Castle Mount were failing, so that the warm mild air was flowing moonward, and there was sobbing in the depths of the planet and Valentine stood amid the scenes of disruption and gathering chaos, holding forth outstretched fingers to the darkness.

The next thing he knew, morning light was in his eyes, and he blinked and sat up, confused, wondering what inn this was and what he had been doing the night before, for he lay naked on a thick woolly rug in a warm strange room, and there was an old woman moving about, brewing tea, perhaps—

Yes. The dream-speaker Tisana, and this was Falkynkip, in the Street of Watermongers—

His nakedness discomforted him. He rose and dressed quickly.

Tisana said, "Drink this. I’ll put some breakfast up, now that you’re finally awake."

He looked dubiously at the mug she handed him.

"Tea," she said. "Nothing but tea. The time for dreaming is long past."

Valentine sipped at it while she bustled around the small kitchen. There was a numbness in his spirit, as though he had caroused himself into insensibility and now had a reckoning to pay; and he knew there had been strange dreams, a whole night of them, but yet he felt none of the malaise of the soul that he had known upon awakening these past few mornings, only that numbness, a curious centered calmness, almost an emptiness. Was that the purpose of visiting a dream-speaker? He understood so little. He was like a child loose in this vast and complex world.

They ate in silence. Tisana seemed to be studying Valentine intently across the table. Last night she had chattered much before the drug had had its effect, but now she seemed subdued, reflective, almost withdrawn, as if she needed to be apart from him while preparing to speak his dream.

At length she cleared the dishes and said, "How do you feel?"

"Quiet within."

"Good. Good. That’s important. To go away from a dream-speaker in turmoil is a waste of money. I had no doubts, though. Your spirit is strong."

"Is it?"

"Stronger than you know. Reverses that would crush an ordinary person leave you untouched. You shrug off disaster and whistle in the face of danger."

"You speak very generally," Valentine said.

"I am an oracle, and oracles are never terribly specific," she replied lightly.

"Are my dreams sendings? Will you tell me that, at least?"

She was thoughtful a moment. "I am uncertain."

"But you shared them! Aren’t you able to know at once if a dream comes from the Lady or the King?"

"Peace, peace, this is not so simple," she said, waving a palm at him. "Your dreams are not sendings of the Lady, this I know."

"Then if they are sendings, they are of the King."

"Here is the uncertainty. They have an aura of the King about them in some way, yes, but not the aura of sendings. I know you find that hard to fathom: so do I. I do believe the King of Dreams watches your doings and is concerned with you, but it doesn’t seem to me that he’s been entering your sleep. It confounds me."

"Has anything like this been known to you before?"

The dream-speaker shook her head. "Not at all."

"Is this my speaking, then? Only more mysteries and unanswered questions?"

"You haven’t had the speaking yet," Tisana answered.

"Forgive my impatience."

"No forgiveness is needed. Come, give me your hands, and I’ll make a speaking for you." She reached for him across the table, and grasped and held him, and after a long while said, "You have fallen from a high place, and now you must begin to climb back to it."

He grinned. "A high place?"

"The highest."

"The highest place on Majipoor," he said lightly, "is the summit of Castle Mount. Is that where you would have me climb?"

"There, yes."

"A very steep ascent you lay upon me. I could spend my entire life reaching and climbing that place."

"Nevertheless, Lord Valentine, that ascent awaits you, and it is not I who lays it on you."

He gasped at her use of the royal title to him, and then burst out laughing at the grossness of it, the tastelessness of her joke. "Lord Valentine! Lord Valentine? No, you do me far too much honor, Madame Tlsana. Not Lord Valentine. Only Valentine, Valentine the juggler, is all, the newest of the troupe of Zalzan Kavol the Skandar."

Her gaze rested steadily on him. Quietly she said, "I beg your pardon. I meant no offense."