But Alhanroel lay thousands of miles to the east, and he was moving not an inch toward his goal so long as he remained at the Terrace of Assessment. Already a week had gone by. During his meditation sessions Valentine entertained fantasies of collecting his people and slipping away by night, passing illicitly through terrace after terrace, scaling Second Cliff and Third, presenting himself ultimately to the Lady at the threshold of her temple; but he suspected they would not get far, in a place where dreams were open books.

So he fretted. He knew that fretting would win him no advancement here, and he taught himself instead to relax, to give himself up utterly to his tasks, to clear his mind of all needs and compulsions and attachments, and thus to open the way toward the dream of summoning by which the Lady would beckon him inward. That had no effect either. He plucked weeds, he cultivated the warm rich soil, he carried buckets of mortar and grout to the farthest reaches of the terrace, he sat cross-legged in his meditation hours with his mind entirely empty, and night after night he went to bed praying that the Lady would appear and tell him, "It is time for you to come to me," but nothing happened.

"How long will this continue?" he asked Deliamber at the pool one day. "It’s the fifth week! Or maybe the sixth — I’m losing count. Do I stay here a year? Two? Five?"

"Some of the pilgrims among us have done just that," said the Vroon. "I spoke with one, a Hjort who served in patrols under Lord Voriax. She has spent four years here and seems quite resigned to staying at the outermost terrace forever."

"She has no need to go elsewhere. This is a pleasant enough inn, Deliamber. But I—"

" — have urgent appointments to the east," Deliamber said. "And therefore you are condemned to remain here. There’s a paradox in your dilemma, Valentine. You strive to renounce purpose; but your renunciation itself has a purpose. Do you see? Your speaker surely does."

"Of course I see. But what do I do? How do I pretend not to care whether I stay here forever?"

"Pretense is impossible. The moment you genuinely don’t care, you’ll move onward. Not until then."

Valentine shook his head. "That’s like telling me that my salvation depends on never thinking of gihorna-birds. The harder I’d try not to think of them, the more flocks of gihornas would fly through my mind. What am I to do, Deliamber?"

But Deliamber had no other suggestions. The next day, Valentine learned that Shanamir and Vinorkis had received advancement to the Terrace of Inception.

Two more days passed before Valentine saw Deliamber again. The wizard remarked that Valentine did not look well; and Valentine replied, with an impatience he could not control, "How do you expect me to look? Do you know how many weeds I’ve pulled, how much masonry I’ve pointed, while in Alhanroel a Barjazid sits on Castle Mount and—"

"Peace," Deliamber said softly. "This is not like you."

"Peace? Peace? How long can I be peaceful?"

"Perhaps your patience is being tested. In which case, my lord, you are failing the test."

Valentine considered that. After a moment he said, "I admit your logic. But perhaps it’s my ingenuity that’s being tested. Deliamber, put a summoning-dream into my head tonight."

"My sorceries, you know, seem of little value on this island."

"Do it. Try it. Concoct a message from the Lady and plant it in my mind, and then we’ll see."

Deliamber, shrugging, touched his tentacles to Valentine’s hands for the moment of thought-transference. Valentine felt the faint distant tingle of contact. "Your sorceries still work," he said. And that night there came to him a dream in which he drifted like a volevant in the bathing-pool, attached to the rocks by some membrane that had sprouted from his feet, and as he sought to free himself the face of the Lady appeared, smiling, in the night sky, and whispered to him, "Come, Valentine, come to me, come," and the membrane dissolved, and he floated upward and soared on the breeze, borne by the wind toward Inner Temple.

Valentine relayed the dream to Stauminaup in his dream-speaking session. She listened as though he were telling her of a dream of plucking weeds in the garden. The next night Valentine pretended he had had the same dream, and again she made no comment. He offered the dream on the next, and asked for a speaking of it.

Stauminaup said, "The speaking of your dream is that no bird flies with another’s wings."

His cheeks reddened. He went slinking away from her chamber.

Five days later, he was told by Talinot Esulde that he had been granted admission to the Terrace of Inception.

"But why?" he asked Deliamber.

The Vroon replied, "Why? is a useless question in matters of spiritual progress. Obviously something has altered in you."

"But I’ve had no legitimate summoning dream!"

"Perhaps you have," said the sorcerer.

One of the acolytes took him, by foot, through the forest paths to the next terrace. The road was a maze, zigzagging, bewilderingly, several times requiring them to turn in what seemed like precisely the wrong direction. Valentine was altogether lost by the time they emerged, some hours later, into a cleared area of immense size. Pyramids of dark-blue stone ten feet high rose there at regular intervals from the pink flag-stone of the terrace.

Life was much the same here — menial tasks, meditation, daily dream-speaking, stark ascetic quarters, drab food. But there was also the beginning of holy instruction, an hour each afternoon in which the principles of the grace of the Lady were explained by means of elliptical parables and circuitous dialogues.

Valentine listened restlessly to all that at first. It seemed vague and abstract to him, and it was hard to concentrate on such cloudy matters when what possessed him was a direct political passion — to reach Castle Mount and settle the questioning of the governing of Majipoor. But by the third day it struck him that what the acolyte was saying about the role of the Lady was entirely political. She was a tempering force, Valentine realized, a mortar of love and faith binding together the centers of power on this world. However she worked her magic of dream-sending — and it was impossible to believe the popular myth, that she was in touch with the minds of millions of people every night — it was clear that her calm spirit soothed and eased the planet. The apparatus of the King of Dreams, Valentine knew, sent direct and specific dreams that lashed the guilty and admonished the uncertain, and the sendings of the King could be fierce. But as the warmth of the ocean moderates the climate of the land, so did the Lady make gentle the harsh forces of control on Majipoor, and the theology that had arisen around the person of the Lady as Divine Mother Incarnate was, Valentine now understood, only a metaphor for the division of power that the early rulers of Majipoor had devised.

So he listened with keener interest. He put aside his eagerness to move to loftier terraces for a time, in order to learn more here.

Valentine was entirely alone at this terrace. That was new. Shanamir and Vinorkis were nowhere to be seen — had they been sent on already to the Terrace of Mirrors? — and the rest, so far as he knew, remained behind. Most of all he missed Carabella’s sparkling energies and Deliamber’s sardonic wisdom, but the others too had become part of his soul in the long difficult journey across Zimroel, and not to have them about him here was discomforting. His days as a juggler seemed long gone and never to be recaptured. Occasionally now he would, in leisure moments, take fruits from the trees and toss them in the old familiar patterns, to the amusement of passing novices and acolytes. One in particular, a thick-shouldered black-bearded man named Farssal, made a point of watching closely whenever Valentine juggled.