After a time Deliamber said, "There are the ruins."

It was difficult at first to distinguish them from the rocks of the desert. All Valentine saw were tumbled dark monoliths, scattered as though by a giant’s contemptuous hand, in little patches every mile or two. But gradually he discerned form: this was a bit of wall, this the foundation of some cyclopean palace, this perhaps an altar. Everything was built to titanic scale, although the individual groups of ruins, half covered by drifting sand, were unimpressive isolated outposts.

Valentine called the caravan to a halt at one particularly broad strew of ruins and led an inspection party to the site. He touched the rocks cautiously, fearing he might be committing some sort of sacrilege. The stone was cool, smooth to the touch, faintly encrusted by leathery growths of yellow lichen.

"And are these the work of the Metamorphs?" he asked.

Deliamber shrugged. "So we think, but no one knows."

"I have heard it said," remarked Admiral Asenhart, "that the first human settlers built these cities soon after the Landing-time, and that they were overthrown in the civil wars before the Pontifex Dvorn established government."

"Of course, few records survive of those days," said Deliamber.

Asenhart squinted at the Vroon. "Are you of a contrary opinion, then?"

"I? I? I hold no opinion at all of events of fourteen thousand years ago. I am not as old as you suspect, admiral."

The hierarch Lorivade said in a dry deep tone, "It seems unlikely to me that the early settlers would build so far from the sea. Or that they would trouble themselves to haul such huge blocks of stone about."

"Then you too think these were Metamorph cities?" said Valentine.

"The Metamorphs are wild savages who live in the jungles and dance to bring rain," Asenhart said.

Lorivade, looking bothered at the admiral’s interruption, said with testy precision, "I think it altogether likely." To Asenhart she added, "Not savages, admiral, but refugees. They may well have fallen from a higher estate."

"Pushed, rather," said Carabella.

Valentine said, "The government should organize studies of these ruins, if it hasn’t already been done. We need to know more about pre-human civilizations on Majipoor, and if these are Metamorph places, we might consider giving them a kind of custodianship of them. We—"

"The ruins need no custodians other than the ones they already have," said a new voice suddenly.

Valentine turned, startled. A bizarre figure had emerged from behind a monolith — a gaunt, almost fleshless man of sixty or seventy, with fierce blazing eyes set in jutting bony rims and a thin, wide, virtually toothless mouth now curved in a mocking grin. He was armed with a long narrow sword and was clad in a strange garment made entirely from the red fur of the desert-animals. Atop his head was a cap of thick yellow tail-fur, which he swept off in a grand gesture as he made a deep, sweeping bow. When he straightened, his hand rested on the pommel of his sword.

Valentine said courteously, "And are we in the presence of one of those custodians?"

"More than one," the other replied. And from the rocks there quietly came eight or ten similar fantasticos, as angular and bony as the first, and like the first all clad in scruffy fur leggings and jackets and wearing absurd furry caps. All carried swords, and all seemed ready to use them. A second group appeared behind them, materializing as though out of the air, and then a third, a good-sized troop, thirty or forty in all.

There were eleven in Valentine’s party, mostly unarmed. The others were back in the floater-cars, two hundred yards away on the main highway. While they had stood here debating nice points of ancient history, they had allowed themselves to be surrounded.

The leader said, "By what right do you trespass here?"

Valentine heard a faint clearing of the throat from Lisamon Hultin. He saw a stiffening also of Asenhart’s posture. But Valentine signaled them to be calm.

He said, "May I know who it is that addresses me?"

"I am Duke Nascimonte of Vornek Crag, Overlord of the Western Marches. About me you see the chief nobles of my realm, who serve me loyally in all things."

Valentine had no recollection of a province known as the Western Marches, nor of any such duke. Possibly he had forgotten some of his geography when his mind was meddled with; but not, he suspected, quite so much. Yet he did not choose to trifle with Duke Nascimonte.

Solemnly he said, "We meant no trespass, your grace, in passing through your domain. We are travelers bound for the Labyrinth on business with the Pontifex, and this seemed the most direct route between Treymone and there."

"So it is. You would have done better to approach the Pontifex by a less direct route."

Lisamon Hultin roared suddenly, "Give us no trouble! Have you any idea who this man is?"

Annoyed, Valentine snapped his fingers at the giantess to silence her.

Nascimonte said blandly, "Not in the least. But he could be Lord Valentine himself and he would not pass here lightly. Lord Valentine less than any other, in fact."

"Have you some special quarrel with Lord Valentine, then?" Valentine asked.

The bandit laughed harshly. "The Coronal is my most hated enemy."

"Why, then, your hand must be set against all of civilization, for everyone owes allegiance to the Coronal and must for order’s sake oppose his enemies. Can you truly be a duke, and not accept the Coronal’s authority?"

"Not this Coronal’s," Nascimonte replied. He sauntered coolly across the open space that separated him from Valentine, hand still resting on his sword, and peered closely at him. "You wear fine clothes. You smell of city comforts. You must be rich, and live in a great house somewhere high up on the Mount, and have servants to meet your every need. What would you say, if one day all that were stripped from you, eh? If by the whim of another you were cast down into poverty?"

"I have had that experience," said Valentine evenly.

"Have you, now? You, traveling in that cavalcade of floater-cars, with your retinue about you? Who are you, anyway?"

"Lord Valentine the Coronal," Valentine answered without hesitation.

Nascimonte’s fiery eyes flared with rage. For an instant it appeared as if he would draw his sword; then, as if seeing a jest much to his own ferocious humor, he relaxed and said, "Yes, you are Coronal the way I am a duke. Well, Lord Valentine, your kindness will repay me for my earlier losses. The fee for crossing the zone of ruins today is one thousand royals."

"We have no such sum," Valentine said mildly.

"Then you’ll make camp with us until your lackeys fetch it." He gestured to his men. "Seize them and bind them. Turn one loose — this one, the Vroon — to be the messenger." To Deliamber he said, "Vroon, carry word to those in the floaters that we hold these folk here for payment of a thousand royals, to be delivered within a month. And if you return with militia instead of money, why, bear in mind that we know these hills, and the officers of the law do not. You’ll never see any of your people alive again."

"Wait," Valentine said, as Nascimonte’s men stepped forward. "Tell me your quarrel with the Coronal."

Nascimonte scowled. "He came through this part of Alhanroel last year, returning from Zimroel where he made the grand processional. I lived then in the foothills of Mount Ebersinul, looking out on Lake Ivory, and I raised ricca and thuyol and milaile, and my plantation was the finest in the province, for my family has spent sixteen generations cultivating it. The Coronal and his party were billeted on me, as best able to meet the needs of hospitality for him, and at the height of thuyol-harvest he came to me with all his hundreds of hangers-on and lackeys, his myriad courtiers, enough mounts to graze half a continent bare, and between one Starday and the next they drank my cellars dry, they made festival in the fields and spoiled the crops, they torched the manor-house in drunken play, they shattered the dam and drowned my fields, they ruined me entirely for their own sport, and then they marched away, not even knowing what they had done to me, or caring. The moneylenders have it all now, and I live in the rocks of Vornek Crag courtesy of Lord Valentine and his friends, and where is justice? It will cost you a thousand royals to leave these ancient ruins, stranger, and though I hold you no malice I will slit your throat as coolly as Lord Valentine’s men opened my dam, and with as little concern, if the money fails to come." He turned away and said again, "Bind them."