"Let—go—"

"If you'll keep your distance."

"All right. All right!"

Hissune released him and caught his breath. His heart was pounding and he was soaked with sweat: he did not dare to wonder how he must look. After all of Ailimoor's endless fussing over him, too.

Vanimoon, stepping back, sullenly rubbed his wrist. "Afraid I'll soil his fancy clothes. Doesn't want common people's dirt on them."

"That's right. Now get out of my way. I'm late enough already."

"For the Coronal's banquet, I suppose?"

"Exactly. I'm late for the Coronal's banquet."

Vanimoon and the others gaped at him, their expressions hovering midway between scorn and awe.

Hissune pushed his way past them and strode across the plaza.

The evening, he thought, was off to a very bad start.

3

On a day in high summer when the sun hung all but motionless over Castle Mount, the Coronal Lord Valentine rode out joyously into the flower-shimmering meadows below the Castle's southern wing.

He went alone, not even taking with him his consort the Lady Carabella. The members of his council objected strongly to his going anywhere unguarded, even within the Castle, let alone venturing outside the sprawling perimeter of the royal domain. Whenever the issue arose, Elidath pounded hand against fist and Tunigorn rose up tall as though prepared to block Valentine's departure with his own body, and little Sleet turned positively black in the face with fury and reminded the Coronal that his enemies had succeeded in overthrowing him once, and might yet again.

"Ah, surely I'd be safe anywhere on Castle Mount!" Valentine insisted.

But always they had had their way, until today. The safety of the Coronal of Majipoor, they insisted, was paramount. And so whenever Lord Valentine went riding, Elidath or Tunigorn or perhaps Stasilaine rode always beside him, as they had since they were boys together, and half a dozen members of the Coronal's guard lurked a respectful distance behind.

This time, though, Valentine had somehow eluded them all. He was unsure how he had managed it: but when the overpowering urge to ride had come upon him in midmorning he simply strode into the south-wing stables, saddled his mount without the help of a groom, and set out across the green porcelain cobblestones of a strangely empty Dizimaule Plaza, passing swiftly under the great arch and into the lovely fields that flanked the Grand Calintane Highway. No one stopped him. No one called out to him. It was as though some wizardry had rendered him, invisible.

Free, if only for an hour or two! The Coronal threw his head back and laughed as he had not laughed in a long while, and slapped his mount's flank, and sped across the meadows, moving so swiftly that the hooves of his great purple beast seemed scarcely to touch the myriad blossoms all about.

Ah, this was the life!

He glanced over his shoulder. The fantastic bewildering pile of the Castle was diminishing rapidly behind him, though it still seemed immense at this distance, stretching over half the horizon, an incomprehensibly huge edifice of some forty thousand rooms that clung like some vast monster to the summit of the Mount.