That night he prepared his own dinner for the first time in his life. He thought he showed respectable skill, for a novice. He opened the last of the fireshower wine, and drank rather more than he would normally have allowed himself. What was happening to the world was very strange to him, and difficult to accept, but the wine made it a little easier. How many thousands of years of peace there had been! What a pleasant world, what a smoothly functioning world! Pontifex and Coronal, Pontifex and Coronal, a serene progression moving from Castle Mount to the Labyrinth, governing always with the consent of the many for the benefit of all; though of course some benefited more than others, yet no one went hungry, no one lived in need. And now it was ending. Poisonous rain comes from the sky, gardens wither, crops are destroyed, famines begin, new religions take hold, ravenous crazy mobs swarm toward the sea. Does the Coronal know? Does the Lady of the Isle? The King of Dreams? What is being done to repair these things? What can be done? Will kindly dreams from the Lady help to fill empty bellies? Will threatening dreams from the King turn the mobs back? Will the Pontifex, if indeed there is a Pontifex, come forth from the Labyrinth and make lofty proclamations? Will the Coronal ride from province to province, urging patience? No. No. No.

No. It is over, Etowan Elacca thought. What a pity that this could not have waited another twenty years, or thirty perhaps, so that I could have died quietly in my garden, and the garden still in bloom.

He kept watch through the night, and all was still.

In the morning he imagined he could hear the first rumblings of the oncoming horde to the east. He went through the house, opening every door that was locked, so they would do as little damage as possible to the building as they ransacked it for his food and his wines. It was a beautiful house, and he loved it and hoped it would come to no harm.

Then he went out into the garden, among the shriveled and blackened plants. Much of it, he realized, had actually survived the deadly rain: rather more than he thought, since he had had eyes all these dark months only for the destruction, but indeed the mouthplants were still flourishing and the nightflower trees and some of the androdragmas, the dwikkas, the sihornish vines, even the fragile bladdertrees. For hours he walked among them. He thought of giving himself to one of the mouthplants, but that would be an ugly death, he thought, slow and bloody and inelegant, and he wanted it said of him, even if there might be no one to say it, that he had been elegant to the last. Instead he went to the sihornish vines, which were festooned with unripened fruits, still yellow. The ripe sihornish was one of the finest of delicacies, but the fruit when yellow brims with deadly alkaloids. For a long while Etowan Elacca stood by the vine, utterly without fear, simply not yet quite ready. Then came the sound of voices, not imagined this time, the harsh voices of city folk, many of them, borne on the fragrant air from the east. Now he was ready. He knew it would be more gentlemanly to wait until they were here, and bid them be welcome to his estate, and offer them his best wines and such dinner as he could provide; but without his staff he could not provide much in the way of hospitality, after all; and, besides, he had never really liked city folk, particularly when they came as uninvited guests. He looked about one last time at the dwikkas and the bladdertrees and the one sickly halatinga that somehow had survived, and commended his soul to the Lady, and felt the beginnings of tears.