"I am chosen of the princes of Castle Mount," he said. "They are human and fallible."

"The Divine speaks through them when a Coronal is chosen. And the Divine did not mean you to be the instrument of Majipoor's destruction. These reports are serious but not terrifying. You will speak with your mother in a few days, and she'll fortify you where weariness makes you weaken; and then we'll proceed on to Zimroel and you will set all to rights."

"So I hope, Carabella. But—"

"So you know, Valentine! I say once more, my lord, I hardly recognize in you the man I know, when you speak this gloomy way." She tapped the sheaf of dispatches. "I would not minimize these things. But I think there is much we can do to turn back the darkness, and that it will be done."

He nodded slowly. "So I think myself, much of the time. But at other times—"

"At other times it's best not to think at all." A knock sounded at the door. "Good," she said. "We are interrupted, and I give thanks for that, for I tire of hearing you make all these downcast noises, my love."

She admitted Talinot Esulde to the room. The hierarch said, "My lord, your mother the Lady has arrived, and wishes to see you in the Emerald Room."

"My mother here? But I expected to go to her tomorrow, at Inner Temple!"

"She has come to you," said Talinot Esulde imperturbably.

The Emerald Room was a study in green: walls of green serpentine, floors of green onyx, translucent panes of green jade in place of windows. The Lady stood in the center of the room, between the two huge potted tanigales, covered with dazzling blossoms of metallic green, that were virtually all that the chamber contained. Valentine went quickly toward her. She stretched her hands to him, and as their fingertips met he felt the familiar throbbing of the current that radiated from her, the sacred force that, like spring water draining into a well, had accumulated in her through all her years of intimate contact with the billions of souls of Majipoor.

He had spoken with her in dreams many times, but he had not seen her in years, and he was unprepared for the changes time had worked upon her. She was still beautiful: the passing of the years could not affect that. But age now had cast the faintest of veils over her, and the sheen was gone from her black hair, the warmth of her gaze was ever so slightly diminished, her skin seemed somehow to have loosened its grasp on her flesh. Yet she carried herself as splendidly as ever, and she was, as always, magnificently robed in white, with a flower behind one ear, and the silver circlet of her power on her brow: a figure of grace and majesty, of force and of infinite compassion.

"Mother. At last."

"Such a long while, Valentine! So many years!"