"And the members of this council?" Divvis asked.

"There will be three. You are one, Divvis. Stasilaine, you also. And you, Hissune."

Hissune, astounded, sat bolt upright. "I?"

Elidath smiled. "I confess I couldn't understand, at first, why Lord Valentine had chosen to advance someone of the Labyrinth, and such a young man at that, so quickly toward the center of power. But gradually his design has come clear to me, as this crisis has fallen upon us. We've lost touch, here on Castle Mount, with the realities of Majipoor. We've stayed up here on our mountaintop and mysteries have sprung up around us, without our knowing. I heard you say, Divvis, that you think everyone in the world is happy except perhaps the Metamorphs, and I confess I thought the same. And yet an entire religion, it seems, has taken root out there among the discontented, and we knew nothing of it, and now an army of hungry people marches toward Pidruid to worship strange gods." He looked toward Hissune. "There are things you know, Hissune, that we need to learn. In the months of my absence, you'll sit beside Divvis and Stasilaine in the place of judgment—and I believe you'll offer valuable guidance. What do you say, Stasilaine?"

"I think you've chosen wisely."

"And you, Divvis?"

Divvis's face was blazing with barely controlled fury.

"What can I say? The power's yours. You've made your appointment. I must abide by it, must I not?"

He rose stiffly and held forth his hand to Hissune. "My congratulations, prince. You've done very well for yourself in a very short time."

Hissune met Divvis's cold gaze evenly. "I look forward to serving in the council with you, my lord Divvis," said Hissune with great formality. "Your wisdom will be an example for me." And he took Divvis's hand.

Whatever reply Divvis intended to make seemed to choke in his throat. Slowly he withdrew his hand from Hissune's grasp, glared, and stalked from the room.

11

The wind was out of the south, and hot and hard, the kind of wind that the dragon-hunting captains called "the Sending," because it blew up from the barren continent of Suvrael where the King of Dreams had his lair. It was a wind that parched the soul and withered the heart, but Valentine paid no heed to it: his spirit was elsewhere, dreaming of the tasks that lay before him, and these days he stood for hours at a time on the royal deck of the Lady Thiin, looking to the horizon for the first sign of the mainland and giving no thought to the torrid, sharp-edged gusts that whistled about him.

The voyage from the Isle to Zimroel was beginning to seem interminable. Asenhart had spoken of a sluggish sea and contrary winds, of the need to shorten sail and take a more southerly route, and other such problems. Valentine, who was no sailor, could not quarrel with these decisions, but he grew fiercely impatient as the days went by and the western continent grew no closer. More than once they were compelled to change course to avoid sea-dragon herds, for on this side of the Isle the waters were thick with them. Some of the Skandar crewmen claimed that this was the greatest migration in five thousand years. Whether or not that was true, certainly they were abundant, and terrifying: Valentine had seen nothing like this on his last crossing of these waters many years ago, in that ill-fated journey when the giant dragon stove in the hull of Captain Gorzval's Brangalyn.