Indeed she was right. A little effort, and he began to feel once more the old sense that the union of hand and eye could carry him to a place where time had no meaning and all of space became a single infinite point. The Skandars, though they must surely have known that juggling had once been Valentine's profession, were plainly astounded at seeing a Coronal do any such thing, and gaped in undisguised curiosity and awe as Valentine and Carabella tossed a motley galaxy of objects back and forth to one another.

"Hoy!" she cried, and "Hoy!" and "Hoy!" as she led him on to ever more complex feats. They were nothing compared with the tricks she had routinely performed in the old days, for her skill had been great indeed, and they were trivial even in comparison with the level of technique that Valentine, never Carabella's equal as a juggler, once had mastered. But it was fair going, he thought, for someone who had not juggled seriously in close to a decade. Within an hour, rain soaked and sweat soaked though he was, he felt better than he had in months.

Sleet appeared and, watching them, seemed to draw out of his anxiety and gloom; after a while he moved closer, and Carabella tossed a knife and a club and a hatchet to him, and he caught them casually and began to weave them into a lofty playful cascade to which he added three more things that Valentine sent his way. There was perhaps a shade of strain visible on Sleet's face that would not have been there a decade ago—except when he was doing his famous routine of juggling blindfolded, maybe—but in no other way did he betray any lessening of his great skill. "Hoy!" he cried, sending the club and the hatchet back toward Valentine, and remorselessly sending other things Valentine's way before the Coronal had caught the first. Then he and Valentine and Carabella went at it with very great seriousness indeed, as though they were wandering jugglers once more, and were rehearsing for a performance before the royal court.

Sleet's display of virtuosity inspired Carabella to some intricate feats of her own, which led Sleet to call for some even more difficult maneuvers, and before long Valentine was totally out of his depth. All the same he attempted to keep up with them as long as he could, and did a creditable job at it, only dropping an occasional thing—until he found himself bombarded from both sides at once by a laughing Carabella and a cool, intense Sleet: and he found himself suddenly all elbows and no fingers, and allowed everything to go tumbling from his grasp.

"Ah, my lord, that's no way to do it!" boomed a harsh and wonderfully familiar voice."

"Zalzan Kavol?" Valentine cried in amazement and glee.

The huge Skandar came bounding toward him, quickly making the starburst salute and then scooping up all the things that Valentine had dropped; and with a manic delight he began to toss them at Sleet and Carabella in that wild four-armed way of his that could push any human juggler, no matter how skilled, to the limits of his ability.