"And where shall we find those allies, my lord?" Sleet asked.

"Wherever we can," said Valentine with a shrug.

8

Throughout the journey down from Castle Mount through the valley of the Glayge to the Labyrinth, Hissune had seen signs, wherever he looked, of the turmoil that lay upon the land. Although in this gentle and fertile region of Alhanroel the situation had not yet grown as troubled as it was farther west, or in Zimroel, there was nevertheless a visible and virtually tangible tension everywhere: locked gates, frightened eyes, clenched faces. But in the Labyrinth itself, he thought, nothing seemed greatly to have changed, perhaps because the Labyrinth had always been a place of locked gates, frightened eyes, clenched faces.

Though the Labyrinth might not have changed, Hissune had; and the change was evident to him from the moment he entered the Mouth of Waters, that grand and opulent ceremonial gateway traditionally used by the Powers of Majipoor when coming into the city of the Pontifex. Behind him lay the warm hazy afternoon of the Glayge Valley, fragrant breezes, green hills, the joyous throbbing glow of rich sunlight.

Ahead lay the eternal night of the Labyrinth's secretive hermetic coils, the hard glitter of artificial lighting, the strange lifelessness of air that has never known the touch of wind or rain. And as he passed from the one realm to the other, Hissune imagined for just a flickering instant that a massive gate was clanging shut behind him, that some horrific barrier now separated him from all that was beautiful in the world; and he felt a chill of fear.

It surprised him that a mere year or two on Castle Mount could have worked such a transformation in him—that the Labyrinth, which he doubted he had ever loved, but where he had certainly felt at ease, should have become so repellent to him. And it seemed to him that he had not really understood, until this moment, the dread that Lord Valentine felt for the place: but Hissune had had a taste of it now, the merest tincture of it, enough to let him see for the first time what kind of terror it was that invaded the Coronal's soul when he undertook this downward journey.