It would have been senseless to impose any sort of punishment on such a ruined creature. Valentine, upon resuming his throne, had pardoned Dominin and had had him handed over to emissaries of his family, so that he might be returned to Suvrael. There he slowly mended. Some years afterward he had begged leave to come to the Castle to ask the Coronal's forgiveness. "You have my pardon already," Valentine had replied; but Dominin came anyway, and knelt most humbly and sincerely before him on audience day in the Confalume throne-room, and cleared the burden of treason from his soul.

Now, thought Valentine, the circumstances are greatly altered once again: for this is Dominin's own domain, and I am little more than a fugitive in it.

Dominin said, "My royal brother Minax has sent me, my lord, to convey you to Palace Barjazid, where you are to be our guest. Will you ride with me in the lead floater?"

The palace lay well outside Tolaghai, in a cruel and doleful valley. Valentine had seen it now and then in dreams: an ominous, menacing structure of dark stone, topped with a fantastic array of sharp-tipped towers and angular parapets. Clearly it had been designed to intimidate the eye and inspire dread.

"How hideous!" Carabella whispered, as they neared it.

"Wait," said Valentine. "Only wait!"

They passed within the great gloomy portcullis and entered a place that on the inside displayed no kinship to its forbidding and repellent exterior. Airy courtyards resounded to the gentle music of splashing fountains, and cool, fragrant breezes replaced the bitter heat of the outer world. As Valentine dismounted from the floater with Carabella on his arm, he saw servitors waiting with iced wines and sherbets, and heard musicians strumming on delicate instruments. In the midst of all waited two figures clad in loose white robes, one soft-faced and pale and round-bellied, the other lean, hawk-faced, tanned almost black by the desert sun. About the forehead of the hawk-faced one rested the dazzling golden diadem that marked him as a Power of Majipoor. Valentine scarcely needed to be told that this was Minax Barjazid, now King of Dreams in his late father's place. The other and softer man was his brother Cristoph, in all likelihood.

Both made the starburst gesture, and Minax came forward to offer Valentine a bowl of chilled blue wine with his own hands.

"My lord," he said, "these are stark times in which you come calling on us. But we greet you in all joy, no matter how somber the moment seems. We are mightily in your debt, my lord. All that is ours is yours. And all that we command is at your service." It was obviously a speech he had prepared with care, and the resonance and smoothness of his delivery showed careful rehearsal. But then the King of Dreams leaned forward until his hard and glittering eyes were only inches from the Coronal's own, and in a different voice, deeper, more private, he said, "You may have refuge here as long as you wish."