He wanted to stretch forth his arms to them from the prow of the riverboat, to enfold them all in a warm embrace, to cry out, "Fear nothing! The Divine is with us! All will be well!"

But was it true?

No one knows the will of the Divine, Hissune thought. But, lacking that knowledge, we must shape our destinies according to our sense of what is fitting. Like sculptors we carve our lives out of the raw stone of the future, hour by hour by hour, following whatever design it is that we hold in our minds; and if the design is sound and our carving is done well, the result will seem pleasing when the last chisel-stroke is made. But if our design is slapdash and our carving is hasty, why, the proportions will be inelegant and the balance untrue. And if the work thus be faulty, can we say it was the will of the Divine that it is so? Or, rather, only that our plan was poorly conceived?

My plan, he told himself, must not be poorly conceived.

And then all will be well; and then it will be said that the Divine was with us.

Throughout the swift river-journey northward he shaped and reshaped it, as he traveled past Jerrik and Ghiseldorn and Sattinor where the upper Glayge flowed from the foothills of Castle Mount. By the time he reached Amblemorn, southwesternmost of the Fifty Cities of the Mount, the design of what had to be done was clear and strong in his mind.

Here it was impossible to continue farther by the river, for Amblemorn was where the Glayge was born out of the host of tributaries that came tumbling down out of the Mount, and none of those lesser rivers was navigable. By floater, then, he proceeded up the flank of the Mount, through the ring of Slope Cities and that of Free Cities and that of Guardian Cities, past Morvole, where Elidath was born, and Normork of the great wall and the great gate, past Huyn, where the leaves of all the trees were scarlet or crimson or ruby or vermilion, past Greel of the crystal palisade and Sigla Higher of the five vertical lakes, and onward still, to the Inner Cities, Banglecode and Bombifale and Peritole and the rest, and on, on, the party of floaters racing up the enormous mountain.

"It is more than I can believe," said Elsinome, who was making this journey at her son's side. Never had she ventured from the Labyrinth at all, and to begin her travels in the world by the ascent of Castle Mount was no small assignment. Her eyes were as wide as a small child's, Hissune observed with pleasure, and there were days when she seemed so surfeited with miracles that she could scarcely speak.

"Wait," he said. "You have seen nothing."

Through Peritole Pass to Bombifale Plain, where the decisive battle of the war of restoration had been fought, and past the wondrous spires of Bombifale itself, and up another level to the zone of the High Cities—the mountain road of gleaming red flagstone led from Bombifale to High Morpin, then through fields of dazzling flowers along the Grand Calintane Highway, and up and up until Lord Valentine's Castle loomed overwhelmingly at the summit of all, sending its tentacles of brick and masonry wandering in a thousand directions over the crags and peaks.