"I think not. And I think your negotiations with the Coronal will lead you nowhere. If he grants such concessions as you mean to ask, his own princes and dukes will overthrow him and replace him with a more ruthless man, and then where will we be? No, Danipiur, I must continue my war until the Unchanging Ones have vanished entirely from our world. Anything short of that means our continued enslavement."

"I forbid it."

"Forbid?"

"I am the Danipiur!"

"So you are. But what is that? I am the King That Is, of whom the prophecies spoke. How can you forbid me anything? The Unchanging Ones themselves tremble before me. I will destroy them, Danipiur.

And if you oppose me, I will destroy you as well." He rose, and with a sweep of his hand he knocked aside his untouched wine-bowl, spilling its contents across the table. At the door he paused and looked back, and briefly allowed his shape to flicker into the form known as the River, a gesture of defiance and contempt.

Then he resumed his own form. "The war will continue," he said.

"For the time being I permit you to retain your office, but I warn you to make no treasonous approaches to the enemy. As for the holy Lord Valentine, his life is forfeit to me. His blood will serve to cleanse the Tables of the Gods on the day of the rededication of Velalisier. Be wary, Danipiur. Or I will use yours for the same purpose."

6

"The Coronal Lord Valentine is with his mother the Lady at Inner Temple," said the hierarch Talinot Esulde. "He asks you to rest here this night at the royal lodging-place in Numinor, Prince Hissune, and to begin your journey toward him in the morning."

"As the Coronal wishes," said Hissune.

He stared past the hierarch at the vast white wall of First Cliff rising above Numinor. It was dazzling in its brightness, almost painfully so, nearly as brilliant as the sun itself. When the Isle first had come into view some days before on the voyage from Alhanroel, he had found himself shading his eyes against that powerful white glare and wanting to look away altogether, and Elsinome, standing beside him, had turned in terror from it, crying, "I have never seen anything so bright! Will it blind us to look at it?" But now, at close range, the white stone was less frightening: its light seemed pure, soothing, the light of a moon rather than of a sun.

A cool sweet breeze blew from the sea, the same breeze that had carried him so swiftly—but not nearly swiftly enough to still the impatience that day after day mounted and surged in him—from Alaisor to the Isle. That impatience still rode him now that he had arrived in the Lady's domain. But yet he knew he must be patient, and adapt himself to the unhurried rhythms of the Isle and its serene mistress, or he might never be able to accomplish the things he had come here to accomplish.