"Not yet an initiate," Hissune tried to tell him, but the Hjort had already swung grandly about and was on his way down the center aisle, not looking back. With numb-legged strides Hissune followed him.

He felt impossibly conspicuous. There must have been five thousand people in the room, seated at round tables that held a dozen or so each, and he imagined that every eye was fastened on him. To his horror, he was no more than twenty paces into the room when he heard laughter beginning to rise, softly at first, then more heartily, and then waves of mirth that rolled from one side of the room to the other, crashing against him with stunning impact. He had never before heard such a vast roaring noise: it was the way he imagined the sea to sound as it flailed some wild northern coast.

The Hjort marched on and on, for what seemed like a mile and a half, and Hissune grimly marched on behind him through that ocean of merriment, wishing he were half an inch high. But after a while he realized that these people were laughing not at him but at a pack of dwarfish acrobats who were attempting with deliberate clownishness to form a human pyramid, and he grew less uneasy. Then the high dais came into view, and there was Lord Valentine himself beckoning to him, smiling, indicating the empty seat close by his side. Hissune thought he would weep from sheer relief. Everything was going to be all right after all.

"Your lordship!" Vinorkis boomed. "The Initiate Hissune!"

Hissune sank wearily and gratefully into his seat, just as an enormous round of applause for the acrobats, who were done with their act, resounded in the hall. A steward handed him a brimming bowl of some glistening golden wine, and as he put it to his lips, others around the table lifted their own bowls in a salute of welcome. Yesterday morning, during the brief and astonishing conversation with Lord Valentine in which the Coronal had invited him to join his staff on Castle Mount, Hissune had seen a few of these people at a distance, but there had been no time for introductions. Now they were actually giving him greeting—him!—and introducing themselves. But they needed no introduction, for these were the heroes of Lord Valentine's glorious war of restoration, and everyone knew who they were.

That huge warrior-woman sitting beside him was surely Lisamon Hultin, the Coronal's personal bodyguard, who, so the story went, once had cut Lord Valentine free of the belly of a sea dragon after he had been swallowed. And the amazingly pale-skinned little man with the white hair and the scarred face was, Hissune knew, the famous Sleet, juggling tutor to Lord Valentine in the days of exile; and the keen-eyed, heavy-browed man was the master archer Tunigorn of Castle Mount; and the small many-tentacled Vroon had to be the wizard Deliamber; and that man hardly older than Hissune himself, with the freckled face, was very likely the onetime herdboy Shanamir; and that slender, dignified Hjort must be Grand Admiral Asenhart—yes, these were the famous ones, and Hissune, who once had thought himself immune to any sort of awe, found himself very much awed indeed to be of their company now.