Somehow."

7

For this, Valentine thought, he would need the circlet of the Lady as well as the tooth of Maazmoorn.

There must be no failures of transmission, no distortions of the message: he would make use of every capacity at his command.

"Stand close beside me," he said to Carabella. And to Deliamber, to Tisana, to Sleet, he said the same thing. "Surround me. When I reach toward you, take hold of my hand. Say nothing: only take hold."

The day was bright and clear. The morning air was crisp, fresh, sweet as alabandina nectar. But in Piurifayne, far to the east, night was already descending.

He donned the circlet. He grasped the tooth of the water-king. He drew the fresh sweet air deep into his lungs, until he was all but dizzied with it.

— Maazmoorn?

The summons leaped from Valentine with such power that those about him must have felt a backlash from it: Sleet flinched, Carabella put her hands to her ears, Deliamber's tentacles writhed in a sudden flurry.

— Maazmoorn? Maazmoorn?

The sound of bells. The slow heavy turnings of a giant body lying at rest in cold northern waters. The faint rustlings of great black wings.

— I hear, Valentine-brother.

— Help me, Maazmoorn.

—Help? How shall I help?

— Let me ride on your spirit across the world.

— Then come upon me, king-brother, Valentine-brother.

It was wondrously easy. He felt himself grow light, and glided up, and floated, and soared, and flew.

Below him lay the great curving arc of the planet, sweeping off eastward into night. The water-king carried him effortlessly, serenely, as a giant might carry a kitten in the palm of his hand. Onward, onward over the world, which was altogether open to him as he coursed above it. He felt that he and the planet were one, that he embodied in himself the twenty billion people of Majipoor, humans and Skandars and Hjorts and Metamorphs and all the rest, moving within him like the corpuscles of his blood. He was everywhere at once; he was all the sorrow in the world, and all the joy, and all the yearning, and all the need. He was everything. He was a boiling universe of contradictions and conflicts. He felt the heat of the desert and the warm rain of the tropics and the chill of the high peaks. He laughed and wept and died and made love and ate and drank and danced and fought and rode wildly through unknown hills and toiled in the fields and cut a path through thick vine-webbed jungles. In the oceans of his soul vast sea dragons breached the surface and let forth monstrous bleating roars and dived again, to the uttermost depths. He looked down and saw the broken places of the world, the wounded and shattered places where the land had risen and crashed against itself, and he saw how it all could be healed, how it could be made whole and serene again. For everything tended to return to serenity. Everything enfolded itself into That Which Is. Everything was part of a vast seamless harmony.