But in that great harmony he felt a single dissonance.

It screeched and yawped and shrieked and screamed. It slashed across the fabric of the world like a knife, leaving behind a track of blood. It ripped apart the wholeness.

Even that dissonance, Valentine knew, was an aspect of That Which Is. Yet it was—far across the world, roiling and churning and roaring in its madness—the one aspect of That Which Is that would not itself accept That Which Is. It was a force that cried a mighty no! to all else. It rose up against those who would restore the harmony, who would repair the fabric, who would make whole the wholeness.

— Faraataa?

— Who are you?

— I am Valentine the Pontifex.

— Valentine the fool. Valentine the child.

— No, Faraataa. Valentine the Pontifex.

— That means nothing to me. I am the King That Is!

Valentine laughed, and his laughter showered across the world like a rainfall of drops of golden honey.

Soaring on the wings of the great dragon-king, he rose almost to the edge of the sky, where he could look across the darkness and see the tip of Castle Mount piercing the heavens on the far side of the world, and the Great Sea beyond it. And he looked down into the jungle of Piurifayne, and laughed again, and watched the furious Faraataa writhing and struggling beneath the torrent of that laughter.

— Faraataa?

— What do you want?

— You may not kill her, Faraataa.

— Who are you to tell me what I may not do?

— I am Majipoor.

— You are the fool Valentine. And I am the King That Is!

— No, Faraataa.

—No?

— I see the old tale glistening in your mind. The Prince To Come, the King That Is: how can you lay such a claim for yourself? You are not that Prince. You can never be that King.

— You clutter my mind with your nonsense. Leave me or I will drive you out.

Valentine felt the thrust, the push. He warded it off.

— The Prince To Come is a being absolutely without hatred. Can you deny that, Faraataa? It is part of your own people's legend. He is without the hunger for vengeance. He is without the lust for destruction. You are nothing except hatred and vengeance and destruction, Faraataa. If those things were emptied from you, you would be a shell, a husk.

—Fool.

— Your claim is a false one.

— Fool.

— Let me take the anger and the hatred from you, Faraataa, if you would be the king you claim you are.

— You talk a fool's foolishness.

— Come, Faraataa. Release the Danipiur. Give your soul over to me for healing.

— The Danipiur will die within the hour.

— No, Faraataa.

—Look!

The interwoven crowns of the jungle trees parted, and Valentine beheld New Velalisier by the gleam of torchlight. The temples of interwoven logs, the banners, the altar, the pyre already blazing. The Metamorph woman, silent, dignified, chained to the block of stone. The faces surrounding her, blank, alien. The night, the trees, the sounds, the smells. The music. The chanting.