Shapeshifters, Metamorphs, Piurivars, call them by whatever name you chose: the true natives of Majipoor, those from whom this wondrous world had been stolen by the settlers from the stars, fourteen thousand years before. For eight years, Valentine thought, I've struggled to understand the needs of those people.

And I still know nothing at all.

He turned and said, "When I rose to speak, my mind was on what Hornkast the high spokesman just had said: the Coronal is the world, and the world is the Coronal. And suddenly I became Majipoor. Everything that was happening everywhere in the world was sweeping through my soul."

"You have experienced that before," Tisana said. "In dreams that I have spoken for you: when you said you saw twenty billion golden threads sprouting from the soil, and you held them all in your right hand. And another dream, when you spread your arms wide, and embraced the world, and—"

"This was different," Valentine said. "This time the world was falling apart."

"How so?"

"Literally. Crumbling into fragments. There was nothing left but a sea of darkness—into which I fell—"

"Hornkast spoke the truth," said Tisana quietly. "You are the world, lordship. Dark knowledge is finding its way to you, and it comes through the air from all the world about you. It is a sending, my lord: not of the Lady, nor of the King of Dreams, but of the world entire."

Valentine glanced toward the Vroon. "What do you say to that, Deliamber?"

"I have known Tisana fifty years, I think, and I have never yet heard foolishness from her lips."

"Then there is to be war?"

"I believe the war has already begun," said Deliamber.

2

Hissune would not soon forgive himself for coming late to the banquet. His first official event since being elevated to Lord Valentine's staff, and he hadn't managed to show up on time. That was inexcusable.

Some of it was his sister Ailimoor's fault. All the while he was trying to get into his fine new formal clothes, she kept running in, fussing with him, adjusting his shoulder chain, worrying about the length and cut of his tunic, finding scuff marks on his brilliantly polished boots that would be invisible to anyone's eyes but hers. She was fifteen, a very difficult age for girls— all ages seemed to be difficult for girls, Hissune sometimes thought—and these days she tended to be bossy, opinionated, preoccupied with trivial domestic detail.

So in her eagerness to make him perfect for the Coronal's banquet she helped to make him late. She spent what felt to him like a good twenty minutes simply fiddling with his emblem of office, the little golden starburst epaulet that he was supposed to wear on his left shoulder within the loop of the chain. She moved it endlessly a fraction of an inch this way or that to center it more exactly, until at last she said, "All right.

That'll do. Here, see if you like it."