"You deceive yourself, perhaps, but not me. There's no joy in it for you, not now. At the beginning you drank in everything as if you couldn't possibly get enough of it—you wanted to go everywhere, behold everything, taste all that is to be tasted—but not anymore. I see it in your eyes, I see it on your face. You move about like a sleepwalker. Do you deny it?"

"I do grow weary, yes. I admit that."

"Then abandon the processional! Return to the Mount, which you love, where you always have been truly happy!"

"I am the Coronal. The Coronal has a sacred duty to present himself to the people he governs. I owe them that."

"And what do you owe to yourself, then?"

He shrugged. "I beg you, sweet lady! Even if I grow bored, and I do—I won't deny it, I hear speeches in my sleep now, I see endless parades of jugglers and acrobats—nevertheless, no one has ever died of boredom. The processional is my obligation. I must continue."

"At least cancel the Zimroel part of it, then. One continent is more than enough. It'll take you months simply to return to Castle Mount from here, if you stop at every major city along the way. And then Zimroel? Piliplok, Ni-moya, Til-omon, Narabal, Pidruid—it'll take years, Valentine!"

He shook his head slowly. "I have an obligation to all the people, not only the ones who live in Alhanroel, Carabella."

Taking his hand, she said, "That much I understand. But you may be demanding too much of yourself. I ask you again: consider eliminating Zimroel from the tour. Will you do that? Will you at least give it some thought?"

"I'd return to Castle Mount this very evening, if I could. But I must go on. I must."

"Tonight at the temple you hope to speak in dreams with your mother the Lady, is that not so?"

"Yes," he said. "But—"

"Promise me this, then. If you reach her mind with yours, ask her if you should go to Zimroel. Let her advice guide you in this, as it has so well in so many other things. Will you?"

"Carabella—"

"Will you ask her? Only ask!"

"Very well," he said. "I will ask. That much do I promise."

She looked at him mischievously. "Do I seem a shrewish wife, Valentine? Chivvying and pressing you this way? I do this out of love, you know."

"That I know," said he, and drew her close and held her.

They said no more, for it was time then to make ready for the journey up Alaisor Heights to the temple of the Lady. Twilight was descending as they set out up the narrow winding road, and the lights of Alaisor sparkled behind them like millions of bright gems scattered carelessly over the plain.

The hierarch Ambargarde, a tall, regal-looking woman with keen eyes and lustrous white hair, waited at the gateway of the temple to receive the Coronal. While awed acolytes looked on gaping, she offered him a brief and warm welcome—he was, she said, the first Coronal to visit the temple since Lord Tyeveras had come, on his second processional—and led him through the lovely grounds until the temple itself came into view: a long building a single story in height, built of white stone, unornamented, even stark, situated in a spacious and open garden of great simplicity and beauty. Its western face curved in a crescent arc along the edge of the cliff, looking outward to the sea; and, on its inner side, wings set apart from one another at narrow angles radiated toward the east.