"Tell the rest of it," said Ermanar.

Nascimonte shrugged. "That’s all I know, mate."

"The ghosts," Ermanar said. "Those who haunt here. Do you know how long they’re fated to wander the ruins? Until Metamorphs rule Majipoor again. Until the planet is returned to them, and the last of us are made into slaves. And then Velalisier will be rebuilt on the old site, grander ever than it was before, and it’ll be reconsecrated as the Shapeshifter capital, and the spirits of the dead finally will be released from the stones that hold them trapped here."

"They’ll cling to the stones a long time, then," said Sleet. "Twenty billion of us and just a handful of them, living in the jungles — what kind of a threat is that?"

Ermanar said, "They’ve waited eight thousand years already, since Lord Stiamot broke their power. They’ll wait eight thousand more, if they have to. But they dream of Velalisier reborn, and they won’t give up that dream. Sometimes in sleep I’ve listened to them, planning for the day when the towers of Velalisier rise again, and it frightens me. That’s why I don’t like to be here. I feel them watching over the place — I can feel their hatred all around us, like something in the air, something invisible but real—"

"So this city is accursed by them and holy to them both at once," Carabella said. "Small wonder we have trouble comprehending how their minds work!"

Valentine wandered off down the path. The city awed him. He tried to imagine it as it had been, a kind of prehistoric Ni-moya, a place of majesty and opulence. And now? Lizards with beady clicking eyes scuttered from rock to rock. Weeds grew thick in the grand ceremonial boulevards. Twenty thousand years! What would Ni-moya look like in twenty thousand years? Or Pidruid, or Piliplok, or the fifty great cities on the slopes of Castle Mount? Were they building here on Majipoor a civilization that would endure forever, as the civilization of the old mother-world Earth was said to endure? Or, he wondered, would wide-eyed tourists someday prowl the shattered ruins of the Castle and the Labyrinth and the Isle, trying to guess what significance they had had to the ancients? We have done well enough so far, Valentine told himself, thinking back over the thousands of years of peace and stability. But now dissonances were breaking through; the ordered pattern of things had been disrupted; there was no telling what might befall. The Metamorphs, the defeated and evicted Metamorphs whose misfortune it had been to possess a world desired by other and stronger folk, might yet have the last laugh.

Suddenly he halted. What was that sound ahead? A footfall? And a flicker of shadow against the rocks? Valentine peered tensely into the darkness before him. An animal, he thought. Something nocturnal slithering around in search of a meal. Ghosts don’t have shadows, do they? Do they? There are no ghosts here, Valentine thought. There are no ghosts here, Valentine thought. There are no ghosts anywhere.

But all the same—

Cautiously he edged forward a few steps. Too dark here, too many avenues of tumbledown structures leading off to every side. He had laughed at Ermanar; but Ermanar’s fears had somehow insinuated themselves into his imagination. He had fantasies of austere mysterious Metamorphs gliding between the fallen buildings just beyond his vision — phantoms half as old as time — forms without bodies, shapes without substance—

And then footsteps, unmistakable footsteps, behind him—

Valentine whirled. Ermanar was trotting after him, that was all.

"Wait, my lord!"

Valentine allowed him to catch up. He forced himself to relax, though his fingers, strangely, were trembling. He put his hands behind his back.

"You ought not go off by yourself," Ermanar said. "I know you make light of the dangers I imagine here, but those dangers might yet exist. You owe it to us all to take more care of your safety, my lord."

The others rejoined him, and they continued on, slowly and in silence, through the moonlit ruins. Valentine said nothing of what he had thought he had seen and heard. Surely it had been only some animal. And shortly animals appeared: some sort of small apes, perhaps akin to forest-brethren, that nested in the fallen buildings and several times caused startlement as they went scrambling over the stones. And nocturnal mammals of a lower kind, mintuns or droles, darted swiftly through the shadows. But did apes and droles, Valentine wondered, make sounds like footfalls?

For more than an hour the eight moved deeper into the ruins. Valentine stared warily into the recesses and caverns, studying the pools of blackness with care.

As they passed through the fragments of a collapsed basilica, Sleet, who had gone off a short way by himself, jogged back in distress to tell Valentine, "I heard something strange to one side, in there."

"A ghost, Sleet?"

"It might be, for all I know. Or simply a bandit."

"Or a rock-monkey," Valentine said lightly. "I’ve heard all kinds of noises."

"My lord—"

"Are you catching Ermanar’s terrors now?"

"I think we have wandered here long enough, my lord," said Sleet in a low, taut voice.

Valentine shook his head. "We’ll keep close watch on dark corners. But there’s more to see here."

"I wish we would turn back now, my lord."

"Courage, Sleet."

The juggler shrugged and turned away. Valentine peered into the darkness. He did not underestimate the acuteness of Sleet’s hearing, he who juggled blindfolded by sheer sound alone. But to flee this place of marvels because they heard odd rustlings and footsteps in the distance — no, not so soon, not so hastily.

Yet, without communicating his uneasiness to the others, he moved still more cautiously. Ermanar’s ghosts might not exist, yet it was folly to be too rash in this strange city.

And as they were exploring one of the most ornate of the buildings in the central area of palaces and temples, Zalzan Kavol, who was leading the way, stopped short abruptly when a slab of rock, dislodged from above, came clattering down practically at his feet. He cursed and growled, "Those stinking apes—"

"No, not apes, I think," said Deliamber quietly. "There’s something bigger up there."

Ermanar flashed a light toward the overhanging ledge of an adjoining structure. For an instant a silhouette that might have been human was in view; then it vanished. Without hesitating Lisamon Hultin began to run to the far side of the building, followed by Zalzan Kavol, who brandished his energy-thrower. Sleet and Carabella went the other way. Valentine would have gone with them, but Ermanar caught him by the arm and held him with surprising strength, saying apologetically, "I may not permit you to place yourself in risk, my lord, when we have no idea—"

"Halt!" came the mighty booming voice of Lisamon Hultin.

There was the sound of a scuffle in the distance, and then that of someone clambering over the mounds of fallen masonry in no very ghostlike way. Valentine longed to know what was happening, but Ermanar was right: to go darting off after an unknown enemy in the darkness of an unfamiliar place was a privilege denied to the Coronal of Majipoor.

He heard grunts and cries, and a high-pitched sound of pain. Moments later Lisamon Hultin reappeared, dragging a figure who wore the starburst emblem of the Coronal on his shoulder. She had her arm locked about his chest and his feet were dangling six inches off the ground.

"Spies," she said. "Skulking around up there, keeping watch on us. There were two of them, I think."

"Where’s the other?" Valentine asked.

"Might have gotten away," said the giantess. "Zalzan Kavol went after him." She dumped her prisoner down before Valentine, and held him to the ground with a foot pressed against his middle.

"Let him up," Valentine said.