It seemed wondrously familiar to be riding into a great city down boulevards lined with cheering throngs. Valentine remembered, though it seemed like the memory of a dream, the beginnings of his abortive grand processional, when in the springtime of his reign he had gone by river to Alaisor on the western coast, and across to the Isle to kneel beside his mother at Inner Temple, and then on the great sea-journey westward to Zimroel, and crowds hailing him in Piliplok and Velathys and Narabal, down there in the lush leafy tropics. Those parades, those banquets, the excitement, the splendor, and then on to Til-omon, once more the crowds, once more the cries, "Valentine! Lord Valentine!" He remembered too in Til-omon a surprise, that Dominin Barjazid the son of the King of Dreams had come up from Suvrael to greet him and honor him in a feast, for the Barjazids customarily stayed down there in their sunswept kingdom, dwelling apart from humanity, tending their dream-machines, sending forth their nightly messages to instruct and command and chastise. And the banquet at Til-omon, and the flask of wine from the hand of Barjazid, and the next thing Valentine knew he was staring down at the city of Pidruid from a limestone ridge, with muddled memories in his mind of having grown up in eastern Zimroel and somehow having wandered across the entire continent to its western shore. Now, so many months later, they were shouting his name again in the streets of a mighty city, after the long and strange interruption.

In the royal suite at the mayoral palace Valentine summoned Mayor Haligorn, who still had a stunned and dazed look about him, and said, "I’ll need from you a flotilla of riverboats to take me up the Glayge to its rising. The costs will be met by the imperial treasury after the restoration."

"Yes, my lord."

"And how many troops can you supply me?"

"Troops?"

"Troops, militia, warriors, bearers of arms. Do you follow my meaning, Mayor Haligorn?"

The mayor showed dismay. "We of Pendiwane are not known for our skills in warfare, my lord."

Valentine smiled. "We are not known for our skills in warfare anywhere on Majipoor, the Divine be thanked. Nevertheless, peaceful though we are, we fight when we are threatened. The usurper threatens us all. Haven’t you felt the sting of strange new taxes and unfamiliar decrees in this year just past?"

"Of course, but—"

"But what?" Valentine asked sharply.

"We assumed it was only a new Coronal, feeling his power."

"And you would blandly let yourselves be oppressed by the one whose role it is to serve you?"

"My lord—"

"Never mind. You have as much to gain as I in putting things to rights, do you see? Give me an army, Mayor Haligorn, and for thousands of years the bravery of the people of Pendiwane will be sung in our ballads."

"I am responsible for the lives of my people, my lord. I would not have them slain or—"

"I am responsible for the lives of your people, and twenty billion others besides," said Valentine briskly. "And if five drops of anyone’s blood are shed as I move toward Castle Mount, that will be six drops too many to suit me. But without an army I’m too vulnerable. With an army I become a royal presence, an imperial force moving toward a reckoning with the enemy. Do you understand, Haligorn? Call your people together, tell them what must be done, call for volunteers."

"Yes, my lord," said Haligorn, trembling.

"And see to it that the volunteers are willing to volunteer!"

"It will be done, my lord," the mayor murmured.

Assembling the army went faster than Valentine expected — a matter of days for choosing, equipping, and provisioning. Haligorn was cooperative indeed — as though he were eager to see Valentine rapidly on his way to some other region.

The citizen-militia that had been scraped together to defend Pendiwane against an invading pretender now became the nucleus of the hastily constructed loyalist army — some twenty thousand men and women. A city of thirteen million might well have produced a larger force; but Valentine had no wish to disrupt Pendiwane to any greater extent. Nor had he forgotten his own axiom about juggling with clubs rather than with dwikka-trunks. Twenty thousand troops provided him with something that looked decently military, and it was his strategy, as it had been for a long while, to gain his purpose by gradual accumulation of support. Even the colossal Zimr, he reasoned, begins as mere trickles and rivulets somewhere in the northern mountains.

They set forth on the Glayge on a day that was rainy before dawn, gloriously bright and sunny afterward. Every riverboat for fifty miles on either side of Pendiwane had been commandeered for army transport. Serenely the great flotilla moved northward, the green-and-gold banners of the Coronal waving in the breeze.

Valentine stood near the prow of his flagship. Carabella was beside him, and Deliamber, and Admiral Asenhart of the Isle. The rain-washed air smelled sweet and clean: the good fresh air of Alhanroel, blowing toward him from Castle Mount. It was a fine feeling to be on his way home at last.

These riverboats of eastern Alhanroel were more streamlined, less fancifully baroque, than the ones Valentine had known on the Zimr. They were big, simple vessels, high of draft and narrow of beam, with powerful engines designed to drive them against the strong flow of the Glayge.

"The river is swift against us," said Asenhart.

"As well it should be," Valentine said. He pointed toward some invisible summit far to the north and high in the sky. "It rises on the lower slopes of the Mount. In its few thousand miles it drops almost ten, and all the weight of that water comes rushing against us as we go toward the source."

The Hjort seaman smiled. "It makes ocean sailing seem like child’s play, to think of coping with such a force. Rivers always were strange to me — so narrow, so quick. Give me the open sea, dragons and all, and I’m happy!"

But the Glayge, though swift, was tame. Long ago it had been a thing of rapids and waterfalls, ferocious and all but innavigable for hundreds of miles. Fourteen thousand years of human settlement on Majipoor had changed all that. By dams, locks, bypass canals, and other devices, the Glayge, like all the Six Rivers that descended from the Mount, had been made to serve the needs of its masters through nearly all its course. Only in the lower stretches, where the flatness of the surrounding valley made flood-control an ongoing challenge, was there any difficulty, and that merely during seasons of heavy rain.

And the provinces along the Glayge were tame as well: lush green farming country, interrupted by great urban centers. Valentine stared into the distance, narrowing his eyes against the brightness of the morning light and searching for the gray bulk of Castle Mount somewhere ahead; but, immense as it was, not even the Mount could be seen from two thousand miles away.

The first important city upriver from Pendiwane was Makroprosopos, famed for its weavers and artists. As Valentine’s ship approached, he saw that the waterfront of Makroprosopos was bedecked with mammoth Coronal-ensigns, probably hastily woven, and even more were still being hung.

Sleet said thoughtfully, "Do those flags mean defiant expression of loyalty to the dark Coronal, I wonder, or capitulation to your claim?"

"Surely they pay homage to you, my lord," Carabella said. "They know you’re advancing up the river — therefore they put out flags to welcome you!"

Valentine shook his head. "I think these folk are merely being cautious. If things go badly for me on Castle Mount, they can always claim that those were ensigns of loyalty to the other. And if he is the one who falls, they can say they were second only to Pendiwane in recognizing me. I think we ought not to allow them the luxury of such ambiguities. Asenhart?"