"What’re you doing?" he asked.

"Looking to see if you’ve been hurt. A blow on the head can take the memory away, you know."

"Is there anything there?"

"No. No, nothing. No marks. No bumps. But that doesn’t mean anything. It could have happened a month or two ago. I’ll look again when the sun has risen."

"I like the feel of your hands touching me, Carabella."

"I like touching you," she said.

He lay quietly against her. The words that had passed between them just now troubled him intensely. Other people, he realized, had rich memories of their childhood and adolescence, and knew the names of their parents and were sure of the place where they had been born, and he had nothing but his overlay of hazy notions, this mist of thin untrustworthy memories covering a well of blankness, yes, and he had known that the blankness was there but had chosen not to peer into it. Now Carabella had forced that upon him. Why, he wondered, was he unlike others? Why were his memories without substance? Had he taken some blow on the head, as she suggested? Or was it just that his mind was dim, that he lacked the capacity to retain the imprints of experience, that he had wandered for years across the face of Majipoor, erasing each yesterday as each new day dawned?

Neither of them slept again that night. Toward morning, quite suddenly, they began to make love again, in silence, in a kind of driven purposeful way quite different from the earlier playful union; and then they rose, still saying nothing, and bathed in the chilly little brook, and dressed and made their way through town to the inn. There were still some bleary-eyed revelers staggering in the streets as the bright eye of the sun rose high over Pidruid.

—10—

AT CARABELLA’S PROMPTING Valentine took Sleet into his confidence, and told him of his dream and of the conversation that followed it. The little white-haired juggler listened thoughtfully, never interrupting, looking increasingly solemn. He said when Valentine had done, "You should seek guidance from a dream-speaker. This is too strong a sending to be ignored."

"Do you think it is a sending, then?"

"Possibly it is," said Sleet.

"From the King?"

Sleet spread his hands and contemplated his fingertips. "It could be. You will have to wait and pay close heed. The King never sends simple messages."

"It could be from the Lady just as well," Carabella offered. "The violence of it shouldn’t deceive us. The Lady sends violent dreams when the need exists."

"And some dreams," said Sleet with a smile, "come neither from the Lady nor from the King, but up out of the depths of our own foggy minds. Who can tell unaided? Valentine, see a dream-speaker."

"Would a dream-speaker help me find my memories, then?"

"A dream-speaker or a sorcerer, yes. If dreams are no guidance to your past, nothing will be."

"Besides," said Carabella, "a dream so strong should not go unexamined. There is your responsibility to be considered. If a dream commands an action, and you choose not to pursue that action—" She shrugged. "Your soul will answer for it, and swiftly. Find a speaker, Valentine."

"I had hoped," Valentine said to Sleet, "that you would have some wisdom in these things."

"I am a juggler. Find a speaker."

"Can you recommend one in Pidruid?"

"We will be leaving Pidruid shortly. Wait until we are a few days’ journey from the city. You will have richer dreams to give the speaker by then."

"I wonder if this is a sending," said Valentine. "And from the King? What business would the King of Dreams have with a wanderer like me? I hardly think it possible. With twenty billion souls on Majipoor, how could the King find time to deal with any but the most important?"

"In Suvrael," said Sleet, "at the palace of the King of Dreams, are great machines that scan this entire world, and send messages into the minds of millions of people every night. Who knows how those millions are chosen? One thing they tell us when we are children, and I know it has truth: at least once before we leave this world, we will feel the touch of the King of Dreams against our spirit, each and all of us. I know that I have."

"You?"

"More than once." Sleet touched his lank, coarse white hair. "Do you think I was born white-haired? One night I lay in a hammock in the jungles outside Narabal, no juggler then, and the King came to me as I slept and placed commands upon my soul, and when I awakened my hair was like this. I was twenty-three years old."

"Commands?" Valentine blurted. "What commands?"

"Commands that turn a man’s hair from black to white between darkness and dawn," Sleet said. Obviously he wished to say no more. He got to his feet and glanced at the morning sky as though checking the elevation of the sun. "I think we’ve had enough talk for now, friend. There still are crowns to earn at the festival. Would you learn a few new tricks before Zalzan Kavol sends us out to work?"

Valentine nodded. Sleet fetched balls and clubs; they went out into the courtyard.

"Watch," said Sleet, and he stood close behind Carabella. She held two balls in her right hand, he one in his left, and they put their other arms around one another. "This is half-juggling," Sleet said. "A simple thing even for beginners, but it looks extremely challenging." Carabella threw; Sleet threw and caught; at once they were in the rhythm of interchange, easily passing the balls back and forth, one entity with four legs and two minds and two juggling arms. Indeed it did look taxing, Valentine thought. Sleet called out, "Feed the clubs to us now!"

As Valentine delivered each club with a quick sharp toss to Carabella’s right hand, she worked it into the sequence, one, two, three, until balls and clubs flew from her to Sleet, from Sleet to her, in a dizzying cascade. Valentine knew from his own private trials how difficult it was to deal with that many objects. Five balls would be in his compass in another few weeks, he hoped; four clubs might be feasible soon too; but to handle three of each at the same time, and coordinate this half-juggling as well, was a feat that amazed him with admiration. And some jealousy too, he realized oddly, for here was Sleet with his body tight up against Carabella’s, forming a single organism with her, and only a few hours ago she had lain with him by the side of that brook in the Pidruid park.

"Try it," Sleet said.

He stepped aside and Carabella put herself in front of Valentine, arm and arm. They worked with three balls only. At first Valentine had problems judging the height and force of his throws, and sometimes sent the ball popping beyond Carabella’s reach, but in ten minutes he had the knack of it and in fifteen they were working together as smoothly as if they had been doing the act for years. Sleet encouraged him with lively applause.

One of the Skandars appeared, not Zalzan Kavol but his brother Erfon, who even as Skandars went was dour and chill. "Are you ready?" he asked gruffly.

The troupe performed that afternoon in the private park of one of the powerful merchants of Pidruid, who was giving an entertainment for a provincial duke. Carabella and Valentine performed their new half-juggling routine, the Skandars did something flamboyant with dishes and crystal goblets and cooking-pans, and, as a climax, Sleet was led forth to juggle blindfolded.

"Is this possible?" Valentine asked, awed.

"Watch!" said Carabella.

Valentine watched, but few others did, for this was Sunday after the great Starday frenzy, and the lordlings who had ordered this performance were a weary, jaded bunch, half asleep, bored with the skills of the musicians and acrobats and jugglers they had hired. Sleet stepped forward carrying three clubs and planted himself in a firm, confident way. standing a moment with his head cocked as though listening to the wind that blows between the worlds, and then, catching his breath sharply, he began to throw.