The stage was colossal, and many things were happening on it at once. Vroon magicians were doing a routine involving floating colored lights and bursts of green and red smoke; an animal-trainer just beyond had a dozen fat serpents standing on their tails; a dazzling group of dancers with grotesquely attenuated bodies sprayed in many-faceted silver glowstuff did austere leaps and carries; several small orchestras in widely separated regions played the tinny and tootling woodwind music beloved of the Ghayrogs; there was a one-finger acrobat, a high-wire woman, a levitator, a trio of glassblowers engaged in fashioning a cage for themselves, an eel-eater, and a platoon of berserk clowns, along with much more beyond Valentine’s range of vision. The audience, slouching and lounging out there in the half-darkness, had an easy time watching all this, for, Valentine realized, the giant stage was in gentle motion, turning slowly on hidden bearings, and in the course of an hour or two would make a complete circuit, presenting each group of performers in turn to every part of the auditorium. "It all floats on a pool of quicksilver," Sleet whispered. "You could buy three provinces with the value of the metal."

With so much competition for the eyes of the onlookers, the jugglers had brought forth some of their finest effects, which meant that the novice Valentine was largely excluded, left to toss clubs to himself and occasionally to feed knives or torches to the others. Carabella was dancing atop a silver globe two feet in diameter that rolled in irregular circles as she moved: she juggled five spheres that glowed with brilliant green light. Sleet had mounted stilts, and rose even taller than the Skandars, a tiny figure far above everyone, coolly flipping from hand to hand three huge red-and-black-speckled eggs of the moleeka-hen, that he had bought at market that evening. If he dropped an egg from so great a height, the splash would be conspicuous and the humiliation enormous, but never since Valentine had known him had Sleet dropped anything, and he dropped no eggs tonight. As for the six Skandars, they had arranged themselves in a rigid star-pattern, standing with their backs to one another, and were juggling flaming torches. At carefully coordinated moments each would hurl a torch backward over his outer shoulder to his brother at the opposite side of the star. The interchanges were made with wondrous precision, the trajectories of the flying torches were flawlessly timed to create splendid crisscrossing patterns of light, and not a hair on any Skandar’s hide was scorched as they casually snatched from the air the firebrands that came hurtling past them from their unseen partners.

Round and round the stage they went, performing in stints of half an hour at a stretch, with five minutes to relax in the central well just below the stage, where hundreds of other off-duty artists gathered. Valentine longed to be doing something more challenging than his own little elementary juggle, but Zalzan Kavol had forbidden it: he was not yet ready, the Skandar said, though he was doing excellently well for a novice.

Morning came before the troupe was allowed to leave the stage. Payment here was by the hour, and hiring was governed by silent response-meters beneath the seats of the audience, monitored by cold-eyed Ghayrogs in a booth in the well. Some performers lasted only a few minutes before universal boredom or disdain banished them, but Zalzan Kavol and his company, who had been guaranteed two hours of work, remained on stage for four. They would have been kept for a fifth if Zalzan Kavol had not been dissuaded by his brothers, who gathered around him for a brief and intense argument.

"His greed," Carabella said quietly, "will lead him to embarrass himself yet. How long does he think people can throw those torches around before someone slips up? Even Skandars get tired eventually."

"Not Zalzan Kavol, from the looks of it," Valentine said.

"He may be a juggling machine, yes, but his brothers are mortal. Rovorn’s timing is starting to get ragged. I’m glad they had the courage to make a stand." She smiled. "And I was getting pretty tired too."

So successfully were the jugglers received in Dulorn that they were hired for four additional days. Zalzan Kavol was elated — the Ghayrogs gave their entertainers high wages — and declared a five-crown bonus for everyone.

All well and good, Valentine thought. But he had no wish to settle in indefinitely among the Ghayrogs. After the second day, restlessness began to make him chafe.

"You wish to be moving on," Deliamber said — a statement, not a question.

Valentine nodded. "I begin to glimpse the shape of the road ahead of me."

"To the Isle?"

"Why do you bother speaking with people," Valentine said lightly, "if you see everything within their minds?"

"I did no mind-peeking this time. Your next move is obvious enough."

"Go to the Lady, yes. Who else can truly tell me who I am?"

"You still have doubts," Deliamber said.

"I have no evidence other than dreams."

"Which speak powerful truths."

"Yes," Valentine said, "but dreams can be parables, dreams can be metaphors, dreams can be fantasies. It’s folly to speak them literally without confirmation. And the Lady can give confirmation, or so I hope. How far is it to the Isle, wizard?"

Deliamber briefly closed his large golden eyes. "Thousands of miles," he said. "We are now perhaps a fifth of the way across Zimroel. You must make your way eastward through Khyntor or Velathys, and around the territory of the Metamorphs, and then perhaps by riverboat via Ni-moya to Piliplok, where the pilgrim-ships leave for the Isle."

"How long will that take?"

"To reach Piliplok? At our present pace, about fifty years. Wandering with these jugglers, stopping here and there for a week at a time—"

"What if I left the troupe and went on my own?"

"Six months, possibly. The river journey is swift. The overland section takes much longer. If we had airships as they do on other worlds it would be a matter of a day or two to Piliplok, but of course we do without many devices on Majipoor that other people enjoy."

"Six months?" Valentine frowned. "And the cost, if I hired a vehicle and a guide?"

"Perhaps twenty royals. You’ll juggle a long time to earn that much."

"When I get to Piliplok," Valentine said, "what then?"

"You book passage to the Isle. The voyage is a matter of weeks. When you reach the Isle you take lodging on the lowest terrace and begin the ascent."

"The ascent?"

"A course of prayer, purification, and initiation. You move upward from terrace to terrace until you reach the Terrace of Adoration, which is the threshold to Inner Temple. You know nothing of any of this?"

"My mind, Deliamber, has been meddled with."

"Of course."

"At Inner Temple, then?"

"You are now an initiate. You serve the Lady as an acolyte, and if you seek an audience with her, you undergo special rites and await the summoning dream."

Uneasily Valentine said, "How long does this entire process take, the terraces, the initiation, the service as acolyte, the summoning dream?"

"It varies. Five years, sometimes. Ten. Forever, conceivably. The Lady has no time for each and every pilgrim."

"And there’s no more direct way of gaining audience?"

Deliamber uttered the thick coughing sound that was his laugh. "What? Knock on the temple door, cry out that you are her changeling son, demand entry?"

"Why not?"

"Because," the Vroon said, "the outer terraces of the Isle are designed as filters to keep such things from happening. There are no easy channels of communication to the Lady, and deliberately so. It would take you years."

"I’d find a way." Valentine stared levelly at the little wizard. "I could reach her mind, if I were on the Isle. I could cry out to her, I could persuade her to summon me. Perhaps."