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could see of it, it appeared that they were indeed. In which case he had wronged them—if only a little. If they had been feted when first they arrived in Celephais, then none of this would have happened. If he, Leewas Nith, had known of their heroics sooner … If, if, if!
    Too late now, but nevertheless he finished piecing together their recent history and sent it, via carrier pigeon, to Kuranes in Serannian. As to why he told his King the whole story: that is easily answered. If a sailor sets out
from Celephais across the Cerenerian, unless he knows that sea most intimately, then surely will he sail into those regions where the sea meets the sky, where gravity-defying Serannian is builded upon an ethereal shore of clouds.
    As for Kuranes himself: he had paid little heed to the first two notes. There were plenty of rogues in the dreamlands and these men from the waking world seemed to be just a couple more. Besides, he had other things on his mind, problems which troubled him sorely.
    But on receipt of the third message an irresistible idea had occurred to Kuranes. Here was he, seeking an answer to a momentous problem—one which may well affect all the lands of Earth’s dreams in their entirety—and somewhere out on the Cerenerian Sea, at this very moment, the answer he sought might well be drifting with the aerial tides … in the shape of a couple of cut-purses whose origins lay in the waking world. Well, and why not? Kuranes himself was once a waking-worlder, though he had been known by a different name then. Yes, and Randolph Carter, too, the King of Ilek-Vad.
    And yet again Kuranes read Leewas Nith’s minuscules, which told the tale of the two as the High Magistrate of Celephais had finally pieced it together. If only half of it were true, then indeed these men were heroes!
    Apparently their adventures had started in Theelys and had taken them to the source of the Tross in the Great Bleak Range of mountains. There, they had destroyed the evil sorcerer Thinistor Udd; not to mention an avatar of the dark demon god Yibb-Tstll, in the shape of a hideous stone idol which walked at Thinistor’s command. There too had they rescued Aminza
Anz, darling of Ilek-Vad and long-stolen from that fair city by the sorcerer’s gaunts.
    Moreover, they had climbed a great Keep of the First Ones, with the result that all three of them (for Aminza Anz went with them) had then set out upon a grand quest across all the lands of Earth’s dreams. During their ensuing adventures they had ridden a raft for endless leagues through nighted bowels of earth, and the life-leaf of a Great Tree across the dawn skies of dreamland; they had burned demon-cursed Thalarion to the ground and gathered up three stolen Wands of Power; and finally they had returned to the keep in the mountains to free the sleeping First Ones from eons of enforced slumbers.
    All of these and other wonders the men from the waking world had performed, and now …? Perhaps Kuranes could find something else for them to do. He must give the matter some very serious thought …
     
    Kuranes was still thinking things over when the man-o’-war of Captain Limnar Dass sailed into Serannian’s harbor and moored at a quay of blood-hued marble. Since the day was already half-spent he had decided against giving the adventurers audience until the evening, and between times Captain Dass could entertain them.
    Which was why, when Dass and his—guests?—came down the gangplank onto the quayside, Kuranes’ special courier was there to meet them and hand the captain a message in the King’s hand. After reading the King’s note, Dass turned a speculative eye upon the adventurers.
    “Seems I’m to look after you for few hours longer,” he told them. “The King won’t see you till tonight.”
    “Is that bad?” asked Hero.
    Dass shrugged. “Normally you’d be handed over to
the peacekeepers,” he said, “and eventually you’d be tried. On this occasion—” he paused and