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went straight in under the arch, through the empty entrance hall beyond which threw back to him his mournful tread, across a courtyard, up steps, and along a passage whose gilt-traced walls and floor tiled in crystal spoke of solemnity and power. A thousand sun-people had strolled laughing through the palace’s high passages, filling its echoing stone vastness with vitality and light, bright jewels and drifting hair, a kaleidoscope of beauty and color flowing in and out of the halls and under the banner-hung arches. In the center was the enormous, clerestoried copper dome to which, in the end, each passage led. Under its ceiling the black marble table stretched, bounded by a thousand stone chairs. On a dais at the head was the raised seat that would never be filled again and behind it, like a solid halo, a giant gold sun that measured the wall in a great circular sweep. To right and left, at the base of the sun, were doors. One led into Janthis’s chamber. The other would never open again. Danarion caught up with Sholia, and hearing him come, she slowed and turned with a smile, the two discs hanging from her necklet sparkling gaily.
    â€œDanarion! I went down into the city this morning. It has grown since I was last here, and the horses brought from Fallan all those years ago have multiplied beyond all expectations. The foals are being born with golden eyes, though, like your people. Have you noticed?”
    He laughed. “Of course I noticed. How are things on Shol?”
    â€œUntouched,” she replied simply, and they both sobered, pacing out of the passage and onto the gleaming black floor of the council hall. The great circular room was empty. Sunlight lay in long falls of gold poured through the clerestory windows ringing the dome, was reflected back by the smooth, glassy surface of the floor, and slid palely over the jeweled ceiling. Before them stretched the stone table, the expectant, empty seats. They walked slowly behind the rows. On the table, fronting each chair, were the necklets of those who had fallen, casting their own reflections on the polished surface so that each one seemed sunk deep into the blackness. Danarion did not need to count them, for he had been present at the closing of all these Gates, as had Sholia. Though he sometimes stood in a trance in the halls and corridors of the palace, walking again on worlds that had long ago become inaccessible, forbidden to his body, he never relived their last days.
    It took a long time to reach the head of the table, passing under shadow and out again, drawn into the aura of dominance that still surrounded the massive raised chair, but at last they reached their seats and settled themselves, looking back down the acres of shining black marble, the silent further caverns of the room. Sholia sighed, one hand on her throat, and sat still, her eyes closed, her golden hair resting softly around her. Danarion laid Falia’s necklet on the table before him, glad to relinquish it, and waited. Presently Ixelion arrived, walking quickly. He did not greet them, and they did not look at him. He slid into his chair, put his elbows on the table, and slipped his pointed chin into his webbed hands. The great, empty chair enveloped them in its brooding atmosphere. More than once, out of his own longing, Danarion had thought that he caught a glimpse of a presence sitting there, the nebulous outlines of the form he loved, but if he turned his head, he saw nothing but dark stars and trees, faces and beasts, carved in mute profusion on the solid stone.
    He knew that he should discipline his mind in that moment, throw off the heaviness of melancholy insinuating itself beneath his control, but he did not. He allowed himself to slip into the past, to a time of peace long gone, not reliving it as he was capable of doing, but hovering outside the scene, as the mortals did when they wanted to retrieve a memory. He was standing behind his own chair, looking at himself