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ships that sail from here are bound for Serannian.”
    “Oh?” said Hero. “Well, that’s no damn good to us, is it? I mean what you’ve said makes Serannian virtually an island. If we end up on—or in—Serannian, it may not be the easiest thing in dreamland to get off again. It would be like leaping out of a frying pan into the fire!”
    “Not us,” answered Eldin. “We’re not heading for Serannian. No, we’ll hug the coast and head east. It’s only if you make for the horizon that you sail into the sky. There’s a coast of clouds up there, piled up by the west wind, and that’s where Serannian is built of pink marble.”
    Hero could not quite hide his snort of derision. “What? I mean, it’s bad enough asking me to believe in any sort of city in the sky without it being built of marble!”
    “The eidolon Lathi’s city Thalarion was built of paper,” reminded Eldin.
    “Yes, it was,” Hero agreed, “—on the ground!”
    “You know, I often wonder how I ever teamed up with you in the first place,” said Eldin. “I can’t understand why you’re a dreamer at all. You’ve no imagination, my lad. There’s too much of the waking world in you for your own good. After all we’ve been through, can’t you get it into your head that things are different here? Vastly different. Time and space are different, and the laws of Nature and of Science.”
    “—And of Magic!” Hero added.
    “Well, yes, that’s true enough,” Eldin agreed. “Dream-magic has a certain amount of science in it, and dream-science has more than its share of magic. It’s difficult to tell one from the other, really. But anyway, there are mighty engines built into Serannian’s foundation. I’ve heard that they manufacture the ethereal stuff that keeps the city afloat on the air. Perhaps it’s this stuff—leaking off, so to speak—that comes drifting down to the sea and changes it. Maybe it forms the great wide river which the traders ride in their galleys from the horizon to the sky.”
    “Maybe,” scowled Hero, a trifle skeptically—too skeptically for his older, more experienced companion.
    “Well, you just believe what you want to,” Eldin snarled as his patience left him at last. “But remember: the next time you see lights in the sky, don’t ask me about them. Right?”

CHAPTER III
    Night-gaunts Over Dreamland
    The apparent animosity which existed between the pair meant nothing. Anyone who knew them (though admittedly their true friends could be numbered on two hands and still leave both thumbs and a few fingers to spare) would happily testify that their banter was very often bruising, and especially so on the eve of a grand adventure. It was a matter of nerves, of inner tensions, and on this particular occasion of Eldin’s slow emergence from long weeks of drunken misery.
    First he had needed to recover from the loss of Aminza Anz, woken up from dreams on the very day when they were to be wed in Ilek-Vad, and now he must recover from the instrument of his recovery. A few days of enforced abstinence while awaiting trial had helped, and with luck the coming escapade might just complete the job. In short, Eldin was “drying out.”
    As for Hero: he, too, had had a bad time of it. Quite apart from nursemaiding Eldin, what should have been for Hero a luxurious and elysian stay in Celephais had gone disastrously wrong. With their rich robes, money and fine yaks, the pair would have been well advised to play their highest cards—that is, to assume the roles of
prosperous merchants and board in one of Celephais’ better inns. They had fallen prey to habit, however, and so had put up at the wormy tavern of Arkim Sallai in a less than savory quarter of the city.
    There, in an atmosphere reminiscent of other sojourns in dreamland’s more earthy inns and taverns, and in the company of shifty characters with questionable backgrounds, they had quickly forgotten their recent and much-applauded heroics and reverted to