A prince deserved a wife worthy of him; a well-born, well-educated, beautiful woman like Liane bos-Benliman. It was far better for everyone that Garric should marry Liane than that he throw himself away on a peasant girl who couldn't write her own name; even if the peasant happened to have a talent for weaving.

"Ilna?" called a child's voice from far away. "Please Ilna, what's wrong?"

And Ilna's fingers knotted a pattern that would bring warmth and calm to the man she offered it to.

"It's more like standing on the seawall at Barca's Hamlet than it's like being in a boat," Sharina said, looking down at the sea almost a dozen feet below the level of the deck on which she stood to the left of Cashel and Tenoctris. Foam boiled back as theShepherd 's bronze ram dipped and rose minusculely at the thrust of the oars. The water was gray today; all Sharina could see in it was an occasional bit of weed churned up as the quinquereme's huge weight slid past.

"We're moving," said Cashel simply. "I don't think I'll ever get used to that. I don't mind, but it's not like being on solid ground."

Sharina laughed. "Cashel," she said, "so long as you're around, everything seems solid."

She hugged herself to him, a great, warm boulder. He didn't respond-they were in public, after all-but he smiled as he continued to watch the approaching shore. The great stone moles which extended Carcosa's fine natural harbor had survived the thousand years of neglect following the collapse of the Old Kingdom. One of the lighthouses which originally framed the entrance remained also, streaming a long red-on-white pennon to welcome the fleet, but the other had fallen into a pile of rubble.

The lighthouses had been built in the form of hollow statues: one of the Lady wearing the crescent tiara of the moon, the other of the Shepherd holding the sun disk. Celondre had written a poem when the lighthouses were dedicated, likening them to the children of King Carlon, the hope of the Kingdom's future.