“Not quite yet,” said Puillayne in a steadfast tone. “I understand the burden of your thought: seize the moment, guarantee the consumption while I can. By that reasoning, I should have guzzled it the instant those scoundrels had fallen. But you must remember that I have reserved a higher use for that wine. And the time for that use has not yet arrived.”

“Yes,” said Immiter of Glosz, a whitehaired sage who was of all the members of Puillayne’s circle the closest student of his work. “The great epic that you propose to indite in the hour of the sun’s end—”

“Yes. And I must have the unbroached True Vintage to spur my hand, when that hour comes. Meanwhile, though, there are many wines here of not quite so notable a puissance that are worthy of our attention, and I propose that we ingest more than a few flasks this evening.” Puillayne gestured broadly at the array of wines he had previously set out, and beckoned to his friends to help themselves. “And as you drink,” he said, drawing from his brocaded sleeve a scrap of parchment, “I offer you the verses of this afternoon.”

The night is coming, but what of that?

Do I not glow with pleasure still, and glow, and glow?

There is no darkness, there is no misery

So long as my flask is near!

The flower-picking maidens sing their lovely song by the jade pavilion.

The winged red khotemnas flutter brightly in the trees.

I laugh and lift my glass and drain it to the dregs.

O golden wine! O glorious day!

Surely we are still only in the springtime of our winter

And I know that death is merely a dream