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crowd, the merchants and traders, the minor officials, and captains’ wives with their servants, up there, the highest persons. And in their ranks, unlike our own, the strictest segregation. To one side were the courtiers, the lords, and to the other, the noble women of the King’s court.
    But one’s eye went higher yet. To the upper terrace. Oh yes, surely they too must be gods.
    Grey and brown were the colors of mourning in our lands. Yet, aloft, such browns, such greys, fawnskin, lion-pelt, the most dappled silks, the pearls of the deepest rivers.
    The princes stoodto the male side, the right, near where the fire-basket blazed up on its stand against the thick sky, top bowed and spread like the very shape of the cedars.
    Foremost were the sons of Udrombis. Her youngest, Amdysos, golden, handsome, eleven years old, clad in a grey that was white. And his elder brother, Pherox, a youth named for the metal of swords, and who had a silver tooth, his black hair like the lion’s mane. And, before them, the oldest son, the heir, the King, Glardor the rising Sun.
    No one would know now, gazing up to him, that he had been, even one moment, unready.
    He was so like the King, the King who had died. He had got, from nature, the tan the King uncannily had had, the kiss of the god. For Glardor was a man for hunting too, and for husbandry in open fields. Around his brow ran the band of lead that betokened his loss. His garments were of sober grey, with one stripe of bullion the width of an arm.
    Behind these three sons of the Consort, ranged the other sons, the men and boys got on Daystar queens. All were comely, all seemed honed by the promise of perfection. The fruit of the princesses of north and west, of east and south, the province-kingdoms of the Sun. But near Amdysos, stood his friend, the son of Stabia, who was friend to the Queen.
    For nine, this boy was very tall, very beautiful. They said he had a chariot already, nor quite a toy one, and he and Amdysos raced in miniature the sacred Race of the Sun that was held at Airis in the summer, by grown men, for the amusement of the gods. But they invented its obstacles, since no man who had faced them must reveal them.
    On the other side, farthest from the fire, were the royal women. The dead King’s queens, seventeen in number, and their daughters—countless, these—drooping in their dove and rain shades. But there, the last and youngest queen, sheltered at the side of the Consort, the little girl from Oceaxis, weeping openly in her veil. Her sons were babies. They had been left behind.
    The harps were conjuring the musics of lament. A boy priest raised his arms, almost in an imitation of the gesture of the corpse, whose arms, for dignity, had been broken to fit the bier.
How arewe to live?
    There is no sorrow unknown to men.
    Birth sends us to a house of shadows
,
    And at the end, to Night.
    They were bearing forward the body of the King.
    The chariot approaches, a chariot of steel, painted with closed eyes, drawn by white geldings—Death does not procreate. Drapes like cobwebs trail the road.
    Out comes the bier, open. Only Akreon has been gloriously dressed for this day. He wears crimson and gold. From his cadaver waft the sweetest, most appetizing odors. He smells like confectionery from a kitchen I have never yet known. And the bath of a rapturous and celebrated courtesan.
    I saw him ascend the stair. Up the terraces, borne high. I think I glimpsed his face, but it was painted, and flowers had been put into his hair, a wreath of white narcissus, the best the spring could give, since the green blossoms at the Heart must not be plucked.
    In the hall of the temple was enormous space. The roof, about the tapering O of the chimney, had stars set into a ceiling stained violet like the sky. Phaidix kept her altar on the female side, but the watch flame was out. The giant altar of the Sun lay under the chimney, empty but for its two fires.
    The chanting was now like the sound of