“Of course,” Veltan replied, fumbling around for his purse. Veltan was still having some problems with the concept of money. He had to admit that it was much more convenient than barter, but he kept losing track of the relative value of coins made from different metals. He gave the beggar a few brass coins and continued down the street toward the forum.

It was winter now, and Veltan didn’t care much for winter, since his Domain in the Land of Dhrall was largely given over to farming, and farmers much prefer spring and summer. The winter sky was perpetually overcast, the bare trees all seemed dead, and there were no flowers. The Trogites of Kaldacin, however, appeared to be immune to the innate melancholy of the season. Trogites in general had very high opinions of themselves, no matter what part of the Empire they called home, but the Trogites of Kaldacin seemed to believe that their city was the very center of the universe, and that simply living inside its walls automatically elevated them far above not only the people of other lands, but also above those Trogites unfortunate enough to live in some other city or village.

The city itself was magnificent, of course. Quite obviously, an unimaginable amount of labor had gone into its construction, but Veltan could not quite grasp the “why” of the entire thing. Nobody really needed houses that big. The towering walls around the city might possibly have been necessary— assuming that there were enemies in the vicinity—but Veltan had a strong suspicion that the walls were merely for show.

The Trogites favored stone for their houses and other buildings, and that certainly made sense to Veltan. Wood burns, but stone usually doesn’t. The marble sheathing was decorative, certainly, but hadn’t the Trogites of Kaldacin had anything better to do with their time?

The “public buildings” made no sense whatsoever at first, but as Veltan had come to know the Trogites a bit better, he had begun to realize that they all seemed to desperately need grand displays to prove to others (and probably to themselves even more) that they were very important. Any hint of a lack of importance seemed to gnaw at the very soul of the average Trogite.

Thus it was that there were enormous marble-sheathed palaces, meeting halls, temples, and mercantile establishments, usually perched atop the hills within the city walls.

Grandest of all, of course, was the imperial palace, the home of the glorious Emperor Gacian. The palace teemed with assorted servants, counselors, and other miscellaneous hangers-on, all vying for the exalted emperor’s attention. After a few hints, Veltan managed to buy his way into an audience with His Imperial Majesty, but the exalted Gacian turned out to be a brainless incompetent with little or no understanding of the meaning of the word army.

“You’re wasting your time here, you know,” an elderly, mantle-clad counselor in the palace of Gacian had advised Veltan after the two of them had become acquainted. “The real authority here in Kaldacin lies in the hands of the Palvanum. They make the laws and decide what course the Empire will take.”

“And where will I find them?” Veltan asked.

“In the forum at the center of the city. If you tell the Palvani what you want and what you’re willing to pay, I’m sure you’ll be able to strike an accord with them.”

It hadn’t turned out that way, however. The individual Palvani were all quite willing to accept Veltan’s money in return for vague promises to “bring the matter to the attention of my colleagues,” but the matter never seemed to come up in the august chamber where most of the Palvani slept through the endless orations of their fellow members.

Veltan of the South wasted yet another afternoon in the forum trying to find somebody—anybody—with enough authority to have control over the Trogite army.

As the cloudy sky to the west flamed with the incipient sunset, Veltan gave up and went back toward the south gate of Kaldacin. There were lodgings available within the city, of course, but Veltan was immune to the weather and he didn’t need sleep. He much preferred to spend his nights out in the fields. The air was sweeter, and he could see the moon more clearly. Veltan was very fond of the moon, and he missed her.

He hadn’t felt that way when Mother Sea had first banished him. He still felt a certain resentment about Mother Sea’s peremptory response to his joking suggestion that she might be prettier if she wore stripes. Mother Sea seemed to have no sense of humor at all. She took everything so seriously. Veltan obviously hadn’t been serious when he’d gone on at great length about the beauty of contrasting shades of blue and how lovely Mother Sea would look if she adorned her surface with carefully blended stripes ranging from pale, pale blue all the way across the spectrum to royal purple. He’d intended simply to amuse her, but she hadn’t laughed. Instead, she had pointed at the moon and said, “Go there, Veltan! Go now!”

“But . . .” Veltan had protested.

“Go!”

And so it had been that Veltan had spent the next ten eons camped out on the pocked face of the world’s baby sister, staring longingly down—or up—at the round blue ball he’d once called home. He’d ventured out among the stars a few times, but that was even worse. There was a dreadful emptiness between the stars that filled Veltan with an overwhelming loneliness. At least he could look at the earth from the surface of the moon. It had made him homesick, of course, but it was better than the vast blackness of the universe.

In time he’d grown fonder of the moon, and she’d evidently sensed his growing affection for her, and she had finally spoken to him. “That was a silly thing to say, you know,” had been her first words to him. “Stripes, Veltan? You’re lucky that she didn’t feed you to her fish.”

“I was only joking,” he’d protested.

“I know that,” the moon had replied, “but the Sea doesn’t know how to laugh. Everybody knows that. I’ll speak with her and see if I can persuade her to relent.”

“She never listens,” he’d replied in a gloomy voice.

“You’re wrong, Veltan. She always listens to me. I can disrupt her tides any time I choose, and she absolutely hates that.” Then, to Veltan’s astonishment, the moon had giggled. They’d gotten along very well after that. Unlike Mother Sea or Father Earth, the moon definitely had a sense of humor, and Veltan had passed the endless centuries telling her outrageous jokes.

Even after Mother Sea had relented and allowed him to come home again, Veltan had continued to maintain contact with the moon, and he frequently visited her.