— We have gone by floater southwest from Piliplok toward the Steiche for three days. I heard someone this evening say that the river is no more than two days' journey from us, perhaps less.

Yesterday the Coronal himself and a few of his followers set out for it ahead of the main body of the caravan. They must be nearly there by this time.

— And how does he plan to cross it?

— That I do not know. But —

"Now! Grab him!"

At the sudden outcry all contact with Faraataa was lost. Two huge forms loomed in the darkness and pounced. Y-Uulisaan, astonished, unprepared, gasped in surprise.

He perceived that it was the vast warrior-woman Lisamon Hultin and the fierce shaggy Skandar Zalzan Kavol who gripped him. The Vroon Deliamber hovered somewhere at a safe distance, tentacles coiling in intricate patterns.

"What do you think you're doing?" Y-Uulisaan demanded. "This is an outrage!"

"Ah, that it is," replied the Amazon cheerfully. "Most certainly it is."

"Let go of me at once!"

"Very small chance of that, spy!" the Skandar rumbled.

Desperately Y-Uulisaan tried to free himself from the grasp of his assailants, but he was like a mere doll in their hands. Panic seized him, and he felt his form-control begin to break down. He could do nothing to reassert it, though the loss of it revealed him for what he truly was. They held him as he writhed and twisted and frantically ran through a host of shapechanges, becoming now this creature or that, this mass of spines and knobs or that length of sinuous serpent. Unable to free himself, his energies so depleted by the contact with Faraataa that he could not generate any of his defensive abilities, the electric shocks and the like, he screamed and roared in frustration until, abruptly, the Vroon slipped a tentacle against his forehead and administered a short stunning jolt. Y-Uulisaan went limp and lay half conscious.

"Take him to the Coronal," Deliamber said. "We will interrogate him in Lord Valentine's presence."

4

As he rode westward toward the Steiche all that day with the vanguard of the royal caravan, Valentine saw the landscape hourly undergoing dramatic change: drab Gihorna was giving way to the mysterious lushness of the Piurifayne rain forest. Behind him lay a scruffy seacoast of dunes and sand drifts, of sparse shaggy tufts of saw-edged grass and small stunted trees with limp yellow leaves. Now the soil was no longer so sandy, but grew ever darker, ever more rich, and supported a riotous lushness of growth; the air no longer carried the acrid flavor of the sea, but had taken on the sweet, musky aroma of a jungle. Yet this was mere transitional country, Valentine knew. The true jungle lay ahead, beyond the Steiche, a realm of mists and strangeness, dense dark greenery, fog-swept hills and mountains: the kingdom of the Shapeshifters.

An hour or so before twilight they reached the river. Valentine's floater was the first to arrive at it, the other two appearing a few minutes later. He signaled to their captains to pull the vehicles into parallel formation along the bank. Then he left his floater and walked to the water's edge.