"Yes, my lord, but—"

Valentine cut him off "Then the order should be given to pitch camp before it's dark, eh, Sleet?" The Coronal put the issue from his mind and turned back toward the river. "Do you see that peculiar animal on the far bank?"

"The gromwark, you mean?"

"Is that what it is? What do you think it's up to, rubbing its face in the ground like that?"

"Digging a burrow, I'd say. To hunker down in when the storm strikes. They live in the water, you know, but I suppose it figures the river will be too badly stirred up, and—"

"Storm?" Valentine asked.

"Yes, my lord. I was trying to tell you, my lord. Look at the sky, my lord!"

"The sky darkens. Night's coming on."

"Look to the east, I mean," said Sleet.

Valentine swung around and stared into Gihorna. The sun should already be nearly down, back there; he would have expected the sky to have turned gray or even black by this time of day. But instead a weird kind of sunset seemed to be going on in the east, against all nature: a strange pastel glow streaked the sky, pink tinged with yellow, and pale green at the horizon. The colors had an odd throbbing intensity, as though the sky were pulsating. The world seemed extraordinarily still: Valentine heard the rushing of the river, but no other sound, not even the nightfall song of birds or the insistent high-pitched notes of the little scarlet tree-frogs that dwelled here by the thousands. And there was a desert dryness to the air, a combustible quality.

"Sandstorm, my lord," Sleet said quietly.

"Are you certain?"

"It must be blowing up just now, on the coast. The wind was out of the east all day, and that's where the Gihorna storms come from, off the ocean. A dry wind off the ocean, lordship, can you reckon that? I can't."

"I hate a dry wind," Carabella murmured. "Like the wind the dragon hunters call 'the sending.' It makes my nerves ache."

"You know of these storms, my lord?" Sleet asked.

Valentine nodded tensely. A Coronal's education is rich in the details of geography. The sandstorms of Gihorna occurred infrequently but were widely notorious: fierce winds that skinned the dunes like knives, and scooped up tons of sand and carried them with resistless ferocity toward the inland regions. They came but twice or thrice in a generation, but they were long remembered when they did.

"What will happen to our people back there?" Valentine asked.

Sleet said, "The storm's sure to pass right over them. It may be upon them already, or if not, it'll be there before long. Gihorna storms are swift. Listen, lordship: listen!"

A wind was rising.

Valentine heard it, still far away, a low hissing sound that had just now begun to intrude itself upon the unnatural silence. It was like the first quiet whisper of an awakening giant's slowly mounting fury that plainly was soon to give way to some awesome devastating roaring.