"He is a Shapeshifter spy, my lord."

The words reached Valentine like blows.

"What?"

"Deliamber detected it in the night: the Vroon felt a strangeness somewhere, and prowled about until he found Y-Uulisaan holding mind-speech with someone far away. He instructed your Skandar and the Amazon to seize him, and when they did, Y-Uulisaan began changing forms like a trapped demon."

Valentine spat in fury. "It goes beyond belief! All these weeks, carrying a spy with us, confiding in him all our plans for overcoming the blights and plagues of the farm provinces— no! No! What have they done with him?"

"They would have brought him to you this night for interrogation," said Tunigorn. "But then the storm came, and Deliamber thought it wisest to wait it out at the camp."

"My lord!" Sleet called from the riverbank. "We are ready to attempt the crossing!"

"There is more," Tunigorn said.

"Come. Tell me about it as we ride across."

They hurried toward the floaters. The wind now was without mercy, and the trees leaned halfway to the ground under its brunt. Carabella, beside Valentine, stumbled and would have gone sprawling if he had not caught her. He wrapped one arm tightly about her: she was so slight, so buoyant, that any gust might carry her away.

Tunigorn said, "Word of new chaos reached Piliplok just as I set forth. In Khyntor a man named Sempeturn, an itinerant preacher, has proclaimed himself Coronal, and some of the people have acclaimed him."

"Ah," Valentine said softly, as though struck in the middle.

"That is not all. Another Coronal has arisen in Dulorn, they say: a Ghayrog named Ristimaar. And we have word of still another in Ni-moya, though his name did not come to me; and it is reported also that at least one false Pontifex has come forth in Velathys, or possibly Narabal. We are not sure, my lord, because the channels of communications have become so disturbed."

"It is as I thought," said Valentine in a tone of deadly quiet. "The Divine has in all truth turned against us.

The commonwealth is shattered. The sky itself has broken and will fall upon us."

"Into the floater, my lord!" Sleet shouted.

"Too late," Valentine murmured. "There will be no forgiveness for us now."

As they scrambled into the vehicles the full fury of the storm broke upon them. First there was an odd moment of silence, as though the atmosphere itself had fled from this place in terror of the onrushing winds, taking with it all capacity for the transmission of sound; but in the next instant came something like a thunderclap, but dull and without resonance, like a short swift unechoing thud. And on the heels of that arrived the storm, screaming and snarling and turning the air opaque with churning whirlwinds of sand.

Valentine was in the floater by then, with Carabella close beside him and Elidath not far away. The vehicle, clumsily swaying and lumbering like some great amorfibot rousted unwilling from the dune where it had been dozing, drifted riverward and moved out over the water.