Oo. Wah. Vah. Mah.

It frightened her. She was being drugged down to the bottom of the sea, and her lungs were filling with water, and the pain was terrible. She fought. She would not let the great wings touch her. She pulled back, and pounded with her fists, and forced her way upward, up toward the surface—

Opened her eyes. Sat up, dazed, terrified. All about her the chanting was going on. Oo, wah, vah, mah. Millilain shuddered. Where am I? What have I done? I've got to get out of here, she thought. In panic she struggled to her feet and went blundering down the row to the aisle. No one stopped her. The wine still muzzed her mind and she found herself lurching, staggering, clutching at the walls. She was out of the room, now. Stumbling down that long dark fragrant corridor. The wings were still beating about her, enfolding her, reaching toward her mind. What have I done, what have I done?

Out into the alleyway, the darkness, the rain. Were they still marching around out here, the Knights of Dekkeret and the Order of the Triple Sword and whoever those others were? She did not care. Let whatever come that may. She began to run, not knowing which way she ran. There was a dull heavy booming sound far away that she hoped was the Confalume Geyser. Other sounds pounded in her mind.

Yah-tah yah-tah yah-tah voom. Oo, wah, vah, mah. She felt the wings closing about her. She ran, and tripped and fell, and rose and went on running.

7

The deeper they journeyed into the Shapeshifter province, the more familiar everything began to look to Valentine. And yet at the same time the conviction had come to grow in him that he was making some ghastly and terrible mistake.

He remembered the scent of the place: rich, musky, complex, the sweet heavy aroma of growth and decay going forward with equal intensities under the constant warm rainfall, an intricate mix of flavors that flooded the nostrils to dizzying effect at every intake of breath. He remembered the close, clinging, moist air, and the showers that fell almost hourly, pattering against the forest roof high overhead and trickling down from leaf to shiny leaf until just a little reached the ground. He remembered the fantastic profusion of plant life, everything sprouting and uncoiling almost while one watched, and yet somehow oddly disciplined, everything fitting into well-defined layers—the towering slender trees bare of branches for seven eighths of their height, then flaring out into great umbrellas of leaves tied together into a tight canopy by a tangle of vines and creepers and epiphytes, and under that a level of shorter, rounder, fuller, more shade-tolerant trees, and a stratum of clumping shrubbery below that, and then the forest floor, dark, mysterious, all but barren, a stark expanse of damp thin spongy soil that bounced jauntily underfoot. He remembered the sudden shafts of light, deep-hued and alien, that came spearing at unpredictable intervals through the canopy to provide quick startling moments of clarity in the dimness.