Quietly Valentine replied, "You misunderstand, your highness. I have not come here to take refuge, but to seek your aid in the struggle that lies ahead."

The King of Dreams seemed startled by that. "Such aid as I can give is yours, of course. But do you truly see any hope that we can fight our way free of the turmoil that assails us? For I must tell you, my lord, that I have looked at the world very closely through this"—he touched his diadem of power—"and I see no hope myself, my lord, none, none at all."

2

An hour before twilight the chanting started again down in Ni-moya: thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of voices crying out with tremendous force, "Thallimon! Thallimon! Lord Thallimon! Thallimon!

Thallimon!" The sound of that fierce jubilant outcry came rolling up the slopes of the outlying Gimbeluc district and swept over the quiet precincts of the Park of Fabulous Beasts like a great unstoppable wave.

It was the third day since the demonstrations in honor of the newest of the new Coronals had begun, and tonight's uproar was the most frenzied so far. Very likely it was accompanied by rioting, looting, widespread destruction. But Yarmuz Khitain scarcely cared. This had already been one of the most terrifying days he had experienced in all his long tenure as curator of the park, an assault on everything that he considered proper and rational and sane: why should he now be perturbed over a little noise that some fools were making in the city?

At dawn that day Yarmuz Khitain had been awakened by a very young assistant curator who told him timidly, "Vingole Nayila has come back, sir. He is waiting at the east gate."

"Has he brought much back with him?"

"Oh, yes, sir! Three transport floaters full, sir!"

"I'll be right down," said Yarmuz Khitain.

Vingole Nayila, the park's chief field zoologist, had been exploring for the past five months in the disturbed areas of north central Zimroel. He was not a man of whom Yarmuz Khitain was greatly fond, for he tended to be cocky and overly self-satisfied, and whenever he exposed himself to deadly peril in the pursuit of some elusive beast he made sure that everyone knew just how deadly the peril had been. But professionally he was superb, an extraordinary collector of wild animals, indefatigable, fearless. When news had first begun to arrive that unfamiliar and grotesque creatures were causing havoc in the region between Khyntor and Dulorn, Nayila had lost no time mounting an expedition.

And a successful one, evidently. When Yarmuz Khitain reached the east gate he saw Nayila strutting busily about on the far side of the energy field that kept intruders out and the rare animals in. Beyond that zone of pink haze Nayila was supervising the unloading of a vast number of wooden containers, from which came all manner of hisses and growls and buzzes and drones and yelps. At the sight of Khitain, Nayila looked across and yelled: