"Of course. But there are no manculains in Zimroel."

"That's what I thought, too, until I saw this fellow back of Velathys, along the mountain roads. Very similar to the manculains of Stoienzar, is it not? But with at least one difference." He knelt beside the cage that held the rotund many-legged creature and made a deep rumbling sound at it. The manculain at once rumbled back and began menacingly to stir the long stiletto-like needles that sprouted all over its body, as though it intended to hurl them through the wire mesh at him. Nayila said, "It isn't content with being covered with spines. The spines are poisonous. One scratch with them and your arm puffs up for a week.

I know. I don't know what would have happened if the spine got in any deeper, and I don't want to find out.

Do you?"

Yarmuz Khitain shivered. It sickened him to think of these horrendous creatures taking up residence in the Park of Fabulous Beasts, which had been founded long ago as a refuge for those animals, most of them gentle and inoffensive, that had been driven close to extinction by the spread of civilization on Majipoor. Of course the park had a good many predators in its collection, and Yarmuz Khitain had never felt like offering apologies for them: they were the work of the Divine, after all, and if they found it necessary to kill for their meals it was not out of any innate malevolence that they did so. But these—these—

These animals are evil, he thought. They ought to be destroyed.

The thought astounded him. Nothing like it had ever crossed his mind before. Animals evil? How could animals be evil? He could say, I think this animal is very ugly, or, I think this animal is very dangerous, but evil? No. No, Animals are not capable of being evil, not even these. The evil has to reside elsewhere: in their creators. No, not even in them. They too have their reasons for setting these beasts loose upon the world, and the reason is not sheer malevolence for its own sake, unless I am greatly mistaken. Where then is the evil? The evil, Khitain told himself, is everywhere, a pervasive thing that slips and slides between the atoms of the air we breathe. It is a universal corruption in which we all participate.

Except the animals.

Except the animals.

"How is it possible," Yarmuz Khitain asked, "that the Metamorphs have the skill to breed such things?"

"The Metamorphs have many skills we've never bothered to learn a thing about, it would appear.

They've been sitting out there in Piurifayne concocting these animals quietly for years, building up their stock of them. Can you imagine what the place where they kept them all must have been like—a horror zoo, monsters only? And now they've been kind enough to share them with us."

"But can we be certain the animals come from Piurifayne?"

"I traced the distribution vectors very carefully. The lines radiate outward from the region southwest of Ilirivoyne. This is Metamorph work, no doubt about that. It simply can't happen that two or three dozen loathsome new kinds of animals would burst onto the scene in Zimroel all at the same time by spontaneous mutation. We know that we're at war: these are weapons, Khitain."