"No," said Khitain over and over, from his vantage point behind the gate. "No. No. No." The furious little creatures were merciless. The mob was in flight, people screaming, running in all directions, a chaos of colliding bodies as they sought to find the road back down to Ni-moya, and those who had fallen lay in scarlet pools as the dhiims dived and dived and dived again. Some had been laid bare to the bone—mere rags and scraps of flesh remaining, and that too being stripped away. Khitain heard sobbing; and only after a moment realized that it was his own.

Then it was all over. A strange silence settled over the plaza. The mob had fled; the victims on the pavement no longer moaned; the dhiims, sated, hovered briefly over the scene, wings whirring, and then rose one by one into the night and flew off, the Divine only knew where.

Yarmuz Khitain, trembling, shaken, walked slowly away from the gate. The park was saved. The park was saved. Turning, he looked toward Vingole Nayila, who stood like an avenging angel with his arms outspread and his eyes blazing. "You should not have done that," Khitain said in a voice so choked with shock and loathing that he could barely get the words out.

"They would have destroyed the park."

"Yes, the park is saved. But look—look—"

Nayila shrugged. "I warned them. How could I let them destroy all we have built here, just to have a little fresh meat?"

"You should not have done it, all the same."

"You think so? I have no regrets, Yarmuz. Not one." He considered that a moment. "Ah: there is one. I wish I had had time to put a few of the dhiims aside, for our collection. But there was no time, and they are all far away by now, and I have no wish to go back to Borgax and look for others. I regret nothing else, Yarmuz. And I had no choice but to turn them loose. They have saved the park. How could we have let those madmen destroy it? How, Yarmuz? How?"

3

Though it was barely past dawn, brilliant sunlight illuminated the wide and gentle curves of the Glayge Valley when Hissune, rising early, stepped out on the deck of the riverboat that was carrying him back toward Castle Mount.

Of to the west, where the river made a fat bend into a district of terraced canyons, all was misty and hidden, as though this were time's first morning. But when he looked toward the east Hissune saw the serene red-tiled roofs of the great city of Pendiwane glowing in the early light, and far upriver the sinuous low shadow of the Makroposopos waterfront was just coming into view. Beyond lay Apocrune, Stangard Falls, Nimivan, and the rest of the valley cities, home to fifty million people or more. Happy places where life was easy; but now the menacing aura of imminent disruption hung over these cities, and Hissune knew that all up and down the Glayge people were waiting, wondering, fearing.