"My lord—"

"What's going on?"

"The city is under attack, my lord!"

Suddenly Hissune was fully awake. "Attack? By whom?"

"Strange monstrous birds," Alsimir said. "With wings like those of sea dragons, and beaks like scythes, and claws that drip poison."

"There are no birds of such a kind."

"These must be some evil new creatures of the Shape-shifters that began entering Ni-moya shortly before dawn from the south, a great hideous flock, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. Already they have taken fifty lives or more, and it will get much worse as the day goes on." Alsimir went to the window.

"See, my lord, there are some of them now, circling above the old palace of the duke—"

Hissune stared. A swarm of ghastly shapes soared and hovered in the clear morning sky: huge birds, bigger than gihornas, bigger even than miluftas and far more ugly. Their wings were not bird-wings but rather the sort of black leathery things, supported on outstretched fingerlike bones, that sea dragons had.

Their beaks, wickedly sharp and curved, were flaming red, and their long outstretched claws were bright green. Fiercely they dived in quest of prey, swooping and rising and swooping again, while in the streets below people ran desperately for cover. Hissune watched one unwary boy of ten or twelve years, with schoolbooks under his arm, emerge from a building directly into the path of one of the creatures: it swept downward until it was no more than nine or ten feet above the ground, and its claws flicked out in a quick powerful assault that slashed through his tunic and ripped a bloody track up his back. As the bird swung swiftly upward again the boy went sprawling, hands slapping the pavement in wild convulsions. Then, almost at once, he was still, and three or four of the birds plummeted like stones from the sky, falling upon him and at once beginning to devour him.

Hissune muttered a curse. "You did well to awaken me. Have any countermeasures been taken yet?"

"We have some five hundred archers heading for the rooftops already, my lord. And we're mobilizing the long-range energy-throwers as fast as we can."

"Not enough. Not nearly enough. What we have to avoid is a general panic in the city—twenty million frightened civilians running around trampling each other to death. It's vital to show them that we're bringing the situation under control right away. Put five thousand archers up on the roofs. Ten thousand, if we have them. I want everybody who knows how to draw a bow up there taking part in this—all over the city, highly visible, highly reassuring."

"Yes, my lord."

"And issue a general command to the citizens to stay indoors until further orders. No one is to go outside: no one, regardless of how urgent he thinks his business is, while the birds are still a menace. Also: have Stimion send word downriver to Divvis that we're having a little trouble here and he'd better be on guard if he's still planning to enter Ni-moya this morning. And I want you to send for that old man who runs that rare-animal zoo in the hills, the one I spoke with last week—Ghitain, Khitain, something like that. Tell him what's been going on this morning, if he doesn't already know, and bring him here under careful guard, and have someone collect a few of the dead birds and bring them here too, for him to examine." Hissune turned to the window again, glowering. The boy's body was wholly hidden by the birds, nine or ten of them now, that fluttered greedily about it. His schoolbooks lay scattered in a pathetic sprawl nearby.