"An unusual name," Valentine said.

"It has been in our family many generations, my lord. I am associated with the office of agricultural affairs in Ni-moya, and it is my mission to carry unhappy tidings to you from Zimroel."

Valentine felt a tightening in his chest.

Y-Uulisaan held forth a sheaf of folders. "It is all described in here—the full details of each of the plagues, the area it affects, the extent of the damage—"

"Plagues? What plagues?"

"In the agricultural zones, my lord. In Dulorn the lusavender smut has reappeared, and also there has been a dying of niyk trees to the west of the Rift, and also the stajja and glein are affected, and root weevils have attacked the ricca and milaile in—"

"My lord!" Carabella cried suddenly. "Look, look there!"

He whirled to face her. She was pointing skyward.

"What are those?"

Startled, Valentine looked up. On the bosom of the brisk breeze there journeyed a strange army of large glossy transparent floating creatures, unlike anything he had ever seen, appearing suddenly out of the west.

They had bodies perhaps a man's length in diameter, shaped like shining cups upcurved to give them buoyancy, and long hairy legs that they held straight out on all sides. Their eyes, running in double rows across their heads, were like black beads the size of a man's fists, shining dazzlingly in the sunlight.

Hundreds, even thousands, of the spiders were passing overhead, a migratory procession, a river of weird wraiths in the sky.

Carabella said, shuddering, "What monstrous-looking things! Like something out of the worst sending of the King of Dreams."

Valentine watched in astonishment and horror as they drifted past, dipping and soaring on the wind.

Shouts of alarm now came from the courtyard of the temple. Valentine, beckoning Sleet to follow him, ran inward, and saw the old hierarch standing in the center of the lawn, waving an energy-thrower about. The air was thick with the floating things, some of which were drifting toward the ground, and she and half a dozen acolytes were attempting to destroy them before they landed, but several score had already reached ground. Wherever they touched down they remained motionless; but the rich green lawn was instantly burned yellow over an area perhaps twice the creatures' size.

Within minutes the onslaught was over. The floating things had passed by and were disappearing to the east, but the grounds and garden of the temple looked as if they had been attacked with blowtorches. The hierarch Ambargarde, seeing Valentine, put down her energy-thrower and walked slowly toward him.

"What were those things?" he asked.

"Wind-spiders, my lord."

"I've not heard of them. Are they native to this region?"

"The Divine be thanked, my lord, they are not! They come from Zimroel, from the mountains beyond Khyntor. Every year, when it is their mating season, they cast themselves into the stream of the high winds, and while they are aloft they couple, and let loose their fertile eggs, which are blown eastward by the contrary lower winds of the mountains until they land in the hatching-places. But the adults are caught by the currents of the air and carried out to sea, and sometimes they are swept all the way to the coast of Alhanroel."