Sleet, with a grimace of disgust, walked toward one last wind-spider that had fallen nearby. It lay quietly, making only the faintest movements, feeble twitchings of its thick shaggy legs.

"Keep back from it!" called Ambargarde. "Every part of it is poisonous!" She summoned an acolyte, who destroyed it with a burst from her energy-thrower. To Valentine the hierarch said, "Before they mate they are harmless enough things, eaters of leaves and soft twigs, and such. But once they have let loose their eggs they change, and become dangerous. You see what they have done to the grass. We will have to dig that all out, or nothing will ever grow there again."

"And this happens every year?" Valentine asked.

"Oh, no, no, thanks be to the Divine! Most of them perish out at sea. Only once in many years do they get this far. But when they do—ah, my lord, it is always a year of evil omen!"

"When did they last come?" the Coronal asked.

Ambargarde seemed to hesitate. At length she said, "In the year of the death of your brother Lord Voriax, my lord."

"And before that?"

Her lips trembled. "I cannot remember. Perhaps ten years before, perhaps fifteen."

"Not in the year of the death of Lord Malibor, by any chance?"

"My lord—forgive me—"

"There is nothing that needs forgiveness," Valentine said quietly. He walked away from the group and stood staring at the burned places in the devastated lawn. In the Labyrinth, he thought, the Coronal is smitten with dark visions at the feasting table. In Zimroel there are plagues upon the crops. In Alhanroel the wind-spiders come, bearing evil omens. And when I call upon my mother in my dreams I see a stranger's face. The message is very clear, is it not? Yes. The message is very clear.

"Sleet!" he called.

"Lordship?"

"Find Asenhart, and have him make ready the fleet. We sail as soon as possible."

"For Zimroel, my lord?"

"For the Isle, first, so I may confer with the Lady. And then to Zimroel, yes."

"Valentine?" a small voice said.

It was Carabella. Her eyes were fixed and strange and her face was pale. She looked almost like a child now—a small frightened child whose soul has been brushed in the night by the King of Dreams.

"What evil is loose in our land, my lord?" she asked in a voice he could scarcely hear. "What will happen to us, my lord? Tell me: what will happen to us?"

TWO

The Book of the Water-Kings

1

"Your task is to reach Ertsud Grand," the instructor had said. "Your route is the open country south of the Pinitor Highway. Your weapons are cudgel and dagger. Your obstacles are seven tracker beasts: vourhain, malorn, zeil, kassai, min-mollitor, weyhant, and zytoon. They are dangerous and will injure you if you allow them to take you by surprise."

Hissune concealed himself behind a thick-trunked ghazan tree so gnarled and twisted that it could well have been ten thousand years old, and peered cautiously down the long narrow valley ahead of him. All was still. He saw none of his fellow trainees, nor any of the tracker beasts.