“I hate a dry wind,” Carabella murmured. “Like the wind the dragon hunters call ‘the sending.’ It makes my nerves ache.”
“You know of these storms, my lord?” Sleet asked.
Valentine nodded tensely. A Coronal’s education is rich in the details of geography. The sandstorms of Gihorna occurred infrequently but were widely notorious: fierce winds that skinned the dunes like knives, and scooped up tons of sand and carried them with resistless ferocity toward the inland regions. They came but twice or thrice in a generation, but they were long remembered when they did.
“What will happen to our people back there?” Valentine asked.
Sleet said, “The storm’s sure to pass right over them. It may be upon them already, or if not, it’ll be there before long. Gihorna storms are swift. Listen, lordship: listen!”
A wind was rising.
Valentine heard it, still far away, a low hissing sound that had just now begun to intrude itself upon the unnatural silence. It was like the first quiet whisper of an awakening giant’s slowly mounting fury that plainly was soon to give way to some awesome devastating roaring.
“And what of us?” Carabella said. “Will it reach this far, Sleet?”
“The gromwark thinks so, my lady. It seeks to wait things out underground.” To Valentine Sleet said, “Shall I advise you, my lord?”
“If you will.”
“We should cross the river now, while we still can. If the storm comes over us, it may destroy the floaters, or so badly disable them that they will be unable to travel on water.”
“More than half my people are still in Gihorna!”
“If they still live, yes.”
“Deliamber—Tisana—Shanamir—!”
“I know, my lord. But we can do nothing for them now. If we are to continue this expedition at all, we must cross the river, and later that may be impossible. On the far side we can hide in the jungle, and camp there until the others rejoin us, if ever they do. But if we stay here we may be pinned down forever, unable to go forward, unable to retreat.”
A grim prospect, Valentine thought; and a plausible one. But nevertheless he hesitated, still reluctant to go on into Piurifayne while so many of his closest and dearest ones faced an uncertain fate under the lash of the wind-driven Gihorna sands. For an instant he felt the wild urge to order the floaters back toward the east, in order to search for the rest of the royal party. A moment’s reflection told him of the folly of that. There was nothing he could achieve by going back at this moment except to put even more lives in jeopardy. The storm might yet not reach this far west; in that case it would be best to wait until its rage was spent, and then reenter Gihorna to pick up the survivors.
He stood still and silent, bleakly looking eastward into that realm of darkness now so strangely illuminated by the frightening glow of the sandstorm’s destructive energies.
The wind continued to gain in force. The storm will reach us, Valentine realized. It will sweep over us and perhaps plunge on deep into the Piurifayne jungles as well, before its power is dissipated.
Then he narrowed his eyes and blinked in surprise and pointed. “Do you see lights approaching? Floater lights?”
“By the Lady!” Sleet muttered hoarsely.
“Are they here?” Carabella asked. “Do you think they’ve escaped the storm?”
“Only one floater, my lord,” said Sleet quietly. “And not one from the royal caravan, I think.”
Valentine had arrived at that conclusion at the same moment. The royal floaters were huge vehicles, capable of holding many people and much equipment. What was coming toward them now out of Gihorna appeared to be more like a small private floater, a two- or four-passenger modeclass="underline" it had only two lights in front, casting no very powerful beam, where the larger ones had three, of great brilliance.
The floater pulled to a halt no more than thirty feet from the Coronal. At once Lord Valentine’s guards rushed forward to surround it, holding their energy-throwers at the ready. The doors of the floater swung open and two men, haggard, exhausted, came stumbling out.
Valentine gasped in astonishment. “Tunigorn? Elidath?”
It seemed impossible: a dream, a fantasy. Tunigorn at this moment should still have been in Piliplok, dealing with routine administrative chores. And Elidath? How could this be Elidath? Elidath belonged thousands of miles away, atop Castle Mount. Valentine no more expected to encounter him in this dark forest on Piurifayne’s border than he would his own mother the Lady.
Yet that tall man with the heavy brows and the deep-cleft chin was surely Tunigorn; and that other, taller still, he of the piercing eyes and the strong, broad-boned face, was surely Elidath. Unless—unless—
The wind grew more powerful. It seemed to Valentine that thin gritty pennons of sand now rode upon it.
“Are you real?” he demanded of Elidath and Tunigorn. “Or just a pair of cunning Shapeshifter imitations?”
“Real, Valentine, real, altogether real!” cried Elidath, and held forth his arms toward the Coronal.
“By the Divine, it is the truth,” Tunigorn said. “We are no counterfeits, and we have traveled day and night, my lord, to overtake you in this place.”
“Yes,” Valentine said, “I think you are real.”
He would have gone toward Elidath’s outstretched arms, but his own guards uncertainly interposed themselves. Angrily Valentine waved them aside and pulled Elidath into a close embrace. Then, releasing him, he stepped back to survey his oldest and closest friend. It was well over a year since last they had met; but Elidath seemed to have aged ten years for one. He looked frayed, worn, eroded. Was it the cares of the regency that had ground him down in this way, Valentine wondered, or the fatigue of his long journey to Zimroel? Once he had seemed to Valentine like a brother, for they were of an age with one another and of much the same cast of soul; and now Elidath was suddenly transformed into a weary old man.
“My lord, the storm—” Sleet began.
“A moment,” Valentine said, brusquely gesturing him away. “There’s much I must learn.” To Elidath he said, “How can it be that you are here?”
“I came, my lord, to beg you not to go further into peril.”
“What gave you to think I was in peril, or entering more deeply into it?”
“The word came to me that you were planning to cross into Piurifayne and speak with the Metamorphs,” said Elidath.
“That decision was only lately taken. You must have left the Mount weeks or even months before the idea came into my mind.” In some irritation Valentine said, “Is this your way of serving me, Elidath? To abandon your place at the Castle, and journey unbidden halfway round the world to interfere with my policies?”
“My place is with you, Valentine.”
Valentine scowled. “Out of love for you I bid you greeting and offer my embrace. But I wish you were not here.”
“And I the same,” said Elidath.
“My lord,” said Sleet insistently. “The storm is coming upon us now! I beg you—”
“Yes, the storm,” Tunigorn said. “A Gihorna sandstorm, terrible to behold. We heard it raging along the coast as we set out after you, and it has followed us all the way. An hour, half an hour, perhaps less, and it will be here, my lord!”
Valentine felt a tight band of tension encase his chest. The storm, the storm, the storm! Yes, Sleet was right: they must take some action. But he had so many questions—there was so much he must know—
To Tunigorn he said, “You must have come by way of the other camp. Lisamon, Deliamber, Tisana—are they safe?”
“They will try to protect themselves as best they can. And we must do the same. Head west, try to take cover in the depths of the jungle before the worst of it reaches here—”