Storm Warning

city walls.

The gryphons strained for altitude, and climbed higher into the cloud-strewn sky. Karal watched those clouds worriedly—this would be a very bad time for a lightning storm to blow up! But, even if he were struck from the skies, he would die knowing what it felt like to be so close to Vkandis....

'Look,' Hydona called, over the thunder of her own wings. 'Down therrre. That isss the firrrssst of the sssignsss.'

Karal looked down obediently and saw exactly what she was talking about. Right in the middle of a green field was a circular space that held black sand. Sheep eyed it dubiously.

'We need morrre height to sssee the patterrn,' Treyvan called back. She nodded and strained upward.

The sheep dwindled into white toys, then into clots of wool, then into small dots on the green field. The air got colder and thinner—not even while going through high mountain passes had Karal been this high up! His ears and nose were numb, and his eardrums popped again and again as they surged higher. Treyvan pointed, and Karal followed the direction of his talon.

A thrill of excitement touched him. There was a pattern! Beyond the circle of black sand, there was another discoloration in the middle of a field of grain, a place that appeared to be circular as well. And beyond that, a mere blot of color in line with the first two, there seemed to be a third at about the same distance as the interval between the first and second.

'Go down!' he shouted to Treyvan. 'Land next to the sand-circle! I'll make some notes and take a sample; we'll go on to the next one and do the same. We'll measure that distance, and see if there really is a third and what the distance is to it—'

'And if therrre isss a fourrrth, and a fifth,' Hydona added. 'Good idea, Karrral!'

They dropped a lot faster than they had climbed. Karal clamped both hands firmly around the front of the basket, but felt like he would be better served by clutching at his stomach. Still, the basket landed with a controlled bump that rattled Karal's teeth but did no other damage. He hopped out and measured the circle of sand by pacing it, folded a bit of paper into a cone and scooped up a sample, then sketched and described the circle. There didn't seem to be anything alive in it; he stirred the center of it with a stick and came up with nothing but fine, black sand, completely uniform in makeup and texture. The sheep watched him with vague alarm on their silly faces but couldn't make up their minds whether to flee or stand. They were more afraid of him than they were of the gryphons and shied sideways, bleating each time he made a move toward them.

The gryphons watched, panting, sunlight glinting off their feathers. He made sure to take long enough at his tasks to allow the gryphons enough time to catch their breath.

'All right,' he said, when he couldn't think of anything else useful to measure. 'Are you ready?'

Treyvan nodded, and he climbed back into the basket. The takeoff was a little slower this time; with only sheep to impress, Treyvan didn't seem to be in as much of a hurry.

The next spot was, indeed, a circle—but this time, it wasn't of sand. This spot contained a short, wiry grass of an odd yellow-green; the soil beneath it was hard and full of reddish clay, so that the earth itself looked red. There were dead insects in this patch, but they didn't look any different from the ones Karal was familiar with. Nevertheless, he took a sample of the earth, the grass, and a little black beetle. Maybe someone else could make something of this.

The third circle held something quite unexpected; a section of ground that could have come from a Karsite meadow. The ground was exactly right; gray and full of stones. The plants were that tough gorse and mountain grass that only goats could eat, and in one side of the circle was a patch of kitten-paw flowers that Karal knew would not grow in Valdemar. He knew that because they were the common Karsite remedy for headache, and when he had asked for some, the Healers hadn't a clue what he was talking about.

Dutifully, he sampled this as well. He also took every kitten-paw bunch that was handy because he felt there would be a lot of headaches in his immediate future. He added notes and observations on the waxboard, and each page of paper. The distance between the first and second circles and the second and third was precisely equal.

They continued to follow a line of disturbances on away from Haven into the north; not all of the things they found were as obvious as those circles of alien earth. Several times they actually had to land to find that there was a transplant, for it was so similar to what surrounded it that only the neat circular cut-line around it betrayed that it was there. And once, they found, not a circle of transplanted soil, but a circle of fused sand.

Only once had Karal ever seen anything like this, and that had been as a child, in a place where lightning had struck sandy loam. That had left a mark about the size of his hand; this was a circle of blackened, cracked black glass, mottled and full of bubbles and irregularities, that was easily the size of a freight wagon. The three of them stared at the lumpy glass, and Karal wondered if the gryphons felt the same cold dread that he did. Something had certainly struck here with terrible force. What if it had struck within the city limits?

What if, somewhere out there, in Valdemar, Karse, or Rethwellan, it had struck within a populated area? What if it struck his father's inn, or Sunhame?