Perhaps it was clouds, he thought: clouds too high and too thin for his eyes to distinguish through the mists rising from the Dreaming Waters that lay to the north of the Red City. But he’d seen the sky through thin clouds before. More likely it was something their guest had done, the chief of the thirty beings who had arrived a month ago, creatures with yellow eyes and hair the color of a storm cloud. Had their chief not said he would protect the Red City from the evil forces gathering among the stars over Quethold? “Drink.” Quickly Trevik lifted the ornate bowl of nectar that he held clutched to his chest. The Queen leaned toward the bowl, her embroidered robes moving in time with the rhythmic swaying of her canopied litter, her long abdomen stretched out along the litter’s couch— “Higher,” Borosiv of the Circling of the First of the Red growled tersely from his far less ornate litter behind the Queen’s.
