reet of the Six
Shepherds. I crouched in the shadow of a wall, waiting.

My skin itched from the dirty shirtcloak I hadn't changed in days.
Shabbiness is wise in nonhuman parts, and Dry-towners think too much of
water to waste much of it in superfluous washing anyhow. I scratched
unobtrusively and glanced cautiously down the street.

It seemed empty, except for a few sodden derelicts sprawled in
doorways--the Street of the Six Shepherds is a filthy slum--but I made
sure my skean was loose. Charin is not a particularly safe town, even
for Dry-towners, and especially not for Earthmen, at any time.

Even with what Dallisa had told me, the search had been difficult.
Charin is not Shainsa. In Charin, where human and nonhuman live closer
together than anywhere else on the planet, information about such men as
Rakhal can be bought, but the policy is to let the buyer beware. That's
fair enough, because the life of the seller has a way of not being worth
much afterward, either.

A dirty, dust-laden wind was blowing up along the street, heavy with
strange smells. The pungent reek of incense from a street-shrine was in
the smells. The heavy, acrid odor that made my skin crawl. In the hills
behind Charin, the Ghost Wind was rising.

Borne on this wind, the Ya-men would sweep down from the mountains, and
everything human or nearly human would scatter in their path. They would
range through the quarter all night, and in the morning they would melt
away, until the Ghost Wind blew again. At any other time, I would
already have taken cover. I fancied that I could hear, borne on the
wind, the faraway yelping, and envision the plumed, taloned figures
which would come leaping down the street.

In that moment, the quiet of the street split asunder.

From somewhere a girl's voice screamed in shrill pain or panic. Then I
saw her, dodging between two of the chinked pebble-houses. She was a
child, thin and barefoot, a long tangle of black hair flying loose as
she darted and twisted to elude the lumbering fellow at her heels. His
outstretched paw jerked cruelly at her slim wrist.

The little girl screamed and wrenched herself free and threw herself
straight on me, wrapping herself around my neck with the violence of a
storm wind. Her hair got in my mouth and her small hands gripped at my
back like a cat's flexed claws.

"Oh, help me," she gasped between sobs. "Don't let him get me, don't."
And even in that broken plea I took it in that