Del's brow creased, but she didn't reply. Nayyib sat down and pointedly turned his attention to the contents of his saddlepouches.

My jaws worked to soften the preserved meat. It's almost impossible to talk with a mouth full of cumfa, so I didn't even try. We all just ground our jaws and thought thoughts none of us wished to share.

I've got to admit it: I've spent more companionable nights in the desert. But it didn't interfere when I decided to go to bed.

Del and Nayyib, not talking, were still sitting by the fire as I unrolled my bedding in the lean-to and crawled into it.

I sighed, turned over, tried to go to sleep. It took me a while, but I got there.

I awakened in the middle of the night, heart pounding against my chest. A residue of fear still sizzled through my body. A dream . . .

Not one like the others. Nothing like the others. This was a normal dream in all respects, except for its content.

I've always dreamed vividly. Maybe it was because of the magic in my bones, incipient dream-walking, bone-reading, or some such thing. Sometimes the dreams were fragments, sometimes connected scenes that told some kind of story. Often they entertained me; usually they confused me, in that I could see no cause for them.

I saw no cause for this one, either.

I lay wide awake beneath a blanket, staring up at the haphazard roof of the lean-to. Del and Nayyib were deeply asleep. I let my breathing still, my heartbeat slow, and considered what I'd dreamed.

Me, in the desert. Older, but not old. I wore dhoti and sandals, held a sword in my hand. All around me were people I knew: Del, Alric, Fouad, Abbu, also Nayyib, and my shodo; even people from the Salset, including Sula and the old shukar who had made my life a misery. My grandmother. A younger woman whose features were obscured, but whom I knew was my mother. And any number of other people I'd known in my life.

One by one they turned their backs on me and walked away. I was left alone in the desert with only my sword.

Remembering it helped. Tension eased. Fear abated. I banished the images, relaxed against my bedding, and let myself drift back into sleep.

THIRTY-THREE

INthe morning the air remained chilly, but it had nothing to do with the temperature. Del and Nayyib both seemed out of sorts. Feeling left out but not sorry for it, I went about my morning routine. Eventually I had the stud fed, watered, saddled, and packed, and I led him over to the lean-to. Del and the kid were still repacking bedrolls. I suspected there had been a verbal exchange held too quietly for me to hear; they seemed tense with one another, and they were behind on preparations.

"All right, children, how long are you going to carry on with this?"

My tone and implication annoyed Del, who'd heard it before. It always annoyed Del. She gathered up her belongings and stalked past me on her way to the white gelding. It left Nayyib with compressed mouth, set jaw, and sharp physical movements at odds with his normal economical grace.

So I came right out and asked it. "Does this have anything to do with Del?"

He didn't look at me. "Yes."

"And you?"

He stood up, hooking saddle pouches over one shoulder. Paused long enough to look me in the eyes. "Ask her." And marched himself across the flat to his horse.

Oh, hoolies. And other various imprecations.

* * *

We wound our way along the wagon ruts, going deeper into the low, boulder-clad mountains. I led, Del followed, and Nayyib brought up the rear. We were strung out, allowing the horses to pick the best footing, since the boulders began to impinge on the tracks. Some things looked familiar, some did not; but it was years since Del and I had been here, and we'd certainly been in a hurry to leave once the chimney collapsed. Other than a slight delay as I was declared a messiah by Mehmet, part of a Deep Desert nomadic tribe dedicated to worshiping the jhihadi, nothing had prevented us from leaving. Del had purposely broken her jivatma after drawing Chosa Dei out of my body, freeing him to fight it out with his brother sorcerer, Shaka Obre. We hadn't been certain how violent that fight would be since both had been refined to essences of power, not physical bodies, so we'd departed the area as soon as we could.

More memories came back. I recalled Umir's incredible feathered and beaded robe, which he'd put on Del when she was his prisoner. The whirlwind in the chimney had been been so powerful that it stripped all the ornamentation from the white samite fabric. We had picked feathers out of our hair for days.

I tried to stretch my senses, to get a feel for my own jivatma, buried in the ruins of the rock formation somewhere ahead. Nothing answered. There was no compulsion to continue as there had been to find my mother's bones; perhaps she trusted to me to complete the task without resorting to walking my dreams. I wasn't aware of anything except heat, the smell of stone and dust, the stillness of the air, the unceasing brilliance of the sun, and the sound of horses chipping rocks as the walked.

The wagon ruts were more difficult to follow as they passed over ribbons of stone extruding from the earth. Someone not intentionally looking for them might miss them altogether. But it struck me as odd that anyone would travel out here. There was no known road from Julah heading this way, the area skirted Vashni territory, and there was no known destination. Or if there were, it was a Vashni place; they had named the chimney decades be-

fore. In fact, I recalled being told they'd brought Del's brother to Beit al'Shahar, and when'he'd returned he could speak again despite missing a tongue. Some kind of holy place, maybe. Except Vashni didn't use wagons, so the tracks didn't belong to them.We rode on a little farther, and then the trail made a wide sweeping turn to the left around an elbow of mountain flank. The stud abruptly pricked up his ears, head lifting. I reined in. He stood at attention, almost vibrating with focus. He nickered deep in his throat, then let it burst free as a high, piercing whinny.

In the distance, echoing oddly, a horse answered him.

Del, halted behind me, voiced it. "There is someone ahead."

"A horse, at least," I agreed. "Possibly two, or maybe a team of four; the wagon ruts got here somehow."

"Who would be out here?" Del asked. "There's nothing."

I shook my head. "It's a bit more than a day's ride from here to Julah on horseback; it would take longer with a wagon and team. Someone built that lean-to as a stop-over, a place to spend the night."

Nayyib brought his horse in closer. "So you're saying someone did settle out here."

"It's a guess," I said. "But we can find out." I brushed heels to the stud's sides and went on, more attentive now than I had been.

The trail took us down and around another tight turn, then leveled out. We were hemmed in by mountain walls. Then those walls fell away as if bowing us into a palace. And palace it was; I pulled up abruptly. Del fell in beside me, while Nayyib ended up on her far side.

"But—it wasn't like this . . ." Del said, astonished.

"Nothing like this," I agreed. Something had happened. Something that had riven the mountains apart, shaping out of existing stone and soil a long, narrow canyon. It wasn't terribly deep, nor was it huge. A compact slot cut between mountains and rock formations, opening up into a flat valley floor.

"Water," Nayyib said, pointing.

There hadn't been before. Now, bubbling up from a pile of tumbled boulders and fallen mountain, was a natural spring. It flowed outward into the canyon, finding its way through scattered rocks, then carved a fairly substantial streambed through the canyon floor.