Farson moved up behind her mount from the side—against an unexpected kick—and gripped the warhorse’s tail. The mare snorted, but she had been through this before. Jaliel did likewise with Farson’s horse, and the three slowly began their descent from the platform down into the Valley of Lost Men. This way no one would wander and missteps would be kept to a minimum.

The wind blew blinding gusts of dust and small objects, pieces of plants, dried insect carcasses, a powdery grit like chalk or ash that coated the skin and matted hair. Twice they found large outcroppings of rocks to shelter behind as the wind picked up in intensity and the howling in the air made even the well-trained horses paw the ground, nicker, and snort. Sandreena patted the nose of her mount in reassurance, but she was hardly in a position to reassure anyone, even her mare. The impulse that drove her to undertake this mission now looked like an impossibly vain idea. Still, each time she had been visited by doubt she returned to the same conclusion; there was no one in the temple save herself and Creegan, and two other Knights, their whereabouts unknown, who could possibly follow up on what that mysterious Kingdom agent had reported.

Necromancy and demons were not usually involved together. Demons took too much delight in devouring anything living to leave something around long enough for a necromancer to use his arts on the recently dead. As demons devoured whatever they killed as a matter of course, that didn’t leave much for the dark magician to work with.

Still, from her studies Sandreena knew there was a great deal of energy, albeit black and evil, in the dark arts, necromancy most of all. If someone was harnessing death magic to control demons—She left the thought unfinished; she really did not know what it meant, and wished again for five minutes to talk to Amirantha, then she’d strangle him.

She became aggravated with herself as much as she was with the Warlock. Of all the times to start thinking about that bastard!

The wind began to shift and then started falling off. Sandreena knew the desert wind in these hot tablelands was unpredictable. But in the relative lull, free from the worst of the stinging sand and blistering dryness, they would better be able to see trouble coming.