It took all the thought he could muster to navigate the broken land. He watched the rock underfoot and the land ahead equally, head up and down and up and down, in a bobbing motion that had little to do with his thinking, which browsed over near and far in an entirely different rhythm. The Juventa Chaos, downhill to his right, was a shallow jumbled depression, over which he could see to a distant horizon; it was like looking into a big shattered bowl. Ahead the land was rumpled and uneven, pits and hillocks covered with boulders and sand drifts, the shadows too dark, the sunlit highlights too bright. Dark yet glary; it was near sunset again, and his pupils were pinched by the light. Up and down, up and down; he came on an ancient dune side, and glissaded down the sand and scree, a dreamy descent, left, right, left, each step carrying him down a few meters, feet cushioned by sand and gravel shoved off the angle of repose. All too easy to get used to that; once on flat ground again it was hard work to return to honest jogging, and the next little uphill was devastating. He would have to look for a campsite soon, perhaps in the next hollow, or on the next sandy flat next to a rock bench. He was starving, faint with lack of food, and nothing in his pack but some meadow onions pulled earlier; but it would help to be so tired, he would fall asleep no matter what. Exhaustion beat hunger every time.

He stumbled across a shallow depression, over a knob, between two house-sized boulders. Then in a flash of white a naked woman was standing before him, waving a green sash; he stopped abruptly, he reeled, stunned at the sight of her, then concerned that the hallucinations had gotten so out of hand. But there she stood, as vivid as a flame, blood streaks spattering her breasts and legs, waving the green scarf silently. Then other human figures ran past her and over the next little knob, going where she pointed, or so it seemed. She looked at Nirgal, gestured to the south as if directing him as well, then took off running, her lean white body flowing like something visible in more than three dimensions, strong back, long legs, round bottom, already distant, the green scarf flying this way and that as she used it to point.