They moved from water to water. Paks learned to ride with a cloth over her face, and keep her mouth closed against the dryness. The horses lost flesh, despite their care. The caravaners showed the Girdsmen how to turn over every rock before sitting down: Paks loathed the many-legged creatures that lurked in that cool shade, and carried poison in their tails.

It took days to cross the first deep canyon: first to ease the wagons down that steep trail without losing control of any of them, then to warp them across the roaring river, red with ground rock, then to drag them back up, foot by foot. And when they came out on top again, Paks could see little of where they had been. After another such canyon, the caravaners pointed out a line of purple against the northern sky. Mountains, they said. Elves, they said also, with sidelong looks at Ardhiel.

Paks asked him, and Ardhiel answered that those mountains were home to elves, but not of his family. He seemed troubled by something, but Paks knew better than to ask. Balkon, looking north, muttered eagerly about stone. He had confided to Paks that his family, the Goldenaxe clan, was looking for more daskgeft, more stonemass for the increase of the family. He hoped to find some; the descriptions Luap had written of the land made him think the stone there might be "dross," or suitable. Paks wondered again how dross could have so many meanings in dwarvish: courage, wit, strength—almost anything good, it seemed to her, was dross.

Day by day the mountains seemed to march nearer their flank. Ahead was only the rolling level of the desert, broken by watercourses. Paks began to feel a pressure from those mountains; she understood why the caravaners would go around rather than through them, for that alone. Then one morning an edge of red rock showed ahead. As they marched toward it, it rose higher and higher. By the next afternoon, they could see the lighter rock below, great sweeping curves of white and yellow—the same color, Paks thought, as the walls of Cortes Andres. And two days later, marching under those great stone ramparts, the Girdsmen turned aside.

Here a river emptied itself from those stone walls into the sand and rubble outside. The caravaners muttered and made gestures, but finally moved on, while High Marshal Connaught examined the map again. When the caravan was gone, he mounted his bay horse and led them up the watercourse, the horses lunging through the dry sand. Ahead, Paks could see towering white walls closing in. She wondered how they could ride in such a narrow space if the water came up.

"Bad place for an ambush," said Amberion beside her.

"Yes, sir."

"By the map, we'll be leaving this soon, and climbing into another stream's valley. I hope the route can be climbed by horses."

Paks had not thought of that, but looking at the sheer walls of stone, she realized what they might face. "If they can't—"