They had some trouble to find the trail from there. Just to the left of the black cone, layers of stone like those that peel from a boiled egg curved downward, but the horses skidded and slipped. High Marshal Connaught sent Thelon ahead; he reported that the stony way ended in a drop four or five men high. Then they searched for a way around. Paks decided that walking in deep dry sand was harder than any marching she had ever done. The wind rose, blowing sand into their eyes. The horses flattened ears against it. The first three trails they tried led to sheer cliffs, and it was early afternoon before the scout found a safe route.

It began in a narrow grove of pines, where broad low boles rose from drifted sand, old trees bent by strong winds into a tangled thatch of branches. Below the trees, the trail followed a twisting ravine, its bed choked with boulders of garish red and black on a bed of sand; they radiated heat like coals. Across the ravine, as they went down, they could see outcrops of red rock. Suddenly the cleft they traveled angled back to the left, then crooked right again. They stood on a narrow platform above a small valley that led straight away toward a tangle of cliffs and canyons. On either side, sheer cliffs rose hundreds of feet, rose-red and orange, striped with black. To the right, an arm of the valley angled back away from them. Down the valley a stream reflected the sky; it looked wider than Paks had expected.

As they rode down into the valley, Paks heard conflicting opinions.

"What a farm that'd make," she heard from one of the yeomen with the mules. "Wind-shelter from those cliffs—water—must be good soil with all that grass."

"A long way to market," said another. "Unless you founded a grange out here, Tamar."

"Marry me, and we might," said the woman, laughing.

"Marry—I'd have married you in Fin Panir, but you wouldn't have it."

"And miss this? Come on, Dort, you weren't any more ready to settle down than I was. But couldn't we make a farm here?"

"I'll tell you that when I find the nearest market." Paks heard them laughing for some moments after.

"It is not good," muttered Balkon, who had turned his pony aside from the others to look closely at the rock wall nearest them. "See—" He poked at it with his axe-haft and a chunk came away; sand sifted after it. "It is soft here. Good rock there—" he pointed at the east wall of the valley, and at great cliffs beyond it. "But something is wrong here. With those cliffs, it must be deeper."

"Strange," murmured Ardhiel as Paks rode by. "It has an odd feel—very strange."

But most of the company liked its looks—green grass and water, walls far enough apart to allow maneuvering, yet close enough for protection. Then they rode out of the last rock-strewn mouth of the ravine, and found themselves once more in deep sand—this time damp.