"I hadn't realized it was so big," Ce'Nedra murmured, shading her eyes to gaze at the distant hilltops.

The floor of the valley was as flat as a tabletop, and it was only sparsely sprinkled with low, thorny bushes. The ground was scattered with round, fist-sized rocks, and the dust spurted, yellow and powdery, from each step of their horses' hoofs. Although it was scarcely midmorning, the sun was already a furnace, and shimmering heatwaves rippled the valley floor ahead, making the dusty, gray-green bushes seem to dance in the windless air.

It grew hotter. There was no trace of moisture anywhere, and the sweat dried almost instantly on the flanks of their panting horses.

"I think we should give some thought to going back," Adara said, reining in her mount. "There's no way we can reach those hills at the end of the valley."

"She's right, your Majesty," Olban told the princess. "We've already come too far."

Ce'Nedra pulled Noble to a stop, and the white horse drooped his head as if on the verge of absolute exhaustion. "Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself," she chided him irritably. This was not going at all as she had expected. She looked around. "I wonder if we could find some shade somewhere," she said. Her lips were dry, and the sun seemed to hammer down on her unprotected head.

"The terrain doth not suggest such comfort, princess," Ariana said, looking around at the flat emptiness of the rock-strewn valley floor.

"Did anyone think to bring any water?" Ce'Nedra asked, dabbing at her forehead with a kerchief.

No one had.

"Maybe we should go back," she decided, looking about rather regretfully. "There's nothing to see out here, anyway."

"Riders coming," Adara said sharply, pointing toward a mounted group of men emerging from an indented galley that lay like a fold on the flanks of a rounded hill a mile or so away.

"Murgos?" Olban demanded with a sharp intake of his breath. His hand went immediately to his sword.

Adara raised her hand to shade her eyes and stared at the approaching horsemen intently.

"No," she replied. "They're Algars. I can tell by the way they ride."

"I hope they have some water with them," Ce'Nedra said.

The dozen or so Algar riders rode directly toward them with a great cloud of yellow dust rising behind them. Adara suddenly gasped, and her face went very pale.

"What is it?" Ce'Nedra asked her.

"Lord Hettar is with them," Adara said in a choked voice.

"How can you possibly recognize anybody at that distance?"

Adara bit her lip, but did not reply.

Hettar's face was fierce and unforgiving as he reined in his sweating horse. "What are you doing out here?" he demanded bluntly. His hawkface and black scalp lock gave him a wild, even frightening appearance.

"We thought we'd go riding, Lord Hettar," Ce'Nedra replied brightly, trying to outface him.