“Hold tight!” Horus hollered, still bravely manning the rudder as the Breath of Shu hit another dune.

The ship shot straight up, tilting high, rolling everyone toward the stern. The prow pointed at the sky, threatening to topple over. But with a final grinding groan, the windrider came to rest.

“Abandon ship!” Horus called.

No one had to be told twice. The crew leaped and clambered from the ship to the sand. Everyone headed up the dune. No one wanted to risk having the ship come rolling back down on top of them.

Reaching the crest of the dune, Jake regrouped with his friends. Marika and Bach’uuk looked banged up but otherwise unhurt. Nefertiti helped Pindor, who’d taken a hard hit to the head. It was already raising a goose egg above his eyebrow.

“You didn’t have to shield me,” Nefertiti scolded.

“Couldn’t let that barrel hit you,” Pindor said blearily, sitting down abruptly.

Nefertiti scowled at him, a fist on her hip. But before leaving his side, she patted his head, as if she were rewarding a puppy. And as she turned away, a shadow of a smile played at the edges of her lips.

Marika joined Jake. “Here we are again.”

Jake raised a questioning eyebrow.

She waved to the dunes. “Dropped into the middle of the desert … isn’t this how this whole adventure started?”

She tried to grin, but Jake read the fear in her face.

“We’ll be okay,” he said, though he had no facts to back that up. “C’mon.”

He followed after Nefertiti as she joined Horus and Shaduf. Politor sat nearby, staring at the ship. He looked as if he’d lost a close friend.

“What do we do now?” Jake asked the group.

Shaduf shrugged. “Unless you can sprout some wings, we’re not flying.”

“We still have a good lead on Kree’s forces,” Horus said. “It is not a far hike to Ankh Tawy.”

“But it is a dangerous one.” Nefertiti’s eyes kept scanning the area. The princess had become the hunter again. “To reach the Great Wind means crossing through the Crackles on foot.”

“What are the Crackles?” Jake asked.

Nefertiti pointed across the rolling sea of sand. About a mile away rose broken cliffs of black rock. It looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to a thick slab of asphalt.

Nefertiti nodded to that blasted landscape. “The Crackles is a labyrinth of rock, sand, and shadows. It’s easy to get lost in there. Easier to get killed. All manner of desert creatures take refuge from the sun under the rocks’ thick shadows.”

Shaduf looked worried. “But that’s not the worst of it.”

Marika moved closer to Jake. “Why’s that?”

“The Crackles reach almost to the Great Wind. It lies within the very shadow of Ankh Tawy. It is that shadow you need to fear the most. For it shelters creatures, like the harpies, that could not exist in any other place.”

Nefertiti sighed loudly. “That’s just stories.”

Marika glanced at Jake. The two of them had seen too many stories come to life. Still, he read the certainty in her eyes. No matter the danger, they had no choice.