Their scouts were valuable. Their familiarity with deserts was even more precious. Suti al-Suri and some of the other horse-warriors had spent many years crossing regions like this for Set Ungabwey’s caravans. They had a feel for the shapes of dunes, the stretches of stable sand. When the chief warrior took the lead, the army made better progress.

Of necessity, however, his path wandered. He kept to the hollows and valleys between dunes, the lower trails where the sands were less likely to shift. Bifalt’s forces moved more quickly with less effort, but they did not always go east.

The storms had passed. Now the air was as dry as the dust kicked up by the horses. The cold cut at everyone’s lungs. Between patches of sunlight, the shadows of the dunes were everywhere, spreading their chill shade. The riflemen, Magisters, and even the mounts coughed without clearing their lungs. The el-Algreb protected themselves with cloths over their faces. The King’s men did what they could.

King Bifalt coughed as much as anyone, but he had a soldier’s disdain for mere discomfort. The sand scorned his desire for haste. Despite his hunger to join Klamath and fight, he could not quicken his pace.

He would have given his damaged hand to hear something useful from the Repository, but there was nothing.

Vexed to the verge of howling, he rode in the vanguard of his forces as if he could drag them faster by brute will. But the el-Algreb scouts were always out of sight among the dunes ahead of him, choosing his way with their characteristic mixture of caution and recklessness. The King required himself to trust them.

After hours that felt interminable, a shout carried back to him from the scouts. As he listened, the chief warrior’s voice lifted.

“Rider,” he explained. “Good.”

Bifalt jerked up his head. A rider? More than that: a rider the el-Algreb apparently knew? What in all the hells was a rider like that doing here?

“Who?” he demanded.

He meant, Who and why?

Suti al-Suri grinned. Like a taunt, he answered, “Wait.”

Bifalt wanted to hit the man. Instead, he urged his horse to trot a little faster.

Before long, he spotted her past a curving slope of sand. Escorted by one of the scouts, she sat her mount in a wide hollow between dunes. At first glance, he recognized her by her flowing white robe, a white so pure that it seemed to shed sand and dust like water from a rain-cape. Then he found her name.

Amandis. A devotee of Spirit.

No, he thought. Impossible.