Beyond the tree trunks lay the canyons with their flat shale tops that fell away to the desert sands. And beyond the canyons, sand dunes as far as the eye could see. The sun was already halfway down to the horizon. Soon the sky would turn bloodred, as it did every evening.

“Do you see anything?” Billos asked.

They scanned the desert for sign of Scabs. And cacti. Just beyond the forest a tall rock jutted fifty yards into the sky. This was the Igal point. Climb its peak and they said you could see for a day’s ride.

“Should we scale the point?” Darsal asked no one in particular.

“We don’t have time,” Silvie said. “Do you see the cacti?”

Billos guided his horse out of the trees and stopped for them to join him.

“Do you see it?” Darsal asked again.

“There’s no clump of four that I can see. That one to the left there is small and by itself. Maybe he meant for us to find four separate ones.”

“No, he said a group of four,” Johnis said, coaxing his ride to the right where the rock shelf hung over a ravine.

“But there’s no saying what he meant by ‘group,’ ” Billos persisted.

“Even so, I don’t see four,” Silvie said. “The catalina cactus likes sand. We’d have to go deeper into these canyons to find more.”

“Either way, I think two of us should make the stretcher we’ll need to carry them back unharmed,” Darsal said. They’d already decided to return the large cacti home safely by strapping them to two long poles with branches between to form a stretcher.

“Fine,” Billos said, “the coward could manage that task, I would think.”

But Johnis hardly heard him, because he’d come to the edge of the ravine and could now see that they were in more than a little bit of trouble. The shelf fell off ten feet to a bed of sand that stretched into a widening canyon.

Their catalina cacti were at the base of this shelf, growing from the sandy bottom. He’d found them, and that was good.

But so had someone else.

Found them and smashed them to bits.

“I found them,” Johnis said.

“Where?” They hurried over and stared into the ravine with him.

Each cactus had to have been as tall as a horse, judging by the size of the green chunks that littered the floor. For a moment they were all too stunned to speak.

“Elyon help us!”

“Now what?” Johnis said.

Billos forced his horse in a tight circle, studying the terrain. “You know now what,” he said. “We have no choice. There have to be four more, deeper in.”

Silvie studied the desert. “Deeper? Do you think that’s wise?”

“What choice do we have?”

“Ride along the forest edge,” she said.