I shrugged. ‘An explosion of some vast kind, or maybe some sort of chemical that flowed over the land and poisoned it. It is said the Beforetimers had the power to destroy whole cities with a single weapon.’

‘For all we know, this once could have been a city,’ Swallow said.

I shook my head. ‘Remember Jacob scribed in his journal that there were only a couple of settlements this side of the mountains on his Beforetime maps, and no cities?’

I noticed Analivia gazing at Swallow, but when she caught my eye she blushed and said briskly, ‘I was thinking we should bathe Dragon again. I know the water won’t wake her but at least she can be clean.’

Swallow went out and carried the unconscious girl gently to the outermost stone bowl that did not spill its contents into the lake but back down the mound where it soaked into the grey earth. It was shallow so there was no need for anyone to hold her as Analivia, dressed now, began to lave her with water. I turned on my back to float. Thus suspended with the clear blue sky arching above me it struck me that if I did not think of the past or the future, I would be content. This is how beasts can live, I thought. But I was no beast. I turned my head one way to look at the Blacklands stretching away to the south and all that I had left behind me, then I turned east to what lay before us, narrowing my eyes against the dazzling brightness of the white plain.

Immediately my contentment faded into unease, for Rheagor had said the city we sought was many days away, and that we would have to follow a path of stone trees. There were no trees at all to be seen, let alone stone ones, nor would there be food or fodder. We could endure for some time without food, but not without water. Unfortunately we had only the few gourd bottles and they would not last more than a few days.

I told myself firmly that Rheagor’s ancestor had made the crossing, so there must be water. If all else failed, I might have cause to be grateful that one of my companions was a tribesman who understood the ways of the desert. Inevitably, thinking of the desert, I thought of Rushton, for it was in Sador, after the abortive Battlegames, that we had first spoken of love. I tried to envisage him on a ship at sea, striding around the deck with a fair wind ruffling his dark hair, green eyes caught by a ship fish leaping from a phosphorescent wave, or the flash of sunlight on the curved back of a blue-green swell, but the dream of the storm and of the ship being swamped by a great black wave overshadowed it.