I was silent a moment, remembering when I had been taken prisoner by the rebel Malik. There were times when I still had nightmares about his threat to drive a knife into my eye. At length I said, ‘You told me that Atthis and Maruman said I needed you. Did they tell you why?’

‘Atthis said that you sought to prevent another Great White from happening and that this was the purpose of your life,’ she said, beginning to look agitated, and all at once she looked more like a child than a young woman. ‘She told me you needed something that I had to remember about the Red Land but I don’t know what it can be! Do you know what it is?’

I bit back all the questions I wanted to ask and said soothingly, ‘We will have time to find out as we travel. For now, rest, and know that I am truly glad that you are with me.’

She gave me a tremulous smile. ‘I am glad to be with you, too, Elspeth.’

Soon after, she slept, leaving me to ponder the fact that I did not know what I needed from Dragon any more than she did. Doubtless Atthis would have told me, had she lived, which made me wonder if Maruman’s foray into seliga had something to do with discovering it.

Ahmedri and Swallow returned when the sun hung low in the sky with some scanty lichen they had scraped off rocks for the horses, but they had found nothing that humans, canines or felines would find edible.

Gavyn did not return until right on dusk with Rasial and the horses, but he had brought another hempen bag of firenuts and two large misshapen purple tubers. Ahmedri pounced on the tubers, saying they grew in Sador and were edible and very nourishing, and where there were two, there would be more. He added that since they would not keep without being pickled or salted we might as well eat them in a soup, which he promptly set about preparing.

Seeing how the discovery of the tubers had enlivened the tribesman, I guessed that the find had transformed the desert for him from hostile unknown terrain to merely unfamiliar territory.