Like a wing sweeping them into its embrace, the storm closed around them. A savage awareness seemed to ride the spinning sand, reaching relentlessly past the folds of their telaban, a thousand abrasive fingers clawing paths across their skin. Loose cloth and rope ends spiked upward, whipping with urgent rhythm. The roar filled the air, filled their skulls.
Raraku had awakened. All that Fiddler had sensed the last time he rode these wastes, sensed as an underlying restlessness, the spectral promise of nightmares beneath the surface, was now unleashed, exultant with freedom.
Heads ducked, the horses plodded onward, buffeted by wayward gusts of sand-filled air. The ground underneath was hard-packed clay and rubble — the once deep cloak of fine white sand had been lifted from the surface, now sang in the air, and with it were stripped away the patient, all-covering centuries.
The group dismounted, hooded their mounts' heads, then led them on.
Bones appeared underfoot. Rusting lumps of armour, chariot wheels, remnants of horse and camel tack, pieces of leather, the humped foundation stones of walls — what had been a featureless desert now showed its bones, and they crowded the floor in such profusion as to leave Fiddler in awe. He could not take a step without something crunching underfoot.
A high stone-lined bank suddenly blocked their way. It was sloped, rising to well above their heads. Fiddler paused for a long moment, then he gathered his mount's reins and led the climb. Scrambling, stumbling against the steep bank, they eventually reached the top and found themselves on a road.
The paving stones were exquisitely cut, evenly set, with the thinnest of cracks visible between them. Bemused, Fiddler crouched down, trying to hold his focus as he studied the road's surface — a task made more difficult by the streams of airborne sand racing over the stones. There was no telling its age. While he imagined that, even buried beneath the sands, there would be signs of wear, he could detect none. Moreover, the engineering showed skill beyond any masonry he'd yet seen in Seven Cities.
To his right and left the road ran spearshaft-straight as far as his squinting eyes could see. It stood like a vast breakwater that even this sorcerous storm could not breach.
Crokus leaned close. 'I thought there were no roads in Raraku!' he shouted over the storm's keening wail.
The sapper shook his head, at a loss to explain.
'Do we follow it?' Crokus asked. 'The wind's not as bad up here-'
As far as Fiddler could judge, the road angled southwestward, deep into the heart of Raraku. To the northeast it would reach the Pan'potsun Hills within ten leagues — in that direction they would come to the hills perhaps five leagues south of where they had left them. There seemed little value in that. He stared again down the road to his right.
Fiddler mounted the Gral gelding. 'We follow the road,' he yelled to his companions, gesturing southwestward.
They voiced no complaints, turning to their mounts. They had bowed to his command, Fiddler realized, because both were lost in this land. They relied on him completely. Hood's
