“Mistress…”

The formality startled Snake and she glanced over at Melissa with concern. “Melissa, what’s wrong?”

“How much farther before we stop?”

“I don’t know. We have to go on as long as we can.” She gestured toward the sky, where the clouds hung low and threatening. “That’s what they look like before a storm.”

“I know. But we can’t go much longer. Squirrel and Swift have to rest. You said the city is in the middle of the desert. Well, once we get in we have to get back out, and the horses have to take us.”

Snake slumped back in her saddle. “We have to go on. It’s too dangerous to stop.”

“Snake… Snake, you know about people and storms and healing and deserts and cities, and I don’t. But I know about horses. If we let them stop and rest for a few hours, they’ll take us a far way tonight. If they have to keep going, by dark we’ll have to leave them behind.”

“All right,” Snake said finally. “We’ll stop when we get to those rocks. At least there’ll be some shade.”

At home in the healers’ station, Snake did not think of the city from one month to the next. But in the desert, and in the mountains where the caravannaires wintered, life revolved around it. Snake had begun to feel that her life too depended on it when at last, at dawn after the third night, the high, truncated mountain that protected Center appeared before her. The sun rose directly behind it, illuminating it in scarlet like an idol. Scenting water, sensing an end to their long trek, the horses raised their heads and quickened their tired pace. As the sun rose higher the low, thickening clouds spread the light into a red wash that covered the horizon. Snake’s knee ached with every step Swift took, but she did not need the signal of swollen joints to tell her a storm approached. Snake clenched her fists around the reins until the leather dug painfully into her palms, then slowly she relaxed her hands and stroked her horse’s damp neck. She had no doubt that Swift ached as much as she did.

They approached the mountain. The summertrees were brown and withered, rustling stalks surrounding a dark pond and deserted firepits. The wind whispered between the dry leaves and over the sand, coming first from one direction, then another, in the manner of winds near a solitary mountain. The city’s sunrise shadow enveloped them.

“It’s a lot bigger than I thought,” Melissa said quietly. “I used to have a place where I could hide and listen to people talk, but I always thought they were making up stories.”

“I think I did too,” Snake said. Her own voice sounded very lost and far away. As she approached the great rock cliffs, cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and her hands grew clammy despite the heat. The tired mare carried her forward.

The times the city had dominated the healers’ station were the year Snake was seven, and again when she was seventeen. In each of those years a senior healer undertook the long hard journey to Center. Each of those years was the beginning of a new decade, when the healers offered the city dwellers an exchange of knowledge and of help. They were always turned away. Perhaps this time, too, despite the message Snake had to give them.

“Snake?”

Snake started and glanced over at Melissa. “What?”

“Are you okay? You looked so far away, and, I don’t know—”

“ ‘Scared’ would be a good word, I think,” Snake said.

“They’ll let us in.”

The dark clouds seemed to grow thicker and heavier every minute.

“I hope so,” Snake said.

At the base of Center’s mountain, the wide dark pool had neither inlets nor outlets. The water oozed up into it from below, then flowed invisibly away into the sand. The summertrees were dead, but the ground cover of grass and low bushes grew lushly. Fresh grass already sprouted in the trampled areas of abandoned camps and the paths between, but not on the wide road to the city’s gate.

Snake did not have the heart to ride Swift past the water. She handed her reins to Melissa at the edge of the pool.

“Follow me when they’re finished drinking. I won’t go in without you, so don’t worry. If the wind rises, though, come running. Okay?”

Melissa nodded. “A storm couldn’t come that quick, could it?”

“I’m afraid it could,” Snake said.

She drank quickly and splashed water on her face. Wiping the drops on the corner of her headcloth she strode along the bare road. Somewhere close beneath the black sand lay a smooth, unyielding surface. An ancient road? She had seen remains in other places, disintegrating concrete flesh and even the rusting steel bones in places the collectors had not yet worked.

Snake stopped before Center’s gate. It was five times her height. Generations of sandstorms had brushed the metal to a lustrous finish. But it had no handle, no bell-pull, no door knocker, no way Snake could see of summoning someone to let her in.

She stepped forward, raised her fist, and banged it against the metal. The solid thud sounded not at all hollow. She pounded on the door, thinking it must be very thick. As her eyes grew more accustomed to the dim light in the recessed doorway, she saw that the front of the door was actually concave, perceptibly worn down by the fury of the storms.

Her hand aching, she stepped back for a moment.

“About time you stopped that noise.”

Snake jumped at the voice and turned toward it, but no one was there. Instead, in the side of the alcove, a panel clicked away into the rock and a window appeared. A pale man with bushy red hair glared out at her.

“What do you mean, beating on the door after we’ve closed?”

“I want to come in,” Snake said.

“You’re not a city dweller.”

“No. My name is Snake. I’m a healer.”

He did not answer — as politeness dictated where Snake had been raised — with his name. She hardly noticed, for she was getting used to the differences that made politeness in one place an offense somewhere else. But when he threw back his head and laughed, she was surprised. She frowned and waited until he stopped.

“So they’ve quit sending old crocks to beg, have they? It’s young ones now!” He laughed again. “I’d think they could choose somebody handsome.”

From his tone, Snake assumed she had been insulted. She shrugged. “Open the gate.”

He stopped laughing. “We don’t let outsiders in.”

“I brought a message from a friend to her family. I want to deliver it.”

He did not answer for a moment, glancing down. “All the people who went out came back in this year.”

“She left a long time ago.”

“You don’t know much about this city if you expect me to go running around it looking for some crazy’s family.”

“I know nothing about your city. But from the looks of you, you’re related to my friend.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” For the first time he was taken aback.

“She told me her family was related to the keepers of the gate. And I can see it — the hair, the forehead… the eyes are different. Hers are brown.” This city dweller’s eyes were pale green.

“Did she happen to mention,” the young man said, attempting sarcasm, “just exactly which family she’s supposed to belong to?”

“The ruling one.”

“Just a minute,” he said slowly. He glanced down and his hands moved, out of Snake’s view, but when she moved closer she could see nothing beyond the edge of the “window,” for it was not a window but a glass panel carrying a moving image. Though startled, she did not permit herself to react. She had known, after all, that the city dwellers had more mechanical technology than her people. That was one of the reasons she was here.

The young man looked up slowly, one eyebrow arched in astonishment. “I’ll have to call someone else to talk to you.” The image on the glass panel dissolved in multicolored lines.

Nothing happened for some time. Snake leaned outside the shallow alcove and looked around.