Doulos shook his head, smiled, and held up his hand in the farewell. "What has the prince ever cared for another's pain? Especially a slave's. Swear to me that you will not give us away to the Schreefa."

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Gahzi nodded silently, returned the gesture, then ducked out the cave. "Honored Schreefa, the caves are dusty and full of vermin," he said, his voice a careful, vacant monotone.

Inside, Doulos smiled wider, promising to return the compliment someday. Riolla screwed up her face in disgust and went back to her chair, disappearing under the canopy.

When night fell, the Neffians awakened Saelin and took their positions under the chair, pushing westward, against the rising dunes and a stiff headwind.

When he was sure he heard them no more, Doulos went to the mouth of the cave and looked out upon the peace of the evening, the three sisters already riding high in the sky. It was time to go. Doulos crept over to favin's side. Where the opening in the cave had been lit by day, stars shone down now, bringing almost as much illumination.

Something glittered beside Javin's good hand. Drawn by curiosity, Doulos reached for the shining object and discovered he had in his hand an old book. He opened it carefully, alert for the moment of Javin's waking. The old pages, pale in the starlight, stood up stiffly from the spine and wafted to and fro with his breath. They crinkled a bit under his fingers as he traced the lettering. He sighed in disappointment; the words were too blurry to read, in a language he could not fathom. Just then Javin shifted in his sleep, and Doulos quickly closed the old book and replaced it, never noticing that the last page, lighter almost than the air, lilted away in the darkness of the cave and settled invisibly in a dusty comer.

"Wake up, Muje." Doulos shook Javin's good shoulder gently, then waited for him to sit up and take the water he offered.

"Who are you? Where are we?" said Javin gruffly,

his voice dry and husky. His hand had grown cool, the pain nearly gone. Beside him lay the evidence that someone had lanced the sting again. He smiled at the man-from his light, short-cropped hair and dark skin, obviously a slave-and took another long drink. "Thank you. You have saved my life. What is your name?"

The Neffian smiled back. "I am called Doulos."

"Doulos, I am Javin. My other name is Argivian," he hedged. "You are a slave?"

Doulos lowered his eyes from habit. "Yes. Muje, I have run. Please do not send me back. If I go back, my master will kill me."

"I would not take you back, Doulos. Tell me-did you follow me from the city, or take up my trail even before?" Javin smiled.

"I watched you with the woman at the surgery. I came behind you from there," Doulos admitted.

"Why?" said Javin.

Doulos looked at him and laughed, great puzzlement in his voice.

"Because, Muje-you are the true king of Sumifa, and all of Almaaz."

odd guests, moved across the erg slowly for the rest of the day, and for three more days, Yob and his men seemingly oblivious to the heat. When Cheyne demanded they stop to rest in the shadow of a huge rock, hewn, so said Og, into the likeness of Rotapan, they grumbled until Og sang Yob's song again. The humans slept and ate, Yob demanded the song yet again, with Og wearily obliging, but also causing some of the rock to peel away from Rotapan's majestic brow and come crashing down on one of them. Og made a new verse of it and the others applauded obliviously. By the time the song was over, they had forgotten who had been killed.

Soon after, they were moving again. Cheyne was beginning to develop some respect for the ore leader, despite himself. Yob halted the group on several occasions, sniffing the air, pointing to a stretch of sand, and then promptly directing them around it.

"What's he doing?" Cheyne asked Og after the second time of having to add two or three miles to their path.

"Sandmire. Dry quicksand. He can tell somehow.

Smells it, I think. For some reason, the Neffians know how, too," replied Og. "The sandmire seems all right at first, because there is a thin crust of regular sand on top of it. But one step into it, and you are lost. Legend has it there are people, full caravans, still falling to the bottom of sandmires."

Cheyne nodded, remembering Javin's words about the sandstorms, and tried to fix the territory in his memory, but found it impossible without landmarks.

That afternoon passed, like the others before, in heat and dulling sameness, until the sun lowered before them and Cheyne noted, almost surprised, that the erg had changed into scrubland. Serrano, Claria had called it. A few low, gray-leafed trees, their trunks twisted and wind-battered, bordered long, flat stretches of patchy sawgrass and thistle. The grass had turned a dormant yellow and whistled dryly as they passed, but the thistle bloomed gloriously, thousands of spiky purple heads stiff and proud against the constant wind.

To Cheyne, this country looked even more hostile than the desert; where there was long clean space on the erg, the serrano was littered with sandspurs and briars, thorns and razor-edged cacti. It smeiled of sagebrush and juniper and the peculiar sharpness of candlestaff, those upside-down-looking giant trees that managed to live in the most severe of climates, their barren branches reaching skyward tike long straight roots, a single bunch of red, waxy leaves at each terminal. Their interiors were hollow, and travelers had used them for centuries as emergency shelter and shade. You could smell a candlestaff grove before you ever saw it-like burning pitch mingled with attar of roses, their fragrance filled the breeze. Sure enough, a mile or so later, a great forest of them sprouted up from the rocky floor like gnarled, blackened hands, their fingers burning at the ends.

High above the pungent trees, several packs of horned canistas hunted the ridges. Their eyes glowed

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red even in the day, and their eerie, laughing wails rode the wind over the dry valley. Twice they came upon the canistas' recent kills-the carcasses looked to have been lions, but it was hard to tell, with nothing left but bones and flies. Yob's second-in-command had wasted no time in gathering the trophies. The heat seemed to be more oppressive, too, but that could have been because they'd had so little rest, thought Cheyne.

"Who do you think they were?" whispered Claria as they trudged along in the ore war party. Og had recovered somewhat, both from his blisters and from Womba's heartfelt advances, especially since Yob had tied her hands behind her back.

"What? Who?" he said, his mind still on the bones.

"Them. The heads on his belt. Who were they?" She shuddered, pointing to the big ore walking in front of Og.

"You don't recognize them?" asked Cheyne.

"Should I?"

"They were two of the 'phantoms' we fought in the alley. Look behind their ears. See the tattoos? Same as the one that didn't get away."

Claria squinted hard, trying to catch a glimpse of the double crescent marks they had seen on the other assassin. When the big ore missed his footing going up a dry gully, he paused to right himself, and she saw them clearly. "Oh. Do you think they were still following us?"