'Come,' he said, feeling unusually benevolent. 'There is a small cave just ahead. We will be safe there.' Taking her by the hand, they climbed the remaining distance carefully, coming at last to the wide, shoulder-high cavity that had given him refuge once before. He searched it quickly before letting the girl enter. But finding it uninhabited, he helped her up, then lay down and basked in the first real safety he had known for several days, seeming to take no further notice. But Sylviana could find no such release. Crouching on one knee in the light of the smaller cave's entrance, she could think only of her friend, the gentle wolf, trapped beyond all help in the lower cave. Realizing there was nothing more she could do, she remained there in uncertain melancholy, her mind buried deep in her thoughts. Chapter 5 Peering down at the entrance of the larger cave, Sylviana kept her vigil. Kalus had long since fallen asleep, something which troubled her deeply. She could not understand how he could be so indifferent about the fate of her only friend. She herself had remained on the lip of rock just beyond the smaller niche for what seemed an eternity, and still had seen no sign of either wolf or spider. She had passed much of the time by studying the awesome landscape that opened so broadly before her, her first unobstructed view. And she could summon just enough geology and topography to be both puzzled and intrigued by the inexplicable diversity of it. To the left of them, due south at a distance of roughly five miles, lay a massive sandstone ridge, descending from a high central erg in two long arms that reached out west and southwest beyond the edge of sight. Eroded by wind and water, it reminded her most of photographs she had seen of Monument Valley in the west, though not so old or well defined. Then there was the phenomenon of the line of granite cliffs from which she now surveyed the valley. As nearly as she could tell it ran directly north-south at an altitude varying from five- to fifteen-hundred feet. At its base, directly below them, a shallow gorge crept slowly southward to end in a shadowed overhang at the foot of the sandstone ridge. How the two lines of vastly divergent rock had come together to form such a neat corner she could not guess. Perhaps violent flooding had deposited the sand during a great turmoil of the sea, then left it to slowly age and weather through the intervening centuries. How many she dared not even think. The contrast between the two was like day and night.