Kael looked at Flaith. "Sure, they'll be after us, too, now! They know what we look like. They'll want us for helping this one get away." "What can we do?" The old peddler smiled. His swart face lighted under the loose cowl of his kufiyah. "Come with me. I will make a home for you on the desert where none shall ever find you." Flaith said, "Perhaps they won't know about us. We left the sfarri lying like dead men, remember!" Lunol looked his interest. Kael said, "I touched my harp and the sfarri fell like poisoned insects. Why they fell I do not know. Do you?" Lunol shrugged his shoulders. "I am an ignorant man. I do not know about these things. But this I do know. If we do not go into the desert, sooner or later the sfarri will find us!" They set off across the sands, past the high-humped rocks that were beaten and weathered by the fierce storms that ravaged the planet. They struggled across the burning wasteland, their throats choked with the heat and the sand. The sun glowed down on them, making sweat run in tiny rivers that plastered their robes to their flesh. The hours went by. Night came, and they slept where they fell, exhausted. With the sun, they were up and moving. The days came and went, long eternities of heat and thirst, through which they plodded in the shifting sands. They were tiny motes of life against a backdrop of level, desolate loneliness. They crossed ancient beds of rock, where once, in forgotten eons, a sea had rolled. Here Kael had to lift and carry Flaith, for her thin sandals were gone, and her white feet were red with blood where the stones had cut them. They went on and on. They stopped at an oasis, here and there, to quench their thirst in the cool waters of a subterranean spring. They ate of the dried figs and bits of hard black bread that Lunol carried in his girdle. Toward dusk of their sixth day on the desert, Lunol cried out. They focussed eyes salt-encrusted with dried sweat where his finger pointed. "There! See yonder, and know Lunol did not lie!" * * * * * There was livid fear in the eyes of the old peddler as he gestured at the glistening black pile of the tower lifting upward from the sand. It was almost as if he expected to see something dark and fearsome slip from the basalt blocks and come hunting him. "It's been there for thousands of years," he whimpered. "Even when the balangs roamed these sands, the tower was there." Flaith came close to Kael. "I'm frightened! There's something wrong with it." Kael snorted and walked forward through the sand, ploughing his way where the wind had piled thick granules. Flaith ran a few steps after him, her hand seeking his arm. Behind them, could hear the peddler moaning.