Dead.
Sita swallowed. “Perhaps I was wrong about the time. Perhaps it onlyfeltlike an hour.”
“Perhaps.”
Karim wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe it had only been a few minutes. However, the position of the sun said otherwise.
Choosing not to go further down that unfathomable line of thinking, Karim turned his mind to another burning question. “How didyousurvive? Did you make it to shelter before the storm hit?”
Sita bit her lip. “Not exactly.”
Karim waited for her to continue. “Well?”
“I don’t know!” She threw up her hands. “It was as if there was this barrier around us. The storm raged, but somehow it didn’t touch us. I don’t understand it.”
“It didn’t touch you? Is this more of your Khetaran magic? Did you do something? Say something?”
“I suppose I did. I was worried about the little girl, so I—”
The little girl!Karim had forgotten all about Aya. “Where is she?”
Sita’s shoulders fell. “Gone. She must have run away when I went looking for you.”
Karim reached back into the hole and pulled out his pack. He rooted around in it. Everything was accounted for, except—
He slapped his forehead. “The map! I had it in my hand!” He fumbled in the hole, trying to find it. After sifting through the sand for several minutes and finding nothing, he stood and beganto pace. “What will we do now, hey? If the map is buried or flying on the western wind, how will we find the lost city? We don’t know our way around this region.”
Sita squinted into the distance. “We don’t, but Aya does.” She pointed, and Karim turned to see a set of small footprints leading southeast. “Maybe the storm convinced her to return home. If we follow and track down her tribe, they might be able to tell us how to find Perset.”
As if he understood her words, Behkai trotted over to the footprints, marked the scent, and took off in Aya’s wake.
Karim hesitated.
“Unless you have a better idea?” Sita asked.
Karim swept an arm toward their new path and tipped his head. “Lead on, Princess.”
Sita snorted, and they forged ahead.
She didn’t ask Karim any other questions about how he’d survived being buried alive, and he didn’t interrogate her about how she’d magically shielded Aya and Behkai from the storm.
But as he walked, Karim could think of nothing else.
In more ways than one, he feared where their untrodden path was taking them.
***
First, the wind took the footprints. Then it took the scent. Frustrated, Behkai snuffled at the ground and began to wander in ever-widening circles.
“Now what?” Sita asked, her cheeks pink with exertion.
Karim stopped and put his hands on his hips, scanning the horizon. Up ahead, the rolling dunes were interrupted by a collection of towering landforms. Most had sheer faces that would be impossible to scale, but one landform—a spire, like a finger pointing to the sky—featured a small plateau about halfway up the summit. “If Iclimb up there,” he said, “I’ll have a better view of the area.”
Sita stayed with the dog while he went on his mission. He made quick work of the peak, his body feeling surprisingly hale given the fact that only a couple hours earlier he’d been vomiting up piles of sand. Reaching the plateau, he stood and looked around. From that vantage point, Karim could see far across the desert in all directions. He turned southeast. There were no structures in sight. No oasis either, which didn’t bode well. Their water supplies were already low. A little farther south, though, he noticed something odd about the land. It looked…red.
Could it be a trick of the light?
He leaned forward, trying to get a better view, and put his hand on the wall of the spire to steady himself. As he touched the rock face, the world shuddered—and Karim had the sensation of falling backward, even though he hadn’t moved at all.
