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Snake’s face
and she tightened her legs against the mare’s damp flanks. The horse leaped
across the shore and passed between delicate summertrees, shadows and delicate
fronds flicking past, until suddenly the desert opened out to the horizon.
    Snake held the case in her left hand; the right could not yet grasp tightly
enough. Away from the fires and the water’s reflections, Snake could barely see.
The black sand sucked up light and released it as heat. The mare galloped on.
The intricate decorations on her bridle jingled faintly above the crunch of
hooves in sand. Her sweat soaked into Snake’s pants, hot and sticky against her
knees and thighs. Beyond the oasis and its protection of trees, Snake felt the
sting of windblown sand. She let go of Merideth’s waist long enough to pull the
end of her headcloth across her nose and mouth.
    Soon the sand gave way to a slope of stones. The mare clambered up it, onto
solid rock. Merideth held her to a walk. “It’s too dangerous to run. We’d be in
a crevasse before we saw it.” Merideth’s voice was tense with urgency.
    They moved perpendicular to great cracks and fissures where molten rock had
flowed and separated and cooled to basalt. Grains of sand sighed across the
barren, undulating surface. The mare’s iron shoes rang against it as if it were
hollow. When she had to leap a chasm, the stone reverberated.
    More then once Snake started to ask what had happened to Merideth’s friend,
but she remained silent. The plain of stone forbade conversation, forbade
concentration on anything but traversing it.
    And Snake was afraid to ask, afraid to know.
    The case lay heavy against her leg, rocking in rhythm to the mare’s long
stride. Snake could feel Sand shifting inside his compartment; she hoped he
would not rattle and frighten the horse again.
    The lava flow did not appear on Snake’s map, which ended, to the south, at
the oasis. The trade routes avoided the lava flows, for they were hard on people
and animals alike. Snake wondered if they would reach their destination before
morning. Here on the black rock the heat would build rapidly.
    Finally the mare’s gait began to slow, despite Merideth’s constant urging.
     
    The smoothly rocking pace across the wide stone river had lulled Snake almost
to sleep. She jerked awake when the mare slid, pulling her haunches under her,
scrabbling with her hooves, throwing the riders back, then forward, as they came
down the long slope of lava. Snake clutched her bag and Merideth and clamped the
horse between her knees.
    The broken stone at the foot of the cliff thinned out, no longer holding them
to a walk. Snake felt Merideth’s legs tighten against the mare, forcing the
exhausted horse into a heavy canter. They were in a deep, narrow canyon, its
high walls formed by two separate tongues of lava.
    Spots of light hovered against ebony and for a moment Snake thought sleepily
of fireflies. Then a horse neighed from a long distance and the lights leaped
into perspective: the camp’s lanterns. Merideth leaned forward, speaking words
of encouragement to the mare. The horse labored, struggling through the deep
sand, stumbling once and throwing Snake hard against Merideth’s back. Jolted,
Sand rattled. The hollow space around him amplified the sound. The mare bolted
in terror. Merideth let her run, and when she finally slowed, foam dripping down
her neck and blood spattering from her nostrils, Merideth forced her on.
    The camp seemed to recede, miragelike. Every breath Snake took hurt her as if
she were the mare. The horse floundered through deep sand like an exhausted
swimmer, gasping at the height of every plunge.
    They reached the tent. The mare staggered and stopped, spraddle-legged, head
down. Snake slipped from her back, soaked with sweat, her own knees shaky.
Merideth dismounted and led the way into the tent. The flaps were propped open,
and the lanterns within suffused it with a pale blue