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rivers and over fields of smoothed rock and sand, they threw off their searchers for hours at a stretch, and thus moved faster. The border of Mundus Lucifa grew close — a hundred kilometers, fifty, ten. Then they crossed it — a low barbed wire strand posted with wood and stone markers.
    As they prepared to stop and hide for the night, Barthel's horse went lame. He examined the beast's foreleg and found a splintered river stone had wedged into the hoof, splitting it to the quick. Left alone, the beast could hobble about and feed off the grassland well enough — but it couldn't be ridden. And it wouldn't be able to move fast enough to keep up with them.
    Their supplies were low. There was little to transfer from horse to horse. They buried the saddle in a wadi as the sky was graying. Rain would fall before darkness came — and the wadi would fill with water, likely to cover their traces.
    They found a pile of rocks firmly mounted against the floods and higher than the water was likely to rise. After checking it out for vermin, they rigged a hidden shelter and rested, waiting for the storm to break.
    The front of rain hit with the impact of a spilled bucket. Rivers grew in minutes, carried away whole landscapes as mud and scum, and rushed into the wadi. The search party below faced serious danger of drowning unless they could find high ground and wait out the storm.
    When daylight came the land was still as death. The grass had been pounded, into a thick yellow mud. Water dripped from the rocks. No wind blew, no animals called, nothing moved.
    The land dropped away ahead of them. Kiril had a dizzying premonition — where night was a river? — and looked into the canyon. It was a sheer drop of at least a kilometer to a series of declines and gorges running helter-skelter into the grandest chasm he had ever seen. It seemed to plunge forever into a murky, mist-filled shadow that complained from far away with a tinny grumble. This was the natural border of Mundus Lucifa. But Kiril had heard of a way across. They rode and walked gingerly along the canyon's rim for the rest of the day trying to spot the formation he described. Night gloomed up again, and with it came mists and fogs which filled the canyon and wafted at the brim like a ghost ocean.
    It was well into the afternoon of the next day before the vapors burned off. Then they saw what Kiril had told them to look for — a monumental rock bridge. It was at least three days away, but they could see its four arches in the distance like the doors to a Mediwevan church. Bar-Woten nodded grimly, satisfied he was seeing a true wonder. Barthel took it in stride. “Allah never surprises me,” he said tersely.
    Bar-Woten declared they had thrown their pursuers off. “The flood probably convinced them we weren't worth the effort. Either that or it killed them.”
    “Did you kill any?” Kiril asked. Barthel looked at him sharply, sensing trouble.
    “No,” Bar-Woten said. “I didn't. I doubt if Barthel did — he was too busy keeping his horse quiet. Did you?”
    “No,” Kiril said. “I'm not sure I could have.”
    “The Bey is ashamed that I didn't kill?” Barthel asked grudgingly.
    “Not at all. It accomplishes nothing. A skillful hunter kills only for food — and we weren't in the circumstances to enjoy tall pig.”
    Kiril trudged across the hard-baked stone and mud of the canyon edge. Barthel took his turn on the horse.
    “The Ibisians must have thought differently about killing at one time,” Kiril said.
    “They did,” Bar-Woten said. “I did, too.”
    They switched, and Bar-Woten walked in silence. Birds wheeled over the canyon, wings wide and dark. Their cries counterpointed grumbling from the chasm. To the south the white line of Obelisk Tara still gave a point of reference. It would be thousands of kilometers away before they lost sight of it, and by that time they'd have another Obelisk to follow. There would be the usual region where the sky was darker