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was bound to lose. Better to do it gracefully.
    “I yield,” he said.
    She released him instantly, letting go and getting off him. She got back into her cloak, facing away so he could dress without further embarrassment. He was charged with desire, but had not wanted it to be abated in this particular manner. It would have been akin to rape, of him by her.
    “We will wait on the sheep,” he said.
    There was no reaction from any of the others. They merely waited.
    Twenty minutes later, about the time they would have been midway through the valley, there was a stirring in the air. Then it convulsed. A whirling cloud formed, sucking up sand and rocks, shaping them into a funnel of flying debris. It was a dust devil, expanding into a tornado, forming from the heat and sending it into the sky. Shep felt the formidable wind as the air was sucked in from the sides, feeding into the spinning maw.
    It would have been death to be there when it happened. The sheep had known. Maybe they had smelled the hot air and known from experience. Maybe they had precogged it. But they had known.
    “I think I am becoming a believer,” Shep said. “To trust the sheep.”
    Elen caught hold of him and kissed him. “I'm so glad you gave them a proper chance.” As if it had been purely his own decision.
    The tornado raged for several minutes, then evaporated as swiftly as it had come. Now the air was cooler.
    “I think we can cross!” Shep said, surprised. “The hot material was dissipated. We can walk there before the sun heats it up again.”
    “Good choice,” Elen said.
    Shep blew a note, and the sheep stepped smartly forward. Python slithered onto the rock, finding it bearable, and hurried ahead. Vulture flew. Shep and Elen walked.
    “My choice would have killed us all,” Shep said.
    “This is your choice,” Elen said. “You trusted the sheep.”
    “And you had nothing to do with it?”
    “Nothing important.”
    She was not teasing, rebuking, or embarrassing him about his awkward loss. She was pretending that he had trusted the sheep throughout. That there had been no contest, no holddown. “This is the way you want it?”
    “Of course. You're the shepherd. I am only the guide.”
    Shep experienced burgeoning emotion, but kept it to himself. This was not the occasion for it.
    They reached the other side safely. Now the sheep spread out to graze, and the others located a fruit tree suitable for food and perching. “We'll rest for an hour, here, Shep said belatedly.
    When all parties were ready, they resumed their hike. The scene was deceptively pleasant. They were making good time.
    Shep had gained real respect for the sheep. They had known, whatever the mechanism. But also for Elen Elf, who had done what she had to do, in the manner she had to, and sought no credit for it.
    The easy landscape abruptly gave way to seriously difficult terrain. A mountain rose ahead of them with a bare tilted slope that disappeared into roiling clouds above and turbulent water below. “I hope you're not going to say what I'm afraid you will say,” Shep said.
    “I'm saying it. Our way leads past this tilt, and there's no feasible way around it. But the sheep can handle it.”
    Shep put a foot on the polished slope. The moment he put weight on it, his boot slid downward. “I can't navigate this, and I doubt you others can.”
    “We can't, but the sheep can. They will have to portage us across.”
    Shep inspected the situation more closely, and realized that the water below was not water, but boiling lava. This was volcanic terrain. Any creature who attempted to walk the obsidian slope would slide down into that inferno of doom.
    “Elen--” he said.
    “Trust the sheep.”
    She had trusted the sheep before, and they had saved them all from likely death. But that was one time. Could he afford to trust them? Yet what choice did he have? He saw no other way to cross.
    Elen looked at him with compassion. “If you would like to have me