You couldn’t have told which of us was dragging the other, and I couldn’t have told you, for I was swimming in the air, laughing at jokes the stones told me. Sometimes there were animals—great pale snakes, children with birds’ faces—sometimes not. Sometimes, when the black woman was not looking, Lukassa rode on my shoulders.

On the eleventh day, or the twelfth, or perhaps the fifteenth, my mare died under me. I felt her die, and managed to sprawl clear to keep from being crushed by her bones. If I had been strong enough to bury her, I would have done it; as it was, I tried to eat her, but I lacked even the strength to cut through her hide. So I thanked her, and asked her forgiveness, and the first bird that laid claw on her I fell on and strangled. It tasted like bloody dust, but I sat there beside her, chewing and growling in full sight of the other birds. They left her alone for a while, even after I walked away.

The bird sustained me for two more days, and cleared my mind enough at least to realize where I must be. The Northern Barrens, no desert, but almost as bad. As far as you can see, the land is broken to pieces, everything smashed or split or standing on edge. Here’s a toss of boulders blocking the way, the smallest bulking higher than a man on horseback; here’s a riverbed so long dry there are wrinkled little trees growing up out of it; there, all that tumble and ruin might have been a mountain once, before great claws ripped it down. No road, never so much as a cart track—if you have all your wits about you, you pick your way across this country, praying to the gods’ gods not to break a leg or fall in a hole forever. Starving mad like me, you stagger along singing, peaceful and fearless. I dreamed my death, and it kept me safe.

There was an old man in one of those dreams.