She spun webs of blue and cast them into the firmament. They fluttered toward the winged lizards like merry moths, wrapped themselves about the dragons, and brought them tumbling to earth.

One thing Ethrian noted through the flash and flame: The land was alive. Riotously alive. It could not be the desert that held him captive on its shore.

The vision began to fade. He looked this way and that, trying to make sense of it. It was gone before he could grasp anything more.

He looked toward where the woman had stood. There was a gap where the red bolts had bayoneted the cliffs. A gap where, earlier, he thought there had been nothing but solid cliffline.

He crept that way, unsure, cautious. The moon was high now. He could see the tumbled stone well.

It was not a fresh fall. Ages had gnawed at the boulders in the slide.

A voice seemed to call from the desert beyond.

He froze.

It was another of the ghost voices. He shrugged. He had no time for mysteries. His great task was to survive. To do that he had to get off this shore.

The climb was an epic of pain. And he found nothing above but moon-silvered desert vistas. More land utterly without life. Yet... yet he heard the voices. Wordless voices. They called.

What was this land? What forgotten spirits haunted its barrens? Gingerly, he limped in the direction whence the voices seemed to come.

His feet were swollen, raw, and festering. His tongue was fat and dry. His sunburn blisters were breaking. He ached in every sinew and joint. A throbbing pain beat from temple to temple.

But he was stubborn. He went on. And, in time, the descending moon outlined something atop the nearest mountain.

The more he studied it, the more it looked like some gargantuan figure carved from the mountain itself. It was a great sphinxlike creature, facing eastward.