He walked for two days and a night before he found the half-sunken road that arched across the desert. The road ended four days later, in the barrens. His water was gone and the leathern pocket that had held food tablets was empty.
"I can't turn back," he thought. "I've been gone a whole week from the inland sea."
Angus turned and stumbled on. The sun beat down on his naked shoulders, on the remnants of the sun-worn rags about his middle. With each puff of sand his feet kicked up, something went out of his spirit.
Angus saw a brown rock uplifting its jagged tip from the sand. He ran awkwardly toward it, hoping that from its top he might see the spires of a distant, nebulous city. But there was only sand and more twisted, curving dunes, and the faint azure tint of the horizon.
He stood on the naked finger of rock and swore. He invoked the olden gods—the fecund Ashtal, goddess of love and sex; Grom who fought with warriors; Jethad who loved the wise. He called on them for their attention and he cursed them, upwards and down, forward and back.
In his rage he took the empty canteen and hurled it.
Choking, he broke off in mid-curse.
The canteen had disappeared in midair!
The Hierarch made fists out of his taloned hands. The cowled man, bent before his carven chair, trembled. The Hierarch whispered, "Are you sure?"