"Sand wraiths?" Chris asked.
"More about them later. As I was saying, I'm more worried about the buzz bombs right now. We've never heard of a concerted attack like what happened at Phoebe. Before this, they've always traveled alone. It could be that we disturbed a nesting place, but there's also the possibility they're exhibiting new behavior. That can happen in Gaea."
Gaby had her arms folded in front of her. She was looking straight at Cirocco, who would not meet her eyes.
"It's also possible the attack was deliberate," Gaby said.
Robin looked from one to the other. "What do you mean by that?"
"Never mind," Cirocco said quickly. "I don't think so, and if it was, they weren't after either of you."
Robin assumed that meant Gaby and Cirocco were wondering if it had something to do with Cirocco's visit to Phoebe. Possibly Phoebe had some influence with the buzz bombs, had persuaded them to try to kill the Wizard. Once again she was struck with the odd lives these two women led.
"The other possibility is to go through the mountains," Cirocco resumed. "They would give us some protection from the buzz bombs, though we'd still have to stay alert. What I'm suggesting is that we go down the Euphonies here." She knelt once more and traced the route as she spoke. "It's a short dash, no more than twenty kilometers, from here to the hills. It's about thirty from the end of the Euphonies to the southern reaches of the Royal Blues. How long would that take, Hornpipe?"
The Titanide considered it. "With Gaby doubling up, one of us will be slower. We could have her trade mounts twice in the course of the journey. I should say we could make it in one rev, pacing ourselves. More like two or two and a half for the second crossing because we will be tired."
"Okay. No matter how we look at it, this route would slow us down."
"Maybe I missed something," Robin said. "Do we have an appointment?"
Cirocco smiled. "You've got a point. Better safe than swift. I'm not sure, myself. I figure we could make our way to the central cable, dash across to it, and if we haven't seen any buzz bombs to that point, we could make a decision again about whether to stick to the highway. But I'd like to hear what you think." She looked from face to face around the group.
Robin had not realized until that point that Cirocco had taken over the group. It was an odd way to do it-asking the other six to advise her on a decision-but the fact remained that a week earlier it would have been Gaby doing the asking. She looked at Gaby and could detect no resentment. In fact, she seemed happier than she had been since Psaltery's death. The consensus was to follow the mountain route, since that seemed to be the one Cirocco preferred. They mounted, Gaby sitting behind Cirocco for the first third of the trip, and set off under skies that were growing cloudy in the west.
29 Across the Sands
The clouds arrived overhead as the Titanides were resting after their long run across the dunes between Triana and the foothills of the Euphonies. Cirocco glanced at Hornpipe, who consulted his clock.
"The second decirev of the eighty-seventh," he told her.
"Right on time."
Chris didn't understand it for a moment.
"You mean you... ."
Cirocco shrugged. "I didn't make the clouds. But I did ask for them. I called while we were still in the canyon. Gaea said she could give me an overcast but wouldn't go so far as to make it rain. You can't have everything."
"I don't understand what you wanted clouds for." Or how one could just ask for them, he added to himself.
"That's because I haven't told you about the sand wraiths yet. Hornpipe, are you folks ready to go yet?" When the Titanide nodded, Cirocco stood and wiped the sand from her legs. "Let's mount up, and I'll tell you as we go.
"Sand wraiths are silicon-based creatures. We call them that because they live beneath the sand and they're translucent. They'd be hell to fight if they lived in a night region, but you can see them well enough in Tethys.
"The scientific name for them is something like Hydrophobicus gaeani. I may have gotten the endings wrong. It describes them pretty well. They are intelligent and have the sweet disposition of a rabid dog. I've spoken with them twice, under carefully controlled conditions. They are so xenophobic that the word 'bigotry' is pitifully inadequate; racists to the tenth power. To them there is only the race of wraiths and Gaea. Everything else is food or enemies. They will pause in the act of killing you only if they aren't sure which you are, but more likely they'll kill first and decide later."
"They are very bad people," Valiha confirmed solemnly.
The Titanides were riding three abreast now so Cirocco could tell Chris and Robin about the wraiths. Chris was not sure this was good strategy, and he kept scanning the sky nervously. The Euphonic Mountains were more rugged than the dunes they had just crossed, but not enough for his tastes. It would have felt better to be in canyons so narrow that they had to proceed single file. The hills ahead did go higher, sometimes reaching up in mesalike formations. Of course, the more rugged the country, the slower they would go, and thus, the longer they would stay in the country of the sand wraiths.
On balance, he feared buzz bombs more. Perhaps when he saw the wraiths, he would change his mind.
"They live under the sand," Cirocco was saying. "They can run or swim or something, under the sand, and do it about as fast as I can run on the ground.
"Their existence is fairly precarious since water is poisonous to them. I mean, if it touches their bodies, it kills them, and it doesn't take much to do it. They'd die on a sunny day if the humidity were much over forty percent. The sands of Tethys are bone dry in most places because the heat from below blasts the water right out of the ground. The exception is where Ophion goes under the sand. It flows in a deep bedrock channel, but it still pollutes the sand for ten kilometers in every direction as far as the wraiths are concerned. So all of Tethys is divided into two totally separate tribes of wraiths. If they could ever meet each other, they'd probably fight to the death because they're always fighting even in the smaller divisions that are marked off wherever water flows in times of flash flood."
"Then it does rain here?" Robin asked.
"Not a lot. Say once a year, and just a trickle. It would have killed the wraiths long ago, but they can grow a shell and hibernate for a few days when they smell it coming. That's how I talked to one; I came in here during a storm and dug one up and put him in a cage."
"Always the peacemaker," Gaby said with teasing affection.
"Well, it was worth a try. The thing about this route is that the mountains are pretty dry right now. The highway, as it happens, closely parallels the path of Ophion under the desert."
"That was no accident, believe me," Gaby said. "I thought it made as much sense as keeping to the high ground when going through a swamp."
"Yes, that's true. The point is, we might meet some wraiths up here. I'm hoping the cloud cover will keep them down, but I don't know how long it will last. The good news is that they seldom band together in groups larger than about a dozen, and I think we have enough hands to fight off an attack."
"I should have traded my gun in on a water pistol," Robin said.
"Were you making a joke?" Hautbois asked, digging into her left saddlebag. She came up with two items: a large slingshot and a short tube with a handle and trigger and a pinhole in one end. Robin took it, squeezed the trigger, and a fine stream of water squirted from the end and sailed ten meters before hitting the sand. She seemed delighted.