Chapter 28
Keethior, come! she called again. We are going to die.
Child?
There you are!
Coming, he said, but she could tell by the hollowness of his voice that he was very far away.
Then the howling wind stopped, and the black-robed priests were too close. There was a sudden crack of sound, and the waves of hatred shifted around them, so that the air rippled off their robes with malice and trapped the seekers, Isika, Ben, and the refugees. The dry air wicked the moisture out of their bodies. Isika strained to lift her arm and found that she could only move her eyes.
The little group stood in the cracked desert like a tableau of the stricken—parched and hollow. It seemed to Isika that they were shards of pottery, so fragile that if someone pushed them they might shatter. The six men
