Cheyne was glad of the darkness. It covered his embarrassment. For the first time, Muni had just acknowledged him as an equal and he had nearly let his anger make him a fool. He returned the bow and took the rope. "You're not going down?"

"No. Kifran and I will stand guard up here. I will feed you buckets and empty the backfill. The only things likely to disturb you inside are the living vermin." He smiled.

Kifran, a large, bearded Sumifan, saluted Muni and

Teri McLaren

took his place by the tallest column. He was one of the men from the crew Muni ran, one of the few who did not believe in the old juma stories of an evil djinn which had once hovered over this place, bringing deadly sandstorms and making it uninhabitable, the very reason old Sumifa had moved to its present location. Muni's explanation to Cheyne had been more pragmatic: the community had simply outgrown its bounds, and the river had changed its course over the years, forcing them to rebuild across the Nantas to the west, where the town now rambled and sprawled, every so often adding another wall around the last when the population expanded. But the old legends had a hold on most of the Sumifan citizens-ask any Fascini's right-hand man, and the answer was the same. Old Sumifa had moved because it was destroyed by an evil force which still roamed the dunes.

"Muni?"

"Yes, my friend."

"By chance, did you see a tall elf in the city yesterday?"

"No, I did not." Muni laughed. "But if I had, or if I do, I will be certain that you are the very first person I tell."

Cheyne sighed and dropped down into the pit, the torch Muni had tossed in before him burning brightly on the newly swept marble floor. Several of Muni's despised vermin had scattered from the fire, and a couple of fancollar lizards, the scorpions' chief predators, skittered after them, their tiny claws clicking faintly on the marble floor. Nature seemed to balance everything, thought Cheyne, taking a bucket from Muni, scraping it full of sand, shaking it over the screen into another bucket, handing that one back up full, receiving another empty one.

The work continued rhythmically, uneventfully, for an hour, Cheyne's mind turning to his afternoon's adventure, wandering through the streets of Sumifa again, to Riolla's, to the fight with her assassin, to the odd helper he'd found and lost again so quickly.

What was it about this totem that made Riolla, the Mercanto Schreefa, want it badly enough to take his head? She had lied about the last glyph. Maybe she really did know what it said. Cheyne thought of the strange little man who had helped him. He wished he could have bought the beggar a hot meal or a bed for the night, even though he stole my last two kohli, Cheyne thought, smiling. At the very least, a loaf of bappir, that strange, sweet grain bread all Sumifans so favored. He vowed to himself that if he ever saw the big-nosed beggar again, he would find a way to thank him.

"Cheyne?" Muni called down. The empty bucket bobbed on its rope.

"Right here, Muni. Just thinking. Sorry."

There were only three or four feet of sand left to remove from the corner. Then he could sleep. With a mighty pull on the bucket, Cheyne tore into the job with renewed energies.

Just then, the torch burned into a knot, flaring brilliantly for an instant, illuminating the dark corner where Cheyne was working. He stopped in midscoop, something in the cascade catching the sudden light. Cheyne stepped back for the torch and brought it close over the fine sand. Just under the surface, the thick lip of a pottery jar decorated with intricate, bright goldleaf markings caught the torchlight again, its crescent shape unmistakable. Cheyne braced the torch upright in the sand, pulled out his hand sweep, and began to brush away the thin layer of grains. In minutes, he had freed from its gritty tomb several shards of a good-sized clay jar.

"Muni! I found something. Besides sand, I mean," Cheyne called up in an excited whisper.

But his old friend had stepped away from the portal for a moment-Cheyne could hear him speaking

Teri McLaren

sharply to Kit ran above, but could not make out the words. Agitation was not Muni's style. Troubled, Cheyne turned back to the shards, grabbed up the light, and shone it under the bright rim. More sand. He quickly sketched the situation of the find, then scooped his hand shallowly into the fragments, drawing out sand and letting the grains fall, their sharp edges sparkling like gold dust in the soft light of the torch. The sand inside the shards somehow looked redder and sharper than what he had been scooping away all night. And far more different from another kind of Almaazan sand-grains blown around for centuries in the high, towering storms of the eastern erg, settling to earth only when they became rounded, dull, and unreflective. There were supposedly great deposits of them hidden on the erg's surface. You could drown in sand like that, no water for miles. Just sink into the smoothness of it and keep sinking, until you were covered up. Like suffocating in silk.

But the crystals in his hand had been new when they found their way into the jar-as if they'd just been created, their edges sharp and faceted like little mirrors, catching the light in glittering waves. He ran his hand across the pleasantly rough grains, changing the pattern of sheen from the light, tiny rainbows appearing in the dark room for just an instant when the torch wavered.

Fascinated, Cheyne carefully dug more and more of the fine sand from under the mouth of the jar. When his hand struck the sharp edge of something, he leapt backward, thinking he'd been stung by a scorpion. Under the glare of the lantern, he saw a little nick on his hand instead of a sting and, relieved, took up his hand sweep to fish out a small, bronze-bound book the moment before Muni's face appeared over the portal.

"Sorry, Cheyne, I thought I thought saw something in the dunes-Cheyne?" Muni peered down into the vault, a slow smile creasing his weathered brown face. "You have found more besides vermin, 1 see," said Muni, delight in his voice. "What do you make of it?"

"What? Oh, you mean the shards!" Cheyne chortled, quickly hiding the small book in his robes. He wanted a chance to look it over before handing it up. There was writing, and once a linguist got hold of a book, it could be months before he saw it again. "Yes, I have. I don't think the piece is Sumifan, though-the designs and clay are wrong, don't you think?"

"Hmm. We'll need to see it in daylight. Your father will be pleased. And that won't hurt right now," Muni said knowingly.

"Muni, I'm going to stop for a minute and record the patterns on these shards."

"Good idea. Only make haste-we have yet to empty the room. And something feels very wrong about the weather up here. I think I saw some sort of shadow moving toward the camp."

"That 'evil presence' the men are always talking about? Surely not you, too, Muni?" Cheyne laughed and pulled out his sketch pad, quickly roughing in the odd shapes stamped and carved onto the pottery fragments.

He was finished long before he called Muni to resume the evacuation of the sand-time enough to examine the little book and decide it was without a doubt what (avin had been searching for. Now he'll understand why I have to find my past, he reasoned. He tucked the book into his pack, saving it for Javin's eyes first. Muni, he knew, would understand. An hour later, they left Kifran to continue the watch alone.