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.

"Think of it as a flamethrower," Cirocco suggested. "You don't have to be accurate. Shoot in the general vicinity and fan it around. Even a miss will hurt them, and enough shots will put water vapor in the air and drive them back underground. And don't shoot it anymore now," she said, hastily, as Robin squeezed off another shot. "The bad news is that there are no springs in Tethys, and what water we use in battle will be water we won't have to drink later."

"Sorry. What's the slingshot for?" Robin was looking at it eagerly, and Chris could see she wanted to hold it and give it a try.

"Long-range stuff. Water balloons. You put one of these into the cup, pull back, and let fly." Cirocco was holding something the size of a Titanide egg. She tossed it to Chris. When he squeezed it gently, a trickle of water ran into his hand.

Valiha was looking through her saddlebags, too. She removed a slingshot and a short club, which she stowed in her pouch, and another water pistol, which she handed to Chris. He looked at it curiously, trying to get the feel of it, wishing he could shoot a few practice shots.

"The sling takes skill, which I have," Valiha explained. "Do as the Wizard says, do not be too selective in your targets. Just shoot."

He looked up and saw Cirocco grinning at him.

"Feeling like a hero?" she said.

"Like a little boy playing at being one."

"You'll change your mind if you ever see a wraith."

"I never said it worked all the time." Cirocco put her hands on her hips and scanned the sky again, with no better result. Gaby watched her, feeling for the first time in years that irrational desire for the Wizard to make something happen. It did no good to know that Cirocco's powers did not work that way. She wanted her to make it rain.

"She said she'd provide cloud cover," Gaby pointed out.

"She said she'd try," Cirocco corrected. "You know Gaea can't control every detail of the weather. It's too complex."

"So she keeps saying." Seeing the look on Cirocco's face, Gaby kept the rest of her remarks to herself.

"We haven't seen any wraiths yet," Robin said. "Maybe the clouds were enough to scare them off before they broke up."

"They're probably down deep in the sand," Hautbois agreed. Gaby said nothing. Instead, she reached into Hornpipe's saddlebag and took out a bladderfruit the size of a baseball.

The group was at the end of the foothills leading to the eastern slopes of the Royal Blue Line. Not far to the east was the central Tethys cable, and barely visible beyond it was the fine line of the Circum-Gaea Highway. A last outpost of naked rock formed a wide bowl filled with sand just in front of them, its rim submerged in several places.

Standing on Hornpipe's back, steadying herself with a hand on Cirocco's shoulder, Gaby lobbed the bladderfruit in a high arc that brought it down in the center of the bowl.