Close to the ground as they were, they seemed to go very fast, though not in any straight direction. Joncaster kept them low, zipping along the bases of the dunes rather than over their tops. The heat made Genevieve drowsy, and she let her body relax against the padding, aware of passing time but paying no attention to it, coming to alertness only when Joncaster murmured, “There,” as he pointed toward the top of the nearest dune where a red scrap fluttered in the ceaseless wind. “I found a cave nearby that we can watch from.”
“How far a cave?” asked Enid. “It’s almost noon. We don’t have much time.”
“Patience, madam. Patience.”
They veered widely around the base of the flag-topped dune, then went up another to encounter an outcropping of gray stone. Joncaster maneuvered the sled between two rough pillars and let it come to rest on an area of hard-packed sand beneath an overhang.
They rose, stiff from the motionless hours. When they stepped away, Joncaster pulled a pack of netting from under the padding and tossed it over the sled. Between the shadow of the rock and the effect of the netting, the sled disappeared.
“No one will see it unless they’re looking for it, and so far as we know, no one’s looking,” said Melanie in a dispirited voice.
Joncaster had moved away around the outcropping, and he returned, beckoning. “Keep it quiet. I hear harptas grunting, so they’re not far. They’ve covered more distance than I thought they would. They must have had fewer candidates than usual.”
They found Joncaster’s cave almost at the top of the outcropping, a shallow slit across the face of the rock, which Joncaster probed with a staff and a light, dislodging any of the desert’s stingers and biters. They slithered into the crevice backward until the shadow covered their faces.
Melanie handed Genevieve a square of the same netting they had thrown over the sled, showing her how to drape it to hide her face.
“Now,” said Joncaster, when each of them had wriggled a belly hollow in the sand carpeting the space. “You don’t say a word, Genevieve. You don’t cry out or scream or run out of this place in some crazy effort to stop anything that’s happening, you understand? Nothing you can do will change what you see, and Madam Commander there says you have to see it, so stay quiet.”
She was immediately rebellious, and the feeling must have shown on her face, for Melanie took her hands and squeezed them, tightly.
“What he says is true, Genevieve. Only your silence keeps us safe. If you are not concerned over your own safety, remember Dovidi, and your husband, and even Joncaster and me. You must watch quietly.”
“Hush,” hissed Joncaster. “They’re here!”
Below them, within the scalloped rim of the lower dune, lay a broad blot of blood lichen, a few bristles of bonebush, a few taller sentinels of thorn. The flag marked one of the dips in the rim at the far side. Beside it rose the head of a man, then the head of a horse, then the bodies of both as the horse climbed over the rim. Once atop it, the horse was reined out of the line of march while four harpta lumbered past him, the first three accompanied by walking figures—half of them in black, half in white—and the fourth lizard burdened with basket panniers slung along its sides. From somewhere in the train, a baby cried, a single weak, querulous wail, and Genevieve’s head came up, too swiftly.
“Shh,” murmured Melanie. “Don’t move. Don’t attract attention. Just watch. The one on the horse is the Shah. The white-robed ones are the candidates. The black-robed ones are the aspirants or their proxies. They’re called ‘ritual masters.’“
The baby did not cry again. When all the persons and beasts were arrayed around the rim of the hollow, the Shah rode along their line, indicating this pair, that pair, this pair from among the black-and-white couples: six pair, all told, who knelt while the Shah raised his hands, mumbling something the observers could not hear.
“He’s giving them his blessing,” whispered Melanie.