found he was whispering, too, though there seemed no
reason for it.
“Feel any wind now, mate?”
Jon-Tom wet a finger, stuck it into the air. “No. Not a
breeze.”
“Then ‘ave a look at your own feet, mate.”
210
Alan Dean Foster
THE DAY OF THE DISSOJVAJVCE
211
Jon-Tom did so. As he stared he saw sand flowing over
his toes. There was no wind at all, and now the sand was
moving much faster. He drew his feet up as if the pulver-
ized silica might bite him.
“Look all around, lad.”
The sand was crawling westward at an ever more rapid
pace. It seemed to accelerate even as he watched. In
addition to the steady movement there came the first
murmurs of a dry, slithery, rasping sound as grains tumbled
over one another.
The discussion finally woke Roseroar. “What’s goin’ on
heah?”
“I don’t know,” Jon-Tom muttered, eyeing the crawling
ground. “The sand is moving, and much faster now than it
was yesterday. I’m not sure I want to know what’s making
it move.”
“Should we go back?” The tigress was slipping on her
sandals, shaking the grains from the leather.
“We can’t go back.” He pulled on his boots. “If we go
back now, we lose Jalwar, Folly, and likely as not,
Clothahump’s medicine. But I won’t force either of you to
stay with me. Roseroar, are you listening to me?”
She wasn’t. Instead, she was pointing southward. “Ah
think we might get ourselves a second opinion. We have
company, y’all.”
The line of camels the tigress had spotted was slightly
behind them but moving in the same direction. Hastily
gathering their equipment, the trio hurried to intercept the
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