“I’d wager this is the furthest we can travel on the road.”
The desert unfurled around them in all directions like a hostile flag reflecting the tawny, late- evening sunlight. Their horses stamped anxiously as they perceived their riders’ uncertainty, both looking back and forth between the warding beacons that sheltered both sides of the road. Plans could be laid until the end of the ages within the safety of tavern or fortress walls, where the ale flowed freely and talk of the Ta’raj lingered around most people’s unwillingness to travel even the relative safety of the lantern-bound track. Out here, however, to go too long on the road was folly and to venture beyond it to meet with a certain demise.
The sound of the desert intensified to fill the silence, a constant sussurus of wind and sand and insects whining a hole in the wide, unkind space.
