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I reached the bottom and couldn’t take another step.
I bent over double and braced myself with my hands on my knees.
“Stand up straight, with your hands on your head,” Egara said. “It will expand your lungs and help you recover faster.”
I did as he suggested but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell the difference between standing like this and collapsing on the floor the way I wanted.
Egara marched up and down the valley as if our run over the sand dunes hadn’t affected him at all.
I hated him.
He peered at our surroundings, hands perched on his hips, frowning.
“I swear it’s supposed to be around here…”
“What… is?” I said around gulping mouthfuls of oxygen.
“A brook. According to the map, there should be one right here.”
“What… map?”
“The one my lawyer gave me before I was sentenced. It’s supposed to be right here.”
He stamped his foot, making a crunching sound.
Not what you would expect from very fine grains of red sand.
He got down on his front and peered closer at the rocks.
He fingered them and ran them through his fingers.
“These aren’t regular rocks.”
“No, they’re what… you would expect at the… bottom of a running… stream.”
He peered over at me, smiling, and dropping the remainder of the tiny pebbles.
“You said you were a historian. Not a geologist.”
I shrugged, finally able to stand without panting.
“I was a good science student.”
“Come on.”
He followed the narrow trail of rocks that ran between the sandy mountains.
“Maybe if we follow this, we’ll come to the stream I’m looking for.”
Our footsteps crunched on the gravelly pebbles and wound through the valley.
I was only glad it sloped downhill and not up.
I let gravity do most of the work, managing to catch myself with each step and avoid tumbling over flat on my face.
“I was thinking,” I said, finding my rhythm, “what happens if the guards come looking for us?”
“With any luck, we’ll be gone by the time they catch up to us.”
