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touch him. For the most part Jylyj ignored her, although once or twice I caught him giving her a faintly exasperated look.
With the guide at the front, we left the encampment and traveled north, using another old path through the groves of heartwood. The air began to warm a
little as we emerged from the trees into a narrow clearing around the base of the two facing cliffs, both of which were so tall that I nearly had to bend
backward to see their snow-covered tops. Beyond them the mountains stood like worn monuments, each forming an uneven procession that never ended
but disappeared over the horizon.
The guide halted at the entrance to the cliff pass and spoke in a low voice to Jylyj, who nodded and turned to Reever.
"The scout says that stones sometimes fall from the sides of the cliffs in the summer season," the Skartesh told my husband. "We must move quickly
now, but if you hear stone cracking, go to the face of the cliffs and stay there."
The guide increased his pace to a trot, and I held on to the straps of my pack as I tried to keep up. My short legs had to take two strides to match one of
the others', and by the time we emerged from the pass my face and longshirt were damp with sweat.
A secluded valley stretched out before us, the red soil completely covered by reedlike amber grass with three-sided seed heads. Here and there I saw
the broad-leafed blue plants with the white berries, but no trees grew here. All through the heartwood we had heard the rustling of animals in the brush, but
here the silence seemed almost eerie.
"This is the tribe's burial ground?" Reever asked. The Skartesh nodded. My husband said something to the guide, who didn't seem to understand him.
To Jylyj, Reever said, "Ask him where the graves are, so that we won't walk over them."
"There are no graves," the Skartesh said after conferring with the guide. "I believe they bring the bodies of the dead here and leave them on the ground
to decompose naturally."
"Then the place should be littered with bones," I said.
"It feels as if it is." Uorwlan looked about and wrapped her arms around herself. "I don't see any remains. Do you hear that humming?"
Reever listened and then looked down. "No, but I can feel something in the ground." He took out a scanner and used it, turning in a slow circle. "There is
something vibrating under the soil."
"We should try to signal the Sunlace," Qonja said. "We told the captain we would relay our status every morning."
I glanced at the guide. "We agreed not to use our equipment in front of the natives."
"Seno said the exposed deposit of shining stones was somewhere over there," Jylyj said, pointing to one side of the cliffs. "I will go with the scout and
see if we can locate it. While we are gone, send your signal."
The oKiaf and the Skartesh walked off, while Reever set down his pack and took out the small transceiver. After calibrating it several times, he was able
to send off a brief signal. No reply came, however, and after a few moments he switched off the unit.
"Whatever is moving under the ground is also causing relay interference." He handed out scanners to Qonja, Hawk, and Uorwlan. "Walk along the
perimeter of the meadow and see what you can detect."
Reever and I walked carefully through the amber reed grass. While I looked for any signs of oKiaf remains, he scanned the surface.
"There are enormous deposits of a crystalline mineral under the soil," my husband said.
I caught my breath. "Black crystal?"
"No. It has far more benign readings--more like a form of quartz. I'm reading tons of it here."
We walked on, but after a few more meters, he stopped me.
"Don't go any farther. There are large subsurface faults filled with liquid all around us. The ground may collapse under us."
He knelt down and placed the end of a sampling probe into the soil, and watched it disappear as it burrowed into the ground. Then we retreated a safe
distance.
"Could it be graves?" I asked.
"No. The liquid isn't decompositional. It appeared to be mineral." He watched the scanner display as the probe began transmitting a vid of its progress.
The red soil in front of it fell away, and the probe dropped into a void half-filled with a pool of what looked like water.
The probe didn't sink but instead floated on the top of the fluid. All around it the liquid began to bloom with strange, feathery shapes, as if the probe's
presence had caused some sort of reaction. As we watched, the feathery shapes solidified into three-sided crystalline shafts.
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