“Where are we?” asked Lainuver. He tried to sound confident but his voice betrayed him.

“In Kuldagan, of course,” answered Bala, a gentle smile lighting up his voice. “I’ve been there once with my master. This is what Kuldaganian night looks like beyond city walls. If there is no moon to light the way, it’s that dark. And it’s always cold at night in the desert.”

“Did something go wrong, Pai?” asked Juel cautiously. “We were supposed to land in the city.”

“I didn’t dare risk it,” confessed the young mage. “There are too many objects there. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to calculate everything properly and would hurt someone. But we’re not far away, I swear!”

“Yeah, it’s just the dunes. They are quite lofty and obscure the view,” explained Bala. “I bet that we’d see the city right away if we climbed one. Kuldaganian cities shine like stars on the earth by night.”

“Like stars on the earth…” Milian echoed his words. And whispered,

O lovely land,

Entrancing land,

Far from woe, far from sorrows within;

As if dreams hide

Where the night sky ends, the earth begins…

It didn’t seem that he intended someone to hear his newborn poem but in the night that quiet, even whisper can be too loud to hide anything… The whole team heard the boy. Embarrassed, Milian fell silent.

“So you’re a poet, Mil…” said Orion, a strange thankfulness in his voice. “Why haven’t you ever read us anything of yours?”

“I preferred to listen to your stories instead.” Milian laughed the question away. “Let’s go. It’s getting colder and colder by the minute.”

Orion shrugged, unconvinced by his friend’s nervous laughter. What kind of storyteller was he if he couldn’t even notice a poet beside him? Orion made a promise to himself to shut up the next time someone asks him for another story so Milian would have a chance to shine as well.

The dune they chose to climb was a mighty beast. It took the team a while to reach the top. Their feet sank in the sand with every step, the cold wind drained their warmth slowly but steadily, and their cloaks were no help. But all their efforts and suffering were rewarded in the end when they reached the top of the sandy monster and saw the shining lights of the city below.

Stars in the sky, stars on the earth; a place where dreams hide… All that Milian had expressed in his snatch of a poem before anyone had seen that with their own eyes. Poetry is a sister to magic, yes, but it also has a lot in common with divination. Fortune-telling.

Seeing the lights of the city and hearing its distant murmur lifted the team’s spirits again. The Lifekeepers ran down the dune with a burst of boyish laughter, eager to reach Torgor, that shining diadem crowning the dark sands.

In the cold air, their every breath was a puff of white vapour that the desert hungrily snatched away the moment it appeared; their every step was a fleeting impression in the sand, soon erased by everlasting winds; their voices were devoid of echoes, swallowed by the dunes. The desert holds few memories…

“I heard that Kuldaganian nightlife is truly something!” said Lainuver. He was so cold that his teeth chattered, making speaking difficult, but he just couldn’t wait to share his excitement.

“Oh we’ll have fun there all right!” Oasis’s happy voice joined him in the dark. “I’m so sick of Firaskian curfews!”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Bala, “but Kuldaganian nights are mostly work, not fun. It’s just too hot there by day to do anything, so the locals mostly live by night.”

“Oh…” Oasis’s enthusiasm died in an instant. “And what about the city we’re going to from here? That ‘Border’? Is it just like Torgor?”