The sun was warm and a slight cool breeze had sprung up. It was spring, the best time of the year in the high desert. Not too cold, but not yet scorchingly hot as it would be in a few weeks. The spring weather never lasted very long. And once Serali was out over the circle desert the breeze warmed. Down there there was no water at all, and it never rained. The storms that sometimes rolled over Land's End never dropped so much as a single drop onto the lower desert. Nobody knew why, but it had always been that way. The gullies and dry washes might pour water down the cliffs when it rained above, but no rain ever actually fell in the whole barren expanse.

The golden dunes passed beneath her, one after another. The warm air rising off the desert floor was very dry. It lifted her high above the level of the cliffs. She soared on, not needing to exert any effort to remain aloft.

The sun set that evening in a spectacular display of oranges and reds that gradually deepened into purple and then into a velvety black speckled with coolly glittering stars. When it had become too dark to see the dunes below Serali landed. To her surprise she noticed that she had come down a few yards from what seemed to be a towering wall of stone. The moon was not yet up, but the starlight dimly gleamed off of smooth stone blocks. Curious, Serali made her way across the shifting sand to the wall. Standing next to it her head was high enough to see over it easily. For a moment the view puzzled her, but then she realized that the wall wasn't a wall at all. It was the side of a raised roadway. Straight as a ruler the road ran across the desert, going due south. It must start somewhere near Land's End, she realized. I wonder where it goes?

With a shrug Serali curled up against the road-wall and went to sleep. She woke in the dim gray light before dawn. She climbed up on the road and watched the sun rise over the dunes. The golden light spilled across the sand and glinted brightly off her polished metallic scales. She waited until everything around her was bright with light and the sun was fully risen in the cloudless blue sky. Then she spread her wings and leapt into the air.

All that day she flew across the sand, following the road below. The dunes had looked all the same from a distance, but swooping low Serali could see that there were barren rocky spots, places covered in gravel, and many different shapes of sand dunes. The wind blew gently, lifting wisps of sand and dust into the air. The sun beat down from above and before long a warm thermal was rising off of the sand. Deciding she'd seen enough of dunes, Serali allowed the thermal to lift her high above the desert floor.

She slept again by the side of the road and flew on once the sun rose. For humans it would probably be best to cross the sands at night, but the heat didn't bother her, and she could go for a very long time without food and water if she must, and the hot air that rose from the sands made her flight utterly effortless. She let it lift her now, as high as it could, so far up that she felt the air begin to thin.

At that height she could see forever across the golden plain of sand below. But ahead she could clearly make out a low dark shape that had to be a range of mountains. All day they drew nearer, but it wasn't until the sun was setting that Serali reached them. From the air she could make out a crossroads. The road met another road running east to west. They formed a perfect right angle cross. Then Serali realized that the second road wasn't as perfectly straight as the first. It seemed to curve, though the curve was only just barely visible from where she hung high above it. If the curve stays the same all the way, she thought, it will form a circle a hundred miles or more across! There was something else odd about the second road. The dim light made it hard to tell exactly what, but as Serali dropped down to land on the far side of the road she realized what it was. On the north side there was nothing but the drop to the barren rock and sand. But on the south side the ground was level with the road and it was covered in clumps of tough grass.

Serali settled on the grass and curled in a ball. She fell asleep almost immediately. As the sun rose the next morning she looked at the mountains. They were tall, though nothing compared to the mountains of the far north. They were capped with traces of snow and cloaked with pine and aspen. Directly ahead of her the north-south road left its ruler-straight course and wound up the mountains to a pass between the peaks.

Serali launched herself into the air and flew toward the pass. As she drew nearer she noticed something odd about the mountainside above the pass. The rocks seemed to form two dragons, one on each side. At first Serali thought it was just a strange coincidence, but as she flew even closer it became obvious that somebody had carved two immense dragons into the mountain. They faced each other across the pass, a female mountain dragon on the right, a male mountain dragon on the left. She landed between them and stared up at them. They gazed down at her, their heads carved so that they were looking at the highest point of the pass, where she now stood.