Soon I was fast asleep, notwithstanding the anxieties that, had I been less weary, might well have kept me wakeful.

For these were many.

On the coming night we must slip through the Fung, and before midday on the morrow we should either have entered Mur, or failed to have entered Mur, which meant--death, or, what was worse, captivity among barbarians, and subsequent execution, preceded probably by torture of one sort or another.
Of course, however, we might come thither without accident, travelling with good guides on a dark night, for, after all, the place was big, and the road lonely and little used, so that unless we met a watch, which, we were told, would not be there, our little caravan had a good chance to pass unobserved.

Shadrach seemed to think that we should do so, but the worst of it was that, like Quick, I did not trust Shadrach.

Even Maqueda, the Lady of the Abati, she whom they called Child of Kings, had her doubts about him, or so it had seemed to me.
At any rate, she had told me before I left Mur that she chose him for this mission because he was bold and cunning, one of the very few of her people also who, in his youth, had crossed the desert and, therefore, knew the road.