" It is terrifyingly beautiful," Julia said softly. " Terrifying?" " Nature at its most beautiful and most lethal. It is like standing on the edge of one of those lakes in Switzerland, so blue and so calm and so deep and so dangerous. You have the overwhelming urge to plunge in, even though you know the cold will kill you. This desert - your desert - it makes me want to walk into it and keep walking. You probably think I'm being ridiculously fanciful." " I would not have put it in those words, but they are exactly how I feel about Qaryma. Terrifyingly beautiful. "