MARS: THE SKULL OF A PLANET PICKED CLEAN BY THE WIND OF TIME North Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city that was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden and vanished—in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.