Balefire stubbornly marched through the blinding, buffeting waves of
wind-flung sand, all but blinded and deafened by the ferocious power of
the storm.  He sensed rather than saw that he was rounding the point of
rock in the lee of which the party sheltered, and he doggedly kept his
feet in the face of the increased gusts.  Fist clenched over the seeking
stone, he kept muttering "Alduin!" through clenched teeth, and was at
last rewarded by a response from the artifact.  A grin more like a death
rictus than a smile spread over his features as he struggled, one
painful step at a time, in the indicated direction.

Unable to see in the near-solid maelstrom of sand surrounding him, he
found the drift when he walked into it, the shock driving him to his
knees.  He had half-crashed into a sand-drift almost the height of a
man, but the seeking stone indicated his direction was correct.
Struggling against the infernal wind, he tried to rise to his feet, but
even his tremendous strength could not prevail against the prevailing
gale, now coming from directly behind him.  His boot slipped and he
crashed against the drift face down.  Snarling, he levered himself up
onto his forearms by sheer brute force, his breath coming in ragged
gasps.  The seeking stone throbbed insistently now...Alduin must be
buried in the drift!

Tucking the stone away, he plunged his hands into the drift, burrowing
into the mass of sand, feverishly flinging it away ony to have it
replaced almost instantly.  The wind howled at his back, forcing him
against the drift even as he tore at it.

And then his flailing hands touched fabric, and he felt warmth.
Redoubling his efforts, broad chest heaving as he fought for air, the
Dark Elf at last discovered the scribe, buried completely in the growing
sandhill, but clearly alive.  Weakly, the scribe's eyes rolled and
blinked in the wild spray of gritty sand, and the Warmage saw that
Alduin's lips were tightly closed over a tube of some kind.  Puzzled,
the panting mercenary looked closer.  A quill!  The scribe had broken
off a quill to use as a breathing tube!  Admiration for the plucky
scribe's intelligence filled the scarred warrior mage, and he reached
out to grasp and squeeze Alduin's shoulder in encouragement.

Nearly exhausted himself by his battle with the sandstorm, Balefire
doubted that the scribe could be brought back into the relatively
sheltered cleft with the others.  No matter; the storm could not last at
this pitch for long, he judged, and the weak but reliable functioning of
the seeking stone showed him a way to deal with the sand which even now
threatened to rebury the scribe together with himself.  Groaning with
the effort, battle-hardened muscles straining, he drew his heavily
enchanted claymores from their scabbards on his back and plunged them
each to half of their length in the packed-solid heart of the drift.
Carefully maneuvering, he drew his ensorcelled cloak, a powerful Shield
spell only one of its many enchantments, tentlike over the upright
swords.

"Hail, Alduin!  Well-met.  'Tis a poor tent, not even much of a lean-to,
but 'twill serve to avoid suffocation.  We can wait out the storm, and
then return to the others.  Glad I am to have found you living, scribe.
You will have plenty of which to write, now, methinks."

The wind howled and the waves of sand crashed around them.