Farisa felt a bodily sway that made clear her state of movement. Mazie’s arms were still around her waist as they rode an unta. The light of Garet’s oil lamp drew blue in only moderate distance, proving the night air still troubled by skrum flatus.

“We’re getting away as fast as we can,” Mazie said.

“How long was I out?” Farisa asked.

“More than an hour.”

“Runar,” Farisa said. “I have to help Runar.”

The man, riding an unta, looked back. He wore a makeshift eyepatch.

Saito said, “I treated him. There was physical damage to the—”

“I’m half blind,” Runar said. “Lost an eye.”

“I’ll check the wound again when we set camp, but he’s not going to die tonight.”

Farisa looked around herself. It was strange to hear Saito speak of death—one of their deaths—as something, even in the negative, that could conceivably happen. Of course he wasn’t going to die tonight; he was Runar.

Farisa said, “If you get a headache, let me know. There might be something I can do.”

“Glad to know you’ve got an eye on me.”

“Bad choice of word, methinks.”

Runar laughed. “Aye, it is.”

When they finally stopped, it was after ten o’clock, but the soft sleepiness of night had not settled. No one had wanted anything to do with the soil, so they put their tent on a rock face and, rather than use stakes that would be damaged if driven into the granite, weighed its corners down with stones, leaving it unstable enough to rock a little bit until their bodies were inside to give it weight.

They discussed the notion of having dinner, but no one had much appetite. Instead, they sat around the fire.

Farisa said, “How do we know we’re safe from the skrums?”

Garet reached into his bag for a book. “While you were setting up camp, I read this. I’ve marked the page.”

Farisa looked at the yellowed paper. “It says—”

“The short version is that the big orange one you killed was their leader—it’s called the skrum master. Like bees, they have a queen and drones. It’ll take days for them to form a new master and, till then, they won’t leave the soil.”

Farisa shuddered. “That means they’re still in the soil.”

Claes, adjusting the logs in the campfire so it would throw less light, said, “Didn’t you say they don’t like to come this far north?”

Garet said, “They don’t. Five flags is chilly to them and this”—Farisa guessed it was about four—“is arctic. Something scared them out of Switch Cave.”

“I wonder what.”

“A salt golem,” Farisa said. “I choose to believe it's a benevolent salt golem.”

“It may be,” Garet said. The others chuckled uneasily. “I wouldn’t fret too much. There are a million things underground that most people—including us, if we’re lucky—will never see.”

The fire leapt to catch wind and Farisa flinched; it had looked like a lunging tentacle.

“One more thing you should all know,” Garet added. “Your piss’ll be blue the next few days. It’ll burn like hell coming out, and it’ll stink, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

#

Farisa could not sleep for hours; when her eyes closed, veiny flashes became the dark forest and those horrid skrums were marching through it, all around her. She tossed about, sweating profusely, until the hooting of an owl convinced her the forest was safe. When her eyes opened, it was midday.

No one had started to pack up camp. No one had eaten. No one had slept well.

“We can still get ten good miles,” Claes said.

“I can’t think of anything better to do,” Mazie said.

Farisa volunteered to break down camp, because physical labor often cleared her mind—because fifteen seconds of freedom from thought was fifteen more than zero. Garet came as close as the old man ever did to making a demand, that they eat lunch before setting off, so they chewed on some dried fruit. The trail was rocky and it descended; spiderwebs crossed Farisa’s forehead at least twice every mile, and tangles of silk got caught in Mazie’s hair.

The group’s spirits had lifted by dinnertime; they were still in a dense highland forest, but it looked different here—the trees were taller, but not so dense as to block out the sun—something Garet assured them skrums could not stand. The conifers were sporting bright fingers that would become cones, and the broadleaf trees were sporting yellow flowers.

and one in ten had spun out yellow flowers.

Shortly before they all went to sleep, Talyn pulled Farisa aside.

“You did a good thing for Eric.”

“I did what was right.” Farisa scratched her shoulder; the scar itched. “No more, no less.”

“I wonder about his mind.”

Farisa looked at the boy, across the campfire. “He doesn’t seem worse off than the rest of us.”

“Could you do something about his memory? I don’t want him to be—”

“Traumatized.”

“Right.”

Farisa shook her head. “Who’s to say that he is?”

Talyn put a hand on Farisa’s arm; she brushed it away.

“We’re going into Switch Cave, Talyn. The place crawls with orcs, drampfs, and trolls. Claes has heard rumors of a dragon, which seems unlikely, but who knows? Beyond the Cave, there’s the Dark Man of the Desert, and no one even knows who or what he is. I’m sorry, but Eric needs to have his guard up, not down."

“What about at the end of—”

“If he wants his memory changed, he can ask me.”

“I was hoping you could just, you know, go in.”

“Without his knowing? No. Never.” She remembered the accusations that had been made against her in Cait Forest. “Fuck you for asking.”

#

They continued to follow the Road, losing altitude. Two days had passed and now it was warm enough, even at night, that exertion left Farisa’s arms and face covered in sweat, although today the air was dry enough to make the heat pleasant, rather than stifling, by five o’clock—they were setting up camp—when they stopped for the day.

Farisa drove a tent stake into the ground, though she couldn’t get it deep enough for it to feel firmly implanted. She realized she might have struck hardpan, so she looked for a better spot.

Mazie pointed into the woods. “Come with me.”

“I told Claes I’d set up the tent tonight.”

“We’ll be quick.”

Farisa looked up. “It gets dark so fast down here.”

“Two minutes. Perhaps less.”

“Go on,” Runar said. “I’ll do the tent.”

Farisa said, “Are you sure?”

Runar chuckled. “I’m missing an eye. That doesn’t mean I’m broken. It seems she needs you right now more than the rest of us.”

“I don’t know if she needs me,” Farisa said as she grabbed an empty pail. “She wants me. There’s a distinction.” She rattled the bucket. “We’re looking for water, right?”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” Mazie said. “We could find a spring along the way.”

They walked along a side path. There was still a thumb of distance between the sun and horizon when they arrived. The meadow stretched for acres; wild white roses, with indigo fringes on each petal, grew.

Farisa sniffled. “It’s beautiful.”

“I wanted you to see this. I would’ve brought you one of the flowers, but I knew you’d say—”

“—that it serves a better purpose—”

“—on the plant.”

“You do know me.” Farisa smacked Mazie’s upper arm. “You know me too well. It’s like—”

Mazie smiled. “It’s like what?”

“Never mind.” Farisa stood on her toes, because Mazie was taller; she put her hands behind the woman’s neck.

Farisa kissed Mazie. Mazie kissed back. There was a mingling of breath; there was movement of hands; there was a world’s disappearance as they squeezed each other’s bodies like the world had nothing else to touch.

Mazie pulled her head back. “You’re the best, Farisa.”

“Stop fucking talking.” Farisa kissed Mazie’s lips again, then moved to her neck, shoulder, collarbone. “You are the best, Maze. You, you, you are the best.”

It would be nice to lose the concept of time here, but time would not lose them. When night was truly set to fall, Farisa decided it was time to head back. Their hands interlaced as they walked; when she could, though, Farisa snuck an opportunity to inhale Mazie’s scent. More than once, they stopped and kissed.

“I love you so much,” Farisa said.

“And I love you.”

“That being said...” Farisa looked up. Stars had not yet come out. “It isn’t an easy life. If men and women both please you, then to be someone like me—”

“No one is like you,” Mazie said. “That is what I’ve learned. Besides...” She circled the sky with two fingers. “This isn’t an easy life.”

“I know, but I have these memories. I... in the past... I think I might have gone too far, too fast, and I don’t want to make mistakes I might have made before, nor do I want you to make what you will regard, in the future, as one. Do you truly want to be with a woman?”

“It’s not about a woman, Farisa. I want to be with you.”

“I...” Farisa’s cheeks felt as if she'd sipped warm cider on the coldest winter day. “I never know what to say to compliments.”

Mazie ruffled Farisa’s hair, massaging her scalp. “Then don’t say anything, silly.”

#

At dinner, Farisa noticed Runar’s near absence. He sat by the campfire with food, but did not seem to eat. Saito had given him opium, which seemed to be killing his appetite. Throughout the evening, Runar had been going into the woods often, using his novel turns of phrase for urination—salting the crops, saluting the colonel, draining the eel—to give the sense that all was well, but Farisa suspected he was in a lot of pain, because he did not go so far when he urinated, nor was he gone so long. She volunteered to take the evening watch, but that was Kanos’s shift, and he refused to part with or trade it.

“Well, I’m staying up anyway,” she said to the group.

She followed Runar on his trip away from camp. Once a hundred yards out of the camp’s sight, he vomited. She caught sight of his face when he turned around to head back; he wore an expression that even Farisa could decipher—a grimace of pain.

She snuck back to camp to find him sitting by the fire, though it was after nine o’clock and the others were sleeping. “You need my help.”

Runar crossed his arms. “Saito said—”

“I overheard. He said he thinks there is no necrosis. That doesn’t mean he’s sure, because he can’t be sure. If there’s necrosis in your head—”

“God’s balls, Farisa. If there’s rot inside my head, he can’t do anything but leave me to die.”

“There are things I could—we could—try.”

The man’s tone turned harsh. “The pain is subsiding.”

“Runar.”

“What would you do, exactly?”

Farisa spread her feet. “Whatever I can.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” His face twitched. “Mind yourself, and I’ll mind me. I know you followed me into the woods. Don’t do that again.”

She went to sleep, but moved her sleeping bag to the edge of the tent so she could hear noises by the campfire. A couple of hours later, she woke to hear Runar’s and Garet’s voices.

Garet said, “Saito said I can’t give you more.”

“It isn’t working.” Runar stamped his feet. “It stopped fucking working. Double the dose. Triple it.”

“Saito said that would kill you.”

“It won’t. I’m two hundred pounds. I never get sick. It’ll end the pain.”

Farisa left the tent and walked over.

Runar raised his head and glared at her. “Go to sleep, Farisa.”

“Take off your eyepatch.”

Runar looked away as if insulted, but Garet said, “She can help you.”

“It’s not a thing to be ashamed of,” Farisa said as she grabbed the strap and looked at his eye. “You were wounded in battle. It could have happened to me—to any of us.” The flesh had charred and a black blister, its irregular shape formed by the merging of several small ones, had spread to his temple. “You do need me. Now.”

“It’s just a little—”

Saito exited the tent and recoiled at the sight. “She’s right. I’m a doctor. If you had let me see that.... When a limb looks like that, we amputate but—”

“—since it’s my fucking head, that isn’t an option, so I guess I’ll have to live with it.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Saito said, “You won’t.”

Runar bit his bottom lip.

“The dose of opium I would give for a wound like that, in the hospital, is the last one. If she wants to help you, it’s your best shot. Your only shot.”

“What can she—?”

“Let her try.”

Garet asked Farisa, “How much time are we going to lose?”

“It’s hard to say. A spell like this, back home, would cost me three days.”

“Three days’ bed rest?”

“Three days’ bed rest, yes. I’d be slow for two weeks. It seems, though, that as we go south, magic becomes both more powerful and easier to use, so my recovery time could be reduced and, anyway—”

She looked at Saito and they finished the sentence together. “We don’t have any other choice.”

Runar looked at her. “This is...?”

Saito said, “It’s the only way you live, Runar.”

He nodded. “Let’s do it, then.”

She closed her eyes. She had no trouble stabilizing herself once in the blue; this far south, it came fluently. She could see the corruption: a silver-brown spot of venom throbbed in the man’s head, between the optic nerve and brain, and its tendrils flared out in several directions like a skrum frozen in time. “Yes, I can do this.” In the blue, her voice sounded tinny and mannish. “I’d bet my life on it.”

Garet gave Runar a bandanna to bite on. Farisa heard his voice, though it seemed to be coming from a much older man. Saito nodded in silent support.

She wished she had done this thirty hours ago. Neutralizing venom was easy compared to reversing of necrosis. She traced every glyph of the healing spell—no less than a man’s life was at stake—with such precision, it felt as if she had threaded herself through a needle. She did not think even Raqel had ever drawn a line or curve so flawlessly, but this spell would require that. White waves of blasting pain flooded the world; Farisa felt them, Runar felt them. The man’s teeth chattered hard enough to chip. The mage’s heart beat faster than she thought it could, and a jacket of cramping agony crushed her ribcage. The blister on Runar’s face deflated. The flesh turned pink and soft, and the knob of rot inside his skull shrunk until it disappeared. Farisa’s bodily pain soured into nausea, rattling her whole digestive tract from end to end, and it ejected Farisa from the blue at the exact moment she had completed the cure.

“He will live,” Farisa said. “I cannot restore the eye, but the flesh is all—”

There is also that thing I learned about him. I must tell Claes as soon as I—

“The pain’s gone,” Runar said. “It’s completely gone. You’re a miracle worker.”

She had rolled over on her stomach. Unable to stand, she crawled away from the others and vomited. Saito must have heard her, because he had brought her a canteen of water. She was able to get back to the tent, but only with his support.

“Before I go to sleep,” she started to say. I need to speak... The world had already pulled her into dreamless suspension ...to Claes. He will know what to...

#

Mazie, glad their food situation had improved, finished one of the mountain pies that Garet had made for breakfast. Claes had told them this would be a day for foraging and fishing, and she was glad for the change of pace.

“Is Farisa still asleep?”

Claes nodded. “I’ve told some of the others that she’s sick, but... yes.”

“I know.”

He stirred the last glowing ashes of their fire. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“We all say we want to go as far as we can, but I know that Kanos and probably Runar are here for Switch Cave gold. I don’t know what they intend to find, as I only plan to go through that place once, but you—”

“I...?”

“What is your plan, if we have to turn back?”

“I don’t have one. We’re going to cross. We will be the first to see what’s on the other side of the Ivory Ashes.”

“I want to cross. We will be the first to see what’s on the other side of the Ivory Ashes.”

He seemed taken aback, as if she had said something arrogant. “You never have doubts?”

She shrugged. “I doubt everything. I don’t let it get to me.”

A crack in the morning clouds let sunlight through.

Claes nodded. “Garet will want to speak to all of us at eight o'clock and tell us where to look for food, but let Farisa sleep in.”

“I will do that,” Mazie said.

Claes walked away. She was glad for the conversation’s end, because a passing thought had risen about time—an unremarkable time, minutes past seven on September 18, an unremarkable day—and she found herself, as if by a cat’s reflexive search for new objects to bat about, rifling through Farisa’s possessions in search of not of an item but a confirmatory absence of finding.

“Kanos!”

He and Runar had strayed from the group and were watching narrow fish swim up a river when Mazie approached.

She smiled at Runar apologetically before interrupting. “Kanos, where’s the watch?”

He turned around, indignant. “What are you talking about?”

“Farisa’s gold watch.”

“I don’t have it.”

“A thief knows another. It’s not yours. Give it back.”

“Could you mind your own business?”

“Farisa’s watch is not in her bag.” She looked at his brother, then him again. “Do we have to go through your stuff?

He looked at Runar. “Tell this bitch that—”

Runar’s silence told Mazie what she needed to know. He would not tattle on his brother, but he would not cover up an act he considered wrong.

Kanos looked aside for a moment, as if Mazie would disappear by his doing so. This failed, so he wordlessly opened his jacket, grabbed the watch, and tossed it.

She caught it. “That’s fucking low, Kanos, even for you.”

“What’s low is that she didn’t tell us she had this thing. She didn’t share. In town, we could have sold it and bought—”

Mazie used her shirt to wipe the grime of Kanos off the watch, then wound it as she walked away.

“I’m going to check her bags every day from here on. If anything of hers goes missing, I’ll tell everyone you’re a thief.”

#

Farisa woke at half past three. The area around the campsite was clear and flat, so as soon as she walked outside the tent, she was able to spot two figures by naked eye and confirm, using a spyglass, that they were Garet and Claes. When she reached them, she discovered that they’d found a spring as well as about twenty pounds of edible mushrooms.

“Good,” Garet said. “You’re awake.”

Claes was the first to speak. “We decided to let you sleep. Kanos thinks you’re sick.”

“Which is not untrue,” Farisa said.

Garet pointed along a trail that climbed a steep hill. “Let’s take a walk.”

“Runar,” Farisa said. “Did it work? How is he?”

Claes said, “Do you think she’s ready for this discussion?”

Garet said, “She doesn’t have much of a choice.”

After fifty vertical feet, the trail switched back and forth like a serpent, though it offered a clear view of the campsite from every vantage point. Farisa, still sore everywhere and easily winded, had stopped for breath at least six times when Garet said, now about three hundred feet above camp, “We can talk freely up here. We’re alone.”

“Runar’s doing well,” Claes said.

Garet added, “What you did worked.”

“You need to be secretive about all the things you can do—and selective.”

“Runar’s worth the exertion,” Farisa insisted.

Claes and Garet looked at each other. The former said, “We both agree.”

“I should also tell you about—”

Claes said, “I know, unfortunately.”

Garet said, “Eye of Sophya?”

Farisa crossed her arms. “How’d you—”

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“I said that?”

“You did,” Claes said. “So what is the Eye of Sophya?”

Farisa looked around, then scratched her neck. “I suppose it’s why we’re up here.”

She had been unable to restore Runar’s lost right eye, due to its severing and consumption by a skrum; she had, however, found while in the blue a sort of emerald tangle, a glowing string tied in a knot, right inside the injured socket. One in a hundred people had this artifact, visible only in the blue, though it only turned visible after trauma, and only a mage’s efforts could untangle it.

She looked out over the plain below. “It is a talent like mine.”

Garet adjusted the stick he was using for balance. “You made him a mage?”

“No, and I never would. He will never get the Marquessa.”

Claes said, “You are sure this puts him in no danger?”

“None. Except, of course—”

“The danger we’re all in every day.”

“I can only go on what I have read, but what people call ‘magic’ seems to be quite a number of distinct talents: necromancy, elementalism, paranormal perception, enchantment, divination, and so on. What I can do is called Flare, and that’s what brings the Marquessa. I can project my mind into this parallel world—”

Garet said, “The blue, right?”

“Yes. I can only go into it for short spurts, and it’s exhausting. Runar’s Eye of Sophya is more of a perceptive talent than a manipulative one. I can cast spells, but I can’t stay in the blue for long. Ten minutes, down here, might be the absolute maximum, and that’s if I don’t do anything there. His enhanced perceptions, on the other hand, will be with him always.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“I wouldn’t have unlocked it if it weren’t. He doesn’t have to know when to search, and he’ll see things none of us—not even me—can.”

There was a pause. The sun had gone behind a high eastern mountain, so the sky was already beginning to dim. Garet finally said, “There’s one problem, though.”

Farisa and Claes looked at him.

“It’s another secret we have to keep—that he has to keep. Explain it to Runar, but make sure he doesn’t tell anyone. Four of us will know; that’s already a large number as far as my tastes go.”

“You don’t trust Kanos,” Farisa said.

“I do not.”

“You shouldn’t.”

Claes said, “We have naturally moved to the second thing I wanted to discuss. He attacked you, Farisa.”

“I might have started it, and it was two weeks ago.”

“It’s the way in which he attacked you—”

Garet’s face turned red. “Kanos used magic?”

“I believe he's a mage,” Farisa said.

“Fuck.”

“I can’t be sure,” Farisa said. She looked back at their camp to see if anyone had returned, and the valley had darkened into twilight. “My memory is vurkt. The Marquessa could have been playing one of her tricks.”

“He’s an unpleasant man,” Garet said. “If he attacked you using magic, we have to—”

“Please don’t say it, Garet. Mages suffer prejudice everywhere, and even people who are not us have been burned alive over the suspicion. I don’t think we should kill him based on a single memory that, although it is mine, I do not fully trust.”

“It wouldn’t be just that,” Garet said. “He started two fights we could have avoided—the squibbani and the skrums.”

Claes said, “We could afford to lose Kanos, but we would make an enemy of Runar. If we lose two men—Well, you’ve been through Switch Cave. Didn’t you say it takes eight pairs of eyes to get through it intact?”

“Ideally, yes.”

“The best approach might be the obvious one.”

Farisa and Garet looked at Claes. The old man spoke first. “Tell me, because it’s not.”

“These men—both of them, but especially Kanos—are on this mission for the money. Rather than discourage Kanos from looking for treasure, we encourage it. We let him be seduced by the gold of Switch Cave. It won’t be any use to him where we’re going. He’ll decide to turn around.”

“He knows a lot about us,” Garet said. “He might tell the Company.”

“We’re months beyond Portal. The earliest he can reach the Company is November. We will have crossed the Ashes, or died in the attempt, before they can catch up with us.”

Garet put his hands in his pockets and looked at Farisa. “You said magic gets stronger as you go south. Do you know why that is?”

“I have no clue,” Farisa admitted. “On Ettaso, it was the opposite; magic was stronger near Tevalon than in Cait Forest, where it was quite weak.”

“It’s getting dark,” Garet said. “Let’s go back to camp. As this was—and remains—a secret meeting of ours, I did not bring a light.”

“There’s still a lot we have to figure out,” said Claes. “If Kanos does one more reckless thing, we might have to—”

“Kill him.”

“I was going to say we let him sleep in one morning and be gone.”

Garet looked aside. “Killing him’s less cruel than abandonment.”

“What if he wants to live, though? Shouldn’t he have the choice?”

“Runar and Talyn would never let us do it.”

“You’re right.”

They descended. The colors of rock faces on distant eastern mountains suggested the sun would not set for another hour, but the valley had only diffuse skylight and felt dark. The trail seemed steeper than it had been on the way up, and one had to be mindful of briars.

Garet, on the trail’s final segment, stopped.

“Unlocking Runar’s... that Eye of Sophya you talked about. Is the latter why you had to sleep in so late?”

“It is,” said Farisa, “but it would have cost me a week to recover back home. It’s as you said. On the Road, and through Switch Cave, we need as many eyes as we can get. He might see things we need him to see.”

#

Next morning, Farisa woke to the sound of rain atop the tent. She had slept in till eleven; having been in the sleeping bag for fourteen hours, her body ached. She dressed herself and walked outside; it seemed no one would be going anywhere for a long time. Water rushed in torrents, causing mud slicks to form in the valley, and the plains a thousand feet below them had turned into a shallow lake, though it would probably start to steam as soon as the sun came roaring out.

Once the rain stopped, Garet told them to pack up their tent. By one thirty the ground was dry enough for travel, though water dripped from the trees. At three, they came over a crest into a hot desert wind that dried the lips.

“It’ll get much hotter,” Garet said. “We still have four thousand feet to descend.”

Farisa spotted a black line of mountains on the southern horizon. “That’s the Ilyzian Ridge, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” Garet said.

“So we’re almost there.”

“It’s farther off than it looks. How tall do you think those mountains are?”

“I have no idea,” she admitted. “Twenty thousand feet?”

“Five miles,” Garet said. “Possibly six.”

“I guess that’s why no one has tried to go over them.”

Garet chuckled. “To avoid Switch Cave? Oh no, quite a number have tried. No one has succeeded though. Split off to the west, and you’re going through rough karst; it’ll take weeks to get through, and that’s if the ocean doesn’t throw a storm at you.”

“And to the east?”

“The orcs in that region are said to be larger and better-equipped than those here, and they’re already a hassle enough. The ones in Switch Cave might be the outlying settlers—the bumpkins or the rubes, one could say.”

Kanos looked back at Mazie and whispered, “The pessimou.”

Farisa nearly showed him a middle finger, but covered it with the other hand.

“Switch Cave is an odd place,” said Garet. “It’s hot in there, but it’s not the killing heat of the Ashes, because some air from the mountains comes through. There are rumors of old orcish ruins, though I never saw anything like that, and Switch Cave is dangerous enough without embellishment. I don’t see how orcs, seeing as they have no language, would be able to form cities, but I intend never to find out.”

“How long does it take to get through?”

“Only a day, which is a mercy.”

“Two or three, if you don’t know where you’re going,” Kanos said. “Or if you get scared by the darkness and lose your wits.” He laughed.

Garet rolled his eyes. “If that’s the case, you should have brought a better lamp.”

The next day, they continued their descent. Short trees were replaced by shrubs and grasses, whose color blanched as they progressed.

Runar asked, “When is the rainy season here?"

Garet laughed. “Midnight to two, once every ten years.”

The terrain, dotted with stands of brown brush, was flat enough for them to see the miles ahead, so nothing of size would have surprised them. They had seen the two men, coming north the other way, for almost an hour before they actually met.

Kanos readied his weapon. “Just in case.”

“No need,” Garet said. “Look at them.”

One was tall, the other short; otherwise, they looked more the same than different—emaciated, filthy, and reddened by sunburn.

When the two groups came together, Claes asked, “How many of you were there?”

“Southbound, nine of us,” said the taller man, whose grizzled beard had grown unevenly. “Six untas, two huskers. We’ve lost all our animals, as you can see.”

“Who led you?”

“Name of Lloyd Cagner ring a bell?”

“No.”

The shorter of the men asked, “How’s the Road back?”

Garet said, “Orcish traffic’s low, but we did fall into a pack of skrums. Thousands of them.”

“How’d you survive that?”

“Salt,” Farisa said. “Salt is the trick.”

“One of our men lost an eye,” Garet added.

Runar, wearing a blue flannel eyepatch made from an old shirt, raised his hand.

“We saw a few skrums in Switch Cave,” the taller man said. “Northbound. They seemed to be in a hurry to leave.”

The shorter man said, “There are rumors of a dragon, newly hatched.”

Garet laughed. “There always are, though.”

Claes said, “How far’d you make it in the Ashes?”

“Three days before our animals started to die. We looked around for water, but there were squibbani everywhere."

“Squibbani,” Garet said. “Did you encounter the Dark Man of the Desert?”

“Thank the gods, no.”

The other of the two men said, “I hate to ask, but—”

“No need,” Garet said. “I was younger than you when I first came here, and if no one had helped me on the way back, I’d have perished somewhere about here. We can afford to give you one unta, fifty pounds of dried meat, and a box of ammunition, if you two know how to hunt.”

The men nodded. “Thank you. That’s more than we need.”

Kanos said, “Shouldn’t we—?”

Claes said, “We have.”

The short man said, “I don’t know how I’d tame them, but we crossed some feral untas on the way.”

Garet said, “I’ll go get you your stuff.”

“Give me your map,” Claes said. “I’ll update your water marks. First stream is four miles up.”

“I remember it,” said the taller man. “We hope you’re not giving us more than you can afford.”

“We’re generous, not suicidal.”

Farisa and Claes both looked at Kanos.

The shorter man asked, “What do you want in return?”

Garet yelled back, “Your safety, is all.”

“I have a question for you,” said Farisa.

She remembered the rumors of her father’s survival. It had been the original reason for this journey, though every mile in this wilderness made clear how big this place was, and her hopes were diminishing. Still, she owed it to herself to ask. “Did either of you encounter a man named Dashi Zevian?”

The men looked at each other. “No.” “Never heard that name.”

Farisa massaged her forehead. “Thank you.”

Claes said, “Thinking on it, I also have a favor to ask of you. Garet, can you get me the brown book in the second wagon?”

Garet handed it to Claes. “There’s some skrum gunk on it, but it won’t hurt you.”

Claes scratched his wrist. “Skrum gunk is why I asked for it.” He gave it to the taller of the two men they’d met. “You found this on a corpse. Remember what I look like. That’s what the corpse looked like. You found it exactly seventy miles north of where we’re standing today. When you get to Portal, sell it at a pawn shop. Doesn’t matter which one, the Global Company owns ‘em all. They’ll try to tell you this thing’s worth two grot. Ask for more. With the name that’s on it, you’ll have no problem getting five thousand.”

“And do you want us to store the money in—”

“It’s your money, not ours,” Claes said. “Do whatever you want. We’re never coming back this way.”