'Hmm,' grumbled the First of the Magi, letting the ivy fall back across the wall. He glowered at his apprentice as he stood up, frowning. 'Perhaps, sometimes, the past is better left covered.'

Logen cleared his throat and edged away, ducked quickly under a leaning archway. The wide space beyond was filled with small, knotty trees, planted in rows, but long overgrown. Great weeds and nettles, brown and sagging rotten from the rain, stood almost waist high around the mossy walls.

'Perhaps I should not say it myself,' came Longfoot's cheerful voice, 'but it must be said! My talent for navigation stands alone! It rises above the skills of every other Navigator as the mountain rises over the deep valley!' Logen winced, but it was Bayaz' anger or Longfoot's bragging, and that was no choice at all.

'I have led us across the great plain to the river Aos, without a deviation of even a mile!' The Navigator beamed at Logen and Luthar, as though expecting an avalanche of praise. 'And without a single dangerous encounter, in a land reckoned among the most dangerous under the sun!' He frowned. 'Perhaps a quarter of our epic journey is now safely behind us. I am not sure that you appreciate the difficulty involved. Across the featureless plain, as autumn turns to winter, and without even the stars to reckon by!' He shook his head. 'Huh. Truly, the pinnacle of achievement is a lonely place.'

He turned away and wandered over to one of the trees. 'The lodgings are a little past their best, but at least the fruit trees are still in working order.' Longfoot plucked a green apple from a low hanging branch and began to shine it on his sleeve. 'Nothing like a fine apple, and from the Emperor's orchard, no less.' He grinned to himself. 'Strange, eh? How the plants outlast the greatest works of men.'

Luthar sat down on a fallen statue nearby, slid the longer of his two swords from its sheath and laid it across his knees. Steel glinted mirror-bright as he turned it over in his lap, frowned at it, licked a finger and scrubbed at some invisible blemish. He pulled out his whetstone, spat on it, and carefully set to work on the long, thin blade. The metal rang gently as the stone moved back and forward. It was soothing, somehow, that sound, that ritual, familiar from a thousand campfires of Logen's past.

'Must you?' asked Brother Longfoot. 'Sharpening, polishing, sharpening, polishing, morning and night, it makes my head hurt. It's not as if you've even made any use of them yet. Probably find when you need them that you've sharpened them away to nothing, eh?' He chuckled at his own joke. 'Where will you be then?'