Their home island of Calla had been settled by souls who had begun their journey around Camp, across from Old Eltown, and made their way north and west, following trails laid down by migrating giants. So the speech of the Calladons and Bufrects was a dialect of what was still spoken around Secondeltown. But different folk altogether had created the town that later became Cloven. Its two halves, East and West, had been separated long enough by the gradually broadening Shiver that a different dialect was spoken in each. At the opposite end of the First Shiver, many days’ journey to the south, the people of Toravithranax spoke yet another entirely different language. Of all of these places, Secondeltown, being closest to El’s Palace, and indeed having a direct view of the Palace from the vast and magnificent Temple, Basilica, School, and Monastery of Elkirk looming above it, spoke a language thought to be closest to that of First Town in the Before Times. A simple version of that language—Townish—had come into use up and down the length of the First Shiver as the common tongue of mariners and traders. It was close enough to what the Bufrects and Calladons spoke that with a little practice, and by pruning their sentences, they could make themselves understood around the docks in West Cloven. Or so they were assured by Robst as he piloted them safe into the old harbor after a reasonably uneventful journey. It was not the biggest town they’d ever seen—Farth, the capital of Calla, was bigger and certainly nicer to look at—but it was a considerable town. Much larger vessels than theirs were moored all about, unloading cargo from the Lake Land across the First Shiver. In its place the produce of many Bits was transferred into vacated holds: honey, wax, timber, fish, grains, and fibers.

Robst knew where to go, but even still they’d have been lost without Corvus. Yesterday the giant talking raven had flown away without explanation as soon as the back side of this Bit had hove into view. Today he had appeared high above them as they rowed into the harbor. “He’ll not perch anywhere that his size will draw attention,” Brindle predicted. “Not all folk are as easygoing as we Calladons in the presence of such creatures.”

But one other soul had apparently been keeping an eye on Corvus’s movements, for when they at last found a mooring place, he was standing on the shore waiting for them. Corvus, apparently satisfied the connection had been made, flapped away toward some nearby cliffs topped with dark trees.