‘If only the excitement of disbelief,’ Lostara muttered, walking over to the edge of the tel and looking south-westward to where the red wall of the Whirlwind cut a curving slash across the desert. Behind her, she heard muted words, spoken in some language unknown to her. Probably gibberish. I’ve seen enough mages at work to know they don’t need words ... not unless they’re performing. Pearl was probably doing just that. He was one for poses, even while affecting indifference to his audience of one. A man seeking his name in tomes of history. Some crucial role upon which the fate of the empire pivots.

She turned as he slapped dust from hands, and saw him rising, a troubled frown on his all-too-handsome face.

‘That didn’t take long,’ she said.

‘No.’ Even he sounded surprised. ‘I was fortunate indeed. A local earth spirit was killed ... close by. By a confluence of dire fates, an incidental casualty. Its ghost lingers, like a child seeking lost parents, and so would speak to any and every stranger who happens by, provided that stranger is prepared to listen.’

Lostara grunted. ‘All right, and what did it have to say?’

‘A terrible incident – well, the terrible incident, the one that killed the spirit – the details of which lead me to conclude there is some connec—’

‘Good,’ she interrupted. ‘Lead on, we’re wasting time.’

He fell silent, giving her a wounded look that might well have been sincere. I asked the question, I should at least let him answer it.

A gesture, and he was making his way down the tel’s steep, stepped side.

She shouldered her pack and followed.

Reaching the base, the Claw led her around its flank and directly southward across a stony flat. The sunlight bounced from its bleached surface with a fierce, blinding glare. Barring a few ants scurrying underfoot, there was no sign of life on this withered stretch of ground. Small stones lay in elongated clusters here and there, as if describing the shorelines of a dying lake, a lake that had dwindled into a scatter of pools, leaving nothing but crusted salt.

They walked on through the afternoon, until a ridge of hills became visible to the southwest, with another massive mesa rising to its left. The flat began to form a discernible basin that seemed to continue on between the two formations. With dusk only moments away, they reached the even base of that descent, the mesa looming on their left, the broken hill ahead and to their right.

Towards the centre of this flat lay the wreckage of a trader’s wagon, surrounded by scorched ground where white ashes spun in small vortices that seemed incapable of going anywhere.

Pearl leading, they strode into the strange burned circle.

The ashes were filled with tiny bones, burned white and grey by some intense heat, crunching underfoot. Bemused, Lostara crouched down to study them. ‘Birds?’ she wondered aloud.