He lifted his sword. ‘Bairoth Delum – so I name you. Witness. The Jhag Odhan. So unlike our mountain fastnesses. To this wind I give your name – see how it races out to brush the grasses, to roll against the hill and through the trees. I give this land your name, Bairoth Delum.’

That warm wind sang against the sword’s rippled blade with moaning cadence.

A flash of movement in the grasses, a thousand paces distant. Wolves, fur the colour of honey, long-limbed, taller than any he had ever before seen. Karsa smiled.

He set forth.

The grasses reached to just beneath his chest, the ground underfoot hardpacked between the knotted roots. Small creatures rustled continually from his path, and he startled the occasional deer – a small breed, reaching no higher than his knees, that hissed like an arrow between the stalks as it fled.

One proved not quite fast enough to avoid his scything blade, and Karsa would eat well this night. Thus, his sword’s virgin thirst was born of necessity, not the rage of battle. He wondered if the ghosts had known displeasure at such an ignoble beginning. They had surrendered their ability to communicate with him upon entering the stone, though Karsa’s imagination had no difficulty in finding Bairoth’s sarcastic commentary, should he seek it. Delum’s measured wisdom was more difficult, yet valued all the more for that.

The sun swept its even arc across the cloudless sky as he marched on. Towards dusk he saw bhederin herds to the west, and, two thousand paces ahead, a herd of striped antelope crested a hilltop to watch him for a time, before wheeling as one and vanishing from sight.

The western horizon was a fiery conflagration when he reached the place where they had stood.

Where a figure awaited him.

The grasses had been flattened in a modest circle. A three-legged brazier squatted in its centre, filled with orange-glowing pieces of bhederin dung that cast forth no smoke. Seated behind it was a Jaghut. Bent and gaunt to the point of emaciation, wearing ragged skins and hides, long grey hair hanging in strands over a blotched, wrinkled brow, eyes the colour of the surrounding grass.

The Jaghut glanced up as Karsa approached, offering the Teblor something between a grimace and a smile, his yellowed tusks gleaming. ‘You have made a mess of that deer skin, Toblakai. I will take it none the less, in exchange for this cookfire.’

‘Agreed,’ Karsa replied, dropping the carcass beside the brazier.

‘Aramala contacted me, and so I have come to meet you. You have done her a noble service, Toblakai.’

Karsa set down his pack and squatted before the brazier. ‘I hold no loyalty to the T’lan Imass.’