‘No sharper an observance could be made. And why, you ask?’

‘I do not bother, for I know you will tell me in any case.’

‘Of course I shall, for I am of a helpful sort, a natural proclivity. The reason, my young friend, shall soon be made evident.’

They clambered over the last of the rise and came to the flat ground, eternally shadowed beneath the canopy and so free of grasses. The tree and all its branches, Karsa now saw, were wrapped in spiders’ webs that somehow remained entirely translucent no matter how thickly woven, revealed only by a faint flickering reflection. And beneath that glittering shroud, the face of a Jaghut stared back at him.

‘Phyrlis,’ Cynnigig said, ‘this is the one Aramala spoke of, the one seeking a worthy horse.’

The Jaghut woman’s body remained visible here and there, revealing that the tree had indeed grown around her. Yet a single shaft of wood emerged from just behind her right collarbone, rejoining the main trunk along the side of her head.

‘Shall I tell him your story, Phyrlis? Of course, I must, if only for its remarkability.’

Her voice did not come from her mouth, but sounded, fluid and soft, inside Karsa’s head. ‘Of course you must, Cynnigig. It is your nature to leave no word unsaid.’

Karsa smiled, for there was too much affection in the tone to lend the words any edge.

‘My Thelomen Toblakai friend, a most extraordinary tale, for which true explanations remain beyond us all,’ Cynnigig began, settling down cross-legged on the stony ground. ‘Dear Phyrlis was a child – no, a babe, still suckling from her mother’s breast – when a band of T’lan Imass ran them down. The usual fate ensued. The mother was slain, and Phyrlis was dealt with also in the usual fashion – spitted on a spear, the spear anchored into the earth. None could have predicted what then followed, neither Jaghut nor T’lan Imass, for it was unprecedented. That spear, wrought of native wood, took what it could of Phyrlis’s lifespirit and so was reborn. Roots reached down to grip the bedrock, branches and leaves sprang anew, and in return the wood’s own lifespirit rewarded the child. Together, then, they grew, escaping their relative fates. Phyrlis renews the tree, the tree renews Phyrlis.’

Karsa set his sword’s point down and leaned on it. ‘Yet she was the maker of the Jhag horses.’

‘A small role, Karsa Orlong. From my blood came their longevity. The Jhag horses breed infrequently, insufficient to increase, or even maintain, their numbers, were they not so long-lived.’

‘I know, for the Teblor – my own people, who dwell in the mountains of north Genabackis – maintain herds of what must be Jhag horses.’

‘If so, then I am pleased. They are being hunted to extinction here on the Jhag Odhan.’

‘Hunted? By whom?’

‘By distant kin of yours, Thelomen Toblakai. Trell.’