But she conquered herself, because fear was a weapon of the Dark. If she allowed herself to be led by her fear, how could she know the righteousness of her actions?

Still, she worried. Still, she feared.

“Shogg’s Ford, then,” Lief suggested. They had been poring over what maps they had, drawing forth recollections of the territory, trying to work out a route that did not involve the busy ground between here and Isinglas.

“Remind me…” Dragged from her ruminations, Dion leant over his shoulder and tried to work out where the place was.

“Shogg’s Ford is a place of darkness,” Harathes objected.

“Shogg’s Ford is mostly a place of small-minded vice and bad beer,” Lief replied cheerfully. “Yes, it’s on this side of the line. It’s in the uncertain lands, and we’ll likely find all sorts there. But they won’t be looking for a fight and, frankly, we’ll have more of a chance giving Muggins his civilized debut in Shogg’s Ford than we would have had in Isinglas. They’re used to freaks there, they are.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” Cyrene agreed slowly. Her narrowed eyes strayed over to Enth. “And a lot of trade goes through there. We could certainly get enough to disguise what… it is.”

He, it, Dion had already fought over the pronouns. “We will have to be careful, there,” she put in.

“When are we not?” Lief said easily.

Shogg’s Ford.

Memory accreted within Nth’s brain, pieced together from the gift of his Mother. She had been there when Man had not claimed that place. Long ago, she remembered the bellowing, stinking shoggs as they braved the water. Gone now, hunted first by her and then by Man, and now no more than a name without a memory, even in a world that seemed written and overwritten with ancient history: Darvezian, Armes, Light and Dark.

At first the new body they had imprisoned him within had dominated his attention. The world had become a shrieking, blinding whirl of unfamiliar senses. He was denied the voice of the ground, that had spoken to him of every twitch and motion within his world, and carried the speech of his people as well. Instead there was a raucous cacophony of sound that battered in through his unwanted ears, out of which, somehow, he could still parse the gibbering that was the way that these Men communicated among themselves. Of all the new abilities that had been forced on him, that comprehension was the one he would most do without. He had never wanted to discover that Men, the destroyers and the prey, could speak, even if their speech was such a painful din.