'If it's usually even half this bad, it's no surprise we haven't met anybody,' Rudy commented, huddling as close to their wind-flattened fire as he could without the risk of self-immolation. They had made camp in a rolling depression of ground that Ingold identified as a beast wallow of some sort -bison or gelbu. 'Even without the Dark Ones, this part of the country would be a hell of a place to try and make a living.'

There are those who do,' the wizard replied without looking up. Wind twisted their fire into brief yellow ribbons that licked the dust. By the restless light, only the prominences of his curiously reticent face could be made out - the tip of his nose, the wide-set flattened triangles of the cheekbones, and the close, secretive mouth. These lands are too hard for the plough and too dry for regular farming, but in the south and out in the deserts, there are colonies of silver miners; and here, close to the mountains, lie the cattle lands and the horse lands of the Realm. The plainsmen are a hardy breed,' he said, strong fingers

twisting at the leaves of the fresh-water mallows he was braiding into a strand, 'as well they have to be.'

Rudy watched him weaving the plants together and picked out by the leaping glow of the fire the shapes of the seeds, the petals, leaf and pod and stamen, identifying and fixing the plant in his mind and recalling what Ingold had told him about its curative properties. 'Are we still in the Realm of Darwath?' he asked.

'Officially,' Ingold said. 'The great landchiefs of the plains owed allegiance to the High King at Gae - in fact, as a legal entity, the Realm stretches to the Western Ocean, for the Prince-Bishop of Dele takes - took - his laws from Gae.