Tomb the Iron Dwarf, acting at the lean end of his life on an impulse he didn't fully understand, had left the Great Brown Waste, his longtime prospecting ground, and in his one-hundred-and-fiftieth year travelled through Methedrin in the spring; where amid the tumbling meltwater and shortlived flower meadows he recalled other times and other journeys. Surprised by his own sentimentality and suddenly aware he was seeking something special, he'd dawdled south down the Rannoch, warming his old bones. 'One last discovery,'he had promised himself, one last communion with ancient metal, and then an end to arthritic nights; but this seemed a strange place to make it. What he might find in a land that hadn't known industry for millenia, what he might return with for the last time to the Pastel City, he couldn't imagine. He had not seen the City for twenty years, or his friend Fulthor. He had never seen the Sign of the Locust.

When he woke up, it was dark, and he was inside his caravan. A tall old man in a hooded cloak bent over him like a question mark in the orange lamplight. Strange designs worked into the weave of the garment seemed to shift and writhe as he moved.

Tomb winced away, his thick gnarled hands yearning for the axe he had not used in a decade (it lay beneath his bed; his armour was there too, packed in a trunk; so his life had gone since the Fall of the North). 'Why have yoti come here, old ghost?'he said. 'I'll cut off your arms!'he whispered as he lost consciousness again, feeling an old cruelty sweep over him like a familiar pain; and then, waking suddenly with his wide astonished eyes staring into that aged face, skin like parchment stretched over a clear lemon-yellow flame, he remembered! Ten thousand grey wings beat down the salty wind like a storm in his head!