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stopped him in his tracks.
    Amemun loved Sendarus almost as much as Marin, and he would have to be told. Grief suddenly rose in him again, but he held onto his new hate and his mind cleared like a dry old forest swept with a summer fire.
     
    The old Amanite gave his most polite smile and graciously accepted the small morsel of food in his left hand. He blessed it in the name of the god of the desert, placed it into his right hand and put the morsel in his mouth. He pretended to chew and enjoy the food, then swallowed it whole, forcing down the bile that surged up his gullet. The heat inside the tent was oppressive, and he was feeling nauseous.
    'Good!' Amemun declared, and his host, the headman of the Southern Chett tribe he found himself with, smiled appreciatively.
    'As our honoured guest, you must by tradition have the best portion of the feast.'
    'It was delicious,' Amemun said. Please, Lord of the Mountain, let me hold down my heaving stomach .
    'As headman I would normally have it,' the host said, his tone suggesting another meaning.
    It was Amemun's turn to smile appreciatively; he was on firmer ground now. After spending gruelling weeks on the hot, arid plains that filled the south of the continent of Theare he had finally found his way to this man, rumoured by shepherds living on the border lands between Aman and the desert to be one of the grand chiefs of the Southern Chetts. His name was Dekelon, and he looked to be a hundred years old. His head was bald, his skin the colour of sun-baked mud, and his eyes brown, rheumy circles.
    'Your hospitality will have its rewards,' Amemun said.
    'That is the way of things,' Dekelon said. He motioned for his son and whispered something in his ear. The son nodded and left the tent, taking with him the rest of his father's relations and retainers. 'Now we can talk. You have come a long way to see me.'
    'Is that so strange? Your reputation as the strongest and wisest of all the Southern Chetts is known even as far as Pila.'
    'There are two things you should know, Amemun of Aman,' Dekelon said, his voice changing from the singsong tone he had used in greeting to something colder and flatter. 'The first is that when we are alone there is no need for flattery; it does not help your cause, whatever that cause may be.'
    'Ah. And the second?'
    'We do not call ourselves the Southern Chetts as if we were nothing but a twig off a nobler and greater tree.'
    'I understand. By what name should I call your people?'
    'We call ourselves the Saranah.'
    'Saranah? I do not know that word.'
    'It is from an ancient tongue, and is the name of a bird that soars above the oceans, rarely touching the ground,' Dekelon said. 'Just as my people touch the ground here very lightly. We live on an old country, and poor, so we protect it and nurture it where we can, and scratch what living we are able from our goats and sheep and scattered plots of land.'
    'What ancient tongue?' Amemun asked, curious.
    'Very few of our people know it any more, and none at all in the east.'
    'Is it a tongue we all spoke once?'
    Dekelon shrugged. 'Perhaps.' His tone suggested they were here to discuss matters more weighty than a dead and largely forgotten language.
    Amemun sighed deeply. He had travelled long and far to deliver this message. 'As you say, the Saranah live on an old and poor land. Perhaps it is time you found richer pasture?'
    Dekelon glanced sharply at him. 'Are you suggesting we move east, into Aman?'
    Amemun blinked. He had not expected discussions to be so direct. 'No.'
    'Then what are you suggesting?'
    'That you move north.'
    For a moment Dekelon did not understand, but when he realised what Amemun was in fact suggesting he wheezed in laughter. 'Oh, that is a fine joke. We Saranah are scattered all over this land in our small tribes, and you want us to march north and occupy the Oceans of Grass. Our distant cousins, the hated Chetts, live there in huge clans. What will they say about it, do you think?'
    'They