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Remy knew part of the story, the part that any child who grew up along the Dragondown Coast would know: In an age forgotten even by the time of Arkhosia and Bael Turath, a market had sprung up around an oasis at the intersection of two roads. Perhaps it had sprung up because a freak desert rainstorm had bogged a caravan down in mud so deep that when it dried, the merchant could not dig his wagons out and all of his beasts had died. So he stayed, never arriving at his destination—which might have been any of the ancient cities that since lay in ruins along the shores of the Gulf. It might even have been the ancient city that lay below Karga Kul.

At first it was a collection of tents, a way station for caravans skirting the edge of the desert but wary of coming too close to the bandits and worse that haunted the Blackfall’s banks. There was water there, and safety in numbers.

Over the centuries, the market had grown. Walls had sprung up around it, and earthen berms. Cisterns had been dug, and cellars to store goods that would not survive long in the Fork area’s heat and dust. As Remy walked through its road gate, it was larger than any town he had ever been in except Avankil. Above the ground, awnings and tents that had once stood by themselves now fronted permanent stalls and rows of wood-frame houses. Remy wondered how much the builders had paid to get that much wood all the way out here. The nearest tree was forty miles away. At the center of the market stood a citadel built of sandstone. “More than once,” Keverel said, “Crow Fork Market has stood against an army. Below that keep, there are cellars. Below the cellars, dungeons. Below the dungeons …” He trailed off. “One hears stories.”

“Who invades a place out in the middle of a waste?” Remy asked.

“Recently?” Kevel said. “The hobgoblin warlords who ravage these wastes have had their eyes on this market since before you were born.”

Around them surged the activities of commerce, a storm of getting and spending. Crow Fork Market stood at the crossroads of the southern Dragondown. Any land route between Toradan, Avankil, and Karga Kul passed the Crow Fork.

Iriani stopped a passing fruit seller and spent a piece of silver on a basket of apples. Holding them up to everyone, he said, “Apples in the wastes. Who wouldn’t fight to control this place?”

“Me,” Biri-Daar said. “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t waste a goblin’s life on this place.”

Keverel looked around, taking in the chaos. He had mentioned to Remy that morning that he, like Remy, had never been inside the market’s walls. “History is long. One imagines that the actions we find baffling made sense at the time,” he mused.

“Or that people were just as stupid then as we can expect them to be now,” Lucan countered dryly.

“At least once, it was an elf army that marched on the market,” Biri-Daar reminded him. “Which by your formulation would mean that elves can be stupid just as humans can. Or halflings.”

“Or dragonborn,” Kithri added cheerfully.

“The propensity for foolishness knows no racial boundaries,” Keverel commented. “Shall we eat?”

The area immediately inside the gates of Crow Fork Market was reserved for the staging of caravans and merchant missions. From there, grooms took their horses and walked them along the wall toward the stables that were set away from the main bazaar spaces. To the left and right were rows of stalls offering every kind of foodstuff found within three months’ journey. These stalls were hotly contested, and handed down across generations. Few things in commerce were certain, but one of those few certainties was that a caravan arriving was hungry and a caravan leaving thought it might be. In both cases, food was desirable.

Remy ate skewers of fried squid from the Furia coast, where the waters were deep and wracked with storms. He washed them down with a strong tea chilled by ice brought down from the glaciers high in the Draco Serrata. It was said that some of those glaciers contained the preserved bodies of warriors and mages from the