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In the morning Remy woke first, to find Lucan still sitting exactly as he had been when Remy fell asleep. “You took two watches?” he asked.

“One long one,” Lucan said with a slight shake of his head. “The peace does my mind good. And elves don’t need sleep the way you do.”

Remy stretched and poked at the coals of the fire. “Then you can take all of the watches,” he said.

“I didn’t say we didn’t need rest,” Lucan said. “Just that we don’t sleep the way humans do.”

“How do you rest, then?”

“You might call it a kind of meditation,” Lucan said. “To those who don’t do it, it’s difficult to explain.” Fog sat in the valleys between their campsite and the rise into the next range. Remy could just see the road on the other side, winding its way up and to the north. They had been traveling west and northwest for the last day or so.

“How long before we get to the bridge?” he asked.

Lucan shrugged. “I’ve never seen it. Only heard stories. And the only times I’ve been to Karga Kul, I’ve taken ship from Furia.”

“Furia,” Remy repeated. It was the fifth of the grandiosely named Five Cities of the Gulf, the southern bookend to Saak-Opole in the north with Karga Kul, Avankil, and Toradan in the Gulf’s interior. Of them, only Avankil and Karga Kul were real cities; the others might once have been greater, but had become only glorified towns. Still, Remy was smitten with the idea of it. One day, he resolved, I will go to Furia. I will see all five, and those beyond the Gulf.

“I can see what you’re thinking,” Lucan said. “The world’s a marvelous place, for certain. On the other hand, the world can also make you very dead very fast in a very large number of different ways. So keep the stars out of your eyes, boy. Learn.”

Remy nodded as he flipped twigs into the fire. He blew on them until they flared and caught. “I have learned,” he said. “Already.”

Lucan cracked a smile, a rarity for him as far as Remy could tell. “I think you have. There’s always more, though. Don’t forget that. You’ve got a good spark in you,” he added, standing up and stretching. “You might go a long way if you live through this first trip.” The elf cracked his knuckles and went to see to the horses. Often, Remy had observed, he did this before the others awoke. The storied elf affinity for animals and the natural world was strong in Lucan; Remy was starting to think that it made him unfit for the company of the speaking races.

“What’s Furia like?” he asked.

“I think it’s my favorite of the Five,” Lucan said. “Although I hate cities, or any settlements, really. So that’s something like asking me what my favorite aspect of Orcus is.”

The name of the demonic prince took some of the gleam out of the morning. “Odd comparison,” Remy said.

Lucan grinned again as he looked at one of the horses’ teeth. “They told you never to use his name, am I right? That he might hear and be angry that you weren’t being reverent enough? I’ve heard that as well. The truth is, Remy, Orcus doesn’t care what anyone says about him. His human minions might, or might pretend to so Orcus will take notice of them and transform them into one of his hierophants. But if someone told you that Orcus would come and eat you because of something you said, they were just trying to scare you. Who was it, your mother?”

“It’s been a long time since I saw my mother,” Remy said.

“Me too,” Lucan said. His smile faded. “So who was it?”

“Philomen,” Remy said.

“The vizier?”

“Once I was taking a sealed scroll from his chambers to a ship waiting to sail for … I think it was Karga Kul,” Remy recalled. “He told me to run as fast as I could, to stop for nothing. I said that the only thing that would make me run faster was if Orcus was chasing me. He said …

“You don’t want to joke about that. That Orcus isn’t a fit topic for humorous conversation. He said he’s far too real, and far too … I don’t know.”

“Sounds sensible to me,” Lucan said. “But only if you believe that certain topics cannot be joked about. I don’t believe that. Want a bit of advice? You shouldn’t either. Laughter is one of the few things