I suppose I should begin with Iddan’s lectures before we reached the Magharun coast, but I’ve forgotten half of what he told me, and the other half I doubt will particularly interest my readers. It will suffice, I hope, for me to say that there are three kings among the Magharun, one in the north, one in the south, and one near the mountain in between. Rosédan was in the southern kingdom, which was called Dumun. I didn’t like Iddan’s expression or his tone when he talked about Dumun. “The coastal towns aren’t that bad, but the closer you get to the royal city, the darker the rumors get. I doubt even half of them are true, but there is an awful darkness hanging over that place.”

“Worse than the Crocodile?” I asked, hoping he would give me a negative answer.

“Oh, I really couldn’t say. My sense is that they’re different: the Crocodile came from outside Dūrī, but whatever sits at the heart of Dumun is from within.”

You can understand, therefore, that I was fairly gloomy by the time we reached our destination, the town of Ġhomurk. It didn’t help that the crew of our ship was mainly from the northern Magharun kingdom, and they had nothing good to say about Dumun.

I can’t put into words quite what I was expecting in Ġhomurk, but the reality of it proved to be far worse. When I visit a town I enjoy talking to as many people as I can, aided by my Bird and its gift of languages. I had not liked the silence of Uruki and the fishing village in Mimiris̱, but that was in keeping with the air of aloofness and stillness that lay over that island. In Ġhomurk, the looks we were given were distinctly unfriendly, from men and women alike.

A group of young men approached Iddan and me as we wandered up from the shore. They were obviously looking for trouble, as young men often are, and we were very obviously strangers.

“And who are you?” their ringleader demanded, stopping in front of us and crossing his arms across a wide chest. I wondered if it was his size that made him the leader.

“Do you know what he said?” Iddan whispered to me. “My understanding of the Magharun language isn’t what it should be.”

“Just an inquiry for our names,” I replied. “Should I answer him?”

“You might as well. I don’t see what harm it could do.”

“What are you whispering about?” asked the curious young man. “Who are you? What do you think you’re doing in Ġhomurk?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m Kësil and this is Iddan, and we’re looking for a friend.”

“I don’t think you’ll find any friends here. Go back to your ship, or better yet, go back to your homes. Dumun isn’t safe for the uninitiated.” He smiled, showing his teeth, but no hint of the smile touched his eyes, giving him a vaguely piscine look.

“I’m willing to take that risk,” I said. I noticed that all the other men had the same dead-eyed appearance and I was unnerved.

“Maybe you’d like to be initiated. That hair on your friend’s head is astonishing, isn’t it?”

I tried to smile, even though the conversation didn’t seem to be going in a promising direction. “I don’t think we do.”

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

I quickly explained the situation to Iddan as the men drew closer. He looked alarmed, as was only proper. “Should we return to the ship?” I asked. “We’ll have more numbers there, at least.”

“Do you have any magic under your hat to help us?” said Iddan.

The Bird is a marvelous creation of the fair folk’s magic, but it is strictly limited in its usefulness. “Do you have any lore of Mimiris̱ to help us?” I asked in turn.

“The lore of Mimiris̱ is ancient and profound, but not much good for trivial things like this.”

I was not sure I shared Iddan’s view of what was trivial and what wasn’t. The men were getting awfully close by now, and nothing good was promised by their hungry grins and empty eyes. I dread what would have happened had a stranger not intervened at that moment, greeting us in a loud voice. “You didn’t tell me you were arriving today! I would have prepared a feast for you! But come along anyway and I’ll offer you what I have.”

He put his arms over our shoulders and hurried us away, and it was only once we were in his house and the doors had been barred behind us that he addressed us again.

“So,” he said, his friendly expression melting away. “What brings you to Ġhomurk? What brings you to Dumun, especially now of all times?” (From here on, let it simply be assumed that I was translating on Iddan’s behalf).

“We’re looking for a friend of ours,” I said.

“In Dumun? Good luck! If you’ll take my advice, leave in the morning and never come back. You will not find any friends here.”

“But we will find her,” said Iddan with an intensity that startled me. “Or we will die trying.” While this was true, I’m not sure I appreciated the casual way he spoke for me.

“There are worse things than death.” The man’s wife entered then, a thin pale woman who bowed when she saw us. The man made a gesture I didn’t understand and exclaimed, “But I should introduce myself! I am Illoẋ’ār and this is my wife Vlīs’irda. I have lived in Ġhomurk all my life, but she was born in the city itself. Our children are in the inner rooms and no doubt will be out to greet you shortly. Now tell me, where are you from and how did this friend of yours come to Dumun? You are from the north, I judge, by your complexion, yet you speak perfect Maghorun. I have no idea where you’re from, however.”

“I am from the north, from a place whose name you wouldn’t recognize if you heard it,” I said. “My name is Kësil.”

“I am Iddan of Mimiris̱,” said Iddan. I thought Illoẋ’ār’s eyes widened when he heard the name, but it didn’t particularly show in his voice.

“And your friend?”

I was not at all sure how to explain the situation. Rosédan had been lost to me in another world, sent somewhere far away, so that only with the help of Iddan had I been able to find her. I myself had only the vaguest grasp on the magics involved, so how was I to explain all this to Illoẋ’ār?

“Her name is Rosédan,” said Iddan, “and she is definitely in Dumun, by the shores of the deadly lake.”

“Then you will never be able to help her, and you should count her as already dead.”

“If she’s dead, I may as well be dead too,” said Iddan with surprising conviction. I was starting to wonder at this point why exactly he was so interested in Rosédan. I was desperately in love with and wanted to marry her, but what was Iddan’s excuse?

“Stay here until the morning, then,” said Illoẋ’ār with a sigh. “When the sun rises you should return to your ship, if it hasn’t left already. If you insist on dying, then there is a road straight from Ġhomurk to the city, and you should stick to it. There are those in Dumun who know neither law nor light.”

“Like those men outside,” I remarked.

“They, at least, have light.” This did not seem likely to me, unless there was some meaning to the word “light” that I failed to understand or my Bird to translate properly.

“Have they been initiated yet?” asked Vlīs’irda in a quiet but clear voice.

“They are strangers, so I doubt it.”

She bent to whisper in Illoẋ’ār’s ear. He listened, then shook his head, a gesture that filled me with relief somehow. I was beginning to get a queasy feeling whenever I heard the word “initiation.” “No, I don’t think that would be prudent, not now. They’ll be gone in the morning, and that will be that. Bring some bread for our guests, if you will.”

She withdrew into the inner rooms, and it wasn’t long before we were brought a small meal. Vlīs’irda watched us eat in silence for a short while, then she began to tell us a story. I appreciated the entertainment even if I didn’t particularly understand all the details of the story, which went something like this.

“There was a kingdom once in the shadow of the great trees of Samara. The people there were fond of their kings and their queens and the games they played at morning and at evening. They were all like children, and they made childish dolls to play with. But T’inrā the Half-God knew that they couldn’t remain children forever, so he sent his servant Klūr to raise them up, starting with the women and then the men, which is why to this day girls become women before boys become men.

“They went out from the shadow of the trees and built a city for themselves and learned the smithing of metal from a horned wanderer on the earth. First they made axes to cut trees, and then they made axes to cut men. Blood poured out upon the earth and nourished the crops, but still the earth’s mouth opened wide to drink more. In shame and horror a band of the city’s people left and traveled south to the Irlasa, where they camped and rested. Then the shadow of T’inrā the Half-God rose out of the Irlasa and spoke the Six Curses that we shall never forget.

“There is no birth. There is no death. There is no transgression. There is only transgression. There is only death. There is only birth.

“We saw the door then to the above and the below, and we understood why T’inrā the Half-God is divine above and bestial beneath. And we all passed through the door and were never seen again.”

“Calm, darling,” said Illoẋ’ār, putting his hand on Vlīs’irda’s shoulder. She had been speaking more and more quickly, to the point where her words were piling up on top of one another like rocks in an avalanche. “They don’t need to hear all that. “Let them eat in peace. In the morning they will go on their way.”

“One story, then. Just one. The last king of the children who dwelt in the shadow of the great trees of Samara had a red beard and he was called the Great-Handed, because he used his great hands to cling to everything and everyone he wanted. What he loved more than anything else was to make dolls out of wood and cloth, and he would caress them and kiss them with his bristling red beard. But when the time came for him to be initiated, he broke them all to pieces and swallowed them and ascended to heaven.”

I didn’t understand this in the least, but I didn’t tell her, being worried that she might decide to explain and make things even more confusing and uncomfortable. I simply thanked her for the food and the stories. She withdrew, and Illoẋ’ār regarded us both with tired eyes. “She loves Dumun,” he said, then asked us if we knew any stories from our own homes to tell.

So I told the story of the last Khiar emperor and the fall of his realm. A tragic tale seemed fitting, but unlike Vlīs’irda’s nonsense, the tragedy was pure and clear, and it ended with the reestablishment of the priesthood in Dëlpar, out of which light and hope would come in time.

Iddan told a story about a race of wanderers who found homes all across the face of the earth, but were cursed by a forgotten sin to dwindle and perish with time. It was not as dramatic as my story but I think ultimately more tragic. There was no hope for his characters except to vanish and be forgotten. I wished, upon hearing it, that I had told something more comic.

Illoẋ’ār wished us a good night then. “Get whatever sleep you can,” he told us. “I doubt anyone will try to come into the house after you, and if they do they won’t succeed, but I’ll stay out here with you just in case.”

There was not much room for three to sleep on the couch that was the outer room’s sole furniture. Iddan in particular had an offensive habit of suddenly stretching out his arms to strike his bedmates in the face. What with that and my worries about the men outside, my sleep was troubled that night.

In the morning Illoẋ’ār gave us some bread to take with us and repeated his warning to stay on the road. Vlīs’irda brought out their children, a young boy and girl who regarded us with large eyes and pale faces. We thanked Illoẋ’ār, bade farewell to them all, and left Ġhomurk as quickly as we could.

No one bothered us in the streets of Ġhomurk, much to my relief. The countryside beyond the town was largely empty and barren, apart from a few fields of wheat, but even these were small and patchy. “The ground here is poor, I think,” I said. I knelt and crumbled some of the soil in my fingers to confirm my intuition that I know absolutely nothing about crops and their desired soil. I am not, sad to say, any sort of farmer.

“Salt comes from Dumun,” said Iddan. “They give salt to Mimiris̱ and Samara, salt of a remarkable kind, more savory and pleasant than ordinary sea salt, lacking the deadly nature of its mother. And they are certainly paid well for it.”

“Does anyone at all live in the country?” I would have added that it reminded me of Iddan’s island, but it occurred to me that he might not find the comparison a flattering one. But it was true nevertheless: both realms seemed to me to have been left behind by the rest of the world, left empty except for a withdrawn and forgotten people. It was a melancholy thought that the same thing might happen someday to Edazzo or Dūrī.

“I hope they don’t,” Iddan said, and I had to agree with him.

When the sun was high and its heat grew oppressive, we stopped and found a rocky outcropping under whose shadow we could rest. I took the opportunity to ask Iddan about the Shaddar he had mentioned before. “Your hair isn’t like that of anyone else I saw on Mimiris̱,” I added.

“Well, I suppose it won’t do any harm to tell you. It seems likely that I’ll end up being the last, and there’s really no point keeping anything a mystery after that, is there? Besides, there’s something trustworthy about you. I think I told you about the priests who guided us when we came to the Holy Island, didn’t I? Among them was a caste of wise men marked by the golden color of their hair. They were distant kin to their dark-haired brothers, but they kept themselves separate and married among themselves so their power wouldn’t be lost. It was only they who had the right to perform certain rituals whose names we’ve forgotten.

“But over time, of course, they did dwindle in number. Many intermarried and so lost their hair and their status. Others married kin that was far too close, and were drowned in sickness and insanity. So in the end, after all those millennia, I am the last. I will either die without issue, or my children will have hair like yours. There is one other way out, maybe.”

“What’s that?” I asked, but Iddan didn’t answer me for some reason. No doubt it was some secret of the Mimiris̱.

Once or twice we passed ox-drawn carts on which were loaded great jars and whose drivers scowled down at us but did nothing else to bother us. By nightfall we had reached a walled town, and debated between ourselves whether it was wiser to enter or to stay outside for the night. Iddan’s argument rested heavily on the unknown perils of the country Illoẋ’ār had warned us about, and ultimately it prevailed over mine. So we passed through the gate, wary of everyone we saw. We found a fairly secluded place in the shadow of the wall where we could rest, which we did in shifts. I admit that Iddan must have been right, judging by the sounds I heard from outside. There were howls which had something in them of a wolf’s call, something of a lion’s roar, and something of a wailing woman. There were rapid footsteps, but if I could hear them through the solid earth wall, they must have been made by very large feet indeed. And although this may have been just a dream, I could vow that I was wakened by a voice calling my name.

We were glad to be gone the next morning. There was a mixed group of men and women that called out to us, but we ignored them and returned to the eastward road. We traveled long into the night before we came to the lake of Irlasa at last. The land all around it was coated in a discolored crust where bare-chested workers were digging and carrying baskets to carts. At one point along the lake’s shore the land rose in a mound where a city had been built. It was unwalled, which was strange (Ġhomurk had walls), and I commented on the fact to Iddan.

“It’s the lake,” he said, though I don’t know how he knew. “They trust the lake to kill anyone who tries to conquer them. We should keep our distance.”

“There are salt lakes in my homeland,” I said. “They taste brackish, but they are not deadly.”

“Irlasa is not the same. I saw it in my winged journey here before. There are places in the world marked by invisible powers so that they carry some of that power with them for hundreds or thousands of years.” I nodded, thinking of Līwam’s house and its nightmares, or the tomb of the sacred spear in Uruki. “There is something in Irlasa, spirit or power, that hates life and destroys whatever it can touch. See how far the workers stay from the water? They’re afraid, and we should be too.”

“All right. But where’s Rosédan?” I asked, getting to the heart of the matter with my usual insight.

“When I found her, she was in a building near the outside of the city. There were several women with her. She didn’t seem to be hurt. But that was several days ago, you’ll remember.”

I was full of questions, and had been for some time, concerning Iddan’s knowledge, but these questions were not nearly as important as Rosédan was to me. I ran ahead of Iddan before I remembered that “a building near the outside of the city” was not a particularly specific location.

“Just within the walls here, I believe,” Iddan said. We approached the nearest gate and eyed the guards nervously. I know I did, but Iddan must have felt similarly, judging by the way his step faltered and he fell into line behind me. I smiled at the guards despite my nervousness and greeted them.

I wrote “guards” above, but I doubt that’s really what they were. In fact, I suspect they were simply bored men who decided to harass any travelers who happened to pass by. Similarly, I suspect that the toll they demanded at this point had been established by any official ruler. It was, to put it crudely, robbery, but since their clubs looked like they could break our skulls easily, we paid out of our scanty funds. Which is to say, Iddan’s scanty funds.

Hurrying past their menacing eyes, we entered the city of Dumun. Unless my Bird deceived me, the city had the same name as the kingdom, which strikes me as an unnecessary confusion. It was a dreary place I do not care to remember in much detail. There was a wearisome monotony to the buildings, broken only by the squat statues of a repulsively naked goat-legged god. But at the time I could think only of Rosédan.

“Here!” Iddan called, rushing ahead of me for once and pointing at a building that looked no different than any other, so I’m not at all sure how he could tell that this was the place. “Rosédan was here!”

He hesitated at the door, then knocked quickly three times. It was opened by a veiled man who asked us with obvious irritation what we wanted.

“We are looking for a friend of ours,” I told him. Although I couldn’t see his eyes behind his veil, his head did jerk in a suspicious manner.

“A friend with golden hair?” he asked. “She is within, waiting our master’s pleasure. You should leave now.”

“We’re not going to leave! Take us to her now!” I surprised myself by the vehemence with which I spoke. I suppose it can be attributed to love, which sounds absurdly sentimental now that I write it down. I’ll see if I can think of something better later.

The veiled man made to shut the door, but I stuck my foot in the gap and pushed him out of the way. A narrow passage led to a courtyard where, to my great relief and utmost horror, Rosédan was tied to a table or altar or something of that description. It was quite dark (there was no moon), but there was a sufficient number of torches that I could tell by the glint of her hair immediately that it was her. I called her name, and she lifted herself weakly against her bonds and cried out to me.

“Seize them in the name of the messengers!” said a veiled man, interrupting our emotional reunion. “Let no hand prevent, nor eye disdain, the sacrifice of what is falsely called purity. Let the barrier be broken and the unity of T’inrā pour in. Behold! He comes!” And so on in this vein for some time. Iddan and I could do nothing to silence him, as we were engaged in a struggle with some other men, also veiled, who had come upon us from behind.

Then a door opened at the far end of the courtyard, and something came through. It was hard to see clearly in the torchlight, but it had the rough form of a man, though it was hunched over and there was something odd about its legs. Two women emerged at its side, holding its shoulders, but it shoved them aside and drew close to Rosédan.

“T’inrā is here!” the chief of the veiled men said, raising his hands, and all the others shouted with one voice.

At this I was filled with terror. A new strength fell upon me, and I broke away from my assailant to run to the table, or altar. The thing called T’inrā was there before me, its hands reaching out for her exposed flesh. I punched it in its swollen throat and it fell back, then leaped over the table towards me. Its legs were covered in hair, I thought, but when I grabbed them I found that I was clinging to the material of breeches, which tore away in my hand as the thing fled, leaping up and over a windowsill and escaping into the night.

I turned back to Rosédan to discover that Iddan had gotten a knife somewhere and was already cutting her bonds. Freed, she jumped up from the altar or table, but she stumbled and I caught her up in my arms. There was a momentary embarrassment as she adjusted the sheet of fabric that covered her. For a moment, then, we stared into one another’s eyes, before we remembered where we were and who it was that surrounded us. “Hurry!” she said, pulling me after her to a bundle that lay against the inner wall. Iddan followed us, holding up the knife against the men who were following us. Rosédan rummaged through the bundle with one hand, using the other to keep herself relatively modest, then she disappeared.

Although I’m not sure what I had been expecting to happen next, that had definitely not been it. Iddan and I both gaped. The men following us gaped.

“Sorry,” said a voice in my ear. “I wanted to get dressed in privacy. Come with me!”

She tugged on my arm, and I tugged on Iddan’s. We retreated through the inner door and up a short flight of stairs to an upper room. There was no obvious exit, other than the door that Iddan shut and barred, and I gave Rosédan a perplexed look. That was my intention, anyway, but when she appeared again, she was behind me.

“Remarkable!” Iddan exclaimed. “Under the holy flesh, what kind of magic was that?”

“Mine,” said Rosédan, twirling the ring between her fingers, with a smile that made my heart beat faster (unless that was just from the danger we were all in). “Unfortunately, I only have one of these toys. If I had three, escaping would be no problem at all.”

“This reminds me of the puzzle where the merchant has to cross a river with a sack of wheat, a goose, and a wolf,” I said, but no one paid any attention, unfortunately. It’s a clever puzzle, and I’m sure it would have helped us immensely.

“Your clothes disappear too,” said Iddan, which seemed to me too obvious to bother pointing out. Then he suggested something rather more useful: “What would happen if someone wore the ring and carried someone else in their arms?”

She considered the suggestion, then said, “I don’t know. Here, Kësil, you try.”

I was, I suppose, flattered by her choice of me to be the carrier, but I didn’t relish the idea of carrying someone down through that crowded courtyard, and then doing the exact same thing again. But I wasn’t able to resist her command, and anyway I couldn’t think of any other way to escape on short notice, not without a chance to think about the puzzle with the merchant, the wheat, the goose, and the wolf.

I put on the ring, and the only change I noticed was a certain cloudiness in the center of my vision. But Iddan gasped, so I can only assume that I had vanished. I squatted and held out my arms for Rosédan, then realized my mistake. I touched the back of her leg, preparing to lift her, then realized my mistake. She apologized, but that didn’t do my bruised shoulder much good.

Finally we got the procedure straightened out. I held her in my arms, which I found to be somewhat more difficult than I had expected. Still, I knew better than to say so, as I had a feeling I could be misinterpreted.

“That looks remarkably strange,” said Iddan. “But it’s a pity. I can still see you, Rosédan.”

“Good,” I said incautiously, setting her down as quickly as I could.

“Why good?” she asked, staring at me. (I had actually moved out of the way, so she was staring at the wall, strictly speaking, and I was spared the brunt of it.)

“Did I say good? I meant to say bad. Now what are we going to do?”

“I have another idea,” said Iddan with surprising promptness. “Give me the ring, and I’m positive I’ll get us out of here.”

I asked the obvious question. “How?”

“Watch! Though actually watching might be a tiny bit difficult, mightn’t it?” He held out his hand and so I gave him the ring, the blurry spot in my vision snapping back into focus. He put it on and vanished, and his voice came from somewhere near the door. “Really, you shouldn’t watch. I’m about to do something that will banish me from Mimiris̱ for a long time, I’m afraid. But it’s worth it, if I can save the Shaddar. Oh, Rosédan? If this works, I’d love to get a kiss.”

“From whom?” I asked, not hiding the edge in my voice. He laughed, and Rosédan blushed.

Then the bar lifted off the door and he went through. Happily, there was no one on the other side, our hosts having gone down to the courtyard to plot, it seemed. There was a long silence, in which Rosédan and I looked at one another, neither of us daring to speak.

“Well, that was remarkable,” said Iddan.

Rosédan was so startled she actually jumped and gave a slight shriek. I, of course, did nothing of the sort, and once my heart had gone back to normal and I was able to speak without gasping, I asked him what by the Flame was so remarkable.

“Oh, they’re all gone. I’m so glad,” he replied. His knife appeared in midair and dropped to the floor. “I’m so glad,” he said again. After several moments of silence (I wondered if he had gone out there again), he appeared in front of us and held out the ring in a trembling hand. “I think if we hurry we can escape before they get back.”

“But where did they go?” I asked.

“Who knows? By the double-headed ax, I don’t care either, as long as they let us go in peace.”

We went out through the courtyard again, and there was indeed no sign of any of the men and women who had been there before, or of anyone at all. When we came out into the city street, it was just as deserted as the courtyard had been. “Maybe they were all nothing more than phantoms,” I said.

“No, they weren’t. What they threatened; never mind that,” said Rosédan. She clasped her hands together and added, “I can never thank you enough for coming to find me. I owe you my life. But how did you know where I was? And who is your friend?”

“I’m Iddan, and we should save the explanations for a more appropriate time.”

We passed through the gate unmolested, and now it was apparent where the people of the city had gone. On the eastern side of the city there must have been hundreds assembled, ululating without words. Even the laborers on the shores of the lake had joined in. And there was another presence too. I couldn’t see them clearly in the darkness, but there were other figures on the outskirts of the crowd.

“They must be looking for their T’inrā,” whispered Rosédan as she clung to my arm. I asked her later who T’inrā was, and she explained haltingly that he was the great god of Dumun. When I inquired further about the strange man with the hairy breeches, she couldn’t answer. I have learned, however, that the Magharun kingdoms lie on the western coast of a kind of isthmus between two continents, through which many nations have passed through the ages. In the mountains east of Dumun, I am told, there are peoples who have lingered, like water caught in a tide pool on the beach, cut off from the rest of the world, left to grow stagnant. What things might crawl out of that water I don’t dare to guess.

We fled, of course, going away from the crowd and heading northward along the shore of the deadly lake. Once or twice we drew near enough to the water that I could feel the salt crunch under my boots and a burning air fill my throat, which I took to be a warning that we were too close. We passed things in the darkness that were in the likeness of people, and each time we were frightened before they were revealed to be pillars of rock.

It was a hard run. I don’t care to think back to it, and anyway I don’t remember much of it, only that my legs and my chest ached beyond anything I had felt before. Iddan vomited, I think, when we came to a halt, though that may have not been from physical exhaustion so much as despair. We were in rougher land than those flat plains around the lake, and from the rocks all around us men in armor had sprung up like young trees, though somewhat faster than trees generally do.

Iddan had his knife, and I regretted that I had no weapon, though I doubt either of us were in any shape to fight. I comforted myself with the knowledge that at least Rosédan had her ring.

One of the men held up a lantern and said, “Who are you? Answer or die!”

With these are our options, it seemed best to give our names, and so I did.

The man drew closer to us and the lantern’s light hurt my eyes. “You’re not from Dumun? By the mountain, then what were you doing in that cursed land?”

“Escaping,” I said.

The man shook his head and turned to the others. “Ahvul! Mxavla!” he barked. “Take these three to Valax.”

“We’re so tired.” I wasn’t able to help myself. Rosédan was half-collapsed on my shoulder, and I felt that if I took another step I would melt into the earth.

He looked at us again for what seemed like a thousand years. “All right,” he said finally. “Rest here until morning. But then you’ll go to Valax, to answer to the king.”

I held Rosédan tight, and I saw that she had tears in her eyes. I will take up my story again in Valax, the great city of Ramzun.