I twisted around in Grog’s arms to look back the way we’d come. The camp we’d abandoned was still barely in sight. I could see the discarded corpse of the skinned pursuer beast, but no sign of the missing ogre. I thought about saying something to Ferrith… then I re-evaluated that idea. The chances of Ferrith not being aware that one of his ogres had gone missing since last night seemed exceedingly rare. It must have just wandered off in the night, I decided. He said that happened sometimes. The alternative was that he’d put another one “out of its misery”, and if that was the case, mentioning it while I was alone in the wilderness with the guy seemed short-sighted. No. Everything was fine. It was fine! And my travel companion was definitely not a serial murderer of defenseless ogres—a species which he still seemed to consider me to be a member of. The idea of reaching civilization was becoming increasingly appealing.

“Sooooo… How far away is this town?” I asked, trying my best to sound casual.

Ferrith shrugged. “At a guess I’d say somewhere between 27.32 and 54.65 miles.”

“Seems pretty far,” I commented, still mildly annoyed at the apparent rissian habit of giving precise numbers when estimating distances. Ferrith was handling the pace pretty well, so I didn’t feel guilty asking him some more questions while we traveled. “You mind telling me a bit more about this place before we get to town?” I asked.

“What do you want to know?”

“Well for starters, is the country we’re in right now a monarchy? You mentioned a king yesterday. Where I come from a king means there’s just one guy in charge of everything.”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Ferrith agreed. “King Julius rules over Kalador and before him it was King Kaedin. We’re kind of on the edge of Kalador, so we’re not likely to see many King’s men out this way. There’s a garrison in Haemir, but they mostly act as security for the Duke.”

“I’m not actually that interested in how your government functions,” I told Ferrith, “I was more worried about any rules and laws I should be concerned with. I don’t want to get thrown in jail for saying the wrong thing.”

“Ah. Makes sense,” Ferrith agreed, nodding. “The main thing you’ve got to remember is no black magic. That’s the big one, and it applies everywhere, not just Kalador.”

“Black… magic?” I asked. “Mind explaining what that is? It’s not like I’d use that on accident, would I?”

“Probably not,” Ferrith assured me, “but if you did I’m probably the only one that would cut you some slack for being a foreigner. Black magic is as evil as it sounds: magic that either kills people or deals in death. It’s not allowed anywhere, but Kaladorians are more religious than most, so they’ll put you to death if they even suspect you’re using any. You’d be lucky if they even give you a trial first.”

“That does sound serious,” I agreed. “But… hold on just a second. Haven’t I seen you throwing fireballs around? That looked like it could kill someone pretty easily. Does that qualify as black magic? Should I be careful not to tell anyone I saw you doing that?”

Ferrith glanced back over his shoulder at me while he jogged. The look he gave me was… strange. Flat, emotionless. After a second, his lips curled up in a slight smile before he turned back to watch the trail we were following. “I like you,” he said.

I blinked. “Umm, thanks, but why?”

“It’s refreshing to meet someone that errs on the side of keeping a dangerous secret. That’s all,” he explained. “But to answer your question, no. Magic that can kill doesn’t automatically qualify as black magic. My Fireball Brand falls into a pretty broad gray area for magic. Fire is useful like that. It can be used for things like providing a light source, a heat source, or even to cook food. See? It can kill, but the more useful a Skill or Brand is at doing things other than killing, the easier it is to argue that it’s not black magic.”

“Okay, I guess that makes a certain kind of sense,” I said. “I mean, it seems a little weird to me. You’re allowed to burn someone alive, but not use magic that kills them instantly? If I had a choice I’d prefer to die faster, not slower.” Given my diagnoses, I felt like I was more qualified than most to speak on that.

“You want to know how to stay out of trouble when you get into town? Perfect example, right there. Don’t say stuff like that.”

“Like what? That I don’t want to burn to death? Is that controversial or something?”

“No, the other bit. About how little sense it makes not to ban Brands like Fireball. There are some Markethians that try to argue in favor of those kinds of restrictions and they don’t need help from foreigners like you. You’ll piss people off if they hear you talking like that. Unless you’re planning to join the church or something.”

“Fine,” I said. “I can keep my mouth shut. I just find it weird that in a world with dangerous monsters roaming around like the ones we saw yesterday, people would make the most effective magic for killing them illegal.”

“There’s a simple explanation for it,” Ferrith said. “Remember what I told you about everyone having a Skill?” I nodded. “And remember when I told you that Skills aren’t exactly random?”

“Sure,” I prompted.

“Well, the type of people who end up getting the kinds of Skills that are only good for killing tend to… not be the nicest people, if you know what I mean. If you ever meet a guy with a Skill that can instantly kill someone, chances are he won’t just be willing to use it, he’ll be eager to. It tends to give those types of magic a bad reputation, you get me?”

“Umm, yeah,” I said, thinking it over. Ferrith’s explanation was making more sense the more I thought about it. I had trouble sleeping and ended up with some kind of sleeping Skill. Ferrith liked being a lazy slug that got other people to do stuff for him and he got a Skill to summon and command ogres. Some psycho murderer was probably exactly the kind of person who would end up with a Skill that could kill people. Perhaps banning what they called “black magic” was just a matter of self-preservation. “I think I understand. And now that I’m thinking about it, the kind of person to get a Skill that can heal people would probably also be the most likely to become a priest.”

“Bingo,” Ferrith said. “And they’re also the most likely to want to heal the disenfranchised. Which is lucky for you, because I don’t have the extra money to pay to get you healed. No offense or anything, but I have my own expenses.”

“I get it,” I agreed easily. I was beginning to understand that Ferrith was keenly interested in ways of making money. It didn’t seem prudent to ask someone like that to fork up a bunch of their hard-earned pay to help you out. “No offense taken. If there’s a free option available, it doesn’t make sense to spend money on healing. I don’t care who does it for me, as long as I’m cured. I wouldn’t even hold the whole ‘summoning me into an alien world’ thing against you if I leave this world healthier than when I got here. It would make this whole trip worth it.”

Ferrith snorted. “Wait’ll you get home before you say that,” he cautioned me.

After that brief conversation, I failed to find another subject Ferrith would engage with me on. I asked him about some of the wildlife I saw but he either couldn’t spot what I was pointing to or just shrugged and gave them the same basic name I had guessed at already. There definitely weren’t any birds with horns back on Earth, but Ferrith just shrugged and called them birds. Birds, stags, squirrels, bugs. The most interesting thing I saw was a fat lizard wiggling down the road, barely able to walk. Ferrith just said it “must have gotten loose” and laughed about it, but didn’t elaborate much more than that.

The first rissian I saw besides Ferrith was a farmer pulling a cart full of potatoes. I was actually surprised that I recognized the vegetable he was hauling. His cart was led by more of those stags I’d briefly seen on our way to pursuer beast territory. They looked like a cross between a deer, a horse, and a goat: they were the size of a horse, with the thin, spindly legs of a deer, and the thick, curled horns of a goat. The farmer wore a rough-spun shirt and his skin was as dark and gray as Ferrith’s exposed face. He gave us a few nervous glances when we went by, but didn’t offer any kind of greeting. Ferrith didn’t offer one either, so we just passed each other in tense silence. I actually found it oddly comforting that being carried by an ogre was unusual behavior, even in this strange world.

The closer we got to this town Ferrith had been telling me about for days, the more people I saw just like that farmer we passed. The road widened, there were more farms. Eventually we started to pass simple houses with clay walls and thatched roofs. It was just when the sun was reaching its peak that we finally came to a set of large wooden gates. They were thrown wide, with carts passing two-abreast into the city’s twenty-foot stone walls.