Landfall came too soon, and not soon enough.

They knew they were lost. Erjang had arranged an extensive suicide watch, even before the rice began to grow small. Many of these people had lived through the famine that had preceded Tauga, and the gnarled hand of starvation was close enough to touch. Fresh memories of the gaunt dead were rising from a mire they hoped would die with Usgalo the tyrant.

There was hope, still, for hope is a bitter weed that roots wherever it is defied. But not of reaching the taiga. They were too far east.

Some had said there were islands here, following the earthquakes of some decades ago. They were unexplored, despite all attempts otherwise, but maybe...

Smaller hopes had sprung up between there and the Dark Carnival they had left behind. Water wasn't a problem any more. A long journey left far too much room for twiddling thumbs, and when thumbs twiddled with the Mason's Flesh, results eventually followed.

If the salt filters could be grown on anything other than flayed skin, it would be perfect. Nobody thought twice about allowing the graft-bearers a double ration.

But now there was land in sight and the suffering was about to end. Erjang looked at it with thin old eyes hung with bags. Where one suffering ended, another began.