"Normal travel feels unbearably slow sometimes," he says with another wry grin. Another adjustment he had to make when he first arrived here, just like Istredd. Kyle did travel by train though, once - and he had liked to see the countryside for once, as opposed to the shadowy blurs of the Gray Space.

Maybe there is something beyond the shores of Basawar. Maybe the scholars are wrong, and the land they know is only Parfir's foot, or his backside. He privately amuses himself with these more humorous sacrilegious thoughts.

He begins putting his little kit away, raising his head when Istredd speaks up again.

"Nothing more specific?" A strange, dark forest could be anywhere, really - depending on how strange. He had seen strange things in the forests at the south of Thorne's border, but there's always as far as Nocwich.