"The Cilanese are a peculiar people. It is commonly held that the gipsies do not frequent that marshy land, in fact I myself have written it in this book, but if one examines beyond the understanding of the common man, a different picture emerges. The lore of a place, of a culture, has an infinitely more accurate memory than any of the folk who claim that place or culture.

"Ignoring even the obsure hints and tales that waft only in the cold humidity of Cilan itself, we can find hints of what seems to be the truth in many of the various stories that are told on any given night, in any given ale house, in any of the cities of the world. I admit, I have listened to my poor friend Fiero Dul tell many of these stories, and at the time, the were nothing more than pieces of disassociated culture, the result of the more common intercource between men that has come in the wake of the Merchants League.

"A good example is the bizarre tale 'The Fox Groom,' which I'm told is a favorite in the high pass inns of the Tubalothes, though in actuality it originated in western marches of Cilan. Though it seems unlikely that any reader is unfamiliar with this very common story, a brief summary seems in order."

An odd lack of foresight for someone like Saxo.

"In the story, the heroine sends her brave betrothed off to some distant war, from which he never returns. The distraught heroine braves many dangers and seeks out the supernatural powers of various oracles, all of whom tell her the same thing: her lover will return, but he will be a vagabond, a lost soul. The heroine returns and works hard to provide a home for her vagabond lover. Some days later, a fox comes to the home looking for food. The heroine, believing it to be her betrothed, woos him and marries him. Of course, in the end her true lover returns, indeed a vagabond as the oracles insisted, only to find his true love devoured by the fox.

"Remembering that in Cilanese (and to a lesser degree, Iskandran) lore, the fox is characterized as the epitome of the lost soul, the vagabond, makes one part of this story easier to comprehend. But even without such knowledge, we find in this tale a hint about the early days of Cilan, one that we find in other stories as well."

I will have to find this "Fox Groom" story, and the others he is discussing. I wonder what they are?