"Though there are many other examples, the two cited, and indeed the folkloric tradition in general, will suffice to suggest that, though common tradition suggests that gipsies never entered the Cilanese swamps (except for their coming of age journey, as I have mentioned), the Cilanese Narti did indeed encounter gipsies in their journeys south, and that in fact, their cultures seem to have assimilated each other.

"This is certainly apparent in the significant cultural differences between the Iskandrans and the Cilanese, as well as the long-lived tension between them, but it also seems clear in an examination of the Cilanese culture itself. They have become a supernatural people, keeping themselves continually under th influence of strange and subtles magicks. Entirely different from the external, elemental- and force-driven powers granted by the gods or painstakingly wrestled by the wizards, this swamp magic seems instead to be like smoke, clinging to them and permeating their lives.

"Of course, they are not all such witches or practitioners. In fact, of late, the Cilanese have begun to exert a presence in the mercantile drama opened by the League, but there is still a faint air of it about them, and deep behind the diplomatic face they have erected, there are still demon summoners and black magicians. It is a heritage they will not easily escape, if indeed escape is their purpose.

"I will not now speak of the demons, though they are perhaps the most salient feature of Cilan. They deserve a treatment of their own, and shall receive it in due time. Suffice it to say, the Cilanese, now a hybid of Narti and gipsy blood, sought the power that was to be had from their ancestors, and from the spirits of the world around them, and more importantly, from the ancenstors of the spirts around them."

Merkado is wise to give separate treatment to the demons. He himself surely knew that their influence and taint spread far beyond those wicked fools who ripped them from stagnation and cast them into the world again. It is a thing that is alien to me, though I suppose it is in the end a manifestion of the addiction of mortality and stagnation that threatens to shackle all men.