looked at me wonderingly, as if detecting my falsehood, but did not
follow his look with any probing questions, to my great relief. In order
to steer the conversation away from this point, I added quickly, "I am
not at all disappointed, either, for the landscape is beautiful and the
trees and foliage are wondrously large, but I was surprised to find
that, from the prairie to the lake, I saw no one living among these
quaint locations."

Wagner looked at me closely, with a hint of almost reverencing respect
and said, "You were very fortunate in your travels, I assure you, for
had you arrived at any other time, you would have fallen into fouler
hands than ours by far."

"I do not understand what you mean," I said.

"Of course not, I am forgetting your new arrival has left you
unacquainted with affairs that I am faced with everyday. Let me explain:
we, that is, the Canitaurs, have been in open hostilities with the other
group of people on this island, the Zards, for as long as we can
remember. They have great military superiority in this section of Daem,
and when we come here we are forced to live in hiding, in outposts such
as this one."

"Why not just make peace?" I asked.

"Because it is our ideologies that conflict, neither group of us will
yield, and the solution can only be decided by force, military force. It
is fortunate that you have come among us first, for they would have
mistreated you."