Ah, three hours past sunset, and we've just finished a truly filthy exercise in degradation: the Talos Hunt. My, my, traveling with Errol must be wearing off on me. I feel as though I could channel his spirit or even throw his voice! I think the only reason I didn't hear him complain more often today about the dirt and muck was his great anticipation of what his chef would do with the meat we killed! I wonder what tiger tastes like...

We won the Hunt, of course. We are now kings among rabble, and we are qualified for what may quite possibly turn out to be the quintessential exercise in filth somewhere to the north in a shanty town aptly named Ashanto. Let us pray to the gods it does not involve wading up to our waists in pond scum.

My mood is sour, I admit it. I am feeling poor. My share of the glorious Hunt's prize: fifty pieces of gold, which I refused so as to cut my debt to the party in half! I am a debtor! A prodigy of the Art, and I must actually borrow coin to scribe scrolls into my own book! During the last of what seemed uncountable treks back and forth through the wilderness surrounding Talos, I had to restrain myself not once, not twice, but three times from slipping my crossbow from its sheath and impaling a pathetic jaybird yammering away just off the trail.

Speaking of impaling a Jay -- Ha! now I sound like Vaugner! -- we met up with the haughty wench some days ago. She hasn't changed much in the last four months, except that somehow, amazingly, she has managed to adopt an even more condescending tone than the one she had at school! You'd think she were heir to the Throne of Kronos and not to the Mayor of Talos-on-Hickwater. I saw her father at the so-called feast before the dreadful Hunt. The old man doesn't look like one to be passing the keys to the kingdom down to a girl anytime soon. Jay had better start dabbling in the draughts and banes if she's going to have any chance for a taste of power while she can still enjoy it. As pretty as she is, she isn't getting any prettier or any younger, now is she?

And annoying though she is, there's something of a spark in that one. She has talent, and ambition, and a healthy bit of resentment brooding under her fair brow, if I'm not off my mark. She knows she's missing out of life, sequestered away with her councils and advisers and whatnot. Still, I find I can barely be bothered to show any interest in her. She could be the high-born sister of Alana. Pretty to look at, but in the end, just as useless. Does she advance my knowledge of the Art? Does she have any power I can control? Hmmm... not yet, perhaps. But I suppose with Jay there is that bit of potential. Might not be the worst of situations to find some way to have the upper hand on a princess, a very minor, insignificant princess, but a princess nonetheless. You never know where such things might lead.