Travel has been a huge part of my life since I was a young boy. I drove $200 beater cars so I wouldn’t waste money that could better be spent on plane tickets and learned to love youth hostels and the sounds of other people snoring because it meant I could go on longer trips. My wife and I are a lot better off financially now, of course, so for the last ten years we’ve been able to travel as often as our schedules allowed. But of course, Covid came along and we’ve all been largely stationary for the past twenty months.
With the minor miracle of effective vaccines and the greater miracle of health officers making tough decisions, travel is starting to open up again. It’s not easy, of course, and there’s never an absolute guarantee of safety, but both the risks and the inconveniences of following COVID protocols are manageable for us now. So, we’re off to France, specifically, Dordogne.
Les vieux maîtres de sort aiment raconter que la magie a un goût. Les sorts de braise ressemblent à une épice qui vous brûle le bout de la langue. La magie du souf e est subtile, presque rafraîchissante, un peu comme si vous teniez une feuille de menthe entre vos lèvres. Le sable, la soie, le sang, le fer… cha- cune de ces magies a son parfum. Un véritable adepte, autre- ment dit un mage capable de jeter un sort même à l’extérieur d’une oasis, les connaît tous.
'I totally saw this coming,’ Reichis growled, leaping onto my shoulder as lightning scorched the sand barely ten feet from us. The squirrel cat’s claws pierced my sweat-soaked shirt and dug into my skin.
The way of the Argosi is the way of water. Water never seeks to block another’s path, nor does it permit impediments to its own. It moves freely, slipping past those who would capture it, taking nothing that belongs to others. To forget this is to stray from the path, for despite the rumours one sometimes hears, an Argosi never, ever steals.