“It was local folklore, really. The shamans know about those roses.” “Do they? What do they know?” “They come from—the roses, I mean—from the heart of the desert of Karamakan. So the story goes. They won’t grow anywhere else. If you put a drop of the oil in your eye, you’ll see visions, but you have to be determined, because it stings like hell. So I’m told.”
The thing about that desert is that you can’t enter it without separating from your dæmon. It’s one of those odd places—there’s another in Siberia, I believe, and I think in the Atlas Mountains as well—where dæmons find it too uncomfortable, or too painful, to go. So the roses come at a considerable cost, you see. A personal cost as well as a financial one.”
