I wrote all of this, more or less.  However, it's the result of deduction from dreams.  I did dream of the rituals to which all of this builds.  And I dreamed of Zanne hiding out in Montoya Manor, and of magentine turning up all over the place where it didn't belong.  And of something being wrong with Kimba.  Only in writing this did I put the pieces together.  That and looking at my faded old globe of Novatierre, the pencil-marks by now almost vanished.  Vanikke is the first country directly south of Toulin, with only a channel between them.

            One interesting point.  I originally thought of the Woman in the Stone as Akarre.  But before posting this I realized that my unconscious mind drew that name from an Anne Rice novel, and research showed that the name was original to her.  Her Akarre was an ancient priestess of early Egypt before becoming a vampire, so I could see how my mind could home in on her for a metaphor.

            Or was that all there was to it?  Egypt didn't feel right.  I felt that my woman in the stone was far, far older than Egypt even at its earliest.  And I felt that she belonged to the cave art of France or Spain.  So I did further research.

            It surprised me how quickly Google turned up Mari, a Basque cave-dwelling goddess of weather, associated with regular witch-gatherings called Akelarre.  (Her name could have evolved from Emari, meaning "Gift" or "Amari" a prefix for a mother.  I went with the latter.)  Akelarre is only an unaccented syllable away from what came to me.  Basque country lies between France and Spain, fitting what I envisioned.  And they apparently (no one knows for sure) speak the last remnant of the most ancient tongue of Europe before the Indo-European languages arrived from the East.  Apparently for years archaeologists could find cave paintings in other parts of Spain and France, but not in Basque country; however, in the twenty-first century modern equipment has turned up tons of cave art in this region, so old that it had faded to a previously undetectable condition.  So I changed Akarre, here and in the chapter before last, and in chapters to come, to Amari.