Chapter 17 - The Southeast

exactly a week into the journey [from Adrilankha to Dzur Mountain] the jungle around them ... in the days that followed, they continued along trails and paths that had been cut through the jungle ... looking at the [desolated villages along the large waterways] until, at last, with a surprising abruptness, the jungle turned into grassland; long, seemingly endless, and with no explanation of why it should make such a drastic change with so little warning ... after they had been on the road nearly two weeks [they meet Orlaan who] put several thousands of miles of distance between [her] and the sea of amorphia [Lesser Sea of Chaos?]

[from Adrilankha to Dzur Mountain] in a day or two the terrain assumed a character of grasslands occasionally dotted with woods ... after several days, the woods became denser and more frequent, until soon they were traveling through what could only be described as deep forest ...they were able to see Dzur Mountain standing up against the northern sky.

Piro rode northeast from Adrilankha with, it must be said, no very clear sense of where he was going ... He continued, therefore, riding east, until ... he realized that he was very close to killing his horse, whereupon he drew rein. He was, by this time, well outside of the city, in a small forested dell between two low hills, and entirely out of sight of anyone, and it was by now fully dark. He dismounted and led his horse a short distance until he encountered a brook ... After some time, Piro at last rose ... and led her onward, at last reaching a small cabaret, set back from the road and nearly invisible [he spends the night] "Come, let us travel. Let us go back east. I will enlist in Morrolan's army..." ... at last they were both packed and ready to travel, albeit slowly, and they began the journey at a leisurely pace toward the county of Southmoor and Castle Black. That night, they stayed in an inn ... They mounted once more and continued on the same road they had traveled more than a year before, on the way to Dzur Mountain ... [Ibronka arrives] They mounted their horses again, and ... rode ... in companionable silence. By the end of the day, they were close to the western border of Southmoor ... "this is the Nacine road, and here is where it crosses the Shallowway Pike. Therefore, we should turn eastward here." [everyone arrives, the last being a merchant] "here, on this fine avenue that runs between Roughground and Nacine" ... "I know an inn [the Deepwell Inn in Mistyvale County] stands in the middle of eight counties that have reverted to the Empire, with nothing more than a scattered barony among them ... A few hours' ride at a steady clip will see us at the door."

Pel ... left Dzur Mountain, after which he made his way to a near-by posting house, some twenty or thirty miles away

we left [Pel] in a small village on the southern slopes of Dzur Mountain

[From Castle Black] I risked a look down. There were trees below me that looked like miniature bushes, and the two roads and one stream were lines of brown and blue respectively, meeting and crossing and running almost parallel to form a design that, if I tried, I could convince myself was a mark in some runic alphabet. Maybe it was a symbol that told the castle, "Don't fall down." That was a comforting thought.

I left Dzur Mountain on the third day of the month of the Phoenix in the 230th year, all right? I had to walk a long way, and there was still snow on the ground; deep snow at the top. It was cold. ... I climbed down off rocks ... Eventually I made it down [Dzur] Mountain and found the cottage of a Teckla family ... I got some sleep ... Do I really need to give you every day? It isn't like anything happened. All right, all right. Your rules were: no teleporting, no magic, no Imperial conveyances until I reached Adrilankha, so I got a ride on an oxcart from another peasant ... he [let] me stay in his cottage that night ... the next day I walked as far as the inn in Yalata, and slept in a real bed. My next ride was on a wagon drawn by a pair of oxen ... He brought me all the way to [Adrilankha]

In all the march occupied some fourteen days at the end of which time the Empress stood, unopposed, at the head of her army ... on the very road from which Piro had set out more than a year before. The Empress, then, in an elegant coach (requisitioned the day before in the village of Cambry ... came to halt before what could be considered the gates of Adrilankha, had Adrilankha any gates to stop before. It was, to be sure, at the political boundary of the city of Adrilankha and the county of Whitecrest.)

On a spring day in the 229th year of the Interregnum, [Orlaan] could be seen to be picking flowers in a meadow near the banks of the river that the Easterners call the Naplemente ... but it is more often known as the Adrilankha Rive, for the simple reason that it passes through this city before finding its way to the ocean. The meadow ... was nearly three hundred miles north of this city, and there were no cities nearby, though, to be sure, there were no small number of inns and tiny villages, as more than a few roads ran in diverse directions through the region ... [Orlaan] traced a line from Dragaera City ... to Dzur Mountain [and began her search from the edge of the Lesser Sea and her search brought her here]