He was learning more simply by being north of the Abus, in this place which had seemed so nightmarish from the other side of that dark stretch of water. The southern bank was tilled and manipulated: neat furrows creating levels on which crops could be raised and some measure of order imposed. Here, in the Black Kingdom, the land was so twisted by the roots of giant trees that there could be no hope of tilling it, or perched so steep on the sides of mountains that it was a wonder that earth clung there at all. And yet the Anakim clearly had no difficulty existing here. The forests the
...more
