CHAPTER 2
“Is it a river, or the world’s longest lake?”
With a sense of wonder, Penrys studied the view before her. She sat her horse with her two companions, each of them holding the lead rope of a pack string of five animals.
Below the bluff, worn by the river, the flooded Junkawa flowed east. The roiled waters of the Mother of Rivers dominated the landscape. On the far bank, to the north, an isolated ridge stretched away into the blue distance. Its near end point, cut through by the river and erased from the memory of the land after that, was covered by the works of man—Yenit Ping, the Endless City.
She knew there were ways to travel the crumbling ridge down to Mentsek Tep, the lower town at its foot, diked and embanked against high water, but at this distance she could make out onl
