Cari nodded and set to work skimming through the newly opened leaves of the book. There were six pages now available to her that weren’t open before. She read quickly through the first few until she came to passages where she had to read everything with a careful eye. After reading this section twice through she shook her head and looked up sadly into her master’s face.
“I’m sorry, O my master, but the book is not much help,” she said. “The first few pages just tell about the path Ali Maimun took to reach Punjar. Then he describes Punjar itself; he calls it ‘a blighted land where the power of Rimahn is great. Its people are unenlightened and selfish, and live lives of quiet deprivation. They do little farming, preferring to eat roots, bark, tubers, and insects. They scavenge fruits and nu
