25 Ashan 721
It was just sunrise, and the early Ashan air was still cold. The water was even colder. Amoach had materialized on the opposite side of the crossing, watching Oram ride Mule through the sluggish, spated creek. The cold did not trouble Oram, but he made a point of getting Mule into the sunlight and drying him off as quickly as possible. He removed the saddle, changed the damp saddle blanket out for his own wool blanket, then reattached the saddle. The hunter would lead the animal rather than riding it for the next couple breaks, waiting for the trial to warm up before mounting again.
The wooded areas near the creek gave way to open grassland as Oram headed north, the sun clearing the mountains to his right. The land breeze at his back faltered, and the air grew still and warm. By the time the traveler felt the first breaths of sea breeze blowing in his face, Mule seemed plenty warm and dry.
Atop Mule, Oram could see farther. As one went north, the terrain quickly went from level to gently rolling, and the grasses grew longer, lankier, not as lush. The traveler soon found himself in an expanse of small, thinly-grassed dunes stretching as far as one could see to the east, west, and north; there were occasional patches of scrub, but for the most part the ground was covered in sawgrass. The hunter could see bits and patches of sand beneath the grass, and that sand was often strikingly red.
This would not be great farmland, Oram judged, but sheep might graze here. So might horses, he thought, and he dismounted for a bit and let Mule loose to see what he would make of the area’s offerings. He marked the location on his map and took some samples of the sand. These did not look different from the sand one found near Almund, but its presence here was odd; the coastal sand near Scalvoris tended to be green. Mule nibbled half-heartedly at the sawgrass; he found it edible but not especially tasty, Oram guessed. After drinking some water and taking a couple bites of bread and fruit, Oram remounted and continued north, continually re-checking his True North Gem to make sure he was not drifting too far east or west.
After about another break the hunter saw his first patches of purple grass ahead. Thinking of the oddities he had seen with Hop the trial before, Oram investigated more closely. The surroundings offered no high vantage point, nor were there any talking puffins on hand to point out the “bigger picture” to him, so it was not easy to discern any large scale patterns at a glance. Still, he suspected that he was dealing with another one of those weird linear patterns, and this seemed to be borne out as he began to find other oddities such as lines of mushrooms. At length, he satisfied himself that the line he was looking at ran east-to-west.
Since Slag’s Deep was uppermost on his list of concerns, Oram headed east, to follow the line to the banks of the north-south run, the same one, he knew from his map, that ran under that bridge and past Egilrun. The line of discolored vegetation continued on the other side of the river as far as Oram could see from his side, without changing direction. Before turning around to follow the line back west, the traveler searched the banks for sand, which include patches of green as the Smooglenuff map had led him to expect. After taking a sample of this, as well as refilling his water skins, Oram remounted and headed back west, to find out if, as he increasingly suspected, the trail of odd vegetation ran all the way across to the coast.
