“No, I'm not. But the Divide makes you appreciate the potential in things. And this whole world is thrumming with potential.”

Nomi chuckled and took a sip of her cydrax.

“How long did you stay there?” Ramus asked.

“Three moons, camped in its shadow. At dawn I'd see a moment of sun, and then only dusk. After a while, I started thinking about finding where it ended.”

“I've always heard that there is no end,” Ramus said. “That it goes on, out beyond Noreela's shores.”

“Maybe,” Ten said. “But the closer I came to the eastern shore, the more treacherous the landscape became. Plain turned to marsh, and then bog. The bogs were venting poisonous gases, and there were creatures in there . . . huge. I never saw them, but I heard them, and I felt the ground shiver as they rose and rolled. So I worked northward, leaving the Divide's shadow at last. And by the time I reached the shore, I could no longer see the Divide. The bogs steamed, the clouds closed in and wherever that cliff struck the coast was out of view.

“I would have stayed there, but the bog gas would have killed me eventually. And if not the gas, those things that lived there.” He opened the third bottle of cydrax. The alcohol seemed to be having little effect. “I could hear them rising from the bog and dragging themselves toward me. Perhaps they were close. Or perhaps they were a long way off, and larger than I imagined. I didn't stay to find out.”

“Voyagers have tried sailing past the Divide,” Nomi said.

“Piss,” Ramus said. “They've set out with that intention, but no one knows if they succeeded, because they've not been seen again.”

Ten nodded, a satisfied smile on his face.

“Maybe they're still sailing,” Ramus speculated.

“Or maybe,” the wanderer said, “they're in the stomachs of the bog beasts, or at the bottom of the sea, or washed up rotting against the shore. Noreela is a hungry land.”

“You have a way of making it such an attractive place,” Ramus said, but his interest was piqued. “Go on. What happened next?”

“I went west,” Ten said. “I traveled again in the shadow of the Divide, heading for the Western Shores. I hoped that there I would find what the east had hidden, but I was wrong.”

“What was there?” Nomi asked.

“A jungle. I started in, but the trees soon grew so close together that I could barely pass by. And there were creatures there too. Spiders as big as my hand; snakes as thick as my thigh; ants; worms with teeth; flies that sucked my blood and left poison in its place. And other things, not animals. Not human. A bad place. I only touched its outer extremes, but I knew it went on for days.”

“So you went north?” Ramus asked. “Tried to skirt the forest but keep the Divide in view? Only the forest grew north as well, and by the time you reached the Western Shores, the Divide was too far away to see?”