Ramus sat up eventually, sipping water and trying to sigh away the dregs of pain. Strange how it never actually hurt during the dream, only after. Almost as if he really was being ripped away for a time, and the pain came from being forced back into his own body, his own mind.

“I should tell Nomi,” he whispered. But upon voicing the idea, he instantly shoved it away. He had not told a soul, and he never would. This was his own final voyage, the greatest of them all, and he could share it with no one.

THE NEXT MORNING, Ramus spent some time studying several maps of Noreela, trying to piece together clues about the uncharted terrain south of the Pavissia Steppes. Voyagers had gone that way before, but of those who returned, few were adept at mapping their routes. Ramus had painstakingly copied any voyage maps he could lay his hands on, either at the Guild or in the library, and he kept the copies in his rooms. He had never attempted to amalgamate them before, because a mistake repeated would only be doubled. But they were all he had.

Some indicated that much of the uncharted area was forest. Another map suggested that marshland took up a large proportion of the land down there. Each possibility would offer differing problems, and Ramus hoped fervently that some of the terrain at least was plain or grassland. Some said that the land there was deceptive, shifting, as though it was a young land still trying to find its lie.

So he decided to create his own map, drawing together as much information as he could from the others, and he worked until well after midday. As he worked, he wondered yet again why it had taken so long for the Three Hearts—Long Marrakash, Cantrassa and Pengulfin Landing—to explore the rest of the world. Some said it was a leftover from the farming stock that they all descended from; simple folk who spent their lives working the land and rarely thought of moving on. Others suggested that it was a fear of the unknown set against the comfort in which much of Noreela lived. Ramus thought there was an element of truth in both, but that the real problem was a dearth of imagination.

Since the start of the Age of Expansion—with Sordon Perlenni's momentous voyage to, and naming of, Sordon Sound—things had been changing. The frontier was being pushed farther south, but with each hundred miles advanced, it seemed that settlers regressed to a more savage state. There were vicious marauders down there, and talk of wars, sacrifice and cannibalism. That in itself was enough to put off prospective travelers.