Kem was so excited that he grinned at Elen as he crowded in next to Ipis. Simo, and then Xilsi, gave the command to walk, and the horses flicked their ears eagerly. Elen gripped the bench’s railing as the carriages rolled forward.

“Not used to traveling by carriage?” Xilsi asked without taking her eyes off her pair of horses.

“No. I’m used to my own two feet. I’ve never ridden in a Sun Chaser.”

“These are good goers. Just wait until we open up into a trot.”

All the barriers to control movement into and out of the Pall had been opened. They passed the final gate and were saluted by wardens standing atop hallow-wood sentry boxes. Then there was nothing but the road running ahead in a long, straight line, with the Pall on either side.

Kem said to Ipis, “Have you traveled across a Pall?”

“Sure, three times,” said Ipis in a boastful tone. “Twice on training runs. Haven’t you?”

“I’ve never,” he said, then added in a sharper tone, his mood shifting with mercurial swiftness, “or not that I remember, anyway.”

Elen felt his accusing gaze on her like pinpricks.

Xilsi was grinning like a fool as she urged the horses into a high-stepping trot. The carriage ran smoothly, and while it wasn’t fast like the imperial carriages, it was definitely faster than walking—unless, of course, one was a gagast. Fulmo loped along behind the second carriage, easily keeping pace.

After a while, Xilsi said, “I’ve never been out this way. What a weird Pall. Do you feel it? Can you hear it? They each have their own distinct miasma. But this is strange, even for a Pall. Blunted. Dull. No wonder they call it ‘flat.’”

They lapsed into a silence broken only by the rumbling hum of the wheels and the rhythmic clip of hooves, soothing in their constancy. The countryside covered by the Pall was a lowland plain, but it was hard to know how level the land was beneath. The mist that stretched away to either side of the elevated roadbed lay entirely still, as if stiffened and ironed flat, with not a single ripple, nothing but the occasional burst of a spark-like glimmer that as quickly vanished. Like a cry for help no one could hear, Elen thought, then wished she hadn’t because she wondered if it were true. No human or animal who walked or fell into a Pall survived, unless the haunt was correct in saying a soul—the breath of the High Heavens that animated the bodies of people and animals—might survive in some attenuated, trapped form, and wouldn’t that be the worst thing of all?

After a while, Kem whispered, “There’s no wind.”

“Shh, it’s bad luck to talk,” Ipis murmured.