“Pelis Manor decided to get involved in the hallow-wood trade. They got imperial permission to open a branch Manor in the eastern half of Woodfall. Pelis Manor North is where we’ll halt for the night. If we get there by nightfall!”

After about a league, the landscape began to rumple into gently rolling hills. The young plantations were overtaken by mature forest, thick with black birch, sandy oak, and the occasional white pine. Ground cover flourished: purple thistle, cone-shrub, and the last yellow blossoms of sunspark. As they passed through a wide meadow, the drowsy fragrance of blue sap-bloom struck Elen like a blow. She hadn’t smelled sap-bloom since they’d escaped Duenn Manor. Aoving had woven wreaths of sap-bloom to decorate her hair whenever she was called to the lord’s chamber for the night. Lord Duenn had thought it was decorative and pretty, but Aoving used the blooms to make him fall asleep faster. It was the kind of hedge healer’s knowledge that the wealthy and elegant Manors knew nothing of and thus could not protect themselves against. By such small ways people made life just a tiny bit more endurable, day by day.

Amid fields, a small village appeared, sitting behind a shallow ditch half full of a muddy sludge that barely passed as water.

“Someone is getting sloppy,” said Xilsi. “Elen, can you note this down in your transmission log? It needs to be recorded for Map Hall.”

“I only have authority to record possible infractions in Orledder Intendancy.”

“I don’t care about that. Make the report through your intendant. It looks to me like people are getting lazy. Maybe there’s been no Spore in recent years, and they think the threat has vanished.”

“Maybe Flat Pall is dying,” Elen said, “and doesn’t have any Spore left to cast into the winds.”

“Huh.” Xilsi cast her a measuring look. “That’s an interesting thought. Go on.”

Without mentioning her conversation with the haunt, Elen explained about the surveyor she’d spoken to, the appearance of the Desolation where a Pall had disappeared, and Berri’s idea that if Flat Pall was dying then it, too, might simply drain away, leaving empty land behind it, devoid of life, with possibly altered contours, but potentially re-habitable territory.

“An intriguing notion,” said Xilsi. “You should train as a surveyor. I’ll mention it to Simo, and he can mention it to the exalted highness. Not that Prince Gevulin has any influence over the surveyors, mind you. The Inspector General of the Imperial Order of Surveyors is an old coot, the last surviving sibling of the Hibiscus Emperor, if you can believe it.”

“How can that be possible?” Kem asked. “Joef made me memorize all the reign years of the eighteen emperors. The Hibiscus Emperor ascended the Lotus Throne eighty-six years ago.”