Children of the Garden, Part 2 (Len's Song, 2022 edition, Snippet 15.2)

A story fragment from the Dustsong Cycle

(Read Len’s Song, 2022 edition, Snippet 15, Part 1.)

On the overmorrow, Len and Egwae traversed the final stretch of the western wastes. The sun remained well shy of its zenith when they surmounted the last dune betwixt them and the valley.

Len was afoot, leading the camel. Even with the weight of his pack on his shoulder and the flat length of stone in his hand, his step had more spring than he could rightly recall, leastways not for a good while. Nor could he remember returning to the valley with less trepidation in his gut, since the first time he’d gone a-wandering.

On this return, unlike that grand entrance with his thirteen clans, two mounds of piled stone, as tall as Len, greeted him and Egwae. They marked the start of a dirt road that wound its way through furrowed fields, down to the great river that Len’s folk sometimes called the Kaelii.

Beyond the river, across a bridge of split logs anchored by boulders, a vibrant patchwork of orchards, farms, and gardens covered the land. A spider’s web of roads crossed the land within the bow of the river; its strands snared dozens of villages, as well as the great half-built cisterns closer to the mountains. Ensconced in its nest of hills under the Fangs was the walled city of Danoh.