The Morgaffo nodded curtly. “That is a worthy answer. Carry on, freeman.”

Radnal had an impulse to salute him — he spoke with the same automatic assumption of authority that Tarteshan officers employed. The tour guide mounted his own donkey, waited until his charges were in ragged line behind him. He waved. “Let’s go.”

The trail down into Trench Park was hacked and blasted from rock that had been on the bottom of the sea. It was only six or eight cubits wide, and frequently switched back and forth. A motor with power to all wheels might have negotiated it, but Radnal wouldn’t have wanted to be at the tiller of one that tried.

His donkey pulled up a gladiolus and munched it. That made him think of something about which he’d forgotten to warn his group. He said, “When we get lower into the park, you’ll want to keep your animals from browsing. The soil down there has large amounts of things like selenium and tellurium along with the more usual minerals — they were concentrated there as the sea evaporated. That doesn’t bother a lot of the Bottomlands plants, but it will bother — and maybe kill — your donkeys if they eat the wrong ones.”

“How will we know which ones are which?” Eltsac zev Martois called.

He fought the urge to throw Eltsac off the trail and let him tumble down into Trench Park. The idiot tourist would probably land on his head, which by all evidence was too hard to be damaged by a fall of a mere few thousand cubits. And Radnal’s job was riding herd on idiot tourists. He answered, “Don’t let your donkey forage at all. The pack donkeys carry fodder, and there’ll be more at the lodge.”

The tour group rode on in silence for a while. Then Toglo zev Pamdal said, “This trail reminds me of the one down into the big canyon through the western desert in the Empire of Stekia, over on the Double Continent.”