A cool steady breeze played along his face. He knew, naturally, that the air was still — for what could move the air? — and, rather, that Land, the ground beneath his feet, was sailing ever so smoothly down the mighty River, the River that ran from horizon to horizon. At least that was what he’d been taught, and he had learned painfully that one does not question the teachings. And perhaps, he reflected, it was true that Land floated on the River, for if you dug deep enough, did you not often come upon water beneath the ground?

Afsan knew little of boats — although his pilgrimage would involve a long water journey — but he did understand that the bigger the boat, the less it rocked. Land was roughly oval in shape. According to explorers who had traveled its length and breadth, it was some 3 million paces from the harbor of Capital City to the westernmost tip of Fra’toolar province and about 1.2 million paces from the northernmost point of Chu’-toolar province to the southern tip of the Cape of Belbar in Edz’toolar. Such a great rocky raft might indeed float reasonably smoothly down the River. And, after all, the journey was not always a steady one, for the ground shook, sometimes severely, several times each kiloday.

Still, the floating was the part he always had a little mental trouble with. But he himself had seen how the porous black basalts that covered so much of Land’s surface could indeed be made to bob in a chalice of water. Besides, if there was a better explanation for the way the world really was, he couldn’t think of it — at least not yet.

His stomach growled, and, opening his wide mouth, Afsan growled back at it. He understood that a ritual hunting party was going out today, and that meant he might get to eat something other than the usual fare from the imperial stockyards. He wondered what they would bring down. Thunder-beast, he hoped, for it was his favorite, though he knew that even the largest hunting packs had trouble felling those great animals, with their massive pillar-like legs, their endless necks, their lengthy tails. Probably something less ambitious, he thought. Perhaps a shovelmouth or two. Stringy meat, but an easy kill, or so he’d heard, even if they did almost deafen you with the great bellowing calls they produced through the crests of bone on their heads.