Chapter Seventeen
Exploration
Hunkered down on a low hill in a sea of rolling blue-green plains, Huldar shaded his eyes and gazed east toward barren tundra and the glare of a crumbling ice-shelf. On the other side of the continent, where the Uri’madu were camped, warm ocean currents had accelerated the thaw. Here in the west, the ice retreated more slowly, but every hand’s-breadth of change was just as exuberant. At his feet, new vegetation grew so quickly he could almost hear its progress with the naked ear.
After a last look, he clapped loose grains of dirt from his palms, freed his legs from a clinging vine, and stepped through the new portal to the foot of the long range of chalk cliffs Duvät Gok had placed on the list for urgent exploration.
His head tipped slowly back as he studi
