Two hexes southeast, four south of Alakran.
The row of low hills at the extreme south of this hex are two-faced: dry, rocky, and forbidding on their northern slopes; but gently sloped and blessed with abundant shrubs and grasses on the south. The only clue that green Zigmunus, refuge-realm of women, lies beyond the ridgeline are the tops of occasional laurel bushes beyond the harsh teeth of the hilltops. Dark and lovely, they flower purple in the spring, points of hope in an elusive shadow glimpsed above the heat haze.
If the skeleton to be found in the sands, clutching an empty drinking gourd and a juniper branch -- if she could speak, and who knows, with weird magics the dead are known to give up their secrets -- she would abashedly name herself, Ningelal of the Dhuga village Yothai. Beset by fears, fleeing from scorpion women and terrified by medusa sculptures, her glimpse of the cool laurels of Zigmunus took shape in her mind as the horns and hair of some lethal beast, and she died here beset by indecision and felled by heat-stroke. Even without this tale to guide them, travelers who come across the dried remains of Ningelal would receive a minor blessing from the universe if they took her body across the ridge and laid it within sight of the blessed land.
No comments:
Post a Comment