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Windhammer, Copyright Wayne Densley 2008 All Rights Reserved
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580
 Your decision made, you turn Pallenten to the right-hand trail and urge her forward. Quickly the path descends into a wide depression, its interior a tangle of thick vegetation punctuated by large stands of sickly trees and bogs edged by the dome-bushes that prove an impenetrable barrier to movement anywhere other than the narrow pathway. Sure that this path will lead you to the larger Western Trail, and an easier way back to the open plains, you follow it carefully. At all sides the vegetation crowds the trail, a solid wall of grasping branch and hanging vine; and in this wet, crowded place the wind cuts through everything, sending loose leaves and rotting twigs scattering across your path.
Within this dank and unwelcoming basin you follow the trail until it opens out into a wide, cleared area of ground. Here you bring Pallenten to a halt and dismount onto the sodden earth. Your hope that this trail might lead to an easier path ends when you survey the ground about you. Here you have found a dead-end instead, a wide clearing from which there are no exits, only thick walls of green and thickets of tangled thorn bushes. If you are to find your way out it will have to be along another path.
You have not wasted your time completely though. At the lower edge of the clearing stands a dilapidated cabin, ruined by long years of neglect, but showing some signs of having been recently inhabited. Piles of cut wood line one wall, and the ground surrounding the ill-kept front door is churned by many horse and boot prints. If nothing else there is the chance that if someone resides here you may be able to gain valuable information on what lies between the marshes and the Krodestaag mountains in the west. Cautiously you approach the front of the cabin and call out to anyone inside.
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This book, and its associated books and other documents in the Chronicles of Arborell series are the intellectual property of the author, Wayne F Densley, and all rights are reserved by him. Windhammer is best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution. Any questions regarding the Chronicles of Arborell can be answered by emailing the author at densleyw@shoal.net.au
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Windhammer, Copyright Wayne Densley 2008 All Rights Reserved
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