of her.”
I pressed her to explain this but she would say no more, lapsing into a sullen silence.
The countryside slipped past, field after field of grains and sweet-smelling herbs, and as we progressed, strange dwellings came into sight, clustered together and reminiscent of papery wasp nests but big enough to house many Yatsill. Kata explained that these were nurseries filled with the young, who grew to maturity with astonishing rapidity.
Yatsill farmers—dressed in frocks of coarse unpatterned linen—were busy tending to the crops. They paid us no attention as we glided past.
We made three short stops, during which Mademoiselle Clattersmash disembarked to collect herbs. Spearjab informed us that she used them to manufacture poultices for the treatment of wounds, and also to brew various concoctions that, when mixed with the Dar’sayn liquid we’d seen collected from the fruits in the Forest of Indistinct Murmurings, produced specific effects during meditations.
The farms were on a slight gradient, the land rising smoothly ahead of us, so the horizon appeared to be getting closer and closer as we drew nearer to the crest of the ridge lying across our path. We could now clearly see, on the other side of it, the tops of towers and chimneys, the latter sending plumes of smoke and steam into the air.
To our right, the slope steepened into much rougher terrain, which wrinkled upward in increasingly jagged waves until it became the range of quarry-scarred mountains. Three of the four moons dotted the heavens above the peaks, faint circles in the yellow sky.
“What! What!” Colonel Spearjab declared loudly. “Home sweet home! Hurrah!”
As he made this pronouncement, a breathtaking vista opened up before us, for the slope led not to the brow of a ridge but to the edge of the continent, and to the right and left the ground dropped away, a sheer cliff at least a mile high, with a sparkling emerald sea lapping at its distant base. Into this precipice a vast semicircular bay intruded, the land inside it descending to the sea in a series of nine colossal steps, and as I looked down upon them, I saw they were swarming with Yatsill. About a third of the terraces were heavily forested and the trees were filled with houses in the Koluwaian style, but it appeared that the forest was in the process of being cleared and a city the size of London built in its place. The size of London! It was simply staggering! The creatures, with the same wondrous efficiency of termites and ants, were constructing, at an apparently preternatural pace, what had taken centuries for my species to achieve—a vast, sophisticated city. And it was expanding before my eyes!
The topmost terrace was already entirely stripped of trees and looked to be a manufacturing district, for there were many large brick buildings and foundries with tall chimneystacks belching out the sooty clouds so symptomatic of industry.
The next level, which was half-complete, contained row after row of humble abodes, similar in size and arrangement—or so I later learned from Clarissa—to the “two-ups, two-downs” seen in England’s northern cities, such as Manchester and Leeds.
Next came a terrace of spires and minarets, rising from what I took to be temples and administrative establishments, all constructed—or being constructed—from a white variety of stone much like marble.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth steps were being made into attractive residential districts, with many a square patch of greenery and long roads lined with shops.
The seventh level was partially landscaped and already resembled a dreamlike version of Regent’s Park.
The eighth terrace, Colonel Spearjab revealed, was given over to barracks for the City Guard and workshops for artisans, while the ninth, and smallest, was an almost self-contained fishing village.
The most incredible aspect of the whole city, though, was the speed at which it was supplanting the forest. Every single part of it looked brand new, and every single one of its inhabitants appeared to be involved in its construction.
“Magnificent!” the colonel bellowed. “Welcome to Yatsillat! Welcome, I say! Ha ha!” He pointed at the sea. “And behold, Phenadoor!”
A number of very wide and steeply sloping avenues cut through the terraces all the way from the top of the city to the bottom. Our Ptall’kor passed into one that was lined with trees. It was paved with colourful cobbles, which, upon closer inspection, froze the blood in my veins, for they were hard shells rather than pebbles, meaning the murder I foresaw in my Yarkeen vision would transpire here, not in London. However, I