He spent much time exploring the ruins of ancient Nith which began some two miles to the northeast of Belloc's dwelling. The ruins were situated atop a hill cleft by a dry gully through which a rill, the lifeblood of the city, once flowed. The rill was a parched ravine now, as though some convulsion of the earth had bled the region dry of its lifeblood. Yet vestiges of the city's former glory remained for those with eyes that could recognise the remnants of walls and the

foundations of the once-fair buildings, and it was plain that if one had stood upon the once-high walls, they quite obviously had commanded a wide view from the foothills of the Blackcrest Mountains to the heartland of the Plains of Morag. The original name of the Blackcrest Mountains was long forgotten, but they were presently so named because the tallest of them were devoid of trees on their crowns, exposing the barren black rock underneath.

Although there was no one living who could tell Anest about the fall of ancient Morag, there were many legends which he collected in their entirety, no matter how vague or outlandish. Belloc had listened to him with great interest (and, if he had known it, great pride), as he described how he sought for genuine clues to Morag's past by examining the perpetuation of certain myths and ideas. Many of these he collected from travellers who ventured the wide lands, as well as from soldiers from Normandon and Brand who had patrolled this region for generations. And many of the great cities had libraries with documents containing various clues. Most of these were merely speculative, containing the scholarly but overly imaginative speculations of people with little knowledge and far too much time on their hands.




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