Down barren ravines and chasms the numberless torrents flowed, lapped along their courses by goat and bear, lizard and panther. Hence onward the waters wound their way, through broader ponds and streams where sheep sucked, and steel-eyed hillmen reined their horses to drink, through silver-blue forests and braided, gleaming cataracts. Where the tributaries joined to form the mighty Ilbars, the land stretched level in fertile valley and steppe. Here the river rolled slowly and deliberately, finding the leisure and the unopposable will to meander through lush meadowlands. Along its broad, smooth artery coursed the lifeblood of an empire: trade, plunder, and migration, flowing past thriving cities from walled Samara through caravan-rich Akif, to Aghrapur itself, the pulsing, glittering heart of Turan. The river swarmed with many types of craft: fishing-boats, coracles, reed rafts, and oared galleys, even tall-masted galleons ghosting upstream under shallow sail from the weedy mains of the Vilayet.
