Another short, arbitrarily chosen passage from "The Zedland Chronicles."

They had climbed all morning and were exhausted. The river raged and tumbled in a continuous rampage out of the mountains, frothing and spewing as if it was rabid, crazed with need to reach the sea. Out of necessity, they had trekked considerably west of it and now stood in a mountain pass overlooking a long, narrow valley that ran east-west. It was the Valley of Birds that Zule had mentioned when he returned from the Samoo People twenty years ago. The south rim that they stood atop sloped down gradually to the flat valley floor, but the north wall rose one thousand feet vertically and apparently extended east and west as far as the eye could see. Many thousands of birds made their home in the wall, and the sky above the valley floor was always crowded, a colorful tapestry in motion, causing a cacophony that was strangely comforting. Directly across the valley from where they stood, a waterfall plunged one thousand feet into a lake. It created a large, misty cloud that glittered in the sunlight, and a perpetual rainbow hung in the air above it.