The Gorsewold

Between the market bridges of Stonebridge, the harbor walls of Three Rivers and the sandy shore of Coral Bay lies a wide stretch of open heath that no one bothered to name until now. This is the Gorsewold: low, dry scrub in tan and olive, dark patches of thorny brush that keep their own counsel, and a few grey outcrops of rock standing up out of the heather like the knuckles of something buried. A river runs along one edge and another along the next, pale sand marks the shore on the far side, and at the southern tip the long Longarch Bridge carries the road out over the water.

Roads cross it every which way. Carts out of Stonebridge head for Three Rivers, caravans cut south toward the bridge and the grasslands beyond, and a handful of rutted tracks wander down to the shore for no reason a traveller can name. Where the roads meet, the heath is trampled flat and the bushes wear a skin of dust, but a short step off them it is all gorse and thorn and wind. Mule drovers pitch camp in the lee of the rocks, shore hunters cross it with their catch, and anyone with a reason not to be seen on the main road finds that the brush patches are very good at not asking questions.

No town stands on the Gorsewold. The towns around it consider this a waste of good land, and say so at every opportunity, usually while sending their carts straight across it.