Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 300
explain what Queen Galas has done?
"The first people spread across the world from one
original tribe. They had great powers, and they wanted Ventus
as their own. They fought the Winds, because the Winds were
still sculpting Ventus, and would not let the people build cities
or cultivate the land. Men defied them, but the Winds beat
them down, until at last there were only scattered communities,
who learned to get along with the Winds by obeying their laws.
We learned to stay out of the Winds’ way, and appease them
when we went too far. Your general Armiger went too far-they
took notice of him, and swatted him like an insect.
There’s a lesson in that.
"In the early days after our defeat, some folk wandered
to the edge of the desert. There they found the desals hard at
work, flooding the sands to strain salt from ocean water that
poured in from the Titans’ Gates--those are the Wind-built
dams at the seaside. They pumped the newly freshened water
deep into the earth. We know now that it comes up again
through springs all across the continent. Back then, it was just
another miraculous and incomprehensible activity of the rulers
of the world. Our people huddled on the edge of it, watching
the floods in awe.
"Iasin the first, ancestor of all the kings of Iapysia, was
the man who realized that the desals were utterly indifferent to
the plants and animals that struggled within the flood plains.
The ocean water brought nutrients from the sea, the desert
sands strained the salt, and fresh water poured up and out
through a thousand channels into rivers that flow into your
lands, or that vanish into bottomless lakes. A thousand kinds
of life thrived during the flooding, and when the Titans’ Gates
closed to draw strength for another great gasp, they withered
and died. Iasin led his people into the heart of the inundated