Several settlements possessed towers belonging to Mage organizations or wealthy families, recognizable by the magical formations glowing faintly around their upper levels.
Once, they passed a distant compound where dozens of young warriors trained inside an open field while armed guards watched the road.
The Kingdom's strongest institutions had concentrated themselves around its political center, and Sage was increasingly aware that building a headquarters here would be nothing like expanding through Evergreen.
The towns changed too. The spaces between them gradually shrank until Sage sometimes couldn't tell exactly where one settlement ended and another began.
Villages beside the Royal Road had grown into busy trading communities, and larger towns sprawledbeyond their original walls with new buildings constructed along every road leading toward the Capital.
