Istora's lifeline. The Sova Chyda rises from springs in the Suftos Hills, runs through the Winterwood, and passes the capital at Tuur before it reaches the Void. The Istori have built everything they have along it: drinking water, the irrigation their thin farmland depends on, and the barges that carry Winterwood timber down to the coast for export. Its water runs clear, and Istora takes that for a verdict. Murder Creek, the western kingdom's river, runs dark with the residue of old killing; the Sova Chyda does not, and the Istori read the difference as proof that the dead side with the rightful heir.
On the river's middle bank stands the Shrine of Reflections, where elves come to study the clear water, and where the priests have lately begun to see worse things in it than their own faces.