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Seven days they had ridden within the mists, which crept and folded upon them like some living thing intent upon causing bewilderment. The sun showed itself but faintly by day, and by night the drums returned, though low and distant.

When darkness fell, Elden lay wakeful near Gedain, his sightless gaze fixed upon the featureless dark, fearing what lurked just beyond in the shadow. Gedain slept deeply, whether from exhaustion or resignation, none could say...

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Avarlon, now quickened with child, made her way through the garden toward the temple to attend the observance of the solstice moon. The morning was bright, and Sol warmed the stones beneath her sandals. The air lay thick with the scent of summer’s full bloom. She stopped at the fountain to breathe it in and to admire the flourishing of color.

Yet as she stood, another scent crept beneath the fragrant air, sharp and acrid, perhaps carried from the tannery or th...

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Gedain and five riders pressed on in haste for the High Gate, climbing the old mountain wagon trail as it coiled upwards into the foothills of the Norzcarpe. On the third morn, the sky dimmed beneath a veil of gray haze, and ere midday a wet spring snow began to fall, heavy and clinging. Still, they urged their mounts onward, upward, the path softening to mire beneath their steed’s iron shoes. The horses labored, sides heaving, nostrils flaring with mist.

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The host of Gruen plodded southward in a long, mournful procession that stretched near a mile on the old Fywater road. To their left brooded the murky forest, her shadows alive with bird calls and the faint rustling of creatures meek and monstrous. To their right flowed the Fywater, no longer wide and shallow, coursing gently in the open sward of Briganta, but a stony, swirling torrent, an ever-narrowing fermentation tumbling from the highlands. Veiled b...

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Two summers passed while Cleon had tarried far from Gruen, and in those seasons did Fia bear and nurse her second son whom she named Cerenid. The babe was slight of form and gentle in spirit, and nursemaids oft did urge him to suckle, worried that his vitality had failed him as his ribs shone like pale ridges. Yet the long nights of his weakness did at last depart, and he endured the winter’s stern trial.

In that third autumn, when the leaves seared to gold a...

The Norzcarpe forms a mighty wall of jagged granite spires mantled in grinding ice of furlongs[i] depth. A near impenetrable barrier since the purgation of mankind, it had thwarted southern invasion for millennia. But o’er the span of a thousand years, the ice at last withdrew, receding into the high mountain valleys, surrendering the broad northern plain to leaf and beast. And just as the tide of sea returneth, so too returned the tribes of men, guided northward by silent mo...

524 When at last they had pulled the raptor down into the mire, the wild men sprung upon it with their axe and hammer, battering its limbs and flesh into the soil as if they were hacking away at a stubborn stump. The beast writhed and shrieked in agony by their blows until it finally succumbed and resisted no more.

At the sight of its fall, the Neandilim assault wilted. The false men who had pressed into the breach slowed, then faltered and turned, and the stream of gold reversed fl...

Gedain returned, and the men lined the way with hopeful, silent faces as he emerged from the fog at the threshold of the camp. They followed behind him as he rode into the heart of it, where Cerenid stood in counsel with Madrot and the captains.

The rex turned as he neared.

“Thou hast returned,” Cerenid remarked. “Where hast thou been?”

“I have ranged the path that lieth before us,” he answered.

Then he reached behind and raised high the severed head of the Neandilim warrior. A murmur sprea...

534 Gedain found himself standing upon a high precipice of vulcan glass, with spires sharp as broken blades, rising heavenward in every direction as far as the eye could see. The heavens beyond and above painted in molten gold. A low Sol hung near the horizon, unmoving, rippling in the heated air. Sweat gathered upon his brow and ran in slow drops down his neck. The air smelled of burning sulfur and backing stones.

Far below yawned a deep ravine, and hemmed within, a vast army, arra...

The fifth dawn broke, and the ashen veil that had hung for days over the host Had thinned. The light of Sol fell pale upon the weary column, and though the men were road-worn, thirst-bitten, and sore of limb, many took the clearing sky for an omen of favor.

Madrot delegated the rearguard to the charge of his captain, and without ceremony rode off the road into the woods. Word of his departure wove through the ranks with many naming him a deserter.

533 North by west he went, beneath t...