David Dalglish - Dawn of Swords

But Lyana, whose only sin had been naïveté and fright, was being forced to perform heinous acts as a form of sadistic punishment.

The world spun out of control, and Vulfram collapsed, holding his head in his hands, wailing to the empty hall that he wanted a second chance, that he deserved it. He’d been loyal over the many years of his life, loyal as he bore down the whip and scarred the flesh of his beloved. He wailed and wailed over the fact that everything that had happened was, at its core, not fair in the slightest.

They set up camp in a rock-strewn valley. Jacob was unusually silent while striking his flint, the sparks he created bringing his body in and out of focus like a phantom. Roland wanted to offer to take up the camp-making duties, as doing so might take his mind off the air’s numbing iciness, but he refrained. The First Man was frustration personified at the moment. Seven days of searching, of winding deeper into the Tinderlands and then back toward the river, and nothing had crossed their path-no stray humans, no wild beasts, not even a pack of wolves. Traversing the barren terrain was akin to hiking across an endless, dead steppe. Even during the cloudless days, when the sun shone down on the land with all the intensity it had in the south, there was an ever-present chill in the air. The small spattering of grass that covered the stony earth was brown and dead, brittle as hay, and there were wide swaths of ice that seemed to appear from out of nowhere.

Roland sighed. The trip across the Tinderlands had been a monotonous undertaking for the most part. The only excitement the group had experienced occurred on the first day, after he, Jacob, Brienna, and Azariah crossed the narrow strip of rapids opposite the defensive tower the Drake villagers were constructing. They had been greeted by a mudslide on the other side of a hill they crested. Roland had plummeted down the slope, flipping and slipping and whacking his head on dried roots and hard stones. When his descent finally came to an abrupt stop, he found himself surrounded by craggy rock faces on all sides, standing tall and dead like monuments to long-forgotten gods. He emerged covered with sticky sludge, his brain pounding in his skull, his entire body sore. When he called out to the other members of his party, he discovered them spread out along this odd desert of crude, naturally formed shrines. All but Jacob, that is. They searched the maze for hours, not discovering him until well past dusk, sprawled out on his back, moaning. Brienna had needed to slap him across the face to wake him.

Now the seventh day of searching came to a close, the sun dipping behind the mountains, allowing the blackness to swallow them whole. The mudslide and maze seemed so long ago. The monotony of each passing day bore down on him, causing his feet to twitch impatiently. He wanted to leave this place now, wanted to go home before something bad happened to them in this dead land.

Azariah warmed his long, elegant hands before the fire, his words breaking the lengthy silence.

“I think one of the villagers might have gone insane,” he said, the firelight reflecting in his eyes.

“Why would you say that?” asked Brienna.

The Warden raised his hands and gestured all around him. “Take a look. There is nothing about. This place is completely, irrevocably dead.”

Brienna muttered something incomprehensible in response.

“There is something out here,” said Jacob. Roland glanced at his master, watching him toy with his knife while he sat there with crossed legs.

“I think you are mistaken,” said Azariah.

“I think not,” Jacob snapped back. “I know there is something out here. We’re close. I can feel it.”

Azariah laughed. “You’re becoming as delusional as the villagers then, my friend. Perhaps it is you who has lost his senses. Should I be sleeping with one eye open from now on?”

“Perhaps you should.”

“Boys,” said Brienna, her tone weary. “Can we please stop this? My head aches. I need sleep.”

“Very well,” said Azariah.

Brienna turned to her lover. “Jacob, please come here. I need comfort tonight.”

Jacob jammed his knife into the ground and stood up. He sauntered around the fire, an odd look of frustration painted across his features, and slipped beneath the blankets with which Brienna had covered herself. The elf wrapped herself around him, and he around her, pulling the blankets up over their heads. Roland expected to hear the muffled giggles that usually came next, and to see the pile of blankets bulge and shift as the couple wrestled playfully, but it remained still but for the steady rise and fall of their breathing.

There would be no games tonight, it seemed. Brienna’s mood had soured along with Jacob’s. This awful place had once been her homeland, lush and alive and teeming with game. Now it was cold, desolate, and uninhabitable. All this she had told him one night while they shivered together in front of the fire, Brienna pining for the beauty of Kal’droth, her every word followed by harsh and biting profanities.

Roland took a swig from his waterskin, then uncorked the small vial of apple brandy Ephraim Wendover had given him and downed a gulp of that as well. The liquor warmed him ever so slightly, taking the most abrasive edge off the cold, but the feeling didn’t last long. To Roland, the cold was the absolute worst part of this entire, ill-fated journey. He thought he’d had it rough on the way to Drake, but the town had seemed downright balmy compared to where he was now. In the Tinderlands, he found, the cold was a living thing, a demon that circled him at all times, crystallizing the moisture in the air, filling his lungs with its frigid evil, making every breath laborious. No matter how many layers he piled atop himself-and Turock Escheton had been more than generous in supplying them with the necessities for their journey-his body was locked in a near-constant shiver. Even pushing himself physically didn’t seem to help, as exertion only made him sweat, and that sweat soon cooled, occasionally freezing on his flesh and making him colder than ever. He thought to ask Azariah for a swig from the large wooden carafe he carried with him, but the Warden was fast asleep, bundled to the neck, and snoring heavily.

Roland was all alone-the last conscious being in a land of the dead.

He lay awake for a long time, coverlets stacked atop him. Halfway through the night, as always, the cold invaded even those. The combination of the chill and the uncomfortable hardness of the uneven ground beneath him told him to give up on sleep. He sat up, poked a twig into the bed of glimmering coals, and tossed another couple of dried-out logs onto them. They caught fire almost immediately, crackling as the flames grew higher. If there was one good thing about the Tinderlands, it was the fact that there was plenty of undisturbed and well-seasoned firewood about.

He sat there for some time, poking at the fire, adding more sticks while his mind drifted to home. He was thinking of Mary Ulmer and the way her perky little breasts heaved whenever she scrubbed the family laundry in a thin, sheer blouse two sizes too small for her, when a strange sound echoed through the valley. The stirring in his abdomen retreated. For days he had heard nothing but the hiss and pop of the fire come evening, along with Azariah’s snores, but this was different-this was foreign. He froze in place, afraid to move, when he heard it again. It was an odd sound, like waves crashing against living rocks, making them all sigh at once.

The third time it happened, a very human-sounding scream followed, and Roland tore off his blankets and shot to his feet. He frantically lit the end of a dried stick and thrust it all about, searching for whatever beast was stalking them. The sound came a fourth time, and he retreated a step, tripping over the lump of Jacob and Brienna in the process. He careened backward, the dark vertigo playing tricks on him, and smacked his elbow when he landed.