Where could everyone be? Was it possible that her uncle did not know she was coming? That he did not want to see her? Or worse—that he was already dead?

Kyra drew her staff and knocked on the golden doors, at first quietly, then with more and more force.

No one answered.

She suspected no one would. After all, would he not have seen her approaching?

Kyra, feeling confused, defeated, did not know what else to do. Night was falling, and she could not return to Volis. Not after all she’d been through.

Kyra turned, put her back against the golden doors, and slowly slid down, until she sat on the ground. Leo came and lay down beside her, resting his head in her lap, while Andor stood close by, grazing.

She sat there, looking at the last rays of the dying sun as darkness fell all around her, and she wondered. Had her quest been for nothing?

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Duncan walked beside Seavig, Anvin and Arthfael, hundreds of their following close behind, as they all entered the city of Kos. Duncan could hardly believe this place, this vast plateau on top of the world, at least a mile wide, nestled amidst snow-capped peaks. It was a perfect home for the people of Kos, a people strong and silent, separatist and unflappable, a people who lived not in fear of the elements around them. They approached massive arched gates, a hundred feet high, soaring into the clouds and carved of ice—ice, Duncan realized, that never melted. Duncan examined them in awe as they passed through them.

They walked over a bridge of ice, and Duncan looked down and saw the chasm it spanned, twenty feet wide, the fall that would kill any man. He looked ahead and saw the bridge was leading them right into the city of Kos.

They entered the city and as they did, the people of Kos emerged to watch them, hundreds of men, women and children appearing out of the wind-whipped snow, staring back expressionless, women standing over children, all watching wordlessly. They were a people who was hard to read: Duncan could not tell if they were ready to embrace them or kill them. Perhaps both.

Fires somehow managed to burn in structures carved into the ice, curved to shelter them from the wind, and the air here was filled with the welcome smell of roasting meat. Duncan looked ahead and as a gust of wind drove away the clouds, he noticed a singular structure built from the ice, around which the entire city revolved: a temple. Shaped in a triangle, ending in a point, carved of ice, it rose a hundred feet, etched in an elaborate design, its facade carved with the faces of bearded warriors. The huge structure had a small opening, an arch just tall enough for people to walk through. A door into a world of ice.