Chapters (51)
- Dedication
- Contents
- PREVIOUSLY …
- PART I
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- PART II
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- PART III
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- PART IV
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- About the Author
- ALSO BY DAVID WRAGG
- About the Publisher
‘It’s been a time,’ Rennic said, his voice almost gentle. The two of them were struggling to rekindle the heat of their previous disputes. ‘They might not even know—’
‘They always know,’ she spat. ‘If we travel, we push through and out, go to the plains.’
‘Make for a vast expanse of baked nothing? For what? Princeling can call in treaties. We’ll fight them, push them back into their own southern chaos. Pressure in the north.’
‘If we stay there, that place will be our tomb, one way or another.’
Rennic offered her a flash of a grin. ‘Beats dying alone down here, right?’
She didn’t match it. ‘Time will tell. I will do this for you, Gar, but I fear this will be the end of us.’
Chel looked from one to the other. ‘Where are we going?’
Loveless looked up from the fire, flames dancing in her eyes. She looked more grieved than he’d ever seen her.
‘Arowan.’
PART III
TWENTY-THREE
The fortress was the mountain, the mountain the fortress. Only with the greatest effort could Chel spot where one ended and the other began. The construction squatted in the pass, filling it, choking it like a boulder, the monstrous gatehouse at its centre a consuming maw. Humanity thronged before it, a torrent of people funnelled by the pass into its jaws, shuffling slow and fearful. From the tiered ramparts above, rank after rank of impassive archers gazed down, armour glittering in the fierce sun.
‘I thought this place was supposed to sit on a gorge. Where’s the gorge?’ Chel squinted against the glare, peering beyond those ahead at the rugged structure rising over them.
‘Arowan sits on the gorge, my friend. This is Korowan. Gateway to the great beyond.’
Lemon leaned across. ‘They call it the Stop.’
‘In what sense?’
‘At a guess, all of them.’
Chel looked over the banked walls, the rising crenellated tiers. The colour of the stone varied, the style and ornamentation, even down to the decorative carvings. ‘Bit of a mixture, isn’t it? Who built it?’
Foss sniffed and rubbed at his nose. Pale road dust clogged the air, drifting in clouds from the thumping passage of the crowd. ‘The Sericans. Word is, any time it was breached, they’d rebuild it bigger, plug whatever the weakness was, and then some.’
‘How old is it?’
‘The oldest bit? Hundreds of years.’
‘And the newest? When was it last breached?’ Chel squinted up. Suddenly the massive structure seemed all the more imposing. Long, silken pennants snapped from a dozen mounts along its upper tiers.
‘Not in our lifetime, friend. Generations.’
‘Arowan itself? Did it ever fall?’