The God King (Heirs of the Fallen (Book 1)) by James A. West

Author:James A. West [West, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epic Fantasy
Published: 2013-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Under a dark gray sky, Kian led his company along the faded ruts of an ancient supply road running toward Ammathor. No one was saying much, except Hazad and Azuri.

“I thought the desert was supposed to be hot,” Hazad groused, fiddling with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. No one had any cold weather clothing, and wrapped as they were in every spare bit of cloth they could find, the company looked like a troupe of vagabonds. “It feels like winter.”

“It’s midsummer,” Azuri said, breath steaming.

“The frost in my beard these last two mornings doesn’t seem to care what season you think it is.”

“Just a cold spell,” Azuri assured him. “It’ll warm up again. You’ll see.”

Kian wasn’t so sure, and the tense look in Azuri’s eyes said he wasn’t sure either. The cold had settled in a few days earlier, and showed no sign of surrendering its hold. Having the sunlight blocked by dense smoke and falling ash didn’t help. The only indication that the sun still existed was the faint, muddy red disk sinking behind them.

Turning his mind from the cold, Kian tried to guess how long it would take to reach Ammathor. He quickly gave up. There was no telling, not with the way the lands had changed.

As far as the eye could see, the desert had been transformed into more of a wasteland than it had ever been before. They often had to ride around great chasms that had not been there before. In other places craters pocked the land, creating impassible areas of blasted rock and broad flats covered in something that resembled crumbly green glass. Ellonlef said the Tears of Pa’amadin had made the rough holes and the glass, a claim no one disputed.

He looked sideways and found her riding with her head bowed, as if in prayer. He couldn’t fault her for that, though he had never understood those who prayed to the Silent God of All, whose very name told that he was not given to answering.

Ellonlef looked up and gave him a secretive smile. Kian nodded, then turned back to the lifeless face of the desert. It seemed she had warmed to him. He wished she would go back to treating him like an uncouth mercenary, a man who only cared for himself, someone far beneath her station. But she won’t. She knows I saved her life, even if she doesn’t understand how.

He remembered the cramped space under the outcrop, how it had collapsed on them with an explosive roar. In the flickering light, he had seen a stone crush her face—

Kian pushed the images aside, tried to drown them with a drink from his waterskin. He almost gagged on the sour grittiness of the water they had dug from the ground at dawn. When his throat stopped convulsing, the memory of Ellonlef’s bloodied face remained in his mind’s eye.…

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