D&D - Forgotten Realms - Avatar Series 05 by Crucible-Trial of Cyric the Mad # Troy Denning

Author:Crucible-Trial of Cyric the Mad # Troy Denning
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-09T09:25:06+00:00

Twenty-Two

If the Storm Horns are not the highest and coldest mountains in the world, then I do not know what mountains are. They are nothing but jagged granite teeth a thousand feet high, with no tree taller than a fire giant and a cold wind that blows down from the barren heights at every hour of the day and night. Yet barbarians will live anywhere, and some of them lived in a little village that straddled a treacherous goat path they stupidly called the High Road. In the heart of this village stood a small citadel, and by the starburst and skull discreetly carved in the top of the gatehouse arch, I knew this to be a temple of the One.

Despite my hunger and fatigue, I was reluctant to pound the gate. From inside the castle came a terrible wailing, and the air near the walls reeked of death; this could have been on account of the fresh kill Halah had snatched as we passed through the village, yet the underscent of decay and mustiness suggested otherwise. But even this was not as disturbing as the green fly roaring over the citadel; the thing was as large as an elephant, with black legs longer than spears and eyes as big as wagon wheels. This was not the sort of pet True Believers usually kept in their temples-at least not in civilized lands - and I found it difficult to believe what I saw.

I considered riding on. Certainly Halah was capable; she had already galloped a distance greater than the breadth of Calimshan, and still she was as fresh as the minute she burst from the stock shed. It was I who needed rest. The witch had been hounding my trail since her windstorm knocked me from my mount, and this was the first time I had stopped without spying her somewhere on the distant horizon. Whether she and her companion had finally ridden their hippogriff to death or merely stopped to rest, I did not know-but it hardly mattered. Even with the One’s heart slushing in my chest, two solid days of riding had left me so weary that I had twice fallen off my horse. Only Tyr’s protection had saved me from smashing my skull.

Halah tore a leg off her kill’s carcass and began to gnaw at the thighbone, trying to get at the bone marrow. I turned away from the gruesome sight and studied my backtrail, as I had grown accustomed to doing. The River Tun snaked along the base of the mountains, as brown and murky as the plain beyond, and in the distance the sky was as blue as steel. When I still saw none of the brushfires or tornadoes or raging floods that always seemed to accompany the witch, I leaned over to knock on the gate.

The portal swung open before my hand touched it. An old priest in the silver skull-bracers of a True Believer peered out at me. His eyes were as vacant as a ruin, his flesh as gray and fixed as clay.

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