Ice Forged by Gail Z. Martin

Author:Gail Z. Martin [Martin, Gail Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Fantasy - Historical, Fiction / Fantasy - Epic
ISBN: 9780316215398
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-01-08T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THIS IS MADNESS.” PIRAN HAD BEEN GRUMBLING under his breath since they left the road and headed onto the sledge trail. Connor had said nothing, but was inclined to agree.

Ahead of him, Dawe’s loping stride left wide-spaced marks in the frozen crust of the snow. Blaine and Kestel were in the lead, with Ifrem’s map safe inside Blaine’s pack. Blaine had retrieved it from the innkeeper the night before. Verran had stayed behind to tend the farm, and Connor found himself feeling rather jealous.

Penhallow’s obsidian disk hung from its leather strap around Connor’s neck, secure within his tunic. It had warmed from his body heat, but unlike the night it had led him to the library’s hiding place, the disk showed no hint of magic, neither glowing nor changing its temperature.

“I never thought they’d decide to set out like this,” Connor said apologetically.

Piran snorted. “That just means you don’t know Mick and Kestel very well.”

True enough—but I’m learning. Connor tried to get his mind off the numbing cold. On one hand, his rescuers had gone far beyond what Connor could have hoped in terms of hospitality, offering him shelter and a ready-made group, no small gift in a strange and forbidding land. They had taken pity on his lack of skills, since little of what he knew from court was any good in Edgeland. He’d found his new friends to be quite companionable, yet his court-honed instincts also suspected that their easy acceptance was hardly casual.

In short, he wondered how things might have been different if he had not arrived with the map and pendant.

The air was mercifully still, which made the cold tolerable, despite Piran’s complaints. Connor wore every stitch of clothing he had been able to scrounge together, as well as a heavy coat, scarf, mittens, and a fur-lined hat, plus boots with heavy woolen socks. Even in the harshest of Donderath winters, he would have been roasting in such an outfit. Here in Edgeland, it barely kept him from freezing.

“Does that blasted pendant of yours tell you anything?” Piran asked, his breath fogging on the cold air.

“Not a thing,” Connor replied. It was cold enough that it hurt to breathe through his mouth. “How do you tell night from day around here? For all I know, we’re out here in the middle of the night.”

Piran snorted. “We’ve got the town bells and the notched candles. Other than that, it’s anybody’s guess, or you read the stars.”

Connor shielded his eyes against the falling snow. Lord McFadden—or Mick, as he preferred up here—had arranged for a trapper to take them as far as the road’s end on a horse-drawn sledge. That had been preferable to slogging through snow that was knee-deep where it wasn’t drifted and hip-deep or worse in other places. Connor was not yet used to the wide, sinew-woven snowshoes laced onto his feet, contrivances his companions wore as easily as if they had been doing it all their lives. Connor struggled with the odd, wide-legged stance and the rolling gait, afraid he would pitch headfirst into the snow with every step.

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