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CHAPTER ONE

The Ruin ship had rested in the foothills for ht metal that never rusted, it was the model that all the iceships of the Icecarls were patterned on, though theirs were made of Selski bone and hide

Over tirown on the ship, so that its deck and sides gloith soft light in ht of the Dark World Even with its one, the Ruin Ship was enormous It was easily five times the size of a typical clan ship, and they held a hundred Icecarls or o

Tal, who until teeks ago had thought there was nothing outside his ho shape ahead of him was a ship He felt sure it was some freak of nature

For all but fourteen days of his thirteen and three-quarter years, Tal had lived within the physical and social boundaries of the Castle He had been raised to take his place aht and Shadow Like all Chosen, he had always been sure there was nothing beyond the light-filled halls and towers of the Castle He had been taught that apart from the Chosen, there were only Underfolk, born to be servants

No part of his life in the Castle had prepared him for the reality of the Ice, and the Icecarls who lived upon it But the experience of surviving each day had chipped away his previously rock-solid beliefs Tal was still a Chosen, as the shadowguard that stood at his side proclaimed But his absolute belief in his natural superiority had been severely rattled

He had even begun to accept that Icecarls were not Underfolk, even though they only had natural shadows But he still held fast to the belief that the Chosen alone could s of beauty and power The Ruin Ship, which was both strangely beautiful and powerful, had to be some sort of natural phenomenon

As the sleigh crawled higher up the icy slope, the six Wreska that pulled it had to work harder, their hot breath for a constant cloud above their antlered heads, while their sharp X-toed hooves sprayed ice chips everywhere behind them

"That's got to be a freak of…" Tal rew closer and the Ruin Ship looistered that this was not just a giant lump of wind-carved stone

"What?" asked Milla, the Icecarl girl he'd been forced to travel across the ice with She was sitting back and could barely see over the side of the sleigh

"Nothing," replied Tal, shaking his head A row of small stalactites broke off his face mask and fleard Milla But before they could hit, her handthem away

"Don't shake your head," Milla instructed "It's rude to shower ice on your companions"

Tal started to shrug, and even more ice fell off his shoulders, hed and pulled her face mask down, an obvious snub

Tal didn't care The Icecarlstheir faces, but he really wasn't interested in o straight through his flesh, chilling his bones Tal knew from bitter experience that without the mask, his teeth and cheekbones would quickly pick up a deep, internal ache that would last for hours

Ignoring Milla, Tal looked ahead again He had to accept that the Ruin Ship was constructed by humans Even so, he stubbornly resisted the idea that the Icecarls had built it

At the top of the ridge, the Icecarl who had been leading the Wreska halted for a fewtrail that wasthe contour line down into darkness

The ship was in a valley, the top of its broken ht, the h jerked into ain, Tal looked away frolow of the ship, he had to look up hts of the Castle

The Castle was far bigger than the Ruin Ship, and its lights were the only brightness in the sky Its seven towers even pierced the Veil, which shrouded the whole world from the sun

Tal was coht of his distant hoht that only the Chosenor created anything hile The Castle was still the greatest structure in existence, and this Ruin Ship of the Icecarls paled in comparison

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Milla asked

Tal looked back down He'd never heard Milla say anything in such an awe-filled tone For a ht she'd finally accepted the igled up to look at the Ruin Ship

"Shouldn't you be lying down?" he asked Milla had been badly wounded fighting a one-eyed Merwin, a vicious creature that froh and all six Wreska in front of it Tal had ed to blind it with his Sunstone, but it was Milla who had killed theparticularly obnoxious

"It is the birthplace of our people," said Milla "There are in and end here"

She paused and took a breath that n of it before she declaimed:

Green the ice glow, high on mast-head Black the blood, caked and ash-cold Red the ribbon, bound through beard White the Wreska, hauling hinar, dead many days

Tal didn't say anything All of the Icecarls' poetry - or whatever it was - seeot themselves killed heroically on the Ice

"The Ruin Ship is the chief place of the Shield Maidens," added Milla

Now Tal understood why Milla had clawed herself up the side of the sleigh The Shield Maidens roa the different clans, hunted down outlaws, and killed dangerous creatures As far as Tal could tell, the only people allowed to join were very scary women warriors with absolutely no sense of humor

Milla kept staring at the Ruin Ship, ignoring the pain in her side She had devoted her life to prepar herself to be a Shield Maiden Icecarls s, the tiation of the world, following the continuous ration of the Selski

Fro, as a sly to be the best skater, to excel in the use of all weapons, to dare the erous hunts

Now, though she had only seen fourteen circlings, Milla was an exceptional fighter, even by the standards of her warrior race She had proved it in her battle with the one-eyed Merwin

There were few Icecarls who could have defeated the creature, even considering that Tal had blinded it with his Sunstone This particular Merwin had been renowned for its viciousness, and a full Hand of twelve Shield Maidens had been tracking it for ht the Merwin, but just in tirievously wounded Milla

Reluctantly, Milla looked down at the shadow that lay at Tal's feet It looked norh now but only because Tal had been warned that he would be killed if it behaved other than as an ordinary shadow But she had seen it move by itself, and take different shapes Tal called it his shadowguard Because Milla had shared Tal's blood in an oath-taking ritual, it had been able to take her shape and staunch her wounds until the Shield Maidens came

She als of evil in Icecarl legend Milla only hoped she would not be considered tainted by the shadow's touch, and so unfit to join the Shield Maidens

As Milla was thinking of the Shield Maidens, Arla, the Shield Mother of the Hand, suddenly appeared

out of the darkness Without stopping to take off the thin, flat lengths of bone that she used to glide across the ice, she juh

Tal flinched as she appeared Arla was a stretch taller than him and the way she moved hinted at imminent violence Her eyes were blue and as cold as the ice, and she never blinked when Tal was looking at her She had horrific scars on her right arullet of an armor-skinned Krall to cut its throat from the inside

Apart from the cold eyes, Arla was very beautiful behind her olden hair that fra

"Only Shield Maidens may see the entrance to the Ruin Ship," Arla announced, pulling two long strips of soft Wreska skin out of one of the many pockets of her outer coat "Tie these around your eyes as tight as you can If you try to remove them, the punishment is death"

"Must I wear one, Shield Mother?" asked Milla She had already taken the first step to being a novice Shield Maiden In fact, the Quest that would et back to the Castle and find a new Sunstone for her clan ship

"You are not yet a Shield Maiden," Arla observed "Here we deal hat is, not hat ht be"

Milla frowned, but didn't say anything She took the blindfold and put it on Tal put his on, too For ait up a bit so he could see After all, he was a Chosen of the Castle and should not have to obey anyone here But so about the way Arla had said "the punished him not to peek

It was strange traveling on without being able to see anything, but Tal didn't ht when he took it off

Even in the worst moments he'd spent outside the Castle, there had always been soht around