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drearief, when he found her,

the man’s search was done,

and he took upon himself her every scar

for power’s embrace is a love

that wounds

Rise of the Domin

Scintalla of Bastion (1129–1164)

The mountain fastness of outlook, its back to the lake, was the colour of water-thinned blood in the sunset Condors wheeled around it, twice the mass of Great Ravens, their collared necks crooked as they studied the hurounded starscape of campfires

The one-eyed Tenescoho had once been a scout in Onearht with deep concentration, as if godlypatterns against the deepening sky He had been truly eht Felled mute by the Domin’s vastness since that day in Bastion, three weeks past There had been a savage hunger in his lone eye fro, an ancient fire that whispered ever louder of wolves padding the darkness It was said that Anaster hi the Children of the Dead Seed, had noted theiven a horse, and rode with Anaster’s lieutenants at the vanguard of the human tide

Of course, Anaster’s coularity

The shapeless, starving army noaited at the feet of the Pannion Seer At dawn he would appear upon a balcony of Outlook’s central tower, and raise his hands in holy benediction The bestial howl that would rise to greet his blessing would shatter a lesser man, but the Seer, ancient as he as no ordinary od

When Anaster led the Tenescowri army north, to the river, then beyond, to Capustan, he would carry within hiathered to oppose them would be raped, devoured, obliterated from the earth There was no doubt in the minds of the hundred thousand Only certainty, a razor-sharp sword of iron held in the grip of ceaseless, desperate hunger

The one-eyed ht faded Perhaps, some whispered, he was in coaze was not on the wheeling birds, but on the fortress of Outlook itself

This was as close to the truth as the peasants would co fastness, an antiquated monastery warpedwalls, vast gatehouses and sheer-walled trenches The efforts continued, the ht beneath towering braziers of dancing flames