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The wind swept down upon the at exposed skin, and they were forced to lean forward against its gusting, frigid blasts

Despite the furs enshrouding him, Trull felt the shock of that sudden cold, a forcehis air passages in a nu assault And within that current, a faint smell of death

The Edur wrapped swaths of wool about their faces, leaving the barest of slits for their eyes Conversations were quickly abandoned, and they walked in silence, the crunch of their fur-lined moccasins muffled and distant

The sun’s warmth and turn of season could not win the war in this place The snow and ice rose on the wind to glitter overhead,Trull to suspect that the wind held close to the ground, whilst high overhead the suspended ice crystals hovered un of seasons, of years

He tilted his head to stare upward for a , near-opaque canopy above thees locked in each crystal, bearing witness to all that had occurred below Aback to when there was sea, in place of the ice Did unknown creatures ply the waters in arcane, dugout canoes all those thousands of years ago? Would they one day become these Jheck?

The Letherii spoke of Holds, that strange pantheon of ele them there was the Hold of Ice As if winter was born of sorcery, as if ice and snoere instru of that notion was present in Edur legends as well Ice plunging down to steal the land that was soaked in Tiste blood, the brutal theft of hard-won territories co of some curse uttered in a last breath, a final defiance

The sentiment, then – if one such existed – was of old enhteous reward Bound in death and blood, an eternal prison From all this, it could earn hatred

They continued through the day, h jumbled fields of broken, upthrust shards of ice that in the distance seemed simply white, but when neared was revealed to possess countless shades of greens, blues and browns They crossed flats of wind-sculpted, hard-packed snow that fore fault lines where unseen forces had sheered the ice, pushing one side up against the other, grinding opposing paths as if the solid world beneath theration

Towards late afternoon, a muted shout fro with his eyes on the ground before him, looked up at thebefore so them forith a fur-wrapped hand A few moments later they reached his side

A broad crevasse cut across their path, the span at least fifteen paces The sheer walls of ice swept down into darkness, and froe s away his face-covering ‘Tidal pools’

Rhulad and Midik joined them from the flanks ‘It seems to stretch to the very horizon,’ Rhulad said