They passed Avane next, god of wind, with two faces and a third shaped as a delicate dove.
Ezer paused to study Avane’s female face. She was carved as a beautiful warrioress, her crown resembling whorls of wind.
Is it your voice that guides me?Ezer thought.Is it you that watches after me each day?
‘They could end the whole godsdamned war,’ Ezer said suddenly. ‘If they wishedit.’
Arawn sucked in a breath. ‘To use their name in vain is unwise. They are always watching, always listening. Especially here.’
Not to me,Ezer thought.
Until she remembered the tornado of ravens, and she thought better of her words.
The higher they walked, the more the rumble of war returned.
And soon she could see the battlefield.
The Expanse.
She paused on the stairwell, breathless as the wind whipped past her ears. There was no whisper. There needn’t be, because she knew the sight of death.
For miles, it stretched, a land of snow and ice and howling wind. The battle raged in flashes of light, bursts of colorful Sacred magic.
And far beyond it stood the jagged Sawteeth Mountains.
They were so much larger than she’d ever imagined. It was like another world entirely, a place that could never be fully explored.
But it was the shadowstorm above them that stole the breath from her lungs.
‘That,’ Ezer breathed. ‘That’s the Acolyte’s power?’
The sky rumbled, and lightning flashed, illuminating the storm of pure shadow that spiraled over the Sawteeth’s highest peak.
Unnatural.
Dangerous.
Alive.
Thousands of living shadows seemed to swim up and down the Sawteeth, from the storm to the snow … a dark barrier that none could pass.
Not without darksoul blood.
‘Shadows,’ Arawn said. ‘As if he wields the darkness of hell on his fingertips. No one can cross beyond that curtain of dark magic. We’ve exhausted every option. They all end in death.’
The stories hadn’t done it justice.
The Acolyte was the king of nightmares, indeed.
‘Does it ever stop?’ she asked, as the wind pushed at her back.
She closed her eyes and pushed the fear away. She wouldn’t fall.
Some part of her knew Arawn wouldn’t let her.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The shadowstorm guards the Sawteeth day and night, and has never ceased, not in the twenty years of war. His power is immense. His wolves … growing in number by the day. His darksoul soldiers, too.’
‘Does he ever come out to fight?’ Ezer asked. ‘Does he ever walk the battlefield?’
