Sunset over the Ashen Plains was not red. It was the color of tarnished pewter bruised with soot.
The pale disc of the winter sun touched the jagged black teeth of the western crags. Then, the swirling rime of white ash around Ethan’s boots gently dissolved into the dark rock dust. The sixteen-year-old weaver let out a long, shuddering gasp as the spirit anchor of the Iron Promise released his bones. His knees buckled instantly, his boar spear clattering to the stones. But three refugee draymen rushed out from the sally port. It caught the exhausted boy before his face hit the freezing slush. Then he carried him into the keep like a returning hero.
He had held the bridge. For six hours, not a single scout had dared approach the archway.
Yet inside the dark rock keep of Fort Karst, no one was cheering.
In the vaulted undercroft beneath the Great Hall. There, everyone could feel the scent of damp grain, lamp oil, and sulfur, four men and a girl sat around a heavy pine frame stand table scarred by a century of meat cleavers and spilled ale.
At the head of the table, his midnight-blue velvet frock coat stripped of its frost-crust and hanging from the back of an oak chair, stood Vane Vale. His silk sleeves were rolled up past his forearms, revealing pale, ink-free skin. At the same time, his manicured thumb drove the beads of his gold-trimmed pocket counting frame back and forth with the…
