CHAPTER 18

No one in Anielle or the gray-stoned keep
looming over its southern edge shouted with
alarm at the ruk that descended from the skies
and alit upon the battlements.
The keep sentries who’d been on watch had
only drawn their weapons, one racing into the
dim interior, and pointed them at Chaol and
Yrene as they slid off the mighty bird.
The cold on the open ocean was nothing
compared to the wind off the wall of
mountains the city had been built against, or
the blistering chill from the sprawling Silver
Lake it curved around, so flat that it looked