The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [150]
However, this wasn't Colorado. The silvery, leafless trees were valsindar, not aspen, and the needles of the sintaren trees were a feathery purple-green. All the same, they looked so much like ponderosa pine that, as they made camp that evening, Grace couldn't resist walking up to one, pressing her nose to its sun-warmed bark, and inhaling deeply.
“Ice cream,” she said in answer to the curious look Paladus gave her. “Where I come from, some pine trees smell like vanilla ice cream.”
The Tarrasian commander wore a skeptical look. “And does that one smell like this vah'nilla?”
She shook her head. “More like butterscotch.”
Tira touched her nose to the tree and laughed.
Paladus hesitated, then followed suit, moving close and sniffing the tree's bark. He turned around, eyes wide. “It smells delicious.”
Grace laughed. “So it does.”
As the evening wore on, Grace noticed more than one man moving from sintaren tree to sintaren tree, stopping to smell each one. Despite what lay ahead of them she felt her spirits lifting. While this forest was empty of people, it did not give her the same sense of desolation as Embarr. It was sad, yes, but there was a contentedness to it as well. This land had learned to live alone.
Just like you, Grace.
The next day, as they set out, Durge told her this forest was called the Winter Wood. It stretched across the entire north of Falengarth, and once everything within its borders had been part of the kingdom of Malachor. Maybe that was why she felt less afraid here; maybe she had come home.
Then they came upon the pylon, and the feeling of peace vanished.
It was damaged; otherwise, they would surely have felt its insidious effects as they had before. As it was, a gloom seemed to descend over the forest, though the sky above the leafless branches of the valsindar was clear as a sapphire.
It was Senrael who sensed it first. The crone warned Grace, who instructed the Spiders to scout things out—carefully. Aldeth returned minutes later; he had spotted the pylon in a clearing not far ahead. Tarus gave the commands, and the army veered to the east to give the relic a wide berth. Luckily, the bulk of the force was marching a quarter league back, and so never came near enough for concern.
“I'm not sure what happened to the pylon,” Aldeth said. “I didn't want to get too close to it, but it looked to me as if the stone was cracked.”
Durge stroked his mustaches. “From years of cold and ice and wind, perhaps.”
“Or more likely from this,” Samatha said as she approached, holding up a sword. The blade was broken off a few inches above the hilt, but it was enough to see that the sword had been forged of jet-black steel.
Grace took the broken sword in a trembling hand. “Onyx Knights. They were the ones who broke the pylon.”
Paladus looked at her. “Why?”
The metal was cold against her bare skin, but she didn't let go. “Kelephon means to betray the Pale King. He wants to gain the Imsari for himself.”
“He must have spoken powerful runes to have allowed his knights to approach the pylon,” Master Graedin said. He shivered inside his gray robes. “I suppose they broke it to keep the Pale King from spying on their comings and goings.”
“Which means Kelephon has unwittingly done us a favor,” Durge said. “For the Pale King will not see us either.”
Either Durge's theory was right, or luck and Tira's magic continued to protect them, for over the next two days they encountered nothing more menacing than the silver-furred squirrels who made their home in the duskneedle trees, and who scolded them as they marched by.
Then, as suddenly as if a curtain had been drawn aside, the trees of the Winter Wood gave way to a windswept plain at the foot of a range of rugged mountains. A pair of standing stones