J. V. Jones - Cavern of BlackICE

PROLOGUE A Birth, a Death, and a Binding Tarissa whispered a hope out loud before looking up at the sky. "Please make it lighter than before. Please." As her lips came together she looked up past the wind-twisted pines and the ridge of frost-riven granite, up toward the position of the sun. Only the sun wasn't there. Stormheads rolled across the sky, cutting out the sunlight, massing, churning, driven by winds that snapped and circled like pack wolves around sheep. Tarissa made a small gesture with her hand. The storm wasn't passing overhead. It had come to the mountain to stay. Dropping her gaze, she took a steadying breath. She couldn't afford to panic. The city lay a thousand feet below her, rising from the shadow of the mountain like a second, lesser peak. She could see the ring towers clearly now, four of them, two built hard against the wall, the tallest piercing the storm with its iron stake. It was a long way down. Hours of walk, even. And she had to be careful. Resting her hand on her swollen stomach, she forced herself to smile. Storms? They were nothing. She moved quickly. Loose scree, bird skeletons, and snags of wind-blasted wood tripped her feet. It was hard to walk, even harder to keep her balance on the ever sharpening slope. Steep draws and creases forced her sideways instead of down. The temperature was falling, and for the first time all day Tarissa noticed her breath came out white. Her left glove had been gone for days—lost somewhere on the far side of the mountain—and she stripped off her right glove, turned it inside out, and pulled it onto her left hand. The fingers there had started to grow numb. Dead trees blocked her path. Some of their trunks were so smooth they looked