The wind whines and howls with bitter breath. Lightning snarls and barks. Rage
is an animate force upon the plain of glittering stone. Even shadows are afraid.
The scars of cataclysm disfigure a plain that has known only an age of dark
perfection. A jagged fissure lies like a lightning slash across its face.
Nowhere is that fissure so wide that a child could not step across but it seems
bottomless. Trailers of mist drift forth. Some bear a hint of color. Any color
clashes with the thousand blacks and greys.
At the heart of the plain stands a vast grey stronghold, unknown, older than any written memory. One ancient tower has collapsed across the fissure. From the
heart of the fastness comes a great deep slow beat like that of a slumbering
world-heart, cracking the olden silence.
Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence.
Stone cannot speak but stone remembers.
The Old Man looked up. His quill twitched, betraying his irritation at being
interrupted. “What is it, Murgen?”
“I went for a walk with the ghost. That earth tremor we felt a while ago?”
“What about it? And don’t give me none of that around-the-bush crap One-Eye’s
always handing out. I don’t have time for it.”
“The farther south you go the worse the destruction is.”
