They had been traveling the rugged wastes for days. Nothing about the never-ending expanse of rock, ice, and snows—occasionally broken up with a conifer stand here and there—reminded Voran of any place he knew. He had traveled mountains before with Tarin, but always there had been a way between the summits—roads leading through passes from valley to valley, so that the going, though long, had been beautiful, not punishing. Now, every step was on jagged rock, and Voran’s attention was completely absorbed with finding a foothold. Every time exhaustion took its toll and he lost his footing, or whenever he looked away for a fraction of a second, an irregular spur of rock would rise up before him like a sudden mushroom, and the pain of that step would shoot up toward his hip like fire.
At the
