City of Jade Read Online Free Page A

and said, “I am told looking ahead is quite difficult, with many forks to winnow among.”
     
     
    “Forks?”
     
     
    “Points of decision,” said Aravan. “Where deciding one way causes this , and deciding a different way causes that . And with each person involved, the possibilities grow. In the venture before us, with hundreds upon hundreds involved, the possibilities are beyond reckoning, or so I would think.”
     
     
    “Ah, I see,” said Bair.
     
     
     
It was just after the mark of noon and snowing in Adonar when Bair crossed the in-between, with Valké on his shoulder, Aravan’s falcon shape. Bair bore the Elf in this form to ease his way to Neddra, for the best time to cross into that world was at the mark of midnight, just as the best time to leave that Plane was in the strokes of noon. And so, for Aravan to make that crossing at a different time would have been difficult for him; but the stone ring on a chain about Bair’s neck seemed somehow to ease the lad’s way through, no matter the mark of day or night. And so, Aravan had shifted to falcon shape, sealing most of his own in the crystal he wore; and captured in Bair’s own aura, the lad had borne the falcon and the token of power across with ease, from the High Plane to the Low.
     
     
    With Neddra’s bloodred sun shedding precious little light down through an umber overcast, snow fell in this world as well, the white flakes bearing a faint yellow-brown hue as they drifted from the dismal, sulfur-tinged sky.
     
     
    Bair cast Valké into the acrid air and shifted in darkness to Hunter, his Silver Wolf form. Then Draega and falcon raced in a wide arc to the north and east, heading for the crossing to the Mage world of Vadaria.
     
     
    Out of view of the black fortress they sped, that bastion a league and a mile up the vale from the western crossing. And flying high above the running ’Wolf, Valké remained silent, for no pursuing Spawn did he spy—no Vulgs, no Ghûls on Hèlsteeds, no Rûcks, Hlôks, or Trolls giving chase—hence no warning did he cry.
     
     
    As to the fortress itself, it sat atop a high-rising hill in a long vale, a basin surrounded by crags. Roughly square it was, the bastion, an outer wall running ’round, some twenty feet high and three hundred feet to a side and fifteen feet thick at the top, wider at the base, with bartizan after bartizan along its length full about, some fifty feet in between any given pair. To the south a barbican sat atop a gate midmost along that outer wall, a smaller barbican at the north, with a road running up in a series of switchbacks to the main gate of the central stronghold, and a like road ran down from the postern gate opposite. Between the bulwark ringing ’round and the inner fortress itself, there lay an open space, a killing ground for any who had won their way up the hill and had breached the outer wall.
     
     
    Centered within, the black bastion stood: some sixty feet high it was and also built in a square, two hundred feet to a side with a great courtyard in the middle, towers and turrets and a massive wall hemming the quadrangle in.
     
     
    Within the courtyard was a broad stable, wherein scaled Hèlsteeds shifted about, indicating the presence of Ghûlka in the mainstay below.
     
     
    Two outer and two inner towers sat in a small, close-set square and warded the passageway into the dark fortress, with great outer and inner gates and portcullises barring the way. At the northern wall of the bastion, likewise another tight cluster of four turrets warded the rear entry as well.
     
     
    With a tower at each corner of the main fortress and towers midmost along each of its walls, defenders could bring great power to bear against any and all assailants who sought to claim the stronghold as their own.
     
     
    And the walls warding the central fortress were well patrolled—Hlôks and Rûcks at each corner with a small rout slowly walking the rounds.
     
     
    All this