The Chronicles of the Vortex: Book One — The Weight of Souls
The alpine tundra stretched north like a healed wound, pale under the leaden sky. The wind came from the icy mountains, carrying with it the distinct scent of the Wores—a pungent, unmistakable odor that Gared knew all too well.
"We should turn back," he said, his voice thick beneath his fur hood. "The band is dead. I saw the bodies."
Young Blair Renfro didn't take his eyes off the horizon. His blue-green eyes, so clear they seemed to gleam in the twilight, surveyed the white expanse with a calmness that Gared found unsettling.
"Do the dead frighten you, Gared?"
"A dead man is a dead man," the man replied, spitting on the frozen ground. "We have nothing to do with the dead. Especially not here, a hundred and sixty miles from the Wall."
"But are they really dead?" Blair turned, the gentle smile that adorned his face contrasting with the weight of the question. He had the friendly appearance of someone who could be welcomed into any tavern, but Gared had seen what this man did when his hands began to multiply. "The Wores are adaptable creatures. Five years to lay a single egg, but they survive almost anything. Almost."
"Your eyes saw what they saw," Gared insisted. "Snake necks stretched out in the snow. Rigid gorilla limbs. Those stiff, dark orange, purple feathers… They didn't move. Not even the smell remained as before."
Blair closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, something had changed in his face—a silent calculation, a learning too fast to be natural.
"The Shont system is seven light-years from the nearest black hole," he said, as if reading a manual aloud. "The planet Ces has temperatures that melt metal. No water." No life as we know it. And yet… the Wores survive here, in this wretched tundra, with its fifty summer days and its nights of ten degrees below zero.
— What does that matter now?
— It matters because something killed them, Gared. And I need to learn what.
The wind howled between the distant peaks. Gared felt fear crawl down his spine like an insect—and speaking of insects, he noticed how Blair kept his left hand slightly open, his fingers curved. A small gesture. Familiar.
— Don't use that here— whispered Gared. — Your creatures won't do any good against…
— Against what?
Silence descended like a blade.
Then they heard the song.
A deep, guttural sound, coming from somewhere among the rocks covered in grey moss—the tough moss the Wores used to build their fragile nests. It wasn't a bird's song. It wasn't human. It was the lament of something he knew was being watched.
Blair Renfro assumed his fighting stance: legs shoulder-width apart, center of gravity low, both hands now open like fans. Gared had seen him like this before—at the Battle of Tispner, when the autocrat of Thed had ordered the massacre and Blair had multiplied into twelve, then twenty-four, each controlling swarms of mangrove wasps.
"Go back to the Wall," Blair ordered, his voice still calm, almost gentle. "Warn the Council of Panunor. Tell them the Wores aren't simply dying."
"Then what are they doing?"
The smile reappeared, but now it seemed different. Older. Heavier.
"They are being condemned."
And in the darkness that descended upon the tundra, Gared finally understood what his instincts had been trying to tell him for hours: that man with light eyes and blond hair was not just a mystical warrior destined to protect the planet.
He was also the type who might decide to set it on fire.
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End of Prologue