The Fragile Tower - Book 1 of the No.1 magical fantasy series

The Fragile Tower Chapter 9 - The Cold Lands

            All she could see was the stars, a million scattered flares of light, but each one so much brighter than any star she'd ever seen, its light stretching further out into the sky, until there was almost no black in between. They winked and glittered like the lights which had surrounded her, as much a living, breathing world up there as the town she had left behind.

            Glowing between them were nebulous paths through the night, some close to her, others distant, and all of them crossing over each other in many various colours. They looked almost like the path of the milky way on a clear night, except for the gorgeous colours, but Grace knew what these were from the book.

"The travelling winds," she said to herself, and she grinned at them like an idiot, her eyes watering with happiness. They had seemed such a work of fantasy when she had read the book, a network of winds enchanted so that they picked travellers up and carried them from city to city, or from place to place within each city. And yet there they were, shining away in the night so proudly.

As her neck began to ache, she realised that she was standing inches deep in snow, her head tipped back to look upwards, and slowly she tore her eyes away from the sky and looked at the land she had arrived in.

            It should have been a familiar scene; the bare trees and the snow weren't so very different from the ones in the park. And yet everything was different. Every tree was dusted with ice, which caught the light of the moon and threw it back, glimmering almost as brightly as the stars. Beneath her feet, the perfect, undisturbed snow was a gleaming river of white so bright it could almost have been daylight.

            For a moment she thought she heard music made up of faintly chiming bells, and turned her head. The movement brought with it a rush of cold air spiced with cinnamon, only for sound and smell to fade out together and leave her wondering if she had imagined both.

            She could have stood there for hours, gazing around at it all, but she remembered Mr. Fredrickson's words.

            First, find yourself, and then find shelter.

            She slid the pack off her shoulders and let it sink a few inches into the snow. Unzipping the top flap, she pulled out the book where she had stowed it in a sealed plastic bag, heeding the bookseller's warning.

            More than anything else, you will need the book. To have read it is not enough. You will need the map, and possibility-weaving is complex. In an ideal world you would have years to master it. Instead, you will have to refer to the book as you need it.

            She took it out of the bag and opened the very front, where a detailed map had been printed on the cover and the first page. She touched a finger to it, and jumped as a tiny point glowed into being near it.

            She smiled at that point, grateful to the book for showing her where she was without even having to be asked. She remembered how Mr. Fredrickson would talk about books as if they were living creatures, and wondered if she should be thanking the tome out loud.

            Feeling slightly foolish, she whispered, "Thank you," and then peered at the map around the glowing point of light.

            She was south and west of the Fragile Tower and its surrounding city, which was called Kryzna. She should have found out how to pronounce it, she realised, but she supposed she would find out in time.

She would be travelling across the largely uninhabited lands between the cities of the kingdom. It was not a difficult place to navigate, as Mr. Fredrickson had pointed out. The Walled Kingdom was a perfect circle, its wall a stretch of a thousand miles of enchanted stone. The Fragile Tower was at its centre, of course, the spindle of what looked like a clock from above, the twelve cities spaced out around its perimeter and the great river running almost due north to south through its centre.