Here's a little something, back to Chapter 8 for more thrilling adventures. Hopefully what I'll be doing is releasing a bit from each chapter in the run up to the book's release, see if we can get a little more teasing in there... Anyway, lazy day filled with meetings, coffee, maybe trying to shower, finally unpack my clothes and writing, lots of glorious writing!
Read on citizens....
He was manhandled up steps and through corridors, along bridges and across bustling thoroughfares filled with gawking siren citizens. Pain from a hundred cuts and bruises blurred with his fever as he was hauled onto a wide bridge that arched over a massive cave carpeted by rolling fields. The dark rock walls rose upwards and culminated in a huge round skylight. Daylight surged through the opening high above Farden’s head and he could see that snow drifted gently through the hole. As the party crossed the long road he managed to glimpse looks at the farms and buildings below him. Countless people milled below them like ants through the lanes and roads, curving their way through the furrowed fields.
He was dumped unceremoniously at the top of a flight of stairs a good ten minutes later. Cold wind messed with his hair and he tried to push his head up to see, but a guard yanked him backwards, and the refreshing mountain air was taken away. Farden was dragged again, this time somewhere that swung and wallowed. There was creaking and he moved upwards. The mage tried to reserve his strength for whatever was coming, so he kept his eyes shut and concentrated on staying conscious.
After a while he was hauled across what felt like a cold shiny floor and left in a foetal position. All was silent. Behind him a large door was slammed and the sound of boots ceased. Light shimmered behind Farden’s eyelids, and he waited.
‘Can you stand?’ A massive booming voice queried.
Farden lay there, still with eyes closed. Feeling his fingers stretch out beneath him he pushed himself up shakily, every limb wailing in protest. He cursed under his breath and looked for the first time at his surroundings.
There had not been many times in his life that Farden had felt such awe and shock, speechless at his surroundings. The humbled mage felt small as he gazed upwards at a massive domed roof that seemed to tower effortlessly hundreds of feet above him. Thin shafts of light poked through the tough granite rock like holes pierced in a grey blanket and a huge skylight punctured the far side of the ceiling, a massive doorway to the snowy skies outside. All around the hall Farden saw at least a thousand ledges carved into the rock, huge sconces hollowed from the stone running up and along the walls like countless little honeycombed nests. The candlelight of hundreds of lamps flickered all around him, and dragons, scores of dragons, filling the lower ledges of the gigantic hall, squatting and perching on strewn hay, surrounded by little candles and pitchers of water. Farden noticed, with a somewhat unexpected dismay, that only half the nests in the cave were occupied, dark without their candles and visitors. He wondered what this hall would look like before the war.
The huge lizards shuffled and snuffled from everywhere, and the sound of their dragon-riders whispering to each other was deafening. The mage’s eyes were now fixed on what he saw before him.
There, laying on a huge wooden bed of autumn leaves spotlighted by a lone shaft of sunlight...
Haha, not revealing that secret just yet...
Join the Twitter!
(c) Copyright Ben Galley 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment