Free The Broken God by David Zindell Page A

frigid breath, his nose, teeth, and jaw ached. He tried each moment to find the best of his quickness and strength, to flee the terrible cold, but each moment the cold intensified and hardened all around him, and through him, until even his blood grew heavy and thick with cold. Numbness crept from his toes into his feet; he could barely feel his feet. Twice, his toes turned hard with frostbite, and he had to stop, to sit down in the snow, bare each foot in turn, and thrust his icy toes into his mouth. He had no way to thaw them properly. After he had resumed pushing through the snowdrifts, his toes froze again. Soon, he knew, his feet would freeze all the way up to his ankles, freeze as hard as ice. There was nothing he could do. Most likely, a few days after they were thawed, his feet would run to rot. And then he – or one of the City's shadow-men – would have to cut them off.
    In this manner, always facing the wind that was killing him, or rather, always keeping the wind to his left, to the frozen left side of his face, by the wildest of chances, he came to land at the northern edge of Neverness. A beach frozen with snow – it was called the Darghinni Sands – rose up before him, though in truth he could see little of it. A long time ago morning had come, a grey morning of swirling snow too thick to let much light through. He couldn't see the City where it loomed just beyond the beachhead; he didn't know how near were the City's hospices and hotels. Up the snow-encrusted sands he stumbled, clumsy on his skis. Once, he clacked one ski hard against the other and almost tripped. He checked himself by ramming his bear spear into the snow, but the force of his near fall sent a shooting pain into his shoulder. (Sometime in the night, while he was thawing his toes for the third time, he had set his poles down and lost them. It was a shameful lack of mindfulness, a mistake a full man would never make.) His joints clicked and ground together. He made his way over the wind-packed ridges of bureesha running up and down the length of the beach. Little new snow had accumulated on the island; the wind, he knew, must have blown it away. The bureesha was really bureldra, thick old ribs of snow too hard for skiing. He would have taken his skis off, but he was afraid of losing them, too. He peered through the white spindrift swirling all around him. It was impossible to see more than fifty feet in any direction. Ahead of him, where the beach ended, there should be a green and white forest. If he were lucky, there would be yu trees with red berries ready for picking. And stands of snow pine and bonewood thickets, birds and sleekits and baldo nuts. From somewhere beyond the cloud of blinding snow, Ahira called to him. He thought he could hear his father, the father of his blood, calling, too. He stumbled on in a wild intensity of spirit far beyond pain or cold or the fear of death. At last he fell to the snow and cried out, 'O, Father, I am home!'
    He lay there for a long time, resting. He didn't really have the strength to move any further, but move he must or he would never move again.
    'Danlo, Danlo.'
    Ahira was still calling him; he heard his low, mournful hooing carried along by the wind. He rose slowly and moved up the beach toward Ahira's voice. Closer he came, and the sound drew out, piercing him to the bone. His senses suddenly cleared. He realized it wasn't the voice of the snowy owl at all. It was something else, something that sounded like music. In truth, it was the most beautifully haunting music he had ever imagined hearing. He wanted the music to go on forever, on and on, but all at once, it died.
    And then, at the head of the beach, through the spindrift, he beheld a fantastic sight: a group of six men stood in a half-circle around a strange animal unfamiliar to Danlo. Strange are the paths of the Unreal City, he reminded himself. The animal was taller than any of the men, taller even than Three-Fingered Soli, who was the