Free Under A Colder Sun (Khale the Wanderer Book 1) by Greg James Page A

hairs on the nape of his neck were prickling.
    He would soon have need of a keen sword.

Chapter Thirteen
    Everything was ice-cold, wet, and slippery when Milanda awoke; shivers passed through her as a rarefied electricity. Getting to her feet, she found that she was naked and covered in a dripping layer of clear, oily residue. Her head hurt. Her eyes burned. Her tongue felt heavy, embalmed by bitumen and bitter mineral salts. She wiped clots of a cloying substance from her eyes to better see where she was.
    It was an undersea cathedral, with stalactites descending from above, and with grottoes and alcoves creating strange echoes here and there from the most minute of disturbances; water falling, ancient stone crumbling and scattered pieces of limestone and chalk forming natural mosaics across the ground. The sides of the cavern were coated with sea-slime and over-ripe fungus. There was a whisper of salted breezes to the air, a rich draught wafting out from adjoining networks of catacombs.
    The surface underneath her bare feet was slippery, soft, and pliant. It gave way when she put all of her weight on it, sometimes crackling, sometimes hissing as buried gases escaped—for there were dead bodies everywhere, all crushed together and somehow interred in this deep abyssal place.
    For reasons she did not know, she had risen from among them without memory of what came before. A black space existed where the past should have been inside her head. She tried to remember but could not. Pain was a ghost. Hurt was an echo.    
    She walked across the broken spines of the lifeless. The quiet was suffocating and oppressive. The pressure in the freezing air was a tangible weight.
    She wondered how deep under the world this stately carven hall of nature was?
    How many fathoms pressed down upon this time-sculpted space?
    The cavern stretched on before her into a distance where a tinged mist hung as a veil; drawing nearer to the shifting greyish obscurity, she glimpsed something there, hidden beyond. Its size was considerable, and it was not human.
    Milanda made her way towards it, and then paused as the mists cleared somewhat, drawing away to reveal a colossus.
    I am one of the dead , she thought, and should not fear this thing. What can it do but tear me limb from limb, a sensation I will not experience, being extinct of feeling.
    What do the dead have to fear from further harm?
    Nearer and nearer, she came to it—a maggot crawling over the backs of other maggots before the ponderous goliath. She was in the presence of a true leviathan. Infinitesimal crystals of dirty ice and eldritch frost that had been cast off from the creaking hide of the thing formed the damp shroud of mist that hung over it. The light source in the cavern was its eyes: tumour-hued bulbs set in the mottled grey flesh of the titan. It was hunched over, curled like a foetus in a womb.
    She came to a halt before it. Unbidden, she fell to her knees and prostrated herself before it. In her mind, she heard a word—could it be a name?
    ... Juular ...
     
    *
     
    Milanda awoke with a start. She saw that she was at the henge still. She was covered by a layer of Khale’s furs. She could see him standing close by in his time-worn leathers; the scarred meat of his arms looked like engraved stone rather than flesh.
    “What’s wrong?”
    He was studying the sky with cautious eyes.
    “Look,” he said. “Do you see how the clouds have changed?”
    Milanda shielded her eyes and squinted up at them. He was right. They were much darker and heavier. “What does that mean?”
    “That we must find other shelter.”
    “But we’re in the middle of the wilderness.”
    “I know.”
    There were tales of storm winds that chased one another out of the Heart of the World and into the wilderness. The same tales told of bodies discovered, the flesh and muscles torn clean away from the bone. The winds were picking up. Soon, they would become fierce enough to bite through furs and into