Read A Path to Coldness of Heart for Free Online

every sorcery, every soul, trying to swarm and swamp its enemies before Shinsan, already battered and distressed, could steel itself on that frontier.
    “I’m quitting now,” Mist murmured. She wanted to ask if she dared demand unconditional surrender. She wanted to ask if anyone had heard how her children were. She had not seen them in months. Most of all, she wanted to question the Tervola about the potential consequences of peace.
    She did none of those things. She collapsed. Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, the pig farmer’s son, placed her on a field cot.
    ...
    Queen Inger’s liaison with the commander of her bodyguards was a deep secret, yet there were those in the know. The far sorcerer Varthlokkur knew via the Unborn.
    Another who knew was the invisible Michael Trebilcock. Michael had been out of sight so long he had been forgotten by most people. But he was not far away. People who knew him saw him all the time without recognizing him.
    He appeared to have aged considerably.
    ...
    In far Itaskia interested men within the War Ministry noted that most rumors about the Greyfells party were proving to be true. It was an excellent time to squeeze that clutch of troublemakers. That wicked, traitorous family appeared unable to withstand sustained financial and political pressure with Duke Dane off on a mad, expensive adventure.
    ...
    The missing Guild General Machens Liakopulos, having gone unseen for months, came to the attention of outsiders while crossing a courtyard at High Crag, the mother fortress of the Mercenaries’ Guild. He had just spoken to a council of the Guild’s old men.
    The witness who recognized him and cared enough to ask questions learned that the General had retired in one of the grand apartments that had come available when High Crag cleansed itself of the Pracchia disease.
    The General felt badly about abandoning Kavelin but he felt no compulsion to sacrifice himself on the altar of kingdom worship that had claimed so many old companions. The King was dead. His dream died with him.
    Wicked Inger could fry in her own drippings. Machens Liakopulos was old. He was tired. And he was done with ungrateful Kavelin.
    ...
    One-time Lord Kuo Wen-chin was weary of exile but only exile let him enjoy any life at all. Once he had been overlord of all Shinsan. Those who had displaced him would eliminate him instantly should they learn that he lived. But the wishful heart will so often not attend the practical mind.
    Kuo’s world was a lifeless island off a desert coast far from civilization and farther still from the heart of his homeland. It was a storied island but most of its tales were ancient beyond recollection. Three living beings knew what part it played in the Nawami Crusades. A handful more had heard of the laboratories of Ehelebe. The most terrible horrors subsided into still darkness after a few millennia.
    Kuo amused himself by learning what he could from his surroundings. But months fled. Learning became tedious.
    He had moments when he cursed Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i for having harkened to his appeal for sanctuary.
    Kuo Wen-chin appreciated the honor his friend had done him. And Kuo was a patient man. But his patience was wearing.
    He was too much alone. Food came unannounced and anonymously, arriving through a one-way portal. Nothing left the island.
    Maybe Lord Ssu-ma had fallen fighting the Deliverer, or in the war with Matayanga. Or politics might have consumed him.
    Yet someone kept sending supplies.
    He shared the island with only one organism more complex than an insect or spider. Or the rare seabird that landed only perforce. Birds neither nested nor hunted here. They fled as soon as they had the power to go.
    Wen-chin had found a crazy old man in a cell beneath the fortress that slithered along the spine of the island. The old man was little more than a ghost, physically and mentally.
    Wen-chin found some purpose in nursing the ancient, who had suffered a mind-shattering trauma. He did not