Chapter LII. Domenic
LII
DOMENIC
WINTER
Across Gallamere, Domenic felt the effect of his enchantment’s end.
The streets were deserted, cars left abandoned with frost splayed over windshields and water frozen in exhaust pipes.
The power citywide had long since gone out.
People crowded in makeshift fortresses of apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals, bundled in layers and carrying what little they could afford to deem precious.
With today’s promise of the dawn of Summer, firewood supplies had all been freshly, measuredly depleted—and so they burned all manner of flammable refuse scavenged in the storm’s early hours: books and newspapers, furniture and fence posts.
Victims of frostmaul already lay curled upon sidewalks, in subway stations, even in homes where the cold had crept through the subtle cracks of thresholds and windowpanes.
And despite Domenic’s command that Sharpe shelter the Order magicians, there were too many ghasts to truly abandon their defenses, all converging on the Citadel.
In the storm, no one could see the battle unfolding upon the summit. Even the magicians nearby could only glimpse a dim flash of light, hear the whisper of explosions.
Until, with a deafening boom, a crack cleaved through the earth and split the mountain apart.