was a white scab of frost, a sign that winter was almost upon them.
`Aye, and this will be a winter alike to no other, for it will be without end,' Brogan thought to himself, and he wished that he could take Dorain's hand, or wrap his cloak about her shoulders. Although she would not look at him, she was always near at hand, so close that he felt he could feel the quickened beating of her heart. `Whose eyes will mark the Spring when it comes, I wonder? Will there be any of us left alive then, standing under some foreign sky, and remembering the lands that were the Four Kingdoms? Will I be there to gaze down into your depthless blue eyes, or will it be you, my love, looking up at the sky, remembering me as I was?'
Dorain's close-fitting, light elven mail and travel garments did little to conceal her form, and a stiffening of her back and her features, the colouring of her cheek, belied that she had ventured an askance look and become aware of his attentions, and all-too-obviously tried to disguise the fact.
In the distance ahead of them, to the northwest of Alin, plumes of black smoke rose from farmers' fields. It was not the pleasant, pungent aroma of fall refuse and slash burning, but rather the acrid, eye-watering smoke of destruction.