Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 472
End this long night...
In an age of miracles, would men still massacre their
neighbors? Maybe they would just do it on a far greater scale,
once they could command the oceans to drown continents or
the earth to swallow cities.
It seemed it must be true since the powerful, who wanted
of nothing, were the very ones who commanded these
massacres.
The thought filled him with fury--the same fury that had
made him run into the night after Emmy, that had made him
taunt the Heaven hooks into leaving their destruction of the
Boros mansion to chase him. He would not accept this truth.
Let them kill him, let the whole world come crashing down
when he told Armiger the secrets of the desals. Despite all
evidence, he would never accept that such miseries were
destined to happen forever.
A short, vertical line wavered on the horizon. The spire
of the desal? He would find out soon enough. Then, he would
demand that the Winds answer for the burned towns, the
sundered families, all his and everyone’s miseries in all this
long age of night.
Jordan would not have known he was on a plateau had
Tamsin not told him. The ground became less sandy as they
went, and now and then they took little climbs up tumbled rock
slopes. Eventually they had to dismount and lead the horses,
because the beasts both breathed laboriously, their mouths
foaming. The belly of Jordan’s horse seemed swollen, and it
trembled when he touched it. Jordan and Tamsin finally had to
carry most of the supplies they had scrounged, while the horses
walked painfully beside them.
"What’s wrong with them?" Tamsin tried to soothe her