The curtains of stone darkness parted, and Lahor spread out before us

The curtains of stone darkness parted, and Lahor spread out before us. It was even worse than it had seemed in silhouette—the road ahead nothing but slabs of broken stone, every building half-open and crumbling, every window nothing but broken shards of glass. Standing before us was a boy, no older than sixteen at most. He wore a long purple jacket that didn’t fit him well, once fine but now several hundred years out of style. Waves of pale blond hair framed a delicate face and wide, empty ice-b