the shadow and bone

CHAPTER I

STANDING ON THE EDGE of a crowded road, I looked down onto the

rolling fields and abandoned farms of the Tula Valley and got my first

glimpse of the Shadow Fold. My regiment was two weeks' march from the

military encampment at Poliznaya and the autumn sun was warm overhead,

but I shivered in my coat as I eyed the haze that lay like a dirty smudge on

the horizon.

A heavy shoulder slammed into me from behind. I stumbled and nearly

pitched face-first into the muddy road.

"Hey!" shouted the soldier. "Watch yourself!"

"Why don't you watch your fat feet?" I snapped, and took some

satisfaction from the surprise that came over his broad face. People,

particularly big men carrying big rifles, don't expect lip from a scrawny

thing like me. They always look a bit dazed when they get it.

The soldier got over the novelty quickly and gave me a dirty look as he

adjusted the pack on his back, then disappeared into the caravan of horses,

men, carts, and wagons streaming over the crest of the hill and into the

valley below.

I quickened my steps, trying to peer over the crowd. I'd lost sight of the

yellow flag of the surveyors' cart hours ago, and I knew I was far behind.

As I walked, I took in the green and gold smells of the autumn wood, the

soft breeze at my back. We were on the Vy, the wide road that had once led

all the way from Os Alta to the wealthy port cities on Ravka's western

coast. But that was before the Shadow Fold.

Somewhere in the crowd, someone was singing. Singing? What idiot is

singing on his way into the Fold? I glanced again at that smudge on the

horizon and had to suppress a shudder. I'd seen the Shadow Fold on many

maps, a black slash that had severed Ravka from its only coastline and left

it landlocked. Sometimes it was shown as a stain, sometimes as a bleak and

shapeless cloud. And then there were the maps that just showed the Shadow

Fold as a long, narrow lake and labeled it by its other name, "the Unsea," a

name intended to put soldiers and merchants at their ease and encourage

crossings.

I snorted. That might fool some fat merchant, but it was little comfort to

me.

I tore my attention from the sinister haze hovering in the distance and

looked down onto the ruined farms of the Tula. The valley had once been

home to some of Ravka's richest estates. One day it was a place where

farmers tended crops and sheep grazed in green fields. The next, a dark

slash had appeared on the landscape, a swath of nearly impenetrable

darkness that grew with every passing year and crawled with horrors.