War of the Words/Chapter 7

Jano fled through the streets like a man pursued, which, in fact, he was, though he was unaware of the fact. Moving with purpose past the central market and giving wide berth to the Temple square, he continued without looking where he was going, nor paying attention to the area behind him from whence he came.

With a sense of deliberate purpose he continued quickly to the city gates. Glancing about briefly, he moved deliberately into the farm land outside of the city proper. With renewed determination he followed the fork in the road that lead to the School of Thought, where he planned to seek out Tralin himself and reveal Darin's evil machinations.

He came to the grounds of the school and paused to catch his breath. It was this pause that would prove his undoing. For in the brief moments it took him to recover himself, the skulking figure following diligently in the shadows was able to overtake him silently. In range, the figure gathered energy to himself and muttered some words of power and gestured with meaning. With that the force of his ancient incantation was unleashed. The power of the incantation would leave the caster weakened for days.

Jano's first awareness that anything was amiss was the coldness in his extremities. He rubbed his hands together to attempt to warm them, but the coldness spread in spite of the warmth of the night. Then Jano felt a cold unlike any he had ever known.

Jano had heard scholars describe things in terms of absences. Evil was the absence of good. Cold was an absence of heat. For any cold Jano had before experienced, such an explanation was sufficient, but this cold was different. Far from being a relative lack of heat, his being was suffused with antiheat. Far from numbing, this cold produced experiences and sensations for which human experience had no words. A cold so real and complete that he emanated chill that dropped the temperature in his surrounding environment by nearly twenty degrees within a minute. Hypothermia shut down his processes as the cold froze Jano from the inside out.

The figure in the shadows smiled. "Our arrangement remains upheld." Voices could be heard within the school's garden and with a gesture the figure vanished to regain the energy used in trailing and trapping the treacherous spy.