Iced On Aran Read Online Free PDF

What’s it mean?” He got up, stretched, stepped round the fire and prodded Hero with a booted toe. “Eh, eh? Since you’ve started this silliness you might as well finish it. Except, be warned: if you’ve made my name something oafish, it’ll very likely warrant a clout!”
    Hero snored loudly.
    â€œWhat?” Eldin booted him again, heavier this time. “No one goes to sleep that fast! Up, up! I want to know the meaning of my bloody name!”
    Hero sat up, gave a deep sigh. “We’ve a busy day tomorrow,” he said. “Trekking in unfamiliar territory, and an unknown monster—a maneater—to track, trap or kill. We should both get some sleep.”
    â€œUp, I said!” Eldin repeated. “I was sleeping, remember? And anyway, how’ll I be able to sleep with this on my mind?”
    Hero got up, put his hands behind his back, ambled to
the edge of the firelight and back. “On your what?” he inquired. “Your ‘mind’?” He sniffed and cocked a wondering eyebrow. Then he looked over his shoulder into the darkness beyond the fire’s glow and shivered. “Brrr!” he said, his tone shuddery.
    â€œEh? Brrr!? Don’t change the subject!” said Eldin sharply. “And anyway, it isn’t cold tonight.”
    â€œNothing to do with the cold, old lad,” Hero shook his head. “Goosebumps.”
    â€œThey don’t, you know,” Eldin returned.
    â€œEh?”
    â€œGeese. I’ve seen ‘em fight, heard ’em honk, watched ’em fly south for the winter. But I never saw a one bump.”
    â€œThe fact is”—Hero ignored Eldin’s wit—“I’m restless. It’s this quest of ours—call it a mission—that Kuranes has sent us on. It’s like nothing we ever did before. I was thinking about it, rolling his—its?—name around in my head: ‘Augeren,’ and that started me off on the meaning of names.”
    Eldin hoisted himself up on to the horizontal branch of a dead, toppled tree and dangled his feet. He snapped off a smaller branch and tossed it into the fire, watched the sparks leap and the flames jiggle. The circle of light expanded a little, and night’s shadows drew back.
    Hero turned his back on the dark, gazed earnestly at Eldin. “Fact is,” he said again, “I don’t like this job we’re on one little bit. I’ve a feeling it’s a sight more sinister than it seems—and after what Kuranes has told us, that’s saying a lot! ‘Augeren’ … brrr !”
    Eldin hadn’t said much about their current job until now, but he had given it plenty of thought—and he knew exactly what Hero meant. Not about this silly “meaning of names” business, but about the actual nature of the beast they pursued. Call it a beast, or
“Augeren,” or a Thing; call it whatever you liked. It still came down to the same thing in the end: it was unknown but seemed all-knowing; it had been experienced (horribly) but never seen; it struck like lightning out of the darkness at totally innocent victims; and it always killed. And it ate. But most monstrous of all was how it killed and what it ate …
    As for Augeren’s hunting-ground:
    Between Inquanok and Leng—that northern plateau of ill-repute which sits like some vast and forbidden iceberg at dreamland’s one suspected pole—there stands a range of gaunt gray peaks no dreamer has ever been known to scale. Or if someone has climbed them, he never lived to return and report the fact. The range forms an eyrie for Shantak-birds, who build their massive nests on ledges halfway up; while the topmost pinnacles are eaten into by caves which, according to legend, are the gloomy resting-, nesting-, or mating-places of night-gaunts.
    Shunned by many, still the gaunt gray peaks are regarded by most as a blessing, a provision of beneficent