Tower of Winter (The Traveler's Gate Chronicles: Collection #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

name is Donia Sarkis," she said, and she filled the name with more than just sound. She released her dreams, her ambitions, her hobbies, her fears, using them to add texture to the name until it meant all that was her.
    The Frozen One heard her name.
    And he heard far more than she had ever meant to say.
    She wasn't the best choice to send on the mission with Nikolos, and she knew it. She hadn't told the Overlord because this was her chance to look better in his eyes with very little effort. She remembered, and the Frozen One learned.
    Three years before, on Helgard's eighth floor, she had seen a pack of snow bats tear into an Enosh Traveler. She was only twenty yards away, and had tamed a snow bat of her own, and she could have saved him. She was supposed to; all Travelers of Helgard should look out for each other. But she had been afraid of failure, afraid of calling the bats down on herself. And he was from Enosh, after all. No one would blame her. She had stood there, watching his blood stain the snow, frozen. She made no decision, and he died.
    The Frozen One learned.
    As a student in Helgard, Donia had only one rival. Another girl who, despite an almost pathetic lack of ability to bond with any of Helgard's creatures or powers, still managed to out-score Donia in every test. One night, Donia snuck in and tore random pages out of her rival's textbook.
    The Frozen One learned the worst of her. He learned things that she had forgotten, that she had pushed out of her memory because they were too embarrassing or painful. He learned the best of her, too: the time when she spoke with Overlord Vasilios and secretly negotiated her father's promotion. The time she had saved a crippled mirka and nursed it back to health, releasing it into the wilds of the fourth floor before it was returned to pulling carts on the second.
    Finally, after an endless instant, the Frozen One had learned everything about her. She sagged back against the ice, as exhausted as if she had just slogged a mile through hip-deep snow. She wanted nothing more than to let the cold lull her to sleep.
    She wasn't prepared when the Frozen One shared his name in return.
    It was a thousand syllables pronounced in a second, impossible to memorize, and yet somehow burned into her brain.
    The name carried a poem of meaning in each breath: this being was a cog in the wheel of creation and destruction, an agent of change, a lonely force with the job of keeping nature in flux. The Tower of Winter was built around him, locking him in place, robbing him of meaning and power and purpose.
    Him and a hundred like him.
    He wanted nothing more than to return to his place in his own world. That need burned in him, hotter than a star, more insistent than gravity. But he knew that his world was long dead, and only the Tower was left, drifting in time on an empty sea.
    Another time, Donia would have been fascinated by these concepts. Here was a being that understood, really comprehended, the nature of the Territories. Or one Territory in specific, at least. And she was sharing his memories.
    Another time, she would have given anything for the opportunity to study the Frozen One's thoughts. But at that time, she struggled just to stay conscious.
    The Frozen One's story continued until she felt as though she had aged to death, been born again, and aged once more.  
    Then it stopped, and she found herself back in the ice, where she had started.
    Her thoughts were torn to shreds, like a child shredding a sheet of paper into a thousand pieces and scattering it all over the floor.
    Nikolos, she thought, but for a moment she couldn't remember who he was or why he was important.
    It's cold. Why was that bad?
    My ribs hurt. I'm in danger. The Tower would go on long after her body died. It would drift, stuck between reality, never to end because it existed in a place without beginnings or endings...
    What would you ask of me, Donia Sarkis? the Frozen One rumbled. The sleep calls to me. I must