Vetra did not look at the sand.
She looked at the room, her eyes a glacial blue that seemed to hold the reflection of a world already dead.
When she spoke, her voice had shed its dry, legalistic edge. It took on the cadence of ancient things, of fireside legends told in the deep of winter, of sagas written in the blood of fallen kings. It was a voice that belonged to the beginning of the world, or perhaps, its end.
"In the wake of the Great Silence," she began, and the air in the hall seemed to thicken, as if a heavy mist had rolled in from the Northern Wastes.
"When the Dragons had fled the skies and the fires of the South met the frosts of the North in a world of ash, the Empire of Nevareth was born. It was not built on stone, nor on the strength of walls. It was built on a vow."
The room fell into a trance. Even "he guards, their hands tight on their halberds, leaned forward. It was the tone of a prologue, a story everyone knew, yet none had truly understood.
