Author: Michael J. Dennis

Publisher: Michael J Dennis

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 1386862045

When night took hold would he stand in awe at those bodies forever beyond his touch? The trunk was far wider than he was tall, black and shining, gnarled, at first glance it reminded him of an ancient yew with many trunks intertwined as one, like wide ropes, knots and boles, a parody of a tree with no leaves or needles but an array of small bones, none of its branches swayed in the breeze. It stood brooding, motionless like no other tree he had ever seen. Its trunk formed of faces screaming to be free, arms and legs entwined with bodies. Locked together for eternity, its main branches composed of long bones fused as one, branching off into smaller versions of themselves a grotesque mockery of natural trees, ending in bud-like structures of knuckles, small bones and teeth looking much like fruit and flowers. Prydain stood eighty feet tall, it's all-encompassing branches appeared just as wide casting a bone-chilling shadow across the snow. Almund took a deep breath as he stepped back, slipping on a half-buried pile of bones that crunched beneath his boot. At first glance, Prydain looked as though conjured by some mad sorcerer, not grown from this good earth, but this was no trick, for all its deathly stillness he could feel its energy not formed by man but planted, its roots deep within the earth, abet many years ago in this rich soil for the veneration of Achren.