![[Illustration]](https://oldbook.b-cdn.net/kitaplar/1/pg910-h/images/cover.jpg)
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees hadbeen stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and theyseemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. Avast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless,without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that ofsadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terriblethan any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of thesphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness ofinfallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternitylaughin