ice dragons

Long ago, when much of the Perilous Realm was locked in a neverending winter, the ice dragons ruled. They were mighty creatures, powerful and unpredictable. Few humans ever saw them, for they dwelt only in the most frozen, inaccessible regions.  Nor were they interested in gold or treasure or in capturing princesses, like their more avaricious and meddlesome cousins, the dragons of fire.

Those few storyfolk who dared travel in the lands of ice brought back tales of huge winged shapes that left blizzards of frost in their wake, of avalanches that had the power to change direction and even charge uphill, of lakes that would suddenly freeze over, or just as suddenly crack apart and plunge travelers into the icy water.

There are those who say that the glaciers we see today are the sleeping bodies of these mighty beings, and that although their kingdom has shrunk much from what it once was, they may still be roused from their slumber. Even as it withers away and dies, ice is a magnificent and dangerous phenomenon to behold.

In The Shadow of Malabron, Rowen of Blue Hill has a very close encounter with an ice dragon on the Whitewing Glacier. An encounter that will have important consequences for the fate of Fable and all of the Perilous Realm.

Illustration by Mary Wharton