Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

moved on, glancing down only occasionally.
    She took a circuitous route after that, examining her surroundings with more care. Huge archways led out into courtyards filled with abundant plantings, wide stone benches, and gravel paths, all glistening under the constant drizzle of rain that had been going on since early morning. Chill, damp air drafted through the outer hallways that opened to those courtyards. She shivered in spite of her heavy cloak and turned to a more indoor route.
    The inner hallways, not as wide for the most part as the outer, had floors decorated with a vaguely geometric pattern. The tiles were a mixture of the coarse, light grey and some of a smoother, charcoal grey. The pattern was punctuated on occasion by triangles of an oddly familiar pale yellow stone. It looked newly laid to her eye; she paused again, frowning at it, trying to remember where she’d seen that yellow stone before. At last, giving up, she moved on; the memory would come to her if it was important.
    The walls held thick tapestries displaying historical events: the first she came to showed King Ayrq of Bright Bay as he accepted the surrender of the last warring tribe. His booted foot rested on a pile of skulls and his hands reached up to place the crown on his own head as his former enemies knelt before him, eyes downcast. A similar mural decorated the formal palace dining hall; Alyea had never liked it much, finding it entirely too grim for her taste. But something about this one felt different. She paused to examine it more closely.
    In the background, she spotted three small, hardly noticeable robed figures: one in green, one in white, and one in black. Their hoods were pulled forward over their faces, obscuring their expressions, but their hands were outstretched, palms up and raised to the sky, as though calling down the blessings of the gods upon the moment.
    Alyea moved on, smiling now, and at each new tapestry paused for just a moment, finding some small, often subtle symbol of the Three Gods worked into the background. A few were worn, frayed, or damaged; clearly they’d been hidden during the Purge, then pulled out to decorate the hallways as a mark of triumph after Oruen banished all the priests from Bright Bay.
    Did that mean Oruen had sworn his allegiance to the southern three, rather than the northern four? Or was this a servant subtlety, a minor rebellion reflecting the change of regime? Alyea wasn’t sure how to interpret it, and knew Oruen was canny enough not to reveal the answer until it suited him to do so.
    Hall tables and shelves, also, held the signs of change: candelabra worked in complex forms that resembled the desert symbols she’d seen on the Scratha Conclave banners; sprays of flowers arranged in color-patterns that she suspected had more meaning than simple beauty; small, beautifully worked stone figurines of a nearly translucent, striated stone that reminded Alyea of the delicate cups of the teyanain.
    Hard to believe these hallways had ever been grim and lifeless. Hard to remember that the bleak decorations of the Four Gods had been the only permitted display throughout the palace, and indeed the entire of Bright Bay. It had all swept away, like a receding tide, as swiftly as it had come in, leaving only detritus behind.
    Alyea glanced down at the floor, her mood sobering again even though the tiles here held no marks, and quickened her pace. She’d seen enough, idled enough; and the king would be waiting for her.
     

     
    Rain pattered and streaked overhead, smearing the glass in the ceiling to a watery refraction; the room, normally cheerful in sunlight, held a grey chill even against the light from numerous torches and candles. Once again, Alyea looked around with a new appreciation of her surroundings.
    The chairs, well-padded and covered with thick blue fabric, had wide seats, thick legs, and slender backs decorated with carvings, each one different. One bore a seagull design, another a