Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun Read Online Free PDF

his mind working far more effectively than his body, Leitos deduced that there could be up to two dozen slavemasters after him. He had never known so many
Alon’mahk’lar
to go after a single slave. For the barest moment, he thought it possible that some of his fellows had made it farther than he had believed. Just as quickly, he dismissed that idea. He had seen them fall, one by one, many miles back. And in the openness of the desert, he would have noticed if others were about.
    It does not matter!
he thought forcefully, ducking his head and willing his arms and legs to pump faster. While not as speedily as he wished, his feet began to fall in a surer, steadier rhythm, and his great gulping breaths managed to keep the fire in his lungs from becoming a debilitating inferno.
    The edge of a jutting rock caught his foot caught and sent him soaring. He plowed through sand and gravel, scraping away layers of skin from his knees and palms. Leitos gritted his teeth against crying out, and lurched to his feet in a bid to run, only to stumble and fall flat. He sprawled facedown, fingertips digging grooves through the coarse soil, his whimpery breaths puffing dust into his nose and eyes. The horns sounded again.
    “Damn you!” Leitos screamed, relishing the explosion of hate and fury in his breast, uncaring that he had pinpointed himself to his enemies. He wanted them to find him, so that he might punish them for making him afraid, destroy them for hounding him to such extremes.
    As if mocking the futility of his desires, the horns wailed again. All the enraged heat coursing through Leitos’s veins went to ice.
Fool!
he cursed himself.
    Continuing to berate himself, he pushed himself to his bloody knees, then to his feet. He stood swaying, wanting more than anything to crawl into a deep, dark hole until the
Alon’mahk’lar
moved away. But there was no such shelter, at least none he was likely to find. Instead, he searched for and found the slavemasters. Their feet pounded the ground, and their eyes formed a broken line of winking lights. They were gaining ground at a shocking pace, and their silvery stares bored through the darkness to find him.
    I will not surrender,
he thought, gritting his teeth.
    He found the
Archer
again, then locked his eyes on the brightest star he could find above the horizon, using it to guide his shambling trot.
    All before him blurred together, save that glowing beacon in the heavens, and he forced himself to disregard the crying horns. In this enthralled state, he did not at first notice that his feet no longer thumped against pebbly soil, but rather slapped against sandstone. Only when a rising cliff forced him to halt, did he come fully back to himself.
    Despite the gloom, he could tell it stretched miles in both directions, and rose up no less than twenty paces. The top edge climbed, fell, and climbed again, like the spine of a great beast. He had seen the ridge of stone the day before. He wished he had remembered it before he took flight from his makeshift den, for he might have gone in another direction. Now he was trapped.
    Am I?
he wondered, brushing his fingers over the surface. It seemed the wall of rock was smooth, but on closer inspection, he found that it looked as if mud had been poured out to bake under the sun, then more was poured over the first layer, then more, slowly building up hundreds of thin sheets….
    He reached up, wedged his fingers between two layers of stone, then pulled himself up enough to drive his toes into another seam. He began to climb, his muscles weak and shivery. Still, the ascent was far easier than he would have imagined. His life in the mines had made his grip firm, and the skin of his fingers tough as leather. And despite the abuse the soles of his feet had taken since his escape, the tips of his toes were in better shape, and they clung to the layered stone like a second set of fingers.
    Over several paces he climbed, then the cliff arched over the top of