Restoration (Rai Kirah) Read Online Free PDF Page B

my horse stood tethered to a post. Lights were beginning to flicker behind the dark walls, like fireflies disturbed from the grass. “You must give me a way to find you.”
    “I’ve got to warn Aleksander,” I said, strapping my small pack onto the saddle. “I’ll tell him about the kanavar, and then get away again before I go mad again. When I figure out where I’m going, I’ll send word here to the locksmith.”
    “And if you need me, I‘ll—”
    “Don’t tell me anything!” I untied the horse and mounted, the urgency of my leaving driving my leaden limbs. A Warden was sworn to protect the world from evil. I could not even protect my own child from myself.
    But Blaise would not allow me to go yet. “If you need me, leave a message at Dolgar’s shrine in Vayapol. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you. I promise I won’t tell you where to find the others unless I judge you’re well.” He stayed my horse until I nodded in agreement. “I owe you more than life, Seyonne. If you’re in the pits of Kir‘Vagonoth itself, I’ll come.”
    There was no answer to such friendship. I clasped his hand and rode away.
     
    The red fingers of dawn were just touching the sky when I first glimpsed the spires of Zhagad in the distance, rising from the shadows of the dune sea. The Pearl of Azhakstan. The seat of imperial power since one of Aleksander’s great-grandsires had outgrown his desert kingdom and decided to order the world according to his whim. For five hundred years the warrior Derzhi had proven that they could kill, enslave, burn, starve, or mutilate anyone into their grand design. Their Empire had grown into an uneasy prosperity of roads and trade, anchored on the rocks of tyranny and fear, bound into a whole with the chains of slavery.
    Why did I believe that one cocky prince could alter the bleak landscape of such a world? What arrogance was mine to believe that the bright center I had seen in Aleksander was the gods’ answer to its brutality? But I did believe it. When Aleksander bought me at the Capharna slave auction, I had been resigned to death in bondage, bereft of hope and faith after half a lifetime of degradation. When I saw the feadnach in him, I had cursed my Warden’s oath that bound me to protect my cruel and arrogant conqueror. But our journey together had changed us both. I had shared Aleksander’s strength and refreshed my spirit at the fountain of his unquenchable life. He was our hope. I could not let him die in some tribal spat. I tugged on the reins and headed down the rocky promontory toward the golden domes that glittered in the growing light.
     
    An extraordinary amount of traffic bustled on the wide, paved road that led from the travelers’ well at Taíne Amar to the outer gates of the royal city, the last league of the Emperor’s Road that stretched from Zhagad east and west to the boundaries of the Empire. One would have thought it was time for Dar Heged, the twice-yearly gathering of Derzhi families to present grievances before the Emperor. Troops of scowling warriors occupied the center of the roadway, escorting finely dressed lords toward the city, consigning everyone else to the peripheries. And everyone else seemed to be leaving Zhagad that day; vast merchant caravans lumbered outward like traveling cities, the horses and chastou straining under the drovers’ urgent whips. For so many to depart the city before the evening market was very odd. And seldom had I seen so many clumps of people gathered at the roadside talking, rocklike obstacles for the herdsmen screaming at their flocks of goats and the hurried travelers lashing at beggars who pawed at their stirrups. The din of shouts and hooves, clattering wheels, dangling pots, snapping whips, and bleating animals was deafening. I hated cities, and the noise and stink and crowds of this one had polluted the peaceful desert.
    It had taken me three anxious weeks to get to Zhagad. I had traveled the harsh desert road