The Crow Read Online Free PDF

belonged to him, someone who without question wrapped her warm arms around him when he cried out and trembled in his black dreams – was the most important thing that had happened to him in his whole life. When he had been forced to leave her behind, he had felt as if his heart had been cut in two. It was a loss he tried not to think about, because it hurt him too much.
    Meeting Saliman was the second most important thing that had happened to him. Despite his anxieties about Maerad, the ride to Turbansk with Saliman had been his first taste of real freedom. The weather had stayed fine for most of the way, and although they feared pursuit from Norloch, he and Saliman had encountered no dangers. After Hem's body had made the first painful adjustments to horseback – for riding made his legs so stiff that he thought he would walk with bowed legs for the rest of his life – the journey had been an unalloyed pleasure.
    Hem often wished he could ride again with Saliman through the mountains of Osidh Am, his favorite part of the whole journey. They had camped at night by still pools in the fragrant forests of larch and fir, and Hem would lie by the fire looking up at the bright stars through the branches high above him. During the day they often surprised small herds of deer, which would leap up almost under the horses' feet to crash away through the bracken, and sometimes they brushed past bushes full of butterflies, which would start up in a cloud of bright colors about their heads.
    There were no other people for leagues, and a great peace began to rise in Hem's heart. It was the happiest he had ever been. On the other hand, his first sight of Turbansk, which was, Saliman told him, the most ancient city in Edil-Amarandh, had been bewildering and overwhelming.
    They had arrived at first light on a summer's day, just before the dawn bell. The Great Bell of Turbansk, three times the height of a man, hung in a high belfry under a gilt cupola above the West Gate – one tower in that city of many towers, which glowed like an opulent mirage on the shores of the Lamarsan Sea. It was struck every day at the exact moment that the sun's disc appeared over the horizon.
    As it rang over the city, it had seemed to Hem as if the sound itself was made of light. Sunlight and bell note spilled simultaneously over market and tower, house and hall and hovel, picking out the glittering domes of the School and the palace and the Red Tower, flushing the stone walls pale pink or warm yellow. The sun flooded the city's broad squares and trickled into the narrow alleys of the poor quarters, where the walls were painted in fading greens or blues or reds, and fresh washing was strung over the street from house to house like colorful flags; and on the great inland sea of Lamarsan a path of dazzling gold flared across the water.
    In the markets, which teemed with people hours before dawn, the flaming torches faded in the sudden increase of light and the world flooded with color. The dew sparkled on the roses and jasmine and saffron in the flower stalls, and rainbows quivered over the scales of trout and salmon, and on the iridescent feathers of freshly killed ducks and pheasants as they lay on the marble benches.
    From the food and flower markets spread a labyrinth of alleys lined with stalls and tiny shops, which sold everything from plain brass lamps to curious enameled fortune-telling boxes that were used to predict the positions of the stars, from robes of diaphanous silk to thick linen tunics, from rings and brooches to knives and cooking pots. The narrow streets were packed with people: bakers walking with trays of fresh loaves balanced on their heads; donkeys and pack mules loaded down with huge panniers or sacks; farmers from the Fesse, the land surrounding the city, carrying baskets of dates or live ducks, their heads poking from the top; women in bright, embroidered robes, their fingers sparkling with rings; children squabbling and playing; and