The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) Read Online Free PDF

didn’t want to complete this climb. He knew what would happen at the top. It scared him, and yet he was unable to deny the urge to go there, to look upon the desert below from such a height, so he took to the path once more. His breathing became labored halfway up, but he pushed now that he was so close. Near the top the slope was not so brutal, but he still found it impossible to catch his breath. Eventually, however, he came to a narrow ridge.
    The wind here was cooler. It blew more fiercely than below. Ahead of him, the red desert floor opened up. It went on forever, flat as could be. Who would have guessed that so much land could be amassed in one place? He was so used to the islands, so used to the span of the sea, that he never thought what it would be like to see something so grand and humbling as this. It was a dangerous place, but beautiful, perhaps more so because of the danger.
    He stared at the edge of the cliff ahead. The ridge was wide in places, but this was its highest point, and also its narrowest. Only a score of paces separated him from the edge.
    He stepped forward, feeling the wind against his fingertips.
    He took another step, felt the soles of his boots scrape.
    He had hoped, in the days that had followed the events at the bridge on Galahesh, that his sense of the wind would return to him. He had hoped that he could once more feel the touch of the havahezhan. He had hoped he could summon the wind as he once had. But the days had turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and still he felt nothing. He had tried from the towers of Galostina, and later, Radiskoye. He had tried from the mountains of Uyadensk. He had tried from the perches of the eyrie and the decks of windships. But each and every time, he’d felt nothing.
    As was true now.
    He took another step forward.
    The wind gusted, tugging at his clothes.
    He breathed deep, swallowing the spit that filled his mouth now that he was so very near the edge.
    The desert yawned wider and wider, and yet it was not this he was most aware of, but the sheer height of this vantage.
    With one more long step he reached the edge. The wind howled for a moment along the face of the cliff below. The desert seemed as wide as the sky. The ground was rocky, the vegetation sparse. The red floor of the dry plain ahead felt limitless. In the distance, below the cloudless blue sky, was a line of dark mountains, but it didn’t feel like they encompassed the desert, or even obstructed it in any way. It felt as if the mountains were merely one small obstacle, and that the desert continued on and on, eating more of the world as it went.
    In those mountains was a village named Kohor, an ancient place where they could learn more of the Gaji and the secretive tribes that had for centuries remained hidden from the world. Closer, much closer, was a caravanserai, little more than a few dozen red-stone buildings with a well and a thousand-year-old trade route running through it. It was another stop on their journey toward the mountains, and the place Soroush and Ushai had gone the day before to secure them passage with a caravan.
    Nikandr’s eyes were drawn to the base of the cliff where a whirlwind rose and twisted on the wind before spinning away into nothingness. Nikandr knew it was a havahezhan slipping momentarily into the world of Erahm, playing with the wind before being drawn back to Adhiya.
    He often noticed such things. He didn’t want to; he simply did, and it made him painfully aware of the weight around his neck. For weeks after the events on Galahesh, he’d reached for his soulstone and gripped it tightly in his hand, hoping to feel the wind spirit—the havahezhan—he’d been bonded to ever since seeing Soroush on the cliffs below Palotza Radiskoye six years ago. He would eventually release his grip, for he felt nothing, and knew that he never would. His bond to that spirit had been broken the moment Nasim had driven the khanjar into his chest.
    He scraped