The Phoenix Endangered Read Online Free PDF

might seem miraculous to lesser souls. But it would take all that she knew, all that she was, to bring her people to safe haven.
    At Kannanatha, Shaiara told her people to abandon all but what they would need to keep them alive and sheltered upon the journey. If Rausi’s song was true, both water and shelter awaited them at the end of their journey. If it was not, then it did not matter, for they would never survive the return trip.
    All but one of their tents they cut into pieces, leaving the desert winds to carry the strips of dun shotor-hair cloth where it chose. The wooden tent-poles they broke into pieces, scattering those that they did not use as fuel that day. Sun and scavengers would render the pieces unrecognizable within a moonturn. Shaiara was ruthless in her winnowing of the tribe’s scant possessions—better to destroy more than was necessary here, than to have to abandon it later and leave a trail of detritus that would lead the enemy directly to their hiding place.
    Even now it felt wrong to think of her fellow Isvaieni as her enemy, as those her people might have to fight in order to survive. Of course there was conflict between the tribes, even—sometimes—raiding and blood-feuds. But what the Nalzindar faced now was no matter that could be brought before a Council of Elders at the Gathering of the tribes, to be settled there if it was deemed to have gotten out of hand. This was something a thousand times worse: war. And Shaiara wanted no part of it. Better to risk everything on this desperate gamble than to allow her people to fall beneath the influence of the Shadow.
    And so, in the hour before sunset, the Nalzindar did all that they could to erase the evidence of their presence from Kannanatha Iteru , and Shaiara led her people into the Barahileth.
    They had camped two days at Kannanatha, not only to make themselves and their shotors as water-fat as they could, but so that Shaiara’s hunters and scouts could rideforth a day ahead of the tribe, for this was the last part of her plan to get her people to Abi’Abadshar alive.
    Their store of grain and fruit must go to feed the shotors , for the hardy animals were being taken far from their usual forage, and though Shaiara did not think that all the beasts would survive the journey, it was important to keep them alive as long as possible. Without those supplies, the tribe must rely entirely upon what it could catch—and game of any kind would certainly be all-but-nonexistent within the inhospitable furnace of the Barahileth.
    A more pressing need even than food was water, and while there were no wells, and certainly no oases, on the path ahead, the desert held more sources of water than these, and Shaiara’s people knew how to find them all.
    The hardest part of the journey began.
    As they advanced into the Barahileth, Shaiara’s hunters scoured the desert for anything edible in a way that flew in the face of every teaching the Nalzindar held dear, for Shaiara’s people not only kept the Balance, they lived it. There were no sheshu in the Barahileth, for the desert hare made its home in the roots of thornbush and daggerplant, but there were mice, and adders, and scorpions, and all could be eaten if one’s hunger were sharp enough, and one knew the secret of preparing them.
    Such an insult to the desert’s balance would take more than one turn of the seasons to repair, but if Sand and Star was kind, the Nalzindar would never pass this way again, and the desert would have time to heal.
    They rationed the water from Kannanatha Iteru ruthlessly, eking it out with what their scouts found—sometimes nothing more than a seep that had to be scraped clear of precious moisture and which collected only a few precious sips of water at a time. They spread cloths upon the ground to collect the scant desert dew, and set up little sun-stills to get more water out of their own urine. And when the time came—as Shaiara had known it must—for them to slaughter two