Read The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) for Free Online Page A

bitterly for her place in their party. It went beyond the fact that the two of them were lovers. Ushai had roots in the Gaji. Her father was from Kohor. She’d taken to the winds with her mother, who was Aramahn, when she was only eight, but she still remembered it in bits and glimpses. In the end, they’d agreed that her blood ties to that place could prove useful.
    Atiana could hear Nikandr rooting around the tent, no doubt for a mouthful of vodka. Whatever truth there was in Ashan’s words—she had no doubt he was worried about Soroush—there was more bothering him. One could not be near him and not know of it. It was his link to Adhiya. A year and a half had passed since the events at the Spar on Galahesh, and a day didn’t go by when Nikandr didn’t seem maudlin or reticent. She tried to find ways to reach him, to pull him from his doldrums—and indeed, there were times when he seemed to brighten, giving her hope—but then a day would pass, perhaps two, and he would return to his yearning.
    “How long do we wait for them?” Atiana asked, referring to Soroush and Ushai.
    “If they’re not back by morning, we’ll continue as planned, and hopefully find them at the caravanserai.”
    Footsteps crunched over the ground toward them. It was Sukharam, the boy Nasim had found and brought to Ghayavand with him. He was gifted—as gifted as Nasim, if Ashan was to be believed—but that wasn’t why Ashan had insisted he be brought. His fate is entwined with Nasim’s , Ashan had said before the journey had begun. We can no more forget about him than we can Kaleh, or the Atalayina.
    Sukharam was a grown young man of sixteen now. He pulled up the hem of his flax-colored robes and knelt between her and Ashan. He reached for the flatbreads, perhaps to test them, perhaps to steal a bite, but Atiana slapped his hand away. He scowled, but Atiana paid him no mind. She quickly flipped the flatbreads over, each landing on the cookstone with a sizzle.
    “I don’t like the feel of this,” Sukharam said. “Any of it.”
    Ashan watched Sukharam intently. “There’s no reason to think that anything’s gone amiss.”
    Sukharam looked to his right, toward the caravan route that would take them to the plains below. “Those that live here in the desert… They’re secretive.”
    “As much as the people of the desert might isolate themselves, the caravanserais are run by the Empire. They are the Kamarisi’s people. We should worry about him, not the locals.”
    Atiana flipped the eggplant and sprinkled it with coarse grains of salt and pepper.
    “You may not see it,” Sukharam said, “but they have a distrust of us. I saw it at the edge of the desert. I’ve seen it in each of the caravanserais we’ve visited. They may pledge their loyalty to the Kamarisi in the light of day, but in the dark of the night they serve the desert, and the desert does not want us.”
    “I’ve been here many times before,” Ashan replied. “They watch travelers they do not know, true, but they watch everyone, even people from other caravanserais, other villages.”
    Sukharam was staring at the cookstone—he was a young man, and young men were always hungry—but then he glanced up at Atiana with a sullenness she’d seen on him often.
    Atiana pulled up one of the flatbreads, quickly snatching two of the eggplant strips and folding the bread over it. She handed it to Ashan, whose face brightened as he accepted it. Atiana did the same for the next, handing this one to Sukharam. Only when she’d made the third, and set more dough and eggplant onto the stone for Nikandr, did she turn to Sukharam. “You can say it.”
    He took a bite of his bread and spoke as he chewed. “You shouldn’t have come. You should have left this to us.”
    By us he meant himself and Ashan and even Soroush and Ushai. In his eyes, the four of them had more of a right than Atiana and Nikandr to be here in the desert chasing after the Atalayina.
    “Nasim needs