Silk Roads and Shadows by Susan Shwartz

Author:Susan Shwartz [Shwartz, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction
ISBN: 9780330306621
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 1990-04-14T23:00:00+00:00

Unable to rest, they waited out the storm, wondering if it had stopped their pursuers.

When the winds subsided to a faint howl, Bryennius, in the grip of the blackness that filled his heart since Ch'ang-an, took two of the scouts on a mad foray to the rear. Two men returned with news of the army of marching statues.

Only one chariot still rolled along on cracked wheels, drawn by clay horses that lacked manes or limped on only three hooves. The footmen's armor was crazed and pitted by windblown gravel; several of the spearmen lacked arms.

Statues blown onto their sides or backs jerked and rolled until collision with another statue or a standing rock pushed them back onto their feet or broke them beyond use.

Bryennius had lost one of their scouts, a trained siinger, after he hurled a stone that hit an ancient captain, and waited too long to see if the now-headless statue could rise. So there was a method of "killing" the statues, but there were still so many statues and so few of them that Alexandra insisted that there be no more such forays.

Outside Keriya, their water ran short. Now they could spare none for the beasts, and they thanked God for the camels. Still, each day, their humps diminished and their long-legged strides slowed.

And the distance between them and the deadly army of Ch'in Shih Huang-di, which needed no water, dwindled.

Days blurred into nights of too much watchfulness SIN

and too little sleep. This close to any town, they!

fear bandits as well as their pursuers. They was travel by night again.

One night Alexandra flogged her groaning camel t bar head of the line of march. As had become his Bryennius usually rode alone.

"Leshi, one of our Tibetans, tells me that there! lake at the desert's heart," she said. "If we found wouldn't have to risk entering Keriya."

"The desert has no heart," Bryennius said. "WeJust to enter Keriya to buy more animals. Two camels bar mange, and one is near to foundering."

The Bryennius she remembered would have been bar to quest for the mysterious lake. This silent, stranger knew what their presence in a market might cost it, but dared not turn aside. She susp that his decision would give him screaming night again tonight, and all the nights that followed. She' have taken his hand if she thought he'd have per it.

Bryennius saw the gesture. Something struggled l bar bar gray eyes, so pale compared to the night and his ered skin . . .

"Brother . . ." she stammered.

"In the name of God, don't call me that!" the we tore out. "Don't look at me like that! Everyone who 1 ever called me brother-Leo, Suleiman, even Li Sfc comis someone I've lost. Everyone who has ever offe me a future is*someone I've had to leave. I beg you,.! me alone to think about the trail and the desert, nothing else."

"There's me," Alexandra whispered. "And Siddiqa "And what happens to you, Siddiqa, and me when if we return

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