The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) by Bradley Beaulieu Page B

was true. He’d looked at them all himself, and he’d chosen those that went into the bag, making sure they were neither the best nor the worst. The Haelish had for some reason asked for uncut stones. He knew they crushed the gemstones and worked them into paint that they slathered over their skin before battle. It imbued them, it was said, with the abilities of hezhan without communing with them directly as the Aramahn did. Their wicked magic was how they’d survived so long against Yrstanla, but Yrstanla had been successful at taking and holding the land that held much of Hael’s gemstone mines, slowly tilting the war in their favor.
    The woman, as tall as Styophan himself, gave Kürad his answer. Kürad closed the bag and hefted two of the others before dropping them into the satchel and turning to Styophan. He took one deep breath, and then met Styophan’s gaze. His look was like stone—uncaring, resolute—but it wasn’t until he nodded to the warrior standing at the beaded doorway that Styophan was certain something had gone terribly wrong.
    The warrior turned and left. Styophan heard the call of a bird, the same lonely cry he’d heard earlier in the forest. In the distance he heard it picked up and repeated. And then, barely, he heard it again.
    Styophan’s pulse quickened. A message was being passed through the forest, no doubt to those who’d been set to watch his ships. Had he done something to offend Kürad?
    “My Lord—“
    Styophan managed no more than this, for just then he heard the sound of a cannon in the distance. Another came shortly after. And then a barrage of them came, one after the other.
    Like the pounding of the drums of war.

CHAPTER FOUR

    Styophan pulled the flintlock pistol from his belt and pointed it at Kürad’s chest as a cry from his men outside the yurt filtered in through the doorway.
    “Tell them to stop!” Styophan cried.
    The cannons continued to boom in the distance.
    “Tell them to stop!”
    But the Haelish did not listen. They merely stared, especially Kürad. It was as if he were begging Styophan to fire.
    Styophan pulled the trigger. The shot boomed in the enclosed space and exploded against Kürad’s chest, flaking away some of the glittering umber paint. His skin cracked , as if it were made of so much stone. Blood seeped through the fissures, but the shot itself—by the ancients who protect—had impacted and fallen with a thump to the reed-covered floor.
    Anahid, the gem upon her brow glowing, raised her hands above her head. Between them, white lightning formed. Men ran at her, but before they could grab her, lightning arced out and ran through three of them. They fell to the ground, the first one unmoving, the other two twitching.
    Styophan dropped his pistol and tried to pull his shashka to run them through, but the Haelish men nearby grabbed his arms and twisted them behind his back. He struggled as one of the women rushed forward and struck Anahid on the crown of her head with the hilt of her wood-handled knife.
    The lightning vanished with a resonant buzz, and Anahid slumped to the ground.
    “Leave her!” Styophan cried.
    The Haelish men twisted his arms more painfully until he was on his toes to keep them from pulling an arm from its socket.
    Kürad, the blood from the wound running down his chest and seeping into his buckskin pants, stepped forward until the two of them were face-to-face.
    In the distance, the cannon fire continued, some with the sound he knew well—the smaller cannons of Anuskayan windships. And then a massive boom fell across the forest. Gunpowder… There was a store of gunpowder on the Graaza .
    A score of men had just died from that explosion, and it sounded as if none of the other ships would be spared. The Haelish wouldn’t know what to do with the ships in any case.
    “You cowardly goat!” Styophan shouted in Anuskayan. “You mongrel dog!”
    Kürad responded in Haelish, and the same woman, this time with a flinty look on