Chasers of the Wind by Alexey Pehov Read Free Book Online Page A

they were swimming and was now coughing it up.
    The wind drove away the clouds, the moon emerged anew, and the northerners beheld the bleached and majestic ruins of an ancient city. People had abandoned the mountain capital of this former Imperial province when the War of the Necromancers began. Since then more than five hundred years had passed. No one had ever returned to live in Gerka, the City of a Thousand Columns, as travelers called it. The centuries had transformed this former pearl of the highlands into a dead kingdom of cold wind. It came here every evening from the snowcapped heights and mournfully wailed through the ruins of the ancient buildings. This place was known as a ghost town. The highlanders detoured around its borders and did not rest for the night if there was a distance of less than a league between them and its white walls.
    But the northerners weren’t superstitious. The way through Gerka was five times shorter than any other. At the southernmost tip of the city a trail commenced, and that trail led to a pass, and from there it was no distance at all to the Gates.
    They passed through a tall arch that had once been the main gate, and came out onto a wide street. Wherever they looked there were crumbling houses and hundreds of marble columns stretching toward the sky. The moonlight sparkled on them, enlivening them, making them seem as dazzlingly beautiful as they had been in those years when life teemed here. The silver-blue light gleamed in the gaps of the empty street, the old buildings cast dark shadows, and faint bluish wisps of incipient fog crept along the time-ravaged pavement.
    Gerka stared impassively at the outsiders from the gloomy ruins of her buildings. She had no care for who came to her or why. She only sang her song with the wind. The wind was her eternal friend, but people always left and betrayed her. She had no desire to take vengeance on them for their treachery; she only desired one thing—to be left in peace. So the once great city let the three warriors from the far north pass through her without inflicting any harm on them.
    Just as she would let those who followed after the redhaired warriors pass through.
    *   *   *
    The trail skirted the edge of a precipice. To the left of it was a basalt wall. To the right—a chasm. The scouts had been climbing for more than an hour already, and the valley that held the City of a Thousand Columns was far below. Da-Tur kept casting his eyes up at the faint stars. Dawn was not far off. By the time it arrived they needed to be at the pass, or better yet, beyond it.
    Inhospitable, biting, icy wind; snow on the path. The pass was just a stone’s throw away. The night had robbed them of all their strength, and they were tired, but they continued to move forward doggedly. Ga-Nor repeatedly stopped and looked back. He didn’t really believe that they’d succeeded in deceiving the necromancer.
    Ahead of them, a figure appeared on the path. Against the background of the rapidly brightening sky and the white stain of the snow only his silhouette was visible—tall, compact, wide-shouldered. He was walking from the direction of the pass. He was not hurrying, but ambling, as if he were out for a stroll.
    Ta-Ana was in the lead. She took aim.
    “May a snow gove take me! Who is that?” said the archer nervously, biting her lips.
    “I don’t know,” replied Da-Tur tensely. “No one but the servants of the White could be here. In the leg.”
    The woman smiled wolfishly and pulled back her bowstring. The stranger was almost upon them. Ga-Nor strained his sight and saw that the entire body of the man was covered in scaled armor.
    “Don’t shoot! It’s a Fish!” he shouted at the exact same moment that Ta-Ana let loose her arrow.
    An earsplitting crash rang out.
    The stranger burst like an overripe melon. A warm shock of stinking air threw Ga-Nor, who had not been holding on to anything, into the chasm. Ta-Ana was also unlucky. As soon as