Kadin and the Noble's Daughter

ell. Kadin stabbed hard, burying his black knife to the hilt in the man's throat. The small man gurgled and fell. Even in death his face was calm.

They rode hard that night and into the late morning. Sweat poured over Kadin's face and down his braids to his back. Every step his horse took was a new lesson in pain. He passed out at least twice but Lenda's cry woke him before he fell from his mount. If he had fallen, he would have died.

At high sun, when the red orb burned hottest spotted the ragged peaks of their destination, Ava Tog Kar. The ruins looked the same as they had when he had stumbled on them three years earlier. As far as he knew, no one knew of the ruins but him.

Two of the four stone towers tapering from their wide bases to the sharp tips, had crumbled to dust. The northern wall, built of huge sandstone bricks, stood with the remaining two towers. Kadin and Lenda rode around the wall and through a path of sinister granite statues. Each was shaped either as a naked man or wom