 Harper Collins presents The Blue Eye, Book III of the Horizan Archives, by Osma Zechanid Khan, read by Jenny Brice. Prologue They wouldn't kill him at the council. The Talisman commanders were suspicious of Danyar, but they held fast to the rules of the loyal Jirga. The consultation Danyar had asked for with the leaders of the Talisman tribes. The Shin War in particular held themselves to a higher standard. Their commitment to their own honour was the reason Danyar retained any hope of returning to the Blakhan city unharmed. Once he returned to the safety of Ashville, this temporary reprieve would end. Though Danyar was one of the Shin War, as well as the guardian of Kandor, the city was now the capital of the Talisman. He would be seen as an enemy. As such, he would be hunted with the same ferocity as the Blakhan himself, unless he could persuade the Talisman commanders that their war against the Khan was futile, that they should retreat for the sake of their own survival—for the sake of the boys who had known too much war, boys conscripted by force. He'd pass many of those boys on his way to the Talisman's central command. Their eyes were sunken in their haggard faces, their cheeks hollow with hunger. Though they hoisted Talisman standards and readied themselves for battle, their hopelessness haunted him. He had walked in their midst without fear, meeting each one's gaze, the sacred cloak flowing down his back as he passed, deliberately permitting it to brush their hands, even though he knew the Talisman would consider his act a sacrilege. To take something holy that had been guarded for centuries and allow the basis rabble to touch it was to dishonour the cloak in their eyes. And as contemptible as that idea was to Danyar, that some were more deserving of grace than others, he didn't think of the Talisman's legions as contemptible. As he met their eyes, eyes that were blue, green, amber-gold or dark, midnight-flect brown, he thought of them as his own. Shin War or not, these boys who fought the Talisman's wars and inflicted the Talisman's cruelties had once been his trust as guardian of Kandor. He'd called for the lawyer Jerger as much for them as for himself. Somehow they must have known it. As he passed through their ranks unmolested, each boy bowed his head, unable to sustain the clarity of his brilliant silver gaze. Two Talisman pages leapt forward to raise the flaps of the tent as he entered. He memorised their faces and thanked them in a quiet voice. Bewildered by this show of respect, they retreated without daring to speak. Danyar sighed, the movement of his powerful shoulders shifting the cloak to one side. They reminded him of Wafa, the Hazara boy under his care, who distrusted any show of kindness. Inside the tent he was greeted by wary commanders, all of whom were armed. He searched out those who might recognise him as the defender of the first oralist, sworn enemy to these men. The Talisman's war was as much against the women mystics known as the Companions of Hera as it was against the Blachan. Led by the one-eyed preacher, the Talisman sought to bring all of Horasan under their ruthless law. None who defied that law were spared. Women faced a darker fate, sold in slave chains to the North. Like the Blachan, the Companions of Hera stood in the way of the Talisman advance. Danyar had pledged himself to their cause, and to the cause of one woman in particular, Arian, the first oralist, the woman he loved. He'd fought his kin for her, he'd killed for her without a second thought. Now as he searched the faces of the commanders, he wondered if any might recognise him not just as her defender, but also as the rider who had killed his own cousin at the frozen city of Furusco, or if any had witnessed his killing of the Talisman leader who had roused a mob against Arian in Kandor when Arian had taken the Sacred Cloak from its shrine, or worse yet, if any might know him from the…