 Harper Collins presents The Black Khan by Usma Zainat Khan, read by Jenny Brice. Chapter 1 In the deserted courtyard of the Klay Manar, the bodies of Basmachi fighters were gathered in a pile beneath a stunted tree in the shelter of a square stone base. White ribbons streamed down from the tree's slender limbs tied to its branches and twigs. The ribbons were bare of script. The people of Black Aura could not write. The ribbons were meant as a reminder of their sacred traditions. They were desperate, desolate prayers. The bodies piled beneath the tree formed the authoriton's answer to those prayers. No wind stirred the ribbons or the dying branches. Sunlight blunted the edges of Arian's vision, and she found her way around the tree more by instinct than anything else. She knew she was about to be taken inside the house of worship, just as she knew the authoriton expected a demonstration of her power, a compulsion she had resisted with all the force and determination she was capable of as a companion of Hera. There were only three people in the courtyard, Arian, the authoriton, and his consort, Lania, Arian's older sister. Each night, since she'd been captured in Black Aura, attempting to retrieve the blood-print, Lania and the authoriton had brought Arian to this place. They showed her the stunted tree and the bodies mouldering beneath it, then coerced her into entering the blue-domed house of worship to test her abilities with the claim. Situated on the eastern side of the square, the dome was the pinnacle of a massive structure. Four arcades met at its doubled entrance, each lined with portals decorated with mosaics and glazed bronze brick. At the entrance to the main portal, a sand-coloured octahedron with open arches could be reached by a set of stairs. Here great recitations of the claim had once been addressed to the people of Black Aura, the bloodless sharing the teachings of the blood-print, an ancient and powerful manuscript long believed to be lost. The manuscript that was the oldest, most venerable record of the claim, the powerful, mysterious magic ceded throughout the history of all the lands of Chhorasan, but lost to a people now condemned to a final age of ignorance. Skirting the pulpit, Arian was taken through to the indoor galleries covered by dozens of smaller domes perched on a peristyle. Though well-lit, the interior space was cold and as quiet and deserted as the courtyard. They stopped at a niche in the wall where multicoloured mosaics were arranged in a magnificent declamation. Lania read the words first, verses commonly known to the companions of Hera, though Lania's inflection was different, the words gathered up in hubris and flung out, outlining the niche in a darkly radiant fire while the authoritan nodded his approval. Prodded by her sister, Arian repeated the same words, her strong voice giving them distinctions of grace that coaxed out their inner meaning. The authoritan looked down on Arian from the top of a flight of wooden stairs positioned beside the niche. He stood tall and thin, enclosed in his white robes, his ghastly crimson eyes flickering out from a bloodless white face, a nimbus of silver hair floating above the harshly etched bones of his skull. He seemed too frail to do her any damage, yet his hands and voice transmitted his inescapable power. Now the rest. His reedy voice was like a needle in Arian's ear. That's all there is, she said. You know the conclusion of these verses from your training at the Citadel of Hera. Recite them for us now. The cold command in his voice whipped at Arian's nerves. It was a compulsion to do as he asked, or suffer intolerable pain. Yet she'd learned that though he could otherwise affect her, he could not compel the claim to issue from her lips. It was a tiny point of victory that Arian held to herself, infusing her with a strength of self-reliance that was no reproof against the pain. He raised a bony finger in the air and aimed it at the... Sample complete. Ready to continue?