Blade of the Avatar/Blade of Midras/Chapter 16

=Opalis=

Excerpt
The city of Opalis lay at the horizon like a beckoning mirage.

Syenna, Aren, and Zhal, along with six of the Baroness’ guards, stopped their horses in wonder on the road that crossed the plain. They had followed the Jaana River from the Ash Coast up to the crossroads village of Jaanaford, then continued up the road that paralleled the West Jaana for several days. Now, in an instant, the weariness of their journey was momentarily forgotten.

“It’s incredible,” Aren said, shaking his head. Sitting on the back of the chestnut horse they had placed him on, the vision that had caught his eyes across the plane had made him forget that his hands were tied and bound to the horn of the saddle beneath him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Syenna smiled in wistful awe. “I didn’t know.”

“You haven’t been here before?” Aren asked.

“If I had only known,” she replied.

“It is a most common reaction among those whose eyes first gaze upon the beauty of Opalis,” chuckled Gerad Zhal as he urged his horse forward just enough to come alongside the captain. “I would have thought, Captain Bennis, that a warrior in the service of the Obsidian Cause would have seen many such places in the course of his conquests.”

“No, Loremaster,” Aren said through a lopsided grin. “Never anything like this.”