The Battle Drum by Saara El-Arifi EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Saara El-Arifi
- Language: English
- Genre: Coming of Age Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
SYLAH
The Marion Sea is so named by the natives of the Drylands after the Eastern Star,
“Marion.” Those who follow the star will find themselves at the shores of the
mainland in three weeks. Celestial navigation appears to be the main form of
wayfaring for the clear-bloods in the west who have made it to the continent. It is why
we have struggled to map their land as precisely as I would have liked.
—Head Cartographer of the Zwina Academy, year 238 B.W.
The world bled blue. Sylah wasn’t sure why she hadn’t realized that before
—the earth was a Duster.
Her toes clung to the sand, clenching and releasing the particles of dirt.
Something swirled among the waves. She recognized the movement of it,
the dips and twirls of the current. The laugh of a splash that she knew, she
knew. Her feet left the ground, leading her toward the laughter.
Has she found me? Here at the edge of the world?
The Marion Sea curved across the horizon like an endless smile as it
beckoned her closer. She waded in until her pantaloons were sodden to the
waist and looked for the woman she loved between the eddies of the water.
Something sparkled beneath her, and as she bent to grab it the current
became more urgent. The waves that had once been frothy as lace
dissipated into a foam like fresh spittle. The sea picked and pulled at her
clothes, and the smile on the horizon became a gaping wound bleeding into
the oncoming sunset.
“Sylah, what the fuck are you doing?” Jond was shrieking like an eru in
heat. She could hear the worried pitter-patter of his sandals at the edge of
the shore twenty handspans away.
Her mouth twisted into a scowl at the sound of her friend’s voice.
Former friend. Friends don’t try to kill each other.
Sylah didn’t indicate she’d heard him. She lifted up the shell she had
found and watched the water trickle away. The water was not blue after all
but colorless. Transparent.
“Of course, you’re a Ghosting,” she mused to the ocean. It seemed to
tug back at her in confirmation.
The land she stood on belonged to the Ghostings: every grain of sand,
every droplet of water. It was their world that the founding wardens had
invaded. To silence the truth the Embers had taken the Ghostings’ tongues
and hands. For more than four hundred years the wardens told the lie that
the Ghostings were serving a penance for a rebellion. A rebellion that never
happened. All they were trying to do was defend their own home.
Stolen.
Sylah had also had her life stolen. She had thought it was Anoor who
had taken it, living the life Sylah should have had. But no, that was a lie
too. Anoor was exactly where she should be.
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