Dragon Horse

Chapter 1: The Unexpected Return

Kan raced through the deserted, dusty streets of Maracanda as the first slanting rays of sunrise cast long shadows over the capital city of the Western Empire. He leapt over the sleeping bodies of the street-people in the great market-square of the Grand Bazaar, gulping in the cool air. In only an hour or two the extreme heat of the last few weeks would be settling like a pall over the city.

It was high summer, and the maze of winding alleys and small lanes that surrounded the Grand Bazaar were overflowing with uncollected piles of waste and refuse. There had been no wind on the plains surrounding the city for many weeks now, so that the summer grass, usually so lush and green, was turning a scorched brown colour. The cooling northerly winds needed to bring the relief of rain had not come, and Maracanda baked in the heat - the people muttered that it was a bad omen, a troubled sign of the times.

Kan was an acrobat. He was only thirteen but had travelled with his circus people up and down the trade roads that criss-crossed the Empire more than any of his friends put together, including his best friend, Rokshan. Rokshan was the younger son of one of the city's richest merchants, a powerful trading family headed by the formidable Naha Vaishravana, Rokshan's father. He couldn't wait to tell his friend that their favourite storyteller, Shou-lao, known to everyone as the Old Man of the Markets, had travelled back with the circus people from their last show.

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