Kaida
I smelled it before I saw it.
The air changed somewhere in the last hour of the journey — the cool northern dampness of the road giving way to something drier, warmer, carrying the scent of dust and stone and something exotic flowering that I didn’t recognise. After weeks of forest and rain and mud and the foul smell of road inns, it hit me like stepping through a door into another world.
I had fallen asleep against the carriage window. The motion woke me — the wheels found a different surface, smoother, the horses’ rhythm changing as the road began to climb.
I pushed the curtain aside.
The moon was high and almost full, and in its light I could see hills. Pale hills, dry grass, scattered dark trees with twisted shapes I didn’t know the name of. The landscape was nothing like an
