Kitabı oku: «The Blue Eye», sayfa 2
Remembering himself, he dropped his hand. He stepped away from Daniyar, remorse darkening his eyes. Mourning the things he knew he would never be able to have.
“I can’t follow you,” he said. “There’s nothing for me save this. Every man in Candour has been conscripted to the Talisman cause. There’s no way out of it, though many of us have tried.” His fingers ran over his scars. “Those who agree to fight are guaranteed the safety of their women. Those who refuse …” He dragged his tunic open, yanking at his armor.
At first Daniyar thought the pattern across his ribs were lash marks left by a whip. But the raised flesh was red and blistered, the texture of the flesh thick and waxy. Toryal’s body had been burned.
A swirling torrent of rage and grief rose inside him.
“You could still come with me. You could bring those like you to the gates, and the Black Khan would give you shelter. It isn’t too late for you to choose another course.”
But Toryal was shaking his head, desperate and unsure.
“Don’t offer me a future I know I’ll never see. All I have left is my hope that my sisters will not be sold.”
And, with his sword gripped in his hand, Toryal disappeared.
The strange lethargy, the almost-hope that had seized Daniyar and held the battle at bay now evaporated in a rush. He moved through the tent, stepping over bodies, searching for the bowl that held his ring. But its piercing light failed to penetrate the smoke.
Then there was no more time to search. The stench of death in his nostrils, the heat of fire at his back, he swung around to face the group of Talisman who advanced.
He drove forward into the fray, his sword flashing out into the night, the Cloak streaming from his back singed by trails of fire. The sight of the Cloak gave one of the Talisman pause; the rest rushed to meet his sword. Daniyar was heavy with muscle, but he moved with the grace of a predator, his skill in combat honed by the years he had stood against the Talisman. Bodies fell as others surged to take their place. The Talisman had no strategy beyond an inarticulate fury they intended to assuage. Daniyar took a slash to his arm, another to the opposite shoulder. It slowed him but didn’t bring him down.
The fury of the Zhayedan’s mangonels brought him a moment or two of rest, and then he was thrust upon his mettle again: more of the soldiers recognized him as the man who had promised a truce during the loya jirga.
Under the rage, he read their contempt for a man who could betray his own. He shrugged it aside, blocking a bold attempt at his throat, another under his armor. But in the end, he couldn’t stand against them all. His arms were tiring; there was nowhere to escape to. Sweat dampened his hair, seeped under his armor. Clouds of smoke stung his eyes. There was no sign of his ring, no other powers to call upon, when he needed his every breath to fight.
But then the Talisman fell back, bodies collapsing to the ground, arrows through their necks or rising from their backs. These weren’t fletched like Teerandaz arrows; they were black-tipped, lethal in their accuracy. He blinked to clear his bleary eyes. Two men were fighting at his side, raising their swords when his movements were too slow. They were sheathed in skintight leather, expressionless behind their masks.
They fought back the press of the attack, and when the Talisman’s attention turned elsewhere, one of them grabbed Daniyar’s arm.
“The field is lost,” he warned. “The only way out is with us.”
1
A NARROW CHAMBER LED OFF TO THE RIGHT OF THE QAYSARIEH PORTAL. A faint scent of dampness emanated from within, overlaid with traces of jasmine. When Arian peered inside, the sight she encountered brought her to a halt. A moment later, her escort became aware that she’d fallen behind. Khashayar, a captain of the Zhayedan army, signaled his men to wait. He strode back to join Arian at the entrance to the chamber.
“Does something delay you, First Oralist?”
He spoke to her with the respect her status as First Oralist demanded. More, his manner set an example for his men, who had balked at abandoning Ashfall while the capital was under attack. Yet the order to accompany the First Oralist on her mission had come directly from the Black Khan. The Zhayedan might find little merit in chasing a holy relic while their comrades fought a battle for survival, but they would obey their Khan, and through him Khashayar. The city would have to hold until they returned from their quest.
Arian raised her eyes to Khashayar’s face. He was black-haired, with dramatic dark eyes under an aristocratic brow. Though he was no relation, in appearance he resembled Rukh, the Black Khan. He was young to be charged with escorting her to Time-back, but his youth was a matter of years, not experience. He carried his command with poise: disciplined, experienced, yet adaptable enough to recognize why Arian’s mission mattered to the fate of his city.
“What is this chamber?” she asked him.
“A cistern. We use it to collect rainwater.”
“There’s a prayer nook in the wall.”
Khashayar nodded, but his head was inclined toward the sounds of combat beyond the city walls. When she still didn’t move, he said, “It was built at the request of the Begum Niyousha—the Black Khan’s mother. She observed her worship here. The Princess Darya followed her example.”
A shadow crossed Khashayar’s face. The Princess of Ashfall had been killed during a skirmish on the walls. She should have been safe in the Al Qasr with the rest of the Khan’s household, yet she’d raced to the western gate to prevent her half-brother, Darius, from striking against the Black Khan, her death as chaotic and impetuous as the way she’d lived her life.
“May I take a moment for prayer before we leave?”
Khashayar’s black gaze skipped over the First Oralist’s confederates—Sinnia, the Companion from the lands of the Negus, and Wafa, the blue-eyed Hazara boy under the Companions’ care.
When he hesitated, Arian tried to reassure him. “The blessing is important, otherwise I wouldn’t delay.” A graceful hand swept out from under her cloak, the gold circlet on her upper arm agleam in the muted light. She gestured back at the square they had passed through where the impact of the battle was felt. “I will pray for the deliverance of Ashfall, as much as for our journey ahead.”
Khashayar gave the order to his men to proceed. He settled himself at the entrance to the cistern, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’ll stand guard.”
“Don’t wait,” Arian said to Sinnia. “Go with the Zhayedan; I won’t be far behind.”
She waited until Sinnia had departed, tugging Wafa along with her. Hesitant now, she nodded at Khashayar. “I will require privacy.”
She flushed a little under the keenness of his gaze.
“I won’t intrude, sahabiya.”
Something in his expression told her she could trust him, though all had come to chaos in both her city and his. His integrity shone from his eyes, his dedication a bond that pulsed between them in the room.
Bowing her head, she slipped past him to make her way to the prayer nook. The vaulted ceiling of the cistern sloped down to a sandstone colonnade. Lanterns in rich blue turquoise were hung between columns of gold above an elongated pool. Between two of these columns, a single pillar, almost like a plinth, had been placed in the center of the pool. The glow of torchlight shone on amber walls, whose high periphery was lined with geometries of tiny blue tiles. At the northeastern corner, a mihrab was fashioned against cold stone like the plume of a peacock’s tail, feathered in emerald green, the exquisite tessellation sheened with light. Beneath it, the golden threads of a well-worn prayer rug reflected echoes of that light.
Arian knelt on the rug. She held words of prayer in her mouth until they bloomed into blessings. Benedictions sought, tumultuous griefs confided. Her fears confessed to the One.
What were they coming to?
What hope did she have of turning the tide of this war?
For years she had battled the tyranny of the Talisman and the greatest cruelty of their reign: their enslavement of the women of the east.
The Companions of Hira were all that stood between the Talisman and total devastation, fighting to preserve Khorasan’s plural heritage, a battle they waged without recourse to force of arms. Instead, they relied upon the scripture of the Claim, the sacred magic passed through oral transmission; its written counterpart had vanished over time, destroyed by the Talisman’s purges.
For a decade, Arian had used her gifts as First Oralist of Hira—First Oralist of the Claim—to disrupt the Talisman’s slave-chains. Then Ilea, the High Companion of her order, had assigned her a new task: to procure the Bloodprint, the sole surviving record of the Claim. Anchored by it, the Companions would have worked to overthrow the Talisman. Months ago, Arian had set out on the trail of the sacred text, but the Black Khan’s machinations had brought the Bloodprint to Ashfall instead.
Now the Talisman’s war had come to the west, to the empire of the Black Khan, and battle raged at his capital. Arian could hear their cries beyond the chamber where she prayed.
Her forehead touched the carpet in prostration. Tears welled up in her eyes, drifting up into her hairline. Her questions sounded like complaints, as if she’d had a crisis of faith. She believed devoutly in the Claim, but she needed to know why she’d struggled so long to lose the Bloodprint in the end. A devastating loss, mitigated only by a new mission: to find the Sana Codex, an ancient record of the Claim hidden away in Timeback, a city of the maghreb.
As a last desperate hope, she had set out with her escort to retrieve it.
I was learning the Bloodprint, she prayed in protest. Why let the One-Eyed Preacher take it? Though I seek the Codex as an answer to its power, is my quest likely to succeed? Do I possess the wisdom to unravel the secrets of the Claim? Will I be able to wield it against one who seems as invincible as the Preacher?
If I fail, who will count the cost?
The prayer rug was wet with her tears now. She had already measured some part of that cost. Her family lost to her in childhood. Her sister’s renunciation when they had chanced to reunite. The Black Khan’s theft of the Bloodprint at the Ark. The manuscript had been in her grasp—then gone. Now two further blows had been struck: she’d been severed from the Council of Hira and divided from the man she loved.
I have Sinnia, she reassured herself. I have Sinnia and Wafa. And this noble soldier of the Zhayedan to guide me, Khashayar, so proud and brave.
She thought about those instances when the Claim had swept over her like a cyclone, overwhelming her conscious will. She whispered a prayer to the One.
Make me a servant of the Word. I have seen the darkness of the Claim. If I must use it to destroy, don’t let it twist who I am. I seek no arcane powers; I disavow the rites of blood.
“Sahabiya.” The soft reminder from Khashayar brought her to the end of her prayers.
Bless these lands, bless this city, bless the people of Khorasan. May the manifest blessings of the One descend upon those who journey at my side, those who wait for me at Hira, and those I leave behind in Ashfall.
Then she made a futile bargain, struck over the ashes of oaths she had already taken.
Keep Daniyar safe, and I’ll give myself to this cause.
She kissed the spot on the carpet that she’d touched with her forehead. When she rose to her feet again, she glimpsed her reflection in the pool. The turquoise waters of the cistern seemed to collect the light—it throbbed at the base of the pool, undulating in a wave that tumbled back into itself. Arian peered into the basin. What caused the light to reflect off the bottomless depths of the pool? Was the basin tiled in silver? She couldn’t tell, the sparks of light kept refracting until the mosaics split apart, an illusion that made the turquoise depths seem infinite.
A mystery she would willingly explore, but the pallor of her skin disturbed the surface of the pool, and her mind was distracted. Her face was lined with weariness, her eyes dull, her hair hanging in limp, damp trails. She’d been a queen at the Black Khan’s banquet—ornamented, perfumed, beguiling, young, and alluringly feminine, a woman who belonged at a court as graceful and dignified as Ashfall’s. How long ago that tranquility seemed now, how deceptive her brief transformation.
She firmed the line of her jaw to make herself appear steadfast, a trick that failed to suffice, her body and spirit bruised in too many ways to count. Now, the dullness was a thing within, the spark of her purpose extinguished. She’d exchanged one guise for another, one quest for another, her course meant to be unerring, but she couldn’t deceive herself. She didn’t want to leave Daniyar. She didn’t trust that she would find her way to Timeback or that she would find what she was searching for in the city. The journey would take time.
What would she return to?
The green eyes that gazed back at her from the pool were bleak with worry and fear. “We must go,” Khashayar said.
Must we? she asked herself.
2
“WE’VE FACED WORSE ODDS.”
Sinnia’s spyglass was trained on the open grasslands, a brief stretch between the hidden exit of Qaysarieh’s tunnels and the rearguard of the camped-out forces of the Rising Nineteen. She grinned, a white flash against glossy dark skin. “It’s usually just the two of us against our enemies, me with my whip, you with your sword and the Claim.” She stretched out the muscles of her shoulders, a luxurious movement in the cramped confines of the tunnel. “This time we have a boy”—she ran an affectionate hand over Wafa’s unruly curls—“and a ferocious host to accompany us.” Wafa didn’t smile at Sinnia, daunted by the sounds of the battle that raged behind them in the city, but he leaned into her touch.
The host consisted of ten well-armed members of the Khorasan Guard. The men looked harried by the sounds of the battle they had left, impatient to return to the defense of their city, though they knew the journey ahead was a long one. Their route would take them across the Empty Quarter to Axum, the capital of the Negus. A reasonable place to break the journey, as it would allow Sinnia to return to the home she hadn’t visited in a year. But Arian had her own reasons for stopping at Axum. If they were able to get through the Rising Nineteen and come out on the other side unharmed, Axum would be a place of refuge. Hunted by the One-Eyed Preacher, they would need that refuge.
Pausing their journey at Axum would also give her the chance to study its celebrated manuscripts. With its long history of exchange with the maghreb, there might be a clue to the whereabouts of the Sana Codex somewhere in Axum’s lore, or at least some reference to the Mage of the Blue Eye, who was reputed to be its keeper. Perhaps the Negus or his queen would be able to tell her more.
Another uncertainty she faced.
If they did find the elusive Blue Mage, she hoped to persuade him to trust her with the Codex—to convince him that her need for it was urgent. It was the only answer to the Preacher’s mastery of the Bloodprint, and she couldn’t stand against him without it, no matter her proficiency with the Claim. She needed knowledge to match his knowledge, or she would have stayed in Ashfall to fight. The necessity of her return was ever-present on her mind.
Khashayar felt it too. He lowered his spyglass to speak.
“There’s no cover, no means to take them by surprise. We’ll have to engage them, First Oralist.” His nod acknowledged Sinnia. “And despite the Companion’s optimism, this is not a battle we can win. The numbers are against us.”
Sinnia passed her spyglass to Arian so she could see for herself, aware that there was something different about Arian but unable to pinpoint what it was. Arian studied the open grasslands, noting the distance they’d have to clear. Passing the spyglass back to Sinnia, she turned to scan the men behind her, her gaze lighting on each for a moment, until each one lowered his gaze. All except Khashayar, who raised his chin and waited.
Arian pressed one hand against the gold circlet on her upper arm, the insignia worn by the Companions of Hira.
“They haven’t moved. They’re waiting for a signal from the One-Eyed Preacher.”
Khashayar unscrewed a silver flask and took a sip of water. The flask was nothing like the plain leather waterskins Arian and Sinnia carried. It was engraved with ornate calligraphy in the pattern of a lush floral wreath. When he saw that the calligraphy had captured Arian’s attention, he offered the flask to her. Arian read the list of blessings and offered them aloud. She returned Khashayar’s flask to him without drinking from it, though his offer had been generous. She knew Khashayar would understand that as a matter of etiquette, she would not place her lips against the opening his lips had touched. He tucked away his flask without comment.
“What is your counsel, First Oralist?”
“I will provide cover.” She showed him a small hillock of grass-threaded sand in the near distance. “We need to reach that hill without giving ourselves away.”
Khashayar checked the spot with a frown. “Even if you could provide cover, it leaves us too close to their soldiers. Our circle around them should be wider.” He showed her what he meant with a sweep of his hand, inadvertently brushing her arm. Her golden circlet pulsed. He was taken aback by the energy that leapt from her body to his. She shifted to allow it to pass.
“Forgive me, I meant no offense.”
“You gave none.” Her soft words stroked over him, and for a moment he had the sense he was being gentled as one would coax a stallion to the touch of a warrior’s hand. Her answer echoed his thoughts. “We must risk it, Khashayar.” She turned back to the opening again, squeezed against Sinnia and Wafa. “They have horses I intend to take.”
Khashayar rubbed his jaw. He widened his stance, planting his feet.
“Horses will not survive the crossing of the Rub Al Khali. The risk is a foolish one, First Oralist.”
His men murmured behind him. The noise of catapults crashing into Ashfall’s courtyard sounded at their backs. The time for ambivalence was over. Either he convinced the Companions to return, or he accepted their direction.
He’d already learned that the First Oralist shared little of her thoughts or her plans. She was used to traveling without a company of soldiers at her back, unwilling to justify her actions, but something about her certainty spoke to Khashayar. Convinced him to heed her counsel.
“We must go,” she said now. “The Claim will cover us all. The risk is worth it.”
With no further argument, he signaled to the men behind him. They moved into position. He squeezed past Wafa, gestured at the Companions.
“I’ll go first with two of my men. Follow us once we are clear.”
The sound of the Claim filled the tunnel, washing the dankness from it, wrapping around their senses, its notes as close and familiar as if the men were voicing it themselves. When Khashayar and his soldiers had eased out of the tunnel, Arian and Sinnia followed with Wafa, the rest of their escort at their back. The Claim rose around them, strong and sweet, yet oddly hollow, a breeze blowing over plains of fertile scrubland. Their party moved across the grass, cocooned inside the Claim, the soft words blowing across the group of soldiers who kept watch at the rear of the Nineteen’s army. Military men, professional and well-trained, alert to sounds and movement around them, their camp orderly and silent.
Khashayar tallied numbers, noted the count and caliber of weaponry, made sharp-eyed assessments of the men waiting to attack Ashfall from the west. The rearguard consisted of two hundred men. In each small group was a runner, positioned to receive messages from the soldiers yet to arrive. The entire vanguard consisted of no more than a thousand men. When spread out in a line against the plains, they had seemed ten times that number. Or perhaps the One-Eyed Preacher had used his sorcery to demoralize the defenders of Ashfall.
He counted the brushfires along their encampment. They lit the faces of small groups, though most of the men had covered the lower half of their faces with their neck scarves, in the custom of their people. He noted the looseness of their robes as a weakness—not what he would have chosen to wear as armor into battle. His own men wore leather armor that closely conformed to their bodies, their weapons at their waists, shields slung over their backs. The Nineteen may have been well-fortified, but Khashayar perceived disadvantages the Zhayedan could exploit.
As they crept ahead with utmost stealth, he considered sending a message by hawk to convey his discoveries to Arsalan, the commander of the Black Khan’s army. But too many of the tribal herders who made up the Rising Nineteen had cast their glances at the sky, waiting for such a signal to give away the enemy’s position. As he scanned the perimeter for a possible ambush, he noticed when two soldiers in each group raised their torches, the signal he had been waiting for.
He held up his hand to silence all movement. The Companions came to a halt, the First Oralist at his side, the Claim a near-silent murmur from her mouth. They were no more than fifty feet from the rearguard of the Nineteen. Two of the soldiers glanced in their direction.
The breeze that brushed the grasslands whipped against their faces, forcing them to turn away.
Khashayar’s smile was grim. He knew his duty was to escort the Companions to Timeback, but his mind was racing with other possibilities. With the First Oralist’s use of the Claim, perhaps they could strike against the rearguard and strike hard—hard enough to gain Ashfall another night’s reprieve.
Before the First Oralist could answer the question in his eyes—or before he could act on his own—a chant began in the Nineteen’s camp. The soldiers beat against the ground with their torches in an accompanying rhythm. The chant was meant to terrorize the citizens of Ashfall, but Khashayar was mystified by the meaning of the words they spoke. They offered it in the High Tongue. As an elite commander, he was literate enough to understand.
“Over this are Nineteen.”
Over what? What did their name signify? He lowered his arm in a signal and began to move again, letting the words sweep over the night. The First Oralist’s continuous murmur of the Claim dimmed any fear he might have felt at the chant.
Over this are Nineteen.
He glanced back at his men to ensure that their course was steady. They moved with precision, a line of warriors determined to protect the Companions and the boy, weapons in hand, eyes focused on the soldiers who should have seen their movements in the open but whose heads remained turned away.
Though the temptation to strike was great, Khashayar bided his time. He would get the Companions to safety, and then he would persuade the First Oralist of the merits of his plan.
They stole across the grass, their movements sleek and their footing sure. None looked away from the Nineteen, waiting for the silence to break, prepared at any moment for discovery.
But under the steady flow of the First Oralist’s words, they made their way to the hillock and dipped down the other side. Now they were positioned on a twenty-foot dune that loomed above the Nineteen. Khashayar made a rapid calculation and was convinced: if the First Oralist used the Claim to shield them, he and his men could eliminate the rearguard.
She would caution him, he knew. Ten against two hundred. But he’d seen the power of the Claim.
Still, he had to consider the step that would come after a surprise attack. News of the First Oralist’s routing of the One-Eyed Preacher at the Messenger Gate had spread rapidly through the ranks of the Zhayedan. She was a weapon they could wield. If she remained on their side. Angering her for a limited victory could mean losing her assistance entirely.
Too, the First Oralist had made calculations of her own. She wanted the horses the soldiers closest to them had grouped at the rear of their camp—horses whose finely shaped heads were the mark of the region’s thoroughbreds. The horses could take them some distance farther west, though they lacked the stamina for the journey through the heart of the Rub Al Khali desert. At some point, the Companions would need to trade the thoroughbreds for camels.
But surely he could use that to his advantage. He would give the First Oralist her horses, if she agreed to his strike. If she helped him destroy the Nineteen’s entire vanguard. He glanced over at her, expecting to find her attention focused on the horses. Instead, her gaze had followed his, and now she watched him closely, as if she could read his thoughts. Could she? He frowned at the thought.
“First Oralist—”
She spoke to him kindly, her cloak thrown back, the breeze taking the long strands of her hair, so that it whipped at his skin, soft as Marakand silk. “I don’t have the power you seek.”
“You defeated the One-Eyed Preacher at the walls.”
“A momentary respite.”
Something in the air shifted. The chanting slowed. Deepened. Soldiers in the camp began to move. Spyglasses scanned the dunes.
Arian and Khashayar ducked down. The murmur of the Claim began again, this time augmented by Sinnia, while the boy, Wafa, crouched at their sides, his blue eyes wide with fear.
Arian shifted closer to the horses. His courtesy set aside, Khashayar’s hand shot out to clamp down on her wrist.
She turned back to him, pinned him with eyes that seemed to see everything, things he didn’t want her to know.
But it was the boy who wrenched Khashayar’s grip from her wrist. A hard smile touched Khashayar’s lips. The Hazara boy freed by the Companions had a blind devotion to them now. Nothing could rout him from their sides, or from their self-appointed Audacy.
He watched as the First Oralist took the boy’s hand and pressed a kiss to his curls.
The Talisman’s prejudice spilled over into his thoughts. How could the First Oralist of Hira kiss a child of the Hazara, a people too weak to defend themselves, instead of aligning herself with much worthier allies?
She answered his unspoken question. “We are all equals. We all belong to the One.” Then, moving out of his reach, she skirted closer, lower down the ridge to where the horses were pastured. “If I could help you, I would, Khashayar. You’ll have to learn to trust me.” She nodded at the city in the distance, a glimmer of lights beyond the army’s encampment. The sounds of battle were fainter far from the walls, yet still audible. The clash of steel, the destruction sowed by catapults that creaked under the weight of their projectiles, the clean whistle of arrows slicing through bursts of noise. Brilliant dots of fire flickered along the walls.
“I would understand if you and your men chose to return to make your stand at Ashfall. Just as Sinnia and I must fulfill our purpose.”
She held his gaze, her own astonishingly clear.
Go with her, the Black Khan had said. Do not leave her side. Whoever stands against you, whoever you must destroy, your foremost duty is to bring the Sana Codex to Ashfall. No matter what the First Oralist may tell you. No matter where she tries to take it. Do otherwise, and you will be party to the destruction of this empire.
Khashayar’s fingers curled into his palm. He moved to give the First Oralist cover, signaling to his men. Crawling crabwise across the hill in their descent, he felt the verses of the Claim attain an urgency. A harshness to stand against words that had no meaning for him, despite their pounding pulse.
Over this are Nineteen.
His armor was brushed by spiky tufts of grass that pricked at the skin of his throat. The breeze summoned by the Claim blew the smoke from the Nineteen’s fires away from their small party back into the camp, where soldiers could be heard coughing. He gripped his sword, sliding sideways. His men remained in position at the crest. Two of his monitored their progress. The First Oralist had also motioned to the boy to wait for her return.
Now Khashayar and the Companions inched their way closer to the camp with the horses, each increment of movement scrutinized in advance.
Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. So close now that the horses’ ears pricked forward, hearing their subtle movements beneath the Claim. Sinnia’s use of the Claim broke off.
“If the Silver Mage was with us, he could calm the horses for us.”
She picked up her use of the Claim before Arian could answer, though Arian’s shoulders tightened at the words. She changed her intonation. The Claim became more secret. When Khashayar looked up to measure their progress, his head was within kicking distance of the enemy’s boots.
He rolled away. The soldier didn’t stir, his gaze fixed on the stars.
Then, like a wraith trailing clouds of mist, the First Oralist flowed to her feet, her graceful movements matched by Sinnia’s. She stroked the mane of one of the sequestered mares, murmuring the Claim in its ear. The horse shifted to nuzzle her shoulder, and Khashayar saw that the mares were linked together, held by a single lead. He motioned to the Companions to retreat, wrapping the lead around his wrist. His powerful body nudged the lead mare up the slope, his sharp eyes trained on the soldiers guarding the horses.
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