The Oathbreaker's Shadow (25 page)

Wadi skipped a rock down into one of the side tunnels as they marched past. Large red Xs were plastered outside the entrance to ea extremely bl most fech tunnel to mark dead ends. Here, so early in their journey, the rock was smooth and well worn. It looked almost natural. But then again, Wadi was telling him that the tunnels this close to Lazar had been built centuries ago. The rock felt cool to the touch as Raim leaned his hand up against it, pausing to take a breath.

They had taken nothing with them. The only thing of value was his half of Dharma’s scarf, tied around his wrist like a talisman. A reminder.

The tunnel until now had been much wider than Raim had antici pated and supported by pillars carved from the rock. His only point of comparison was the mines that he had visited in the north of Darhan, close to the Amarapura mountains. There, the workers had used wooden beams to support the mines, and lumber was constantly being hauled down on wooden tracks to the site of the most recent excavation. There was no such timber framework in the Lazarite tunnels, but then again, Raim hadn’t seen a tree since his exile. It was no wonder the people here were such amazing stone carvers. The sheer amount of rock and stone that needed to be excavated in order to construct such a complex labyrinth forced Raim to again admire the industriousness of these people who laboured towards an unknown – perhaps completely unattainable – goal. There was no real way of knowing whether the tunnels would ever be used again as a trade route back to
Darhan. But it hadn’t prevented them from persevering.

Wadi grabbed his arm. ‘We’re getting near the river,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t seen this before, then you must.’

Vlad shot Wadi a knowing look. ‘We need to set up camp for the night anyhow,’ he said.

‘Will they come looking for us?’ Raim asked.

Vlad shook his head. ‘No. Did you see them? They looked so . . . excited. And no one will suspect I would leave withovehement prote

Coming down was easier than going up. They raced down, and rejoined the main path towards the cavern. Streams of people flowed past them in the opposite direction. The snippets of conversation that he heard set his teeth on edge. ‘Back to Darhan . . .’ ‘Khareh . . .’ ‘Seven chosen . . .’

Finally he could take it no longer, and he stopped one of the Lazarites as he passed by. ‘Where are you going?’ he said.

‘To the temple, of course! Dumas is choosing his seven. I want to be one of the first back to Darhan. Back to my home! Can you believe it? Khareh was just a babe in arms when I was . . . when I left . . . and now look at him! I wonder if I can reach my tribe.’

‘But Khareh is here, look!’
Draikh, come over here
. A still-meek Draikh floated over to stand in front of the Chauk. ‘He will tell you that he would never allow Chauk back to Darhan.’

The man crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I know you. Everyone does. You claim that the promise between you and Khareh is still intact, although his haunt is here, and that his haunt has no connection back to Khareh. If that’s the case, then he doesn’t know any more than we do. Maybe it was
him
’ – he pointed to Draikh – ‘that hates the Chauk, and not the rest of Khareh. Maybe the rest of his soul has seen the light.’ The man shoved past Raim and Draikh, the conversation brusquely over.

They found Vlad seated next to a low flame on the other side of the river, having crossed a wide stone bridge made by the Chauk an age ago. ‘So much water,’ Raim muttered again.

‘Yes,’ said Vlad, and he went on to answer Raim’s unasked question. ‘But we dare not use too much, for if it dries up, that will be the end of Lazar. Can you imagine? That is why we trade water with the Alashan, not give of it freely. They have not toiled for years to dig these paths to this source.’ An uncharacteristic flash of anger tinged Vlad’s voice, but it soon settled. ‘Ancient habits,’ he mumbled, although Raim hadn’t questioned him, or judged him for his bitterness. Raim had been in Lazar for too long to be bothered by the small gripes of ire that escaped the elders. They were at least less vehement than those that crowded the rhetoric of Dumas.

The fires projected Raim’s flickering shadow up onto the wall, larger than life. While Wadi and Vlad sat, he paced, and his shadow paced with him. His other shadow,
Draikh, leaned up against a curve in the rock his curiositys I?mime=image/jpg" from the i where the exit to the cave began.

At that moment, Draikh was in his head. ‘You’re nervous,’ he said.

It’s not like you to state the obvious
, Raim replied.

Vlad spoke to Wadi. ‘Do you know the fastest route north?’

‘Not really, but I thought we would branch left after the second river station.’

Their conversation passed him by as Draikh continued. ‘Glad you’re speaking to me again.’

Raim bit his lip.
I could never forgive Khareh, but you . . . you’re not him, are you?

‘I
am
him,’ said Draikh, cocking his head to one side. ‘But I am not the part that chose to hurt Dharma.’

Then that will be enough for me. Losing my best friend was . . . is . . .

‘I’m still here.’

I know.

Raim felt soft. His legs felt soft and his arms felt soft and inside his chest his heart seemed turned to mush. They had been running. He, Vlad and Wadi had taken off after they had all had what they hoped was a night’s rest.

But they couldn’t run at a steady or normal pace. Knowing the Chauk were battling through the desert alongside them, moving as fast as they could, kept them motivated. They had to sprint as fast as they could, taking
all the narrow shortcuts Wadi could remember until they raced across the second river and stopped to refill their canisters. It was here that Raim felt the exertion’s toll on his body. He cursed the fact that, in spite of Silas’s warnings, he had forfeited some of the fitness he had been so proud of as a Yun apprentice to focus on the meditation offered by Puutra and the temple.

He could read similar looks of pain on the faces of all his companions, except Draikh and Vlad’s spirit. It offered him no consolation. Neither Vlad nor Wadi had trained like he had. He jumped up and down on the spot, knowing that if he let his heartrate slow, he would collapse onto the ground and need a longer rest.

Once the other two were ready, they started up again. Now they were beyond Wadi’s previous experience of the tunnels. Draikh led the way, hovering faster than any of them could run and with a constant look of bemusement on his face that Raim saw whenever the spirit turned round to cheer them on.

Raim didn’t know if anyone had ever met their spirit-self before, but soon both he and Khareh would. Spirits of the same person had met each other in Lazar – sometimes even disliked each other – but the experience would be different from the physical form meeting the spiritual. The difference was that Khareh didn’t know he was about to meet Draikh. Raim debated whether to ask the spirit to stay back.

‘No,’ said Draikh inside Raim’s head. He knew that any
effort requiring speech on Raim’s part would drain his energy from running. ‘The additional element of surprise could benefit us.’

Raim tried to concentrate but his breathing was laboured. He felt every rib against his lungs. Sharp pains shot through his sides and the soles of his feet. But he knew he just had to push on. As a result, it took him several minutes before he felt comfortable enough to reply coherently, even in thought.

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It could benefit us
, he said silently.
Or it could lead him to kill me on the spot. He will be convinced that I broke my promise to him – he knows of no other way that you could be visible. We didn’t know that he could drive part of his own soul away.

The conversation had, in fact, been more motivating than Raim realized. He had picked up his pace just thinking about Khareh and was soon several strides beyond Wadi and Vlad. He had been following the twisting tunnel path without much thought or difficulty, but now he found himself at a three-way junction, and he was forced to stop and allow his companions to catch up.

Wadi appeared first. Running had forced her into a kind of trance, so much so that Raim’s stationary form shocked her and made her jump.

Raim put his hand on her shoulder as she gulped for breath. ‘Any idea which way we should go?’

Vlad arrived by the time Raim finished his question, and doubled over with his hands on his knees.

Wadi abruptly shoved Raim’s hand off her body and set to work examining the three separate entrances. She crawled up the rock, balancing on ledges until she reached the apex of one of the archways. Then she rubbed furiously at the stone. Dust plumed onto the ground. Eventually a small engraving became visible.

‘Amazing!’ said Raim. ‘How’d you know that?’

‘I knew we’d come to one of these eventually. Puutra told me about them, although I had never seen one before. These tunnels have not been used for a long time. Look – the markings are all covered in dust. But . . . I don’t recognize this language,’ said Wadi.

Vlad stepped forward to examine the marking more closely. ‘Neither do I,’ he admitted.

‘But the Baril are supposed to be masters of language – of all language – so they claim,’ protested Raim. ‘My brother boasted he would even master the speech of birds and plants. How could a man-written hand be a mystery?’

Vlad grew quickly defensive. ‘This mark could have been made five centuries ago or more! No Chauk comes north through the tunnels any more. Whatever language this is, must have been long lost. The Baril do not all deal in the lost languages. If you must know, my speciality was mammal language. When you learn to read a hoof print like I can, then you can mock me. If you ever learned to readis – ignorant soldier-boy.’

‘Enough, you two.’ Wadi jumped down from the rock after un covering the symbols from above the other two
doors. ‘Instead of bickering, you could have helped me uncover the writing, and then we wouldn’t still be standing around. And, as a matter of fact, I
have
seen this script before.’

‘Really?’ said Raim. He was glad to see that Vlad flushed with shame as well.

‘Yes.’ Wadi loosened the leather thong around her neck and pulled out the large stone pendant from beneath her tunic. She brushed it off with her hand, although there was no need – it was absolutely spotless.

Wadi chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully. ‘Two paths will lead back to Lazar,’ she said. ‘So we mustn’t choose incorrectly. But if I can just find where to . . .’

‘Where to what?’ Raim asked. Vlad quieted him, but his expression clearly show the other apprenticesanvo were ded he was wondering as much as Raim.

Vlad stared over Wadi’s shoulder. ‘Look! The symbol on your pendant is the same as the symbol over the left door! That must be the right way.’

Without looking at him, Wadi rotated the pendant in her hand. Vlad’s open mouth snapped shut. The symbol was now the same as the sign in the middle. A third rotation had the symbol predictably looking like the symbol over the right door.

Wadi’s eyes searched the cavern. Then she began to randomly kick at the ground, trying to uncover a symbol in the ground. Raim followed suit. But there was nothing. Finally she said, ‘Search the walls for anywhere that looks
more distressed than other areas in the cave – or like it could be moved . . . a hairline fracture in the rock, or something.’ They set to work. Raim’s fingers groped at the dust. His torch flickered, obscuring the detail on the stone and making lines and shadows appear where there were none.

Draikh didn’t help to look. Instead, he stood at the front of the central doorway and sniffed at the air.

‘There’s something at work here,’ he said aloud. ‘These doorways aren’t right. I believe that one will lead us in the right direction but . . .’

His open musing was interrupted by Raim’s excited cry. The rock had shifted beneath his fingertips and Raim was prising open a piece of the wall. It came apart in one large, distractingly light and almost paper-thin square of stone. It revealed a small round indent, almost the size of Raim’s palm.

Wadi rushed over to him. ‘You found it!’ She took the pendant and set it into the indentation.

Nothing happened. ‘Maybe we have the wrong pendant?’ said Vlad.

‘Or maybe it’s turned the wrong way,’ said Raim, trying to sound a little more optimistic. He looked from the pendant to Wadi’s face, and saw that tears were streaming down her face.

‘Damn you,’ she said. Then in her next breath she spoke words that were too quiet for them to hear.

A bright beacon of light emanated from the left
doorway. In contrast, the other two doorways were engulfed by shadow. Raim felt immediately repulsed by the shadowed doorways. The repulsion took over his entire body; he couldn’t even look at the darkness and was instead drawn into the light. He hadn’t felt that kind of visceral reaction to a shadow since . . .

‘That’s promise light!’ Vlad cried. ‘And promise shadow! Impossible!’

‘Come on,’ said Wadi, yanking the pendant out of the wall and back over her neck. ‘There should be a supply room just beyond this doorway where we can take a rest and I can explain . . . as long as that old sage Garus didn’t use it all. Just don’t go turning your nose up at two-hundred-year-old meat.’

‘Shouldn’t we try to remember which doorway we came through?’ said Raim.

‘It wouldn’t do us – or anyone in the future – any good.’

‘The doors change!’ exclaimed Draikh. ‘That was what was so strange about them . . . like there was someone or something there that would mislead you – if you didn’t know how to choose properly.’

Wadi smiled wanly. ‘That’s right. You can right handn from the , ex’t guess. You are either granted passage or you’re not.’

They found themselves in a small supply room, so small it barely allowed them all in comfortably. It was also near-empty. Where there had once been shelves of food and water, here there were only the bare essentials – a bit of
food and a few bags of what looked to be Alashan camping supplies. The foods were supposed to be nonperishable, but the slabs of dried meat were rock-hard and inedible. They were also thick with dust.