The Oathbreaker's Shadow (3 page)

Beside him, his grandfather was squinting forward to capture every moment of the ceremony. In fact, most of the other people around Raim were leaning forward, but they were falling asleep, not craning their necks in interest. Raim yearned to join the ranks of the dozing. He felt his eyelids droop, heavy with sweat and boredom. But Loni’s hand, hard and bulbous, pressed down on his, snapping him back to attention. Raim scolded himself. He should try to stay awake. It was his brother’s wedding after all.

To keep alert, he ran over his moves for the upcoming Yun trial. He put his recent tussle with Khareh out of his head.
It’s only nerves
, he told himself. He had allowed himself to get distracted. He wouldn’t let it happen again. Step left, parry, retreat. Forward, strike to the shoulder, swoop down to the knee, protect his chest with the shield. Knock the enemy’s weapon out of his hand, finish with a fatal
blow to the neck. Well, without the last move in the actual duel.

An involuntary shiver ran down his neck. Was Lars thinking the same thing? He tried to think back to what he could remember of Lars’s first attempt. Raim had watched from the very front – all the Yun apprentices who had yet to reach their Honour Age stood side by side to form the ring in which the older apprentices fought, to keep the crowds back. Lars had done well – the duel had lasted a long time, with neither side backing down easily. Eventually, though, Lars had tired. That had been his mistake. If it had been Raim in his position, he would have spent all of the next year training to increase his stamina. To avoid the same problem, Raim would have to try to end the duel quickly, before
he
became the one that ran out of fuel.

The priest raised his hands and Raim scrambled to his feet with the rest of the crowd. As he stretched to shake the stiffness from his back and neck, Raim caught sight of Khareh surreptitiously making his way over to where the royal family was seated. Under a carefully erected shelter lay Batar-Khan, the Seer-Queen, the Khan’s advisers and their entourage. The Seer-Queen was barely feigning interest as she was attended by servants clad in pristine white linen, trying to create a breeze in the still, stifling air by waving fans of woven reeds. She was supposed to be one of the most powerful women in the world, with the power to ‘see’ into the future. The Baril were charged with
examining dozens of women to find the one who could pass the test and become the Khan’s principal wife. Somehow, a remarkable number of ugly daughters of important warlords turned out to be ‘seers’. When it was Khareh’s turn he would have to marry whomever the Baril chose – and that was an obligation Raim didn’t envy one bit. Heat pricked the back of his neck as he thought of the girl he would be seeing in only a few short days. No, he knew who he the other apprenticesgh deliberateCC f would choose if he could. Suddenly, he really envied the breeze Khareh was enjoying.

With the sun at its peak, the royal tent was the only source of shade on the flat ledge about halfway up Mount Dahl. The entire village had climbed the long, circuitous path carved into the mountain in the early morning, when the sun was low and hidden by the mist. But now the sun beat down on the weary audience with its powerful rays. Raim slipped his finger under the edge of his turban, trying to release some of the sweat that glued the cloth to his forehead. The villagers steamed around him, forced to sit on the hard ground outside and endure the entire ceremony with the sunshine reflecting off the smooth, flat rock.

Finally, the moment of the ceremony Raim had been waiting for arrived. The moment when the apprentice Tarik-en-bar was to become Tarik-bar: a Baril priest. Raim stood up on his tiptoes to see over the crowd. Tarik’s length of promise string was tied in a complicated web of knots, each of which was an oath to the Baril to obey their laws.

Qatir-bar turned to Tarik. ‘Tarik-en-bar, son of the Moloti tribe, this string is your word. And with this string do you vow to join your life with Solongal-en-barja, daughter of the Temu tribe, until death takes you?’

‘I vow this,’ said Tarik, all traces of nerves vanished and replaced with a calm solemnity. In one swift movement, he knotted one end of his string to Solongal’s.

‘Let this knot be your vow to Solongal-en-barja, and may you never witness the flames of your betrayal.’

The priest then turned to Solongal, who repeated the vows back to Tarik. She in turn knotted her string to Tarik’s and pulled the knot tight. They were promised together, now and for always.

Qatir pulled a blade out of his robes and sliced through the piece of string joining the two circles of knots together. He placed one loop around Tarik’s neck and pronounced him Tarik-bar.

Raim bristled and his shoulder blades tightened under his skin. The knotted necklace gave his brother an instant authority, making him seem stronger and wiser. Raim, despite being three years younger than Tarik, had always been the leader of their family. Tall and muscular, he towered over his eighteen-year-old scrawny sibling. While Raim spent nearly every hour training to join the Yun, Tarik learned to read and write, preparing for a life of quiet domesticity and study. But now it was different. Tarik-bar had purpose. Tarik-bar had a knot.

Instinctively, Raim clasped a hand to his left wrist.
Underneath the heavy cloth of his tunic, so small he couldn’t feel it – although he knew it was there – was a tiny indigo bracelet he had worn on his wrist since before he could remember.

The bracelet had the tiniest knot in it, almost imperceptible unless you ran your fingers over the string and noticed the tiny bump along the way. It had grown with him as his muscles expanded from Yun training; the bracelet was a part of him. Sometimes he paid it as little mind as a birthmark. Other times – like now – it felt as heavy as an iron clamp. Raim swallowed hard and repeated his mantra back to himself: he hadn’t reached his Honour Age yet, so whatever promise the knot held – if it did hold a promise – it couldn’t mean anything. He let the moment of fear pass from his mind, then pushed his left sleeve up until the bracelet was visible. Just an insignificant thing. A tiny bit of string. It meant nothing.

He looked up. Tarik-bar and Solongal-barja turned their backs to the crowd and walk the other apprenticesgh deliberateCC fed towards the gaping black hole that led deep into the mountain, following the Baril priest. Sound seemed to follow them into the cave, until all that was left outside was an unearthly silence. No one breathed. No one moved.

The silence was shattered by the clatter of a horse’s hooves. A Darhan soldier thundered round the corner – a scout from the outlying borders. Normally scouts wore camouflaged clothing, but this one had changed into the sky-blue turban of a messenger. Raim’s thoughts
immediately turned to war, and he wondered who had invaded Darhan this time. What else could be important enough to interrupt the Khan during a solemn Baril wedding?

Men and women, caught in the soldier’s path, yelled in protest as they were forced to leap out of the way of the charging stallion, heading straight for the royal tent.

Raim could see that Batar-Khan was fuming with anger that the ancient ceremony had been interrupted. The Khan snapped his fingers at his most senior adviser, Altan, who immediately stepped forward and barked at the man, ‘What is the meaning of this?’

The soldier leaped off his horse and bowed low at the feet of the adviser, without lifting his eyes from the ground. ‘Please, Altan-leder, I must speak with the Batar-Khan in private.’

The Great Khan sensed the urgency in the man’s voice – the entire congregation could. He hesitated for a moment, then with a regal wave of his wrist, he ushered the man towards him as the servants dropped a curtain over the tent’s entrance to separate the Khan from the congregation.

Raim watched Khareh closely throughout the commotion. Khareh signed a message to Raim in the language he had invented for them after learning in one of his lessons that the savage desert nomads, the Alashan, used sign language to communicate while hunting, so as not to spook their prey.

‘If they can do it, you bet that we can,’ Khareh had said as he tried to invent enough signs to keep their conversations interesting. There had to be signs for at least the most basic of words and phrases:
yes, no, you’re on your own now
. ‘And just think! That way we can talk to each other without any of these stone-heads knowing.’ Khareh was always trying to think about ways to get around his bodyguards.

Back on the mountain ledge, Khareh repeated the message, and Raim decoded: ‘Meet me in the glade in ten minutes.’ He signed back that he understood and Khareh disappeared behind the curtain with his uncle.

Suddenly, Raim remembered his brother and swung back round to look at the mountain. But the entrance to the cave was empty; his brother now a sworn entrant into the Baril.

Raim swallowed down a lump in his throat, which threatened to escape as a tear. He felt like applauding Tarik’s achievement. He felt like yelling a goodbye into the mouth of the cave. He felt like running after his brother and making him promise to visit. But he did none of those things, and simply lowered his head to the ground, allowing himself to be sw"http://www.w3

Rumour and speculation buzzed in the air like a swarm of behrflies swept up from the desert. Clumps of nomads chatted noisily with one another as they began the slow descent down the mountain and all the while they wove their excitement into a tale they could pass on to the next village they visited. For a people who moved constantly, news was a valuable trading good, and stories were bartered as much as sheepskin. This story would be a juicy one to tell to anyone they met.

Raim didn’t even make it halfway down towards the glade before Khareh caught up with him, the prince’s face flushed with excitement. In fact, Raim couldn’t remember seeing his friend so happy since he had been named a prince in the first place.

‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, shifting from foot to foot, unable to stand still. ‘They’ve found a
real
sage.’

‘What?’ Raim spluttered, pulling Khareh off to the
side so that the passing tribespeople wouldn’t hear.

‘You heard me. A real live sage! Apparently they found him on the outskirts of the Sola desert near Mauz and they’re so scared of him, they’ve brought him here, to the village, to be dealt with straight away! You coming?’

Khareh didn’t wait for an answer, but there was no way Raim was going to miss out on seeing a sage in action. He felt his heart catch in his throat at the thought, but he tried not to let himself get too excited. At least twice a year some crazy man or woman – most often clanless – would come forward claiming to be a sage. And each time, it was a disappointment. But Raim had almost never seen Khareh so excited. And Khareh was normally the most scathing and sceptical of all, despite his belief that real sages did exist.

As they darted in amongst the rough, dusty streets of the village, tribespeople and villagers alike stopped in their tracks to wonder just where the prince could be running off to this time.

They arrived at the royal caravan. It was stationed outside the village – there was nowhere for it to fit within the restrictive confines of the tiny settlement. Besides, even though the caravan was portable, it was infinitely more comfortable than any of the ramshackle village houses. Sometimes Raim forgot just how opulent it must appear to those unused to seeing it. It was built up off the ground on a platform of wooden planks. It had eight wheels so it could be transported easily and pulled from village to village by four oxen. The exterior was wrapped in the pelts
of snow leopards and tied together by ropes that had been dipped in gold. But the most dazzling adornments were the seven rugs that represented the pledges of fealty from seven warlords of Darhan to Batar-Khan. Mhara reminded him constantly that this was the highest number of oaths any single Khan had managed to unite under his reign.

Highly skilled clans of weavers created the carpets – and the competition for a commission from the Khan was fierce. Weavers held a prestigious position in Darhan society and men and women with nimble fingers and an eye for colour would be quick to try and join oneI’m so sorryt >

The carpets then represented the source of the Khan’s power: absolute loyalty.

Raim crept into the royal yurt behind Khareh. They had been friends for so long that no one took any notice of the fact that he was there. They zigzagged round members of the royal entourage lounging on pillows on the ground until they reached where Altan was standing.

Raim felt a sudden rush of cold, like an icy winter draught blowing under the felt of an unsealed yurt. It wrapped around him and made him shiver, a deep-seated shake that started in his neck and travelled all the way down his spine. But it was the height of summer,
and he wasn’t shivering from cold; he was shuddering in disgust.

Amidst the rich golden ornaments, the lush silks and the sweet-smelling incense, Raim’s stomach was turning, boiling over with a nausea that caused sweat to drip down his spine and the bile in his stomach to rise.

He wasn’t alone. All around him, people were looking pale and physically shying away from the far corner of the room. Not Khareh, though. If he was feeling any discomfort he wasn’t going to be the one to show it. Raim tried to emulate his friend’s iron-hard will, and attempted to compose his features.

There could only be one source: a shadow. And that shadow belonged to a frail, cowering old man in a tatty tunic that must have been white at some point, although now it was stained red with dust. He had a very long beard that was tied in a bizarre bow under his chin. The thick beard could not totally conceal the dark slash of a scar running from underneath his nose, across his lips to his jawline. It wasn’t bright red, like the scar from a fresh betrayal, but paler, almost flesh tone. And behind him was the swirl of a grey shadow – not black and threatening as shadows normally were, but thick, bulbous and swirling grey as a storm cloud. Out of the corner of his eye, Raim saw Mhara take a protective stance, her hand moving to her Yun sword. Raim was confused. Were this man and his shadow dangerous? He wasn’t behaving like any oathbreaker he had seen before.