The Oathbreaker's Shadow

by Amy McCulloch

  ‘No, you’d have to exist first. Sages are legend, make-believe.’

  ‘Gods, your ignorance is really annoying sometimes. Don’t the Yun teach their students anything? Anyone who says sages don’t exist is a fool. I’ve read about them. There were magicians in the past who could command whole armies with their power, who could self-heal and levitate things, like swords – they could even make themselves fly!’

  ‘Sounds to me like you’re the fool, for believing in that goat’s dung.’

  ‘It’s not goat’s dung. Anyway, I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about it. I hear the real sages are south. In Aqben.’

  ‘Let them rot there, then. Aqben houses only devils,’ Raim said, } div.shading-50-whiteor7K‘The repeating the typical adage used whenever the south was mentioned.

  Khareh raised an eyebrow, and shrugged. ‘So, you’re not worried about the whole first-chance-to-fight-to-be-Yun thing, are you?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  Raim bit his lip. ‘If it was an ordinary fight, I wouldn’t be. But this is it. I heard one of the other villagers saying they’d crossed with Lars’s tribe not a month ago. His father was saying he’s really bulked up this year, as big as an ox. And that he’s going to have a Yun for a son, soon.’

  Khareh grimaced. ‘What would the warlord know about his son anyway? He’s probably not seen him since we last did. Lars has been off training with his mentor.’

  It was Raim’s turn to grimace this time. ‘While I’ve been stuck here herding goats.’ Then he shrugged. ‘But it’s not like I could leave Dharma and my grandfather alone to go off to train, especially with Tarik wrapped up with his studies. And I’m lucky that my mentor has been here, so I have had plenty of practice.’

  ‘True. Besides, that’s not the real issue, is it? Isn’t this Lars’s third and final try? It’s not you who should be worried, it’s him. With you as his opponent, it looks like we might be watching heads roll this tournament after all!’

  ‘No, it’s his second try. It’s Jendo’s final one though.’ Raim frowned. Every Yun apprentice knew that if you didn’t pass the third try, your life was forfeit. It was why he couldn’t joke about it as Khareh did. It could be his reality in another two years, should he fail all three bouts.

  Khareh seemed to read his mind and shrugged. ‘You’re the best fighter the Yun has trained in generations and you know it. Well—’ He broke into a maniacal grin. ‘Except they never had me, of course.’

  ‘Is that a challenge?’ Raim’s eyes darted around and spied a metal pole Khareh had discarded while making his invention. He grabbed it and spun it around in his hands. Khareh was partially right. As a prince, Khareh couldn’t join the Yun, since he needed to study and be trained in his royal duties. But he had studied sword fighting for as long as Raim, and he was the only sparring partner – other than Raim’s own Yun mentor, Mhara – who always gave him a good run. And Mhara was Batar-Khan’s official Protector, and chief of all the Yun.

  Lars was older. No one really expected a Yun apprentice to win their first attempt – after all, Lars had a whole year of growth and experience on Raim. But still, he felt confident. His training had settled into his muscles like knots tying everything into its rightful place, joining all the movements together. If he couldn’t trust his body’s promise to execute the moves his mind asked it to, then what could he trust?

  There was a dangerous twinkle in Khareh’s eye, and he snatched up another pole, ready to scuffle. Khareh taunted Raim about his weaker left side. For the most part, Khareh was the aggressor, pushing Raim backward with quick, strong strokes. Raim remained on the defensive, absorbing his opponent’s blows. He tried to focus on anticipating Khareh’s next move, on his footwork or his sword strokes, but still he couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to fight with a real Yun blade. Soon I will be a great warrior, leading the Yun as the Khan’s Protector. I’ll lead the army that will own path to followor7K‘The finally unite all the tribes of Darhan and then maybe I’ll . . .

  He blinked. Khareh swung at his pole with all his might and it popped out of Raim’s hand and fell to the ground with a thud. For a second Raim stood in shock, his hands splayed palm out in front of him and his legs bent like a frog. Mhara called this the ‘moving mountain’ position. Winning now was as impossible as shifting a mountain with your bare hands.

  The low, clear sound of a bone horn sounded out over the field and snapped Raim back to life.

  ‘Gods, the wedding!’

  2

  The priest’s voice was slow and monotonous as he led Tarik, Raim’s brother, and his young soon-to-be wife, Solongal, through a series of complicated vows and sermons. Raim had never seen his brother’s betrothed before. They were an odd pairing. His brother was tall and as thin as a stick of bamboo. Khareh used to joke that Tarik had too many bones as so many poked out of his skin at odd angles – especially his Adam’s apple, which jutted out of his throat like a second chin. By contrast Solongal was several inches shorter, with a squashed round face and hooded eyes so small they seemed like little black peas in a sea of rice pudding. They both held long pieces of string in their hands, and at the end of each vow the priest signalled for them to tie a knot in the string to form an elaborate pattern. Slowly they were sealing their fate as Baril.

  Tarik was tripping over his words, the letters in his mouth tumbling out as cumbersome as an elephant wading through mud. He wasn’t handling himself well, but anyone would be nervous in the presence of Qatir-bar, the first of all the Baril priests. When Qatir-bar had appeared, Raim had been awed. The man was shaped like a spear, with a gaze that was just as sharp. Around his neck, lying on top of his pristine white robes, was an intricate necklace of knots that represented his Baril vows. But it was his forehead that drew the most attention. It was almost completely flat. Tarik had told him in the past that the Baril spent so much time deep in prayer with their heads on the ground that their foreheads flattened, but Raim hadn’t believed him. He wondered how long it would take for Tarik’s head to get like that. Tarik was so pious, he imagined it wouldn’t be too long.

  Raim sat cross-legged on the ground a few rows of people back from where the priest and the couple were standing. Baril marriages were the exception in Darhan. For a man and a woman to promise to remain together and raise a family until death was a foreign concept to most tribespeople. It was a luxury they could not afford. Life on the steppes was hard at the best of times and it was necessary for each person – man or woman – to continue to work for their clans in order for life to continue. When she came of age, a woman would promise herself to her chosen partner and his tribe, and her children would become the tribe’s children, raised by the elders. After the b own path to follows I someoneollowedirth, the parents would return to their clan roles – perhaps as soldiers in the army or as weavers or tenders to the animals. When they grew too old to perform their role, they would return to their old tribe as elders to raise the tribe’s children, and so it would continue. On the steppes, idleness wasn’t a sin; it simply wasn’t an option.

  Loni was one of the Moloti tribe elders, and he had taken in first Tarik, then Raim and then Raim’s sister, Dharma, as his grandchildren. Tarik and Dharma were Raim’s siblings by adoption, not blood. Raim knew almost nothing about his true parents, not even their clan profession. It didn’t matter; he had his own path to follow. His father could be the lowliest dung collector in Darhan and Raim would still aspire to be Chief Yun.

  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

  3

  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.