The Yun was crouched over a small brazier topped by a sizzling frying pan, sweat soaking through his thin white garment. His hair was long and matted with sand and dirt. The acrid stench of body odour mingled with cooking meat.
The man snapped his neck to the side so Raim caught a glimpse of the raw, blistering skin on his cheek. The man’s eyes never rested on Raim but constantly scanned the wall in front of him.
‘What do you want?’ he said.
‘Are you Yun?’
‘My name is Silas.’
A spectre slid through the wall, causing Silas to jump up and knock the frying pan clattering to the floor. The haunt was tall and cloaked in black, a deeper black than any Raim had ever known. On his face was the polished mask of Malog. And he didn’t carry a dagger as the other haunts did, but a sword. A Yun sword. It was pointed right at Silas’s throat.
‘What right do you have to call yourself that any more, wretch?’
Raim’s ears rang with the sound of that terrible, deep voice. His hands trembled, although the reprimands weren’t directed at him. Silas shook violently, as if an earthquake was concentrated beneath his body. Raim repeated to himself, He’s just a haunt, he’s just a haunt, talk to the Yun, talk to him! But he couldn’t work up the courage.
Draikh stepped forward, knowing what Raim wanted to ask but couldn’t. ‘Tell us news of Darhan,’ he said, as if nothing was happening.
‘Khareh?’ said Silas, and his right handeblbuckseco shivering ceased. He stretched out along the floor like a cat, reaching as if to pick up the mess he had made. His fingers gripped the frying pan’s handle. Then he flung it at Draikh.
‘GET OUT!’ he screamed.
The frying pan passed straight through Draikh’s spectral form and thundered against the wall, but Draikh fled through the door anyway – Silas’s snarling face was enough to frighten even the ethereal.
‘Out, out, out!’ Silas picked a red-hot stone up out of the fire and hurled it after Draikh. The smell of burned flesh filled the air as it seared Silas’s palm. He didn’t seem to care. The stone cracked the floor as it landed.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Puutra rushed into the room. When he caught sight of the mess, he said, ‘I told you to be careful!’ and yanked Raim’s arm to lead him away.
‘No,’ said Silas. ‘Let him stay! I need to talk with him.’
Puutra stared from Raim to Silas and back. Raim nodded. ‘Fine,’ Puutra conceded, and he and his haunt left, the door snapping shut behind them.
Silas leaped up and began pacing in front of the now smouldering brazier, barely taking notice of his burned hand. He sneaked nervous glances in Raim’s direction, as if he was afraid Raim was another apparition come to haunt him. Raim shuffled on the spot, feeling awkward. It didn’t help that every five or ten seconds, the monstrous spirit behind Silas would slap his giant sword against the stone, making both of them jump.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything!’ said Raim breathlessly, then thought better of it. ‘I want to know what’s happening with . . . the Moloti tribe.’ All he really wanted to know about was Khareh, but Silas’s reaction to seeing Draikh was enough to frighten him off touching that subject directly.
Silas shrugged. ‘Probably what is happening with all tribes. Forced into submission by the new Khan. Unable to continue their wanderings until all of Darhan is under his control.’
Raim was confused. New Khan? Unable to be nomadic? No Khan could enforce that upon his people. ‘There’s a new Khan?’
‘I would not be surprised if he had declared himself Emperor by now. Dictator! Tyrant! Despot! Those would be more apt descriptions. Yes, and you should hope that your tribe submitted easily. It is those who opposed him that I cry for.’
‘You should cry for no one but yourself,’ snarled the haunt. ‘How can you stand it, living with yourself after what you did, you stinking tyrfish, you treacherous leech, you disgrace of Sola . . .’ The name-calling continued in an endless stream.
Silas ignored the haunt and cast a studious eye over Raim. ‘I know who you are. How could any Yun forget? You are the murderer of our leader and a traitor!’ Raim was about to protest, but Silas continued to speak as if his thoughts were spilling out in one uncontrollable stream of babble. ‘YOU should be haunted by him as well as me – but that’s right, you never made the promise to the Yun, you coward. And why isn’t that haunt of yours in here taunting you, torturing you, like mine does ceaselessly to me? In fact, why do you have Khareh as your spirit in the first place? He must have sworn you in as his Protector, didn’t he?’
‘Y occasionalbl for youdou never answered my original question,’ said Raim. ‘Who is the new Khan? Did Batar-Khan die?’
‘He was overthrown. By Khareh.’
A beat of silence, then Raim exploded. ‘Khareh is the new Khan? But how is that possible? The rules . . .’
Silas guffawed loudly, to the point where Raim thought he might be choking. ‘Rules? Since when did Khareh care about those?’
But becoming a Khan was an immensely complex process in Darhan law, even for an heir. And Khareh was no longer the heir – or so Mhara had told him. ‘How? Does he have a new Protector?’
‘The girl Erdene is his Protector.’ Raim’s jaw dropped to the floor. He couldn’t believe that Khareh would choose someone new. The thought hurt him most of all the things he had heard so far. Didn’t Khareh believe in him enough to know that Raim was coming back? Silas continued, taking no notice of Raim’s flabbergasted expression. ‘It wasn’t a shock to us, though, since she also . . .’
Raim finally found his voice and interjected: ‘Erdene? She is Khareh’s new Protector?’ It felt so unreal. He tried to imagine it. Erdene – it seemed so long ago that he had worshipped the ground she walked on. But looking back on it, he hardly knew her at all. In fact, it sounded like she was getting everything she ever wanted.
One eyebrow crept up Silas’s forehead. ‘Not just Khareh’s Protector, but his Seer-Queen too.’
‘But she’s no seer!’ Raim protested.
The former Yun shrugged. ‘She passed the test.’
Everything Raim knew was crumbling around him. He felt like the room was spinning, or maybe his brain was so confused it could no longer tell his eyes to see straight.
‘I suppose you want to know why the entire population of Darhan allowed Khareh to overthrow his uncle . . . how a boy – barely sixteen – could become Khan with a young Yun Protector and no army to support him?’
Raim couldn’t even bring himself to nod. It was unbelievable.
‘He destroyed his uncle’s family. You have never seen anything like it. The former Batar-Khan, now simply to be remembered as Batar, was brutally killed in front of his entire clan.’
Anger surged through Raim then. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘You’re lying. Khareh would never do that.’
‘Khareh didn’t do it. Not himself, anyway. He ordered Batar-Khan’s own men to do the deed instead. Without a Protector, Batar-Khan was too weak to defend himself. And with his death, all the promise-knots made by the warlords were undone. His entire tribe submitted to Khareh’s rule. After that, one by one, the rest of the warlords capitulated. Including my tribe.’
A memory flashed before Raim’s eyes, a recognition of Silas’s countrymen. Silas hailed from the same territory as Ryopi, that contentious lot who scarcely strayed from the river. They would be the last to follow a plains-man; they followed currents and shoals. Raim wondered when Khareh-Khan had become Khareh-Tornado.
‘Then why are you here?’ asked Raim.
‘Yes, tell him.’ Silas’s haunt slowly slid the blade through his spectral fingers, slic extremely bl for youding the webby sinews had they been real. Raim’s stomach turned.
A hacking cough escaped Silas. He doubled in half, convulsing in jarring gasps as if he expelled his life with every heave. By contrast, Raim’s breath was caught in his throat. He waited for the man to calm and begin his story. In the
moment before Silas began, Raim heard a flag flutter outside, the first time he had been able to hear any noise from beyond the room. Silas’s haunt, for the first time since their conversation began, had ceased his spiteful mutterings.
‘It all happened so quickly,’ he said. He lowered himself onto the cot in the centre of the room and stared at the floor. His face contorted with conflicting emotions as the memories flooded back. ‘The Yun held their council a few hours after the takeover was announced. The Rentai was chaos. Such turmoil!’ There was a glint of excitement in his eye and he leaned in, his memory gaining momentum. ‘This Erdene, this new Seer-Queen and Yun Leader, she would not accept the guidance of any elder Yun. It was obvious Khareh-Khan had coached her – but still you could see the look of sheer terror in her eyes.
‘Some tried to be kind, saying she did not know how deep she was in Darhanian politics. The strongest and wisest Yun saw her fear and tried to calm her, to talk sense to her. But then, there was a group of us, all from the east that thought she would never see sense – and we were correct, I might add. We thought we could overcome her. When she demanded we pledge our lives to Khareh – imagine, not to the land, to Khareh, as if we were all his Protectors! – we threw off our masks in defiance. But our rebellion did not go as planned. As if a secret voice whispered in that childish ear and imbued her with strength, she banished us from the room, calmly telling us we would never know the secret behind the Khan’s power, and that all the others present were forbidden to reveal it to us. The power became obvious before long. The girl had acted out of wisdom. To not know Khareh’s secret . . . it was torturous. It is torturous.’
Raim could not hold his lips closed any longer. ‘But what is his power?’ If Khareh had possessed any power at all, beyond maybe a knack for inventing, he couldn’t have kept it a secret from his best friend. Could he?
To his surprise, Silas burst out into laughter. ‘His power? But which should I inform you of? How about the power to make objects move with his mind? No? Too easy, tricks with magnets, surely. Then try his ability to levitate, to fly. Still not wondrous enough to imagine the entire Yun along with every warlord in Darhan capitulating to his mastery? Then try this . . . he can heal his own wounds. He has become a sage, of the highest order.’
Raim felt Silas’s hot breath on his ear as he spoke those last words. Then Silas leaned backward to allow the magnitude of his speech to sink in. When he spoke again, the voice was drained of its excited quality. Exhaustion laced his words. He rubbed the corners of his eyes with his fingertips.
‘It wasn’t enough that the four defiant Yun, including myself, were forced to fight Khareh – he defeated us with ease. I remember coming at him, his aristocratic muscles so weak compared to mine. I have been Yun for fifteen years and was passed through on my first attempt. Ceaseless training since birth! And I am cut down two feet from him, my tunic slashed and stained with my own blood. My sword is taken from me and I fall to the floor. My comrades fall with me – only they do not get up ever again. I look up as Khareh walks past . . . our swords, all four Yun blades his curiosityor‘No.’CC f floating in the air around him, and he is surrounded by light! I don’t know what made me do it, perhaps the sight of my three dying warriors, perhaps the sting of my own wound . . . I reach into my boot, pull out the dagger I had hidden there and slash at his bare calf. I felt such satisfaction, watching that string of blood-red pearls form where my
dagger had performed its duty. I remember the clatter of two swords as they dropped from the air. I remember his anguished scream, taken by such surprise. I was distracted by my triumph, but when the pain on his face turned to pride, it was my turn to be shocked. The wound on his leg was gone, as if it had never been opened. But it happened. And Khareh-Khan never forgot it.’
‘Can’t you shut up?’ said Raim, agonizing to hear any story Silas had to tell. He cried out in pain as the flat of the haunt’s blade landed squarely on the back of his hand. Blood pooled beneath his olive skin and he felt it begin to throb. He glared back at the haunt, but Silas began again.
‘Such a terrible thing . . .’
‘Nothing is as terrible as what you did, vow breaker,’ growled the haunt.
Silas closed his eyes and shook his head as languidly as if he were under water. ‘I drew his blood and in return he made me do the most awful deed. There were a number of . . . enemies that he had to be rid of. If you could even call them enemies.’ He spat towards the ground.
The haunt caught the spit in mid-air. ‘You are the enemy.’ He wiped the spit on Silas’s filthy tunic.
‘He told me where Batar-Khan’s Seer-Queen and her baby were, and made me promise . . . no, I can’t say it, don’t make me!’ The haunt prodded him with the knife but it only made him more upset. ‘What had happened . . . only opened my eyes to the true motivations of this boy’s regime. I wouldn’t carry out the task. He is a tyrant. I broke the vow instead. I shattered my Yun sword, breaking my vow to the Yun by not defending my warlord’s tribe and cast myself out into the desert.’
‘Traitor,’ the voice said.
‘I am not a murderer,’ Raim said into the silence that followed, still reeling from Silas’s words. But that accusation hurt the most. ‘Mhara’s death was an accident. She was . . . she was like a mother to me. And Draikh does not torment me because I never broke my promise to Khareh. I am still Khareh’s Protector. And now I will be for life.’ He pulled down the neck of his tunic to show Silas the ink-black mark. It couldn’t be true what Silas was saying. It couldn’t. ‘He is my best friend.’
‘You deserve everything that has come to you,’ the voice continued over the top of Raim, taunting, ever taunting.
‘He is your best friend, you say?’ Silas leaped to his feet, as lightning fast as a cobra strike, and grabbed Raim by the tunic. With his other hand, he whipped a dagger out of his boot. Raim tried to fight back, but Silas was too quick, pressing the blade at his neck. ‘This is not Yun workmanship,’ he said. He angled the blade so light from the w a temporary settlement tI calledfeindow bounced off its smooth surface. Raim felt the blade slice the skin on his neck, a trickle of blood winding its way down his throat. ‘Which is a shame, because I had hoped to kill you in the proper way.’
The door slammed against the wall. Silas vomited a stream of curses as two people, a man and a woman, raced in, grabbed him by the shoulders and pinned him down. The dagger clattered to the floor.
‘Are you all right?’ It was Puutra. The anger from before was gone. ‘What happened? You must relay every detail.’
‘Let me see.̵ aid="156604">
33
‘You knew.’
‘Raim, I . . .’
Puutra had signalled the other Shan to drag Raim back to his room after Silas’s devastating revelation. Vlad had pressed a cup of something steaming and hot into his hands, but Raim had smashed it against the wall. Still, not long after, he had fallen into a long and deep sleep. Drugged, probably, by the vapours of the tea. But when he woke up, he hadn’t forgotten anything. The sight of Draikh floating there, an anxious look on his face, made him sick to his stomach.
Dharma.
Her face was all he could think about.
Dharma.
That was the promise Khareh had made to him. To keep Dharma safe. What did it mean if he had broken that? Only one person knew, and that person had hidden the truth from him.
‘Don’t you see?’ Draikh’s voice was quiet, his head hanging down low. ‘That’s why I had to break away from . . . me. Khareh was about to do something despicable. I couldn’t bear it. That’s why I decided to save you from those b a temporary settlement Ise conversation0">
‘Otherwise nothing. Why did you not save Dharma instead? She is the more worthy life.’
‘It . . . doesn’t work like that. You were the one carrying me. I hated Khareh for what he was doing, but I couldn’t stop it either. He wanted to become a sage too much.’
‘Oh, really? And how am I supposed to believ
e that? For all I know you’re just here spying on me, on all of us. I wouldn’t put it past Khareh.’
Draikh looked up, and Raim could see the hurt in his eyes. Raim wasn’t moved. Khareh had been an actor too.
‘Raim, I’m sorry – but now you can make it right. If we work together.’
‘Shut up!’ said Raim. ‘I don’t want to hear your pack of lies. Just go away!’
For once, Draikh did as he was told. As the spirit sadly floated away, Wadi opened the door. ‘I didn’t want to come in while you were talking with Draikh.’
Raim knew he must look a pathetic figure. He sat on the bed, his knees up against his chin. ‘Dharma,’ he said, as if the word were some kind of magic that could revive her.
Wadi placed an arm around him and he leaned into her shoulder.
‘I came here hoping to find answers,’ he said. ‘But now – there is nothing for me. And, worst of all, I am tied to that monster for ever.’
‘But . . . can’t you just tell Draikh to go away permanently, like he’s gone now?’ she asked softly.
Raim put a hand on his chest, where the mark remained. ‘The reminder will always be there. Nothing I do will change that.’
She brought her hand up to his and removed it gently. ‘Think about that tomorrow. For now . . .’
He wept as she held him, until eventually he fell into a sleep that was dark and empty of dreams.
34
After Draikh’s revelation, none of the Shan could persuade Raim to work on anything – no meditating, no sage practice, no reading and writing lessons, nothing. His saviour was, ironically, Silas.
Raim stayed in his room, refusing to move for all of Puutra and Wadi’s attempts to rouse him. But a familiar noise outside piqued his interest for the first time in days. He slumped to the window and peered out over the side. Silas was down below, in the Shan courtyard, a dull, rusted sword in his hand. He was training Wadi; the familiar sound was the harsh clang of metal against metal. Raim watched them for a while, but at first, it only served to remind him of his former life.
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