The Oathbreaker's Shadow

by Amy McCulloch

  The next morning, the clanging woke him up. This time, he decided to go down to the courtyard and watch them from the sidelines there. When he showed up on the edge of the dirt surface they were using as a duelling ground, Wadi was so occasionalt >< margin- had made surprised she almost lost her head to Silas in their practice. He unleashed a stream of curses, but Wadi just smiled.

  ‘Why don’t you join us?’ Wadi asked.

  Raim just shrugged. Wadi sighed.

  Silas, by contrast, strode over to a large wooden box, which contained all the weapons in the Shan temple. He chose another sword and threw it down at Raim’s feet. ‘I thought you were a fighter?’ Silas said. ‘Train. Don’t make me ask twice.’

  Silas’s haunt flew at him then, so violent and vengeful that even though Wadi couldn’t see him or hear the words, she was so repulsed by the shadow that she had to flee.

  Raim didn’t pick up the sword.

  But that night, as he lay in bed, he thought of Silas’s words. He was a fighter. He needed to train. If he could train himself up to the Yun he might have been, he could go back to Darhan and avenge Dharma.

  His vow meant he might not be able to bring any harm to Khareh directly, but he could make it easier for those who could. But he couldn’t do anything if he could barely remember how to swing a sword. He had only ever been good at one thing his entire life, and that was fighting.

  So at first light, before Silas arrived, he moved down to the courtyard and started warming up. When Silas did show, he did not seem surprised to see Raim there, and offered only a grunt of greeting. Then he picked up a sword, and ran at Raim.

  Raim fought back. He used it as fuel. Every blow he struck, he thought of fighting Khareh – even if he knew he would never be able to do it in person. Silas was a surprisingly good teacher. A natural Yun leader. Raim did not blame Silas for being the bearer of the awful news.

  When Wadi joined them, Raim worked with her on his hand-to-hand combat, while she worked on her swordplay. The swords were so old and rusted that one of them shattered as they were fighting and another’s grip shed leather into Wadi’s palm. Raim decided to look at their weapons store himself, and he yelled with delight when he found two ancient bows, complete with a quiver of arrows. He brought them down to Wadi and they spent the whole afternoon in the entrance courtyard, where Silas was unable to go, setting up targets as curious young Chauk children watched from their windows, some of them perched up on the window sills, their legs dangling precariously high against the cliffs.

  Raim lined up a shot, relishing in the familiar ache that was warming up the space between his shoulder blades and the muscles of his fingers. He let the arrow loose and watched as it flew towards the piece of overly ripe fruit they had been using as a target, before yelling with glee as the fruit splattered against the wall, the arrow having demolished the centre of it.

  ‘Yes!’ He pumped a fist into the air and turned to Wadi. ‘Still got it!’

  She smiled at him and arched her back like a cat, stretching out her own soreness. ‘I think I’ve had enough archery practice for today.’

  Raim nodded and jogged towards where his arrow landed to return it to the quiver. Then he turned back and caught up with Wadi, who was strolling back towards the Shan temple.

  ‘I can’t believe we found bows and arrows – I wonder what else Puutra has stored up in the temple.’

  Wadi smiled again but it was smaller this time, and gone from her face the other apprenticesanvokn‘Where in a heartbeat. Raim put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

  She stopped abruptly and rounded on him. ‘What are you doing here, Raim?’

  Raim took a step back, in shock. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What are you doing here, now, in this place? You haven’t said a word to Draikh. You haven’t been meditating on your scar. The whole time I’ve known you, all you’ve ever cared about is finding out about this.’ She reached over and grabbed his wrist, and he pulled it out of her grasp instinctively. She raised her eyebrows, but when she spoke again her tone was softer. ‘All you’ve ever wanted was to be able to clear your name – that’s why you came to Lazar in the first place.’

  ‘And what good would it do me now?’ Raim flung the bow down on the ground and shrugged the quiver off his back. He slumped down onto a low stone wall. ‘The only answer I have is to get back to Darhan, and avenge Dharma. That is my life now.’

  Wadi sat down next to him, shaking her head slowly. ‘But you can’t do it alone. Without Draikh, that plan is suicide . . .’

  Raim stood up and stormed off, not daring to look back but knowing instinctively that Wadi wouldn’t follow.

  The next day, he felt like sticking to the basics – two swords, him, Silas and a deserted courtyard. Silas was the one person he could trust not to talk to him about Draikh or his other promise.

  He arrived at the training ground. The ex-Yun was balancing on one leg, his hands clasped together over his head, his eyes closed. Without opening his eyes, he changed positions, lowering his leg, stretching one arm out in front of him and tilting his head back towards the sky. He must have sensed Raim’s arrival, however, for he said, ‘Just one more invocation to Naran, and I will be with you.’

  Behind him, the dark shadow of a storm over a placid lake, the haunt boiled and seethed insults. There was no tolerance between this haunt and Chauk. But somehow, Silas had managed to become deaf to his insults. Now, he was much more the Yun Raim imagined he must have been in his Darhan days. He had strength and colour, and even a slight sparkle in the eye that hinted at his former prowess. He also now had much advice to give to Raim, who soaked it up eagerly.

  ‘You must keep up your physical strength and maintain your Yun training in swordsmanship and archery, even as you are expanding your mental muscle,’ Silas had said 8216;When I le

  35

  They buried him out in the sands. Raim tried to remember the details of a Yun funeral rite, to offer Silas some of the honour that Mhara had never been able to receive. He had been buried with a blade strapped to his right hand, so that he would still carry it with him in the afterlife. It wasn’t his Yun blade – that had burned with his original promise knot. But it was something. It was more than Mhara had, anyway, and the realization of this sent a painful stab of guilt through Raim.

  ‘I don’t think I can do this any more,’ Raim said to Puutra when they returned to the meditation room and to Wadi inside the temple.

  Puutra managed a sad smile, full of pity. ‘I know it has been difficult for you, Raim. First with the discovery about your sister, and now with Silas’s suicide. But you know there is nowhere else for you to go.’

  Draikh hung back in the shadows, looking despondent. Puutra raised a hand to Draikh and gestured him over to where they were standing. Raim still found it impossible to look at him, no matter how many times he insisted it wasn’t him who had hurt Dharma. Puutra looked up at Raim through bushy eyebrows. ‘You must learn to work with your haunt . . . with your spirit again.’

  ‘But—’ Raim began to protest.

  ‘But he has apologized, Raim, and you must forgive him. To think, you are in such a unique position here. You have a spirit in debt to you. Shan grovel and beg for forgiveness from our haunts, for them to grant us even the tiniest measure of power. And here you have a spirit willing and obedient . . .’

  Raim looked up at Draikh and the pair locked eyes. Then Raim chuckled softly. ‘Willing? Obedient? Are we talking about the same Draikh here? Never.’

  ‘Maybe if you ask nicely,’ Draikh said through a relieved smile.

  Puutra clapped Raim on the back. ‘Good. Good. We can make the pair of you great, you know.’

  Raim was about to reply when Puutra silenced them with a sharp hiss. They all then seemed to hear it together. Footsteps. Hurried, urgent.

  Indeed, as the person dashed round the corner, momentum threw him up against the stone wall. He bounced off again-source { font-size: 0.8em; text-align:
right; margin-top: 0;s I font-weight: bold; from the i like a piece of rubber and came to a skidding halt in front of Puutra. It was Dumas.

  ‘It’s the Alashan,’ Dumas managed to articulate between deep gulps of breath. ‘They’re here, and they’re dying.’

  A young Chauk girl approached one pair of Alashan with a bowl of water in a crowd of hundreds. A woman cradling a man in her arms. The man’s skin was drawn tight across his face; every bone was visible. The woman stared down into the mirror pool of water held by the girl and the thirst in her eyes was plain. They were both parched. But equal to the look of thirst in her eyes was the narrow glare of contempt. The little Chauk girl did not cower, however. She set down the bowl of water at the pair’s feet and backed away, head bowed low to the ground.

  The sight of such a large group of Alashan in a single place visibly shook Raim. They filled the open courtyard and spilled out of the gate. Raim wondered if there were some Alashan tribes that were much larger than others, or maybe there was some sort of annual gathering between Chauk and Alashan, something he had not had a chance to witness during his month at Lazar. Ordinarily, they only approached the walls to bring new Chauk. Puutra approached an isolated group of women to find out the cause of their unannounced arrival.

  From just behind him, Wadi cried out and ran towards a group of her former tribe. Raim was shocked to see Old-maa, Mesan and the rest of the tribe. He hadn’t expected them to come back to Lazar for a long time.

  Raim followed Wadi, but couldn’t help staring around at all the emaciated-looking people. He met first with Mesan. He was holding up another man that Raim had never seen before, and it was a visible effort. The man’s lips were cracked and split like fissures in rock. Raim hurried over and took some of the weight from Mesan, so he could explain.

  Mesan wheezed as he tried to talk, and Wadi hurried over to interpret.

  ‘Wait,’ said Raim. ‘Let me give this man some water first.’

  The other Sh

  36

  Dumas rummaged through a large trunk in the corner, haphazardly tossing aged vellum scrolls onto the floor. Puutra unrolled the scrolls, which turned out to be more maps, overlapping the edges until the surface of the floor in the circle between them was totally covered. Raim took in the vast breadth of landscape and couldn’t help but release a long, deep breath of awe. It seemed so huge.

  Puutra jammed his index finger down on the small brown smudge that represented Lazar. He slid a few finger lengths to the left. He looked into the eyes of everyone in the group in turn, and when he reached Dumas, he paused. ‘Dumas, you let your excitement get the better of you out there. But I cannot deny that your idea is plausible.’

  ‘No, it’s not plausible. It’s stupid; it’s crazy,’ shouted Raim. ‘I’ve said, Khareh would nev—’

  ‘Raim, you’ve done enough. I told you not to tell Vlad of what you knew about his daughter.’

  ‘He had a right to know.’

  ‘And you don’t know for a fact that Khareh wouldn’t change his mind about oathbreakers!’ yelled Dumas.

  ‘Neither do you know for certain that he has stopped exiling people!’ retorted Raim.

  ‘It’s worth a try to find out!’

  Old-maa raised a hand to speak, and both Dumas and Raim had the sense to fall silent. She spoke in Alashan, and Wadi translated in a low voice – although Puutra understood her, no one else would. ‘Bring exiled back to Darhan? We could not.’

  ‘You could not or you will not?’ asked Puutra. ‘You said yourself, it has been a long time without a single Chauk entering the desert. Your people are dying out there, Gola.’

  ‘It will break every rule, every tradition our people know. We never bring Chauk back to Darhan,’ Old-maa replied in Darhanian.

  ‘It is only a tradition if oathbreakers are being exiled into the desert,’ reasoned Puutra. ‘What will you trade for new waterworms, if you don’t have any Chauk? Trade this instead. Trade your knowledge of the desert for our water.’

  If Old-maa was moved, she didn’t show it, but her walking stick was tapping furiously on the ground. ‘How many?’

  ‘I a temporary settlement Isetrained0">

  Puutra nodded. ‘Yes. A small group. Five, maybe.’

  ‘Seven,’ said Dumas. ‘It should be seven.’

  ‘Seven we can manage,’ said Old-maa. ‘It will take us a little over a week to reach Darhan, if we take the quickest path.’

  ‘A week, is that all?’ breathed Dumas.

  Old-maa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Without the Alashan you wouldn’t be able to find your way out of these mountains, let alone to Darhan.’ She turned to Puutra. ‘We will accept this trade.’

  Puutra signalled to another Shan, who immediately fled the room to give the news to the Chauk, who could start reviving the Alashan with water.

  Raim was almost shaking with fury. ‘You can’t be serious, Puutra? They’ll be killed!’

  Raim’s fury was shattered by Dumas’s own. Dumas launched at him, battering his arms against Raim’s body. Raim staggered backward and all his muscles threatened to spring back and return the assault, but Wadi grabbed his arms before he could move. Vlad was similarly pinning down Dumas. He couldn’t pin down Dumas’s tongue, however: ‘You say you have never broken a promise. That means you can NEVER know what we have gone through . . . what this opportunity could mean.’

  Raim bit his own tongue back. It was true, he didn’t know. And underneath Dumas’s anger, he could recognize something else. Hope. Something he hadn’t seen before in his entire time at Lazar. Nothing he could say was going to make a difference.

  ‘Raim and Wadi, you should go back to the Shan quarters,’ said Puutra. ‘And Vlad . . .’ His tone softened. ‘You should go find your wife. Tell her what you know. Comfort yourselves. You won’t be needed for this expedition.’

  ‘You can’t do that! You need us! You surely can’t think this is a good idea . . .’ Before Raim could continue more, Vlad grabbed him by the upper arm and hauled him to his feet. ‘I’m going, I’m going.’ He stumbled towards the door.

  As soon as they started climbing the stairs towards the living quarters, Raim turned to Vlad. ‘This is a mistake.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, his mouth a firm line. And instead of crossing the pagoda towards the rooms, Vlad turned down a different path.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ demanded Raim.

  ‘To the tunnels,’ said Wadi, realization suddenly dawning.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Vlad, his pace quickening as they started down another staircase. ‘If he really did what you say he did . . . if he really harmed my daughter, then we can’t let the Chauk go to Darhan and be killed by that monster.’

  ‘We’ll have to be quick, if we want to get there before Dumas.’

  ‘The tunnels will be quick,’ said Vlad. ‘And the sooner we get to Darhan the better.’ He cracked his knuckles together, and Raim saw a darkness in the man’s eyes he had never seen before.

  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 agai
n, 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

  37

  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.