Raim couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. He felt vibrations in the ground beneath him, and knew that horses were approaching. Khareh’s soldiers. That was quick, Raim thought. You should have left me there, to die with Wadi. Now the soldiers will just kill me here.
And he would let them. He looked over at Draikh, who seemed barely there at all. He wouldn’t be able to prevent his death this time. There was no sign of the woman in white at all.
Wadi’s face swam in front of his eyes. She had died fighting to protect the Chauk, the Alashan and him. She had fought until the bitter end.
Rage filled him. Now Khareh was coming to capture him again – to kill him.
But why should he go down without a fight? He tested his muscles by rotating his shoulders and cocking his head from side to side. The pain was intense but he would bear it for these last moments. He picked up his sword and got up.
He wouldn’t speak, in case making that effort drained what little energy he had and prevented him from dying with valour.
Horses careered round the corner, their hooves pounding the earth. Raim charged towards them. He let out a ferocious roar, forgetting his desire for silence, releasing all the pent-up pain and anguish in one blazing moment. The dust washed over him like a wave, but as he charged towards them the horses slowed to a stop. Raim kept running, the dust burning his eyes. But he kept them wide open. The lead horseman dismounted.
The sword fell out of Raim’s hands. He dropped to his knees.
The horseman wrapped his arms around Raim’s shoulders. It was his grandfather. It was Loni.
‘Come on, boy, let’s take you home.’
41
The pungent aroma of bitterbark tea thickened the air in the tiny yurt. Raim sipped slowly. He tried to concentrate on the taste extremely t >
No such luck. He could think of nothing else. And his wounds burned despite the poultice Loni had applied. He wanted to rub his back up against the post in the centre of the room just to relieve the terrible itch. But he sat motionless on his cushion, apart from the intermittent moments when he brought the cup to his lips and lowered it again down into his lap.
He was following Loni’s orders: ‘Sit here and wait for me. Drink your tea.’
They had travelled most of the night to get to this place. Loni hadn’t named it, but it was clear what it was: a Cheren community, a settlement for old people who had lost their usefulness to society.
Raim was a shell of himself. There was nothing left inside him. Seeing his grandfather cooped up in a Cheren, when he had so much vigour and youth left, shattered whatever pieces were left of Raim’s heart.
Loni reappeared in the yurt. He carried with him a small bowl of rice with a smattering of boiled meat. He placed the bowl in front of Raim, along with some coarsely cut wooden chopsticks. Raim couldn’t even look at it. Instead, he stared straight into Loni’s limitless black eyes.
‘How did you find me?’ It was the question that kept on bubbling to the surface of the boiling cauldron of questions in his mind.
Loni put a finger to his lips. ‘I will show you. We must be quick. We must go while the night is still long.’
Raim followed Loni outside. His yurt was one of many, too many for Raim to count in one glance. It was a tent city like Kharein during festival – but unlike Kharein, this was a city of decay. Even in the dark of night, Raim could see just how permanent the settlement was. Cobwebs hung from the guy ropes that anchored the tents to the ground. Rust stained the few metal joints and spread like orange dye onto the canvas fabric. There were scatterings of fire pits, the dark amber glow of dying embers still visible in most of them. Loni was moving away from the settlement and Raim dragged his feet as he followed.
Draikh floated behind. He hadn’t said a word since the battle the night before. Before they exited the perimeter of the Cheren completely, Loni turned round and circled the air in front of Draikh with an open palm.
‘The spirit can go no further.’
‘You can see him?’ said Raim.
‘No. But the white glow of his presence will disturb where we are going. It is necessary that we learn to manoeuvre in blindness,’ said Loni cryptically.
They moved round a corner and out of sight of the Cheren. Every step they took increased the darkness. At first, the stars made visible at least the outline of Loni’s form. Then, even that tiny illumination disappeared. When Raim tilted his head, he could see the pinpoints of light, but their light didn’t reach their surroundings. In front of him, he could see nothing. He spread his arms to the side to try to touch something – a wall, a tree, anything – to try to guide himself, but there was nothing. He reached forward and groped for Loni. He felt foolish, desperately searching for his grandfather to hold onto, but he couldn’t find him.
Then he couldn’t trust his sense of direction. It was black now – he couldn’t even describe it as darkness – just everywhere black.
‘U extremely blmakfese your feet and follow the ground,’ said Loni. ‘Just keep moving. We are almost there.’
Hearing his grandfather’s voice stilled Raim. He tried to use the sound to guide him, but it threw him even more off balance. It was suffocating – not knowing where to turn or which direction to move.
Concentrate on the ground! Raim lifted his foot, although it felt as if his shoes were made of lead. He placed his heel directly in front of his toe, almost on top of it so at least he felt the pressure of his own body, then repeated the process so he moved forward at a slow, laborious pace.
When the first flicker of light flashed Loni’s silhouette into view, Raim sprinted forward.
‘What was that?’
‘The blinding path.’
Raim shook off his shivers and turned back to look where they had just stumbled from the cave. The opening gaped like the mouth of a sleeping beast. ‘And we have to return through this path?’
‘Yes. And if you ever want to reach this place again, then you will have to learn to cross it without fear. Here.’ Loni passed him an unlit torch and held it against his own flickering one. It caught immediately and a flame leaped to life. The light threw their shadows onto the trees behind. They were deep inside a forest.
‘I hope I never have to come here ag—’ Something caught his eye just above Loni’s head. The old man moved out of his way but Raim barely noticed. He was drawn to what he saw. It was a carpet, the corners nailed roughly between the trunks of two enormous trees. The colouring was so unusual. The rugs of Darhan were filled with greens and browns and reds – colours taken from the earth – vibrant, deep colours that could only be made from natural dyes. But the entire face of this enormous piece was made up of different yellows. The yellows rose and dipped in waves, so intricately woven that it looked like it was moving. Up this close, Raim could see the details of every knot. He moved down the carpet slowly, his entire vision filled with yellows and golds. There was only one tiny blemish on the golden sea. A little figurine, made up of a few threads of deep brown colour. Raim reached up and touched the figure with his fingertips.
The figure was down on his knees. The figure was all alone on the yellow landscape. The figure was . . .
‘Ach! Do you want to set the entire forest alight?’ Loni yanked his arm back from the carpet. Raim hadn’t even realized how close he had been holding the torch to the carpet, but he had only wanted to try to catch more of the detail.
‘That’s me!’ Raim said, pointing back at the figure.
‘They are all of you.’
‘All?’ And then Raim looked beyond the yellow carpet and saw another one nailed between the next two trees. And then another draped across a large branch just behind. The entire forest was filled with the woven masterpieces, blanketing the trees and the ground.
Loni took his arm and walked him through the make-shift gallery. Some of the images of him were up close, so that his expression filled an entire canvas. Others were more like the first one he saw; mostly of the landscape, always with his tiny fi
gure featuring somewhere in the picture. He saw Lazar again, in all its subdued and degenerated glory. Oyu was pictured, with his great wingspan and the promise-knot dripping from his mouth. They didn’ a temporary settlement tI you can fet seem to be in any particular order, just pieces of his life tossed over the trees like laundry hanging out to dry.
And then they came across the panel where the behrflies attacked him. Raim cringed just looking at it, knowing the immense pain those flies had brought. And standing over him was Draikh’s form, swatting at the flies with his sword, blocking them from Raim’s face.
‘This was one of the first ones. What were we to make of this?’ Loni spoke almost apologetically. ‘I thought somehow the carpets were showing us what you were doing, where you were, but when this came up, how could it be? After all, it shows Khareh in the desert. And Khareh could not have been in the desert when he was just taking power in Kharein. It had to be a dream and then, your grandmother and I, we despaired, because we did not know where you were. We had only the rumours to go by – that you murdered Mhara and instigated the whole chain of events that led to Khareh becoming Khan. We thought maybe it was your way of helping him. But the more of these that were made, the more we realized they were about you. And then this one is the most recent.’ He gestured to the carpet they were standing on.
The curvature of the hill, the rough, haphazard placement of the rocks, all indicated that this was the valley where he had crawled out of the tunnel and been found by Loni. He took a moment to study the expressions on Draikh’s face. They both looked exhausted, as it was expected. What he didn’t expect were the looks of absolute defeat. If there was anything about his spirit companion that could be counted on, it was his enthusiasm. He was a resolute optimist. But depicted here, he just looked downcast.
Maybe it was because Draikh knew Raim had no future now. Was it his destiny to peter out with the elders? He could not stay in Darhan – everywhere he went he would be hunted down by Khareh’s soldiers – and he could not go back to Lazar – he had no idea how to find it again without going back to the Alashan. And after he’d led several of their people to certain death, he didn’t know if he could face it.
The dark thoughts turned his stomach even as he turned his attention back to the rug beneath his feet. ‘I still don’t understand how you found me from this. There must be hundreds of valleys and rocks that look like this in Darhan.’
‘I might be a useless old man now, but in my day I was a tracker in the Khan’s army. You know, not all of us can be Yun, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our talents. I’ve found rebel locations from rougher descriptions of terrain.’ Loni’s voice brimmed with such ageless pride that Raim almost smiled. ‘And this is almost as good as seeing it with your own eyes. The journey was long, though. If I had delayed even for a moment, you could’ve been gone from there.’
‘I almost attacked you,’ Raim admitted. ‘How long ago was this . . .’
‘Almost five days ago now, this vision came. She knew what it meant and acted on it much faster than she ever had before.’
‘She? Yasmin?’
Loni did not answer him but continued the long walk through the forest. Raim found himself immobilized by the woven stills from his life. These were private moments – moments he was afraid to relive – like when had first found out about Dharma.
At gentle pressing from Loni, Raim kept moving.
The gent the other apprenticesanvonodle purring of the forest had seemed foreign to him at first; the dense brush thick and claustrophobic. But as fast as he had grown used to the desert’s massive expanses, the forest had faded into the background for him, the carpets stealing all of his attention. Even now, as they walked further, the number of the carpets did not dwindle. Raim wondered aloud, unable to contain his curiosity about how these carpets had been made, and in such a short time.
But then Raim was struck with a thought: what if these had been here all along? Had his destiny been planned right from the start? He had never heard of such a thing happening, not in the ancient texts in Lazar orecialfe.
from the mouths of Vlad or Puutra.
Loni revealed the truth to him as they moved deeper into the forest. He brought him to a clearing, and suddenly Raim knew how the carpets had been made.
There were looms everywhere. Men and women, shrivelled and bent with age, recruited from the Cheren community, crowded around masses of threads,essly weaving. There were vats of dye bubbling away in one corner, with one man dipping a stick wrapped with wool into the liquid while another tossed more leaves or berries to increase the intensity of the colour. It was a weaving community more bustling than Una. No wonder there were so many rugs.
‘But . . . how?’
‘The weaving has instilled new life in the Cheren community. Everyone is involved. We work from these.’ He led Raim over to a loom, and picked up a piece of paper covered in black scrawling symbols. ‘These weaving, endl
symbols represent the pattern that they weave.’
‘Where does the pattern come from? How is it my life is being woven like this?’
Instead of answering, Loni gestured towards a flickering light at the far end of the weavers.
The light was filtered through a soft canvas yurt erectof a small pathway that had been meticulously brushed free of leaves and other foliage. There was an other-worldliness to the lodging.
He was drawn to the light like a moth to a flame, and just as tentatively – almost leaping forward at certain points then lingering, turning back to stare at his grandfather who had stopped at the edge of the pathway.
When he was close enough to touch the fabric, the air thickened around his hand until he felt like he was pushing through honey.
But the curtain lifted before his hand reached it and three women, their faces covered with a mesh-like cloth, exited the tent. They moved fast but barely lifted their feet from the ground. The first woman carried a tall broom, which she swept along the pathway before they walked. The steady sweep-sweep of her broom on the ground guided their movements like an army drum, and they disappeared around the back of the yurt as Raim watched.
They appeared more like mystics than weavers. Raim debated whether to follow them. But the light compelled him forward.
He stepped through the curtain.
‘Dharma?’
The name tumbled out of his mouth, his eyes knowing her before his brain had a moment to process. Her back was to him, but the moment he spoke her name she turned her ear towards him. The fingers of her right hand twitched across the loom that lay in her lap, as if reading the threads that lay on the carpet in front of her. Wrapped around all her slim fingers were hundreds of tiny threads.
‘Raim!’ The loom clattered his curiosityor occasional exto the ground and she bounded towards him. He fell to his knees and she collided against his chest, burrowing her nose into his neck.
‘Dharma, you’re safe! I thought . . . but Khareh . . . I thought I had lost you for ever. Thank Sola!’ They held each other tightly for a long moment, before he loosened his embrace. She still kept her cheek against his shoulder, and would not move for all his gentle pressing. He reached up and stroked her head, and he felt a knot of coarse linen in amongst the soft curls of her hair. ‘What is this?’ He traced the linen until it came to the edge of her temple. He took her chin between his fingers and turned her head towards him.
A blindfold. The rough knot held a crimson blindfold tightly around her eyes. He tried to touch it but she shrank away from him. He cupped her face in his hands. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’s only me.’
His fingertips barely touched the bottom edge of the material but with the tiniest of friction he slid the fold down her nose and cheekbone.
‘No!’ he cried aloud. Fear shook him. ‘No!’ He could barely contain his shock, his eyes darting across her face, unable to see anything but the two dark spaces where the skin was puckered and wrinkled with age where the rest of her was young and innocent. But h
e knew they were not wrinkles. They were Khareh’s revenge. This was how Khareh had won his spirit servant: at the price of Dharma’s sight. ‘And it is all my fault,’ he said, shaking now. ‘Dharma, what pain and torment have I caused you? Blind. You are blind.’ Because of me.
This time, it was Dharma who reached out to him. She stroked his cheek. ‘But I can ed at the end
see!’ she said. The absence of fear in her voice calmed his beating heart.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You! I have been seeing you! Every day, every night, I see visions of where you are, brother. I have lived your journey with you! And I always weave an image of what I see.’
‘And you can see me?’
many things now. But I choose only to see
you, my dearest Raim.’ She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.
He hugged her tightly to him. Then he took the luminous silver scarf from around his wrist and tied it around her eyes, instead of the rotten piece of cloth she had been wearing before. She gasped with delight and couldn’t stop touching the fabric. ‘My parents!’
Raim kissed her fingertips in reply. His eyes lingered on her joyful face. Her hopeful face. He hadn’t seen hope in a very long time.
She reached up to his face. ‘Raim, why are you crying?’
He clutched Dharma tighter again, breathing in her hair and feeling her pulse against his skin. Alive, she was alive. His heart filled with joy and sadness.
‘Don’t cry, Raim. Look at this.’ She lifted up the loom from where she had set it down on the floor beside her. Raim s216;I can see
EPILOGUE
Wadi spat in Khareh’s face. She struggled against the ropes that bound her wrists. ‘You think this is the end, Khareh? Raim is much more powerful than you. He always has been.’
He walked over to her, his strut like an over proud peacock. He drew the pass-stone out from under her shirt. She shivered with disgust as his fingertips touched her neck. He reached down and kissed the pass-stone with his lips, then spun round and left the room, leaving Wadi alone in the darkness.
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