The Oathbreaker's Shadow

by Amy McCulloch

  Puutra released a long sigh. ‘If he had stayed with us perhaps he could have been truly great. But he caused far more damage than good. The knowledge we’ve lost because he has g a temporary settlement tI sense of feone, that is one thing. But it is not nearly so bad as how he chose to escape.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Raim. ‘Surely he would have had to join the Alashan . . .’

  ‘No.’ Puutra shook his head and cracked his knuckles. ‘The Alashan never take Chauk back to Darhan. Never. But there is another way out of Lazar . . .’

  Raim raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought we were completely cut off here?’

  ‘As far as most know, yes. But there are tunnels through the mountains that eventually lead to Darhan. They were once underground trade routes – the only real way through the desert to Aqben in the south. Lazar was a hub of activity. The Khans of Darhan, Mauz – even the southern kings – would send their heirs here to learn the ancient art of being a sage.’

  Raim folded his arms across his chest. ‘The Khans sent their children to be oathbreakers? Why in Sola’s name would they do that?’

  ‘Raim . . . I realize this is difficult for you. Most apprentices to the Shan discover this knowledge themselves, from the book that you cannot read. That way they can come to these revelations slowly, unlocking the real history of the past from the words inscribed on the page – at their own pace. But you do not have that luxury. So I beg of you to keep an open mind.’

  Raim hesitated. What would Khareh do?

  ‘He would listen,’ said Draikh. ‘He would try to learn.’

  Raim knew Draikh was right. He nodded slowly.

  Puutra walked over to a locked chest at the far end of the room. From it, he pulled out a large scroll of paper. Inscribed on the scroll in delicate inkwork was the most detailed map Raim had ev

  er seen in his life. Puutra spread it out over the floor and pointed at Lazar. ‘The sages haven’t always been oathbreakers.’

  ‘Like me!’ Raim exclaimed. ‘You said I had to have broken my oath for Draikh to appear, but that’s not always true, is it?’

  ‘Like you, but not like you. Tthe old stories – the ones who sat at the right hand of the Khan – were not oathbreakers. Lazar was where they came to learn how to externalize their own spirits. They could perform sage magic without breaking any oaths at all.’

  ‘Then why don’t you teach that? Surely that is much better than having to become a traitor first!’

  ‘We would, if we knew how. But that knowledge is even more lost to the sands of time than our version of the art. The sages could never become Khans of their own right, because by externalizing yourself, you make yourself so much weaker. You’re losing part of your own spirit, after all. One sage – whose name we do not speak – discovered that he could become much stronger if he used someone else’s spirit as his power. He dreamed of becoming both Khan and sage in one – he didn’t want to be someone’s second-in-command. He wanted to lead. There were seven other sages living in Lazar at the time, and when they realized what he had done, they were horrified. They chased him through the tunnels, battling him along the way, trying to prevent him from reaching Darhan. It was an epic battle, the seven against the one rogue. They defeated him, but at great cost. In the end, Hao – the extremely blJud strongest left – decided that the knowledge that oathbreaking could lead to becoming a sage was too dangerous. They sealed the tunnels into and out of Lazar, keeping one key – one pass-stone for each remaining sage – seven in total. Five of the sages left Lazar then, to travel back to Darhan and spread words of hatred and deceit against all oathbreakers. They encouraged their khans to exile oathbreakers into the desert to Lazar – the only way they could think of to keep oathbreakers from learning how to manipulate their spirits into becoming powerful sages.

  ‘Only two of those keys remained in Lazar. And Garus stole one of them. That fool! We are lucky that another has returned to us very recently.’

  ‘But why would you want to train sages again, if this Hao person and the others tried so hard to stop it?’

  Puutra’s face darkened. ‘Because what else can we do . . . just wither away here and die? If I had been allowed to stay in Darhan, then perhaps I would have been able to earn my forgiveness from my lovely wife. But now, I have no choice but to live the last of my days here, with her as my haunt hating my every move, knowing that I will die a traitor. But if I dedicate myself to becoming a sage . . . well, then at least my betrayal will not be my only legacy.

  ‘And you have brought hope back to us, Raim. Maybe you can prove that there is another way. Another path to becoming a sage – one that doesn’t result in weakness or require treachery. One that will bring honour to the sages again . . . and to Darhan.’ Puutra put his hand on Raim’s arm, and then shuffled off, leaving Raim alone in the room.

  Raim sat down on the very edge of the map, gazing out over his entire world. All Puutra had said about sages swirled in his head.

  ‘See what I told you?’ said Draikh, in Raim’s mind. ‘You could be great.’

  Maybe.

  ‘You will.’

  Raim traced his finger to where Kharein was. He imagined all the people he knew there. Khareh, Erdene, Lars. What were they doing? Were they living out their lives as if nothing had happened? Would Lars take his empty place in the Yun? His finger migrated out onto the steppe, into the vast grasslands. Loni, Dharma, Yasmin. All out there somewhere. Did they worry about him? Did they presume him dead, or as good as, in the desert? Up into the mountains. Tarik. He wondered if word of his exile had reached the Baril. He wondered if Tarik would be surprised. Something they had both shared was a fierce sense of honour, and loyalty – with a jolt of pain, he knew Tarik would be ashamed of him.

  He imagined going back there, scar gone for ever, not only reclaiming his honour, but taking his place alongside Khareh as his sage and Protector combined.

  ‘You could do it,’ said Draikh.

  Yes, Raim thought, not daring to say it aloud. We could. We could do it.

  All I have to do is clear my name.

  30

  sh-left">As soon as night fell, Raim left his room. Puutra’s words rang in his ears, cluttering his mind. But still one thing Puutra said stood out above the rest: ‘Wadi has her own path to follow.’

  Wadi might have her own path, but there was no way he was going to be able to follow his without her. If there was anyone who could help him make sense of what he had learned, it was her. And if she wanted to be alone – if she didn’t want his help in return – then he could accept that. But only if he heard it from her mouth.

  He had to find her.

  He looked up and down the hallway. It was deserted. He crept towards the stairwell and followed the twisted staircase down, only once having to hide in the shadows as a strange noise caught his attention. He waited, holding his breath, until the sound disappeared. False alarm.

  The curtain leading to the water garden billowed out into the hallway, soft as a ghost. He kneeled down low beside it and drew it aside by the tiniest margin to give him a view into the garden. He peered through but had trouble seeing anything in the darkness beyond. It seemed empty.

  Rules of surveillance. Excitement surged through him as memories of his Yun training flooded back. Even on this small scale, he loved the rush. Look again, Mhara would have said. Is it really empty? Don’t trust your first look.

  No rash decisions. He kept looking, his pupils adjusting to the lack of light. Then he saw a dip in the blackness – movement. Someone stood up from the centre of the pagoda, walked over the stepping stones, and exited through the curtain to the right of where Raim was looking. Raim caught a brief silhouette of the man in the light from the open door. A guard from the front gate. So they were still monitoring the pagoda.

  So, what does it matter? he chided himself. It’s not like he could get kicked out of Lazar – Puutra had made that clear.

  Still, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself and po
tentially get Wadi in trouble if she was waiting for him. But she wouldn’t be waiting at the pagoda if it was under watch. It was now or never; he didn’t know when the guard might return.

  He slipped through the curtain, trying to move it as little as possible. The water reflected a tiny amount of light back, enough for him to pick out the opaque shapes of the stepping stones. He skipped lightly across to the pagoda, over the other side, and down the staircase they had climbed when they had first arrived. At every floor he paused, but there were no more signs of life.

  At the ground floor, he stopped again. He had come to the huge, high-ceilinged room Puutra had led him through on his first day. There was more light here, from the dying embers of torches hung up against the walls. He pressed himself into the shadow against the wall. What if there are more guards here? Minutes passed, but still the silence dominated. He made his move.

  He darted quickly across the stone floor, and headed straight for the door.

  He pulled at the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. He felt around for a lock, but found nothing. He pulled again, using more force. Nothing. He was trapped inside the temple.

  He resigned himself to going back to his room, defeated.

  Then a noise sounded, a temporary settlement tI disappearfe like a pebble skittering across the ground. He rushed over to one of the pillars and crouched down behind it, his heart hammering in his ears.

  Someone appeared at the far end of the room, but Raim couldn’t move his head to look up without risking being seen. He pressed his body close to the heavy stone base of the pillar, so close he felt dust from the stone fly up his nose. He held his tongue to the roof of his mouth to stop from sneezing and after what felt like an eternity, the figure moved away.

  When he was sure the person was gone, Raim trudged back upstairs, trying to avoid feeling dejected about not being able to find her.

  He passed through the water pagoda again, and that’s when he saw it: a round circle with a line through it, identical to the markings on Wadi’s pendant, carved into one of the wooden benches in the pagoda.

  She had been there.

  31

  He returned to the pagoda every night to wait for her, learning the cycles of the guards, slipping out to wait just round the corner as they did their rounds. The days passed insufferably slowly, with either Puutra or Vlad – whoever had decided to torture him that day – moving on from meditating to focus on him and Draikh.

  They were in the middle of a very simple task, based on what Draikh had demonstrated on the first day. Puutra had asked Draikh to move a chair from one end of the room to the other end, where Raim would sit down on it. At first, Raim tried to imagine what it would be like if he couldn’t see Draikh – how amazing it would look to see a chair fly across the room at his command. He could imagine Khareh’s delight, and Raim felt the sudden desire to run all the way back to Darhan to show him. But as the task dragged on, and Puutra banged his cane and said, ‘Again, again,’ the novelty quickly wore off. His late night jaunts to the pagoda had made Raim feel more tired than usual. He felt his focus drift.

  Where could they be keeping Wadi?

  ‘No idea,’ Druikh replied in his mind.

  Also, I don’t see how getting you to prove you can carry a chair is really helping me figure out anything to do with my scar.

  Draikh picked up the chair, which was now on the far side of the room from Raim. ‘It doesn’t help you at all.’

  Puutra banged his cane into the ground. ‘Pay attention! You are not taking this seriously!’

  Dumas stormed over now, anger in his voice. ‘Please, Puutra, he clearly doesn’t care about being a sage. But look, I have breached cooperation. Watch. Nava!’ He turned to his spirit, who slowly raised her pointed face in his direction. ‘Bring that scroll to me.’

  She stared at him blankly.

  Dumas’s eyes filled with desperation. ‘Nava, please, please, my sweet, my heart, the scrolls? Like you did before! I beg you.’

  But the haunt remained motionless. right handebl. By the time he seco

  Draikh, with Khare

  Dumas turned a shade of red brighter than Lazar’s walls after witnessing Draikh’s display. Seeing he had lost Puutra’s attention, he turned abruptly on his heels and stormed out of the room. A few moments later, Nava got up from her perch and sauntered out behind him.

  ‘You’d do better focusing your attention on him than me,’ Raim told Puutra. ‘He’s right. I don’t care.’

  ‘You and Draikh think you are so strong, but you have so much to learn before you realize your true power together!’

  ‘I don’t want to “realize my true power”. I just want to find out how to clear my name and then go home. For gods’ sake let me at least go outside and get some air.’

  ‘You haven’t noticed that it has taken Draikh almost ten minutes to move the chair across the room this time.’

  ‘That’s because we’ve been talking.’

  Puutra raised one eyebrow. ‘Is it?’

  Raim looked at Draikh and for a moment was taken aback. Draikh’s form, normally so solid and clear, had taken on a translucent quality. Raim thought he could see through Draikh to the other side of the room.

  Draikh, however, was defiant. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, and carried the chair the rest of the way towards Raim. Raim wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he thought he saw the chair quiver in Draikh’s hands. When he went to put it down behind Raim, it seemed like he dropped it instead of the bored, deliberate movement he had been using earlier. Raim sat down.

  And Draikh whipped the chair from out under him. Raim tumbled onto the floor.

  Raim rubbed his sore tailbone. ‘See, Puutra? I think Draikh is fine.’

  ‘You are a fool if you believe that. You must train. Or else you risk losing that part of your friend’s soul for ever. Are you prepared for that responsibility?’

  Raim suddenly looked horrified. ‘My friend’s soul?’

  ‘Yes! What did you think he was? Just an apparition from nowhere? No, Draikh – as you call him – is part of Khareh. A big part, as it was an Absolute Vow. And if you wear him out with your magic, that’s it. Gone. For ever.’

  ‘He won’t wear me out. I’m strong,’ said Draikh.

  Puutra’s mouth set in a firm line, Draikh’s form quivered, and suddenly Raim wasn’t so sure.

  By the time they were finished, Raim was weary to the bone and Draikh seemed even weaker, but he went again to the pagoda that night, over a week since the first night. The mark in the wooden bench was deeper than before; he had redrawn it with the sharpened end of a chopstick he had stolen from the Shan. He hoped if Wadi saw that, she would take it as a sign he was waiting.

  He was almost ready to give up for the night, but a whisper reached him.

  ‘Raim?’

  ‘Wadi?-source { font-size: 0.8em; text-align: right; margin-top: 0;orbuckCC f’

  ‘Oh, thank Sola, I’ve found you.’

  Wadi stood in the doorway, her face and hair covered in a fine film of red dust, red-orange streaks of handprints all over her once-white tunic and trousers. She rushed over to him and buried herself in his embrace. He gripped her tightly in his arms, and they held each other in the centre of the pagoda.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he whispered into her hair. ‘Puutra said something about some tunnels . . .’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She pulled away from him slightly, and he brushed the hair from her face. ‘They caught me sneaking through here the first night, just after I made that mark. Tonight was the first night they left me alone – the person guarding me was called away. It sounded urgent, so I thought they might be a while. It was my only opportunity.’

  ‘Now you’re here, you’re not going back to wherever it is they’re keeping you. You’re going to stay here, with me.’

  She smiled. ‘Raim, you don’t understand. I won’t let them keep us apart any more either, but for now I have to go back to what I’m doing for them. T
hey need my help.’

  ‘Your help?’ His brow furrowed.

  ‘Yes, it’s all to do with my pendant.’ She took it off from around her neck and placed it on the floor so it lay next to the mark she had drawn in the dust. ‘It’s a pass-stone.’

  ‘You can use that to get out of Lazar . . .’

  Wadi nodded. ‘Not only that, but they think there’s something special about the stone itself.’

  It did look special. It was slightly luminous, more so than the small amount of light coming from the torches could account for. He touched it with his index finger, almost expecting a jolt, but it felt like cool stone.

  Wadi leaned in closer as if someone could overhear them. ‘They think it’s able to hold a promise.’

  Now Raim really was confused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like in Darhan. You knot your promises, but really what you are doing is sealing them inside the string. It doesn’t matter what the material is, the knot carries it. What if the same was true for stone, or wood, or any other material for that matter? What if you could somehow use it to bind a promise?’

  32

  ‘Let me into those chambers. I need to see the Yun!’ Raim said to Puutra. He was prepared to stand his ground. Puutra had barred him from approaching the Yun straight away, and had enlisted Dumas’s help in restraining him – who was only too glad to help. Raim had sat down in protest outside Puutra’s door, not willing to move until he was granted his wish. But to his surprise, Puutra nodded.

  ‘Yes. It is time. But be careful. He has been through much these past few hours.’

  Puutra led him to a part of the building he had never been before. It was reserved for those who were ill – physically and mentally – and was barricaded by heavy wooden planks and impenetrable-looking black metal locks.

  Puutra stopped in front of one of the doors, took out a large set of keys and unlocked it. ‘As I said before, be careful. He is still . . . sensitive.’ He left Raim and Draikh to enter alone.