The Shadow’s Curse

by Amy McCulloch

  Raim sniffed it, and wrinkled his nose at the odd pieces of . . . brown gunk floating in the clear liquid. Tentatively he raised the bowl to his lips and took a sip.

  ‘Assuming, of course, you are Raimanan of Darhan.’

  Raim almost choked on his sip of tea. He coughed as the liquid hit the back of his throat, and he had to steady himself against the table. The man waited for him to finish.

  ‘Can I take that as a yes?’

  Raim hesitated for a moment, then nodded. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Welcome to the Southern lands, Raimanan.’ He smiled warmly, but then it faded slightly. ‘I’m afraid you’ve arrived at a difficult time. This village is very suspicious of foreigners, and someone washed up from the sea beyond the Xel rocks is especially suspect.’

  ‘You have been waiting for me?’

  ‘Yes, I am one of the servants of the Council.’ He gestured up to the wall behind Raim. A painting hung there. Raim swallowed hard. It depicted Lady Chabi, her eyes closed in sleep, but unmistakeably her. ‘We didn’t know when or where you would come, but there are servants everywhere along this shore and the borderlands of the desert, awaiting your return.’

  So they have been preparing for me, thought Raim.

  ‘It would seem that way,’ said Draikh.

  ‘I sent out a messenger bird as soon as I spotted your body in the cove. Other Council servants should be on their way. I hope they come quickly. I might not have been the only one to see you. With any luck, they will reach us before the sun and the villagers have properly risen . . .’

  The man’s erratic tone set Raim on edge. Draikh seemed to feel it too. His spirit form kept flickering in and out. Draikh was not only weak, he was nervous and that made Raim nervous.

  There was a loud bang on the door.

  Now Raim’s eyes were truly open. The tiny one-roomed dwelling had no other exit point. One window had been hastily boarded over, rusty metal nails hammered in at precarious angles. The other window was half blocked by a tall chest.

  Raim cursed himself. What had he thought when he’d arrived? The darkness. The shadowy corners. Of course, there was no light coming in. All of it had been blocked.

  He’d just walked into a death trap.

  Worse, now he could hear shouts, commotion outside the door.

  ‘Is there another way out?’ he asked the man.

  He shook his head vigorously. ‘I thought we would have more time! I’m sorry; I was following instructions. Find you, bring you here until you can be collected . . .’

  ‘There’s no time,’ warned Draikh. ‘They’re right outside.’

  Raim took two leaps to reach the boarded-up window, and began ripping at the boards with his bare hands. The man ran over to try and help. A few of the nails pinged back with the first tug, and with the second, half of a piece of board snapped off in his hands. One board down, only two more to go.

  It was too late. The door swung open, and in the half-light, Raim could see the outline of a man – tall, broad-shouldered, imposing in silhouette in the frame. He stepped inside and dominated the space. There were more men clamouring behind him, but now Raim was grateful for the smallness of the room – less room to be out-numbered in.

  The man carried a large stick – it looked like the damaged end of a piece of farming equipment. Something a Southerner might use to enslave the land, just as Raim had been taught.

  That meant the man wasn’t a soldier. This, at least, gave Raim the advantage. Raim was Yun-trained. Now was the time to prove it.

  He bent down and picked up the broken piece of wood from the window even as the villager yelled and rushed at him. He had no idea what the man was shouting, but he could guess. He wondered what tales had been told about the North. He imagined they weren’t flattering – if the attitude on the ship had been anything to go by.

  Draikh? Raim thought, as he ducked into a roll, sending the man running headlong into the wall behind.

  ‘I’m useless. Too weak – I can’t help at all.’

  You’re kidding?

  ‘Do you hear me laughing?’

  He didn’t. He didn’t hear anything but the sound of his own heartbeat, the anguished shout of the Council servant behind him as he bashed the villager’s head against the wall, and the war cries of the other men at the door.

  Another villager charged in headfirst, as if he was imitating a bull. An angry bull.

  The man’s clumsiness was his undoing – his bulk wasn’t going to be a match for Raim’s finesse. Raim used the momentum of the man’s weight as he charged, and swung him around in a circle, knocking down several of his comrades along the way.

  In the resulting confusion, Raim turned back to the window. There was barely space between the boards for him to pass. But almost. Just one more plank and that might just be enough . . .

  He jammed his own piece of board behind the loosest looking one, and pulled – trying to use it like a lever. There was a bit of movement, the plank almost coming loose, but then Draikh called his name.

  The men were back in action.

  Raim was shoved against the wall, the entire building shuddering under the force. Maybe the house would topple over and Raim could make his escape that way. Absurdly, he wanted to laugh. But there was no time for that. The servant of the Council was cowering in a corner, clearly not a fighter, but the villagers were ignoring him: they only wanted Raim. One villager had him by the tunic, and Raim was whipped around into the crowd. But Raim still had his piece of board. He used the force of the swing to smash the plank into another of his attackers. It exploded into shards of splinters over the man’s head and he collapsed onto the ground.

  Raim managed to plant his feet firmly, and pushed as hard as he could backwards. The man holding him stumbled, took a few steps back, and fell, dragging Raim down with him.

  The ensuing scream filled Raim’s ears with a terror that momentarily paralysed everyone in the room. The man had fallen straight into the searing hot bamboo stove.

  He let go of Raim, who rolled off immediately. The stench of burning fabric – then flesh – filled the room. The man fell off the stove, but flames licked at his back and his clothing. He ran in a panic against the wall, trying to pat down the flames – but rather than putting them out, the dry timber caught fire. No longer confined to their tiny brazier, the flames ran around the house, as if they possessed life of their own and had finally been set free.

  That was all the distraction that Raim needed. The room was rapidly filling with smoke, and the men were confused, distracted, unable to fight. One of them grabbed at his foot, but he pushed him away with a swift kick. He scrambled on his hands and knees to the window, trying to breathe shallowly so his lungs didn’t fill with smoke and send him into paroxysms of coughing like the others. He pulled at the plank again, and sent up a not-so-silent prayer of thanks to Sola once it came off in his hands. He pulled himself up and through the window, his tunic snagging and tearing on the broken shards of wood, but at least he was free. He fell with a thump to the ground.

  He could hear what must have been the rest of the mob coming around the burning building to reach him. He wasted no time in picking himself up and running. He ran through the town, past other houses, not daring to stop and look to see who might be following him. He didn’t know what direction to run in. He just knew he needed to get away. To get out. To get far from there.

  He finally risked a glance behind him. A few men were in pursuit, but most were trying to put out the fire.

  He kept running. He thought of the burning man in the house, and prayed he would get out alive. There was no way for Raim to turn back and check without being recaptured.

  Suddenly, new sounds captured his attention. Voices. Horses. Dust rose from the mud-and-stone road in front of him. Before he could think – before he could act – a figure on a black horse rose over the hill, such a beautiful and blinding sight he could barely believe his eyes. The figure smiled down on him – a young woma
n with thick dark hair tied in an intricate knot above her head. Behind her, a group of five women crested the hill, all on horseback and dressed in long black robes. They thundered into the village and stopped in front of Raim, blocking his path.

  The woman in front opened her mouth and spoke to the crowd that had begun gathering round. Raim turned around and watched as the men who had previously been chasing him – threatening him – turned their anger to astonishment, and then into something that resembled awe.

  Then something even more astonishing happened.

  The crowd dropped to their knees in front of the women riders. Raim thought back to what the spirit of mother had told him. I am a goddess in Lazar. Maybe not just in Lazar. Maybe here too.

  ‘Come, Raimanan,’ said the lead woman on the horse. ‘It is time for you to fulfil your destiny.’

  45

  RAIM

  The woman’s eyes ran over his wounds – the cut above his eye, which dripped a steady stream of blood down his face, the splinters and scrapes on his hands from the planks of wood, his ripped tunic, his dirty, shoeless feet. ‘It seems we have arrived just in time,’ she said.

  Raim had been given a horse to ride, and he plodded slowly beside the woman. ‘We have been waiting for you, Raim,’ she continued. ‘My name is Mei, and I am a priestess of the Council, and handmaiden to the Lady Chabi. The old man who found you, Wu Li, sent us a message about your arrival. As soon as we received it, we came as fast as we could.’

  ‘Before an angry village mob could kill me?’

  Mei laughed, and it was a delicate sound, like the tiny bells Raim used to attach to baby goats so they wouldn’t get lost. He didn’t see what was so funny about him almost dying, though. ‘The villagers didn’t want to kill you. They just wanted to capture you. Whoever handed you over to us would receive a hefty reward – the notice from the Council only went out a week ago, when we knew the ship was approaching. Of course, we hoped to just meet you safe and sound at the harbour, but things have never gone as planned. No Northerner has made the journey to the South since . . . well, I suppose since your mother did.

  ‘Her arrival changed everything. Just as yours will.’

  Raim swallowed. This was why he had come all this way. ‘Are you taking me to where she is?’

  Mei nodded. ‘Yes. Lady Chabi is ready for you. We don’t have far to go. We must head to Aqben.’

  Aqben. The home of the Southern King and, if Raim remembered properly, the biggest city in the South. Khareh used to say that it was ten times as big as Kharein, but Raim had refused to believe him. He would soon find out.

  As they moved, his ears pounded with blood and filled with the sound of the horses’ hooves against the ground, the strange metallic sound they made. He couldn’t even focus on what Mei was saying, even though he knew it was important. Everything was too different here. Too strange. And it was only getting stranger as they approached the city.

  Raim was happy to spend the rest of the journey in silence, even though his head spun with questions. He concentrated on his surroundings, which steadily filled him with a strange mix of awe and dread. Whereas the little village in the countryside had seemed more or less familiar to Raim, as they travelled further inland everything changed. Everything.

  For one, there were just so many people. They were on a path so well travelled it was beaten into the dirt, and Raim couldn’t think why they didn’t go off the path to give the ground some room to breathe. Then he saw the odd person lift their head out of the fields to watch them, and he realized that those people felt they owned the land they stood on. They used the path because they simply weren’t allowed to walk anywhere else.

  The thought baffled him.

  Gradually other people joined them on the path, but no one spoke to them. That much, Raim could understand. He wasn’t sure that he would want to speak to this group either, who looked particularly forbidding in their long black robes. The people around them were all dressed differently – some in barely more than rags, others in silks so fine he almost pulled up in expectation of being introduced to King Song of the South.

  They stopped when they reached the outskirts of a city far bigger than Kharein. The entrance to the city was marked by a big stone archway, and the top of the arch had a roof that reminded Raim of the Rentai. The corners of the roof winged out at the edges like the upturn of Oyu’s wings. He reached over and stroked the bird’s oily feathers. Oyu had rejoined him once he started the journey with the women. He was glad for the company.

  ‘Is this Aqben?’ he asked, looking out at the town, with buildings spread in every direction as far as his eyes could see.

  Mei chuckled, though the rest of group remained silent. They all dismounted, while a puzzled Raim stayed sat on his horse. ‘This is just town called Zibai. We’ll stay at an inn here for the night, and then we will be in Aqben tomorrow.’

  Just a town? Raim couldn’t believe it. Khareh had been right after all. Strange, too, was the concept of the inn. In Darhan, they would have stayed with a passing tribe, their horses fed, watered or replaced by whichever family had taken them in. Travellers were treated as honoured guests, and always with great care and attention.

  The group he was travelling with was treated with reverence, and more than a little fear, but Raim was shocked when Mei handed over pieces of gold in exchange for their night’s stay. Hospitality would have been free in Darhan – with the expectation that the debt would be paid in kind should the need be reversed.

  But here, even the people who served a goddess were expected to pay.

  Raim was taken to his room, a rolled mattress of straw covered in a cotton blanket on the floor. But it was far too warm for him in that stuffy room, the heat closing in all around him. The tiny window at the far end of the room let in no breeze, in fact – it seemed to only let in noises that made Raim feel equally claustrophobic, because they were not the noises of Darhan. They were the noises of this strange, new place – the chatter in a strange tongue, the clink of glasses in the room downstairs, the sound of passing wagons. None of it made sense.

  In the end, he slept in the stable, with the horses. It was there – surrounded by the one scent that was vaguely familiar to him – that he was finally able to close his eyes and sleep.

  46

  WADI

  Wadi felt sick to her stomach. Erdene had not deserved to die. Guilt wrapped its hand around her heart and squeezed it tightly.

  This is the steppes, Wadi, she scolded herself. Erdene would have killed Wadi in a heartbeat. No, Wadi wasn’t angry because of Erdene’s death – it was kill or be killed. But Wadi had been lucky.

  Erdene had been the more skilled fighter. If there had been any justice . . .

  She couldn’t think like that any more. She faced against the wind, letting it wash over her face and blow through the strands of her hair. She gave herself one breath of wind to feel guilt, to feel sorrow, to feel lucky – and then she had to move on.

  Inside her tunic pocket, she felt the gold ring she had tried to use to dupe Erdene. It hadn’t worked on the Seer-Queen. She had known Khareh-khan for too long.

  She approached Erdene’s horse, who shied away from her, the whites of its eyes bright against the dark sky. Of course it would be afraid of her – it had just seen her kill its former master, and Erdene’s blood was all over Wadi’s hands. She felt the revulsion rising again, and she fumbled in her pack for water, which she sloshed over her skin to wash the blood away.

  It almost worked.

  She spoke softly to the mount, until it let her approach, and then she swung herself up onto its back. She leaned forward and whispered ‘home’ in its ear, kicking her heels into its flank, it jumped into a canter and the steppes began to disappear beneath its hooves.

  They rode for a day, but it wasn’t until she could see the green banner of Khareh’s standard flying high above one of the yurts that a guard came out to meet her. Khareh must have relaxed his defences since the defeat of Mermad
en.

  It must be nice to feel so comfortable, she thought. She wondered if he realized that he was about to let the most dangerous person he knew back into his camp.

  ‘I was away on the Khan’s business,’ she said to the guard, once he had drawn close enough to hear. She held up his gold ring between her thumb and forefinger.

  He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously, but once he saw the Khan’s seal on the ring, he nodded. Wadi knew he wouldn’t risk incurring Khareh’s wrath by not bringing her straight to him. In his mind, if she were truly a threat, Khareh would kill her straightaway.

  Her heart beat wildly as she walked her horse into the camp. She no longer kept her head covered, wearing the indigo-dyed hood wrapped around her long neck, framing her dark, oval face. She caught the gaze of the soldiers who stopped their work to watch her, and boldly held eye contact. She was not going to be afraid any more. She was not going to be a captive any more.

  Khareh needed her, and she knew it. She was going to make sure everyone else knew it too.

  It was Lars who came out to meet her. She prepared herself to be led to the platform where Khareh received his visitors – prisoners or warlords or messengers – but instead Lars said: ‘The Khan would like to see you, in private.’

  When she entered Khareh’s yurt, he was working at his desk, Altan and Garus standing behind him. If looks could kill, she would have died from both of their glances. Khareh, on the other hand, didn’t lift his head to look at her. He continued to sit at his desk, scribbling on a piece of parchment with a quill. For a while, the only sound was the scratching sound of the nib as it etched across the paper.

  ‘So, you came back.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wadi.

  ‘And without a fight, or so I hear.’ He put down his quill and finally lifted his eyes to look at her. ‘Good thing my search party didn’t find you first,’ he said. ‘An unauthorized search party, I might add. I told Erdene you would be back of your own accord, but I turned my back on her for a second and she had gone after you.’