The Oathbreaker's Shadow (14 page)

‘No, wait!’ A knife was already at his throat by the time the words had left his mouth. He was sure that had one of the others not raised a finger by the tiniest of increments, he would already be dead. These people were impatient. ‘I am looking for the city of exiles . . . for Lazar.’

She narrowed her eyes, studying him closely. ‘We grant free passage to the Chauk to reach Lazar, but to no others . . .’

Maybe it would be easier if the Alashan just made his decision for him and ended it right now. But no, he owed Mhara more than that. He owed Khareh more than that. He wouldn’t go down without a fight. He struggled with renewed ferocity against his bindings, the stake tilting forward through his exertion. He twisted the bindings around his wrists, pushed up against the sand with his feet, tried anything to gain some sort of purchase against the ground. It wasn’t working, although the Alashan were strangely quiet despite his protest. Instead, they were pointing at him. He looked down, and saw that in his struggles, the ugly red scar on his wrist winked its presence between the gaps in the rope bindings.

‘You see?’ Raim said. ‘I . . .’ The next words stuck in his throat. ‘I am an oathbreaker.’ Even as he said the words,
the revulsion shuddered through his body.
No, I’m not!
he wanted to shout, but what good would it do him? He only hoped that would be enough to convince them to bring him safely to Lazar, and out of this desert.

All eyes were on the scar for a brief moment before a high-pitched whistle disturbed them. Another grey-clad figure – Raim was unsure whether man or woman – sped towards the five in council around him. The person spoke hurriedly in their language, making blatant gestures to the sky behind Raim.

He craned his neck to try to see the cause of the commotion. At first he could see nothing but pitch-black sky and stars that seemed to melt into the sand at the horizon. But just inside the edge of his peripheral vision he saw a place where the stars were beginning to distort and blur, as if a heavenly veil covered them.

Raim could tell by the Alashan’s reaction that they thought this no divine gift. There was immediate movement all around him; every previously stationary grey mound now alive. The knife-wielding girl slid the ominous blade neatly into a hidden sheath and abandoned him to join the fray. Anyone whose face was uncovered quickly hid it again beneath the impossibly long grey hoods. They didn’t hide their faces fast enough, however, for Raim to miss the expression of extreme anxiety on every one.

A neat line was quick to form, and when all but the council members had joined it they began their move forward. Then the council started leaving.

‘Wait!’ Raim beat his bound feet against the ground and cried out, but the word wouldn’t come, only a desperate croak, his voice run ragged over the dryness of his throat. He would rather face the edge of a sword than whatever in the desert that was making even the ferocious Alashan run. He seemed to have caught their attention, for two of them stopped and started arguing. One of them was the girlhanging-indent
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Once he had caught up with the Alashan, he had expected to be bound again, but instead the man called Mesan had given him a spare grey cloak to throw over his shoulders. Raim supposed that by now there was no chance of escape, and besides, he had lost the inclination to run away. Just being around people, savage or not, felt like a blessing, and they hadn’t tried to drink his blood yet. Raim looked back over his shoulder at the changing horizon. The mist over the stars had grown and parts of the sky were completely dark, as if someone had blotted the tiny lights out with a thick rubbing of coal.hanging-indent
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He turned to join the Alashan, but the knife-girl was in front of him, blocking his path. ‘You cannot walk with us.’

Raim frowned. ‘But Mesan . . .’

‘Mesan allowed you to travel with us to Lazar. He did not permit you to walk with us. No.’ She took Raim by the shoulders and pivoted him round. ‘No, you must walk
with your kind. With the other disgusting oathbreakers.’ She gave him a shove and walked away.

At first, Raim thought the girl was crazy. There was no one else there except the group he was walking with. But then, as the lights carried by the Alashan faded away and his eyes adjusted to the complete darkness, he saw movement. Ten figures were moving towards him, five wearing the grey hoods of the Alashan, five who were bare-headed. These must be the Chauk.

Raim prepared for the tidal wave of revulsion he would feel at the sight of the shadows they must all bear, but to his surprise he didn’t see any shadows at all. He breathed a sigh of relief – although that meant the oathbreakers were still to come.

The first man to reach him spoke. ‘Don’t worry, they won’t lose us, although it may seem like they try. But they won’t take you to Lazar.’

‘What do you mean? Why not?’ He started to walk beside the man, but stumbled, weak with hunger.

‘Here,’ said the man. ‘Eat this. It will help with the weakness.’ He pressed a small piece of hard root into Raim’s hand.

One of the bare-headed men swooped down on them and surprised Raim so much he dropped the root. The man was shouting, raging at the other: ‘Dirty, rotten scoundrel! Good-for-nothing scum, don’t seek to make friends; you are the lowest of the low, the vilest creature in the world . . .’

As the man’s tirade raged on, the one receiving it seemed unfazed. He simply bent down, plucked the root from the sand, brushed it off and handed it back to Raim. ‘There you go. A bit gritty, but then you had better get used to that. Everything you eat in Sola’s fair country will come with a side dish of sand. Just keep chewing it slowly,’ he instructed.

Desperate for any food, no matter how unappetizing, Raim popped the root in his mouth. The sand squeaked as it caught between his teeth but the overwhelming sensation was one of relief – the root’s hard shell gave way to a wave of nourishment inside. Raim felt stronger immediately.

Still the offender’s tirade went on. ‘Foul man, you should wish you had never been born, hideous spawn of the devil.&#nterpret the s

The ground slowly changed beneath Raim’s feet. The sand seemed to clump into little pebbles, as if each individual grain was growing larger. Just as he had become used to walking on a surface that absorbed his movements, now he had to be extra vigilant with his steps so as not to turn his ankle on the loose ground.

A sharp whistle sounded from the front of the group. The Alashan came to a halt, and began to set up camp for the night – or, Raim supposed, for the day, as respite from the boiling sun. Mesan waved him over and handed him a bundle of tightly woven dried grass, wrapped up in a cloth blanket. In small groups of five or six, the Alashan unravelled the strips into long rectangles, which they then curved into the walls of a mini-hut. They threw blankets over the top to create a makeshift roof. The huts were clustered together in a large semicircle against the wind.

His bundle was much smaller than the others, clearly meant for one person. He moved to set it up amongst the Alashan, but they turned their backs on him, and whenever he tried to make camp someone would come over and angrily gesture in his face. It didn’t take long for him to get the hint.

The Chauk were building their shelters set in a firm lines I set in a firm line from the ia few hundred feet away from the Alashan. Words of harassment carried over the sand towards him, and he shuddered despite himself. He did not want to camp there.

That was when he saw the girl again. She had dropped her bundle on the outer edge of the Alashan semicircle, slightly apart from the others. She lowered her hood and pulled a long pin out of her hair so that it came loose from a bun. It fell almost halfway down her back in a thick braid. She was striking. As she bent down to begin her work, he could see the strong lines of her profile, the smoothness of her rich, dark skin and the delicate slant of her eyes. For an instant he was reminded of Erdene, and he felt his cheeks burn. The girl was nothing like the hideous, sun-withered Alashan women of old Darhanian stories, though she certainly seemed as strong.

His curiosity piqued, he walked over and began to pitch up next to her. He followed the lead of the others around him, pressing the bottom of the grass mat into the stony ground and piling pebbles around the bottom to secure it.

‘What do you think you are doing?’ The girl was standing over him.

He quickly stood up and rubbed his hands on the edge of his cloak. ‘I’m Raim. Do you mind?’

‘Of course I mind. Oathbreakers cannot enter our camp, at the behest of our leader, Old-maa. Set up camp with the rest of the Chauk.’

Raim bristled. ‘I am not Chauk. Do you see anything haunting me?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I see no shadow, true. But you are still an oathbreaker.’

‘But I am also an oathkeeper.’ He fumbled inside his cloak and pulled Khareh’s royal knot out from around his neck. He hoped that the girl would understand what it meant. ‘This is an Absolute Vow I made to the Crown Prince of Darhan. It is still intact.’

The girl’s eyes studied the knot. ‘That means nothing.’ She turned away from him.

Raim sighed, and pulled the mat until it was outside the Alashan circle, but not nearly so far away as the Chauk. No man’s land. She didn’t ask him to move any further, so he took that as a sign and continued to build his shelter. As he was adjusting the blanket over the grass mat, he scraped his uncovered arm against one of the hard stalks. He cried out in pain, the blisters from his sunburn raw and oozing. He made the mistake of touching it where the pain was sharpest, but it only made the agony worse. He ground his teeth together to avoid crying out again. Inside his mouth, the pulpy root released a fraction more nourishment, and allowed him the briefest respite from the pain.

‘What are you eating?’ The girl was staring at him from behind his shelter. She kept looking over her shoulder, as if nervous one of the Alashan would spot her talking to him.

‘I’m not sure . . . one of the Chauk gave it to me.’

‘Take it out of your mouth,’ she said. In truth, the root had been close to spent for a while now, but he had been loath to take it out lest that be the only food he had for a while. But he wanted to earn>

‘Now spread the pulp over your blisters. It’s medicinal as well as a source of food.’

He did as she bid, and almost immediately the pain from the blisters calmed. Raim watched with intense fascination as the redness faded soon after. ‘This is almost as good as jarumba flower.’?’ asked Raim.bl leaderd

The girl looked up at him sharply. ‘How do you know about that?’

Raim shrugged. ‘My grandmother is a healer . . . well, actually, she’s chief of the Otoshi clan of healers, the most prestigious in Darhan. She gave me a jarumba petal once, when I was suffering from a soli. It helped.’

‘I see,’ said the girl. She seemed almost impressed. ‘What you were chewing was the root of a jarumba flower. The roots spread very quickly; alas, the flowers are much rarer. Also, the root can be replanted in the hope that we can grow it again wherever we are.’ She turned and pointed at the Alashan camp. ‘See there? We use the shelters to
store our food and supplies to keep them out of the direct sunlight, rather than as tents. We sleep outside during the daylight hours . . . the cloak Mesan gave you acts as a barrier to the sun. It will be difficult at first, since you must be completely still. And you mustn’t eat anything except jarumba root during the day. Eating uses up your water. We will eat now, while there are a few dark hours left.’

He took a piece of dried meat that she offered him, grateful for the small kindness. She smiled over at him for the first time without irony or malice, suddenly seeming very young. It warmed him to think that maybe he was winning her over.

He felt like he could try his luck, now, and keep her talking. ‘Where are we?’

‘The Western Eye of Sheba.’

Raim raised both his eyebrows and looked around him, suddenly expecting to see a lake and swaying palm trees, but there were just rocks and low-lying brush. ‘But I thought that the Eyes of Sheba were supposed to be oases!’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps once. Now it is just a tale that only serves to lure those out into the desert foolish enough to think they can cross it if they pass through the Eyes. They do not realize that the Eyes are worse – just because the sand has changed to rock, doesn’t make it less of a desert. You will find as little water here as anywhere in Sola. At least out in the sands you have no hope. If I were you, I would abandon yours.’

There was another sharp whistle from inside the Alashan half-circle, and all heads turned to look at the western horizon. Raim followed their gaze but still could see nothing at all. ‘What have we been running from?’ he asked.

‘A storm. A sand storm.’

‘But I’ve been watching it and it looks so far away. It is only barely visible on the horizon. Surely it’s not going to reach us here.’

He expected her to laugh at him for his ignorance, but she remained serious in a quiet, hidden way. ‘It is not the storm we are running from. It is what the storm will send our way. We are lucky we spotted it. Often when they come, it is too late. Now, though, it is time for water.’ She started moving towards the Alashan, who were gathering together.

‘What is your name?’ he asked after her.

‘Wadi,’ she said, without turning round.

He followed her; the mention of water had reminded him of how truly thirsty he was. But as she entered the ring of Alashan shelters, she turned to him and said, ‘Stop. Look, I’m sorry but you can’t come any closer. You have to stay outside the ring of tents.’

Raim winced, but didn’t press his luck. This was his life now: reject0">