The Oathbreaker's Shadow (30 page)

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 he 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

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

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.

Just before I was due to send the final manuscript of this book off to my editor, I had a nostalgic moment and looked back over an old Livejournal I kept during the initial stages of writing
The Oathbreaker’s Shadow
. I found this entry from 21 July 2006: