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certainly not as close as Raim and Dharma, but they had one thing in common, and that was the desire to join the most elite clan of their chosen fields. And while Tarik had achieved his goal, Raim had failed at the first hurdle.
    Tarik might enjoy that. Raim had always been the stronger one, the one who naturally excelled at games: racing horses across the steppes, shooting arrows and spears through narrow targets, wrestling. Tarik was the one often left eating dirt, having fallen from his horse or been shoved to the ground.
    ‘He never liked asking for help,’ Raim remembered. ‘He thought it was beneath his intellect.’
    ‘Then maybe he won’t be surprised you’re asking him for help.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Because your intellect is nothing to be proud of.’
    Raim swatted the air in front of Draikh, sending him wheeling away in a fit of laughter. It was only then that Raim looked back up at the mountain range and stopped in his tracks. For so long it had loomed like a shadow on the horizon. Now it was right in front of him, so immense his mind could barely take it in. He didn’t remember feeling so overwhelmed when he’d been here last – but those were different circumstances. This time, he was going to conquer the mountains, not just sit at their base.
    He took a few deep breaths, then carried on walking.
    A violent thud sounded from nearby. He spun on his heel, and immediately dropped into a crouch, using the long grass as shelter. White plumes of an arrow shaft protruded from the ground a few feet from where he had been standing.
    Then he looked in the direction of the shooter.
    And there, quivering with fear, his hand releasing the bow and letting it fall to the ground, was Tarik. His brother.

7
WADI
    The atmosphere changed as they drew close to the limits of the army camp. Gone were the legions of hardened men, the trained warriors, tending to their weapons or their armour. Instead, they moved through the tents housing the newest tribes to join Khareh’s campaign. Unrest was evident in the wary glances they shot Khareh’s entourage. Clearly not all of them were comfortable with their new ruler. But where the army went, they followed.
    Still, Wadi’s attention was drawn to something far stranger. There was a gulf, a stretch of emptiness two yurts wide, separating these tribes and another group of tents. Everywhere else, tribes mixed and intertwined, many tributaries merging into Khareh’s great river of war.
    But beyond this particular tributary, there was an island. She looked over at the yurts on the other side of the divide, and felt unease settle deep into her bones. The army camp was hardly the epitome of neatness and cleanliness, but the yurts over there displayed a shabbiness that Wadi found eerily familiar.
    It reminded her of Lazar.
    Most ordinary Darhanians took great care in their homes, but these ones were badly patched together and poorly maintained. One even had a rip in it big enough to let in a significant amount of water when it rained. The bands of cloth that held the yurts together were frayed and splitting. It was as if the inhabitants took a strange kind of pride in the degradation of their homes.
    In Lazar, they had purposefully chipped away at any object of beauty – their carvings, statues, their homes – because they did not feel worthy of creating anything of value. The hatred against oathbreakers was ingrained too deep.
    She suddenly realised where they were. This was a moving city of Lazar: the tent city of oathbreakers: the Camp of Shadows.
    Wadi pulled up just short of walking into Khareh’s back. She shuddered at how close she had come to touching him. They had stopped in a small clearing, in between the mysterious camp and the main army.
    ‘Bring forth the captives!’ bellowed Garus.
    A group of four men and two women, their wrists tied by a long piece of rope, shuffled forwards. Wadi gasped. Hovering around each one of their hunched figures was a dark,