The Shadow’s Curse by Amy McCulloch

his brother, Raim looked at him more closely. His head was shaved, but he still didn’t have the signature flattened-forehead of the Baril, said to be formed by hours of intensive prayer. Tarik was the most pious person Raim had ever known, so it surprised him that he hadn’t spent every second he’d been in the Baril with his head bowed to the floor.
    Maybe he was too busy running chores to pray. Raim bit at the edge of his fingernail as they walked. Tarik looked the same as the brother he had known but there was something different about him. In the tribe, Tarik had been the most intelligent one – the one who could read and write, the one who was destined to be a Baril master. Ordinary tribespeople both feared and were in awe of the Baril. The secretive monks spent their days devoted to exploring life’s mysteries, while most tribespeople were too busy simply living to spend much time pondering.
    His intelligence meant he had often segregated himself from the tribe, but it also gave him an edge – an authority. He used to walk with his head held high. But all signs of that quiet authority were gone now, replaced with a curved slump of his shoulders that suggested something else: servitude, maybe. He looked defeated. Something must have happened in the few months to affect the change, but Raim couldn’t think what.
    Raim had never been in awe of the Baril, but as they climbed his awe increased of the place they chose to live. On the horizon, Raim could see a line of mountains so huge their snow-covered caps were visible above the clouds. The air was sharp and crisp, every breath searing his lungs and sending shivers running down his spine.
    There was a clatter of stones nearby, which attracted Raim’s attention. He looked up the sheer cliff on their right-hand side and spotted a scrawny goat making its sure-footed way across the rock face. Beneath its chin, the goat had a soft beard, something considered very precious in Darhan – it could be spun into high-quality promise string. Such goats were supposed to be quite rare. Raim wondered if the people here hunted the goats for their hair. Even as he was thinking this, a bit further along the mountainside, he caught sight of a young Baril woman edging her way towards the goat.
    He imagined that would be a pretty good source of income for the Baril.
    ‘Watch out,’ said Draikh, a moment too late to be useful. Tarik stopped, and Raim ran straight into his back.
    Raim was expecting a temple to appear ahead of them, but as of yet as far as his eye could see, there was nothing more than the same craggy boulders they had been crossing. Despite their proposed pledge to lead simple lives, he could imagine a lot of Baril needing a little bit more luxury than the inside of a cave.
    ‘This part is a bit tricky,’ said Tarik. ‘You might need my help.’
    Raim almost laughed – the Tarik he had known would have never offered help to Raim. But then he saw what Tarik meant. At the base of the cliff face, a very steep set of steps had been cut into the rock, with iron handholds bolted in at some of the trickier junctions where the steps switched directions. Even as he marvelled at the workmanship, he dreaded the prospect of the climb. But seeing his brother scale them as easily as if they were the big, wide steps up to the palace in Kharein filled him with confidence. Or, at least, if not confidence then the desire to prove that he could do anything his brother did.
    Do you think they get avalanches here?
Raim thought to Draikh.
Rockslides?
Raim craned his neck and looked up at the mountains around them. They were tall and silent; it did not look like they were in any danger of dumping a load of snow on the stairs.
    Raim’s thick winter boots didn’t provide him with the right grip, and he wished for a second that he could take them off and go barefoot, where he could at least feel the surface with his toes. But as he pressed his cheek against the stone, the coldness of it