Oath Breaker Read Free Page A

boot; and behind the altar, a lobe of stonecrop ground to a green smear. Snagged in a crack, a strand of reindeer hair. Torak's skin crawled. Bale wore seal hide. This had belonged to his killer. An image began to take shape, like a hunter emerging from mist. A big, heavy man clad in reindeer hide.
At once a name sprang to mind, but Torak pushed it aside. Don't guess. Keep your mind open. Find proof.
     
He pictured Bale leaving his hiding-place in the rowans, running toward the figure kneeling by the altar. The killer rose. They circled each other, moving closer and closer to the cliff edge.
     
At one point, the lip of the Crag was cracked, and in the soil that the wind had blown in, a juniper clung to life. It had been half yanked out by the roots, and was still oozing tree-blood. Torak saw Bale desperately clutching a branch, his free hand clawing mud. He had fought so hard to live. And the killer had stamped on his fingers.
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A red mist descended over Torak's sight. Sweat broke out on his palms. When he caught the killer, he would ...
"Whoever it was," said Renn shakily, "he must have been hugely strong to have beaten B--" She jammed her knuckle in her mouth. For the next five summers, it would be forbidden to speak Bale's name, or else his spirit might return to haunt the living.
    "Look there," said Torak. He picked up a tiny speck of dried spruce-blood. "And this." He drew aside a branch to reveal a handprint.
Renn breathed in with a hiss.
Bale's murderer had leaned on one hand to watch his victim fall. That hand had only three fingers.
Torak shut his eyes. He was back in the caves of the Far North, facing the Soul-Eater. Wolf sprang to his defense, leaping at the attacker, snapping off two fingers. "So now we know," said Renn in a cold voice.
They stared at each other, both remembering cruel green eyes in a face as hard as cracked earth.
Torak's fist closed over the spruce-blood. "Thiazzi," he said.

THREE
The Oak Mage had made no attempt to cover his tracks. He'd found his way down the steep north flank of the Crag to a small pebble beach, picked up his skinboat, and paddled away.
    Torak and Renn tracked him to where the trail ended in the Sea. "From where I was," said Torak, "I might have seen him." "Why were you camping out here?" said Renn. "I--I needed to be alone." She gave him a penetrating stare, but didn't ask why. That was worse. Maybe she'd guessed that he'd made a
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terrible mistake; so terrible that she couldn't bring herself to talk of it.
"He might be anywhere by now," she said, turning back to the waves. "He could've made for the Kelp Island, or one of the smaller ones. Or gone back to the Forest." "And he's got a head start," said Torak. "Let's go."
To return to the Seal camp, they had to climb all the way to the Crag again. The altar still looked subtly wrong. It was Renn who noticed why. "The carvings. The tip of the altar is lying across that elk's head. That can't be right."
     
"It's been moved." Torak was appalled that he hadn't seen it sooner. The scrape marks were as plain as a raven on an ice floe. He pictured the Oak Mage--the strongest man in the Forest--putting his shoulder to the altar to shift it, then moving it back but leaving it just out of true.
    Under the tip of the altar, Torak found what Thiazzi had uncovered: a small hollow hacked from the surface of the Crag. It was empty.
"He found what he was after," said Torak.
Neither of them voiced their fear. But among the rowans on the neck, Torak found proof: the remains of a little pouch of dehaired seal hide. The crumbling hide still bore the faint imprint of something hard, about the size of a sloe, which had nestled inside.
    Torak's blood thudded in his ears. Renn's voice
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reached him from a great distance. "He found it, Torak. Thiazzi has the fire-opal."
"Tell no one," said Fin-Kedinn. "Not that he was murdered, or who did it, or why."
Torak agreed at once, but Renn was aghast. "Not even his father?"
"No one," said the Raven