Oath Breaker Read Free Page B

Leader.
    They squatted by the stream at the south end of the bay, daubing each other's faces with clay mourning marks. The roar of the waterfall drowned their voices. There was no danger of being overheard by the Seal women downstream who were preparing the funeral feast, or by the men readying Bale's skinboat for the Death Journey. The Seals worked in silence to avoid offending the dead boy's souls. Torak thought they seemed like people in a dream.
    All day they had worked, and he had helped. Now dusk was falling, and every shelter, every skinboat, every last rack of cod had been moved to this end of the bay, farthest from the Crag. To the north, only the shelter Bale had shared with his father remained. It had been doused in seal oil and set ablaze. Torak could see it: a red eye glaring at him in the gathering dark.
    "But that's wrong" protested Renn.
"It's necessary." Her uncle caught her gaze and held it. "Think, Renn. If his father knew, he'd seek revenge."
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"Yes, and so?" she retorted.
"He wouldn't be alone," said Fin-Kedinn. "The whole clan would want to avenge one of their own."
"So?" repeated Renn.
"I know Thiazzi," said Fin-Kedinn. "He won't hide in the islands, he'll head back to the Forest, where his power is greatest. The quickest route takes him past the trading meet on the coast..."
     
"And if the Seals came after him," put in Torak, "he'd set them against the other clans and get away."
     
The Raven Leader nodded. "That's why we say nothing. The Sea clans and the Forest clans have never been on easy terms. Thiazzi would use that. That's his strength, he fosters hate. Promise me, both of you. Tell no one."
    "I promise," said Torak. He didn't want the Seals going after Thiazzi. Revenge must be his and his alone.
Reluctantly, Renn gave her word. "But his father's bound to find out," she said. "He must have seen what we saw. The--the blood under his nails."
"No," said Fin-Kedinn. "I saw to it." With the gray bars across his brow and down his cheeks, he looked remote and forbidding. "Come," he said, rising to his feet. "It's time we joined the others."
    On the shore, the Seals had set a ring of kelp torches: a leaping orange beneath the dark-blue sky. Within this, they had laid Bale in his skinboat. Greasy black smoke stung Torak's eyes, and he breathed the stink of burning seal oil. He felt the mourning marks stiffening on his skin. He thought, Bale's funeral rites. This can't be.
First, Bale's father stepped toward the boat and gently covered the body with his sleeping-sack. He had lost both his sons to the Soul-Eaters, and his face was distant, as if he weren't experiencing any of this. As if, thought Torak, he was at the bottom of the Sea.
    After him, every member of the clan added a gift for the Death Journey. Asrif gave a food bowl, Detlan a set of fish-hooks, while his little sister--who'd been very keen on Bale--managed to keep from crying for long enough to put in a small stone lamp. Others gave clothes, dried whale meat or cod, seal nets, spears, rope. Fin-Kedinn gave a harpoon, Renn her three best arrows. Torak gave his pike-jaw amulet, for hunting luck.
Standing to one side, he watched the men raise the skinboat on their shoulders and carry it down to the shallows. There they lashed two heavy stones to prow and stern, and Bale's father got into his own skinboat and began towing his son out to Sea.
     
The others trudged back for the silent feast, but Torak remained, watching the skinboats dwindle to specks. When they were out of sight of land, Bale's father would take his spear and gash the funeral boat, sending his son down to the Sea Mother. The fishes would eat Bale's
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flesh, as in life he had eaten theirs; and when his shelter was ashes and the ashes had blown away, all trace of him would be gone, like a ripple on the Sea. But he'll come back, thought Torak. He was born here. This was his home. He'll be lonely at Sea.
Fin-Kedinn was speaking his name. "Torak. Come. You must join the feast."
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