Viper's Daughter Page 12

  ‘If I knew I’d tell you.’

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  She paused, as if trying to remember. ‘Shamik.’

  Plucking birds was Torak’s least favourite task because the lice ran up his arms, but he threw himself down and grabbed the other goose.

  ‘That’s women’s work,’ said Shamik.

  ‘Not in the Forest.’

  Wolf ran to sniff her calloused feet, and she froze like a ptarmigan hiding among rocks. ‘He won’t hurt you,’ said Torak. To his surprise, Wolf was wagging his tail. He was rarely this at ease with strangers. Torak said, ‘I thought Narwals hated wolves.’

  Her squirrelly face creased in a frown. ‘Once I saw a white wolf on the fell. He looked at me and I saw his golden eyes. He was no demon.’

  ‘How come you speak Southern?’

  ‘I’m Ptarmigan.’ Behind the bone disc that hung from her upper lip her mouth was a taut unsmiling line. ‘They were going to drown me because of this.’ She raised her withered arm. ‘Instead they traded me cheap when I was five. That’s how Narwals get females.’

  Torak had wondered. In the Forest when a boy and girl wanted to mate, they could choose either to keep their own clan or join their mate’s. It made sense that as Narwals treated women so badly they had to trade for them.

  Deftly Shamik gutted her goose. She was small but tough, like the stunted willows of the fells, and though her arm was withered, it still worked. The shelter she’d built was a cunning assembly of split walrus hides over Torak’s skinboat and a boulder. Having dealt with the geese, she left two of their feet as an offering, then tented her motheaten robe over her knees and gnawed the remaining two.

  In the shelter, the snores stopped. Shamik paused in mid-chew. ‘He’s waking up.’

  ‘You saw him today?’ exploded Marupai, showering Torak with spit. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You wouldn’t listen.’

  The clouded eyes narrowed. ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘It was after the clan meet. He saved my life when we were fishing—’

  ‘How?’

  Torak began to explain, but when he mentioned Naiginn’s sink-stone the old man cut in. ‘You’re telling the truth, I taught him that knot. Where was he when you saw him last?’

  Torak told him about spirit walking in the eagle. ‘He was heading north past a rock like a fang—’

  ‘No!’ screamed Marupai. ‘My poor boy!’

  ‘You know where he’s going?’

  He was rocking, clawing his mane. ‘When I was young I flew to the world of the spirits. I saw the ice bear with eight paws. I swam into the deeps and fetched walruses caught in the Sea Mother’s hair…’

  Torak stirred impatiently. Shamik gave him a warning look.

  ‘I flew up and touched the moon,’ the old man went on. ‘I learnt that it’s a great disc of ice eternally spinning, so that at times we only see its edge… But above all things I longed to find the island at the Edge of the World.’

  Torak stiffened. The Boat Leader’s words came back to him: Far over the Sea lies the Island no Narwal has ever seen. It is said that fiery cracks gape on the Otherworld. Only the spirits of long-dead mammut keep the demons inside…

  ‘I found it.’ Marupai’s voice was flinty with pride. ‘I alone of mortal men have seen the spirits of mammut walking into the clouds—‘

  ‘Is that where Naiginn’s taken Renn?’

  ‘Who is Renn?’

  ‘My mate! Is that where he’s gone?’

  Marupai’s grimy features were twisted with pain and longing. ‘She was so beautiful the moon stayed behind all day, and the whales swam onto the shore to look at her…’

  ‘Tell me about the Island!’

  ‘One night I told her I’d found it. She made me take her there.’

  Torak’s spine prickled.

  ‘A terrible place for mortal man, but not for her.’ Marupai shuddered. ‘There she bore our son. She took him to a sacred cave where no mortal may go. She made a masking spell to hide his blazing spirit, so that the sun in him wouldn’t scorch us mortals to death.’

  That sounded like Seshru: skilled at lies and half-truths.

  ‘My poor beautiful son,’ groaned Marupai. ‘She promised to return when he was a man and set his souls free – but the Softbellies murdered her. Now his spirit is bound for ever. I told him there was no hope! The spell could only be broken where it was made, and only by a Mage of his mother’s bone kin! And what Mage is bone kin to the sun?’

  Torak’s mind was racing. Once Naiginn had forced Renn to break the spell, he would have no further use for her. He would kill her. ‘Tell me how to find the Island.’

  Marupai drew himself up. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You must!’

  ‘I can’t tell you how to find it, no words can! My son is in danger. I’ll take you there myself.’

  ‘I can hear the Island calling to me,’ said Naiginn.

  Renn couldn’t hear anything except the slap of waves and the sweep of his paddle – and that was muffled by fog. Icebergs loomed. The setting sun was turning the fog red. As Naiginn steered between them it darkened to violet, then deep, glacial blue. He flicked out his tongue to taste the gloom. ‘The night of First Dark. Soon it’ll be winter and the ice will swallow the sun.’

  The icebergs were left behind. The skinboat slid between eerie white discs of drift ice like fallen moons.

  This is the Edge of the World, thought Renn. Her arms ached from being pinioned behind her back. Torak’s headband bit into her wrists. The only plan she’d come up with was to kick Naiginn overboard; but if that capsized the boat, she would drown too.

  ‘There it is!’ he cried. ‘The Island where I was born!’

  All Renn could see through the fog was a bank of cloud on the horizon. Her heart contracted. That wasn’t cloud, it was ice: a flat, frozen mountain flung by the World Spirit to crush the land beneath.

  Howling in triumph, Naiginn brandished his paddle. As he powered the skinboat closer, Renn heard the din of waterfalls and the boom of ice. Suddenly the mountain was blasting them with freezing breath, tossing the boat like a leaf. Her teeth were chattering, but Naiginn exulted in the cold. ‘It’s making me stronger!’

  Ice cliffs towered over them, waterfalls thundering from the heights. On either side of the mountain, Renn saw smoky black headlands clawing the Sea, and a distant red glare. She recalled something Tanugeak had said: The earth is rent and slashed, its open wounds blaze with the fires of the Otherworld. Only the spirits of long-dead mammut prevent the demons’ escape…

  Fearlessly Naiginn paddled into the chill shadow of the ice mountain. Craning her neck, Renn saw its craggy face scarred with cracks. A vast maw gaped on darkness as deep as a midwinter sky. It was fanged with icicles as tall as trees, and spewed an angry torrent into the Sea.

  ‘I was made in that cave,’ Naiginn said proudly. ‘That’s where you’ll break the spell and set me free.’

  One of the ice fangs broke off with a crash. Spume shot skywards, a wave reared towards the boat. With a whoop Naiginn steered out of its path.

  Renn’s courage abandoned her. When she was seven winters old, ice had killed her father. Since then it had twice tried to kill her: once when she’d fought the Soul-Eaters in the Far North and once during a storm in the Forest. If she entered that cave, she would never come out. The mountain would snap shut and her souls would be trapped in endless dark.

  As suddenly as they’d entered the icy blast, they were clear. The Sea turned milky green as Naiginn neared an inlet of glinting black stones.

  ‘I will never go inside that cave,’ said Renn.

  He laughed. ‘You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘You saw that ice-fall. You might have the souls of a demon, but your body is as mortal as mine: if you try to go in there you’ll die too.’

  ‘I know another way in.’

  He threw her on the shore and carried the boat up the beach, leaving her where
she lay; they both knew she had nowhere to run.

  The air was hazed with dirty smoke and the rotten-egg smell of bloodstone. Tortured black rocks made her think of bound and blinded giants struggling to break free. In the distance she heard an echoing bellow. Was that the ice mountain, or some demon of the Otherworld fighting to escape?

  She had never felt so alone. Rip and Rek had forsaken her, Torak and Wolf belonged to a lost world. Since sighting this Island she hadn’t seen a single seal or fish or bird, not one blade of grass. This was no place for living creatures. It was the haunt of demons and ghosts.

  And yet, as she struggled to her knees, she had the oddest thought. What would Seshru do?

  Naiginn returned. Yanking off her boots, he tossed them in the shallows. He spotted the knife bound to her shin and took that too. Having checked her for more hidden weapons, he reached for the medicine pouch at her belt.

  ‘Careful,’ she warned. ‘I’ll need it to break the spell. I’ll need my sewing kit too.’

  ‘If you try to trick me I’ll know it and I’ll hurt you.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  He grasped the duckbone whistle at her neck.

  ‘I’ll need that too.’

  ‘Why, what does it do?’

  ‘It’s for calling the spirits. Leave it alone.’ Magecraft was the only power she had over him: she could do it, he could not. ‘If you want me to break the spell, I have to gather the things I’m going to need.’

  ‘I’m not untying you.’

  ‘Then you have to do it for me.’

  He stood clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘What d’you need?’

  She had the glimmerings of an idea. That Mage’s mask at Waigo with two faces… ‘Fronds of kelp. An oyster shell or a clam shell: the roundest and whitest you can find.’

  ‘What for?’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘Our mother bound your demon souls behind an invisible mask. I have to turn myself into a raven and peck it off.’

  ‘Why the shell?’

  ‘Because,’ she said with exaggerated patience, ‘a shell is like the moon, and the moon is always changing, so it will help me change too. You’ve lived with a Mage, surely you know that?’

  He shot her a look of pure hatred – but he did what she said. He’d lost some of his swagger, and when he’d found the kelp and the shell and stuffed them in his parka, he cast about as if unsure where to go.

  ‘You said you knew another way to the ice cave,’ said Renn. ‘I don’t think you do.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You’ve never been here without your father, have you?’

  ‘I told you, Marupai’s not my father! My father was a Soul-Eater.’

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that our mother might have lied about that too?’

  ‘It’s true! He was Seal Clan, the greatest hunter they ever had! That’s why I’m the best in the world!’

  ‘What a shame you can’t do Magecraft.’

  He hit her and she fell, bashing her shoulder on a rock. He hauled her to her feet, tied rope round her neck like a leash, then started up the shore, dragging her like a dog. He did it all without expression, and Renn knew that to him she was merely a carcass. He needed her to break the spell, and if she refused, he would maim her till she obeyed – and he would do it as readily as if he were snapping a branch or gutting a fish. He was a demon: he didn’t care how living creatures felt. He wanted to eat their souls.

  She reminded herself that although he was stronger, he couldn’t do Magecraft and he couldn’t know her thoughts. He was adept at lies and trickery – but so was she. They both had that from their mother.

  And as Renn stumbled after him over the sharp black stones, she remembered something else about Seshru. The Viper Mage had been vicious, cold-hearted and deceitful. But she had never, ever given up.

  ‘Keep up!’ Naiginn yanked Renn’s leash as he changed direction. He was climbing fast, over ridges of black basalt, but now and then he made a sudden turn that rubbed her neck raw. What was he trying to avoid?

  Stones cut her feet and her calf-length robe shortened her stride. Wind gusted stinking smoke in her eyes, and an ugly thickening in the air told her demons were near. She could hear them hissing under the earth, but she sensed more flitting free. Not even the spirits of mammut could keep them all in the Otherworld.

  And the Otherworld was alarmingly close. Under her feet she felt its unclean heat. This brittle black crust was all that protected her from the blazing horror beneath.

  Another tug on the leash. Why did he keep changing direction?

  The hissing grew louder as they scaled the next ridge. Again Naiginn turned, but this time Renn resisted. She managed a couple of steps and the ground grew hot.

  Before her gaped a steaming, bubbling wound in the earth, scabbed with festering yellow. The demon was trapped in the Otherworld, but near the surface, spitting fury and venting venomous smoke. Its breath was a knife in Renn’s brain, rasping her throat, obliterating sight. She couldn’t stop coughing, couldn’t stop gulping scorching smoke.

  With a snarl Naiginn slung her over his shoulder and carried her down the slope, then flung her to the ground. ‘Do that again and I’ll break your arms!’

  Lying on her back, she gave a spluttery laugh. ‘They frighten you, those holes the demons have clawed. You’re scared of them!’

  ‘I’m not frightened of anything! On your feet!’

  ‘Oh, but you are…’ She broke off to cough. ‘That’s where you belong. In the Otherworld with the rest of your kind.’

  He raised his fist to strike.

  ‘Careful,’ she warned. ‘You need me to break the spell!’

  ‘But not necessarily in one piece. Remember that.’

  The wounds in the earth were left behind. Naiginn led her through a desolate gully of blasted rock. Renn couldn’t see the ice mountain, but its breath chilled her sweat-soaked skin. Soon they would reach the cave – and then what? Her plan seemed doomed to fail.

  Naiginn halted. Ahead loomed an immense, half-charred skeleton. A ribcage as big as a shelter, a skull like a boulder, two huge tusks curving out, then in.

  ‘Mammut,’ said Renn.

  He flinched. He hated even the name.

  From far away came the echoing shriek she’d heard from the Sea. She’d heard the same sound in her vision at Waigo. ‘The spirits of mammut are strong,’ she said quietly. ‘They have the power of the Deep Past. No wonder you fear them.’

  ‘I don’t fear mammut, they fear me. My poison works fast.’ He touched the quiver at his back. But as he edged past the skeleton, he kept close to the wall of the gully, and grimaced when mammut ash drifted over his boots.

  ‘All those mammut bones in the shelters at Waigo,’ said Renn. ‘Must have been hard for a demon like you.’

  ‘My mother’s spell protected me.’

  ‘But not completely,’ she guessed.

  ‘Enough!’

  They reached a ridge of hard-packed grit that crumbled at every step. Naiginn sank knee-deep, Renn floundered in choking clouds of dust.

  She barked her shin on a buried rock. On impulse she screamed and dropped to the ground. ‘My leg! I’ve broken my leg!’

  ‘Get up!’ growled Naiginn, tugging the leash.

  Still screaming, she ignored him. He stooped to haul her upright. She kicked him in the chest, knocked him backwards down the slope, then sprang to her feet and fled.

  ‘You might as well give up!’ Naiginn’s voice echoed from ridge to ridge. Renn couldn’t tell where he was. She could hardly see for the demon breath billowing around her.

  Rocks loomed through the smoke, leaning crazily. She hid behind one: panting, her feet bleeding and burnt. With her hands tied behind her and her leash trailing on the ground, she felt as helpless as a fledgling fallen from its nest.

  ‘I will find you!’ called Naiginn with lazy confidence. ‘I won’t hurt you so much if you give yourself up.’

  As far as she could tell
she was heading back the way they’d come. Somewhere before her lay the inlet and his boat.

  She floundered up another ridge of crumbly black grit. Or was it the same one? Was she running in circles?

  With nightmare slowness she stumbled down the other side. The ground at the bottom was hot; demon breath thick with malice, sapping courage. She fought the urge to cough. She heard the seething hiss of the Otherworld, but no taunts from Naiginn. At any moment he might appear, grinning at her from above.

  She hadn’t gone far when something bit her foot and she was blasted by the foul heat of the Otherworld. She’d nearly fallen into a fissure in the earth as big as a skinboat. She came to another. They were everywhere, deep wounds spitting fierce yellow slime. She didn’t remember this place. Where was the gully and the mammut skeleton?

  The wind changed. Demon breath engulfed her. She broke into uncontrollable coughing.

  Naiginn shouted in glee. ‘The demons are helping me! They’re telling me where you are!’

  Renn ran blindly. The smoke thinned. She glimpsed a fang of black flint, slumped against it, tried in vain to stifle her coughs.

  Footsteps crunched closer. ‘Not long now!’ he taunted.

  At the corner of her eye, a shadow slunk behind the rocks. You’re finished, cackled the demon. Weaponless, barefoot, trussed like a fowl…

  She repressed a mad impulse to bring this horrible hunt to an end: to step out from her hiding-place and get it over with.

  Someone coughed. She jerked round. Nothing there.

  ‘I can hear you!’ called Naiginn, terrifyingly close.

  But he wasn’t the one who’d coughed. It had sounded lighter, like a girl.

  There it was again, although whoever it was now sounded further off, and Naiginn’s footsteps were hastening after them.

  A bird lit onto the rock above her. Rip cocked his head and fixed her with his piercing raven stare – then coughed, perfectly mimicking her. Hitching his wings, he disappeared into the smoke. Moments later, ‘Renn’s’ cough sounded again, far to her right.

  She squared her aching shoulders. She was not alone. The ravens were with her, using mimicry to lead Naiginn astray.