Viper's Daughter Page 2

  At last he glimpsed a white raven in a willow, a sure sign that Dark was nearby. As Torak hauled the hated dugout up the bank, the bird greeted him with an echoing ark! and flew into the Forest. Torak followed her to his friend’s camp, in a dim glade guarded by watchful birch trees.

  Dark sat by his fire with his Mage’s drum on his knees. On it he’d scattered the little slate creatures he loved to carve: aurochs, beavers, vipers. His strange white head was bent and he was making the creatures dance by tapping the drum with a swan’s thighbone. He’d set a salmon to roast and ground a pouchful of earthblood; a pile of the crumbly dark-red stone lay beside him and he was covered in reddish dust. Ark had taken on a pink tinge as she perched on his shoulder, busily preening her feathers.

  At Torak’s approach, Dark raised his head. For a moment his pale eyes were as remote as mountains. Then he saw who it was and his face lit up.

  Torak stepped into the firelight.

  Dark’s smile faded. ‘Ah. So she’s gone.’

  Torak stared. ‘You knew?’

  Dark sucked in his breath.

  ‘What’s this about?’ cried Torak. ‘Where’d she go?’

  ‘I don’t know where. But I think I know why.’

  Torak prowled the glade, slashing bracken with a stick. ‘You knew and you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Renn asked me not to,’ said Dark.

  ‘You’re supposed to be my friend—’

  ‘She’s my friend too—’

  ‘Keeping secrets? Talking behind my back?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that! And stop hitting the bracken, you’re frightening Ark.’

  Strangers meeting Dark saw an odd-looking boy with long white hair and eyes like a sky full of snow. They mistook his gentleness for weakness, but soon realized their error. He’d been born without colour and abandoned by his father when he was eight. For seven winters he’d survived on his own in the Mountains, his only companions a white raven he’d rescued from crows, and his sister’s ghost. Two summers ago the Raven Clan had taken him in and made him their Mage. He was still getting used to living with people in the Forest, and sometimes he went off for a few days alone to clear his head.

  Torak flung away the stick and glared at the fire. ‘Tell me why she left.’

  With his knife Dark speared a salmon eye and offered it. Torak scowled, so Dark ate it himself. ‘She said things kept happening that she couldn’t explain.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘A spring-trap she forgot to warn you about. And that time she nearly shot you when you were hunting.’

  ‘Those were accidents.’

  ‘She didn’t think so. She said, “There’s something inside me that wants to hurt Torak.”’

  ‘What? Renn would never hurt me!’

  ‘I know. But she’s terrified that she might. She said she has to find out what it is and make it stop. She thinks – ’ his voice dropped – ‘it might have something to do with her mother.’

  The birch trees whispered in alarm. The white raven crested her head-feathers and croaked. Torak met Dark’s eyes. ‘But the Viper Mage is dead.’

  ‘I know, but that’s what Renn told me.’

  Torak rubbed his hand across his mouth. ‘And you’ve no idea where she’s gone?’

  ‘She said the signs all point one way but she wouldn’t say where. I’ve been seeing signs too. And just now my drum told me something weird: The demon that is not demon—’

  ‘I don’t have time for Mage’s riddles.’

  ‘And I keep seeing tusks.’ He pointed at a tree where he’d left a small slate weasel as an offering. Shadows of twigs had given it horns. ‘I see them in clouds, in eddies in the river: huge twisted tusks, much bigger than a boar’s—’

  ‘I don’t care about tusks, I need to find Renn!’

  ‘But, Torak, they’re linked! The tusks have something to do with her, I can feel it.’

  ‘Do a finding charm, do it now.’

  ‘She doesn’t want you to find her. That’s why she left without telling you, because you’d insist on going too and she couldn’t take that risk!’

  ‘Just do the charm!’

  Dark opened his mouth – then shut it. ‘I don’t need to. Look at the sky.’

  Above their heads the First Tree glowed luminous green. Its shimmering branches held the moon and the stars, and its unseen roots trapped demons in the Otherworld. Torak felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. The First Tree shone brightest on dark winter nights and rarely showed itself in summer. It had appeared for a reason. He saw from Dark’s rapt expression that he thought so too.

  As they watched, the green lights faded till all that remained was a single shining bough arching like a vast arrow across the deep blue sky.

  ‘North,’ said Torak. ‘It’s telling us she’s gone north.’

  ‘A long way north.’

  Torak glanced at him. ‘You don’t mean the Far North? She’d never try that on her own.’

  ‘Even further. I can feel it.’

  ‘But what could be further than the Far North?’

  Ark cawed a greeting, and they saw Fin-Kedinn at the edge of the glade.

  Leaning on his staff, the Leader of the Raven Clan limped towards them. Silver glinted in his dark-red hair and his short straight beard. Firelight carved his features in shadow and flame. ‘Beyond the Far North,’ he said, ‘is the Edge of the World.’

  Dark set a log by the fire and Fin-Kedinn sat, putting his hand to the old wound in his thigh. His one-eared dog sniffed the salmon, then caught Fin-Kedinn’s glance and lay meekly at his feet. Dark sat too. Ark flew to a tree and glared at the dog.

  Torak stood, clenching and unclenching his fists. The Far North was an icy, treeless waste ruled by the north wind and haunted by great white bears. He and Renn had been there once. They’d been lucky to escape with their lives. ‘Tell me about the Edge of the World. Have you been there?’

  Fin-Kedinn shook his head. ‘But when I was younger I hunted in the Far North with the White Fox Clan, they told me what they knew.’

  ‘So now you can tell me.’

  ‘First you must eat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry—’

  ‘You look as if you haven’t eaten in days. Sit. Eat. You too, Dark, and while you’re eating, tell me about Renn.’

  When Fin-Kedinn spoke, people obeyed. Torak flung himself down and glowered at the fire.

  He discovered he was ravenous and fell on his share of the smoke-blackened salmon while Fin-Kedinn listened to Dark. He was Torak’s foster father, but he hadn’t greeted him as he usually did by touching foreheads. Torak wondered if Fin-Kedinn blamed him that Renn was gone.

  Dark finished speaking. Fin-Kedinn turned to Torak. ‘And Renn never told you anything?’

  ‘Nothing,’ muttered Torak. Twice he’d woken in the night to find her staring into the dark, but he’d thought she was missing her clan. She preferred to camp near them, while he loved living with the wolves in the lonely valleys. Sometimes they’d fought about that.

  ‘You never sensed something was wrong?’ Fin-Kedinn’s voice was sharp.

  ‘Are you saying it’s my fault that she left?’

  ‘Are you?’

  Torak met his vivid blue freezing stare. ‘I thought we were happy,’ he said. ‘Tell me about the Edge of the World.’

  The Raven Leader held his gaze a moment longer. ‘None who seek it have ever returned. But it’s said that the Sea pours endlessly into the void. Stories tell of an island near the edge. Its rivers boil, its mountains spew fire. It’s guarded by the spirits of huge creatures who died long ago.’

  Torak swallowed. ‘How do you reach it?’

  Fin-Kedinn lifted his broad shoulders. ‘The old stories say it’s across the Sea, beyond the northernmost cliffs of the Far North.’ He turned to Dark. ‘That’s why I came to find you. After you told me of your visions, I remembered something. The Narwal Clan hunts along that coast. Their speech is different from ours and they
build their shelters from the bones of huge hairy monsters as tall as trees – and from their tusks.’

  ‘I’ve seen such creatures in my dreams!’ cried Dark. ‘But I can never sense where they live! They don’t seem to belong anywhere, not to the Forest, the Mountains or the Sea – how can that be? They have to live somewhere.’

  ‘They belong to the Deep Past,’ said Fin-Kedinn. ‘They lived during the Great Cold, but the ancestors killed too many, and they died out. Now and then, a Narwal hunter finds a carcass frozen in the earth. These ancient creatures are sacred. Narwals call them mammut.’

  Torak jumped to his feet and slung his quiver over his shoulder. ‘Well, if they all died out, we don’t need to worry about them.’

  Fin-Kedinn faced him across the crackling heat. ‘You’re not going after her.’

  ‘She’s got four days’ lead, I’m not waiting any longer.’

  ‘How about trusting Renn to know what she’s doing?’

  ‘I do trust her. I’d trust her with my life. But something is driving her to the Edge of the World and whatever it is, she isn’t going to face it alone.’

  The north wind rushed screaming over the fells, savaging the Forest and warning Torak back. Before him the desolate shore and the sounding Sea, ahead the empty lands – and beyond them the Far North, where ice bears hunted people as if they were prey. Renn was heading there alone.

  Until he’d met her Torak had never had a friend. For five summers they’d shared secrets and danger. The flash of her dark-red hair in the green Forest lit his spirit as nothing else could.

  He’d made it to the mouth of the river in a day, Fin-Kedinn having relented and given him his own deerhide canoe, saying he’d return the stolen dugout to the Boars. Too exhausted to build a proper shelter of saplings, Torak carried the canoe into the Forest and upended it. He would sleep beneath; and he wanted a last night under trees.

  After hastily waking a fire for company, he checked his gear. Flint-tipped arrows, spare bowstrings of braided deer sinew, pebbles for his slingshot. He stuffed thistledown in his tinder pouch, made needles of split gull bones from a skeleton on the shore, and slotted them into his wingbone needle-case. He would hang everything on his belt, in case he capsized.

  He’d need an eyeshield too. Though it was summer, Fin-Kedinn had warned of icebergs, and Torak had been snow-blind. It had felt as if someone was rubbing grit in his eyes. Muttering thanks to a birch tree, he peeled a strip of bark and cut two eye-slits. A while back he’d lost his headband, but he wouldn’t bother making another. If the circle tattooed on his forehead disconcerted people, too bad.

  Dark had given him his sleeping-sack and beaver-hide boots, as well as some dried salmon cakes and a thick coil of auroch-gut sausage – but these he would save for the journey. He found burdock stems and horse mushrooms and munched them raw, spitting out maggots.

  As an offering he tucked a piece of mushroom in the fork of a rowan. ‘Forest,’ he prayed. ‘You’ve helped me all my life. Help me find Renn. Keep her safe.’

  But what power could the Forest have in a treeless land ruled by ice, wind and waves?

  The light was beginning to die. The clans know that this is when demons lurk, hiding in darkness, breathing malice and despair. Demons are hard to see, and you rarely catch more than a glimpse at the corner of your eye. Renn had a Mage’s sense for them and Wolf knew when they were near. Torak had come to rely on them both.

  Dark had given him a pouch of ground earthblood: ‘You can trade it for warmer clothes on the coast, but keep some on you always.’

  ‘You think I’ll need it?’ Torak had asked.

  ‘The demon that is not demon. I don’t know what that means, but earthblood might protect you. May the guardian fly with you, Torak.’

  ‘And with you.’

  Torak filled his medicine horn and dabbed earthblood on the small slate wolf he wore at his neck, and on the greenstone wrist-guard which Fin-Kedinn had made for Renn and she’d given to him.

  He lay in Dark’s sleeping-sack, watching the glimmer of firelight through the canoe and trying not to think of the double sleeping-sack he’d shared with Renn.

  He touched the scar on his forearm. He’d got it when he was twelve summers old, the night the demon bear killed his father. He remembered running from the wreck of the camp he’d built with Fa. Collapsing against an oak tree, staring numbly into its branches. For the first time ever he’d been truly alone. He was alone again now.

  Beyond the creak and murmur of the Forest he heard the endless soughing of the Sea. He hated to think of Renn paddling north at the mercy of the Sea Mother, who lives in the deeps and is beyond good and evil: who kills without pity or warning.

  An owl hooted. Embers crackled. Wolf called fire ‘the Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot’ because he’d burnt his paw when he was a cub. Torak missed him: the ticklish warmth of nibble-licks, the meaty smell of his big rough pads. He missed everything that was mysterious and unknowable about his pack-brother. Wolf came and went as silently as mist. His ears were so keen he could hear the clouds pass, his nose so sharp he could scent the breath of a fish. If Torak was merely thinking of setting off on a hunt, Wolf would open his amber eyes: Let’s go! Sometimes Wolf knew how he felt before he felt it himself…

  Torak woke to the certainty that he was being watched. It wasn’t some inquisitive badger, the Forest was quiet. Too quiet.

  Silently drawing his knife, he crawled from under the canoe. He rose to his feet. The brief summer night was nearly over. The Forest was full of shadows.

  A spruce branch tapped a warning on his shoulder. He turned.

  A magpie lit onto a branch, showering him with dew. He breathed out. The feeling was gone.

  On the beach he startled a pair of oystercatchers, who flew in circles, loudly scolding him for getting too near their nest. Behind him the Forest was a wall of darkness. Ahead, Sea and sky were a dismal grey blur.

  Trees, rocks, river and Sea: they’d all seen Renn pass, but they weren’t telling. Torak’s spirits sank as he thought of the days ahead, seeking a girl who didn’t want to be found.

  Wolf appeared silently, as wolves do, and stood on the rocks thirty paces away. Dew beaded the silver fur on his flanks, the black fur on his head and shoulders, his russet-rimmed ears. Normally he would have bounded to Torak and greeted him with tail-lashing and rubbing, licking and nuzzling. When he didn’t, Torak halved the distance between them and sat on a mound of dried kelp.

  Wolves don’t only speak with howls and grunts and whines, but with their whole bodies. Although much of wolf talk is subtle and easily missed, it was plain what Wolf was saying. His tail pointed stiffly at the sky and he was staring stonily at the Sea. You left me. I’m cross.

  Torak couldn’t speak wolf as well as a real wolf: he couldn’t apologize by sleeking back his ears and tucking his tail between his legs. Kneeling, he uttered a low grunt-whine. Sorry.

  Wolf twitched one ear and went on staring at the Sea. Still cross.

  Torak sat next to him. He rubbed his shoulder against Wolf’s. Wolf slammed him with his hindquarters, knocking him into the kelp. He growled and soft-bit Torak’s upper arm, worried it, released it without a mark.

  Torak noticed a fresh scab on Wolf’s left foreleg. He shot Wolf a glance. How?

  Fell.

  Sensing embarrassment, Torak didn’t ask more.

  Some things take ages to say in person talk, but a wolf can say them in a tail-flick; others he can’t say at all. Torak couldn’t explain why Renn had left, or where they were heading. He could only tell Wolf that the pack-sister was many lopes away and he missed her.

  Wolf leant against him and licked his chin. Me too.

  A wolf does not abandon his pack. Torak knew what a wrench it had been for Wolf to leave Darkfur and the cubs. Burying his face in his pack-brother’s scruff, he sniffed Wolf’s well-loved smell of sweet grass and warm fur. He felt the tickle of whiskers and teeth as Wolf gently nibbled his ear. He felt better than
he had since Renn had left.

  I am with you, said Wolf. We find the pack-sister together.

  The Demon sneers at the fawning wolf and the trembling boy. They are anxious and frightened. Flawed, imperfect, weak.

  All living creatures are weak. The Raven Leader is weak because he rules his clan by persuasion, not force. The girl is weak because she is a Mage, yet fears to wield her power. The boy is weak because he loves the girl. The Demon despises love. Love is weakness. It makes the living easy to control.

  Now boy and wolf are back in the Forest, the boy gathering his gear, the wolf sniffing the canoe. The wolf is able to smell lesser demons – the slinkers and scurriers – but it cannot smell the Demon.

  The Demon is cleverer and stronger than all living things. It hates and hungers for their shining souls, it longs to grind and shred, to feel them thrashing and shrieking in endless pain…

  But the Demon cannot feed – for the Demon is not free.

  The Demon must be free.

  The Demon shall be free.

  The seal knew it was too big for Renn to kill. As she paddled nearer, it went on basking on the iceberg, while behind it a flock of kittiwakes settled for a rest.

  A sunny day, a calm Sea – but suddenly the seal hoisted itself off the ice and slid under the waves. Renn heeded the warning and swerved. The kittiwakes shot mewing into the air as the iceberg tipped over with a crash, sending a wave that nearly swamped the canoe.

  While Renn struggled through rocking shards of ice, the kittiwakes landed on a distant blue floe. Seabirds can rest anywhere, she could not. She’d hardly slept in days and was losing track of time. As she’d followed the coast north, she’d passed snow-covered mountains and vast silent valleys. No Forest to protect her, and no night: the cold white sun never set.

  The strip of shingle under the cliffs was scarcely wide enough for the canoe, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. She’d been relying on her eyeshield as a disguise. She had to go further, or risk some meddlesome hunter wondering what a girl from the Forest was doing in the Far North.