Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Page 21

  Torak nodded, bracing himself on the rock. His feet were numb with cold. His arms were beginning to shake.

  At last Dari reached Oslak, who tossed away his spear and snatched him up. The wicker sagged dangerously.

  ‘Oslak,’ called Fin-Kedinn. His voice was low, but somehow he made himself heard above the rapids. ‘Come back to the bank.’

  ‘Get away!’ screamed Oslak.

  Torak saw to his horror that Oslak had tied a wovenbark rope to the poles supporting the end of the walkway: one hard pull, and the whole structure would go crashing down, taking him and Dari with it.

  Torak couldn’t bear it. ‘Oslak, this is me, Torak! Don’t . . .’

  Oslak turned on him. ‘Who are you to tell me what to do? You’re not one of us! You’re a cuckoo! Eating our food, taking our shelter! I’ve heard you sneaking into the Forest to howl for your wolf! We’ve all heard you! Why don’t you give up? He’s never coming back!’

  Renn flinched in sympathy, but Torak didn’t move. He’d seen what Oslak had not: Fin-Kedinn limping onto the walkway.

  At that moment Oslak swayed, and the wicker rocked.

  Dari’s mouth went square, and he began to howl.

  Fin-Kedinn stood firm. ‘Oslak,’ he called.

  Oslak lurched backwards. ‘Stay away!’

  Fin-Kedinn raised his hands to reassure him that he wasn’t coming any closer. Then, as the clan watched in taut silence, he sat cross-legged on the wicker. He was six paces from the bank, and if Oslak pulled the rope, the walkway would collapse; but he looked as calm as if he were sitting by the fire. ‘Oslak,’ he said. ‘The clan chose me for Leader to keep it safe. You know that.’

  Oslak licked his lips.

  ‘And I will,’ said Fin-Kedinn. ‘I will keep you safe. But put Dari down. Let him come to me. Let me take him to his mother.’

  Oslak’s face went slack.

  ‘Put him down,’ repeated Fin-Kedinn. ‘It’s time for his nightmeal . . .’

  The power of his voice began to work. Slowly Oslak unwound the boy’s arms from his neck and lowered him onto the wicker.

  Dari gazed up at him as if seeking permission, then turned and crawled towards Fin-Kedinn.

  Fin-Kedinn shifted onto one knee and reached for him.

  The pine-cone auroch slipped from Dari’s fist and into the water. With a squeal Dari grabbed for it. Fin-Kedinn caught him by the jerkin and swept him into his arms.

  On the bank, the Ravens breathed out.

  Torak’s knees sagged. He watched the Raven Leader rise and edge sideways towards the bank. When he drew near, Thull grabbed Dari and held him tight.

  On the walkway, Oslak stood like a stunned auroch. The rope slipped from his hand as he gazed at the churning water. Silently Fin-Kedinn went back for him and took him by the shoulders, speaking in words no-one else could hear.

  Oslak’s body slumped, and he let Fin-Kedinn lead him to the bank – where men seized him and forced him down. He seemed puzzled, as if unsure how he’d got there.

  Torak found his way to the shallows, dropped his spear in the sand, and began to shake.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Renn. Her dark-red hair was wet with spray, her face so pale that her clan-tattoos were three dark stripes on her cheeks.

  He nodded. But he knew she wasn’t fooled.

  Further up the bank, Fin-Kedinn was speaking to Saeunn, who’d climbed down from the Rock. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ he said as the clan gathered around them.

  The Raven Mage shook her head. ‘His souls are fighting within him.’

  ‘So it’s some kind of madness,’ said Fin-Kedinn.

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Saeunn. ‘But not a kind I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘I have,’ said Torak. Quickly he told them about the Boar Clan hunter.

  As the Mage listened, her face grew grim. She was the oldest in the clan by many winters. Age had blasted her, polishing her scalp to the colour of old bone, sharpening her features to something more raven than woman. ‘I saw it in the bones,’ she rasped. ‘A message. “It is coming.”’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Renn. ‘When I was hunting, I met a party of Willow Clan. One of them was sick. Sores. Madness. Terrible fear.’ Her eyes were dark as peat pools as she turned to Saeunn. ‘The Willow Clan Mage sends you word. He too has been reading the bones, and for three days they’ve told him one thing, over and over. “It is coming.”’

  People made the sign of the hand to ward off evil. Others touched their clan-creature skins: the strips of glossy black feathers sewn to their jerkins.

  Etan, an eager young hunter, stepped forwards, his face perplexed. ‘I left Bera on the hill, checking the deadfalls. She had blisters on her hands. Like Oslak’s. I did wrong to leave her, didn’t I?’

  Fin-Kedinn shook his head. His face was unreadable as he stroked his dark-red beard, but Torak sensed that his thoughts were racing.

  Swiftly the Raven Leader gave orders. ‘Thull, Etan. Get some men and build a shelter in the lime wood, out of sight of camp. Take Oslak there and keep him under guard. Vedna, you’re not to go near him. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way.’ He turned to Saeunn, and his blue eyes blazed. ‘Middle-night. A healing rite. Find out what’s causing this.’

  FOUR

  The Mage’s apprentice took an auroch-horn ladle and scooped hot ash from the fire. She poured it, still smoking, into her naked palm.

  Torak gasped.

  The apprentice didn’t even wince.

  At her feet Oslak clawed the dust, but the bindings held fast. He was strapped to a horse-hide litter, awaiting the final charm. Bera had already undergone it, and was back in the sickness shelter: screaming, sicker than ever.

  The Raven Mage and her apprentice had tried everything. The Mage had daubed the sick ones’ tongues with earthblood to draw out the madness. She had tied fish-hooks to her fingers and gone into a trance to snare their drifting souls. She’d shrouded them in juniper smoke to chase away the worms of sickness. Nothing had worked.

  Now a hush fell on the Ravens as she prepared for the final charm. Firelight flickered on their anxious faces.

  It was a hot, clear night, with a gibbous moon riding high above the Forest. The wind had dropped, but the air was full of noises. The creak of the smoking-racks. The caws of the ravens in the gorge. The roar of the rapids.

  The Mage stepped towards the litter, her bony arms reaching to the moon. In one hand she gripped her amulet; in the other, a red flint arrow.

  Torak darted a glance at the Mage’s apprentice, but her face was a blank mask of river clay. She didn’t look like Renn any more.

  ‘Fire to cleanse the name-soul,’ chanted Saeunn, circling the litter.

  Renn squatted beside Oslak and trickled hot ash onto his naked feet. He moaned, and bit his lips till they bled.

  ‘Fire to cleanse the clan-soul . . .’

  Renn poured ash over his heart.

  ‘Fire to cleanse the world-soul.’

  Renn smeared ash on his forehead.

  ‘Burn, sickness, burn . . .’

  Oslak screamed with fury, and spattered the Mage with bloody foam.

  A ripple of dismay ran through the clan. The charm wasn’t working.

  Torak held his breath. Behind him the Forest stilled. Even the alders had ceased their fluttering to await the outcome.

  He watched Saeunn touch the arrow to Oslak’s chest, tracing a spiral. ‘Come, sickness,’ she croaked. ‘Out of the marrow – into the bone. Out of the bone – into the flesh . . .’

  Suddenly Torak clutched his belly in pain. As the Mage chanted the words, something sharp had twisted inside him.

  Slowly she drew the spiral over Oslak’s heart. ‘Out of the flesh – into the skin. Out of the skin – into the arrow . . .’

  Again that pain, as if her words were tugging at his insides . . . Is this the sickness? he thought. Is this how it starts?

  A firm hand gripped his shoulder. Fin-Kedinn stood beside him, watching th
e Mage.

  ‘Out of the arrow -’ cried Saeunn, rising to her feet ‘- and into the fire!’ She plunged the arrow into the embers.

  Green flames shot skywards.

  Oslak screamed.

  The Ravens hissed.

  Saeunn’s arms dropped to her sides.

  The spell had failed.

  Torak clutched his belly and fought waves of blackness.

  Suddenly, a dark shape flew into the firelight. It was the clan guardian, heading straight for him. He tried to duck, but Fin-Kedinn held him steady. Just in time, the raven swerved. It was angry: its clan was under attack. Torak had no idea why it had flown at him.

  He tried to catch Renn’s eye, but she was kneeling by Oslak, peering at the marks he’d clawed in the dust.

  Twisting out of Fin-Kedinn’s grip, Torak ran – between the watchers, out of the camp, and into the Forest.

  He reached a moonlit glade and collapsed against an ash tree. The giddiness came again. He doubled up and began to retch.

  An owl hooted.

  Torak raised his head and stared at the cold stars glinting through the black leaves of the ash tree. He slid to the ground with his head in his hands.

  The dizziness had subsided, but he was still shaking. He felt frightened and alone. He couldn’t even tell Renn about this. She was his friend, but she was also the Mage’s apprentice. She mustn’t know. No-one must know. If he was sick, he’d rather die alone in the Forest than strapped to a litter.

  Then a terrible suspicion took hold of him. They are eating my souls, Oslak had said. Was that the rambling of a madman, or did it hide a kernel of truth?

  Shutting his eyes, he tried to lose himself in the night sounds. The warble of a blackbird. The wheezy cries of the fledgling robins in the undergrowth.

  All his life, Torak had roamed the hills and valleys with his father, keeping separate from the clans. The creatures of the Forest had been his companions. He hadn’t missed people. It was hard, living with the Ravens. So many faces. So little time alone. He didn’t belong. Their ways were too different from how he’d lived with Fa.

  And he missed Wolf so much.

  It had been after Fa was killed that he’d found the cub. For two moons they’d hunted together in the Forest, and faced terrible dangers. At times Wolf had been like any other cub, getting in the way, and poking his muzzle into everything. At others he was the guide, with a mysterious certainty in his amber eyes. But always he was a pack-brother. Being without him hurt.

  Often, Torak had thought about going in search of him; but deep down he knew he’d never find the Mountain again. As Renn had said with her usual bluntness, ‘Last winter was different. But now? No, Torak, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I know that,’ he’d replied, ‘but if I keep howling, maybe Wolf will find me.’

  In six moons, Wolf had not found him. Torak had tried telling himself that that was a good sign: it meant Wolf must be happy with his new pack. But somehow, that hurt most of all. Had Wolf forgotten him?

  Faint and far away, voices floated on the wind.

  Torak sat up.

  It was a wolf pack. Howling to celebrate a kill.

  Torak forgot his dizziness – forgot everything – as the wolf song flowed over him like a river.

  He made out the deep, strong voices of the lead wolves; the lighter howls of the rest of the pack, weaving respectfully around them; the cubs’ wobbly yowls as they tried to join in. But the one voice that he longed to hear was not among them.

  He had known that it would not be. Wolf – his Wolf – ran with a pack far to the north. The wolves he heard now were in the east, in the hills bordering the Deep Forest.

  But he still had to try. Shutting his eyes, he cupped his hands to his mouth and howled a greeting.

  Instantly the wolves’ voices tightened.

  Where do you hunt, lone wolf? howled the lead female. Sharp. Commanding.

  Many lopes from you, Torak replied. Tell me. Is there – sickness in your range?

  He wasn’t certain he’d got that right, and sure enough, the wolves didn’t seem to understand.

  Our range is a good range! they howled, offended. The best range in the Forest!

  He hadn’t really expected them to grasp his meaning. His knowledge of wolf talk was not precise, his ability to express himself even less so. And yet, he thought with a pang, Wolf would have understood.

  Abruptly, the wolf song ceased.

  Torak opened his eyes. He was back in the moonlit glade among the dark ferns and the ghostly meadowsweet. He felt as if he’d woken from a dream.

  A shallow thrumming of wingbeats, and he turned to see a cuckoo on a snag, staring at him with a yellow-ringed eye.

  He remembered Oslak’s sneer. You’re not one of us! You’re a cuckoo! The rambling of a madman, but with a kernel of truth. The cuckoo gave a squawk and flew off. Something had startled it.

  Noiselessly Torak rose to his feet. His hand crept to his knife.

  In the bright moonlight, the glade seemed empty.

  A short way to the east, a stream flowed into the Widewater. Quietly he searched the bank for tracks. He found none; nor any hairs caught on twigs, or subtly displaced branches.

  But someone was here. He could feel it.

  He raised his head and stared into the beech tree above him.

  A creature glared down at him. Small. Malevolent. Hair like dead grass, and a face of leaves.

  He saw it for an instant. Then a gust of wind stirred the branches and it was gone.

  That was how Renn found him: standing rigid with his knife in his hand, staring upwards.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Why did you run away? Are you – did you eat something bad?’ She didn’t want to voice her fear that he might have the sickness.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he replied – which clearly wasn’t true. His hand shook as he sheathed his knife.

  ‘Your lips have gone grey,’ said Renn.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said again.

  As he sat beneath the beech tree, she glanced at his hands, but couldn’t see any blisters. She tried not to show her relief. ‘Maybe a bad mushroom?’ she suggested.

  ‘The Hidden People,’ he cut in. ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘What? But you know as well as I do. They look like us, except when they turn their backs, they’re rotten -’

  ‘Their faces, what about their faces?’

  ‘I told you, like us! Why? What’s this about?’

  He shook his head. ‘I thought I saw something. I thought – maybe it’s the Hidden People who are causing the sickness.’

  ‘No,’ said Renn. ‘I don’t think it is.’ She dreaded having to tell him what she’d learned at the healing rite. It wasn’t fair. After everything he’d done last winter . . .

  To put it off, she went to the stream and washed the clay from her face, then chipped away the thick layer on her palms which had allowed her to carry the hot ash without getting burned. Then she grabbed a clump of wet moss and took it back for Torak. ‘Put this to your forehead. It’ll make you feel better.’

  Sitting in the ferns beside him, she shook some hazelnuts from her food pouch and began cracking them on a stone. She offered one to Torak, but he declined. She sensed that neither of them wanted to talk about the sickness, but both were thinking of it.

  Torak asked how she’d found him.

  She snorted. ‘I may not speak wolf talk, but I’d know your howl anywhere.’ She paused. ‘Still no word of him?’

  ‘No,’ he said shortly.

  She ate another nut.

  Torak said, ‘The healing rite. It didn’t help, did it?’

  ‘If anything, it made things worse. Oslak and Bera seem to think the whole clan’s against them.’ She frowned. ‘Saeunn says she’s heard of sicknesses like this in the deep past, after the Great Wave. Whole clans died out. The Roe Deer. The Beaver Clan. She says there may have been a cure long ago, but it was lost. She says – it’s a sickness rooted
in fear. That it grows fear. As trees grow leaves.’

  ‘Like leaves on a tree,’ murmured Torak. He reached for a stick and began peeling off the bark. ‘Where does it come from?’

  She couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to tell him. ‘Do you remember,’ she began reluctantly, ‘what Oslak said on the walkway?’

  His fingers tightened on the stick. ‘I’ve been thinking that too. “Eating my souls . . . ”’ He swallowed. ‘Soul-Eaters.’

  The birds stopped singing. The dark trees tensed.

  ‘Is that what you mean?’ said Torak. ‘Do you think the Soul-Eaters have something to do with the sickness?’

  Renn hesitated. ‘Maybe. Don’t you?’

  He leapt to his feet and paced, dragging the stick over the bracken. ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know who they are.’

  ‘Torak -’

  ‘All I know,’ he said with sudden fierceness, ‘is that they were Mages who went bad. All I know is that my father was their enemy – although he never told me anything.’ He slashed at the bracken. ‘All I know is that something happened that broke their power, and people thought they were gone, but they weren’t. And last summer -’ he faltered, ‘last summer, a crippled Soul-Eater made the bear that killed Fa.’

  Savagely he stabbed the earth. Then he threw away the stick. ‘But maybe you’re wrong, Renn, maybe they didn’t -’

  ‘Torak – no. Listen to me. Oslak scratched a sign in the dust. A three-pronged fork for snaring souls. The mark of the Soul-Eaters.’

  FIVE

  The Soul-Eaters. They were woven into his destiny, and yet he knew so little about them. All he knew was that there were seven: each from a different clan, each warped by their hunger for power.

  Down by the river, a vixen screamed. In the shelter, Vedna tossed and turned, worrying about her mate. Torak lay in his sleeping-sack, thinking of the evil that could send a sickness to ravage the clans.

  To rule the Forest . . .

  But no-one could do that. No-one could conquer the trees, or stop the prey from following the ancient rhythms of the moon. No-one could tell the hunters where to hunt.