Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Page 38

  THIRTY

  Torak was woken by Wolf licking his nose. He was too tired to open his eyes. Instead he snuggled closer, pressing his face into soft wolf fur. He felt wonderfully warm and safe – and it was so quiet. No seabirds. No wind. Just the sighing of the Sea and the beat of Wolf’s heart against his own.

  Lick, lick, lick.

  Hazily he remembered finding his way ashore. Wolf knocking him backwards into the sand, and keeping him there with a frenzy of snuffle-licks. Then curling up together and slipping down into sleep . . .

  The licking turned to grooming-nibbles. Then a sharp, impatient nudge under his chin. Wake up!

  He opened his eyes.

  Crunchy sand under his cheek; Wolf’s whiskers tickling his eyelids. Beyond that – nothing. The fog was so thick that he couldn’t tell Sea from sky.

  How long had he been asleep?

  The cure.

  He jerked upright, heart pounding. Where was he? Where was Tenris? It was Midsummer night – had they missed their chance? The fog blotted out the sun. He couldn’t tell.

  He got to his feet – and the blood soughed in his ears. He was stiff and sore all over. Thirst burned his throat.

  Somewhere not far off, he heard a trickling sound. He stumbled through the fog, and splashed into a shallow stream choked with weeds. He knelt and gulped handfuls of gritty water.

  Wolf trotted over to him, his paws making no noise on the sand. Still on his knees, Torak nuzzled his scruff and said a heartfelt thank you.

  Wolf swung his tail and licked the corner of Torak’s mouth. My pack-brother.

  Feeling slightly better, Torak stood up and looked about. He still couldn’t see two paces ahead, but this sand was familiar. White, coarsely crushed seashells. Maybe he was closer to the Seal camp than he’d dared hope . . .

  To his right he heard the lapping of the Sea. He staggered across the beach – and suddenly birch trees and tumbled boulders loomed out of the mist. He ran towards them.

  Behind him Wolf gave a low, shuddering growl.

  Torak spun round.

  Wolf’s head was down, his lips peeled back in a snarl.

  Whipping out his knife, Torak dropped to the ground and spoke in an urgent grunt-whine. What is it?

  More growls. The fur on Wolf’s hackles stood on end. Torak felt the hairs on his own neck prickling. And yet – he couldn’t see anything amiss. Up ahead, the birch trees were utterly still.

  I have to go on, he told Wolf.

  Again Wolf growled, warning him back.

  Never before had Torak ignored his warnings, and it felt wrong to do so now. But he had to find Tenris. I have to go on, he said again. Please. Come with me!

  To his dismay, Wolf backed away, growling.

  Full of misgiving, Torak rose and entered the trees without him.

  He was halfway through when a strong hand gripped his arm. ‘There you are!’ cried Tenris. ‘Thank the Sea Mother you’re safe!’

  Torak glanced back over his shoulder – but Wolf was gone.

  ‘We thought you’d drowned!’ said Tenris, pulling him through the remaining trees.

  ‘You frightened me,’ said Torak.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tenris. ‘Come, let’s go! Time’s short, we’ve got to get up to the Crag.’

  ‘You still have the selik root?’ said Torak as they ran across the beach.

  ‘Yes, of course!’

  ‘And Bale? Did he make it ashore?’

  ‘Yes, he’s fine, he’s guarding – he’s fine.’

  Torak stopped. ‘Guarding who?’

  Tenris’s face became grave. ‘She’s sick, Torak. We had to lock her up.’

  ‘Who?’ said Torak. ‘Who’s sick?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Tenris. ‘Come, we’re wasting time.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Torak insisted. But a part of him already knew.

  ‘Torak -’

  ‘It’s Renn, isn’t it? Tenris, please. I need to see her.’

  Tenris sighed. ‘It’ll have to be quick.’ At a run he led Torak through the deserted Seal camp and out to the cave at the end of the bay, where the man who’d killed the whale had spent his lonely vigil. ‘We put her where we kept them before,’ he said as they drew near.

  The cave mouth was all but sealed by a massive door of whale bone and seal hide, and Bale stood on guard with a harpoon. When he saw Torak, his face lit up. Torak pushed past him without a word.

  Through a gap between the door and the cave wall, he saw Renn pacing up and down. It was too dark to see her properly, but he made out her dishevelled hair and furious expression; and the sore on the back of her hand. A cold weight sank inside him like a stone.

  When she saw him, her face cleared. ‘Torak! Oh, thank the Spirit! Now get me out of here!’

  ‘Renn – I can’t,’ he said. ‘You’re sick.’

  Her mouth fell open. ‘But – you don’t believe them. Of course I’m not sick!’

  Behind him, Tenris put his hand on his shoulder. ‘They all say that,’ he murmured under his breath. ‘But don’t worry, Bale will look after her. And I’ve made sure she’ll not go hungry.’

  When she saw the Mage, Renn shrank back. ‘Get away from me!’ Then to Torak, ‘I’m not sick!’

  ‘Tenris is right,’ said Bale, gripping the harpoon so hard that his knuckles were white. ‘My brother was just the same.’

  ‘Renn,’ said Torak, putting both hands on the seal-hide door. ‘I’ll bring you the cure, I promise. You will get -’

  ‘I don’t need the cure!’ she spat. ‘Why don’t you believe me?’ She pointed at Tenris. ‘It’s him! He’s the Soul-Eater!’

  ‘In the end they suspect everyone,’ said Bale.

  ‘Why won’t you believe me?’ cried Renn. ‘Tell him to show you his mark! Make him show you his tattoo! He’s a Soul-Eater!’

  Tenris touched Torak’s arm. ‘Torak, we have to go – or it’ll be too late for her or anyone else.’

  ‘No – Torak – don’t go!’ shouted Renn. ‘He’ll kill you! Torak!’ She threw herself against the door.

  Bale braced it with his shoulder. ‘Go,’ he told Torak. ‘I’ll make sure she comes to no harm.’

  ‘You will get better!’ called Torak. ‘I promise! You will get better!’

  ‘Torak!’ she screamed. ‘Come back!’

  With her cries ringing in his ears, Torak followed Tenris into the fog.

  ‘Quickly,’ muttered the Seal Mage. ‘The turn of the sun is close, I can feel it.’

  With Renn’s cries fading behind them, they started up the trail. Soon all Torak could hear was his own breathing and the sound of water trickling over the rocks. He felt oppressed by a choking sense of wrongness. In the space of a few heartbeats, he’d ignored warnings from both Wolf and Renn.

  A clatter of claws behind him.

  He swung round. Wolf?

  He couldn’t see anything in the swirling whiteness – except Tenris up ahead, disappearing into the fog. ‘Tenris!’ he called. ‘Wait for me!’

  More clattering claws – then a small humped figure scuttled across the trail. Not Wolf. The tokoroth.

  Torak raced forwards. ‘Tenris! Look out! The tokoroth!’

  Pain exploded in his head, and the rocks rushed up to meet him.

  Torak woke with a start.

  His head was throbbing, his shoulders ached. Someone had taken off his jerkin and laid him on a cold stone slab. Someone had tied his wrists together, pulled his arms above his head, and hooked them over a horn of rock. The binding was tight – he couldn’t wriggle out – although if he could push himself up with his heels, he might be able to unhook his wrists and . . .

  Someone gripped his ankles, holding him back. Someone with sharp claws and a knife. When he tried to kick free, they pressed its point against his calf.

  Mist swirled about him, tinged blue with woodsmoke. He heard the crackle of a fire, and caught the tang of juniper. He couldn’t hear the Sea. He must be high up on the cliffs.

>   At his feet, two demon eyes glared at him from a face tattooed with leaves.

  Fear settled on him like a second skin. He was on the Crag, laid out on the altar rock, guarded by the tokoroth.

  Then a second tokoroth emerged from the smoke. A girl with matted hair falling to her knees, and stick limbs covered in bruises. Her fingernails and toenails were yellow, and filed to long, pointed claws.

  In silence she leaned over him, and his skin crawled as her greasy locks brushed his belly. Her bony fingers drew his father’s knife from the sheath at his belt.

  ‘What do you want?’ he whispered.

  In silence she raised the knife in both hands.

  ‘What do you want?’

  In silence she laid the cold slate knife on his chest.

  A soft clinking in the mist – and both tokoroth cowered on the ground.

  A figure loomed out of the mist. With every step, the puffin beaks clinked at his belt.

  Torak felt as if he were falling from a great height. All the kindness, the gentleness . . . All a lie. Wolf had been right. Renn had been right. And he had been wrong, wrong, wrong.

  The Seal Mage had taken off his jerkin to reveal a lean, muscled body that was horribly burnt down the whole of the left side. His arms were smeared with wood-ash, obscuring his clan-tattoos. His face was an ashen mask – as if, thought Torak with a sick sense of dread – he were already mourning someone dead. He wore no amulet, except for a twist of something red and shrunken on a thong at his neck, and his naked chest was unmarked, save for a stark black tattoo over the heart. A three-pronged fork for snaring souls. The mark of the Soul-Eater.

  ‘You,’ said Torak. ‘A Soul-Eater.’

  ‘One of the seven, Torak.’ His voice was the only thing that hadn’t changed. Still beautiful; still as calm and powerful as the Sea on a sunlit day. ‘But with your help,’ he said quietly, ‘I shall rise above the others. I shall become the greatest of them all.’

  Slowly Torak shook his head. ‘I won’t help you do that.’

  Tenris smiled. ‘You don’t have a choice.’ Turning his head, he barked a command at the tokoroth, his voice suddenly harsh and cruel.

  The boy raced to fetch a heavy basket almost as big as himself, while the girl scurried to the neck of the Crag. Torak saw that she was building a wall of driftwood across it, cutting them off from the trail.

  The boy tokoroth hadn’t finished the bindings round his ankles. So if he could keep Tenris talking, maybe he could work his feet free. And maybe if he howled for Wolf . . .

  But what then? Tenris had a spear and a harpoon lying ready by the fire, and both tokoroth had knives at their belts. Three against one. Against such odds, what could even Wolf achieve? ‘Your friends can’t help you,’ said Tenris as if he’d read his thoughts. ‘One of them is guarding the other. There’s a kind of beauty in that, don’t you think?’ From the basket he took out several pale, cone-shaped objects and began laying them out around the altar rock. This time he didn’t seem to care about treading on the silver lines polished in the stone.

  Torak had to keep him talking, to give himself time to think. ‘The sickness,’ he said. ‘You were the one who sent it.’

  ‘I didn’t send it,’ said Tenris, standing back to study his work. ‘I created it. My tokoroth have the demon skill for creeping into shelters. And I . . .Well, I’m very good at poisons.’

  ‘But – why?’

  ‘That’s the interesting part,’ said Tenris, resuming his task. ‘When I began three summers ago, I had no idea how I’d use it; I simply knew that I needed a weapon.’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes not even I can tell all that the future holds.’

  Torak felt sick. ‘So Bale’s little brother . . .’

  Tenris shrugged. ‘I just wanted to know if it worked.’

  ‘And this summer. The clans. Why?’

  The Seal Mage raised his head, and his grey eyes glittered. ‘To smoke you out. To find out what you can do.’

  So Fin-Kedinn had been right, after all.

  ‘And it worked,’ said Tenris, ‘although not in the way I expected. You see, I didn’t know who you were. All I knew was that there was someone in the Forest with power. I thought that whoever it was would perform some great feat of Magecraft to rid his people of the sickness.’ His lip curled. ‘Instead what did you do? You came to me – me! Begging me to make the cure! Oh, it was meant to be!’

  ‘And the cure,’ said Torak. ‘Was that a trick too?’

  Tenris snorted. From the pouch at his belt he took the selik root and tossed it on the fire. ‘There is no cure,’ he said. ‘I made it up.’

  The flames flared a deep, throbbing purple. The two tokoroth drew closer and gazed at it in fascination.

  Tenris eyed them with contempt. ‘Sometimes being a Mage is almost too easy. All it takes is a little coloured fire.’ He gave the girl a savage kick that sent her flying. Hissing, she scuttled back to her wood-pile.

  To Torak’s dismay, the boy rushed back to the bindings at his ankles. He kicked out sharply. The boy tokoroth jabbed his calf with the knife to make him hold still.

  ‘So now that you’ve smoked me out,’ he said to Tenris, ‘what next?’

  Tenris gazed down at him, and his face contracted with pain and longing. ‘When I found out what you could do, I could not believe it. That a boy should have such power. Power to tame hunters and trammel prey. Power to rule the clans . . .’ He shook his head. ‘What a waste.’

  Then he leaned closer, and Torak smelt the bitterness of ash. ‘Soon,’ he murmured, ‘that power will be mine. I will take it for myself, and become the spirit walker. I will be the greatest Mage who ever lived . . .’

  ‘How?’ Torak said hoarsely. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Midsummer,’ breathed the Seal Mage. ‘The most potent night for Magecraft – and it’s your birthnight! Oh, it is perfect! All the signs point to this, all telling me to do it!’

  Gently he put out his hand and pushed back a lock of hair from Torak’s forehead. ‘Do you remember what I told you about Midsummer night? That it’s all about change?’

  Torak tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.

  ‘Tree into leaf,’ murmured the Seal Mage, ‘boy into man.’ He leaned down, and his breath heated Torak’s cheek as he whispered in his ear. ‘I’m going to eat your heart.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Wolf had done what no wolf should ever do. He had abandoned his pack-brother.

  He had been so astonished when Tall Tailless ignored his warnings – so astonished and so cross – that he had deserted him.

  So while Tall Tailless went off alone to the Den of the pale-pelts, Wolf loped up the ridge and down to the Still Wet, where he snapped at the reeds in his anger, and chewed up a hunk of dead wood, until at last all the crossness had been spat out.

  And now as he stood in the Wet to drink, he thought of the time when he’d been a lonely cub, and his pack-brother had found him. Tall Tailless had shared his kills, and given him the crunchy hooves to play with. When Wolf’s pads had been hurting from the trail, Tall Tailless had carried him in his forepaws for many, many lopes.

  A wolf does not abandon his pack-brother.

  Wolf gave an anguished yelp, and raced back towards the Den. He loped over the ridge and down again; wove soundlessly between the birch trees and out onto the pebbles.

  He couldn’t see the Den, as it had been swallowed by the breath of the Great Wet – but he could smell it. And he could hear the female padding up and down in the smaller Den in the mountain. She was angry, worried and scared, and the pale-pelted tailless was growling at her; Wolf didn’t know why. But apart from them, the Den was empty.

  In fact, it was too still. He smelt the lemmings cowering in their burrows. He heard the fish-birds on the cliffs hiding their beaks under their wings. All were waiting. Frightened to move.

  Wolf raised his muzzle to catch the smells. He smelt much fish, and the left-behind scents of many taillesses; he smelt the fa
t, friendly fish-dogs who swim in the Great Wet, and sometimes lumber up onto the rocks. And he smelt the other smell, too: the demon stink.

  The stink grew stronger as he padded forwards, and his hackles rose. When he was a cub, that stink had frightened him. Now it awakened a strange hunger: deeper than the blood-urge, stronger even than the Pull of the Mountain . . .

  But where was Tall Tailless? With all the smells whirling in the windless air, Wolf couldn’t catch the one scent he longed to find.

  And now the female and the pale-pelt were snarling at each other – and as Wolf ran towards them, he saw that the pale-pelt was carrying meat for the female in his forepaws: meat which stank of demon!

  Wolf sensed that the female was hungry, and wanted to eat. He had to stop her! But what if she ignored his warning, just as Tall Tailless had done? What if she didn’t even understand what he was telling her?

  Wolf lowered his head and crept forwards, placing each paw with silent care. He had an idea. There was one thing the female always understood.

  A snarl.

  ‘I’m not hungry!’ snarled Renn as the Seal boy set the bowl on the ground. ‘And for the last time, I’m not sick!’

  ‘Just eat,’ said the boy. Backing out of the cave, he dragged the seal hide across the cave mouth, leaving a gap a couple of hands wide for air.

  Renn didn’t like the Seal boy, but she wished he hadn’t gone. It was frightening being in here on her own. She could feel the suffering of the sick from three summers ago; the walls were dank with their despair.

  But you’re not sick, she reminded herself. You’re just tired and hungry, and worried about Torak.

  She decided to try again with the Seal boy. ‘Do you know why the Hunter attacked?’ she called out.

  Silence.

  ‘Because your Mage killed one of its young. I found the carcass. He trapped it in a seal net – the kind only your clan makes – and he took nothing but its teeth. Does that sound like something a good man would do?’

  No reply.

  She clenched her jaw. ‘I know it was him,’ she said. ‘I heard his belt clink as he rowed across the lake.’

  Still no answer, but she could tell that he was listening. She could hear him breathing on the other side of the door.