Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Page 53

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Torak raced through the tunnels, skinning his knuckles and barking his shins. He stumbled, and the torch he’d snatched from the forest of stone lurched wildly. As he righted himself, a leathery wing fluttered past his face. He bit back a cry and staggered on.

  Twice he thought he heard footsteps, but when he paused, he caught only his own echo. He doubted that the Soul-Eaters would follow him. They didn’t need to. Where would he go? The Eye of the Viper was shut.

  He closed his mind to that and ran on.

  Fragments of what he’d witnessed flashed before his eyes. The thrusting snouts of the demons, fighting to break open the Door. The awful beauty of the fire-opal.

  He couldn’t believe that it had held him for so long. What spell had it cast, that had made him forget Wolf? Was this how it had been for his father? Drawn in by his curiosity, by his fatal need to know – until it was too late.

  Too late. Terror seized him. Maybe it was already too late for Wolf.

  As he ran, he spat out the black root, then bit it in two; crammed half in his medicine pouch, and chewed the other. The rotten undertaste made him gag, but he forced himself to swallow. No time for hesitation. He’d seen what the root had done to the Soul-Eaters. Now it had to work for him.

  With alarming suddenness the first cramps gripped. Clutching his belly, he staggered into the tunnel of the offerings, jammed the torch in a crack, and fell on all fours.

  He retched, spewing up a gobbet of black bile. His eyes were streaming, the tunnel was spinning. His souls were beginning to tug loose.

  Still retching, he crawled to the pit that held the ice bear. He caught the sound of furred pads on stone.

  Memory reached from the dark and pulled him down. A blue autumn dusk in the Forest. His father laughing at the joke he’d just made. Then, out of the shadows, the bear -

  No! he told himself. Don’t think about Fa, think about Wolf! Find Wolf.

  Shivering, he crawled closer, and rested his burning forehead against the rock, peering through the chink between the floor and the slab that covered the pit.

  Flinty eyes glared back at him. A growl shuddered through the rock. His spirit quailed. Even starved and weakened, the ice bear was all-powerful. Its souls would be too strong.

  More cramps convulsed him. He retched . . .

  . . . and suddenly he was trapped in the pit, slitting his eyes against the painful blur of light. He was so hot, so terribly hot. Above him the frail body of a boy taunted him with the maddening scent of fresh meat. The blood-smell was so strong that his claws ached as he paced and turned, and paced again.

  He caught the distant murmur of man-voices, and for a moment his mind turned from the blood-smell, and he bared his teeth. He knew those voices. It was the evil ones who had taken him from the ice.

  As he remembered his lost home, dull pain coursed through him. They had robbed him of his beautiful cold Sea, where the white whales sleep and the succulent seals swim; of the faithful wind which never failed to waft the blood-smell to his nose. They had stolen his ice, his never-ending ice, which hid him when he hunted, and carried him wherever he wished to go, which was all he’d ever known. They had brought him to this terrible, burning place where there was no ice; where the blood-smell was everywhere, but never within reach.

  He growled as he thought how he would seize the heads of the evil ones and crush them in his jaws! He would slash their bellies and feast on their smoking guts and their sweet, slippery fat! Like the pounding of the Sea, the blood-urge thundered through him, and he roared till the rocks shook. He was the ice bear, he feared nothing! All, all was prey!

  Deep inside the marrow of the ice bear, Torak’s souls struggled to gain mastery. The bear’s spirit was the strongest he’d ever encountered. Never had he been so engulfed by the feelings of another creature.

  With a tremendous effort of will, he overcame – and the ice bear ceased to rage at the evil ones, and turned to the blood-smells: the tantalizing web of scent trails which led out into the dark, like the drag-marks after he’d hauled a walrus over the ice.

  Close – maddeningly close – he smelt the blood of lynx and otter, bat and boy; of wolverine and eagle. Further off, he smelt wolf.

  Its scent was fainter than the others, and tainted with a badness he didn’t understand – but for a bear who could scent a seal through the thickest ice, it was easy to trace.

  The trail led down through the dark, and round to the side of his striking-paw – then up again, to where the air smelt cooler. They thought they were cunning to hide the wolf, but he would find it. And when he’d broken free and killed all the others, he would kill the wolf, too. He would catch it in his jaws and shake it till its spine cracked . . .

  No! shouted Torak silently.

  For a moment the great bear faltered, and in the pulsing marrow of its bones, Torak’s souls struggled to escape. He’d smelt enough. His plan had worked. He knew where the Soul-Eaters had hidden Wolf.

  The bear’s souls were too strong.

  He couldn’t get out.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Renn burst from the weasel hole and toppled headfirst into the snow.

  After the heat of the caves, the cold was a knife in her lungs. She didn’t care. She rolled onto her naked back and stared up into a blizzard of stars.

  From high overhead came the caw of a raven. She gasped a fervent thanks – and her clan-guardian cawed back, warning her that it wasn’t over yet.

  Her teeth were chattering. She was losing heat fast. Getting to her feet, she discovered that she couldn’t find her parka, jerkin or mittens, which she’d pushed before her out of the hole.

  After an increasingly desperate search, she fell over them. She bundled them on, and they warmed her in moments. She blessed the skill of the White Fox women.

  Above her the stars glimmered as clouds sped across the sky. No sign of the First Tree. And no moon, either.

  No moon? But surely it couldn’t be the dark of the moon already?

  Yes it could. With a shiver she realized that she had no idea how long she’d been underground. She stared at the shadowy bulk of the mountain. Torak and Wolf were somewhere inside, bound for sacrifice in the dark of the moon. Which was now.

  She had to find them. She had to go back inside.

  As her eyes accustomed to the starlight, she realized that she didn’t recognize her surroundings. Before her the weasel hole was a circle of blackness, but she couldn’t see the standing stone, or the Eye of the Viper; only humped snow and charcoal rockfaces. For all she knew, she could be on the other side of the mountain.

  Frantic, she felt her way forwards – tripped – and pitched into a snowdrift.

  A very hard snowdrift, with something solid underneath.

  She got to her knees and started to dig.

  A skinboat. No. Two skinboats: both bigger than the one the White Foxes had given them, and stowed with paddles, harpoons, and rope. The Soul-Eaters had thought of everything. Drawing her knife, she slit the belly of each boat. There. See how far they got now!

  From deep within the mountain came a roar.

  She ran to the weasel hole. There it was again: the unmistakeable roar of an ice bear. She remembered the murderous chant of the Soul-Eaters. A bear for strength.

  The roars fell silent. She strained to listen, but from the dark came only a warm uprush of bat-stink. She pictured Torak, alone against the might of the Soul-Eaters. She had to find him.

  She thought fast. On her way through the weasel hole, she’d climbed steadily upwards. That must mean that she was now higher up the mountain than when she’d started.

  ‘So head down!’ she cried.

  She ran, plunging into snowdrifts, pulling herself out, but heading down, always down.

  With breathtaking suddenness she rounded a spur – and there was the standing stone and the Eye of the Viper. She never thought she’d be so glad to see them.

  The Eye was shut, blocked by the slab which
the Oak Mage had pushed across it. But maybe she could move it just enough to crawl in.

  She put her shoulder against it and heaved. She might as well have tried to shift the mountain itself.

  Steam misted from the bottom corner of the slab, where it didn’t quite fit across the cave mouth. She tried to squeeze through the gap. It would be big enough for Wolf, but was just a few fingers too narrow for her.

  As she stood before the Eye, the truth settled upon her as stealthily as snow. There was only one way back inside. The way she had come.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. Her breath swirled eerily in the gloom.

  She ran back up the trail, and stood panting before the weasel hole. It was tiny. A tiny, cruel mouth waiting to swallow her.

  She put back her head. ‘I can’t!’

  Moonlight hit her smartly in the face.

  She blinked. She’d got it wrong. It wasn’t the dark of the moon. Not yet. There – riding above the clouds – was the thinnest of silver slivers: the very last bite that the Sky Bear hadn’t yet caught. She still had one day left. And so did Torak and Wolf.

  As she gazed up at the pure, steady white light, Renn felt new courage steal into her. The moon was the eternal prey: eternally in flight across the sky, eternally caught and eaten, but always reborn, always faithfully lighting the way for hunters and prey – even in the very deep of winter, when the sun was dead. Whatever happened, the moon always came back. And so would she.

  Before she could change her mind, she raced down the trail to the Soul-Eaters’ sleds, where she and Torak had hidden their gear. Luckily there hadn’t been any fresh snow, so she easily found her pack.

  First she gobbled down a few mouthfuls of blubber, which steadied her a little. Then she packed more blubber in her food pouch for Wolf and Torak, stuck her axe in her belt, and crammed the rest of what she thought she might need in her medicine pouch. Then she raced back to the weasel hole.

  The breath sawed painfully in her chest as she yanked her parka and jerkin over her head and rolled them up as small as they would go. The sweat on her skin froze instantly, but she ignored that as she tied her mitten strings round the bundled-up clothes, then fastened the other end to her ankle, so that she’d be dragging them behind her. She allowed herself one final glance at the moon, and muttered a quick prayer of thanks.

  The wind burned like ice, but the unclean warmth of the weasel hole was worse. As she crawled into the blackness, panic rose in her throat. She choked it back down.

  You did it once, she told herself. You can do it again.

  She put down her head and began to crawl.

  She never knew how long it took her to find her way back inside. Back through the ever-shrinking weasel hole, back through that final, heart-stopping narrowness – then out into the forest of stone, where – amazingly – the Soul-Eaters were nowhere to be found: only a flicker of torchlight, and a grim circle of red handprints on the wall that turned her sick with fear.

  Something – maybe her clan-guardian wheeling far overhead – guided her through the twists and turns and sudden jolting drops, until she stumbled into a foetid stench, and the uncertain light of a guttering torch.

  She was in a low tunnel with blood-coloured walls and smaller caves branching off it, blocked by slabs of stone. From behind the slabs she caught the scrabbling of claws, and guessed that this was where the “offerings” were confined.

  ‘Torak?’ she whispered.

  No answer; but the scrabblings stilled.

  ‘Wolf?’

  Still nothing. Groping with her hands, she made her way through the gloom.

  The torch went out, plunging her into blackness – and she tripped over something lying on the floor.

  She lay winded, waiting for disaster to strike. When it didn’t, she slipped off her mitten to investigate. Her hand touched the softness of seal-hide. It was a body in a seal-hide parka, lying on the floor.

  ‘Torak?’ she whispered.

  Silence. He was either sleeping, or . . .

  Dreading what she might find, she moved closer. If he was dead.

  Her mind reeled. His souls might be thronging the dark: angry, bewildered, unable to stay together without Death Marks. His clan-soul might have got separated, leaving behind a demon. A terrible thought, that her friend might have turned against her.

  No. She wouldn’t believe it. Bringing her hand closer, she held it over where she guessed the face would be – and felt a faint warmth. Breath. He was alive!

  Abruptly she drew back her hand. Maybe it wasn’t Torak. Maybe it was a Soul-Eater.

  Warily, she touched the hair. Thick, short, with a fringe across the forehead. A thin face, no beard; but scabbed, which could be snow-burn. It felt like Torak. But if she was wrong . . .

  She had an idea. If it was Torak, she’d find a scar on his left calf. Last summer he’d been gashed by a boar, and had sewn it up quite badly, then forgotten to take out the stitches. In the end she’d had to do it for him, and he’d become impatient, and they’d bumped their heads, and burst out laughing.

  Sliding her hand inside the boot, she ran it over the skin. Yes. Beneath her fingers she found the warm, smooth ridges of scarred flesh.

  Trembling with relief, she grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Torak! Wake up!’

  He was heavy and unresponsive.

  She hissed in his ear. ‘Stop it! Wake up!’

  What was wrong with him? Had they given him a sleeping-potion?

  ‘Who’s there?’ a woman called gruffly.

  Renn froze.

  A faint glow of torchlight appeared at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘Boy?’ called the woman. ‘Where are you? Answer me!’

  Wildly, Renn groped in the dark for a hiding-place. Her fingers found the edge of a slab blocking one of the hollows, but it was too heavy, she couldn’t move it. Find another. Fast.

  The footsteps came nearer. The torchlight grew brighter.

  Renn found a slab that she could just move, pushed it back – quietly, quietly - crawled inside, and pulled it shut.

  A thin line of light showed through the slit that remained. She held her breath.

  The footsteps paused. Whoever it was, they were close.

  She turned her head from the torchlight, in case they felt her staring, and fixed her gaze blindly on the dark.

  From the back of the hiding-place, a pair of yellow eyes glared back at her.

  TWENTY-SIX

  In one horrified heartbeat, Renn glimpsed a beak sharp enough to slit a whale’s belly; talons that could carry a reindeer calf to a clifftop eyrie.

  Drawing in her legs, she shrank against the rock. The hollow was tiny: there was barely space for them both. Her weapons were useless. She pictured lightning-fast talons shredding her face and hands; the Soul-Eaters peering in at her ruined flesh, then finishing off what the eagle had begun.

  ‘Boy!’ called the Soul-Eater on the other side of the slab.

  The eagle hunched its huge wings and fixed its eyes on Renn.

  She heard the scrape of a torch being stuck in a crack; the thin squeak of a bat.

  ‘There you are!’ said the Bat Mage.

  Renn froze.

  ‘Boy! Wake up!’

  ‘So you found him,’ said another woman a little further off. Her voice was low and musical, like water rippling over stones. Renn’s skin prickled.

  ‘I can’t wake him up,’ said the Bat Mage. To Renn’s surprise, she sounded concerned.

  ‘He took too much root,’ the other said scornfully. ‘Leave him. We don’t need him till tomorrow.’

  The eagle spread its wings as far as it could, warding Renn back. Back where? She had nowhere to go. She tried to make herself even smaller, and an eagle pellet crunched beneath her palm.

  The Soul-eaters went silent. Had they heard?

  ‘What are you doing?’ said the soft-voiced Soul-Eater.

  ‘Turning him over,’ replied the Bat Mage. ‘Can’t let him sleep on his back. If he�
�s sick, he’ll choke.’

  ‘Oh Nef, why bother? He isn’t worth –’ she broke off.

  ‘What is it?’ said Nef.

  ‘I feel something,’ said the other. ‘Souls. I feel souls, in the air around us.’

  Silence. Again that high, thin squeak.

  Renn blinked. The stink of birdlime was making her eyes water and her nose run. She tried not to sniff.

  ‘Your bat feels them too,’ said the soft-voiced one.

  ‘There, my beauty,’ crooned the Bat Mage. ‘But whose souls? Could one of the offerings be dead?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ murmured the other. ‘It’s more . . . No, it doesn’t feel like one of them.’

  ‘Still, we’d better check them.’

  Terror settled on Renn like a covering of ice.

  ‘Hold my torch,’ said the Bat Mage, her voice receding as she moved away.

  Renn heard the scrape of stone a few paces away, then the ferocious hiss of a wolverine.

  ‘Well he’s not dead yet!’ laughed the soft-voiced one.

  The Bat Mage grunted as she pushed back the stone.

  Another slab was scraped aside, nearer Renn’s hiding-place. She caught the squeak of an otter.

  One by one, the Soul-Eaters checked the offerings, drawing steadily closer to where she huddled. Her mind raced. There was no way out. If she bolted, they’d see her. If she stayed where she was, she’d be caught like a weasel in a trap. She had to stop them looking inside. If she didn’t, she was dead.

  A fox barked in the hollow next to hers. They were almost upon her. Think.

  Only one thing to do.

  Screwing her eyes shut, she crossed her arms over her face – and kicked the eagle.

  It lashed out with an ear-splitting ‘klek-klek-klek’ – and she felt a chill on her wrists as talons sliced a hair’s breadth from her skin.

  On the other side of the slab, the Soul-Eaters stopped.

  The eagle shook itself angrily, and began preening its ruffled feathers.

  Renn cowered with her arms over her face, unable to believe that she was unhurt.