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  Fin-Kedinn did not reply. "Fin-Kedinn? You do understand?" Suddenly he looked tired. "You're no longer a child, Renn. You're old enough to make your own choices." No I'm not! she wanted to say. I need you to help me! Tell me what to do!

  That night Renn sat by a smoky little fire on the banks of the Axehandle, feeling lonely and scared.

  Breaking clan law had been even worse than she'd feared. By doing so, she'd cut herself off from her clan and from Fin-Kedinn.

  Huddling closer to the flames, she blew on her grouse-bone whistle but got no answer. Torak and Wolf were far away.

  She could feel her power churning inside her; the secrets rising to the surface, like splinters working their way through her flesh. She didn't want to do Magecraft, 146

  she hated it, but she had a feeling that to help Torak, she might be forced to try. Because Seshru was out here somewhere.

  Hatred flared in her heart, and she perceived the Soul-Eater's plan so clearly that it could have been her own. Seshru was hunting Torak in the same way that her clancreature hunted its quarry. The viper sinks its poisoned fangs into its prey, then follows it through the Forest as it wanders, slowly weakening. The viper is patient. It waits till the prey falls. Only then does it feed.

  Renn was awakened by the sizzle of water on fire.

  Bale stood over her, his dripping skinboat balanced on his shoulder.

  She sat up, annoyed that he'd caught her dozing. "I thought you went back to your island," she said crossly.

  He ignored that. "I was wrong and you were right. Torak is soul-sick. But it's worse than we thought."

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  SEVENTEEN

  "Aki was barely alive," said Bale. "Somehow he'd crawled out of the water and collapsed in a thicket. The Wolf Clan found him a couple of days later." "A couple of days?" said Renn. "He's been missing nearly a moon." "No. The Boar Clan just didn't bother to send us word."

  "Typical," she said in disgust. "But what were the Wolf Clan doing so far east?"

  Bale looked grim. "Tracking Torak. To 'wipe out the dishonor once and for all.'"

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  Renn shook her head. "Did they say where his trail led?"

  "East. They lost him in the reed-beds on Lake Axehead."

  She went cold. "Lake Axehead? Why?"

  Bale brushed that aside. "Don't you see what this means? Torak left Aki to die!"

  "Maybe he didn't knowAki was there."

  "Oh, he knew. Aki says he saw Torak looking down at him from the ridge. Then he turned and walked away." He rubbed his face. "I know Aki was hunting him, but to leave him to die ... that's not Torak!"

  Renn stared at the fire. Bale was right. But why Lake Axehead? There was a pattern to this, but she couldn't fathom it. She only knew that of all places, the Lake was the one she was least eager to see. Her father had died at its eastern edge. She'd promised herself she would never go back. Bale set down his skinboat and pulled off his gutskin parka. "You're trying to find him too, aren't you?"

  She didn't reply.

  "Why now, when you weren't before?"

  "I was." She told him about her searches in the Forest.

  "Me too," he said, surprising her. "You? I thought you were hunting with the Sea Eagles."

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  He was affronted. "With Torak an outcast?"

  She thought for a moment. Then she said, "You do know that we're breaking clan law? If you tellanyone..."

  "Of course I know! But that goes for you, too."

  Warily they studied each other. Then Bale said, "I caught a fish. Can I cook it on your fire?"

  Renn shrugged.

  It was an impressively large bream, and Bale offered her a piece, which she refused, then changed her mind when she smelled it cooking. In return she gave him some dried deer meat, and showed him how to spread it with juniper-berry and marrowfat paste. While they ate, they talked guardedly. Bale told her how he'd prepared his skinboat for its freshwater "ordeal" by coating it with seal blubber and burned seaweed, and Renn showed him the seal-hide bow case she'd been given in the Far North. But she didn't mention what she'd guessed of Seshru's plans. Bale was Torak's kin, but she didn't know him very well, and if it came to a battle of wills between her and the Viper Mage, he would get in the way.

  On the other hand, he was strong, and he had a skinboat. She was pondering this when Bale rose to his feet, picked up his pack, and hoisted his boat on his shoulder. She asked him where he was going.

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  "Lake Axehead. You go back to your clan. I'll find Torak."

  "What?" "Well you're not coming in my skinboat." "I wouldn't want to," she lied.

  "And if you went overland, you'd never keep up." Seeing her expression, he sighed. "Where I come from, women stay on land. The men do the hunting and the fighting." Renn snorted. "Not in the Forest."

  "Maybe. But I'm Seal Clan, and that's my way. Go back to camp, Renn. You're not coming with me."

  In disbelief she watched him make for the shallows. "Even if you do reach the Lake," she called after him, "what are you going to do? You don't know anything about it, or the Otters!" "I'll take my chances," he replied.

  "Fine! But I'll tell you this. You're not going to beat the Soul-Eaters by being good with a paddle!"

  "We'll see about that."

  "We shall indeed," snarled Renn as she battled through the brambles.

  There was no trail along this part of the Axehandle--at least none that she could find--and she was hot, scratched, and furious. It didn't help that she kept picturing Bale speeding serenely upriver.

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  Above the rapids she rested, then struggled through a stand of soggy alders. The river here formed pools where many clans came to fish. Renn noticed that someone had set lines and fish traps in several of the pools. She was wondering who it was when she caught a flash of fair hair by the water's edge. Bale hadn't seen her. He was kneeling by his overturned skinboat, patching a small tear in its hull.

  "Having problems?" she called.

  "Snagged on a fish trap," he said without looking around.

  "Too bad," said Renn unfeelingly.

  "It's not right!" he burst out. "Leaving them there for anyone to run into! They should've put some kind of marker!"

  "They did. Those strips of willow bark tied to the branches? That's what Forest people leave as a warning when they're fishing."

  Bale set his jaw.

  "Well, good luck," said Renn with a cheery smile. "Hope it doesn't slow you down too much!"

  Bale threw her a thunderous look.

  She was still grinning as she left the pools.

  Her grin didn't last. Across the river, she saw the mouth of the gully where she and Torak had first encountered the Walker, the autumn before last. Wolf had been a cub. When his pads got sore, Torak had 152

  carried him in his arms.

  A fierce longing for them swept over her.

  The pines gave way to towering oaks, and the Forest turned watchful. Renn wished Bale would sweep by in his skinboat. Surely it couldn't have taken this long to sew on a patch?

  A little farther on, two red deer fawns peeped from the bracken, then wobbled toward her on tiny hooves. They were almost within reach before they took fright and fled. Renn put her hand to her raven feathers. When a creature goes out of its way to attract your attention, it's often a sign. What did this mean? It was late afternoon when she climbed the ridge the clans call the Hogback, and stood gazing over the Lake.

  The low sun turned the water a dazzling gold. She saw islands scattered across it, fragile as leaves, and below her the great reed-bed which guarded the western shore. Far to the south, she made out the black dots of the Otter camp, and to the east the cruel white slash of the ice river.

  She'd been eight summers old when she last stood here: bewildered, unable to understand why her fa was never coming back. The Otters had found his body, and Fin-Kedinn and Saeunn had gone to rescue his scattered souls. Fin-Kedinn had insisted that Renn 153


  should come too. They'd stood on the Hogback, staring at this vast inland Sea.

  "Why did he go all that way?" Renn asks her uncle. "There isn't any prey on the ice river."

  "He wasn't hunting prey," murmurs Fin-Kedinn.

  "Then why?"

  "I'll tell you when you're older." He takes her hand in his warm, strong grip, and she clings on fiercely.

  Now she was back on the Hogback, but there was no Fin-Kedinn to cling to.

  By the time she had made her way down the ridge, she'd begun to see the hopelessness of her task. She had no idea where Torak had gone, and there was no one to ask. No trail led along the shore--the Otters didn't need one, they always traveled -by water--and even if she reached their camp on foot, what then? She'd started picking her way south when she heard a stirring in the reeds.

  "Bale?" she said uncertainly.

  No answer. Only the creak and crunch of reeds, as if something was pushing its way toward her.

  She stumbled backward over the tussocky ground. "Bale!" she whispered. "If that's you, come out now-- it isn't funny!"

  The wind veered around, engulfing her in a stink that made her gag.

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  The reeds trembled--parted--and a boat slid toward her. From it stared a green man made of moldy reeds.

  Renn sprang back--and collided with something solid.

  "Whatisthat?" said Bale, behind her.

  "Whatwasthat?" he said again, when they'd retreated a safe distance to a bay at the southern edge of the reeds.

  "I think the Otters made it," said Renn, "to honor the Lake. They put food in it and leave it to go where it will. It's sacred. We shouldn't even have seen it." Bale bit his lip. "I'm glad I found you. This place. I don't know its ways."

  Renn shrugged. "Well. I need a boat, so I'm glad you found me, too." That didn't sound as friendly as she'd intended, so she went on quickly, "Before we do anything, we must honor the Lake. The Otters ask its permission for everything."

  Bale nodded. "What do we do?"

  Feeling a bit self-conscious, Renn left an offering of salmon cakes near the reeds. Then she made a paste of earthblood and Lake water and daubed a little on her forehead and her bow, asking the Lake to let them go in peace. Bale let her daub some on his forehead, and-- after some persuasion--on his skinboat. After that they 155

  had a meal of dried deer meat, and he made a fish trap out of willow withes and set it in the water.

  The sun sank lower and the wind dropped. The Lake turned as smooth as polished basalt.

  "The Viper Mage," Bale said quietly. "She's after Torak because he's a spirit walker. Isn't she?"

  "... Yes," said Renn. She wished he hadn't mentioned Seshru.

  "And she's after the fire-opal, too."

  "Yes," she said again. Lowering her voice, she added, "It's the last piece left. One piece was lost in the black ice with the Bat Mage. One when the Seal Mage was taken by the Sea." "The Seal Mage?" Bale was startled. "He had a piece of the fire-opal?"

  "How else could he have made the tokoroths?"

  He frowned. Renn guessed that he was remembering the bad times on his island, when the Seal Mage had created the sickness. Bale's little brother had been one of its victims. A lonely, wavering cry echoed over the Lake.

  Bale sprang to his feet. "What was that?"

  "A diverbird," said Renn. "They're the best swimmers in the Lake. The Otters make offerings to them, too." She paused. "Fin-Kedinn says the Otters are like their clancreature. Always leaving little piles of half-chewed fish at the water's edge." 156 Somewhere a trout leaped, and they jumped. Bale shook himself and went off to check his fish trap. Renn stayed, brooding, on the shore. "Renn," called Bale in an altered voice. "What?" "You'd better come and see." 157

  EIGHTEEN

  The big bream wriggled and gasped in the trap. It was a fine catch--except that it had two heads. Mouthless, misshapen, the second bulged like a canker, fighting its twin with horrible vigor. "What did this?" said Bale with a grimace. "Kill it," said Renn. "No!" ordered a voice behind them. "Throw it back. Don't touch!" They turned to face a cluster of sharp green faces and sharper spears. Bale moved in front of Renn, but she stepped aside. With her fists on her heart, she addressed the

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  woman who--to judge from her armlet of otter fur-was the Leader.

  "I'm Raven Clan," she said. "My friend is Seal. We mean no harm."

  "No talk!" admonished the woman. Then to the others, "Return that accursed thing to the Lake. We're taking the strangers to camp."

  "But Ananda, why?" protested a man. "At a time like this--"

  "At a time like this, Yolun," cut in the Leader, "we can't let them go free; they'd only make it worse."

  The man called Yolun lapsed into tight-lipped silence while two others broke up the trap and set the monster free.

  After that things happened fast. Renn and Bale were seized and bundled into a reed boat with Yolun and another man. When they tried to resist, knives were pressed against their spines. They could only watch as their gear was tossed into the skinboat, which was lashed to the stern of another craft and towed. They headed south. Beside her, Renn felt Bale shaking with rage. She threw him an urgent glance and shook her head. Fighting was useless. The Otters bristled with greenstone spears and arrows tipped with the beaks of diverbirds. Trying to escape would be futile. The only reason they hadn't been tied up was because there was no need.

  159 Renn studied Yolun as he sat hunched in the prow, stabbing the water with his paddle. His fish-skin jerkin was fringed at neck and hem, evoking the reeds. His eyes were outlined with earthblood to imitate the red glare of the diverbird. He kept glancing resentfully over his shoulder, but beneath his hostility, Renn sensed something else.

  Bale bent and whispered in her ear. "Their craft are heavy and slow. If we could reach my skinboat, we could outrun them."

  "And go where?" she whispered back. "They know the Lake; we don't. Besides, I don't think they're angry so much as frightened."

  "That makes them even more dangerous."

  He was right.

  The reed craft might not have the speed of a skinboat, but the Otters made steady progress, weaving unerringly between the islands that dotted the Lake. As the light summer night wore on, their camp rose into view. Like Bale, Renn was seeing it for the first time. Like him, she gasped.

  "Why do they live like this?" he murmured.

  "To be close to the Lake," said Yolun. He stopped paddling, and for a moment his austere features glowed with fervor. "The Lake is Mother and Father to us. From it comes all life. To it all life must return." The 160

  resentment returned. "We don't expect strangers to understand."

  "I'm no stranger," said Renn. "I'm Open Forest, like you."

  "You're not Otter Clan!" he snapped. "No more talk."

  Wreathed in greenish smoke, the camp of the Otters floated above the Lake, linked to land by a single narrow walkway.

  "It's built on stilts," said Bale, amazed.

  A forest of logs had been planted in the Lake, and on these lay wooden platforms bearing many squat reed domes. A bitter tang of smoke wafted toward them, with a powerful smell of fish. They saw smoldering firebrands mounted on posts; men and women gazing down at them, their eyes wide in their green-painted faces. Renn was perplexed. The Otters were known as happy, playful people, like their clan-creature. Something had changed.

  And all wore the green clay. Until now, Renn had never seen it, although she knew it was sacred to the Otters, who took it from a secret place on the north shore and mixed it with fish oil. But they only ever used it to protect the sick and the dying. She wondered why the whole clan needed it now. Yolun's companion moored the craft to one of the

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  outer piles, and a hatch opened overhead. A rope ladder dropped down, and Yolun ordered them to climb.

  They emerged into an acrid haze. Renn saw that what she'd taken for firebrands were chunks of horsehoof mushroom--burned, she guessed
, to keep away midges. And still the Otters stared.

  She and Bale were pushed toward the largest shelter: a smoky hut lit by rushlights. Inside, she was assailed by a stink of rotting fish. The Otters seemed unconcerned, and even Bale merely wrinkled his nose. Out of politeness, Renn pretended not to notice.

  When everyone had crawled inside, Ananda called for food. Seeing Renn's surprise, she said, "We have a saying on the Lake. A stranger is my guest until proven my enemy." Yolun snorted, as if he'd had proof enough.

  "We're not enemies," said Bale.

  "So you say," said Ananda. "Eat."

  There was silence while a boy and a young woman brought fish-shaped bowls of tight-woven sedge filled with reed-pollen gruel, and a basket piled with baked reed stems: charred on the outside, white and starchy when peeled. Renn recognized the young woman as a Raven who'd mated with an Otter the previous summer. "Dyrati?"

  Dyrati avoided her eyes. "Eat," she said, ladling a

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  gray sludge over Renn's gruel. It looked like thick honey, but the stench of rotten fish made Renn's eyes water.

  "Stickleback grease," said Dyrati. "Eat!"

  "Eat!" commanded Yolun. "Or do you scorn our food?"

  They were all watching her.

  She prodded the stinking mess and felt her gorge rise.

  Bale came to her rescue. "She isn't used to boats; it's turned her stomach." Emptying her bowl into his, he started eating with every appearence of relish--and the Otters relaxed. "How canyou?" whispered Renn.

  "I like it," he mumbled with a shrug. "We make the same thing in the islands, but with cod."

  "You'll be wondering why we have no fish to give you," said Ananda. "Even this grease is from last spring." She searched their faces. "Someone is making the Lake sick."

  The Otters began rocking and moaning, and many touched the tufts of clan-creature fur hanging from their ears.

  "A while ago," Ananda went on, "a child fell ill, and our Mage sent us to fetch the sacred clay. We found the healing spring plundered. A stranger had stolen what only an Otter may touch. That's when the troubles 163