Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 127

Like a fish on a hook, Torak dangled from the tree, while the sky darkened to an angry orange twilight which had nothing to do with the sun. 'You can't leave me here to burn!' he cried.

'You are an unbeliever,' said the woman. 'You are for the fire.'

'Why? What have I done?' Bending double and hauling himself up the rope, he made a grab for the nearest branch. It snapped. He fell back, jarring his leg. 'What have I done?'

Squatting on her haunches, the woman peered at him. Her face was blistered and peeling, and in her lashless eyes he saw the cunning behind the madness. 'The Chosen One watches him,' she hissed. 'She sees him wake the fire with stone, she sees him dishonour it. She knows.'

'What do you want?'

She licked her cracked lips, and he saw the ash crusting the corners. 'To serve the Master, and through him to know the fire once more. The red so pure it makes all else grey . . . '

'But the Master wants to rule the Forest,' he panted. 'He can't want you to destroy it!'

She smiled. 'The Master says to watch the unbeliever, but the Chosen One will do more. She will give him to the fire.'

'Wait,' he said, desperate to keep her with him. 'Was it was it the Master who made you the Chosen One?'

Her features lit up like embers. 'It was the fire,' she whispered. 'On a clear blue day, the lightning sought her from the sky. No thunder, no warning. Just that blazing brightness, brighter than the sun and she at its very heart.' She leaned closer, and he smelt her acrid breath. 'In that moment, she sees everything. The bones in her flesh, the veins in the leaves, the fire that sleeps in every tree. She sees the truth. Everything burns.'

The roar of the fire was getting louder. Smoke was seeping through the trees. 'But you survived,' he said. 'The lightning let you live. You should let me live. Cut me down!'

She was oblivious, lost in her story. 'The fire took her for its own. It turned her hair to ash. It scorched the child from her womb. It transformed her . . . ' Her burning fingers stroked his cheek, and her smile was tender and merciless. 'It will transform you, too.'

He thought of Thiazzi's charred sacrifices on the tree. 'You can't leave me here to burn,' he pleaded.

'Listen to it grow!' With raised arms she saluted the fire. 'The more it eats, the greater its hunger! You are honoured. The fire will take you for its own.' Then she was gone.

'Don't leave me!' shouted Torak. 'Don't leave me,' he begged.

A shard of blazing bark struck the ground by his head. Around him the trees thrashed in the fire's searing breath. The sky had deepened to b.l.o.o.d.y amber. In the west, he saw it coming for him. He remembered what Fin-Kedinn had said. It can leap into a tree faster than a lynx, and when it does when it gets into the branches then it goes where it likes. You wouldn't believe how fast . . .

The Bright Beast came roaring through the Forest, faster than Wolf thought possible. It was eating everything: trees, hunters, prey. Where was Tall Tailless?

Wolf should never have left him. He hadn't found Darkfur and now he couldn't find his pack-brother.

Desperately, Wolf loped into the bitter breath of the Bright Beast. The panicked prey thundered past, fleeing the other way, and he dodged their trampling hooves. He splashed across a little Fast Wet. He skittered down a gully and the Bright Beast reared above him, big as a Mountain. His pelt crisped, his eyes stung. He couldn't go any further, couldn't seek his pack-brother in its very jaws. It was eating everything, and if it caught him, it would eat him too.

Spinning round, he raced back up the gully, and the Bright Beast raced after him. It lashed out a glittering claw. Wolf leapt to avoid it. It pounced on a tree and ate it. Another sapling groaned Wolf sped beneath it just before it crashed and the Bright Beast's cubs flew through the air and devoured more trees.

Hot stones bit Wolf's pads, he ran as he'd never run before, and the Bright Beast raced after him. It flew, it leapt from tree to tree, it soared over the Wet. It was eating the Forest. Nothing could escape.

Snarling with effort, Torak pulled himself upright and made another grab at the rowan. His fingers brushed bark, but couldn't grasp it. Yet again he fell back.

He had another try. This time, he caught a branch. He clung on. This had to work. If it didn't, he was finished.

Shaking his boot off his free foot, he slapped his bare sole against the rowan's trunk and half-kicked, half-hauled himself into the fork. He lay gasping, the tree digging into his belly. He was upright at last.

No time to rest. He wriggled and squirmed till he'd got into a crouch in the fork, supported on his right foot. His left leg, tethered to higher up the trunk, stuck out awkwardly.

Chunks of blazing bark thudded like fiery hail as he tugged at the noose around his ankle; but his weight had pulled it savagely tight around his boot, it wouldn't budge. Frantically he worked at the knot. His right calf trembled with the strain of supporting him.

The noose gave slightly. He worked at it. It loosened a little more. It was all he needed. Twisting and tugging, he yanked his foot from his boot, wriggled out of the noose, and jumped to earth.

After a desperate scramble in the undergrowth, he found his knife and staggered to his feet. His eyes were streaming, his skin p.r.i.c.kling with heat. Smoke had turned day to night.

A roe buck sped past. He guessed it was heading for wetlands and ran after it. Cinders stung his feet. He was barefoot. No time to go back for his boots.

As he ran, he glanced over his shoulder. Flames taller than trees were licking at the sky. The noise was like nothing he'd ever heard, it was the thunder of a thousand thousand bison, it seized his heart and squeezed it dry, it sucked the air from his lungs.

He dropped to a crouch and gulped cleaner air, and when he straightened up, the smoke was so thick that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. He didn't know where he was, but he knew he had to decide now, this instant, which way to run or he would die.

A loud cark!

He couldn't see the ravens but he heard them calling to him as they flew high above the smoke. Blindly, he followed their cries. Burning branches rained down. He was running in the very breath of the fire, and all around him trees were snapping and groaning.

Again he glanced back. A river of flame slithered up a pine tree, which exploded in a shower of sparks. A woodgrouse flew skywards, then dropped back again, sucked to its death in the burning wind.

Quork! Quork! called Rip and Rek. Follow!

Suddenly the ground was gone and Torak was rolling and b.u.mping downhill.

He jolted to a halt and struggled to his knees. Hands and feet sank into mud: cold, wet, blessed mud. The ravens had led him to a lake. He splashed into the shallows and fell headlong over a rock.

The rock gave a piteous whinny. It was a foal, a small black foal, sunk to its k.n.o.bbly fetlocks in mud, shaking with terror. It was too frightened to move, but Torak couldn't stop to help. He waded past.

Ahead of him, the murk thinned for a moment, and in the lake he made out the bobbing black heads of horses swimming for their lives, and beyond them a beaver lodge as big as a Raven shelter.

Another anguished whinny from the foal and in the lake, one of the black heads turned. The mother must have waited as long as she dared, but when her foal wouldn't follow, she'd had to leave. Now she swam reluctantly with the herd, forced to leave her young one to its doom.

That was what Torak should do: swim for the beaver lodge and leave the foal to burn.

With a growl, he turned back, grabbed a handful of its spiky mane, and pulled.

The foal rolled its white-rimmed eyes and refused to budge. 'Come on!' yelled Torak. 'Swim! It's your last chance!' That only made things worse. The foal didn't understand people talk, but what was Torak supposed to do? If he said it in wolf talk, it'd die of fright.

Getting behind the little creature, he shoved his head under its belly and heaved it onto his shoulders. It struggled feebly, so he grabbed its legs to hold it still, and staggered into the lake.

When he was waist-deep, he chucked the foal in the water. 'You're on your own!' he shouted above the clamour of the fire. 'Swim!' He threw himself in and struck out for the beaver lodge.

The fire's name-soul glared at him from the water. Over his shoulder, he saw it claiming the slope down which he'd fallen. He saw the foal swimming bravely behind him.

He was nearly at the beaver lodge, and tiring fast. Billows of black smoke rolled towards him. He couldn't breathe. He'd intended to climb onto the lodge and shelter there till the fire had leapt the lake, but now he realized that if he did, he would choke to death. He had to get inside. Beaver lodges have a sleeping-chamber above water level, which the beavers reach by underwater tunnels. Torak took a deep breath and dived.

Groping at branches, he sought the mouth of a tunnel. His chest was bursting. He couldn't find a tunnel, couldn't see a thing, it was like swimming in mud.

He found an opening. Squeezed through it burst from the water and struck his head on a sapling.

He could barely see in the red gloom, but the roar of the fire wasn't quite so deafening. Through the stench of smoke, he caught the musky stink of beaver, but he couldn't see any; maybe the fire had overtaken them on the sh.o.r.e.

They had built their lodge well. The sleeping-platform was littered with wood chips to keep it snug and dry, while above, the branches were loosely packed to make an air vent which reached to the top of the lodge. The sleeping-platform was only beaver high, and Torak didn't want to get stuck, so he decided to stay in the water and wait out the fire.

Gasping for breath, he thanked the beavers and Rip and Rek and the Forest for his shelter.

'Please,' he panted, 'please keep Wolf and Renn safe.'

His words were lost in the roar of the fire, and he felt in his heart that it was hopeless. The fire was eating the Forest. Nothing could survive.

Not Wolf. Not Renn.

TWENTY-ONE.

Renn stumbled about in a world burnt black.

The Forest was gone. It simply wasn't there any more. She wandered between charcoal spikes which had once been trees. She felt their bewildered souls thronging the soot-laden air, but was too devastated to pity them. Even the sun was gone, swallowed up in an unearthly grey half-light. Had the fire taken the whole Forest? The Open Forest as well as the Deep?

The stink made her cough, and the sound echoed eerily. When she stopped, all she could hear was a furtive crackle of embers, the occasional crash of a falling tree.

Death, she thought, death everywhere. Where is Torak? Is he alive? Or is he . . .

No. Don't think it. He's with Wolf. They are both alive, and so is Fin-Kedinn, and Rip and Rek.

Rubbing her face, she felt the grittiness of soot. She was covered in it. She tasted it on her tongue. Her eyes were swollen and sore. She'd swallowed so much smoke she felt sick.

She was thirsty, too, but she had no waterskin. Only her axe and knife and the wovenstem quiver the Red Deer had given her, containing her last three arrows. And of course her bow.

To give herself courage, she unslung it from her shoulder and rubbed the grime from its waist. Golden heartwood gleamed, and she thought of Fin-Kedinn making it for her many summers ago, and felt a little less alone.

But her thirst was becoming pressing, and it was a long time since she'd left the lake. She had no idea which way she'd come. Where was she?

She should never have escaped from the Red Deer.

Durrain had sensed the fire almost before the prey, and the whole clan had taken to the lake, seeking refuge in canoes which they'd moored to the islet in the middle. There Renn had done as they did, soaking her cloak, huddling beneath it.

She hadn't been frightened, not then. She'd been too angry with Torak for leaving her. A whole day of patient questioning. Where did he go? I don't know. Where did he go? It astonished her that they didn't guess, but they seemed to think it impossible that anyone would brave the sacred grove alone. It would've served him right, she'd thought furiously, if she had given him away.

But as she lay in the rocking gloom with the fire roaring towards them, she forgot her anger. A child sobbed. A woman whispered a charm. Renn shut her eyes and prayed for Torak and Wolf. Please, please, let them live.

Then it burst upon them, and the canoe rocked wildly and people shouted prayers.

It had taken Renn a while to realize that the fire had jumped the lake and swept on without devouring them. Then the World Spirit had lanced the clouds and released a torrent of rain, and in the confusion, she'd slipped overboard and swum away.

She thought she'd headed south, but in the smoke and the rain it was hard to tell. Now, as a breeze cleared the haze, she saw that she stood in a narrow gully where a stream had once run. Maybe it led to a river.

She hadn't gone far when a branch crashed behind her. She turned. The dead trees looked like hunters stalking her.

One of them moved.

She ran, blundering down the gully. She ran till she had to stop, hands on knees, gasping for breath.

Around her, the gully was quiet. Whatever had moved, hadn't come after her. Maybe it had been a tree, after all.

She stumbled between the smoking spikes. Beyond a spur, she saw green. She blinked. Yes, green!

Moaning, she rounded the spur and the green of the Forest blinded her. Rowan and beech and whitebeam rose before her, their boughs a little sooty, but alive.

Panting with relief, she sank to her knees amid ferns and celandine. By her hand lay a sky-blue shard of thrush's egg, pushed from the nest by the hatchling. On a log she saw a spruce sapling as tall as her thumb, thrusting bravely through the moss. She thought, the Forest is eternal. Nothing can conquer it.

But there was no sign of a river. Straining for sounds of water, she wandered through the trees.

At last she was halted by a grove of tall pines which had been toppled by a storm. Dead trunks and earthy root discs blocked her way in a criss-crossed tangle. She ought to turn back, that was what you did when you were lost. But she couldn't face returning to the wasteland.

The pines didn't want her in their bone-ground. Their mossy trunks tried to throw her off, their branches jutted like spears. It was a relief to get out the other side, back among living oaks and limes.

But these trees didn't want her, either. Furrowed bark faces glared at her, and twig fingers dragged at her hair. Some of the trunks were hollow. She thought what it would be like to be trapped inside, and hurried on.

The wind strengthened, blowing soot in her face. She coughed and went on coughing, doubled up, leaning against a tree.

Beneath her fingers, she felt eyes.

With a cry she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away.

Yes, eyes. A fierce red gaze had been carved in the trunk, and a square mouth, edged with real human teeth.

Renn had never seen such a thing. She guessed it had been done to give voice to the tree's spirit. But who would give a tree teeth?

Uneasily, she scanned her surroundings. Lime trees, nettles, a scattering of boulders.

She went on.

When she glanced back, the trees had moved. They'd been much closer to that boulder, she was sure of it. Now they were more spread out.

She started to run.

A root tripped her and she fell and came face to face with another trunk mask, its eyes tight shut in its lichen-crusted face.

Panting, she got to her feet.