Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 132

'How could you know? You're not a Mage!'

'I know that the spirit walker has escaped,' she said, feeding on his unease. 'I know that your plans have gone awry. What's gone wrong? Who's turned against you?'

He threw her from him, and she hit her head on the doorpost. Dazed, she struggled upright. She heard him laugh.

'Yes,' he mused, 'maybe this way is better. Maybe live bait will be more effective than dead.'

From his sleeve he drew a jagged flint knife as long as Renn's forearm. She shrank from him, but he barely noticed. No time for pleasure now, he was intent on his work. Yanking a handful of spirit ladders through the smoke-hole, he severed them and used the rope to bind her ankles, then gagged her with bruising force.

He brought his face close to hers. 'You've got something to do before you die,' he breathed. 'You're going to give me the spirit walker.'

Wildly she shook her head.

'Oh yes. You're going to bring him to me at the sacred grove.'

After a brief, brutal search, he found her beaver-tooth knife and her grouse-bone whistle, cut the medicine pouch from her belt, and tossed all three on the fire. The last thing he did before casting his hood over his face was to take her bow in his hands and snap it in two.

TWENTY-NINE.

Torak thought he saw Wolf on the bank, but when he called, he did not appear. Nor did the ravens. It was as if they knew what he'd done, and condemned him for it.

'But I didn't abandon her,' he said. 'She left me.'

A gust of wind ruffled the river, and the alders stirred reproachfully. A gnarled oak scowled at him as he paddled by.

He could not believe that Renn had left him and gone back to the Open Forest. Surely she would change her mind and come after him? But when he listened for the sound of a dugout, all he heard was the gurgle of water and the sighs of slumbering trees.

She'll be all right, thought Torak. She can look after herself.

Oh, of course she can, Torak. Why would she need your help, hunted by hostile clans in the heart of the Deep Forest, with a Soul-Eater on the loose?

As dawn broke, he stopped for a rest and something to eat. Everything reminded him of Renn. The early morning sun trembled in a patch of wood strawberries. If she'd been with him, she would have dug up a couple of roots and chewed them to clean her teeth. As he groped in the shallows for reed stems and crunched them raw, he remembered a day last summer when she'd tried to feed one to Wolf, and it had turned into a game of tag. All three of them had ended up in the water, Torak and Renn helpless with laughter, while Wolf splashed about, worrying his prize and play-growling as if it were a lemming.

'Enough!' said Torak.

On the opposite bank, an otter raised her sleek head and stared at him, then went back to munching the trout in her forepaws.

Rek flew down, grabbed the otter's tail in her beak, and tugged. The outraged otter spun round, snarling at the intruder, and while her back was turned, Rip swooped and s.n.a.t.c.hed the fish from her paws.

Both ravens alighted near Torak and demolished the fish. Sharing it, he noted, just as he and Renn shared everything. He struck the earth with his fist.

When nothing was left of the trout but bones, Rek flew onto Torak's shoulder and gently tugged his ear. Rip walked towards him and gazed at the medicine pouch at his belt: the swansfoot pouch which had been Renn's until she'd given it to him last spring.

'Not you too,' Torak told the ravens irritably.

Rip waggled his tail and stared at the pouch.

Without knowing why, Torak opened it and took out his medicine horn. Both ravens tilted their heads, as if listening.

Moodily, Torak turned the horn in his fingers. It was carved with spiky marks which looked like spruce trees. Fin-Kedinn had once told Torak that this had been his mother's sign for the Forest, which was how he'd recognized the horn as hers. Now, Torak saw what he'd forgotten. Twisted round the tip of the horn was the strand of Renn's hair which he'd found in her sleeping-sack when he was outcast.

Slowly, he unwound it. Rip hopped onto his knee, took the hair in his beak, and ran it through his bill as delicately as if he were preening a feather.

Torak heaved a sigh. Renn had sent the ravens to help him last summer when he was soul-sick. And he'd abandoned her.

Just as he'd abandoned Bale.

The thought made him go cold. It was happening again. He'd quarrelled with Bale, and Bale had died. Now Renn . . .

His fist closed over the strand of hair. He would go back and find her. He would make her come with him. Vengeance must wait a little longer.

Jumping into the dugout, he turned it around and started downriver.

This time, the ravens flew with him.

Now Wolf was confused as well as worried. What was Tall Tailless doing?

Ever since the Bright Beast had eaten the Forest, Wolf had followed, and not understood. He'd prowled about the great Dens of the taillesses and watched them snarl at each other, then tear the strips of hide from their heads. Then they'd dragged in his pack-brother, and Wolf had been about to leap to his aid when Tall Tailless had snarled at them. That terrible, snarling blood-hunger . . . It was not-wolf. Wolf didn't understand it. It frightened him.

Then he'd followed Tall Tailless and the pack-sister to the Fast Wet, where they had snarled at each other, and then Tall Tailless had abandoned her. A wolf does not abandon his pack-sister. Was Tall Tailless sick? Was his mind broken?

After that, Wolf had kept to the Dark as he'd followed his pack-brother up-Wet. Tall Tailless had called, but Wolf hadn't gone to him. Wolf hated hiding from his pack-brother, but he knew with the certainty which came to him at times that he could not go to him.

Although he didn't yet know why.

THIRTY.

There must have been a storm in the Mountains, because the Blackwater bore Torak swiftly back to the Deep Forest camp.

Masking the dugout with leafy branches, he lay flat, trusting the reeds to conceal him. He was lucky. Everyone was hard at work, painting trees. He saw women, men and children laboriously smearing on earthblood.

What madness, he wondered, made them blindly follow orders? Couldn't they see that Thiazzi was stealing their freedom, like a fox raiding a carca.s.s?

When the camp had drifted out of sight, he took up his paddle. The afternoon wore on. The west wind carried the stink of the wasteland. And still he found no sign of Renn.

As he rounded a bend, he saw that the north bank was muddied, as if by dugouts. The boats were gone, but something flashed on a willow branch. A lock of dark-red hair.

Landing the dugout, Torak made his way warily up the bank.

A swathe of men's tracks led into the Forest. Among them he found Renn's. She'd been re-captured. Why had they brought her here?

Forcing himself to concentrate, he worked out that the men had returned a short while later and paddled away. Had they taken Renn with them? He didn't think so.

Further in, he found another strand of her hair, tied to a twig. Then another. The tightness inside him unclenched a little. She must have been all right if she'd been able to do that. And she'd wanted him to follow.

Drawing his knife, he headed into the Forest.

Dusk was falling when he reached a small shelter in the lee of a fallen spruce. He saw slender scarlet ropes strung from trees, and auroch horns carved with sacred spirals. He guessed this was the prayer shelter of the Auroch Mage. But it had the peculiar stillness of an abandoned camp.

The doorway was barred by two crossed branches: one oak, one yew. Filled with misgiving, Torak stepped over them and went inside. The fire was dead white embers, crumbly as bones, but something lay across it. His belly turned over. It was the remains of Renn's bow.

In disbelief he took up the black, broken pieces of yew on which she had lavished so much care. He remembered a day last summer when he'd found her grinding hazelnuts to oil it. The sun had blazed in her red hair, and he'd wondered what would it feel like to wind it round his wrist. She'd turned and met his eyes, and his face had flamed. Wolf had nosed past him after the hazelnuts, and Renn had batted his muzzle away, 'No, Wolf, not for you!' But she'd soon relented and given him a handful.

Kneeling in the embers, Torak gripped the remains of the bow. He smelt ash, and the tang of spruce. By his knee, he saw a tiny amber pellet. He picked it up. Yes, spruce-blood. Beside it, a handprint. The hand of a large man. Missing two fingers.

Everything fell into place, and Torak spiralled down, down from a great height. Thiazzi was the Auroch Mage. Thiazzi was the Forest Horse Mage. They were one and the same.

And Thiazzi had Renn.

Lurching to his feet, Torak stumbled from the shelter. Moonlight washed the clearing in icy blue. He thought of Renn being forced to watch Thiazzi snap her bow in two. How the Soul-Eater must have enjoyed that. And he'd wanted Torak to know it. He'd left the bow as a sign, with his three-fingered handprint. Thiazzi did this.

It was Thiazzi, not Renn, who had left those strands of her hair on the trail: leading Torak here, making sure that he took the bait. And those crossed branches . . . Proclaiming where he'd taken her.

The sacred grove, where corpses dangled from the oak.

Torak staggered to a tree and retched.

This was his fault. In his hunger for vengeance, he had delivered Renn into the power of the Oak Mage.

Tall Tailless was only a pounce away, but Wolf couldn't go to him. Something was keeping them apart, like a great Fast Wet rushing between them.

Tall Tailless had been holding the pack-sister's Long Claw-that-Flies in his forepaws, and now he put it carefully in the tree. Wolf sensed his fear, and underneath it, his terrible blood-urge.

It was the blood-urge which stopped Wolf going to him. I have to kill the Bitten One, Tall Tailless had once told Wolf. Not because he is prey or in a fight over ranges, but because he killed the pale-pelted tailless.

But why? This was not what a wolf does. This this was not-wolf.

Worry clawed at Wolf's belly. He savaged a branch. He ran in circles.

Tall Tailless had heard him. He stooped and whined. Come to me, pack-brother. I need you!

Wolf whimpered. He backed away.

He remembered the time in the Great Cold when he'd found the white wolves, and had tried to tell their leader about Tall Tailless. He has no tail, Wolf had said, and he walks on his hind legs, but he is . . .

Then he is not-wolf, the lead wolf had sternly replied.

Wolf had known the leader was wrong, but he hadn't dared protest.

But now.

Tall Tailless rose on his hind legs and came towards Wolf, his face puzzled. Why won't you come to me?

His face . . .

From the beginning, Wolf had loved his pack-brother's flat, furless face; but as he stood in the Dark, staring up at it, he saw how different it was from that of a wolf. The eyes of Tall Tailless didn't throw back the light of the Bright White Eye, as the eyes of wolves do.

Not like a wolf.

It crashed upon Wolf with the force of a falling tree, the knowledge that had been stalking him for many Lights and Darks. Tall Tailless was not-wolf.

A pain such as Wolf had never known bit deep into his heart. Not even when he was a cub on the Mountain and missing Tall Tailless terribly, not even then had he felt such pain.

Tall Tailless was not-wolf.

Not wolf.

Tall Tailless was not wolf.

THIRTY-ONE.

I thought you knew, said Torak in wolf talk.

Wolf backed away, his amber eyes clouded with misery.

Oh, Wolf. I thought you knew.

Whimpering, Wolf turned tail and fled.

Torak ran after him, crashing through the trees. It was hopeless. Lurching to a halt, he doubled up, gasping for breath. Around him, whitebeams unfurled their silver leaves to cup the light of the full moon. He howled. Wolf did not howl back. Torak's howl sank to a sob. Wolf was gone. Gone for ever?

The trees stirred in the wind, whispering, Hurry, hurry. Already, Thiazzi might have reached the sacred grove. He might have woken another fire and sunk a stake into its heart. He might be dragging Renn towards it . . .

Torak ran past the shelter, back to where he'd left the dugout. He jumped in and headed upstream, stabbing the river as if it were Thiazzi. He was in an endless tunnel of dark trees and hopeless thoughts. Because of him, Wolf was in misery. Because of him, Renn was in the power of the Oak Mage.