Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 136

'You did the right thing,' she said.

'They don't know that,' he said in disgust. 'They'll let her live because I told them to. Not because it's right.'

'That won't matter to her.'

'Well it matters to me.'

He left her and headed out of camp. He didn't care where he went, just as long as it was away from the Deep Forest clans.

He hadn't gone far before the wound in his thigh began to hurt, so he flung himself down on the riverbank and watched the Blackwater glide by. The ache in his chest was worse, and he wanted Wolf, but Wolf didn't come, and he didn't have the heart to howl.

He sensed someone behind him, and turned to see Durrain. 'Go away,' he growled.

She came closer and sat down.

He tore off a dock leaf and started shredding it along the veins.

'Your decision was wise,' she said. 'We will watch her well.' She paused. 'We didn't know how far her wits had wandered. We were wrong to give her so much freedom. We made a mistake.'

Torak wished Renn could have heard that.

'She sinned,' Durrain went on, 'but it's wise to leave vengeance to the Forest.' She turned to Torak, and he felt the force of her gaze. 'You understand this now. It was something your mother always knew.'

Torak went still. 'My mother? But you said you couldn't tell me anything about her.'

She gave him her thin smile. 'You were bent on revenge. You weren't ready to hear.' Tilting her head, she studied the shifting leaves above her. 'You were born in the Great Yew,' she said. 'When your mother felt her time come, she went to the sacred grove to seek the Forest's protection for her child. She went into the Great Yew. You were born there. She buried your navel-cord in its embrace. Then she and the Wolf Mage fled south. Later, when she knew her death was near, she sent him to find me, so she could tell the things she couldn't tell him.'

She held out her hand, and a spotted moth settled on her palm. 'The night you were born, the World Spirit came to her in a vision. He decreed that you must fight all your life to undo the evil which the Wolf Mage had helped create. She was frightened. She begged the World Spirit to help her child fulfil so hard a destiny. He said he would make you a spirit walker but that you must then be clanless, for no clan should be so much stronger than the others.' She watched the moth flutter away. 'And he decreed that this gift must cost your mother her life.'

Torak stared at the leaf skeleton in his hands.

'To seal the pact, the World Spirit broke off a tine of his antler and gave it to her. She made it into a medicine horn. The day she finished it, she died.'

A redstart alighted on an alder, wiped its beak on the branch, and flew off.

'Your father,' said Durrain, 'left you in the wolf den and went to build her Death Platform. Three moons later, he brought her bones to the sacred grove and put them to rest in the Great Yew.'

Torak cast the leaf skeleton on the water and watched it carried away. The Great Yew. His birth tree. His mother's death tree.

He thought of his father, setting pegs in its ancient flanks to help his mate climb in when she was ready to give birth; then bringing back her bones and laying them to rest, along with her knife: the knife which, many summers later, had saved Renn's life.

On the other side of the river, a troop of ducklings followed their mother down the bank. Torak saw them without seeing them. He was clanless because he was a spirit walker. His mother had chosen to make him so, at the cost of her life.

A painful anger kindled within him. She could have lived, but she'd chosen to die. She had done it for him; but she'd left him behind.

Unsteadily, he got to his feet. 'I never wanted this.'

Durrain made to speak, but he motioned her back. 'I never wanted it!' he shouted.

Blindly, he ran through the Forest. He kept running till his thigh hurt too much to go on.

He found himself in a green glade netted with sunlight, where swallows swooped and b.u.t.terflies flitted over windflowers. Beautiful, he thought.

And his dead would never see it.

As he sank to his knees in the gra.s.s, he thought of his mother and his father and Bale. The pain in his chest became as sharp as flint. For so long he had clung to his need for vengeance. Now it was gone, and there was nothing left but grief. A lump seemed to work loose under his breastbone, and he cried out. He went on crying: loud, heaving, jerky sobs. Crying for his dead, who had left him behind.

Renn lay in her sleeping-sack, staring into the dark. Her thoughts went hopelessly round and round. Fin-Kedinn had made her bow. Thiazzi had broken it. Fin-Kedinn was sick. The bow was an omen. Fin-Kedinn was dead.

Eventually, she could bear it no longer. Grabbing her crutches, she hobbled from the shelter.

It was middle-night, and the camp was quiet. She made her way to a fire and lowered herself onto a log, where she sat watching the sparks fly up to die in the sky.

Where was Torak? How could he do this? Running off without telling her, when she was desperate to get back to the Open Forest.

Some time later, he limped into camp. He saw her and came to sit by her fire. He looked drained, and his eyelashes were spiky, as if he'd been crying. Renn hardened her heart. 'Where have you been?' she said accusingly.

He glowered at the fire. 'I want to get out of here. Back to the Open Forest.'

'Me too! If you hadn't gone off like that, we'd be on our way.'

With a stick he stabbed the embers. 'I hate being a spirit walker. It feels like a curse.'

'You are what you are,' she said unsympathetically. 'Besides, some good comes out of it.'

'What good? Tell me what good ever came out of it?'

She bridled. 'When you were a baby, in the wolf den. It's because you're a spirit walker that you learnt wolf talk. Which let you make friends with Wolf. There. That's good, isn't it?'

He went on glowering. 'But it's not just wolf talk, that's the thing. When you spirit walk I think it leaves marks on your souls.'

Renn shivered. She'd been wondering about that, too. The rage of the ice bear, the viper's ruthlessness . . . At times, she saw traces of them in Torak. And yet those green flecks in his eyes. Surely they were good: specks of the Forest's wisdom which had rubbed off on him, like moss off a branch.

But she was too annoyed to tell him about that now, so instead she said, 'Maybe it does leave marks, but not always. You spirit walked in a raven, and it didn't make you any cleverer.'

He laughed.

With her crutches, she pulled herself to her feet. 'Get some sleep. I want to leave as soon as it's light.'

He threw the stick into the fire and stood up. Then he reached behind him and put something into her hands. 'Here. I thought you'd want this.'

It was the pieces of her bow.

'Now you can lay it to rest,' he said. He sounded uncertain, as if he wasn't sure he'd done the right thing.

Renn couldn't trust herself to speak. As her fingers closed about the much-loved wood, she seemed to see Fin-Kedinn carving it. It was a sign. It had to be.

'Renn,' Torak said quietly. 'It's not an omen. Fin-Kedinn is strong. He will get better.'

She drew a breath that ended in a gulp. 'How did you know I thought that?'

'Well. I know you.'

Renn pictured Torak limping through the Forest to retrieve the broken bow. She thought, Maybe spirit walking does leave marks. But this . . . this is simply Torak. 'Thank you,' she said.

'It wasn't much.'

'Not just for this. For what you did. For breaking your oath.' Putting her hand on his shoulder, she rose and kissed his jaw, then hobbled quickly away.

Wolf watched Tall Tailless blinking and swaying after the pack-sister had gone, and sensed that his feelings were as scattered and blown about as a flurry of leaves.

Taillesses were so complicated. Tall Tailless liked the pack-sister and she liked him, but instead of rubbing flanks and licking muzzles, they ran away from each other. It was extremely odd.

Thinking of this, Wolf trotted off to find Darkfur. She joined him, her muzzle still wet from the kill, and after play-biting and rubbing pelts, they ran together up-Wet. Wolf liked the feel of the cool ferns stroking his fur, and the patter of Darkfur's paws behind him. He snuffed the delicious smells of fresh fawn blood and friendly wolf.

The Forest was at peace again, and yet something made Wolf head for the place where Tall Tailless had fought the Bitten One. When they reached it, they slowed to a trot. The Bright White Eye gazed down upon the wakeful trees, and the dread of the Thunderer still floated in the air.

The Thunderer was a great mystery. When Wolf was a cub, the Thunderer had made him leave Tall Tailless and go to the Mountain. Later, when Wolf ran away, the Thunderer had been angry. Then Wolf was forgiven, although he wasn't allowed back on the Mountain. All this was very strange; but then, the Thunderer was male and female, hunter and prey. No wolf could understand such a creature.

Wolf used to hate not understanding, but now he knew that some things he just couldn't. The Thunderer was one, and Tall Tailless another. Tall Tailless was not wolf. And yet he was Wolf's pack-brother. That was how it was.

A faint scent drifted past Wolf's nose, and he sprang alert. Darkfur's eyes gleamed. Demons.

Eagerly, Wolf put his muzzle to the ground, taking deep sniffs as he followed the trail. It led past the ancient trees and up the rise.

The Den was nearly blocked by a rock, the gap too narrow for Wolf to get in. He made it bigger by digging the earth with his forepaws, and Darkfur helped. At last, Wolf squeezed through.

Inside, he caught a whiff of demon, but the scent was old. No demons here. Just a very thin, smelly tailless cub.

Wolf whined softly and licked her nose. She didn't even blink. Something was wrong. Wolf backed out of the Den and raced off to fetch Tall Tailless.

The Light had come when he drew near the Dens of the taillesses, and he saw at once that he would have to wait. On the edge of the Fast Wet, a group of floating hides had drawn up. Wolf watched the leader of the Raven pack climbing the bank, and the pack-sister throwing away her sticks and hopping towards him, and the pack leader laughing and swinging her into his forepaws.

THIRTY-NINE.

'How long till we reach the Open Forest?' asked Torak.

Fin-Kedinn, rolling up his sleeping-sack, said, 'We should make it by dusk.'

'At last!' sighed Renn.

She tucked a sc.r.a.p of dried boar in a birch for the guardian, but Rip promptly stole it. Torak tried to make his offering to the Forest raven-proof by stuffing it down a crack in an ash tree. Then Fin-Kedinn told Renn to put the fire back to sleep, and he and Torak carried the gear down to the canoes.

It was two days since they'd left the Deep Forest camp, and they were taking it slowly, as Fin-Kedinn's ribs were still mending. The Raven Leader had come alone, the rest of the clan being busy with the salmon run. It was good to be just the three of them.

Around him, Torak sensed a great healing. Even among the Deep Forest clans, there had been a coming together, sparked by the need to heal the stolen children. Five had been freed from holes dug into the slopes behind the sacred grove. All were stick-thin, their teeth filed to fangs, their minds scoured white as mistletoe berries. But after peering into their eyes, Renn had declared that Thiazzi hadn't yet trapped demons in their marrow, so they were still children, not tokoroths; and since she had more experience of this than anyone, even Durrain had deferred to her. The last Torak had seen of the Deep Forest clans, they'd been earnestly debating the best rites to aid the recovery.

The Forest, too, was beginning to overgrow its wounds. It had taken a day to paddle through the burnt lands, but in places, Torak had glimpsed patches of green, and a few hardy deer nibbling shoots. On the sh.o.r.es of Blackwater Lake, he'd seen the sacred mare. She'd whinnied at him, and he'd nickered back. It seemed that she'd forgiven him for riding her.

And yet, he thought as he stowed the waterskins in the canoes, some hurts would never heal. The Aurochs' scars would never fade. Gaup was maimed for life. His little girl, who'd been found with the others, was mute. Worst of all, one of the stolen children was lost for good. Demon, Wolf had said as he'd followed its trail, before losing it in the foothills of the Mountains. Torak pictured the tokoroth scuttling over the stones towards Eostra's lair.

'Better tie down the gear,' said Fin-Kedinn, making him jump. 'There's white water ahead.'

Torak was surprised; he didn't remember any rapids. Then he realized that he and Renn had made this part of the journey on foot, and south of the river. It was a relief to know that from now on, Fin-Kedinn was in charge.

They got under way, gliding past chattering alders and reed-beds alive with warblers. At last, as the light softened to gold, the Jaws of the Deep Forest loomed into view.

Over his shoulder, Fin-Kedinn asked Torak if he was sorry to be leaving the place where he was born.

'No,' said Torak, though it saddened him to admit it. 'I don't belong here. The Red Deer would've let the Oak Mage take over the Forest, rather than fight. And the others . . . They wanted to kill anyone who didn't follow the Way. Now I think they'd kill anyone who did. How can you trust people like that?'

Fin-Kedinn watched a swallow catch a fly on the wing. 'They need certainty, Torak. Like ivy clinging to an oak.'

'What about you? Do you need it?'

Fin-Kedinn rested his paddle across the boat and turned to face him. 'When I was young, I travelled to the Far North and hunted with the White Fox Clan. One night, we saw the lights in the sky, and I said, Look, there's the First Tree. The White Foxes laughed. They said, It's not a tree, it's the fires which our dead burn to keep warm. Later, when I was on Lake Axehead, the Otter Clan told me the lights are a great reed-bed which shelters the spirits of their ancestors.' He paused. 'Who's right?'

Torak shook his head.

Fin-Kedinn took up his paddle again. 'There is no certainty, Torak. Sooner or later, if you have the courage, you face that.'

Torak thought of the Aurochs and the Forest Horses, painting trees. 'I think some people never face it.'

'That's true. But not everyone in the Deep Forest is like them. Your mother wasn't. She had more courage.'

Torak put his hand to his medicine pouch. He hadn't yet told Fin-Kedinn what he'd learnt about the horn, but he had told Renn and being Renn, she'd thought of something he hadn't. 'Maybe it's been helping you all the time. I always wondered why the Soul-Eaters never sensed that you're a spirit walker. And that humming noise at the sacred grove? Maybe it did bring the World Spirit. Though I don't think we'll ever know for sure.'

No certainty, thought Torak. The idea blew through him like a clean, cold wind.

As they swept into the shadow of the Jaws, he glanced back. The low sun glowed in the mossy spruce, and it seemed to him that they whispered farewell. He thought of the hidden valley where the Deep Forest clans had taken Thiazzi's corpse for secret funeral rites. He thought of the sacred grove where the great trees stood as they had stood for thousands of summers, watching the creatures of the Forest live out their brief, embattled lives. Did they care that he had broken his oath? Had they already forgotten?

It was not even a moon since Bale was killed, and yet it felt like a whole summer. Torak said to Fin-Kedinn, 'I promised to avenge him. But I couldn't do it.'

The Raven Leader turned and met his eyes. 'You broke your oath to save Renn,' he said. 'Don't you think that if things had been different if you were the one who'd died, and he'd sworn to avenge you don't you think he would have done the same?'

Torak opened his mouth, then shut it again. Fin-Kedinn was right. Bale would not have hesitated.

Fin-Kedinn said, 'You did well, Torak. I think his spirit will be at peace.'

Torak swallowed. As he watched his foster father deftly plying his paddle, he felt a surge of love for him. He wanted to thank him for lifting such a load from his shoulders; for watching out for him; for being Fin-Kedinn. But the Raven Leader was busy steering their canoe around a submerged log and calling a warning to Renn in the other boat. Then they were out of the Jaws and into the Open Forest, and Renn was grinning and punching the air, and soon Torak was, too.