Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 14

If their journey had been hard before, this was worse. The Walker strode behind them, forcing them almost at a run up a rocky elk trail that at times had them climbing on their hands and knees. Renn went in front, stony-faced, grieving for her quiver. Wolf soon began to lag behind.

Torak turned to help him, but the Walker sliced the air a finger's breadth from his face. 'On!' he shouted.

'I just want to carry '

'On!'

Renn cut in. 'You're Otter Clan, aren't you? I recognise your tattoos.'

The Walker glared at her.

Torak seized his chance and hoisted the flagging cub in his arms.

'Was Otter Clan,' muttered the Walker, clawing his neck, where the crusted skin was tattooed with wavy blue-green lines.

'Why did you leave them?' asked Renn, who seemed to be making a supreme effort to forget about her quiver and befriend him, in order to keep them alive.

'Didn't leave,' said the Walker. 'Otters leave him.' Twisting a wing off the pigeon, he sucked it between his toothless gums, taking in with it a generous loop of slime.

Torak swayed. Renn turned pale green.

'The Walker was making spearheads,' he said through a rancid mouthful, 'and the flint flies at him and bites him in the head.' He gave a bark of laughter, spraying them both. 'Bits of him going bad, getting sewn up, going bad again. In the end his eye pops right out, and a raven eats it. Ha! Ravens like eyes.'

Then his face crumpled, and he pounded his head with his fist. 'Ach, but the hurts, the hurts! All the voices howling, the souls fighting in his head! That's why the Otters chase him away!'

Renn swallowed. 'One of my clan lost an eye the same way,' she said. 'My clan is friendly with the Otters. We we mean you no harm.'

'Maybe,' said the Walker, removing a bone from his mouth and stowing it carefully inside his cape. 'But they still bring it with them.' All of a sudden, he halted and scanned the slopes. 'But the Walker was forgetting. Narik asks him for hazelnuts! Now where did the hazel trees go?'

Torak hefted Wolf higher in his arms. 'The harm you think we bring,' he said. 'Do you mean '

'They know what he means,' said the Walker. 'The bear demon, the demon bear. And the Walker told him not to summon it!'

Torak stopped. 'Told who? Do you mean the crippled wanderer? The one who made the bear?'

A jab of the knife reminded him to keep moving. 'The crippled one, yes of course! The wise one, always after the demons to do his bidding.' Another bark of laughter. 'But the Wolf boy doesn't know about demons, does he? Doesn't even know what they are! Ah yes, the Walker can always tell.'

Renn looked surprised. Torak avoided her eyes.

'The Walker knows about them,' the man went on, still scanning the slopes for hazel trees. 'Oh yes. Before the flint bit him, he was a wise man himself. He knew that if you die and lose your name-soul, then you're a ghost, and you forget who you are. The Walker always feels sorry for ghosts. But if you lose your clan-soul, then what's left is a demon.'

Leaning forwards, he engulfed Torak in a blast of rank breath. 'Think about that, Wolf boy. No clan-soul, and you're a demon. The raw power of the Nanuak, but with no clan feeling to tame it; just the rage that something's been taken from you. That's why they hate the living.'

Torak knew the Walker was telling the truth. He'd seen that hatred himself. It had killed his father. 'What about the crippled one?' he asked hoa.r.s.ely. 'The one who caught the demon and trapped it in the bear? What was his name?'

'Ah,' said the Walker, gesturing at Torak to move on. 'So wise, so clever. To start with, he only wants the little demons, the slitherers and the scurriers. But they're never strong enough for him, he always wants more. So then he calls up the biters and the hunters. Still not enough.' He grinned, giving Torak another blast of carrion breath. 'In the end,' he whispered, 'he summons an elemental.'

Renn gasped.

Torak was mystified. 'What's that?'

The Walker laughed. 'Ah, she knows! The Raven girl knows!'

Renn met Torak's eyes. Her own were very dark. 'The stronger the souls, the stronger the demon.' She licked her lips. 'An elemental comes into being when something hugely powerful dies something like a waterfall or an ice river and its souls are scattered. An elemental is the strongest demon of all.'

Wolf wriggled out of Torak's arms and disappeared into the ferns. An elemental, Torak thought dazedly.

But this talk of demons was upsetting the Walker all over again. 'Ach, how they hate the living!' he moaned, rocking from side to side. 'Too bright, too bright, all the shiny, shiny souls! Hurts! Hurts! It's their fault, the Wolf boy and the Raven girl! They bring it with them to the Walker's beautiful valley!'

'But we're nearly out of your valley,' said Renn.

'Yes, look,' said Torak, 'we're nearly at the top '

The Walker would not be calmed. 'Why do they do it?' he shouted. 'Why? The Walker never did them any harm!' Brandishing their bows above his head, he gripped them at both ends, as if to break them in two.

That was too much for Renn. 'Don't you dare!' she shouted. 'Don't you dare hurt my bow!'

'Back!' roared the Walker, 'or he snaps them like twigs!'

'Put them down!' yelled Renn, leaping at him and trying in vain to reach her bow.

Torak had to act fast. Quickly he opened his food pouch, then held out his palm. 'Hazelnuts!' he cried. 'Hazelnuts for Narik!'

The effect was immediate. 'Hazelnuts,' murmured the Walker. Dropping their bows on the stones, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the nuts from Torak's hand and squatted on his haunches. Then he pulled a rock from his cape and began cracking them. 'Hm, nice and sweet. Narik will be pleased.'

Quietly, Renn retrieved the bows and brushed off the wet. She offered Torak his, but he didn't take it. He was staring at the rock which the Walker was using to crack the nuts. 'Who is Narik?' he said, keen to keep the Walker talking so that he could get a closer look. 'Is he your friend?'

'The Walker can see him plain enough,' he muttered. 'Why can't the Wolf boy? Something wrong with his eyes?' Plunging his hand into his cape, he drew out a mangy brown mouse. It was clutching half a hazelnut in its paws, and looked up peevishly at being interrupted.

Torak blinked. The mouse sneezed and went back to its meal.

Tenderly, the Walker stroked the small, humped back with his grimy finger. 'Ah, the Walker's fosterling.'

The rock lay discarded on the ground. It was about the size of Torak's hand: a sharp, curved claw made of gleaming black stone.

Where there's a stone claw, might there also be a stone tooth? Torak glanced at Renn. She'd seen it too. And from her expression, she'd had the same thought. 'Oldest of all, the stone bite.' The second part of the Nanuak.

'That stone,' Torak said carefully. 'Would the Walker tell me where he got it?'

The Walker raised his head, dazed from stroking his mouse. Then his face convulsed. 'Stone mouth,' he said. 'Long time, bad time. He's hiding. Otters have thrown him out, but he's not yet found his beautiful valley.'

Again Torak and Renn exchanged glances. Did they dare risk another outburst?

'The stone creature,' said Torak. 'Does it have stone teeth inside the stone mouth?'

'Of course!' snarled the Walker. 'Or how could it eat?'

'Where can we find it?' asked Renn.

'The Walker said! In the stone mouth!'

'And where is the creature with the stone mouth?'

Suddenly, the Walker's face went slack, and he looked very tired. 'Bad place,' he whispered. 'Very bad. The killing earth that gulps and swallows. The Watchers everywhere. They see you, but you don't see them. Not till it's too late.'

'Tell us how to find it,' said Torak.

NINETEEN.

How can you have a stone creature, anyway?' said Renn crossly. She'd been in a bad mood ever since losing her quiver.

'I don't know,' said Torak for the tenth time.

'And what kind of creature? Boar? Lynx? We should've asked.'

'He probably wouldn't have told us.'

Renn put her hands on her hips, shaking her head. 'We've done everything he said. We've walked for two whole days. Crossed three valleys. Followed the stream he mentioned. Still nothing. I think he was just trying to get rid of us.'

The same thought had occurred to Torak, but he wasn't going to admit it. In two days, the fog hadn't lifted. It felt wrong. Everything about this place felt wrong.

After some persuasion, the Walker had returned the rest of their weapons, and sent them on their way. Following his directions, they'd left the 'stream at the foot of the stony grey hill', and were climbing the trail that snaked towards the top. It had a bleak, menacing feel. Stunted birches loomed out of the fog. Here and there they saw the gleam of naked rock, where the hill had been rubbed raw. The only sound was the hammer-like 'chack-chack' of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r warning rivals away.

'He doesn't want us here,' said Renn. 'Maybe we've come the wrong way.'

'If we had, Wolf would have told us.'

Renn looked doubtful. 'Do you still believe that?'

'Yes,' said Torak, 'I do. After all, if he hadn't led us to the Walker's valley, we wouldn't have seen the stone claw, and then we wouldn't have known anything about a stone tooth.'

'Maybe. But I still think we've come too far east. We're getting too close to the High Mountains.'

'How can you tell, when we can't see ten paces ahead?'

'I can feel it. That freezing air? It's coming off the ice river.'

Torak stopped and stared at her. 'What ice river?'

'The one at the foot of the mountains.'

Torak set his teeth. He was getting tired of being the one who didn't know things.

They climbed on in silence, and soon even the woodp.e.c.k.e.r was left behind. Torak became uneasily aware of the noise they were making: the creak of his pack, the rattle of pebbles as Renn struggled ahead. He could feel the rocks listening, the twisted trees silently warning him back.

Suddenly, Renn turned and clattered down towards him. 'We got it wrong!' she panted, her eyes wide and scared.

'What do you mean?'

'The Walker never said it was a stone creature! We were the ones who said that. He only ever said it was a stone mouth!' Grabbing his arm, she dragged him up the hill.

The ground levelled out and the trail ended. Torak came to a dead halt in the swirling fog. As he took in what lay ahead, dread settled inside him.

A rockface towered above them, grey as a thundercloud. At its foot, guarded by a solitary yew tree, was a cavern of darkness like a silent scream: a gaping stone mouth.

'We can't go in there,' said Renn.

'We I have to,' said Torak. 'This is the stone mouth the Walker was talking about. It's where he found the stone claw. It's where I might find the stone tooth.'

Close up, the cave mouth was smaller than he'd first thought: a shadowy half-circle no higher than his shoulder. He put his hand on the stone lip and bent to peer inside.

'Be careful,' warned Renn.

The cave floor sloped away steeply. Cold flowed from it: an acrid uprush of air like the breath of some ancient creature that has never seen the sun.

'Bad place,' the Walker had said. 'Very bad place. The killing earth that gulps and swallows. The Watchers everywhere.'

'Don't move your hand,' said Renn beside him.

Glancing up, he saw with a start that his fingers were a hair's breadth away from a large splayed hand that had been hammer-etched deep into the stone. He s.n.a.t.c.hed his own away.

'It's a warning,' whispered Renn. 'You see the three bars above the middle finger? Those are lines of power, warding off evil.' She leaned closer. 'It's old. Very old. We can't go in. There's something down there.'

'What?' asked Torak. 'What's down there?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. Maybe a doorway to the Otherworld. It must be bad, for someone to have carved that hand.'

Torak thought about that. 'I don't think I have a choice. I'll go. You stay here.'

'No! If you go, I'm going too '

'Wolf can't come with me, he couldn't take the smell. You stay here with him. If I need help, I'll call.'

It took a while, but the more he argued, the more he convinced himself too.

He got ready by laying his bow and quiver under the yew tree along with his pack, sleeping-sack and waterskin, then unhooking his axe from his belt. Only his knife would be any use in the dark. Finally, he cut a rawhide leash for the cub. Wolf wriggled and snapped until Torak managed to explain that he had to stay with Renn, who settled the matter by producing a handful of dried lingonberries from her food pouch. But Torak couldn't find a way to tell Wolf that he'd be coming back. Wolf talk didn't seem to deal with the future.

Renn gave him a sprig of rowan for protection, and one of her salmon-skin mittens on a cord. 'Remember,' she said, 'if you find the stone tooth, don't touch it with your bare hands. And you'd better let me have the pouch with the river eyes.'

She was right. There was no telling what might happen if he took the Nanuak into the cave.