Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 94

FOURTEEN.

The walkway lurched, nearly tipping Torak into the Lake. He dropped to all fours and clung on with both hands.

Behind him Wolf stood, his claws digging into the wood. He hated this.

There was no room for Torak to turn, so he cast an encouraging glance over his shoulder. Wolf dropped his ears and gave an unhappy twitch of his tail.

The walkway stopped rocking, and Torak rose. The logs were treacherous, the reeds so thick he had to push them aside. He shrank from the touch of their long, clammy fingers.

The mist closed in. The walkway dwindled to a line of single logs lashed end to end, secured by posts sunk in the reed-bed. There were so many turns that Torak lost his bearings. He didn't know if he was heading out into the Lake, or skirting the sh.o.r.e.

At times, sour brown water slopped over his feet. At others, he found himself crossing a stinking swamp. And the reeds kept changing: from ashen spears with feathery purple plumes, to creaking canes with brown club heads that tapped him furtively on the shoulder. They didn't want him here. If he fell in, they would hold him under till he drowned, or the Hidden People dragged him into the slime.

He'd seen it happen. Once, he and Fa had found a red deer stag trapped up to its neck in a swamp. It was half dead of exhaustion, but they couldn't end its misery. It's bad luck to interfere with those the Hidden People have claimed. Instead, Fa had knelt and stroked its cheek, murmuring a prayer to help it on its way. Afterwards, Torak had been haunted by the look in those dull brown eyes. He'd wondered how long the stag had taken to die.

Wolf's warning 'uff' dragged him back to the present.

Ahead, something crouched on the walkway.

Torak's hand went to his shoulder but of course he had no clan-creature skin. Nothing to protect him from demon or tokoroth.

As he drew nearer, he saw that it wasn't a creature but a post, planted by the walkway and rising to chest height. It had been limed a sickly grey, and painted with a dizzying fish-bone pattern of tiny green dots. It was topped by a small, misshapen head of green clay into which were pressed two white snail-sh.e.l.l eyes.

The shimmering dots made Torak giddy, but he couldn't look away. The power of the thing filled his mind, like the silent boom after thunder.

Wolf felt it too, and set back his ears. Even the reeds leaned away, fearing to touch.

Torak remembered that he still had Renn's swansfoot pouch, with his medicine horn inside, and the strand of her hair. What would she have done?

The mark of the hand. Maybe that would help.

The ochre in the horn was clogged with damp, and he had to spit in it to make it runny; nothing would have made him use Lake water. Pouring the red liquid into his palm, he daubed the mark on his cheek. He tried to do the same for Wolf on his forehead, so he couldn't lick it off but only managed a crude smear. As he finished, the humming in his head grew worse. Someone didn't like him using earthblood.

Holding his breath, he edged past the post. Wolf followed, hackles raised. As they pa.s.sed it, the reeds stirred angrily, and the humming grew stronger.

Torak reached a turn in the walkway and there, guarded by club-headed reeds, stood three posts, their white eyes staring from mouthless faces of green clay.

Something slithered across his cheek. He dashed it away, and the walkway rocked wildly. Too late, he saw that its far end had been untied and was floating free. He lurched righted himself and backed into Wolf, who yelped and nearly fell in.

Trembling, they stood together, while around them the reeds rustled.

'What do you want?' cried Torak.

The reeds fell silent. That was worse. He shouldn't have shouted.

He made to go on and caught his breath.

The posts were gone.

The reeds were different, too. Those surrounding the posts had had brown club heads, but these were a feathery purple.

With a shiver, Torak realized what this meant. It wasn't the posts which had moved, it was the walkway. While he'd been fighting for balance, someone had rearranged the logs.

For the first time since entering the reed-bed, it occurred to him to turn back. But he couldn't, and that frightened him more than anything. His thoughts were no longer his own. The mist had seeped inside his head. Here, in this nebulous half-world which was neither land nor lake, he was losing his very self.

Wolf nose-nudged his thigh and gave an anxious whine. Torak glanced down and frowned. Wolf was trying to tell him something, but he couldn't understand. He, Torak, who had learned wolf talk as a baby he couldn't understand.

He stumbled on, with Wolf padding after him.

They hadn't gone far when the walkway forked. Both ways were marked by a post. The left-hand post had been beheaded; the right-hand one bore a green clay head, but the eyes had been plucked out, leaving blind hollows. Tied around the brow was a viper's shed skin. Skewered to it by a bone needle was a tiny, shrivelled heart.

Seshru the Viper Mage.

Torak wiped icy sweat from his face.

Behind him he caught a flash of movement vanishing into the reeds. There, among the leaves. White eyes.

'Who's there?' he said.

The eyes blinked then reappeared on the other side of the walkway: blue-white, flickering like flame.

'Who's there?' Torak whispered.

Eyes glowed all around him. The humming rose to an ear-splitting whine.

Whimpering, Torak ran for the nearest walkway, the one with the viper skin. The log shuddered tipped and threw him off. The murky waters of the Lake closed over his head.

Down he went, groping for reeds, walkway, anything. Couldn't find it, couldn't tell up from down.

A splash and a flurry of bubbles as Wolf leapt in after him. Desperately Torak swam for the flailing paws but Wolf had disappeared.

Wolf! he screamed in his mind. But his pack-brother was gone.

Frantically, he swam through a slippery ma.s.s of reeds.

Suddenly there were no more reeds and the water was freezing and he was swimming over bottomless dark.

FIFTEEN.

Torak was woken by something slithering over his face.

With a shudder he started up and glimpsed a scaly tail vanishing into the undergrowth.

He was lying on a pile of rotting pine-needles at the edge of a silent forest. Below him, a beach of charcoal-coloured pebbles sloped down to the flinty waters of the Lake.

How had he got here? He couldn't remember.

The east wind whistled over the stones, making him shiver. His clothes felt gritty and damp, and there was a humming in his ears. He was hungry and he missed Wolf, but he didn't dare howl. He wasn't even sure if he could.

The mist had cleared, but an ashen haze robbed the sun of warmth. At the south end of the beach, the reeds stood sentinel. Below him the Lake stretched to the edge of sight, opaque and forbidding.

He got to his feet. The pine-needles were strewn along the sh.o.r.e in broad swathes, as if washed up by a great flood. And the trees, he noticed uneasily, leaned back from the Lake.

He ran into the Forest.

There was no birdsong, and the trees watched him sullenly. He found a stream of muddy water and drank; spotted a few shrivelled lingonberries left over from last autumn, and gobbled them up. In the mud he saw tracks: webbed, with a tail drag. He scowled. He knew this creature, but he couldn't bring it to mind. That frightened him. Once, he had known every sign of every creature in the Forest.

He wondered how he was going to survive. He had no sleeping-sack, no bow, no arrows, no food. Only an axe, a knife, a half-empty medicine horn and a pouch of sodden tinder. And he'd forgotten how to hunt.

The ground climbed, and he reached a small, windy lake where the sun stabbed his eyes and the clamour of frogs hurt his head. He stumbled back into the trees, but they tripped him and scratched his face. Even the Forest had turned against him.

The trees ended. He was back at the reed-bed. He staggered north along the edge of the Forest, till he came to a place where the reeds narrowed to a stretch an arrowshot across.

Beyond them rose a granite rockface. It looked strangely enticing. Rowans and juniper clung to cracks, while ferns and orchids trembled in the spray from a waterfall. Above it swallows swooped and ravens wheeled, and on either side, Torak saw carvings of fish, elk, people: hammer-etched into the rock and painted green. He guessed that the water flowed from the Otters' healing spring. If only he could reach it.

The reeds rattled, warning him back.

The sun began to sink, the trail veered south, and he found himself by the Lake, wading through pine-needles on a charcoal-coloured beach.

He halted. He recognized this beach. He was back where he'd started.

A horrible thought occurred to him.

To test it, he headed back into the Forest and retraced his steps till he reached the reed-bed except this time he turned south instead of north. Dusk was coming on when he finally stumbled onto the beach. Same beach. Same tracks. His own.

An island. The Lake had spewed him onto an island, where even the Otters feared to come. He was trapped: his escape cut off by the Lake to the east, the reeds to the west.

The wind stirred the trees. He stared at them. What were their names? 'Pine,' he said haltingly. 'Birch. Juniper?'

Listen to what the Forest is telling you, Fa used to say. But the Forest no longer spoke to him.

Gathering sticks and tinder, he blundered onto the beach and laid them in the lee of a boulder, so the Otters wouldn't see. At first his strike-fire refused to make sparks, but at last he managed it. Muttering, he hunched over the fire.

On the Lake, a lonely cry echoed. The red-eyed bird that had betrayed him in the reeds.

More voices joined in. Not birds. Wolves.

Leaping to his feet, Torak drew his knife. He'd always loved wolf song. But it struck terror in him now.

Another wolf called to the pack. Torak knew that howl. It was Wolf, his Wolf and yet he couldn't make out what Wolf was saying. The familiar voice had become as incomprehensible as the yowl of a lynx.

'Wolf!' cried Torak. 'Come back!'

But Wolf didn't come.

Wolf had forsaken him.

Torak's fists clenched at his sides. So be it.

Wolf raced through the Forest. Where was Tall Tailless?

One moment they'd been together, fighting the Big Wet, and then he was gone! Wolf had tried to howl, but the Wet had come roaring into his gullet and he'd panicked. He'd forgotten Tall Tailless, forgotten everything except lashing out with his paws until at last he'd struck land.

Now he ran this way and that, snuffing for scents. He smelt bracken and beaver, otter and lingonberry; he heard the taillesses on their floating reeds, and the Hidden Ones slithering in and out of the Wet. Worry gnawed him. Maybe Tall Tailless had become Not-Breath.

A cry rang through the trees: a desperate tailless yowl. Wolf halted, swivelling his ears, lifting his muzzle. He caught the scent. Tall Tailless!

Wolf flew along the scent trail. He wove between trees, leapt over bracken and there at last was his pack-brother, crouching behind a boulder at the edge of the Big Wet, by a small Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot.

Wolf burst from the trees, and Tall Tailless turned and stared.

Wolf loped over the black stones and threw himself at his pack-brother, pawing his chest and snuffle-licking his muzzle.

Tall Tailless pushed him away. Then he waved his great claw at Wolf.

Wolf jumped back.

Again Tall Tailless lashed out, yowling in tailless talk.

Wolf heard the terror in his yowl, he saw it in the beautiful silver eyes. How could this be? Tall Tailless couldn't be scared of him?

Bewildered, Wolf sat down. He felt a whine beginning in his chest.

Suddenly, Tall Tailless grabbed a limb of the Bright Beast and lunged at Wolf lunged at him with the Bright Beast! Wolf leapt sideways, but the Bright Beast bit him on the muzzle and he yelped.

Tall Tailless bared his teeth in a snarl and attacked again. Wolf couldn't understand the yowls, but he knew what they meant. Go away! You're no longer my pack-brother! Go away!

Wild with pain and terror, Wolf fled.

After Wolf had gone, Torak stayed shivering on the beach.

He was exhausted but he didn't dare sleep. If he slept, they would come for him. The wolves. The Otter Clan. The Hidden People. The Soul-Eaters. All, all were against him.

Clutching axe and knife, he rocked back and forth, staring at the flames. He was hungry. He ought to set snares and fishing lines, but he couldn't remember how.