Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 95

He began to nod.

Red eyes came at him. He woke with a cry. The eyes were real. Not red, but yellow. Wolf eyes.

Seizing a burning branch, he lashed out, etching the shadows with a glittering trail of sparks.

The wolves drew back. Their eyes were blank and terrible. They made no sound.

Wolf was among them. Wolf who had been his pack-brother, but had forsaken him.

With head lowered and tail lashing, Wolf moved menacingly forwards.

Torak's heart twisted. Wolf had come to taunt him. See, I have a new pack! I don't need you!

'Get away from me,' whispered Torak.

Wolf's ears twitched. His tail went still.

'Get back!' snarled Torak. He swung the branch at Wolf, who leapt out of the way.

The wolves watched in unblinking silence. Then, one by one, they trotted into the Forest.

Wolf was the last to go. For a moment he glanced back at Torak. Then he too vanished like mist.

It was very quiet after he'd gone.

A large black bird flew overhead with a scornful cark! Torak tried to remember its name. Raven. Raven Clan . . . Renn. She'd been his friend. Hadn't she? He couldn't remember her face.

He touched the oozing wound on his breastbone. There had been something he had to do . . .

The Soul-Eaters. He'd been going to prove that he wasn't one of them. Make the clans take him back.

It all seemed very long ago.

The sun dipped below the trees, and shadows crept down the beach as he sat by the dying fire. The buzzing in his head got worse. He sensed the Hidden People all around: watching, waiting. Feverishly, he fed the fire.

The faint moon rose in the blue sky, and it occurred to him that tonight was Midsummer Night. His birthnight.

'Fourteen,' he muttered. His voice sound harsh and unfamiliar. 'You're fourteen summers old. Happy birthnight, Torak.'

He started to laugh.

Once he'd started, he couldn't stop.

SIXTEEN.

Fin-Kedinn plunged the spear into the fire, and a blizzard of sparks engulfed the antlers mounted on its head.

The Ravens gave a joyful shout and the proud, happy trees rustled approval. It was Midsummer night, the night when the clans honoured the Forest by walking sunwise round the fire, garlanding the trees with necklaces of bone and berries.

All except Renn.

To have taken part would have felt as if she were betraying Torak. Tonight was his birthnight. How could she sit here enjoying salmon-liver stew and flame-blackened boar?

It was nearly a moon since the clan meet; nearly two since he'd been cast out. She missed him all the time. The misery was always with her, like a stone in her chest.

'What if something happens to him?' she'd said to Fin-Kedinn that morning. 'If he fell and broke his leg and couldn't hunt.'

'He's tough,' her uncle had said. 'He's survived on his own before, he can do it again.'

'For how long?'

To that, Fin-Kedinn had no answer.

Since the clan meet, the Ravens had moved east up the Axehandle, and whenever she could, Renn had secretly combed the Forest for any trace of Torak. In vain. Sometimes she woke in the night and thought, what if he never comes back?

She had no idea whether he'd done the rite, but she sensed that something was terribly wrong. The signs were bad. If only she knew what they meant.

She fingered the scar where the elk's antler had gashed her forearm. The wound had healed, but the memory was still raw. If that hunting party hadn't heard her cries . . .

Then, shortly after the clan meet, Aki had gone missing. His friends had found nothing but the remains of his boat. Renn had a dreadful feeling that Torak had been involved.

And n.o.body seemed to care. Everyone seemed to be pretending he didn't exist.

On the other side of the fire, Bale was twisting bramble twine for more garlands. He'd tied back his hair with a strip of seal hide, and he looked very handsome. Renn resented him. He'd stayed with the Ravens when the rest of his clan had returned to the islands, but instead of trying to find Torak, he'd gone hunting on the coast in his precious skinboat. She was disappointed. She'd expected more of him.

'May the World Spirit walk beneath your boughs,' Fin-Kedinn told the Forest. 'May you grow strong, and seed many saplings!'

Suddenly, Renn couldn't bear it. Leaping to her feet, she ran from the camp.

The Raven Mage squatted on the riverbank like a toad. She'd left the celebrations to cast the bones. Now she regarded Renn without emotion. 'So. You seek my help at last.'

'No,' said Renn. 'I've never wanted your help.'

'You seek it all the same.'

Renn set her teeth. Throwing herself down in the bracken, she shredded a burdock leaf. 'I've been seeing signs. I don't know what they mean. Teach me how to read them.'

'No,' said Saeunn. 'You're not ready.'

Renn stared at her. 'You're the one who's always forcing me to learn Magecraft!'

'If you tried to read the signs now, you could do great harm.'

'Why,' said Renn.

With her staff, the Raven Mage drew a circle in the mud, and placed within it three dull white pebbles. 'Your talent lies in linking signs to make a pattern. Until now, your dreams have done this for you. To do it at will, in your waking life, you would have to open your mind completely.'

Renn raised her chin. 'I could do that.'

'Fool of a girl!' Saeunn struck the earth with her staff. 'Have you learned nothing? Your first moon bleed has brought a fearsome increase in your power but it is raw, untried! To open your mind now could be fatal to you and to others!'

For a moment they glared at each other, the crone and the girl, linked only by the unforgiving bond of Magecraft.

Renn was the first to look away. 'Why didn't you tell him he was clanless?'

'The time wasn't right.'

'How could you keep that from him?'

'You've kept things from him too.'

Renn flinched.

'He has a destiny,' declared the Raven Mage. 'This is part of it. So is being cast out.'

Renn was about to ask more when Bale came into view on the path. She told him to go away. He ignored her.

'If this is about Torak,' he said to Saeunn, 'I've a right to hear. I'm his kin.'

'Then why don't you act like it,' said Renn, 'and try to help him?'

'Why don't you?' he shot back.

'No-one may help the outcast,' Saeunn reminded them.

'And squabbling won't help anyone,' said Fin-Kedinn, appearing behind Bale.

Saeunn indicated Renn. 'She says she sees signs.'

Renn bridled. She wasn't ready to speak of this to Fin-Kedinn, let alone Bale.

'What signs?' said Fin-Kedinn, sitting on the bank and motioning Bale to do the same.

Renn picked at a hole in the knee of her legging. 'He took your axe. He went into my medicine pouch and took a pebble he'd left me last summer. He spirit walked in the elk and he he attacked me.'

'I'll never believe that was Torak,' said Bale.

'Well I'm not making it up!' snapped Renn.

'The pebble,' Saeunn cut in. 'Why wasn't I told?'

'Why should I tell you?' muttered Renn.

'Tell me now,' said the Raven Mage.

Renn swallowed. 'He'd put his mark on it. In alder juice.'

'His mark?' said Saeunn. 'His clan-tattoo?'

'Right down to the scar on his cheek.'

'Ah,' breathed the Raven Mage.

Renn felt a p.r.i.c.kle of unease. 'I I kept it safe. But at the clan meet, he took it.' And I know why, she thought miserably. He took it to tell me that he isn't coming back.

'Ah.' Saeunn picked up one of the white stones and turned it in her fingers. 'Now it becomes clear.'

'What does?' said Renn.

The Raven Mage leaned close, and Renn saw the threads of spittle webbing her toothless gums. 'The outcast,' said the Raven Mage, 'has fallen prey to the soul-sickness. '

For a moment there was silence. Then both Renn and Bale spoke at once.

'What's that?' said Bale.

'Is it because of the Soul-Eater tattoo?' said Renn. 'Did he try to cut it out and it didn't work and it made him sick?'

'Tattoos?' Saeunn spat. 'No! Even without tattoos, souls get sick, as well as bodies! They fall prey to demons. Spells.'

From her medicine pouch she shook three small, mottled bones and set them on the black earth. She touched the first with her knotted forefinger. 'If your name-soul falls sick, you forget who you are. You become like a ghost.' She touched the second. 'If the canker attacks your clan-soul, you lose your sense of good and evil. You become as a demon.' Her h.o.r.n.y talon moved to the last bone. 'If your world-soul becomes palsied, you lose your link with other living things hunter, prey, Forest. You become as a Lost One.' Tilting her palm, she dropped the stone, and it struck the world-soul bone, which jumped as if it were alive. 'If his name-pebble fell into the wrong hands . . . '

Renn shut her eyes.

Bale said, 'I don't believe this. Torak isn't sick, he's furious. I would be too, if I'd been cast out for something that wasn't my fault.'

Saeunn bristled like an angry raven, but Fin-Kedinn said, 'I think Saeunn's right, Torak is soul-sick. But who did this to him? Which of the three?'

'You mean the Soul-Eaters,' said Renn.

'Three survived the battle on the ice,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'Thiazzi. Eostra. Seshru. At the clan meet I spoke to people from all over the Forest and beyond, seeking clues as to where they might have gone. No-one's seen any trace of them.' He paused. 'And yet it seems to me that the manner in which Torak's tattoo was revealed, and his spirit walking in the elk these bear the print of a single mind, working alone.'

Saeunn nodded. 'One mind, but which? For days I've fasted and read the bones. The Oak Mage and the Eagle Owl Mage feel far away. The one who haunts the Forest who draws the outcast to her is Seshru the Viper Mage.'

Fin-Kedinn bowed his head.

Renn dug her fingernails into her palms.

Bale was puzzled. 'But she's only one woman. How much harm can she do?'

'More than you could possibly imagine,' said Fin-Kedinn.