Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 123

Bison.

He watched the creature lean against the yew's trunk and give itself a luxuriant scratching that made the whole tree s.h.i.+ver. Then, with a deep, satisfied grunt, it ambled off.

Soon afterwards, Torak caught the familiar tail-swish of horses. As the herd moved beneath him, he glimpsed a wobbly foal duck beneath its mother's belly to suckle; a young mare nibble-grooming the mane of an older one whose scarred rump showed her to be the survivor of many a hunt. He felt a settling of awe. Unlike the dun-coloured horses of the Open Forest, these were as black as a moonless night.

Renn mumbled in her sleep, and the lead mare jerked up her head. The sacred herd melted into the darkness like a dream.

The Forest felt lonely after they'd gone. Torak wished Wolf and the ravens would return.

The wind strengthened and the trees creaked and moaned. He wondered what they were saying. If he knew their speech, they could tell him where to find Thiazzi.

The thought dropped into his mind like a pebble into a Forest pool. Become one of them. Spirit walk.

He wondered if he dared. Trees are the most mysterious of beings. They harbour fire and give life to all, yet eat only sunlight. Alone among creatures, they grow a new limb when one is lost. Some never sleep, while others slumber naked through the cruellest winter. They witness the scurrying lives of hunters and prey, but keep their own thoughts hidden.

Torak wrenched open his medicine pouch and sought the piece of black root he'd kept secret even from Renn. Saeunn had given it to him. For when you need it, she'd said.

He chewed fast. Bitterness flooded his mouth. The root was potent. Before he'd swallowed it, a sharp pain pierced his guts. Waves of cramp took hold, and he doubled up, the rope cutting into his midriff. He began to be afraid. He should wake Renn. But the rawhide held him. He couldn't reach.

The cramps were coming faster, a relentless tide sucking at his souls. He opened his mouth to call Renn's name . . .

. . . and his voice was the groaning of bark and the roaring of branches. His twig-fingers knew the chill moonlight and the wind's screaming caress, his boughs the scratch of wasp and the weight of sleeping boy and girl. Deep in the earth, his roots knew the burrowing moles and the soft, blind worms, and all was good, for he was tree, and he rejoiced in the wildness of the night.

Lost in the coursing tree-blood, the speck of spirit that was Torak begged it to tell him where to find Thiazzi. The yew gave a sigh and lifted him out into the night.

Helpless as a spark borne by a rus.h.i.+ng wind, Torak was carried through the Forest on a soughing sea of voices, from yew to holly, from seedling to sapling to mighty oak, faster than wolf can lope or raven fly. Terror seized him. Too far, he thought, you'll never get back!

When at last he came to rest, his tree-fingers knew the icy winds sweeping down from the High Mountains. He was in the golden tree-blood of another yew, but this one was old beyond imagining, ancient as the Forest itself. His boughs speared stars, his roots split stone and trapped demons in the Otherworld. His limbs sheltered owl and marten, squirrel and bat. To the creatures who dwelt in him, he was the world, but to the Great Yew their lives were as brief as the trembling of a leaf, and long after they were gone, he would endure.

Lost in the vast awareness, Torak felt the p.r.i.c.k of tokoroth claws on his bark. He heard demons howling for the fiery stone that was almost within their reach. Flames seared his branches. He sensed the Oak Mage circling, chanting spells.

The Oak Mage raised his arms to the sky. I am the truth and the Way. I am master of fire. I am ruler of the Forest!

The wind rose and the voice of the Great Yew rose with it. Torak was drowning in voices, all the trees of the Forest rising, swelling to an obliterating roar, tearing him apart . . .

'Torak!' whispered Renn. 'Torak! Wake up!'

His head turned, but she could see that he didn't know her. His eyes were empty and unseeing, no souls inside.

No souls. He was spirit walking.

He had woken her by wrenching himself free from the rope, and now he knelt on his branch, swaying, muttering. She was terrifed that he would step into nothingness and break his neck.

She edged round to his side of the trunk. He was out of reach. She stayed where she was, afraid of startling him.

At last he spoke, in a hollow voice that was not his own. 'I am the Great Yew,' he told the rus.h.i.+ng wind. 'I am older than the Forest. I began amid the roots of the First Tree. I was seedling when the last snows of the Long Cold melted into the earth; sapling at the coming of the Wave. I have never known sleep. But I have known anger . . . '

Renn didn't know what to do. Her Magecraft wasn't strong enough to call back his souls. Praying to the guardian, she stretched out her hand.

Torak rose on his branch and began to walk.

Pain jolted him awake: a raven beak, tugging at his earlobe.

He was dizzy. The wind was blowing in his face, the trees roaring in his head.

'Torak!' Renn's voice came to him from far away. 'Torak, look at me. Only at me. Don't move!'

The raven lifted off his shoulder and he staggered. Beneath him, the ground swayed.

Not the ground. The branch. He stood on the end of the branch, his hands clawing empty air.

'Look at me,' commanded Renn. She crouched near the bole of the tree, one hand gripping the rope that circled the trunk, the other straining towards him. 'Do not look down.'

He looked down. A dizzying drop. Far below, on the yew's snake-like roots, something squatted. He saw ashen hair and a pale, upturned face. He swayed.

Renn's voice called him back. 'Torak. Come to me.' Her dark eyes drew him.

He sank to his knees and crawled towards her.

'You don't remember anything?' said Renn.

Torak shook his head. He was shaking and sick, worse than she'd ever seen him. It had been all she could do to get him down from the tree.

'Not untying the rope or crawling onto the branch? Nothing?'

'Nothing,' he mumbled.

At last she got the waterskin open. 'Here. You'll feel better.'

He didn't respond. He sat with his back against the yew, staring into its branches.

The wind had dropped, and dawn was coming. Rip and Rek perched in the lower boughs, sleeping off the horse meat Renn had given them to say thank you. She doubted if Torak even saw them. There was a strange, shattered light in his eyes, and when she looked closer, she saw that they were no longer a pure light-grey. In their depths were tiny flecks of green.

'I saw him,' he said. 'I saw Thiazzi. He's near the Mountains. Making spells. He thinks he can rule the Forest.' He rolled onto all fours and retched.

When it was over, he collapsed against the tree. 'I thought I'd never get back.'

'What do you mean?'

He shut his eyes. 'When you spirit walk in a raven or a bear or an elk you stay in that creature. But the trees they're not separate. For them, thinking, talking, spirit walking, it's all the same thing. From tree to tree, ash to beech to holly, it pa.s.ses between them. Faster, further, than you could ever imagine.' He clutched his temples. 'So many voices!

Renn could only watch helplessly. What worried her most was that this time, while he was spirit walking, his body had moved. That had never happened before.

She knew that people do sometimes sleepwalk, if their name-soul slips out during a dream. The body wanders, trying to find the errant soul, and usually they get back together before either has left the shelter. But she had no idea what this might mean for Torak.

'Why did you do it, Torak? Why spirit walk now?'

He opened his eyes. 'To find Thiazzi.' He hesitated. 'I see him, Renn. Sometimes it's a flash of fair hair. Sometimes he's right there. Streaming wet. Accusing.'

A chill crawled over her skin. She saw from his face that he meant Bale.

She thought of the day of the death rites, when Torak had stood on the beach and shouted Bale's name to the sky. As if he'd wanted to be haunted. 'Why would he be accusing?' she said.

He struck the back of his head against the yew, hard enough to hurt. 'We had a fight. I went off on my own.'

Oh, Torak. 'What what did you fight about?'

He avoided her gaze. 'He was going to ask you to stay with him.'

Renn felt the heat rising to her face.

'He didn't want to quarrel,' Torak went on. 'It was me. I was the one. I left him to keep watch alone. That's why he was killed.'

Around them, the birds were waking up. Renn saw the dew glistening on fat caterpillar curls of bracken. A b.u.mblebee b.u.mping about among the windflowers.

All this suffering, she thought. Bale dead. His whole clan grieving. Fin-Kedinn hurt. Torak tormented by guilt. All because of Thiazzi. Until now, she hadn't grasped how the evil of the Soul-Eaters spread, like cracks on a frozen lake.

'Torak,' she said at last. 'That doesn't make it your fault. Thiazzi's the killer. Not you.'

The bee settled on Torak's knee, and he watched its unsteady progress. 'Then why is he haunting me? I have to fulfil my oath, Renn. Or he'll be with me for ever.'

She thought about that. 'Maybe you're right. But I'll be with you too. And Wolf. And Rip and Rek.' She paused. 'Only from now on, don't tell me to go back to my clan.'

His lip curled. Then he snorted. Easing the bee onto his palm, he placed it on a dock leaf.

Dawn came, and they sat side by side, watching sunlight slanting through the Forest.

After a while, Torak said, 'If he had asked you to stay with him, would you have said yes?'

Renn turned to stare at him. 'How can you ask that?' she said, exasperated.

He was puzzled. 'I'm sorry, I . . . Does that mean no?'

She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, Wolf returned, his muzzle dark with blood. Giving them both a carrion-smelling greeting, he licked Torak under the chin, and they exchanged one of their speaking glances.

Renn asked him what Wolf was saying.

'Bright Beast,' he told her. 'And I'm not sure, something broken. Think? Mind? Broken mind?'

'Mad,' they said together.

They never had time to wonder what it meant.

Wolf broke into an odd, excited little whimper and shot off into the undergrowth. Torak pulled Renn to her feet and moved in front of her. Five silent hunters came out from the trees. In the time it took Renn to draw her knife, they were surrounded. The hunters were clad in plain buckskin and carried no weapons. Somehow, they didn't need them. Renn saw that they wore no headbands. Whose side were they on?

'You will come with us,' said a quiet voice which was used to being obeyed. 'Your search is at an end.'

FOURTEEN.

The woman wore a necklet of beechnuts and a remote expression, as if her thoughts were on matters no-one else could understand.

Renn guessed she was the Mage or Leader, or both. Her long brown hair was loose, except for a lock at the temple, matted with earthblood; and from her belt hung an antler tine. The clan-tattoo on her forehead was a small, black, cloven hoof.

'You're Red Deer,' said Renn.

'And you're Raven,' said the woman, calmly seeing through her disguise. 'And you,' she turned to Torak, 'are the spirit walker.'

He gaped. 'How did you know?'

'We felt your souls walk. You can mask it from others, but not from the Red Deer.'

'He doesn't mask it,' said Renn.

'Then someone does it for him,' the woman replied.

Renn wanted to ask what she meant, but Torak said eagerly, 'My mother was Red Deer. Did you know her?'

'Of course.'

He took a breath that ended in a gulp. 'What was she like?'

'Not here,' said the woman. 'We'll take you to our camp.'

There was a gesture of protest from one of her companions, a man whose hair was hidden by a binding of reddish bark. 'But Durrain, they're outsiders! They shouldn't see our camp, especially not the girl!'

'I'm not an outsider,' said Torak, 'I'm kin.'

'What have you got against me?' said Renn.

'We will go to camp,' repeated Durrain. Then to Torak and Renn, 'You may keep your weapons, but you won't need them. While you're with the Red Deer, you'll be quite safe.'

Renn felt that she spoke the truth after all, Fin-Kedinn had said to seek them out but she didn't like Durrain. Her thin face was as unfeeling as stone. And she hadn't even asked their names.

Durrain led them east, on a deer trail which kept to the thickets. Twice, Renn spotted Wolf, staying level with them. She wondered what he thought of their turning away from Thiazzi's scent trail, but when she mentioned this to Torak, he brushed it aside. 'Durrain said she'd help us.'

'She said our search was at an end. That might not mean the same thing.'

'They're my bone kin. They have to help.'

Pus.h.i.+ng through the thickets was hard work, and a handsome young hunter offered to carry Renn's sleeping-sack. She declined, then wished she hadn't. The hunter guessed, and carried it anyway.