Viper's Daughter

by Michelle Paver

  The tunnel dropped steeply, water streaming down its walls and over Renn’s boots. She was soaked and shivering, the protective mammut ash washed off her skin. In her mind she saw Torak grey-faced on his knees, his right arm hanging useless at his side. ‘What did you do to him?’ she cried.

  ‘Winged him,’ said Naiginn. ‘He’ll be weak as a baby with one arm out of joint.’

  ‘He’ll still come after us.’

  ‘So much the worse for him.’

  ‘I’ll never do what you say. I won’t break the spell and set you free.’

  ‘Then you’d better pray he doesn’t find us because I’ll cut the tendons behind his knees and cripple him for good.’

  When she didn’t reply he turned. His eyes were a frozen lightless blue. ‘You have no choice but to do as I say. This Island is mine, it’s helped me at every turn. The Sea washed Torak’s boat past the coast so I knew where to find you. Just now the ice shut him out. With every step nearer the cave where I began, it’s making me stronger!’

  Deeper they went, and the din of water grew louder. Suddenly the tunnel opened out and Renn found herself in a vast, roaring cavern of otherworldly blue. Even the air burnt with cold blue fire. Overhead she saw hard clear waves of pallid blue in which pebbles, rocks, boulders hung suspended. Like them she was trapped.

  Before her a shaft of hazy blue sunlight slanted through a hole from the world above – but that only deepened her sense of being cut off from the land of the living. The ice mountain creaked and groaned, she felt its weight pressing down on her. She glanced at her hands and they were livid, like those of a corpse.

  From where she stood, the stream joined a torrent that spewed from the back of the cave over a rocky tongue and down to a spiked mouth that let in a sickly glimmer of daylight. Renn’s teeth began to chatter. That was the same fanged maw she had seen from the Sea.

  It might as well be on the moon. Naiginn had taken her weapons. The plan she’d thought up on reaching the Island would never work. What she’d dreaded had come true. The ice had swallowed her. She would never get out.

  ‘This is where I began!’ cried Naiginn, flinging his arms wide. ‘Soon I will be free to prey on the living!’ In the deathly glow his demon nature was revealed. Skin, hair, eyes: all were a raw, inhuman blue. Like Renn he was drenched, but he wasn’t shivering. He revelled in the cold.

  Dragging her to the edge of the torrent, he slung her over his shoulder and crossed from boulder to boulder, sure-footed in his element. The other side was a gravelly ledge a few paces wide. ‘Here! Here you will break the spell!’

  Around her rose spurs of clear ice, but deep at the back of the cave she caught an evil red glimmer. Her mind flew to her first sight of the Island, and the fiery glare on the smoky headlands flanking the ice mountain. Perhaps a tunnel led to some crack that opened on the Otherworld: a crack forever venting demons.

  Through the echoing roar she made out voices as chill as splintered bone. Something slipped behind a spur. Above her the ice warped into a cruel face. With a cry she fell, and beneath her hands the ice moved, jaws gaped to bite. Demons slithered cackling into the gloom as Naiginn hauled her to her knees.

  ‘See how they flock to honour me! It’s time! Do what you must to break the spell!’

  Demon laughter raked her ears, numbing her thoughts, draining courage. The ice would kill her as it had killed her father…

  ‘I will submit,’ she told Naiginn above the clamour. ‘I will break the spell and set you free.’

  ‘If you trick me I’ll know it,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t,’ she lied. Her mother had done everything sideways like a snake: she had lived by deceit. Renn drew on that now.

  They were on the ledge by the torrent, Naiginn squatting, intent on the spell, Renn shivering on her knees. ‘Tell me what you’re going to do,’ he commanded.

  ‘I told you before,’ she said through chattering teeth. ‘Our mother’s m-masking spell binds your souls. To set you free I must become raven and p-peck it off.’

  ‘Why raven? The worst tricksters of all!’

  ‘This is the hardest M-Magecraft, so I need the power of the moon – and First Raven made the moon. Give me that kelp from the beach and the shell. And untie my hands.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Do it! I can’t break the spell if I’m bound.’

  Reluctantly he obeyed. ‘Tell me what it involves.’

  From the neck of her robe she drew her duckbone whistle. ‘First I call my spirit guides. Then I make my raven mask. K-kelp for feathers. I’ll paint them black with … octopus ink, sew them together with sinew. When I put on the mask you must be silent or it won’t work.’

  His eyes glittered. ‘How long till I’m free?’

  ‘As long as it takes. No more talk!’

  Making him stay where he was, she withdrew a couple of paces till she’d put the shaft of blue sunlight between them. Behind her, the glimmer of the Otherworld. Ice fears fire. Demons fear the Otherworld. Naiginn avoided looking at it. That might prevent him seeing what she did.

  Squatting, she put the whistle in her mouth and blew. Find me, help me! she called Wolf silently. If he heard, he would not let her down – but how could even Wolf hear through the voice of the torrent and the groans of the ice?

  Bending to hide what she did, she smeared one side of the kelp fronds with dark mammut ash. With a bone needle and mammut hair, she threaded the short ends of the fronds in a row to make a long fringe of black ‘feathers’. Next she smeared earthblood on the other side of the feathers, turning them red. Then she bit off a piece of hollow kelp stem to make a thumb-sized tube.

  ‘Hurry!’ shouted Naiginn.

  She motioned him to silence.

  A crash shook the ledge. Far below, a giant fang of ice had fallen from the mouth of the cave. The mountain was becoming angry, it knew what she meant to do.

  Unseen talons tugged at her will. She sensed demons creeping up behind her: they knew she was about to invoke their age-old foe. Doubts rushed in. Wolf wasn’t coming. This wouldn’t work, that great maw would snap shut, trapping her for ever…

  Quork! Raven caws echoed down the column of blue daylight.

  Uneasily, Naiginn stirred. Renn signed him to be still. ‘My spirit guides are come!’

  Fearing the ravens, the demons withdrew – and Renn’s courage returned. Shutting her mind to all else, she took the moon-pale shell and tied it on her forehead with more mammut hair.

  The instant the shell touched her brow she felt the moon’s power coursing through her. In the dark of the Beginning, First Raven had brought light to the world by fetching the sun in his beak – but as he flew he’d dropped a chunk, which became the moon. The moon had always been special to Renn and she called on it now: I have honoured you all my life. Help me become one with your great sister the sun.

  With trembling fingers she tied the kelp fringe around her brow so that its ‘feathers’ hid her face, their black sides outwards, the red against her skin. Crouching, concealed behind the feathers, she smeared her nose, cheeks and chin with earthblood. Lastly she scooped the remaining ash into the kelp-stem tube and gripped it between her front teeth.

  In the distance she caught a new sound. Was that Wolf?

  She couldn’t wait a moment longer, she had to carry out her plan. Still with head down, she crawled towards Naiginn. When she reached the blue daylight she flung up her head and swept back the feathers, turning black to fiery red. At the same moment she blew a blinding cloud of mammut ash in Naiginn’s face, then spat out the tube. ‘Not raven but sun!’ she shouted – and shoved him down the slope.

  Howling, clawing his eyes, he tumbled over the rocks and disappeared into the murk. The ice creaked, another fang crashed, half-blocking the mouth of the cave. It was hopelessly far below, Renn had only moments to get there before it snapped shut.

  As she sought a way down, she heard Wolf howling clear and strong. But how could this be? His howls weren’t coming from
the cave mouth below, they came from behind: from the evil red tunnel that led to the Otherworld.

  Wolf howled for the pack-sister, but her singing bone didn’t call again. The wind carried Tall Tailless’s desperate cries over the Great Hard Cold as he dropped further behind, clutching his injured forepaw to his chest: Go! Find the pack-sister!

  At last Wolf reached the edge of the Great Hard Cold. It fell to a smoky black plain and he caught the nose-biting stink that frightened off other smells. He heard the far-off bellow of a long-nose and the clatter of demon claws.

  The pack-sister had been dragged under the Great Hard Cold by the bad tailless who’d hidden his demon souls so cunningly that not even Wolf had sensed what he was. Wolf had to find her. It didn’t matter that she’d left Tall Tailless, she and Tall Tailless were one, just as Wolf and his mate were one.

  Picking his way down to the plain, Wolf spotted a demon slithering into the smoke. He smelt others, he ached to give chase – hunting demons was what he was for – but he had to find the pack-sister. And he had to protect Tall Tailless. Wolf didn’t know what to do.

  Again he caught the song of the pack-sister’s singing bone, clear and high above the growls of the Great Hard Cold. He howled back: Where are you?

  No answer.

  Wolf heard a noise that made his pelt tighten with fear: the deep crackling roar of a Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot. A Bright Beast so huge it could swallow him in one gulp.

  It sounded terrifyingly close, but he couldn’t see it. Muzzle to the ground, he cast about, rock crunching under his paws, the Bright Beast’s clamour biting his ears. Where was it?

  Then, many lopes away, Wolf saw the earth crack apart and a Bright Beast shoot from within to attack the Up. Out of the crack slipped a demon, dark against the glare. Now the shadowy bulk of a long-nose was chasing it. The demon fled shrieking. Wolf took courage. He was not alone against the demons, the long-noses were hunting them too.

  The ravens were cawing eagerly, swooping over the Great Hard Cold: they had found the pack-sister!

  But as Wolf loped towards them, the ground grew hot beneath his paws – and in a snap he knew: the Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot was underneath. This whole plain was a thin skin over a vast, angry Bright Beast that was fighting to get out.

  Torak slipped and fell, jarring his injured shoulder. Biting back a scream, he waited for the agony to subside. Slid his good hand inside his parka, touched the bulge where his arm had been yanked out of the socket. Tried to push it back in. No good. He struggled to his knees.

  Crossing the ice mountain would have been impossible without Tanugeak’s raven claws strapped to his feet. With them it was almost impossible. He envied Wolf, who’d raced ahead, sure-footed on the ice – and whose black-ringed eyes didn’t need an eyeshield that restricted vision.

  Before him lay ridge after ridge of glaring blue, darkened in places by the menacing slash of a crevasse. Blue ice is the hardest: Torak knew that now. He’d tried using his axe as a pick but it simply bounced off.

  Cresting the next ridge, he came to a sudden halt. Before him a sheer drop to a fathomless blue void. From within came the echoing thunder of water: one more step and he would have fallen in. Nothing could have saved him, he would have been swept to his death.

  Sinking to his knees, he half-slid, half-crawled sideways along the ridge until he’d left the void behind. His breath came in painful gasps. His sweat ran cold.

  He sensed rather than saw a demon slink out of sight. He turned. Nothing there. But he felt it.

  He became uneasily aware of how much noise he made – his creaking clothes, his panting breath. Anything could be creeping up behind him.

  Again he fell. This was hopeless. How could he save Renn when he could barely save himself? He would never get off the ice mountain. He was going to die out here.

  He howled to Wolf: Help the pack-sister! I can’t go on! I can’t!

  The ice flung back his despair: I can’t – I can’t…

  Picturing Naiginn’s handsome, arrogant face, he flushed with shame. ‘Hopeless,’ he muttered. ‘Stupid, weak.’ Even if he did make it off the ice mountain – even if he found Naiginn – how could he fight with only one arm?

  A demon cackled.

  ‘Get away from me!’ yelled Torak.

  Anger cleared his mind. Why was he lugging all this gear? Painfully he eased his sleeping-sack off his back. Now his weapons: which to discard? He would keep his axe and knife, but his slingshot was useless, he needed both hands to shoot.

  Although – as a sling it would be perfect, the pouch could support his forearm.

  Knotting the two ends with fingers and teeth hurt so much that he nearly blacked out, but somehow he did it, then manoeuvred the sling over his head. Much better. His injured arm lay secure against his chest, leaving his good arm free.

  He realized that he still had his slingstones tied around his waist in a slipknot. At a tug they’d be ready to use, and he could throw as well with his left hand as his right.

  If he managed to find his way off the ice, and if he found Naiginn – if, if, if – he would only get a single shot.

  Well, then, he would make it count.

  Torak’s luck had changed. It started snowing, which reduced the glare: tearing off his eyeshield, he stuffed it inside his parka. Now he could see all around.

  The snow also made it easier to track Wolf, who’d chosen a way that even his one-handed pack-brother could manage. At last Torak caught the rotten-egg whiff of bloodstone. Dirty smoke blew in his face, vicious as a kick in the head. He didn’t care. He had reached the edge of the ice mountain.

  Wolf was howling: Pack-sister! Torak caught the eager caws of ravens. It was Rip and Rek. Had they found Renn?

  Through the smoke and the snow Torak saw charred plains of rippling rock that looked as if enormous fingers had raked them in furrows. Distant flares of fiery orange: the Otherworld bursting through. He thought of the burning plain on the other side of the mountain where Renn had fled from Naiginn. These must be the plains on the other side that he’d glimpsed from his skinboat.

  Thanks to Wolf’s trail, it didn’t take him long to find his way off the mountain. Soon he was standing on rock – warm with the Otherworld’s unclean heat – but rock, not treacherous ice.

  To his left the edge of the ice marched into the haze: he guessed the Sea lay beyond. If he followed that edge, he might find another way into the cave where Naiginn had dragged Renn – or even the great fanged maw he’d seen from the boat.

  To his right he spotted Wolf on a low ridge, fighting something he couldn’t see. Wolf was leaping, snapping, worrying the unseen thing in his jaws. With a vicious shake he tossed it into the smoke. No sooner had he bounded off the ridge than it swelled like a rocky blister and split, spurting dazzling fountains of liquid fire.

  Torak realized that this entire plain was a brittle burnt skin over the Otherworld. He wondered where the next blister would burst.

  Wolf was loping over the plain, but he wasn’t making for Torak, he was racing towards a hole at the ice edge some distance ahead. Rip and Rek were wheeling above it.

  As Torak started forwards he saw Renn crawl out and struggle grimly to her feet. Her cheeks were streaked with earthblood. A white eye flashed on her brow. She spotted Torak and her face lit up.

  ‘Don’t move!’ shouted a voice.

  Twenty paces to Torak’s right, Naiginn emerged from behind an outcrop with an arrow nocked to his bow. ‘Renn, come here!’ he ordered. ‘Do it now or I will shoot Torak!’

  Renn saw Torak thirty paces ahead through the whirling snow: swaying, clutching his shoulder. She saw Naiginn standing on the plain with an arrow aimed at Torak’s chest. Naiginn was blinking furiously, but even half-blinded by mammut ash he could make that shot. ‘Renn, come to me now!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll shoot him if you don’t!’

  ‘Ignore him!’ yelled Torak. ‘Get under cover!’

  ‘I can’t, he’ll kill you!’ she cried. Then
to Naiginn: ‘Don’t shoot, I’ll come!’

  Wolf streaked towards the boulders where Naiginn stood, legs braced, ready to shoot. As Wolf sprang, Naiginn swung round and let fly. Wolf yelped, twisted in mid-air and fell with an arrow in his haunch.

  Before Torak could stagger to his aid, Wolf was on his feet. With fangs bared he launched another attack, but Naiginn had climbed out of reach. Wolf leapt, fell back, leapt again. Perched in the rocks, Naiginn nocked another arrow to his bow. ‘Stay back, Torak!’ he warned. ‘This one’s poisoned! One more step and you’ll watch your wolf die!’ To Renn: ‘Come here or I will kill them both!’

  Renn saw Torak sink to his knees. Snow speckled his hair and shoulders. He looked hollow-eyed and spent.

  With his good hand he wrenched his axe and knife from his belt and cast them away. ‘Do as he says, Renn. It’s over.’

  The Long Claw-that-Flies had sunk deep in Wolf’s rump. He snapped but couldn’t pull it out. The pale-pelted demon was out of reach, barking at the pack-sister and aiming another Long Claw at Tall Tailless.

  Tall Tailless was clutching his injured forepaw. Wolf saw a demon sneak towards him, flickering in and out of sight like a shadow under a wind-tossed tree. Wolf forgot the Long Claw and flew at it. The demon fled. Wolf’s paws scarcely touched the rocks as he chased it over the plain, leaping blazing cracks and braving waves of muzzle-biting smoke.

  The demon was fast, but Wolf was faster. He was within a snap of his prey when a long-nose emerged from the haze. As Wolf scrambled out of its way, the great beast gored the demon on the point of its tusk and flung it high. The demon flew shrieking through the Up and hit the ground with a thud. Bellowing, the long-nose stomped on it with one tree-trunk foot. It went on trampling, grinding, crushing even the rocks in its fury, forcing the demon back where it belonged. Then with a toss of its head and a fierce glance at Wolf, it vanished into the smoke.