Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  On they went through the fog. Torak felt it settle on his skin, beading his strange new clothes with damp.

  Up ahead, something bobbed in the water.

  He blinked.

  It was gone.

  No – there it was again, bobbing up beside him. A head like a dog’s: a grey dog with a blunt, whiskered muzzle and large, inquisitive black eyes.

  Detlan saw it and smiled. ‘Bale! Asrif!’ he called. ‘The guardian has come to show us the way home!’

  The seal rolled over, showing a pale, spotted belly. Then it flipped round, scratched its muzzle with one hand-like flipper, shut its nostrils tight, and sank below the surface, where it swam alongside the skinboats.

  So that’s a seal, thought Torak. He thought it an odd blend of ungainliness and sleek beauty.

  The guardian led them well, and the fog cleared as abruptly as it had descended. Suddenly they were out in sunlight again.

  ‘We’re home,’ said Detlan. Laughing, he lifted his paddle high, scattering droplets.

  Torak gasped. Before him lay an island like none he’d ever seen.

  Three jagged peaks reared straight out of the Sea. There was no Forest. Just mountains and Sea. The mountains were almost sheer, their grim flanks speckled with seabirds and veined with waterfalls that cascaded from patches of ice mantling their shoulders. Only at their feet could Torak see a swathe of green – and below that, a wide, curving bay with a slash of sand stained pink by the setting sun.

  Smoke rose from a cluster of humped grey shelters on the sand. Beside each shelter stood a rack on which were laid several skinboats. Below them on the beach, Torak saw that two saplings had been planted, and lashed together to form an arch. The saplings were bright scarlet. Uneasily he wondered what they were for.

  From across the water came the murmur of voices and the clamour of birds. With a shock he saw that the cliffs were alive with seabirds: thousands of them – wheeling, crammed onto ledges. The shelters of the Seals, too, seemed precarious and cramped. He couldn’t imagine how people could live like this: caught on a narrow strip of land between mountain and Sea.

  ‘The Seal Islands,’ said Bale, bringing his skinboat alongside Detlan’s. There was no mistaking the pride in his voice.

  ‘How many islands are there?’ said Torak. He could only see one.

  Bale looked at him suspiciously. ‘This, and two smaller ones to the north. The Cormorant and the Kelp clans live on those, but this – this is the Seals’ home. It’s the biggest, which is why the whole group takes its name. The biggest and the best.’

  Of course, thought Torak sourly. Everything the Seals did had to be the best.

  But as they drew nearer, he forgot about that. There seemed to be something very wrong with the bay. Its waters were deep crimson: too deep to be coloured only by the setting sun.

  Then he caught a familiar, salty-sweet stink, very strong in the windless air. It couldn’t be . . .

  It was.

  The Bay of Seals was full of blood.

  EIGHTEEN

  The clamour of seagulls dinned in Torak’s ears, and the smell of blood caught at his throat.

  He saw children paddling in foaming red shallows, and women washing hide in crimson water. Men moved like shadows before a leaping fire, piling huge slabs of meat beside the sapling arch. Limbs, hands, faces: all were stained scarlet, like people in a dream.

  ‘Someone’s made a big kill,’ said Asrif.

  ‘First of the summer,’ said Bale, ‘and we missed it.’ He made it sound as if that was Torak’s fault.

  Suddenly Torak realised that all this meat came from just a single kill. He saw a tail fin longer than a skinboat. What he’d taken for saplings were the jawbones of a whale.

  At least – he guessed it was a whale, although it wasn’t a Hunter. Instead of teeth, its jaws trailed a long fringe of coarse black hair, which a Seal man was chopping off with a knife. He’d cut off his own hair, too. It lay at his feet in the same pile as the whale’s.

  As Torak waded onto the slippery red pebbles, he saw how happy everyone was. The whole clan was bubbling with celebration. A kill this size would mean food for days to come.

  Bale leapt out of his skinboat and told Torak to stay there. ‘Islinn will decide what to do with you after the feast.’

  Alone on the shingle, Torak was painfully aware of the Seals’ stares. Among the Ravens he’d been an outsider, but this was worse. And these people were his bone kin.

  He watched Bale unstrap his bundles and toss them to a weather-beaten man who’d come down to meet him. From the resemblance between them, Torak guessed they were father and son.

  He saw Detlan setting his skinboat on a rack, flanked by a beaming woman and a small girl, clearly his sister, who was jumping up and down, clamouring for his attention. Detlan looked embarrassed, but pleased to see her.

  Asrif, still in the shallows, was being scolded by a shrewish woman even shorter than he was. ‘You were supposed to bring back two bundles of salmonskin!’ she said, jabbing her finger in his chest. ‘How could you leave one behind?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Asrif. ‘I packed them both, I know I did. And now it’s not there.’

  Bale was speaking to his father and pointing at Torak. Then he ran up the beach to talk to a man by the fire.

  Dusk came on, the Seals went to make ready for the feast, and still Torak waited. His cheek hurt. He was ravenous.

  He saw now why nobody had bothered to tie him up. There was nowhere to run to: the mountains walled in the bay. At the south end, a waterfall pounded down from a cliff-face. At the north, a track climbed up towards an overhang which jutted over the Sea like an enormous skinboat. Unless the Seals let him go, he’d never get off the island. He would be trapped, while in the Forest the clans sickened and died . . .

  The sky turned deep blue. Food smells wafted down to him. He saw cooking-skins hanging from supports of what looked like whale bones, and fair-haired women chatting as they stirred. Unlike the Seal men, their calves rather than their arms bore the wavy blue lines of their clan-tattoos.

  Near them, a group of girls giggled as they dug into a steaming mound from which came the rich smell of baked meat. Torak knew this way of cooking from the Ravens, but he’d never seen it done quite like this. A hunk of meat as big as he was had been wrapped in seaweed, then buried in a pit of fire-heated stones, and covered with more seaweed and sand.

  The women began sharing the food into bowls. Torak noticed that only they did the cooking, while the men had cut up the carcass. That struck him as bizarre. Didn’t Seal girls hunt? He wondered what Renn would say about that.

  Hungrily he watched the clan gather in a circle around the fire. Still no-one came to fetch him.

  A murmuring began, like the sighing of the Sea, and the whole clan lifted its arms. A figure stepped from the circle, and Torak recognised the man who’d cut off his hair. Bearing a basket of capelin, the man approached the jawbone arch, and set the offering beneath it. Torak guessed he was thanking the whale for giving its life to the clan. But instead of returning to the feast, the man trudged into the gloom, towards a cave at the foot of the overhang.

  When Torak had almost lost hope, Detlan came for him, and they went to sit some distance from the fire, with Asrif and Bale.

  A girl handed Torak a bowl. It was so heavy that he nearly dropped it, and to his astonishment he saw that it was made of stone. Why in the name of the Forest would anyone make bowls out of stone? How would you carry them when you moved camp?

  A disturbing idea came to him. Perhaps the Seals never moved camp.

  ‘Eat,’ said Detlan, tossing him a spoon.

  Torak glanced at his bowl. It contained a hunk of dark-pink meat topped by a thick slab of grey fat, and a smaller piece of purplish flesh. Around it swam a sludgy stew that stank of the Sea, half a capelin, and two long, pale things that looked like fingers.

  ‘What’s the matter,’ said Bale, ‘not good enough? You’re lucky we’re fe
eding you at all.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever eaten shellworms?’ said Asrif.

  ‘What’s in it?’ asked Torak.

  ‘The red meat’s whale,’ said Detlan, ‘and that’s blubber on top.’ With his knife he speared his own chunk of purple meat. ‘Whale heart. Very special. We all get a piece, to take in its strength and courage.’ He crammed it in his mouth and chewed.

  ‘Bet you don’t have anything this good in the Forest,’ said Asrif.

  Torak ignored him and ate. The whale meat was stringy, the blubber oily and bland, and the shellworms had no taste at all. But the capelin was good.

  ‘Had you really never seen a seal?’ said Detlan.

  ‘Detlan, why waste your time?’ said Bale.

  But Detlan seemed to have taken Torak’s ignorance as a personal affront. ‘Seals give us everything,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Clothes, shelters, skinboats. Food, harpoons, lamps.’ He paused, clearly wondering if he’d left anything out.

  ‘What about your parkas?’ said Torak, curious despite himself. ‘That thin hide you can see through. That can’t be seal.’

  ‘It is,’ said Asrif. ‘It’s gutskin.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Detlan, ‘the seals give us everything. We are the people of the seal.’

  Torak frowned. ‘But no-one’s allowed to hunt their clan-creature. So why do you?’

  All three of them looked horrified.

  ‘We would never do that!’ cried Detlan. Angrily he struck the spotted fur on his chest. ‘This is our clan-creature! This is ring-seal! What we hunt – what we eat – that’s grey seal!’

  Torak had never heard of such a distinction, and it struck him as slippery and false. Something must have shown in his face, because Detlan’s brows lowered ominously.

  ‘Told you it was a waste of time,’ said Bale, rising to his feet. Then to Torak, ‘Come on. Time to face the Leader.’

  Islinn the Seal Clan Leader was old and shrunken. He looked as if the life were being sucked out of him.

  His wispy white hair and beard were beaded with tiny blue slate beads, and his ears were pierced with twisted, spear-like shells whose weight had stretched his earlobes to his shoulders.

  Bale forced Torak to his knees. Then he named the captive to the Seals, and told them how he’d broken the law.

  At that, many people cried out and ran to lay placating hands on the whale’s jawbone. The Leader stroked his beard with a shaky hand, but said nothing. His rheumy eyes moved constantly. Torak wondered if they hid intelligence, or the lack of it.

  At last Islinn spoke. ‘You say that you’re kin,’ he murmured in a reedy voice that sounded as if he barely had the strength to force it from his chest.

  ‘My father’s mother was a Seal,’ said Torak.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I can’t name him. He died last autumn.’

  The Leader pondered that, then murmured to the man beside him. The man’s face was hidden by drifting smoke, but Torak could tell from the thick, sandy hair and the muscled limbs that he was much younger than Islinn. His jerkin and breeches were plain, but his belt was magnificent. Made of braided hide, it was two hands wide, and fringed with the red and yellow beaks of puffins.

  Puffins, thought Torak. He must be the Mage.

  ‘Name your father’s mother,’ said the Leader.

  Torak did.

  The Leader’s lipless mouth tightened.

  Among the Seals, someone caught their breath.

  ‘I knew the woman,’ wheezed the Leader. ‘She mated with a Forest man. I never knew that she’d had a son.’

  ‘How do we know that she did?’ said the Mage without turning his head. ‘How do we know that the boy is who he says he is?’ He spoke quietly, but all the Seals leaned forward to listen.

  It was a remarkable voice: smooth-flowing and low-pitched, but with an undertow of great power, like the Sea. It was a voice that anyone would want to hear. For a moment, Torak almost forgot that it had called him a liar.

  The Leader was nodding. ‘My thoughts too, Tenris.’

  The smoke shifted, and Torak saw the Mage for the first time – or at least, he saw one side of his face, for Tenris was still turned away. He was handsome in a sharp-boned way: with a straight nose, a wide mouth flanked by deep laughter lines, and a dark-gold beard cut close to the strong line of his jaw.

  Torak sensed that this was the man who wielded the real power among the Seals; the man who would decide his fate. For a moment, he was reminded of Fin-Kedinn. ‘I am telling the truth,’ he said. ‘I am your bone kin.’

  ‘We need more than your word,’ said the Mage. He turned into the light, and Torak saw that the left side of his face was terribly burned. One grey eye peered from a lashless socket. His scalp had been scorched a mottled pink. Only his mouth was unscathed. He gave Torak a wry smile, as if daring him not to flinch.

  Torak put his fists over his heart and bowed. ‘I admit that I broke your law,’ he said, ‘but only because I didn’t know. My father never taught me the ways of the Sea.’

  Tenris the Seal Mage tilted his ruined head. ‘Then what were you doing on the shore?’

  ‘The Forest Horse Leader told me I’d find what I’m looking for by the Sea.’

  ‘And what are you looking for?’

  ‘A cure.’

  ‘For what? Are you ill?’

  Torak shook his head. Then he told Tenris about the sickness.

  The effect on the Seals was startling.

  The Leader threw up his wrinkled hands.

  Many Seals shouted in alarm.

  Bale leapt to his feet, his face thunderous. ‘Why didn’t you warn us?’ he cried. ‘What if you’ve brought it back?’

  Torak stared at him. ‘You know the sickness? You’ve seen it before?’

  But Bale had turned away, his face etched with pain.

  ‘It came three summers ago,’ the Leader said grimly. ‘His younger brother was the first to die. Then three more. My son among them.’

  ‘But now you’re free of it?’ said Torak, biting back his excitement. ‘You found a cure?’

  ‘For the Seals,’ snarled Bale, ‘not for you.’

  ‘But you must give it to me!’ cried Torak.

  Bale rounded on him. ‘Must? You break our law, you anger the Sea Mother, and now you say we must?’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like in the Forest!’ said Torak. ‘The Ravens are sick. And the Boars and the Otters and the Willows. Soon there won’t be enough people to hunt -’

  ‘Why should we care?’ said the Leader.

  The Seals murmured agreement.

  ‘Merely because,’ put in Tenris, ‘you say that you’re kin?’

  ‘But I am!’ insisted Torak. ‘I can prove it! Where’s my pack?’

  At a glance from Tenris, Asrif ran to a shelter, returning moments later with Torak’s pack.

  Eagerly Torak pulled out the bundle which held his father’s knife. ‘Here,’ he said, unwrapping it and holding it out to the Mage. ‘The blade was made by the Seals. My father’s mother gave it to him, and he made the hilt.’

  Tenris went very quiet as he studied the knife. Torak saw that his left hand was a burnt and twisted claw, but his right was unharmed. The long brown fingers shook as they touched the blade.

  With pounding heart, Torak waited for him to speak.

  The Leader, too, was peering at the knife. He didn’t seem to like what he saw. ‘Tenris,’ he breathed, ‘how can this be?’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Tenris. ‘The hilt is red deer antler, mated to a blade of Sea slate.’ He raised his head and fixed Torak with a gaze grown cold. ‘You say your father made this. Who was he that he dared to mix the Forest with the Sea?’

  Torak did not reply.

  ‘My guess,’ said Tenris, ‘is that he was some kind of Mage.’

  Belatedly Torak remembered Fin-Kedinn’s warning, and shook his head.

  To his surprise, a corner of Tenris’s mouth twitched. ‘T
orak, you’re not a very good liar.’

  Torak hesitated. ‘Fin-Kedinn told me not to talk of him.’

  ‘Fin-Kedinn,’ repeated Tenris. ‘I’ve heard the name. Is he a Mage too?’

  ‘No,’ said Torak.

  ‘But there are Mages among the Ravens.’

  ‘Yes. Saeunn.’

  ‘And did she teach you Magecraft?’

  ‘No,’ said Torak. ‘I’m a hunter, like my father. He taught me hunting and tracking, not Magecraft.’

  Again Tenris met his eyes – and this time Torak felt the full force of his intelligence, like a shaft of strong sunlight piercing clouds.

  Suddenly the Mage’s face softened. He spoke to the Leader. ‘He’s telling the truth. He is our bone kin.’

  The Leader squinted at Torak.

  Bale shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Then you will help me?’ said Torak. ‘You will give me the cure?’

  Tenris deferred to Islinn. ‘It’s for you to decide, Leader.’ But he leaned over and whispered in the old man’s ear.

  Aided by Tenris and Bale, the Leader rose to his feet. ‘Since you are kin,’ he wheezed, ‘we will deal with you as one of our own.’ He paused to catch his breath. ‘If one of us had broken the law, he would be made to appease the Sea Mother. So must you. Tomorrow you will be taken to the Rock, and left there for a moon.’

  NINETEEN

  Torak is back at the edge of the Forest. The sun is shining, the Sea is a dazzling blue, and he’s breathless with laughter as he rolls in the sand with Wolf.

  An ecstasy of tail-wagging and flailing paws, of high twisting leaps! Wolf lands full on his chest and knocks him flat, covering his face with nibble-greetings; Torak grabs his scruff and licks his muzzle, telling him in low, fervent yip-and-yowls how much he’s missed him.

  Wolf has grown so much! His flanks and haunches are solid with muscle, and when he rears up and puts his forepaws on Torak’s shoulders, they come head to head. But he’s still the same Wolf. The same clear amber eyes and well-loved smell of sweet grass and warm, clean fur. The same mix of puppyish fun and mysterious wisdom.