Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  Torak stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know what story you told Tenris on the Crag,’ said Bale, ‘but I do know that you’re a lying little coward who’d do anything to save your skin.’ He tossed Torak the broken paddle. ‘Maybe that’s why you were so ready to believe I could play a trick like this. Because it’s the sort of thing you’d do in the Forest.’

  Bale’s insults were ringing in Torak’s ears as he made his way wearily back to shore. The older boy had gone on ahead, and carried his boat up to the racks. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing left to say.

  You can’t do this on your own, Tenris had said. You need to win their trust. Concentrate on Bale . . . the others will follow.

  He was right, and Torak knew it. He had to prove to Bale that he hadn’t tricked anyone.

  He had an idea. If he could prove that the Follower was on the island, Bale would have to believe him.

  Find the tracks, he told himself. Not even Bale could argue with that.

  And it should be possible. Torak might not be any good at skinboating, but he knew how to find a trail.

  As he reached the south end of the bay, dusk was coming on – or rather, the brief blue glow that counted for dusk this close to Midsummer. Leaving his skinboat on the beach, he crossed the stream, and started working his way along the bank. Terns hovered and dived above him, but he ignored them.

  It was a good time for tracking: the low light would sharpen the shadows. He was glad, too, that the Seals were busy waking the fires for nightmeal, so that nobody saw him come ashore. He didn’t feel like explaining what he was doing.

  No prints in the soft mud. But there, on the grass: the merest hint where something small – the Follower? – had brushed off the damp as it passed.

  It was hard to trace – dew trails always are – but Torak used the trick his father had taught him, turning his head to one side and looking at it from the corner of his eye.

  After a few false starts, he tracked it to a stretch of limpet-crusted rocks that tilted into the Sea. Beyond the rocks, at the very edge of the bay, stood a clump of birch. To his surprise, the trail didn’t lead towards them, but onto the rocks. He found a tiny piece of scuffed lichen, and a scent of rottenness where the Follower had scampered across a pile of dead seaweed.

  Finally, in a patch of sand left by a previous tide, he saw it: a perfect, sharp-clawed print. Very fresh. No time for ants or sand-midges to blur the edges.

  Look at this, Bale, he shouted in his head.

  A cackle of laughter to his left – and there it was: a small humped figure shrouded in long hair like mouldy seaweed.

  Torak was too elated to be scared. Here was the proof he needed. If he could catch it, Bale would have to admit defeat.

  The creature turned and scuttled away.

  Torak scrambled after it.

  The seaweed was slimy under his bare feet, and a voice of caution sounded in his mind. The Follower would like nothing better than if he took a tumble into the Sea.

  He reached a cleft in the rocks where the swirling Sea sent up jets of spray. The cleft was too wide to leap, but somehow the Follower had got across. There it was on the other side: eyes gleaming with malice, daring him to jump.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he panted, ‘I’m not that stupid!’

  The Follower bared its brown teeth in a hiss and sped into the gloom, its claws clicking on the rocks.

  Torak raced round the edge of the cleft to where the seaweed was drier and less treacherous. It occurred to him to wonder how a patch of dry seaweed had come to be in the middle of all this wet . . .

  Too late. The seaweed gave beneath him and he pitched into the Sea. Torak, you fool! A pitfall! The simplest trap of all!

  Winded by the cold and covered in seaweed, he kicked to keep himself afloat as he sought a likely place to haul himself out. The swell was heavier than it had appeared from the rocks, but it should be easy enough, and the only harm done would be to his pride. The Follower, of course, would be long gone.

  Clawing the seaweed off his face, he reached for a handhold. The seaweed was tougher than it looked. He couldn’t seem to get it off his face – or push his hands through it to reach the rock.

  Because it isn’t seaweed, he realised in surprise. It’s rope made of kelp, knotted kelp, and this is a seal net. You’ve fallen into a seal net. Which, presumably, was exactly what the Follower had intended.

  The swell threw him against the rocks, knocking the breath from his chest. Treading water was becoming difficult, as the net clung to his legs, hampering movement. It seemed to be tied to the rocks at the top, and weighed down with something, maybe a stone, because he had to work to keep his head and shoulders above the water.

  How Bale will laugh about this! he thought bitterly. How they’ll all laugh when they find me floundering in a net within arrowshot of camp!

  If he’d had his knife, he could have cut himself free, but the Seals hadn’t trusted him with weapons. He’d have to call for help, and endure the inevitable taunts.

  ‘Help!’ he shouted. ‘I’m over here! Somebody!’

  The wind whistled across the bay. Terns screamed overhead. The Sea slapped noisily against the rocks.

  Nobody came. Nobody could hear him.

  Treading water was tiring. And strangely, the waves seemed to have risen: now they reached to just below his chin.

  That was when the truth hit him, and he began to be frightened. He was trapped in a seal net, out of earshot of the camp, and the tide was coming in.

  Fast.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The tide was creeping higher, and Torak had to fight to keep his chin above the waves.

  The swell kept sucking him backwards, then smashing him against the rocks. The Sea was pounding the breath out of him. Her salt smell was thick in his throat, her restless moaning filled his head. She had taken him, and she wasn’t letting go.

  He tried to close his mind to her; to think what to do. There had to be some kind of opening in the net. After all, he’d fallen into it, so there must be a way out. But somehow he couldn’t find it.

  The mesh was small – he couldn’t force his fist through – and the knots were hard as pebbles; a waste of time trying to unpick them with fingers grown numb. And the kelp was far too tough to rip apart with his hands, or bite through. ‘They’ve got to be strong to hold a full-grown seal,’ Detlan had told him at daymeal. ‘And they are.’

  If only he had his knife . . . What else could he use? Again he smacked against the rocks, scraping painfully over the limpets.

  Limpets. They had sharp edges, didn’t they? If he could prise one off, maybe . . .

  The swell drew him back, then battered him once more. As he kicked his way to the surface, the Sea’s endless laughter rippled through him.

  Don’t listen to her, he told himself. Listen to yourself, listen to the blood drumming in your ears – anything but her . . .

  Still kicking to stay above the waves, he pushed his thumb and two fingers through the meshing and grabbed the nearest limpet.

  The creature clamped hard to the rock and refused to let go. Snarling, Torak clawed at its shell, but it stuck fast. It had become part of the rock.

  Then he remembered the black and white bird he’d seen attacking a limpet on the shore. He’d spotted similar birds here on the Seals’ island, Detlan called them oystercatchers. Torak remembered the way the bird had struck the limpet with its beak: abruptly, giving it no time to cling on.

  He found another limpet and tried the same thing, striking a glancing blow with his fist. It worked. But the limpet slipped from his fingers and spiralled down, out of reach and through the net.

  Again the Sea’s vast laughter shuddered through him. You cannot win, she seemed to whisper. Give up, give up!

  No! he shouted in his head. It’s too soon!

  The shout became a sob. Too soon. He had to find the cure, and make sure that the clans were safe. He had to see Wolf again, and Renn,
and Fin-Kedinn . . .

  If that stone weren’t dragging down the net, he’d have a chance.

  The thought woke him like a slap in the face. If he could get free of that stone, the tide would become his friend: he could make the Sea work against herself, make her lift him and carry him onto the rocks.

  So why are you wasting time with limpets? he thought frantically. Get under the water and deal with that rock!

  He took a deep breath and dived.

  It was frightening being in her world, in a swirling chaos of black water and murky seaweed. He couldn’t find the rope that tied the rock to the net, couldn’t even tell up from down.

  He surfaced again, gulping air. The waves were lapping higher. Now he had to strain to keep his mouth above them. Salt burned his lips, his throat, his eyes. His legs were heavy, his thoughts fogging with cold.

  ‘Help!’ he yelled. ‘Somebody!’ His cry ended in a gurgle that was horrible to hear.

  The light was failing, and he couldn’t see much: just the rock looming over him, and a deep blue sky pricked by faint stars that seemed to be sinking further and further away from him . . .

  Drowning. The worst death of all. To feel the Sea Mother squeezing the life out of you, wrenching your souls apart. And without Death Marks, they would never find one another again. He would become a Sea demon, wandering for ever, hating and craving all living things, striving to snuff them out . . .

  A wave washed over him, and he coughed seawater.

  I am beyond pity or malice, the Sea Mother seemed to murmur in his ear, beyond good and evil. I am stronger than the sun. I am eternal. I am the Sea.

  He was so tired. He couldn’t keep treading water, he had to stop, just for a little while, to rest.

  He sank, and the Sea Mother wrapped her arms about him – tight, tight, until his chest was bursting . . .

  A silver flicker in the darkness.

  A fish, he thought hazily. A small one, maybe a capelin?

  And now there were more of them, a whole shimmering shoal, come to watch this big creature dying in their midst.

  Down he sank, and the silver darts divided and flowed about him like a sparkling river, as the Sea crushed him in her arms . . .

  A sickening jolt deep in his belly, as if his guts were being pulled loose. And now, quite suddenly, he was free of that crushing embrace; free of the cold and the darkness. He could no longer feel the net dragging him down, or the salt burning his throat. He couldn’t even hear his own blood thumping in his head. He was light and nimble as a fish – and like a fish, he was neither cold nor warm, but part of the Sea.

  And he could see so clearly! The murkiness was gone. The rocks, the floating weeds, the other capelin flowing about him – all were vivid and sharp, although strangely stretched at the edges. In some way that he didn’t understand, he had become fish. He felt the tiny ripples in the water as each slender body flickered past; he felt the shoal’s wary curiosity. He felt the stronger surges coming back from the rocks; and beneath them the vast sighs of the Mother.

  Without warning, terror invaded the shoal. Panic coursed through them like lightning – and through Torak, too. Something was hunting them in the deep. Something huge . . .

  What is it? asked Torak, fighting to master their terror, which had become his own. What is it that hunts us?

  The shoal didn’t answer. Instead it whipped round and fled for the deep Sea – fleeing the Hunter prowling beneath them – leaving Torak behind. Another sickening jolt inside him . . .

  . . . and he was Torak again, watching the capelin vanish into the dark.

  His chest was bursting, the blood roaring in his ears. No time to wonder what had just happened. He was drowning.

  Blindly he kicked out, fighting the Sea Mother’s lethal embrace – and the net fought him, holding him back.

  At that moment, a column of white water sent him spinning sideways, and something big plunged in beside him. Powerful teeth savaged the net – tearing him free . . .

  Then hands were reaching down for him, trying to pull him out. They weren’t strong enough – he was slipping back again, scraping his palms on limpets.

  With his last shred of strength he gave a tremendous kick. It pushed him a little further out of the water: enough for the hands to grab him and wrench him out.

  The Sea Mother gave a sigh, and let him go.

  Torak lay gasping like a landed fish. He felt the roughness of limpets against his cheek, and the grittiness of seaweed between his teeth. He’d never tasted anything so good.

  ‘What were you doing?’ whispered a voice that was oddly familiar.

  He rolled onto his side, then onto his knees, and spewed up what felt like half the Sea. ‘D- drowning,’ he gasped.

  ‘I could see that!’ said the voice, managing to sound both angry and shaken. ‘But what were you doing? Why didn’t you just climb out?’

  Torak raised his head. ‘Renn? Is that you?’

  ‘Sh! Someone might come! Can you stand? Come on! Follow me!’

  Struggling to grasp what was happening, Torak staggered to his feet. He swayed, and would have toppled back into the water if Renn hadn’t grabbed his wrist and dragged him towards the birch trees. ‘Through here,’ she whispered, ‘there’s a bay where we won’t be seen!’

  Together they scrambled between huge tumbled boulders and straggly birch, emerging at last onto a little white beach shadowed by a looming hillside.

  Torak sank to his knees in the sand. ‘How – did you find me?’ he panted.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ said Renn, ‘it was -’

  A shadow bounded from behind a boulder and knocked Torak backwards into the sand, covering his face in hot, rasping licks.

  ‘It was Wolf,’ said Renn.

  TWENTY-THREE

  There was something fierce – almost desperate – about the way they greeted each other. Wolf whimpering and lashing his tail as he covered Torak’s face in kisses; Torak unnervingly like a wolf himself as he licked Wolf’s muzzle and buried his face in his fur, murmuring in the low, fervent speech that Renn couldn’t understand.

  She felt like an intruder. And she was deeply shaken by what had just happened. She kept seeing the body in the water: face down, dark hair swirling. She’d thought he was dead.

  Her hands shook as she retrieved her quiver and bow from where she’d hidden them behind a boulder, and shouldered her wovengrass bag of limpets. ‘Can you walk?’ she said more abruptly than she’d intended.

  Still on his knees with Wolf, Torak turned and gazed at her as if he’d no idea who she was. With his bruised face and streaming hair he didn’t look like her friend any more.

  ‘I – I can’t believe . . .’ His voice was rough with unshed tears.

  ‘Torak, we’ve got to get out of here! We’re too close to the camp, someone might come!’

  But she could see that he wasn’t taking it in.

  ‘Come on!’ she said, pulling him to his feet.

  The hillside was steep, and the deep moss and crowberry made it tough to climb, but to her relief he managed it. Wolf pranced about them, swinging his tail and leaping up to nuzzle his face.

  Just below the ridge, they had to stop for breath.

  ‘How did you find me?’ panted Torak, bent double with his hands on his knees.

  ‘I was foraging on the shore,’ said Renn. ‘Suddenly Wolf gave that grunt he makes, and ran off.’ She paused. ‘Torak, what happened? Why couldn’t you get onto the rocks?’

  ‘I – was caught in a seal net.’

  ‘A net?’

  ‘I tried to get out, but I couldn’t. Wolf bit through it. He saved my life.’

  Renn thought about that: about the kind of love that had made Wolf brave the thing he feared the most. ‘He hates the Sea,’ she said. ‘I had a terrible time getting him into a skinboat.’

  ‘How did you manage?’

  From inside her jerkin she drew out the thong on which hung the grouse-bone whistle.

  Torak stu
died it. ‘So if I hadn’t given it to you all those moons ago, you wouldn’t have been able to bring him with you. And I would have drowned.’ He scratched Wolf’s flank, and Wolf rubbed against him, wrinkling his muzzle in a grin.

  Once again, Renn felt like an intruder. She realised that she knew nothing of what had happened to Torak since he’d left the Ravens. There was lots she had to tell him, too: about the sickness, and the tokoroth. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘My camp’s not far.’

  They crested the ridge, startling a pair of ravens who flew off with indignant caws. When Torak saw what lay before him, he cried out. ‘But there’s a forest!’

  Below them lay a steep-sided valley like an axe cut through the mountains, with a long, narrow lake at the bottom. On all sides the slopes were darkened by willow, rowan and ash.

  ‘They’re not very tall,’ said Renn, ‘but at least they’re trees. The Seals don’t seem to come inland, so hiding’s been easy. But yesterday I found someone’s tracks down by the lake. A man’s or a boy’s, I think.’

  ‘I miss the Forest so much,’ said Torak, gazing at the trees.

  ‘Me too,’ said Renn. ‘I miss salmon, and the taste of reindeer. And the nights are so light here. You don’t notice it in the Forest, but here . . . I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ murmured Torak.

  ‘There’s my camp,’ said Renn, leading him down to the hidden gully filled with ferns and meadowsweet and the frothy yellow flowers of bedstraw. A stream tumbled through, and in the east bank she’d dug herself a fox-hole, with a firepit in front. A rowan tree spread its arms protectively overhead.

  ‘You can dry off by the fire,’ she told him. ‘I’ll cook the limpets. They won’t take long.’

  Hanging up her quiver and bow, she knelt by the embers. They gave almost no smoke because she’d used ash, and peeled off the bark.

  Before setting out, she’d placed a flat piece of slate over one end to heat up, and now she spat on it to check it was hot enough; it gave a satisfying sizzle. After rinsing the limpets in the stream, she set them on the slate to cook.

  ‘What have you done for food?’ asked Torak as he huddled by the fire, with Wolf leaning against him.