Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  And it hurts, thought Torak, remembering the sickness and the pain. It had felt as if something deep inside him were being torn loose . . .

  Then a thought occurred to him that gave him hope. ‘But this can’t be right!’ he said eagerly. ‘I’m not a spirit walker, I’ve got proof! In the Forest, I was treed by a boar. He nearly got me, and I was terrified – and it didn’t happen! I didn’t get the sick feeling, or the pain, and I never for one instant knew what he was feeling!’

  The Seal Mage was shaking his head. ‘Torak, Torak, that is not how it is. Think! You know enough about Magecraft to be aware that even for ordinary Mages, when they wish to cure the sick, they need help to free their own souls. There are many ways of doing this. A trance. A soul-loosening potion. Sometimes simply going without food, or holding your breath. It is the same for the spirit walker. Being merely afraid, as you were of that boar, would not have been enough to loosen your souls.’

  Torak thought back to the other times when it had happened. At the healing rite, there had been Saeunn’s soul-loosening smoke. In the seal net, he’d been close to drowning. With the guardian, too, he’d been drowning. It was beginning to make a terrible kind of sense.

  ‘Besides,’ said Tenris, and Torak was surprised to see that his half-smile was back, ‘you were lucky you didn’t spirit walk inside that boar. His souls would have been too strong for yours. You might have been trapped in there for good.’

  Torak got to his feet, stumbled to the edge of the rocks, and stood there shivering. He didn’t want to be different. And yet – wasn’t this why his father had kept him separate from the clans? Why he’d said as he lay dying, There’s so much I haven’t told you?

  ‘This is a curse,’ he said, his teeth chattering. ‘I don’t want to be different. It’s a curse!’

  ‘No!’ Tenris came to stand beside him. ‘Not a curse, but a gift! You may not think so now, but in time, you will see this!’

  ‘No,’ said Torak. ‘No.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ said the Seal Mage, his beautiful voice shaking with emotion. ‘What you did so easily – without even trying – is something the cleverest Mages strive their whole lives to achieve! Why, once I knew a Mage – a good one – who tried for six winters on end. Six winters of trances and potions and fasting. Then finally, for a few heartbeats – he succeeded. And he counted himself the luckiest of men!’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ said Torak. ‘I never -’

  ‘But Torak, this is the very purpose of Magecraft!’ The handsome, ruined face was alight with fervour. ‘We do not learn Magecraft merely to trick fools with coloured fire! We do it to delve deeper! To know the hearts of others!’ He caught his breath. ‘Think what you could do if you learned to use this! You could discover such secrets! You could know the speech of hunters and prey. You could gain such power . . .’

  ‘But I don’t want it!’ cried Torak – and on the other side of the fire, Bale stirred in his sleep.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ said Torak more quietly. He had never felt so frightened and confused. All his life he had been Torak. Now Tenris was telling him he was someone else.

  He stared out across the cold, heaving Sea. He longed for Wolf, so that he could tell him all about it. But how would he ever get Wolf to understand? He had no idea how to describe spirit walking in wolf talk. And that seemed to him to be the very worst of it: that in this he would be cut off from Wolf.

  ‘What should I do now?’ he said to the cold Sea.

  Again Tenris put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You should do what we planned to do,’ he said calmly. ‘I will waken Bale, and we will make ready to leave. We will take the selik root back to camp. And on Midsummer’s night – this coming night – we will take it up to the Crag, and you will help me make the cure. That is what we shall do.’

  His voice was as steady as an oak standing firm in a gale, and Torak took strength from it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. This doesn’t change what I have to do. Does it, Tenris?’ He turned and looked up into the Mage’s face.

  ‘No,’ said Tenris, ‘it doesn’t change anything.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  At last the hunger had been chased back into its Den, and Wolf was free to seek the female and Tall Tailless.

  But while he’d been gulping down delicious soft chunks of rotting blackfish, the dark had come. Not the true Dark, but the dark which covers the Up when the Thunderer is angry. And this time it wasn’t after Wolf. The taillesses were the ones in danger.

  Over the hot black earth he raced, then up the slope and down again, to the boulders where the female had waited for his pack-brother. He smelt that Tall Tailless had been here too, and that he had fought with the female. Fought! Wolf could not believe what he was smelling! The snarling, the baring of teeth.

  Swiftly he found the Bright Beast-That-Bites-Hot, with the two pale-pelted half-growns sleeping beside it. Then to his horror he smelt that his pack-brother had gone out on the Great Wet, in one of the floating hides.

  Mewing in distress, Wolf scrambled back up the boulders after the scent of the female. Ah, she was clever. She’d returned to the Still Wet, where there was less danger from the Thunderer, and there she’d dragged out a floating hide. She’d headed into the wind, so Wolf easily caught her scent. Now he knew what to do. He must follow her. She too was seeking Tall Tailless.

  A roar from the Up. The wind began to howl through the valley, and the Wet came pouring down. Trees bent, fish-birds were tossed about like leaves. And still Wolf loped, flying over the rocks and the angry little Wets crashing down from the peaks.

  As he ran, another scent hit him, and he skittered to a halt. Raising his muzzle, he took deep sniffs to make sure.

  His claws tightened. His fur stood on end.

  He smelt demon.

  ‘Take my hand!’ shouted Tenris, leaning perilously over the side of his skinboat and reaching for Torak.

  Torak fought to keep his head above the waves, and strained to grasp the outstretched hand. He caught it – but another wall of water engulfed him, dragging him under.

  Over and over he rolled in the crushing darkness. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

  The Sea threw him above the waves, playing with him. His gutskin parka helped him stay afloat, and he bobbed up and down, gulping air.

  Tenris was gone. Bale was gone. The sky was black as basalt. Crackling flares of lightning revealed nothing but raging Sea.

  ‘Tenris!’ he yelled. ‘Bale!’ The storm whipped his voice away.

  Through the murk he glimpsed his overturned skinboat tossing about on the waves. He swam for it – the Sea dashed it against him – and he grabbed it with both hands. ‘Tenris!’ he shouted.

  But the Mage was gone.

  Suddenly the skinboat gave a terrific jolt, and he was thrown against a rock. Winded, he reached for it with one hand, clutching the skinboat with the other. The Sea sucked at the boat, pulling him off the rock. He had a heartbeat to decide what to do.

  He let go of the skinboat and hauled himself onto the rock. The boat was carried away into the gloom.

  Shivering, storm-battered, he clung on.

  He didn’t know where he was. If he’d been thrown onto the shore, he had a chance. If not – if this was an isolated skerry somewhere in the Sea – he was in trouble.

  A groping search of his haven soon told him that the rock was no bigger than a Seal’s shelter, and surrounded by nothing but waves.

  Panic gripped him.

  Bale was gone. Tenris was gone. He was stranded on a rock in the middle of the Sea.

  The storm blew over as abruptly as it had arisen.

  By the time Renn reached the eastern end of the lake and laid down her paddle, the water was lapping the rocks, and scarcely stirring the reeds in the shallows.

  She didn’t want to think of how it must have been for Torak on the open Sea. Why hadn’t he listened to her and come overland, instead of going with the Mage and the tall Seal boy?

  Wearily she drag
ged her borrowed skinboat ashore, lifted out her pack and her sleeping-sack, then hid them behind a boulder. She didn’t know what she would find at the Seal camp, but she doubted that she’d need anything but her quiver and bow.

  Straightening up, she noticed that the sky wasn’t clear, as it should be after a storm. Dirty white clouds were pouring down from the peaks, and tongues of mist were seeping towards her across the lake. Mist after a storm. She’d never seen that before.

  At a run she started up the slope, making for the little white beach on the other side. She crested the ridge – and gasped. The Sea had disappeared behind a yellow wall of sea-mist that was rolling menacingly towards her.

  This shouldn’t be, she told herself. This can’t be.

  Then she remembered that it was Midsummer night. And on Midsummer night, anything is possible.

  Exhausted, wet and scared, she half-slid, half-stumbled down the tussocky slope, and fell to her knees in the coarse white sand.

  Anything is possible . . .

  Maybe it’s even possible that the Seal Mage is right: that Torak really is a spirit walker.

  Back at the Heights as she’d crouched among the boulders, she’d flatly rejected what she’d heard the Mage telling Torak. It couldn’t be true. It had to be some kind of trick.

  But all through the long, hard journey on the lake, she’d been turning it over in her mind, and now she knew that it was true.

  Torak was a spirit walker.

  A spirit walker.

  She had heard of such creatures, but only in the stories of long ago which Fin-Kedinn sometimes told on winter’s nights: how Raven learned to hold onto the wind, how the First Tree came, and the first clans, and the first – spirit walker.

  Now, as she crouched shivering on the little white beach, she sensed that in some way she didn’t understand, Torak the spirit walker lay at the heart of everything. The tokoroth – the sickness – the cure. If only she could see the pattern.

  Torak clung to the rock. He was cold, wet and hungry, and although the storm had passed with startling suddenness, he was trapped in the fog, with no idea where he was. The fog could take days to lift. He didn’t have days.

  Then he remembered the little roll of dried whale meat which Detlan had given him before they’d set off. It was smelly and salt-stained, and if he ate it, he’d have nothing for the Sea Mother. He ate it anyway.

  The meat made him feel a bit better. Then another thought occurred to him which heartened him some more. He didn’t have the selik root. Tenris did – and maybe Tenris had made it back to land; maybe the clans still had a chance . . .

  A wave slapped into him, nearly knocking him off the rock.

  Concentrate, he told himself. You’ve got to get off this rock and back to land.

  He didn’t have many choices. Sooner or later, he would have to swim for it. But he was exhausted, and he knew he wouldn’t last long in the water. He’d need help to stay afloat.

  The skinboat was gone, and so was his paddle. All he had were his clothes and Fa’s knife, and his mother’s medicine horn, safe in its pouch. It contained a small amount of earthblood: just enough for Death Marks. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

  More waves buffeted the rock. He crawled higher, drawing the gutskin parka closer about him.

  The gutskin parka.

  He remembered the way it had buoyed him up in the storm. He remembered the Seal children splashing in the shallows, their beginners’ boats steadied by a cross-pole with an inflated gutskin sack at either end.

  Yanking the parka over his head, he cut off the laces at the neck and used them to tie one wrist shut, and also the neck, and the waist. Then he put his mouth to the remaining wrist, and blew.

  Blowing made him giddy, but after a sickeningly long time, he had a slightly squashy air-sack which floated when he tried it on the water. If he lashed it to his belt, it might help him stay afloat – or at least stop him sinking if he got too weak to swim.

  Around him the Sea swirled and the fog billowed. Somewhere out there lay the Seal island. But which way?

  All he could see was black water. No seabirds, no drifting seaweed; no silvery currents to indicate a headland. He couldn’t see the sun, had no sense of the direction he should take. For all he knew, he might be making straight for the open Sea.

  Far away, a wolf howled.

  Torak caught his breath.

  There it was again. A long howl, followed by several short, sharp barks. Where are you? called Wolf.

  Torak put his hands to his lips and howled a reply. I’m here! Again the answer – faint but clear, piercing the fog – floating to him across the Sea.

  Again Torak howled. Call to me, pack-brother! Call!

  Hunger, fatigue, cold – all were forgotten. He wasn’t even scared of Notched Fin any more, because now Wolf was with him, showing him the way back. His guide would not let him down.

  The water was freezing, but he didn’t give himself time to think. With the air-sack lashed to his back, he slid off the rock and struck out through the fog and the whale-haunted Sea.

  Alone in the fog on the little white beach, Renn heard wolf howls, and froze.

  It sounded like – yes! Wolf! And Torak! She’d know his howl anywhere! That had to mean that he was all right!

  He would be making for the Seal camp. That made her feel a bit braver about heading there too.

  The fog was so thick that she couldn’t see two paces in front. With her hands before her like a blind girl, she blundered through the birch trees and the boulders towards the Bay of Seals.

  The trees ended. She still couldn’t see. No camp. No Sea. No sounds except – somewhere nearby – the rush of wavelets on shingle. The howling had ceased.

  She left the trees and stumbled towards where she hoped the Seal camp lay.

  A scrape and a muffled gasp somewhere close. The sound of a skinboat being set down. Then – before she could draw back – a tall figure loomed out of the mist and ran straight into her.

  With shouts of alarm they leapt apart.

  ‘Who are you?’ cried the boy.

  ‘Where’s Torak?’ cried Renn.

  Both were open-mouthed and staring with fright.

  Renn recognised the tall Seal boy who’d set out with Torak from the Heights.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘I’m Renn,’ she said with more assurance than she felt. ‘Where’s Torak? What have you done with him?’

  His glance flicked to her bow, then back to her face. His shoulders slumped. ‘The storm,’ he muttered. ‘We got separated. I – I saw his skinboat go over.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  He rubbed his eyes, and she saw how tired he was. ‘Tenris tried to reach him. So did I. We couldn’t . . . Tenris is still out looking for him.’ He seemed genuinely distraught, and if he hadn’t been a Seal, Renn would have felt sorry for him. ‘I heard strange howls,’ he said. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it.’

  She was tempted to tell him, but she hardened her heart. He was not to be trusted; let him go on thinking Torak was lost. She would not believe it. She’d heard Torak howling with Wolf; that had to mean they were safe.

  Another skinboat slid out of the mist, and a man got out and lifted it onto the beach. It was the Seal Mage.

  Full of concern, he ran to the Seal boy – saw Renn – recoiled in surprise – then turned back to the boy. ‘I couldn’t find him,’ he said. Like the boy, he seemed devastated, and Renn began to wonder if she’d misjudged the Seals.

  ‘And who is this?’ said the Seal Mage, turning to her. His expression was kind, his voice as quiet and strong as the Sea on a sunny day. But something about him put Renn on her guard.

  ‘I’m Renn,’ she said. ‘I’m from the Raven Clan.’

  ‘And what are you doing here, Renn from the Raven Clan?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m – looking for Torak.’ She hadn’t meant to say it. But his voice compelled obedience.

&
nbsp; ‘So are we,’ he said, looking grim. ‘Come. We’ll go up to the camp and decide what to do.’

  As he walked, he pulled his gutskin parka over his head, and Renn saw for the first time his magnificent Mage’s belt, and heard the soft clink of its puffin-beak fringe.

  She stopped.

  That sound sent ripples through her memory. It was the same sound she’d heard as she watched the skinboater gliding over the lake.

  Sea-mist settled clammily on her skin. Her heart began to race. The pattern was coming together before her eyes. The tokoroth. The sickness. The Soul-Eaters . . .

  The Seal Mage turned, and asked her what was wrong.

  Blood thudded in her skull as she stared up into his handsome, terribly scarred face. She thought, There is a Soul-Eater among the Seals. There is a Soul-Eater among the Seals, and his name is Tenris. And he is after Torak – Torak the spirit walker.

  ‘You’ve gone very pale,’ said Tenris in his beautiful, gentle voice.

  ‘I’m – I just need to find Torak,’ she said.

  ‘So do I,’ he said, and a corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. It was a smile full of warmth, but as Renn met his calm grey gaze, she knew with a clutch of terror that he’d seen the knowledge in her face. He knew that she knew.

  ‘Come,’ he said, reaching out and taking her icy fingers in his. ‘Let’s go and get something to eat.’

  Then he saw the scab on her hand, and his face contracted in pity. ‘Oh, my poor child, what’s this?’

  Before she could reply, he turned to the Seal boy. ‘Look, Bale. The poor little thing has the sickness.’

  Bale stared at her hand; then his own crept to his clan-creature skin.

  ‘No I don’t,’ protested Renn, trying to pull her hand from the strong, steady grip. ‘It’s not the sickness, it’s a -’

  ‘You mustn’t worry any more,’ said the Seal Mage, taking both her hands in his. ‘From now on, I will look after you.’