Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  It was this pale-pelt who now rose on his hind legs and came towards Wolf.

  Wolf gave a muffled growl.

  Pale-Pelt bared his teeth, and brought his big claw close to Wolf’s muzzle.

  Wolf flinched.

  Pale-Pelt laughed, lapping up Wolf’s fear.

  But what was this? Wolf’s muzzle was free! Pale-Pelt had cut his muzzle free!

  Wolf seized his chance and lunged – but the deerhide held him back, and he couldn’t get his jaws around it to bite through it.

  Here came the other one, the big twisted female with the stinking fur.

  Pale-Pelt jabbed at Wolf again, but Stinkfur growled at him. Pale-Pelt stared hard, to let her know who was leader, then stalked off.

  Crouching beside Wolf, Stinkfur pushed a scrap of elk meat through a hole in the deerhide.

  Wolf ignored it. Did these taillesses think he was stupid? Did they think he was a dog, who would take meat from anyone?

  Stinkfur threw up her forepaws, and walked away.

  Now the viper-tongued female left the Bright Beast, and came over to Wolf. Squatting on her haunches, she talked softly to him.

  Without wanting to, he listened. Her voice reminded him a little of the female who was Tall Tailless’ pack-sister, whose talk was sharp and clever, but gentle underneath. As he listened to the viper-tongued female, he smelt that she was not afraid of him; that she was curious.

  He flinched as she reached her forepaw towards him, but she didn’t touch him. Instead he felt coldness on his flank. His whiskers quivered. She was smearing his pelt with elk blood!

  The smell was so muzzle-wateringly delicious that it drove all else from his head. After much struggling, he twisted round and started to lick.

  He knew it was odd that the female had done this, and something in her voice made him wary, but he couldn’t stop. The blood-lust had him in its grip, and already the strength of the elk was loping through his limbs. He went on licking.

  Wolf was becoming very tired. There was black fog in his head, and he could hardly keep his eyes open. He felt as if a great stone were crushing him.

  Through the fog he heard the soft, sly laugh of the viper-tongued female, and knew that she had tricked him. The elk blood she’d fed him had been bad, and now he was sinking into the Dark.

  The fog grew thicker. Fear seized him in its jaws. With the last twitch of his mind, he sent a silent howl to Tall Tailless.

  FIVE

  ‘Are you scared?’ said Torak.

  ‘Yes,’ said Renn.

  ‘Me too.’

  They stood at the edge of the Forest, beneath the last – the very last – tree. Before them stretched an empty white land beneath an endless sky. Here and there, a stunted spruce withstood the onslaught of the wind, but that was the only sign of life.

  They were now as far north as any of the Forest clans had been, except for Fin-Kedinn, who as a young man had journeyed into the frozen lands. In the two days since meeting the Walker, they’d crossed three valleys, and glimpsed the distant glare of the ice river at the roots of the High Mountains – where, the winter before last, the Ravens had camped, and Torak had gone in search of the Mountain of the World Spirit.

  They stood with the north wind in their faces, staring at the trail of Wolf’s captors: a brutal knife-slash through the snow.

  ‘I don’t think we can do this on our own,’ said Renn. ‘We need help. We need Fin-Kedinn.’

  ‘We can’t go back now,’ said Torak. ‘There isn’t time.’

  She was silent. Since their encounter with the Walker, she’d been unusually subdued. Torak wondered if she too had been thinking about what the old man had said. Twisted legs and flying thoughts . . . the sideways one . . . Big as a tree . . . It had raised echoes in his mind: echoes of Fin-Kedinn, speaking of the Soul-Eaters. But he couldn’t bring himself to mention them out loud. It couldn’t be them. Why would they have taken Wolf, and not him?

  So in the end, all he said was, ‘Wolf needs us.’

  Renn didn’t reply.

  Suddenly, he was gripped by the fear that she would turn round and leave him to carry on alone. The fear was so intense that it left him breathless.

  He watched her brush the snow off her bow, and settle it on her shoulder. He braced himself for the worst.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said abruptly. ‘Let’s go.’ Without a backwards glance, she left the shelter of the trees.

  He followed her into the empty lands.

  As soon as they left the Forest, the sky pressed upon them, and the north wind scoured their faces with snow.

  In the Forest, Torak had always been aware of the wind – as a hunter he had to be – but apart from storms, it was never a threat, because the power of the Forest kept it in check. Out here, nothing could hold it back. It was stronger, colder, wilder: a malevolent, unseen spirit, come to harass these puny intruders.

  The trees became smaller and sparser, until they shrank to an occasional knee-high willow or birch. Then – nothing. No green thing. No hunters. No prey. Only snow.

  Torak turned, and was shocked to see that the Forest had dwindled to a charcoal line on the horizon.

  ‘It’s the edge of the world,’ said Renn, raising her voice above the wind. ‘How far does it go on? What if we fall off?’

  ‘If the edge of the world is out there,’ he said, ‘Wolf’s captors will fall off first.’

  To his surprise, she gave him a sharp-toothed grin.

  The day wore on. The snow was firmer than in the Forest, so they didn’t need their snowshoes, but the north wind blew it into low, hard ridges, which kept tripping them up.

  Then, abruptly, the wind dropped. Now it was blowing softly from the north-east.

  At first, it was a relief. Then Torak realized what was happening. He couldn’t see his feet. He was standing in a river of snow. Around his calves, long, ghostly streams were flowing like smoke, obliterating the trail.

  ‘The wind’s covering the tracks!’ he shouted. ‘It knows we need them, so it’s destroying them!’

  Renn ran ahead to see if the trail was any clearer. She threw up her arms. ‘Nothing! Not even you could find it!’ As she ran back to him, he saw her expression, and his heart sank. He knew what she was going to say, because he’d been thinking it himself. ‘Torak, this is wrong! We can’t survive out here. We’ve got to go back.’

  ‘But people do live here, don’t they?’ he insisted. ‘The Ice clans? The Narwals, the Ptarmigans, the White Foxes? Isn’t that what Fin-Kedinn said?’

  ‘They know how. We don’t.’

  ‘But – we have dried meat and firewood. And we can find our way by the North Star. We can bind our eyes with wovenbark to keep out the glare, and – and there is prey out here. Willow grouse. Hare. That’s how Fin-Kedinn managed.’

  ‘And when the wood runs out?’ said Renn.

  ‘There’s that willow he talked about, the kind that only grows ankle high, but you can still –’

  ‘Can you see any willow out here? It’s buried under snow!’

  Her face was pale, and he knew that behind what she said lay a deeper dread. The clans whispered stories about the Far North. Blizzards so powerful they carried you screaming into the sky. Great white bears that were bigger and fiercer than any in the Forest. Snowfalls that buried you alive. And Renn knew about snowfalls. When she was seven summers old, her father had ventured onto the ice river east of Lake Axehead. He’d never come back.

  ‘We can’t do this on our own,’ she said.

  Torak rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I agree. At least, for tonight. We should make camp.’

  She looked relieved. ‘There’s a hill over there. We can dig a snow cave.’

  He nodded. ‘And then I’m going to do what it takes to find the trail.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said uneasily.

  He hesitated. ‘I’m going to spirit walk.’

  Her mouth fell open. ‘Torak. No.’

  ‘Listen to me. Ever si
nce we saw that raven, I’ve been thinking about it. I can spirit walk in a bird, I’m sure of it. I can go high in the sky, see far into the distance. I can see the trail!’

  Renn folded her arms. ‘Birds can fly. You can’t.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to,’ he said. ‘My souls would be inside the bird’s body – say it’s a raven – I’d see what the raven sees, I’d feel what it feels. But I’d still be me.’

  She walked in a circle, then faced him. ‘Saeunn says you’re not ready. She’s the Clan Mage. She knows.’

  ‘I did it last summer –’

  ‘By accident! And it hurt! And you couldn’t control it! Torak, your souls could get stuck inside, you might never get out! Then what happens to your body? The one that’s lying on the snow, with only its world-soul keeping it alive?’ Her voice was shrill, and there were two spots of colour on her cheeks. ‘You’d die, that’s what! I’d have to sit in the snow and watch you die!’

  He couldn’t argue with her, because everything she said was true. So he said, ‘I need you to help me find a raven. I need you to help me loosen my souls. Are you going to help me or not?’

  SIX

  ‘First,’ said Torak, ‘we’ve got to attract a raven.’

  He waited for Renn to comment, but she was hacking out the snow cave, making it plain that she wanted no part of this.

  ‘I spotted a nest at the edge of the Forest,’ he said.

  Her axe struck, and chunks of snow flew.

  ‘It’s a daywalk away,’ he added, ‘but they may come foraging out here. And I brought bait.’

  She stopped in mid-swing. ‘What bait?’

  From his pack he pulled a squirrel. ‘I shot it yesterday. While I was filling the waterskins.’

  ‘You planned this,’ she said accusingly.

  He glanced at the squirrel. ‘Um. I thought I might need it.’

  Renn resumed her attack on the snow, hitting harder than before.

  Torak laid the squirrel twenty paces from where the shelter would be – so that, once his name-soul and clan-soul had left his body, they wouldn’t have far to go, to get into a raven. Well, that was the hope. He didn’t know if it would work, because he didn’t know anything about spirit walking. Nobody did.

  Drawing his knife, he slit the squirrel’s belly, and stood back to study the effect.

  ‘That’s not going to work,’ called Renn.

  ‘At least I’m trying,’ he retorted.

  She wiped her forehead on the back of her mitten. ‘No, I mean, you’re doing it wrong. Ravens are too clever to be fooled by that, they’ll think it’s a trap.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Torak. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Make it like a wolf kill. That’s what they look for, a kill.’

  He nodded, and set to work.

  Renn forgot about disapproving, and helped. They used her shoulder-bone scraper to chop up the squirrel’s liver, mixed it with snow, and spattered this around to resemble blood. Then Torak cut off a hind leg and tossed it to one side, ‘so that it’ll look as if a wolf trotted away to eat in peace.’

  Renn studied the “kill”. ‘Better,’ she said.

  The shadows were turning blue, and the wind had gone into the north, leaving a light breeze wafting snowflakes over the carcass. Torak said, ‘The ravens will be flying home to roost. If they come, it won’t be before first light.’

  Renn shivered. ‘It doesn’t seem possible, but according to Fin-Kedinn, there are white foxes out here, so we’ll have to stay awake to keep them off the carcass.’

  ‘And we can’t have a fire, or the ravens will smell it.’

  Renn bit her lip. ‘You do know that you can’t have anything to eat? To go into a trance, you need to fast.’

  Torak had forgotten that. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll eat when you’re not looking. Then I’ll make the paste for loosening your souls.’

  ‘Do you have what you need?’

  She patted her medicine pouch. ‘I gathered a few things in the Forest.’

  His lip curled. ‘You planned this.’

  She didn’t smile back. ‘I had a feeling I might need to.’

  The sky was darkening, and a few stars were glinting. ‘First light,’ murmured Torak.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Torak huddled in his sleeping-sack, and tried to stop shivering. He’d been shivering all night, and he was sick of it. Peering throught the slit in the snow cave, he saw the half-eaten moon shining bright. Dawn wasn’t far off. The sky was clear – and ravenless.

  In one mitten, he clutched a scrap of birch bark containing Renn’s soul-loosening paste: a mixture of deer fat and herbs which he was to smear on his face and hands when she gave the word. In the other, he held a small rawhide pouch fastened with sinew. What Renn called a “smoke-potion” smouldered inside. He’d asked what was in it, but she’d said it was better not to know, and he hadn’t insisted. Renn had a talent for Magecraft, which for reasons she never went into, she tried to ignore. Practising it put her in a bad mood.

  His belly rumbled, and she nudged him with her elbow. He refrained from nudging back. He was so hungry that if a raven didn’t come soon, he’d eat the squirrel.

  A thin scarlet line had just appeared in the east, when a black shape slid across the stars.

  Again, Renn nudged him.

  ‘I see it,’ he whispered.

  A smaller shape glided after the first: the raven’s mate. Wingtip to wingtip, they wheeled over the kill – then flew away.

  Some time later, they came back for another pass, flying a little lower. At the fifth pass, they flew so low that Torak heard their wingbeats: a strong, rhythmic ‘wsh wsh wsh’.

  He watched their heads turn from side to side, scanning the land below. He was glad he’d buried the gear beside the snow cave, which Renn had made into a featureless mound, with only a slit for air and observation. Ravens are the cleverest of birds, with senses sharp as grass.

  Yellow fire spilled over the edge of the world, but still the ravens circled, spying out the “kill”.

  Suddenly, one folded its wings and dropped out of the sky.

  Torak slipped off both mittens, to be ready.

  Silently, the raven lit down on the snow. Its breath smoked as it stared at the shelter. Its wingspan was wider than Torak’s outstretched arms, and it was utterly black. Eyes, feathers, legs, claws; like the First Raven herself, who woke the sun from its winter sleep, and was burnt black for her pains.

  This raven, however, was more interested in the squirrel, which it approached at a cautious, stiff-legged walk.

  ‘Now?’ mouthed Torak.

  Renn shook her head.

  The raven gave the carcass a tentative peck. Then it hopped high in the air, landed – and flew off. It was checking that the squirrel was really dead.

  When the carcass didn’t move, both ravens flew down. Warily they walked towards it.

  ‘Now!’ mouthed Renn.

  Torak smeared on the paste. It had a sour green smell that stung his eyes and made his skin prickle. Then he unfastened the pouch and sucked in the smoke-potion.

  ‘Swallow it all,’ Renn whispered in his ear, ‘and don’t cough!’

  The smoke was bitter, the urge to cough almost overwhelming. He felt Renn’s breath on his cheek. ‘May the guardian fly with you!’

  Feeling sick, he watched the big raven tug at the frozen innards. A sharp pain tugged at his own insides – and for a moment he felt a surge of panic. No, no I don’t want to . . .

  . . . and suddenly he was tugging at the squirrel’s guts with his powerful beak, slicing off delicious tatters of frozen meat.

  Swiftly he filled his throat-pouch; then pecked out an eye. Enjoying its slippery smoothness on his tongue, he hitched his wings and hopped onto the wind, and it bore him up, up into the light.

  The wind was freezing and unimaginably strong, and his heart swelled with joy as it carried him higher. He loved the coldness rippling under his feather
s, and the smell of ice in his nostrils, and the wind’s wild laughter screaming through him. He loved the ease with which he rode upwards, twisting and turning with the merest tilt of his wings – he loved the power of his beautiful black wings!

  A slippery ‘wsh’ – and his mate was at his side. As she folded her wings and rolled off the wind, she gave a graceful twitch of her tail, asking him to sky-dance. He slid after her and locked his icy talons in hers, and together they drew in their wings and dived.

  Through the streaming cold they sped, through a blur of black feathers and splintered sun, exulting in their speed as the great white world rushed up to meet them.

  Of one accord they unlocked their talons, and he snapped open his wings and struck the wind, and now he was soaring again, soaring towards the sun.

  With his raven eyes he could see for ever. Far to the east, the tiny speck of a white fox trotted through the snow. To the south lay the dark rim of the Forest. To the west he saw the wrinkled ice of the frozen Sea. To the north: two figures in the snow.

  With a cry he sped off in pursuit.

  ‘Cark?’ called his startled mate.

  He left her, and the white land flowed beneath him.

  As he drew nearer, he swooped, and in an instant that burned into his mind for ever, he took in every detail.

  He saw two figures straining to haul a sled. He saw Wolf strapped to the sled, unable to move. As he strained to catch the least twitch of a paw, the smallest flicker which would tell him that Wolf was still alive, he saw the bigger man pause, pull his parka over his head, and loosen the neck of his jerkin to let out the heat. He saw the blue-black tattoo on the man’s breastbone: the three-pronged fork for snaring souls. The mark of the Soul-Eater.

  From his raven beak came a horrified croak. The Soul-Eaters. The Soul-Eaters have taken Wolf.

  He flew higher, and the sun blinded him. The wind gave a furious twist, and threw him off.

  His courage cracked like thin ice.