Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  Inuktiluk whistled, and the hillocks erupted into six large dogs. They yawned and wagged their tails as they shook off the snow, and Inuktiluk batted away their noses as he untangled their harnesses and checked their paws for ice cuts.

  With her thumbnail, Renn prised a shred of meat from between her teeth. ‘The Walker said “the foxes” would tell us how to find the Eye of the Viper. Maybe he meant the White Foxes.’

  Torak had thought of that too. ‘But can we risk it?’ he said. He wanted to trust Inuktiluk, but he’d learned the hard way that a man can do kind things, and still hide a rotten heart.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Renn. ‘We won’t tell him anything. Not till we know we can trust him.’

  Inuktiluk was turning their clothes inside out, and laying them on the sled. They froze in moments, and he beat the ice from them with the flat of his snow-knife. Then he fetched meat and tossed it to the dogs.

  Five were full-grown, but the sixth was a puppy of about five moons. Its pads hadn’t yet toughened, and it wore rawhide paw-boots; it squealed with pleasure as Inuktiluk flipped it onto its back, to check that they were securely fastened.

  Torak thought of Wolf, and the dream returned to darken his spirit. He told Renn about it. Then he said, ‘Wolf was with Fa, and Fa is dead. So was it Fa’s spirit who sent the dream? Was he telling me that Wolf is dead too?’

  ‘Or maybe,’ said Renn, ‘it wasn’t your father’s spirit that dreamed to you, but Wolf’s. Maybe he’s asking you for help.’

  ‘But he must know that we’re coming for him.’

  She looked unhappy.

  He was wondering if now was the time to tell her about the Soul-Eaters, when Inuktiluk returned.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he said sternly.

  Their clothes were drier, but uncomfortably cold. It didn’t help that Inuktiluk watched them with evident disapproval. ‘You’re much too thin. To survive on the ice, you need to be fat! Don’t you even know that? Everything in the north is fat! Seals, bears, people!’ Then he asked them what names they carried.

  They exchanged glances. Renn told him their names and clans.

  Inuktiluk seemed startled to learn that Torak was Wolf Clan. ‘That makes it worse,’ he murmured.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Torak.

  Inuktiluk frowned. ‘We won’t talk of it here.’

  ‘I think we must,’ said Torak. ‘You saved our lives, and we’re grateful. But please. Tell us why you were looking for us.’

  The White Fox man hesitated. ‘I’ll tell you this. Three sleeps ago, one of our elders went into a trance to watch the night fires in the sky, and the spirits of the Dead sent her a vision. A girl with red willow hair, like the World Spirit in winter; and a boy with wolf eyes.’ He paused. ‘The boy was about to do a great evil. That’s why I had to find you. To stop you bringing evil to the people of the ice.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Torak said hotly.

  Inuktiluk ignored that. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here, where you don’t belong?’

  When they didn’t answer, he rolled up the sleeping-sacks and headed out. ‘Rub more blubber on your faces, and bring the lamp. We’re leaving.’

  ‘Where?’ said Torak and Renn together.

  ‘Our camp.’

  ‘Why?’ said Renn. ‘What are you going to do to us?’

  Inuktiluk looked offended. ‘We’re not going to harm you, that’s not our way! We’ll just give you better gear, and send you home.’

  ‘You can’t make us go back,’ said Torak.

  To his surprise, Inuktiluk burst out laughing. ‘Of course I can! I’ve got all your gear strapped to my sled!’

  After that, they had no choice but to follow him outside.

  He’d already put on his owl-eyed visor, and now he tossed them both a pair. Then he snatched up a supple hide whip fully twenty paces long, and at once the dogs began howling and lashing their tails, eager to be off.

  ‘Why is the sled pointing west?’ said Renn uneasily.

  ‘That’s where our camp is,’ said Inuktiluk. ‘On the sea ice, where the seals are.’

  ‘West?’ cried Torak. ‘But we’ve got to go north!’

  Inuktiluk turned on him. ‘North? Two children who know nothing of the ways of the ice? You’d be dead before the next sleep! Now get on the sled!’

  NINE

  The north wind howled over the white hills, and blasted the hunched spruce trees on the plains. It whistled through the northern reaches of the Forest, and whipped up the snow on the banks of the Axehandle, where the Raven Clan had pitched camp. It would have woken Fin-Kedinn – except that he was already awake. Since the Willows had given him Torak’s message, he’d barely slept.

  Someone has taken Wolf. We’re going to get him back.

  ‘But to rush off without thinking,’ said the Raven Leader. With a stick he stabbed the fire that glowed at the entrance to his shelter. ‘Why didn’t he come back and seek help?’

  ‘Why didn’t the girl?’ said Saeunn in her raven’s croak. Without blinking, she met his look of pure blue anger. She was the only member of the clan who dared brave his displeasure.

  They sat in silence, while above them the wind did its best to waken the Forest. The Raven Mage tented her robe over her bony knees, and stretched her shrunken claws to the fire.

  Fin-Kedinn gave it another stab – and a dog, who’d been thinking about trying to slip inside, put back his ears and slunk off to find another shelter.

  ‘I didn’t think he’d be so reckless,’ said Fin-Kedinn. ‘To head for the Far North . . .’

  ‘How do you know he has?’ said Saeunn.

  He hesitated. ‘A Ptarmigan hunting party saw them in the distance. They told me this morning.’

  Thoughtfully, Saeunn stroked her spiral amulet with a fingernail as ridged and yellow as horn. ‘You want to go in search of them. You want to find your brother’s child and bring her back.’

  The Raven Leader rubbed a hand over his dark-red beard. ‘I can’t risk the safety of the clan by leading them into the Far North.’

  Saeunn studied him with the icy dispassion of one who has never felt affection for any living creature. ‘And yet you want to.’

  ‘I’ve just said that I can’t,’ he replied. He threw away the stick, suppressing a wince. The wind had woken the old wound in his thigh.

  ‘Then have done with it,’ said Saeunn, shrugging her shoulders like a raven hitching its wings. ‘The girl has shown herself to be wilful and stubborn, I can do no more with her. As for the boy, he has allowed his – feelings’ – her lipless mouth puckered – ‘to get in the way.’

  ‘He’s thirteen summers old,’ said Fin-Kedinn.

  ‘He has a destiny,’ the Mage said coldly. ‘His life is not his own, he may not risk it for a friend! He doesn’t understand that, but he will. When he fails to find the wolf, he’ll return, and you can punish them both.’

  Fin-Kedinn stared into the embers. ‘I was going to foster him,’ he said. ‘I should have told him. Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe – he would have asked me for help.’

  Saeunn spat into the fire. ‘Why trouble yourself? Let him go! Let him go and seek his wolf!’

  TEN

  Wolf is in the other Now that he goes to in his sleeps. He can lope faster than the fastest deer, and bring down an auroch on his own; and yet, when he wakes up, he’s just as hungry as if he hadn’t killed at all.

  This time, he is a cub again. He’s cold and wet, and his mother and father and pack-brothers are lying still and Not-Breath in the mud. The Fast Wet did this. It came roaring through while Wolf was exploring on the rise.

  He puts up his muzzle and howls.

  On the other side of the Fast Wet, a wolf is coming, coming to rescue him!

  Wolf bursts into a frenzied welcome. Then his welcome turns to puzzlement. This is such a strange wolf. Its scent is that of a half-grown male, but it smells of other creatures too, it walks on its hind legs, and it has no
tail!

  And yet – it has the light, bright eyes of a wolf; and something in its spirit calls to his. He has found a new pack-brother. A pack-brother who will never abandon him . . .

  Wolf woke with a snap.

  He was back on the sliding tree, squashed beneath the hated deerhide, jolting over the Bright Soft Cold. He longed for that other Now, in which he was a cub again, being rescued by Tall Tailless.

  His head ached, and he’d been sick in his sleep, but he couldn’t move to lick himself clean. His wounded pad hurt. His trodden-on tail hurt more.

  Stinkfur came and pushed in another piece of meat – which Wolf ignored. On and on they dragged him, while the Light sank, and the Bright Soft Cold came drifting down from the Up.

  After a while, Wolf smelt that they’d entered the range of a pack of stranger wolves. That meant danger.

  The big pale-pelted male went off on his own, and hope leapt in Wolf’s heart. Maybe Pale-Pelt would be foolish enough to attack the stranger wolves, and they would defend themselves, and he would be killed!

  Much later, Pale-Pelt returned – unharmed. He was smiling his terrible smile, and carrying a small deerhide Den which wriggled and snarled. Wolf smelt the rank fury of a wolverine. A wolverine? What did this mean?

  But he couldn’t hold onto that for long, because he was getting tired again, sliding down into sleep.

  A great owl hooted – and he woke. Without knowing why, his fur prickled with dread.

  The owl fell silent. That was worse.

  Wolf was now fully awake. While he’d slept, the Dark had come, and the sliding tree had stopped. The bad taillesses were some paces away, crouching round the Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot. Wolf sensed that they were waiting for something. Something bad.

  Around him the strange white land lay windless and still. He smelt a hare nibbling willow buds many lopes away. He heard the tiny scratchings of lemmings in their Dens, and the hiss of the Bright Soft Cold falling, falling.

  Then through the Dark he heard a tailless approaching. His claws twitched with eagerness. Could it be Tall Tailless, come to rescue him?

  His hope was swiftly torn to pieces. It wasn’t his pack-brother. It was a female whom Wolf hadn’t smelt before. He knew that she was part of the bad pack, for he saw the others rise on their hind legs to wait for her. He felt their dread as she came gliding through the hissing whiteness.

  She was tall and very thin, and the pale fur of her head hung about her like worms. Her voice was as the rattle of dry bones, and her smell was of Not-Breath.

  The others greeted her quietly in tailless talk; but although they hid it, Wolf smelt their fear. Even Pale-Pelt was afraid. So was Wolf.

  Now she turned, and came towards him.

  He cowered. His very spirit shrank from hers.

  She came closer. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. There was something terribly wrong with her face. It was blank as stone, and it didn’t move at all, not even a twitch of her muzzle when she spoke. And her eyes were not eyes, but holes.

  Wolf growled and tried to pull away, but the deerhide held him fast.

  Now she was leaning over him, and her Not-Breath smell was dragging him down into a black fog of loneliness and loss.

  Slowly she brought one forepaw close to his muzzle. She was holding something – he couldn’t see what – but he caught the scent of that which has lain long in the deep of the earth. Through her pale flesh he glimpsed a grey light, and he knew, with the strange certainty that came to him sometimes, that what she held bit as fiercely as the Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot. Except that it bit cold.

  His growl became a terrified whimper. He shut his eyes and tried to think of Tall Tailless coming for him through the Bright Soft Cold: coming to rescue him, just as he’d done when Wolf was a cub.

  ELEVEN

  Inuktiluk’s sled hurtled west, carrying Torak and Renn the wrong way. The only sounds were the panting of dogs and the scrape of runners on crusted snow; and an occasional gasp from Renn as they banked on a slope, and leaned in hard to avoid toppling over.

  ‘You can’t watch us all the time,’ Torak told Inuktiluk when they’d stopped to rest by a wide, frozen lake. ‘Sooner or later, we’ll get away.’

  ‘Where would you go?’ retorted Inuktiluk. ‘You’d never make it north, you’d never get round the ice river.’

  They stared at him. ‘What ice river?’

  ‘It’s about a sleep from here. No-one in the Ice clans has crossed it and lived.’

  Torak set his teeth. ‘We’ve crossed an ice river before.’

  Inuktiluk snorted. ‘Not one like this.’

  ‘Then we’ll go around it,’ said Renn.

  Inuktiluk threw up his hands. Whistling to his lead dog, he started across the lake. ‘We cross on foot,’ he told them. ‘Walk behind me, and do exactly as I say!’

  Burning with frustration, they followed – and were soon absorbed in the difficult task of simply staying upright.

  ‘Keep to the white ice,’ called Inuktiluk.

  ‘What’s wrong with the grey ice?’ said Renn, eyeing a patch to her right.

  ‘That’s new ice. Very dangerous! If you ever have to cross it, stay apart – and keep moving.’

  Torak and Renn glanced at each other, and widened the gap between them.

  Even the white ice was wind-polished to a treacherous slipperiness, and they slowed to an anxious shuffle. Inuktiluk’s boots seemed to grip the ice, allowing him to stride ahead, and the dogs’ sharp claws proved best of all; but the puppy slithered about in his seal-hide boots, reminding Torak painfully of Wolf. As a cub, he’d been forever tripping over his paws.

  ‘How deep is the lake?’ asked Renn.

  Inuktiluk laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter! The cold will kill you before you can shout for help!’

  It was a relief to reach the shore and climb onto solid snow. While Inuktiluk checked the dogs’ paws, Torak drew Renn aside. ‘There’s more cover up ahead,’ he whispered, ‘we might be able to get away!’

  ‘And go where?’ she replied. ‘How do we get round the ice river? How do we find the Eye of the Viper? Face it, Torak, we need him!’

  The land became harder to cross, with jagged ridges and swooping declines. To help the dogs, they jumped off and ran up the slopes, leaping back on the sled as it sped downhill, while Inuktiluk slowed it by digging in the tines of a reindeer-antler brake.

  The cold sapped their strength, but the White Fox man was tireless. Clearly he loved his strange, icy land, and he seemed troubled that they knew so little about it. He insisted that they drink often, even when they weren’t thirsty, and he made them carry their waterskins inside their parkas, to stop them freezing. He also made them ration the amount of blubber they ate or smeared on their faces. ‘You’ll need it for melting ice,’ he said. ‘Remember, you only have as much water as you have blubber for melting ice!’

  Seeing their puzzled expressions, he sighed. ‘If you’re to survive, you need to do as we do. Follow the ways of the creatures of the ice. The willow grouse burrows a shelter in the snow. We do too. The eider duck lines her nest with her feathers. We do the same with our sleeping-sacks. We eat our meat raw, like the ice bear. We borrow the strength and endurance of reindeer and seal, by making our clothes from their hides. This is the way of the ice.’ He squinted at the sky. ‘Above all, we pay heed to the wind, which rules our lives.’

  As if in answer, it began blowing from the north. Torak felt its icy touch on his face, and knew that it was not appeased.

  Inuktiluk must have guessed his thoughts, because he pointed to the far shore of the lake, where one of the stone men stood. ‘We build those to honour it. Sooner or later, you’ll have to make an offering.’

  Torak worried about that. At the bottom of his pack lay Fa’s blue slate knife, and in his medicine pouch, his mother’s medicine horn. He couldn’t imagine parting with either.

  Around noon, they came to an eerie land where giant slabs of ice tilted crazily. Fro
m deep within came hollow groans and echoing cracks. The dogs flattened their ears, and Inuktiluk gripped an eagle-claw amulet sewn to his parka.

  ‘This is the shore ice,’ he said in a low voice, ‘where land ice and sea ice fight for mastery. We must get through quickly.’

  Renn craned her neck at a jagged spike looming overhead. ‘It feels as if there are demons here.’

  The White Fox looked at her sharply. ‘This is one of the places where Sea demons get close to the skin of our world. They’re restless. Trying to get out.’

  ‘Can they?’ said Torak.

  ‘Sometimes one slips through a crack.’

  ‘It’s the same in the Forest,’ said Renn. ‘The Mages keep watch, but a few demons always escape.’

  Inuktiluk nodded. ‘This winter it’s been worse than most. In the Dark Time, when the sun was dead, a demon sent a great island of ice surging inland. It crushed a Walrus Clan shelter, killing everyone inside. A little later, another demon sent a sickness that took the child of a woman of my clan. Then her older boy went onto the ice. We searched, but we never found him.’ He paused. ‘This is why we must send you south. You bring great evil.’

  ‘We didn’t bring it,’ said Torak.

  ‘We followed it,’ said Renn.

  ‘Tell me what you mean,’ urged the White Fox.

  They stayed silent. Torak felt bad, as he was growing to like Inuktiluk.

  They pressed on through the broken mountains of ice. At last the shore ice gave way to flatter, crinkled ice. To Torak’s surprise, Inuktiluk squared his shoulders and breathed deeply. ‘Ah! Sea ice! Much better!’

  Torak didn’t share his ease. The ice before him seemed to be bending. Bewildered, he watched it gently rising and falling, like the hide of some enormous creature.

  ‘Yes,’ said Inuktiluk, ‘it bends with the breath of the Sea Mother. Soon, in the Moon of Roaring Rivers, the thaw will begin, and this place will become deadly. Great cracks – tide cracks, we call them – appear beneath your feet, and swallow you up. But for now, it’s a good place to hunt.’