Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  The night was quiet. Nothing but the restless wind, and an occasional rumble as the ice river shifted in its sleep. The stars had never looked so distant or so cold. She longed for voices. People, foxes, anyone. “Voice hunger” is what the clans of the north call it: when you’re alone on the ice, and you crave voices more than warmth or meat; because you don’t want to die alone.

  It wasn’t fair. Why should she go down into the ice with the demons? She wanted to see Torak again, and Fin-Kedinn, and Wolf.

  ‘What you want doesn’t matter,’ she said out loud, ‘this is how it is.’ Her voice sounded old and cracked, like Saeunn’s.

  Above the ice river, a slash of deep crimson appeared: a wound in the sky.

  She watched the crimson melt to orange, then to a blazing yellow. No more excuses. She got to her feet. The Death Marks were stiff on her skin. The fire-opal was heavy on her breast. Shouldering her faithful bow, she started for the cliffs.

  It began to snow. White flakes speckling black ice, an eerie reversal of how things should be. The ice was jagged. She had to fight her way over towering ridges and bottomless cracks. One slip, and she’d be swallowed, with no hope of getting out. And she had to get further in, to the black chasm right under the cliffs. That was where she would unmask the fire-opal, and summon the demons. That was where she would lead them down into the dark.

  An ear-splitting groan – and to the south, part of the cliff-face collapsed. Billowing clouds of ice blasted her face. Nothing could withstand the might of the ice river. Not even demons.

  She brushed off her parka, and pressed on.

  It was noon by the time she neared the darkness under the cliffs. In the driving snow she stood on a ridge, staring down at the slash in the belly of the ice river.

  There, she thought. In there it will be buried for good.

  Torak had been walking all night, following Wolf’s tracks by the glimmer of the Soul-Eaters’ rushlight. Behind him Nef and Thiazzi trudged with the skinboats on their shoulders; in front went Seshru, the rushlight in one hand, the rope that bound his wrists in the other. At times, he sensed the sinister presence of Eostra, although he never saw her; but when he glanced up, there was the shadowy form of an eagle owl, wheeling against the stars.

  His chest ached, his feet dragged. He forced himself to keep going. Nothing mattered, except finding Renn. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he twisted his wrists so that the rawhide bit into his flesh. He had to leave a blood trail. That was part of the plan.

  Dawn came. In the ashen light, the land was humped and menacing. He sensed they were being followed. Either Wolf had come back, or his plan was working – but far too soon.

  Seshru jerked at the rope, yanking him forwards.

  Pretending to stumble, Torak fell to his knees, rubbing his bloody wrists in the snow.

  ‘Up!’ snapped Seshru, giving a tug that made him cry out.

  ‘Listen to him whine,’ sneered Thiazzi. ‘Like that wolf when I stamped on his tail. Whining like a cub.’

  You’ll pay for that, thought Torak as he staggered to his feet. I don’t know how, but you will pay.

  Noon approached. It began to snow. Through the flying whiteness, Torak made out a long, low hill. Beyond it he heard the boom of the ice river; far to the south, on the very edge of hearing, the howling of wolves.

  Seshru had reached the top of the hill. Her face was blank as a mask in its slit-eyed visor, and her black tongue flicked out to taste the air. She smiled. ‘The demons are coming.’

  Nef dropped the skinboat and hobbled up the slope. As she whipped off her visor, Torak was shocked to see how she’d aged in the course of one night. ‘There,’ said the Bat Mage. ‘She’s down there in the shadow of the cliffs.’

  Renn halted twenty paces from the chasm, in the lee of a ridge of black ice.

  Slipping her hands out of her mittens, she drew the swansfoot pouch from inside her parka. Her fingers were shaking so badly that it took several attempts to loosen the neck of the pouch, but at last she managed, and the fire-opal rolled onto her palm. It lay dull and lifeless; strangely heavier than when she’d carried it in the pouch, and so cold that it burned her skin.

  You couldn’t stop this now, she thought. Even if you wanted to.

  Snow fell thickly, chilling her palm, but the fire-opal remained untouched.

  Deep within the stone, a crimson spark flickered. The spark flared to a flame. Pure. Steady. Beautiful . . .

  Shutting her eyes, Renn made a cage around it with her fingers. When she looked again, it was still glowing: crimson light bleeding through her flesh.

  Snow swirled in her face. Beneath her boots the black ice shuddered. She raised her hand, and held up the fire-opal.

  The ice river fell silent. The wind dropped to a whisper. Waiting to see what would come.

  At first it was only a distant rustling: a murmur of hunger and hatred on the wind. Then it swelled to a raucous clamour that pierced her skull and beat at her spirit. The demons were coming.

  An arrow shattered the ice a hand’s breadth from her head.

  ‘Don’t move!’ A man’s voice shouted.

  Torak scarcely recognized Renn.

  Her red hair floated like flame in the whirling snow, and her white face was severely beautiful as she held up the fire-opal. She didn’t look like his friend any more, she looked like the World Spirit in winter: a woman with bare red willow branches for hair, who walks the snow alone, striking terror in all she meets.

  ‘Don’t move!’ bellowed the Oak Mage again.

  ‘We will shoot!’ warned the Bat Mage.

  ‘You can’t escape!’ cried the Viper Mage, nocking another arrow to her bow.

  ‘Get back!’ shouted Renn – and took a step towards the edge of the chasm, ten paces behind her. ‘There are cracks all around me, if you shoot, you’ll lose it for ever!’

  The Soul-Eaters froze. She was thirty paces away from them, well within arrowshot; but the risk was too great.

  Desperately, Torak tugged at the rope that bound his wrists behind him, but he couldn’t break free of the tether; Thiazzi had hammered the stake deep into the ice.

  Thinking fast, he slipped his hand out of his mitten, opened his fist, and dropped the black root onto the ice, then twisted round to reach it with his teeth. He prayed that he hadn’t left it too late, that his plan would work against the odds, and -

  A shadow flew over him. ‘Renn!’ he shouted. ‘Above you!’ She’d already seen it. As the eagle owl swooped towards her with talons outstretched, she lashed out with her knife, and sent it screeching skywards. ‘Stay back!’ she warned the Soul-Eaters sternly. ‘You can’t stop me!’

  ‘Renn, don’t do it!’ yelled Torak. ‘Don’t jump!’

  She seemed to see him for the first time. Her face crumpled, and she was Renn again. ‘Torak! I can’t –’

  Her eyes widened with horror as she stared at something behind him – and he turned, and saw, through the whirling whiteness, a black tide racing like cloudshadow over the ice.

  Demons.

  For a moment he could only watch the darkness sweeping towards him. Then he bent his head, caught the root in his mouth, and chewed – gagging, forcing himself to swallow.

  ‘Renn!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t jump!’

  ‘Don’t jump!’ shouted Torak – and Renn hesitated.

  Through the snow she saw him kneeling on the black ice: tied to a stake, his hood thrown back from his bruised face. The Soul-Eaters stood on either side of him, he didn’t stand a chance – and yet for a moment, hope made her falter. He sounded so certain.

  But the demons were sweeping closer, and the Soul-Eaters were moving forwards, bearing down on her.

  She saw Torak sway – and watched in horror as the blood left his face, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he pitched forwards onto the ice.

  Get up! she told him silently. Do something, anything, just let me know you’re still alive!

  He lay still.

 
It’s over, she thought in disbelief. I’m the only one left.

  Her fingers tightened about the fire-opal, and she edged backwards, closer to the chasm.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The bile was bitter in Torak’s mouth as he lay face down in the snow.

  With the last of his strength he turned his head, and saw Renn backing towards the chasm, and the Soul-Eaters advancing on her. Then the demons came roaring over him. He sensed their hunger for the fire-opal, and their terror of the wolves who hunted them: the white wolves of the north and the grey wolf of the Forest, who’d sought them tirelessly through the snow, and now came streaking across the ice, driving all before them.

  ‘Wolf . . .’ Torak tried to say, but his lips wouldn’t move. Cramps twisted his guts. The sickness came at him in waves.

  Just before he slid into darkness, he saw the Viper Mage turn, her mouth slack with horror. There, at the edge of the pack-ice: a great white bear exploded from the Sea . . .

  . . . and now he was surging onto the ice, shaking the water from his fur. He was leaping towards the evil ones, and they quailed before him, their terror rank on the wind.

  The Viper Mage faltered with an arrow nocked to her bow. She glanced from the bear to Torak’s slumped body, and her face contorted with fury. ‘The boy! The boy is the spirit walker!’

  With one sweep of his paw, the bear sent her screaming through the air, to land in a limp huddle on the ice. Over the crackling blackness he bounded, drinking in the scents streaming towards him on the wind. The fury of the Oak Mage, the terror of Renn. Before him the Bat Mage fled, the demons parted like a river. His growl filled the sky, his roar shattered ice. He was invincible!

  Torak felt the fury of the ice bear as his own; he felt its blood-urge drowning him in a crimson flood. He fought to conquer it . . .

  He lost.

  The killing hunger roared through him, the hunger which had led him as he’d followed the blood trail over the snow. He would slaughter this prey: the evil ones who dared invade his ice, the girl with the flaming hair! He would feast on their hot, tender hearts, he would kill them all!

  Before him the evil one with the pale hair brandished a feeble weapon. Scornfully he swatted it aside, delighting in the anguished howl of the fallen.

  The prey whimpered and squirmed. He moved in for the kill . . .

  . . . and a great grey wolf leapt in front of him. It stood facing him, its lips drawn back from its fangs in a snarl.

  The bear bellowed his rage. He reared and pounded the ice with his forepaws, twisting his head, roaring at the wolf.

  The wolf stood its ground, unafraid. Its amber eyes were fixed on the bear’s: steady and strong as the sun. They pierced the darkness of the bear’s souls, and found Torak. They saw his souls, they called to him. With an agonising jolt he shook himself free of the blood-urge – he knew Wolf, and he knew himself again. He wrenched the souls of the ice bear to his will.

  Thiazzi still cowered before him: his arm broken, his weapons lost.

  Torak faltered. Here was a Soul-Eater at his mercy: to be killed with a single shake of his terrible jaws. But now it wasn’t the blood-urge of the bear which drove him, it was his own. He would do the killing – with the might of the greatest of hunters at his command. And he wanted to kill. The Oak Mage had tortured Wolf, and tried to kill Renn, and hunted his father to death. Oh, how he wanted to kill!

  But Wolf’s amber eyes were fixed on him; and suddenly he knew that if he killed the Soul-Eater now, then, truly, he would become as one of them.

  With a deafening roar he rose once more on his hind legs, looming over the Oak Mage. With a roar he crashed down, pounding the ice so that black shards flew. He – would – not – kill!

  In the instant that he turned from killing, he saw Renn stagger to the chasm, poised to jump. He saw the Bat Mage hobble after her, snatch the fire-opal from her hand, and push her away from the edge with such force that she went flying.

  Then the Bat Mage turned with a look of bitter triumph, and called to Torak’s body lying on the ice: ‘The debt is repaid! Tell your father when you meet him! The debt is repaid!’

  She threw herself in – and the demons gave a rending howl, and leapt after her. The ice river groaned, the black ice collapsed, shutting the chasm for ever – and the light of the fire-opal was quenched.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Torak awoke on the ice, lying on his back.

  His head was spinning, and he felt sick. But the last snowflakes were drifting gently onto his face, and the sky had a lightness to it that told him the demons were gone.

  Renn sat beside him, her head on her knees. She was shaking.

  ‘You all right?’ he mumbled.

  She straightened up. She was very pale, and there was a Death Mark on her forehead that he hadn’t noticed before. ‘Mm,’ she said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Mm,’ he lied. He shut his eyes, and visions whirled in his head. The Bat Mage on the brink of the chasm. The Oak Mage cowering before him: him, the ice bear, bent on killing . . .

  ‘The Soul-Eaters are gone,’ said Renn. ‘They took the skinboats and fled. At least, I think they did.’ She told him how she’d scrambled to safety just before the ice crashed down; and how, when the snow clouds had cleared, the Viper Mage and the Oak Mage were gone. So was the eagle owl, and the white wolves.

  Torak opened his eyes. ‘Where’s Wolf?’

  ‘He hasn’t gone far.’ She plucked at the fur of her mitten. ‘He helped me find you. I couldn’t see for the snow, then I heard him howling. It was horrible. I thought he was mourning you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Torak.

  ‘The Viper Mage,’ she said with a catch in her voice. ‘She knows you’re a spirit walker.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So now they all know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She stared across the ice and shivered. ‘What did the Bat Mage mean, “The debt is repaid”?’

  He told her how his father had once stopped the Bat Mage from killing herself.

  ‘Ah,’ said Renn. Then she put something heavy into his hand. ‘Here. This is for you.’

  It was Fa’s blue slate knife.

  ‘When she pushed me aside,’ said Renn, ‘she must have stuck it in my belt. I didn’t find it till afterwards.’

  Torak’s fingers closed over the hilt. ‘She wasn’t wholly bad,’ he murmured. ‘Not all the way through.’

  Renn stared at him. ‘She was a Soul-Eater!’

  ‘But she did her best to repair what she’d done.’

  He thought about the souls of the Bat Mage, trapped in the black ice with the demons. And he thought about the small dark shadow he’d seen lifting off from Nef’s shoulder just before she jumped. She’d sent her beloved bat away so that it wouldn’t perish with her.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it,’ said Renn in a low voice. ‘The ice bear. You spirit walked in the ice bear.’

  He met her eyes, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Torak, you might never have got out! You might have been trapped in it for good!’

  Painfully he raised himself on one elbow. ‘There was nothing else I could do.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You were the one who risked everything, who was prepared to give your life to keep the fire-opal buried. That was so brave . . . I can’t imagine doing that.’

  She scowled, and plucked more fur off her mitten. Then she shrugged. ‘There was nothing else I could do.’

  Silence between them. Renn took a handful of snow and scrubbed the Death Mark off her forehead. Then she set about cleaning the wounds on Torak’s wrists.

  ‘What if no ice bear had come?’ she said. ‘What would you have done then?’

  ‘I’d have spirit walked in Thiazzi,’ he said without hesitation, ‘or Seshru. I wasn’t going to let you die.’

  She blinked. ‘You saved my life. If you hadn’t –’

  ‘Wolf saved us,’ said Torak. ‘He hunted down the demons. He stopped me killi
ng Thiazzi. He saved us all.’

  As if they’d summoned him, Wolf came loping over the ice, slipped, righted himself with a deft twirl of his shortened tail, and skittered to a halt in a shower of snow. Then he pounced on Torak and gave him a thorough face-licking.

  Suddenly Torak wanted to bury his head in Wolf’s scruff and cry till his heart broke: for the Bat Mage, for himself, and in a tangled way, for his father.

  ‘Here,’ said Renn, holding out a scrap of seal meat.

  He sniffed; took the meat, and tried to sit up, but the pain in his chest made him wince.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ said Renn.

  ‘No, I just fell. Bruised my chest.’

  ‘Do you want me to take a look?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘I’m fine.’

  She looked puzzled. Then she gave another shrug, and went off to leave a piece of meat for the clan guardian. When she came back, she gave another piece to Wolf, keeping the last for herself.

  They ate in silence, watching the sun sink towards the Sea. The wind had gone, and the ice river was asleep. The afternoon was still. Torak watched a solitary raven rowing across the vast white sky – and was suddenly sharply aware of how far they were from the Forest.

  He glanced at Renn, and saw that she’d had the same thought.

  She said, ‘We’ve got no food, no blubber, and no skinboat. How in the name of the Spirit are we going to get home?’

  That was how Fin-Kedinn and Inuktiluk found them when they came up from the south in their skinboats: Torak and Renn huddled together on the ice, with Wolf standing guard beside them.

  FORTY

  After that first stunned moment, Renn had given a strangled sob and thrown herself at her uncle. He’d stood on the ice and held her, and she’d breathed in his smell of reindeer hide and Forest.

  He’d borrowed a skinboat from the Sea-eagle Clan, he told her, and kept to the leads between the skerries and the coast until he’d reached the camp of his old friends, the White Foxes.