Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  ‘No,’ she snapped.

  He raised an eyebrow, but made no comment.

  Watched by Ananda and a cluster of silent Otters, they made their way towards the hatch, then climbed down the rope ladder and into the skinboat.

  ‘Our gear’s all stowed,’ said Bale as he untied the moorings and pushed off. ‘Let’s go before they change their minds.’

  The Lake was treacherous with hidden currents, and the skinboat bucked wildly. Several times, Renn nearly fell out.

  ‘It doesn’t like fresh water,’ said Bale, excusing his beloved craft’s poor performance. ‘It’s my fault. It sits much lower than in the Sea, I’m not used to that.’

  Huddled behind him, Renn was soon soaked, despite the beaver-hide mantle she’d found in one of the packs. She felt like a burden. Bale was much stronger and better at skinboating, and when she did try to help, she ended up clashing paddles with his.

  Every so often, she made herself feel useful by taking out her grouse-bone whistle and calling for Wolf. But she never got an answer, and that only made things worse.

  Dread settled inside her when she thought of what lay ahead. She will use her power, the Otter Mage had said. But Renn didn’t want to use her power, not ever.

  They pitched camp for the night in a sheltered bay. Their Forest food had run out, but the Otters had provisioned them with salmonskins of roasted reed pollen, so they made a cheerless gruel.

  Bale seemed preoccupied. When they’d eaten he said, ‘What did the Otter Mage mean when she said you’re afraid of your power?’

  Renn braced herself.

  ‘She meant Magecraft, didn’t she?’ When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘If we can’t find Torak, it might be the only way. You have the skill. Why not use it?’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she muttered.

  ‘But for Torak. You’d do it for Torak?’

  She made no reply.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘I’m not afraid!’

  After that, they didn’t speak. Bale upended the skinboat on shoresticks and covered it with pine boughs for a shelter, then rolled himself in his beaver-fur mantle and turned his back on her. It was a long time before Renn got to sleep.

  They paddled east throughout the next day, but saw no sign of Torak. Renn had no sense that they were getting closer to him – but they were getting closer to something. The dread inside her grew worse.

  As the sun began to sink, they were buffeted by a strong east wind, and Bale had to work hard to keep them moving forwards. Then, as they rounded an island, Renn felt a chill on her face, and there it was: the relentless glare of the ice river.

  The dread in her belly hardened to stone. Somewhere out there, her father had found his death.

  Bale twisted to face her. ‘This doesn’t feel right. Why would he go there? There’s no prey, nothing!’

  ‘The Otter Mage said we would find what we sought in the east.’ But Renn knew better than most that the prophesies of Mages are tricky things, and can have many different meanings.

  As they paddled nearer, the chill became a freezing blast, and the ice turned blue. Renn craned her neck at the shining cliffs which towered overhead. She heard the trickle of meltwater, but she couldn’t see it. No falls tumbling from the cliffs; just that dazzling blue ice.

  ‘We’re too close,’ said Bale. ‘We’d better turn back, make camp at that bay we passed. We’ve come as far east as we can.’

  In her sleep that night, Renn saw Torak.

  He crouched on a beach of black sand, his clothes in tatters, his face wild and hopeless as he lashed out with a flaming brand – lashed out at Wolf.

  Renn gasped – and woke.

  Bale was gone.

  Emerging from the shelter, she saw him watching two reed boats putting out from their bay.

  ‘I had a dream,’ she told him. ‘Torak’s worse, he can’t last much longer.’

  Bale nodded grimly. ‘Trouble is, he’s a long way away.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He pointed to the boats. ‘They’ve been out here looking for fish for the past five days, so they didn’t know who we were. They were helpful. Told me what the others kept from us. Someone found Torak’s bow in the reed-bed.’

  ‘The reed-bed?’ Renn was aghast.

  ‘Near the Island of the Hidden People. The Otter Mage sent us the wrong way.’ He punched his palm. ‘Ah, Renn, we were so close! If only we’d known, we might have found him by now!’

  ‘But to send us the wrong way! Why?’

  ‘What does that matter? We’re further away than ever. And if you’re right, he’s running out of time.’

  She thought quickly. ‘How long will it take us to get there?’

  ‘As the raven flies, maybe a day. By skinboat, with all these islands in between? Two days, maybe three.’

  ‘Let’s get going!’

  ‘Not yet.’ He pointed east. Above the ice river, purple-grey clouds were massing. The World Spirit was restless.

  ‘But we can still try!’ she said desperately.

  ‘If I knew the Lake, yes. But out here, with a storm coming? No. We’d be no use to Torak drowned.’

  She ran to the water’s edge. Now she saw that everything had conspired to bring her here. Maybe this was why the Otter Mage had sent them east: to force her into doing what she’d resolved she never would.

  Turning her back on the ice river, she stared west. Spiky black islands floated on the amber Lake. Somewhere beyond them, Torak was dying of soul-sickness.

  ‘Then I’ve got no choice.’ She faced Bale. ‘We’ll have to send help from here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll have to do Magecraft.’

  ‘Renn, this is madness!’ yelled Bale as he fought to keep the skinboat afloat in the teeth of the storm. ‘We’ve got to get back to shore!’

  ‘Not yet!’ shouted Renn. ‘We have to get past that last island! I must have a clear view to the west, or the help won’t reach him!’

  ‘But we’re taking water!’

  ‘If you care about Torak, keep going!’

  The sky turned black, the wind screamed in her ears, tugging at her clothes and whipping her hair about her face, churning the Lake to a frenzy of white water. The skinboat reared and plunged, and only Bale’s skill kept them from going under.

  Somehow, she managed to stay kneeling on the crossbar, gripping the boat with one hand as she thrust the other into her medicine pouch. She’d done all she could on the shore. Only the final charm remained.

  As she pulled out what she needed and held it up, she felt a thrill of grim satisfaction. The Viper Mage might have Torak’s name-pebble, but she, Renn, possessed something just as potent.

  ‘What’s that?’ cried Bale.

  ‘His hair,’ she shouted. ‘Last winter he needed a disguise, and I cut it off and kept it!’

  Staggering to her feet, she raised her fist, and Torak’s long dark locks streamed in the wind.

  Bale grabbed her belt to hold her steady. ‘For the last time, we’ve got to get back to shore! That’s hail on the way! If it holes the boat, we’re sunk!’

  ‘Not yet!’

  Throwing back her head, Renn howled the charm to the storm – she summoned the power of the guardian of all Ravens, who flies over ice and mountain, Forest and Sea – she summoned it and sent it to seek Torak – and the wind wrenched the charm from her lips and bore it west across the Lake.

  But in the midst of the charm, as she braced her legs on the frame of the pitching boat and clutched Bale’s shoulder to steady herself, she felt a powerful will confronting hers.

  I feel your purpose . . . You shall not succeed.

  Renn’s knees buckled. She nearly went down.

  You shall not succeed.

  She tried to shut it from her mind – but it was too strong. Stronger than the Otter Mage, stronger even than Saeunn – it had the awesome power of the Soul-Eater – and it
was not to be outdone by the puny spell of some untried girl.

  The World Spirit hammered open the clouds, and down came the hail, pummelling their faces with arrows of ice.

  Bale swung the skinboat about. ‘Rocks! Rocks ahead!’ Renn raised her fist one final time. ‘Fly!’ she screamed. ‘Fly to the aid of the soul-sick!’ The wind ripped Torak’s hair from her fingers and scattered it over the Lake, and Renn was flung backwards as the skinboat gave a terrific heave and reared out of the water.

  ‘We’ve hit a rock!’ yelled Bale. ‘Grab hold of the boat! Don’t let go!’

  The hailstorm thundered west, carrying Renn’s charm with it. It swept across the Lake, flattening the reeds, pounding the Island of the Hidden People.

  At the edge of the black beach, the pine trees thrashed, and beneath them Torak’s miserable shelter shook. Pine cones and branches rained down upon it. Then something heavy dropped out of a tree and thudded onto the roof . . .

  . . . and Torak woke up.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Torak cowered on his scratchy bed of pine-needles, listening to the World Spirit punishing the trees.

  He was terrified of the hail, and of whatever had fallen onto the roof. He was terrified of everything: the Lake, the Hidden People, but most of all, the wolves. They were waiting for him in the Forest. Sometimes he glimpsed the big grey one sneaking about just out of stone-shot, waiting to pounce.

  Because of the wolves, he hadn’t dared go into the Forest. Instead, he eked out an existence on frost-shrivelled berries and blackened mushrooms, with the occasional slimy green hopping thing when he could catch one.

  The world no longer made sense. The sky screamed at him, and from the trees, little red scuttling things pelted him with wooden fruit. Darts of green lightning shot past, laughing at him, and slithery brown creatures bobbed about in the water, scolding him. While he slept, a monster came and gnawed his shelter, and when he woke up, he saw branches swimming upstream.

  Again something thudded onto the roof. This time, it squawked.

  Torak shut his eyes tight.

  At last the storm blew over and the hail stopped. Shaking with fear, he grabbed his axe and crawled out.

  The ice had flattened undergrowth and ripped off branches; it had covered the beach in hard, translucent pebbles which crunched under his bare feet. In a patch of crushed bracken, something stirred.

  No. Two somethings. A pair of big black birds.

  Gripping his axe, Torak edged closer.

  The larger one gave a terrified squawk and flapped its wings, while the smaller one tucked its head into its shoulders and pretended it wasn’t there.

  Torak saw the wreck of a nest, high in a tree. The birds must have fallen out, bounced off his shelter, and into the bracken.

  He took a step closer – which sent them into a frenzy of wing-flapping and high-pitched squeaks.

  He blinked. They were frightened of him.

  He saw that the corners of their mouths were a crinkly pink, and although the span of their wings was almost as wide as his outstretched arms, all that flapping wasn’t achieving anything.

  ‘You can’t fly,’ he said out loud.

  That put an end to the flapping. They huddled together and stared up at him, shivering with terror.

  His belly tightened. So much meat. And as they couldn’t fly, it would be easy.

  To his dismay, he couldn’t do it. They reminded him of something. Or someone. He didn’t remember what.

  A rapid ‘quork quork quork’ split the sky, and he dropped to all fours.

  High overhead, another big black bird wheeled – only this one could fly. Alighting on the remains of the nest, it glared down at him. Its head-feathers were fluffed up like ears, its wings spread.

  Angrily it snapped off a twig and threw it at him. Then it threw down several of the wooden fruit. ‘Quork quork quork’!

  ‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. Greatly daring, he picked up a wooden fruit and threw it back.

  The bird hitched itself into the sky and flew away.

  When he was sure it wasn’t coming back, Torak left the young ones on their own and went to forage on the shore. If he couldn’t eat them, they were no use to him.

  He found a grubby mushroom which tasted all right, except for the bits that wriggled and crunched because he’d forgotten to shake out the woodlice. Then he caught two of the slimy green hopping things, which he killed with a stone. He ate one raw and tied the other to his belt for later.

  Returning to the shelter, he found the young ones where he’d left them. When they saw the green thing at his belt, they flapped their wings and made squeaky begging noises.

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘It’s mine!’

  The squeaks became outraged squawks. They didn’t stop.

  Maybe if he made them a shelter, they’d shut up.

  Piling an armful of twigs in the fork of a tree, he grabbed the bigger bird and shoved it on top.

  It pecked his sleeve and tugged.

  ‘Let go!’ he protested.

  The powerful beak was bigger than Torak’s middle finger, and it easily ripped off the sleeve. Gripping the buckskin in its formidable talons, the bird settled down to shred it, eyeing Torak as if to say, I wouldn’t have to do this if you’d fed me like I asked.

  In the bracken, the smaller one laughed.

  Torak scooped her up and chucked her in the nest. She thanked him by waggling her hindquarters and spurting him with white droppings.

  ‘Hey! Stop it!’ he shouted.

  ‘Hey top it!’ she croaked.

  Torak blinked. Birds didn’t talk.

  Did they?

  If they could talk, maybe he shouldn’t let them starve.

  Foraging in the undergrowth, he caught some spiders and squashed them in his fist. The birds gobbled them up, and would’ve started on his fingers if he’d let them.

  He fed them a leg of the green thing. And another. He decided enough was enough. The larger bird stared at him reproachfully, then tucked its head into its back feathers and went to sleep. Then the smaller one did the same.

  Torak wanted to sleep too, but first he cut a scrap of skin from the green hopping thing and put it on the roof. He had no idea why he did this, but it felt important.

  Yawning, he ate the rest of the green hopping thing, then crawled into the shelter and burrowed into the pine-needles.

  Just before he slept, he said out loud, ‘Frog. The slimy green hopping thing is a frog.’

  The young black birds ruled his days.

  They were noisy and hungry, and if he didn’t feed them often, they got noisier. But they had keen eyes and ears, and they scared off the biting monster which came in the night, and the red scuttling things in the trees.

  After a few days, he took to letting them out of the nest. They hopped and waddled after him, and he found himself showing them things, and remembering as he did so.

  ‘This is a pine cone. Hard to eat. And this is lingonberry, very good – ow! And this is willowherb. If you peel it, you can wind it into twine. See?’

  The birds watched with their intense black gaze, and prodded everything with their beaks, to see if they could eat it.

  Mostly, they could. They ate berries, crickets, frogs, scat, his clothes if he let them. But although they got quite adept with their large beaks, they preferred stealing food to catching it themselves.

  They were good at it, too. When Torak caught his first tiny fish with a bramble-thorn hook on a line, he was so proud that he rashly showed it to them. Next day, he found the bigger one pulling in the line with its beak, while the smaller one looked on hopefully.

  To deter them, Torak planted his knife by the line; but although they left the line alone, they picked at the sinew binding on the hilt. He swapped his axe for the knife, and that worked better.

  Next day, as he emerged from the shelter, the bigger one cawed a greeting from the nest – and flew down to him.

  ‘You flew!’ said Torak, amazed.

>   Startled by its achievement, the bird sat trembling at his feet. Then it spread its wings and flew to the top of a tree – where it lost courage and begged forlornly to be rescued. Torak eventually tempted it down with a handful of chopped frog and a couple of fish eyes, and from then on, it sat and laughed at its sister, who was still flapping furiously in the nest. It was mid-afternoon by the time she made her first flight.

  After that, they learned rapidly, and soon the sky rang with their raucous cries as they wheeled and somersaulted overhead. Their feathers were a glossy black, with beautiful rainbow glints of violet and green, and when they flew, their wings made a strong, dry rustling, like the wind in the reeds. It made Torak wistful, as if he too had once been able to fly, but never would again.

  One morning, they lifted into the sky, and didn’t come back.

  Torak told himself it didn’t matter. He set a snare – one of his newly regained skills – and ate a few berries, taking care to leave some on a boulder, as an offering.

  But he missed the ravens. He’d got to like them. And they reminded him of something – he couldn’t remember what – except that he knew the memory was a good one.

  When dusk fell, he checked the snares he’d set the previous night. He was in luck: a water bird. He woke up a fire and roasted it, but didn’t have the heart to eat much.

  Suddenly he heard a familiar cawing; then strong, rhythmic wingbeats – and down they came, alighting with a thud, one on each shoulder.

  He yelped – their claws were sharp – and lifted them off. But he was glad they’d come back.

  That night, all three of them had a feast. The ravens – whom he’d named Rip and Rek – ate so much that they got too fat to fly, and he had to carry them to their roost.

  After they’d gone to sleep, he sat by the Lake, watching the young swifts screaming overhead, while a woodpecker flashed past like green lightning, and a red squirrel dangled from one foot to reach an unripe hazelnut on another branch. As the moon rose, a beaver waddled out of the Forest, cast Torak a wary look, and settled down to gnaw on a willow sapling. The tree toppled, the beaver chewed off a branch, then swam upstream, dragging it behind him.