Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  He sat in the place of honour with the clan leaders, looking uncomfortable with the attention. Renn saw him self-consciously touching the outcast tattoo on his forehead; but either he didn’t see her, or he was avoiding her. She told herself not to worry.

  Not far from Torak sat Bale. He caught Renn’s eye, and seemed about to smile, but checked himself. They hadn’t yet spoken of what he’d done, and she guessed that he wasn’t sure how she felt. She gave him a brief smile, and he looked relieved.

  When the eating was over, the Otters collected all the fish bones which were too small to be useful and took them to the Lake, so that they could be born again as new fish. Then the Otter Mage twins stood up and started to sing.

  Like a silver stream falling into a pool of clear water, their voices dropped into the listening silence. In her head, Renn saw the dark of the Beginning, when all the world was water. Then a diver-bird dived to the bottom and scooped up a speck of mud in its beak, and flew back to the surface – and made the earth.

  Now they were singing a new song. This time, Renn saw the viper who stole the sacred clay and made the Lake sick. The Lake sought the aid of the World Spirit, who loosed the waters behind the ice and washed away the evil; and the Forest people would have been swept away too, if they hadn’t been warned by the Clanless Wanderer. Then the boy from the Sea killed the viper, and peace returned.

  When the song was over, everyone bowed to Torak, and he went red. The Boar Clan Leader’s bow was grudging, but Aki’s was whole-hearted. Standing up to his father had given him new respect for himself, and he’d relaxed a lot. Maheegun and the Wolf Clan bowed lowest of all.

  By now it was nearly dawn. Surely, thought Renn, the feast must be over soon. Food had made her feel braver. She would simply march up to Torak and say what had to be said.

  But now the Otter Leader was giving gifts, so once again she had to wait.

  Bale was given a diver-bird claw as an amulet – so that, like the most skilled of water creatures, he would always stay afloat.

  Torak got a wristband made from a pike’s lower jaw sheathed in elkhide, so that he would be as skilled a hunter as the pike. And his knife had been repaired; in the hole left by the fire-opal lay a piece of greenstone, precisely cut to fit.

  Just when Renn was feeling left out, Yolun came and laid something at her feet. He bowed, murmuring his thanks for the part she’d played in saving his beloved Lake. His gift was a beautiful little beaver-tooth knife with a hilt carved like a fish’s tail.

  Dawn came, and at last people went off to sleep. Suddenly there was Torak, coming towards her.

  Renn stood up, scattering her bowl and spoon, which she’d forgotten were still in her lap.

  Torak helped to retrieve them, and gave her an awkward nod. ‘Renn . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’ she said, more sharply than she’d intended.

  ‘Ah, Torak,’ said Fin-Kedinn, coming over to them.

  For once in her life, Renn was not glad to see her uncle.

  ‘Come with me,’ said the Raven Leader, unperturbed. ‘There’s something we need to do.’

  Torak opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Renn.

  Fin-Kedinn motioned her back. ‘No, Renn,’ he said gently, ‘just Torak. This isn’t for you.’

  Torak threw her a glance that could have meant anything. Then he followed the Raven Leader into the Forest.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Torak bit back his impatience as he followed Fin-Kedinn.

  Now that he was no longer outcast, he’d hoped that he and Renn and Wolf could be together again, but maybe he was wrong. Wolf hadn’t come near the camp since the flood, and with Renn there was a great awkwardness of things unsaid.

  And now Fin-Kedinn was leading him along an elk trail without even telling him why. He moved fast, leaning on his staff, and he had a rawhide pouch slung over one shoulder.

  They hadn’t gone far when Fin-Kedinn halted. Setting the pouch under a hazel tree, he told Torak to lie down.

  Torak asked why.

  ‘I need to fix your tattoo. You can’t live the rest of your life with the mark of the outcast.’

  Torak had been wondering about that, but now he was apprehensive. ‘Are you going to cut it out?’

  ‘No,’ said Fin-Kedinn. ‘Lie down.’

  Torak lay on his back and watched the Raven Leader take from the pouch a bone needle, a small antler tattooing hammer, a grindstone and a buckskin bundle. This he unwrapped to reveal lumps of earthblood, white gypsum and green tufa stone.

  ‘I’ve sent Bale to find the woad,’ he said, as if that explained anything. ‘Now keep still.’

  Mounting a needle in the hammer, he stretched the skin of Torak’s forehead between finger and thumb, and began the rapid piercings which you need for a good tattoo, pausing occasionally to wipe away the blood.

  At first it hurt a lot. Then it simply hurt. To keep his mind off the pain, Torak fixed his eyes on the hazel tree. The nuts were still green, but a squirrel was busily foraging, stopping now and then to churr at the intruders below.

  After a while, Torak shifted his gaze to Fin-Kedinn.

  His foster father.

  He felt honoured and pleased, but also perplexed. ‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ he said.

  Fin-Kedinn did not reply.

  ‘When I first met you – when you found out who my father was – you were angry. Since then, sometimes I’ve thought you liked me. Sometimes not.’

  Placing the earthblood on the grindstone, Fin-Kedinn crushed it with a piece of granite.

  ‘I know you were angry with my father,’ Torak went on carefully. ‘But my mother . . . You didn’t hate her too?’

  Fin-Kedinn carried on grinding. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was in love with her.’

  Birdsong echoed through the Forest. Bees buzzed among the meadowsweet.

  ‘But she loved me as a brother,’ the Raven Leader went on. ‘Your father she loved as a woman loves her mate.’

  Torak swallowed. ‘Is that why – why you hated him?’

  Fin-Kedinn sighed. ‘Growing up can be a kind of soul-sickness, Torak. The name-soul wants to be strongest, so it fights the clan-soul telling it what to do. You’ve got to find a balance, like a good knife. It took me a while.’ Dipping a corner of buckskin in earthblood, he rubbed it into Torak’s forehead. ‘I stopped being jealous of your father a long time ago. But I went on blaming him for your mother’s death. I still do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He joined the Soul-Eaters. When she gave birth to you, she was in hiding, far from her clan. If he hadn’t put her in danger, she might still be alive.’

  ‘He didn’t mean to put her in danger.’

  ‘Don’t ask me to forgive him,’ warned Fin-Kedinn. ‘For her sake I took you in. For her sake, and yours, I’ve made you my foster son. Don’t ask for more.’ Cleaning the grindstone with a clump of moss, he crushed the tufa stone.

  Torak studied the features of the man he’d come to love. ‘Did you never find a mate?’

  Fin-Kedinn’s lip curled. ‘Of course I did. There was a girl in the Wolf Clan. But after a time she said we should part, because I still thought of your mother. She was right.’

  Silence. Then Torak said, ‘What was my mother like?’

  Fin-Kedinn’s face tightened. ‘Your father must have spoken of her.’

  ‘No. It made him too sad.’

  The Raven Leader was quiet for a long time. Then he said, ‘She knew the Forest like nobody else. She loved it. And it loved her.’ He met Torak’s gaze and his blue eyes glittered. ‘You’re very like her.’

  Torak hadn’t expected that. Until now, his mother hadn’t been truly real to him: just a shadowy woman of the Red Deer Clan who’d made his medicine horn – and declared him clanless.

  Fin-Kedinn stared unseeing at the hazel tree. Then he squared his shoulders and resumed his work. ‘In a way, it’s because of your mother that you survived as an out
cast. Those creatures who helped you. Beaver, raven, wolf. The Forest itself. Maybe they saw her spirit in you.’

  ‘But why did she make me clanless? Why did she do that?’

  Fin-Kedinn sighed. ‘I don’t know, Torak. But she loved you, so -’

  ‘But how do you know? You didn’t even know that she’d had a son!’

  ‘I knew her,’ Fin-Kedinn said quietly. ‘She loved you. So she must have done it to help you.’

  Torak couldn’t see how being clanless was any help at all.

  ‘Maybe,’ Fin-Kedinn added, ‘the answer lies where she came from. And where you were born.’

  ‘The Deep Forest.’

  A breeze stirred the trees, and they nodded agreement.

  ‘When should I go?’ said Torak.

  ‘Not for a while,’ said the Raven Leader, grinding gypsum. ‘There’s trouble among the Deep Forest clans, they won’t let in outsiders. And it would be foolish to venture in when Thiazzi and Eostra could be anywhere.’

  Bale came through the bracken. His face was grave as he handed Fin-Kedinn a small horn cup containing the woad. ‘I heard you talking about the Soul-Eaters. I don’t think you’ll find them in the Deep Forest. I think they’re in the islands.’

  Torak sat up. ‘What?’

  ‘Something Renn said, a while back. She said the Seal Mage had a fragment of the fire-opal, and it went down with him in the Sea.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think it did. He always kept what he needed for spells in a seal-hide pouch. He didn’t have it when he was killed. Later, when we burnt his shelter, it wasn’t there.’

  ‘That could mean anything,’ said Torak uneasily.

  ‘Before you came to the islands,’ said Bale, ‘when he was simply our Mage, we would sometimes see a red glow on the Crag. We didn’t know what it was. I do now.’

  ‘The fire-opal,’ said Torak.

  ‘And before I left for the Forest,’ Bale went on, ‘there were disturbances – in the woods and around our camp. As if someone were searching for something.’

  Torak thought of the last words of the Viper Mage. Then he noticed that Fin-Kedinn didn’t seem surprised.

  ‘Think about it, Torak,’ he said as he applied the woad. ‘If the fragment in your father’s knife had been the last, why was only the Viper Mage after it? Why not Thiazzi and Eostra, too?’

  ‘So we’ve achieved nothing!’ cried Torak. ‘It’s all to do again!’

  ‘Not so,’ said Fin-Kedinn. ‘Step by step. Remember?’

  Torak made to reply, but the Raven Leader was gathering his things. ‘Time to go back,’ he said firmly. ‘And Torak – we won’t tell Renn of the fire-opal just yet. She’s got enough to think about.’

  When they reached camp, Renn was waiting for them. She glanced at Torak’s forehead and nodded. ‘Ah. I see.’ Then to Fin-Kedinn, ‘Although the white bit isn’t really white, is it?’

  The Raven Leader shrugged. ‘He’s too brown. But it’ll do.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Torak. ‘What have you done?’

  Fin-Kedinn grasped his wrist and raised it high, then spoke to the others who were gathering round. ‘Each of you bear witness,’ he said in his clear voice. ‘This is my foster son: the one who was outcast, but is outcast no more. He’s clanless – but from now on, because of this mark he bears, he is for all the clans!’

  There were smiles and murmurs of assent, and Torak could see that whatever the Raven Leader had done, it had worked.

  Bale explained it to him. ‘He’s divided the circle of the outcast into four: one for each of the four quarters of the clans, then he’s filled them in. White for the Ice clans, red for the Mountains, green for the Forest, and blue for the Sea. It looks good.’ He grinned. ‘Well. Better.’

  Torak was still taking that in when Rip and Rek swooped out of nowhere. Rek made a barking noise that drove the camp dogs wild, and Rip – who was carrying something in his beak – dropped it in the mud, narrowly missing Bale. Then they were off, somersaulting over each other with raucous caws.

  Bale picked up what Rip had let fall, and his eyebrows rose. ‘Here.’ He handed it to Torak.

  It was his name-pebble. His “clan-tattoo” could still be seen – but every speck of the green clay serpent had been pecked off.

  Torak and Bale had gone with Yolun in a reed boat, and when they’d reached the deep part of the Lake, Torak had dropped his name-pebble over the side and watched it disappear into the dark-green water.

  Yolun was pleased. ‘The Lake will keep it safe for ever.’

  Torak thought so too. At first he’d been frightened of the Lake, but he’d come to understand that it was neither good nor bad; just very, very old.

  On reaching land again, Bale and Yolun went off to talk about boats, and Torak was finally free to go in search of Renn.

  He found her on the shore, oiling her bow. He sat down beside her, but she didn’t look up.

  After a while she said, ‘It’s had so many soakings, I think it may be warped.’

  He glanced at her. ‘If Bale hadn’t done it – would you have killed her?’

  She rubbed more oil into the wood, which was already gleaming. ‘Yes,’ she said between her teeth. ‘When you smashed the fire-opal, whose life were you going to give it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Torak admitted. ‘And I don’t know why Fa gave it to me. I suppose he guessed that some day I might need it.’

  ‘But why keep it at all? He could’ve destroyed it along with the rest.’

  Torak had wondered about that too. In his mind, he saw the awful beauty of the fire-opal. Maybe Fa just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  He turned to Renn. ‘Your mother. Have you always known?’

  A flush stole up her neck. ‘No. Fin-Kedinn told me after Fa was killed.’

  ‘So you were – seven, eight summers old.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That must have been hard.’

  She glared at him, repudiating pity.

  He scooped up a handful of sand and poured it from palm to palm. ‘How did it happen? I mean, how did she come to . . . ’

  Renn chewed her lip. Then she told him, staring at the sand between her bare feet, and spitting out the story like poison. ‘When she left my father for the Soul-Eaters, she changed her name. People thought she was dead. Not my father. Fin-Kedinn told him to forget her. He couldn’t. Then she came back to him in secret. The clan never knew. She needed another child, a baby. My brother was too old for – for her purpose. So she got one. Then she left my father again. She broke his heart. She didn’t care. She bore me in secret. Saeunn found her and took me from her, I don’t know how. I was very small. I hadn’t been named.’

  ‘Why did Saeunn take you?’ said Torak. ‘It can’t have been out of pity.’

  Renn smiled mirthlessly. ‘It wasn’t. She needed to stop the Viper Mage using me . . . ’ She took a breath. ‘Anyway. Saeunn told everyone that Fa had mated with a woman in the Deep Forest, who had died; she said that woman was my mother. They believed her.’ Her fists clenched. ‘Saeunn saved me. Sometimes I hate her. I owe her everything.’

  Torak was silent. Then he said, ‘Why did the Viper Mage need a baby?’

  Renn hesitated. ‘Can I tell you later?’

  He nodded, pouring sand from palm to palm. ‘Who else knew?’

  ‘Only Fin-Kedinn and Saeunn. He said it would be my secret, to tell when I wanted.’ Laying down her bow, she turned to him. ‘I was going to tell you, I swear! I’m so sorry I never did!’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry too, for all those things I said. I didn’t mean them. You know that, don’t you?’

  Renn’s face worked. Then she put her elbows on her knees and buried her head in her hands. She didn’t make a sound, but Torak could see the tension in her shoulders.

  Awkwardly, he put his arm around her. For an instant she resisted; then she relaxed and leaned against him. She felt small and warm and strong.

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she muttered
.

  ‘I know.’

  After a while she straightened up and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and wriggled out from under his arm. ‘You’re lucky,’ she sniffed. ‘You never knew your mother.’

  ‘Well. But I remember my wolf mother.’

  Another sniff. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘She had soft fur and a tongue like hot sand. Sometimes her breath smelt of rotting meat.’

  Renn laughed.

  Side by side, they gazed across the Lake. Torak heard the plop of a watervole; the distant tail-slam of a beaver. An otter broke the surface and regarded them, then dived underwater, trailing bubbles.

  Watching it, Torak felt his spirits lift. If only Wolf were with them now, he could cope with anything.

  As if in answer, a mournful howl rose from the Forest.

  Torak turned and gave two short barks. I am here!

  ‘Poor Wolf,’ said Renn.

  ‘Yes. He misses the pack.’

  ‘I think he misses you, too.’

  ‘Come on, then.’ Torak pulled her to her feet. ‘Let’s go and cheer him up.’

  They didn’t find Wolf; he found them some time later, under a stand of pines not far from the camp.

  Listlessly, he wagged his tail as he padded over to greet Torak. His ears were down and the brightness was gone from his eyes.

  Squatting beside him, Torak gently scratched his flank.

  Wolf lay down and put his muzzle between his paws. I miss the pack, he told Torak.

  I know, Torak replied in wolf talk. He thought of Wolf’s delight in the cubs and his affection for the black she-wolf. Wolf had given up all that for him.

  I am your pack, Torak said.

  Wolf thumped his tail. Then he sat up and licked Torak’s nose.

  Torak licked him back, and blew softly into his scruff. I never leave you.

  Wolf’s tail lashed from side to side, and his eyes gleamed.

  Renn ran off, saying she had to fetch something from camp. Soon she was back, carrying a large alderwood bowl with otters carved around its sides. Torak helped her set it in the bracken. It stank. It was full of stickleback grease, speckled with mysterious black lumps.