But the pack leader turned his head and gave a sharp snapping bark. The old wolf recoiled, his eyes slitted with rage, and as he slunk back, I noticed that he had lost one ear and that the fur on that side of his head was white.
The leader turned his attention back to me. ‘Speakswift dinrai, for Gobor One Ear will not long be held off. He did be savaged by tha brother and he is not alone in his slaver for vengeance.’
Bewildered, I sent, ‘My brother is long dead, and never did he come to the mountains, let alone do harm to any beast.’
The leader gave a howl that was a hot braiding of fury and humour, and several others joined him. The old wolf had slunk forward again, his eyes blazing red with hatred. I was losing them and I did not know why.
The pack leader sent, ‘Tha brother art dinrai – a maggot-minded funaga-li that can touch the minds of beasts. That one did lure a pack of Brildane cubs an’ cage them. Then he did reach into their minds to eat their pain, while he cut and maimed and rended! Gobor One Ear an’ Descantra alone did escape to return to the mountains. Their brothers did perish.’
Dinrai, I thought. I had assumed it was an insult, but it seemed the wolves used it to mean humans who could beastspeak; not just beastspeakers, but humans who used coercion on beasts as I had done to stop the pack leader attacking Maruman. That was why he named the wolf killer my brother. Yet he had spoken of a human who lured cubs from the pack and put them in cages; who tortured them and enjoyed their pain.
A cold shiver went through me at the knowledge that he could only mean Ariel. I allowed a picture of him to form in my thoughts, knowing that the pack leader would see it because his mind was meshed with mine. But to my astonishment all of the wolves reacted instantly, snarling and growling at me. An older female lifted her head and gave a long mournful howl, and the old wolf that had threatened me sprang. He would have torn out my throat if his leader had not leapt, too, intercepting him and bringing him heavily to the ground. They struggled briefly and viciously, then the old wolf was on his back, the white pack leader’s teeth sunk into the ruff of fur at his grizzled throat.
‘Yield tha, Gobor One Ear,’ the leader sent with ferocious authority.
‘Dost tha defend this maggot mind, Rheagor?’ Gobor hissed. I heard him, though he addressed his leader and not me, and realised that the wolves’ minds were not merely open to one another, but linked, so that in speaking to one wolf, one spoke to the pack.
‘Nah nah, Gobor,’ the pack leader growled now. ‘This one do defend a leader’s right to firstblood. Yield tha or do be marked and driven out.’
‘Then cease tha blather and give yon dinrai to the longsleep, for the words of such a one are purest treachery,’ the old wolf panted.
‘This one be not lured by any dinrai, Gobor One Ear,’ the pack leader said haughtily. ‘Now yield tha and remember tha place hereafter or be driven out and pack-less.’ Another long, tense moment ended when abruptly Gobor went limp. The leader released him immediately and turned back to me.
‘I showed you the Destroyer who once dwelt where I now live,’ I said swiftly, using the beast form H’rayka which Maruman had told me meant one-who-brings-destruction. ‘That one is not brother to me but enemy and prey. My pack drove him out and though he went far from this valley across the great sea, one day I will vanquish him. But first I must complete my quest.’
‘Tha mind is as the mind of tha H’rayka,’ the pack leader accused. ‘That one is brethren to tha.’
‘That one is my enemy,’ I repeated grimly, and I summoned up a memory of lying on the Zebkrahn machine, Ariel gloating as he tortured me. Again I sensed all of the wolves reacting uneasily, and then the silvery female who had howled before gave a low, terrifying snarl. I forced myself to hold the leader’s gaze as I said, ‘The H’rayka tried to kill my mate. He hates me and he would kill me.’
‘Tha do speak true in this much,’ sent the wolf authoritatively. ‘Even so, the Brildane care not for any funaga-li. Let the dinrai tear at one another’s hearts. This one cares not for any freedom that do be given by a funaga.’
‘I am not talking about freedom but about death,’ I sent. ‘If I cannot do what the oldOnes have bidden me to do, there will only be death for the funaga and for the Brildane and for all beasts. There will be nothing left in all the world.’
‘Let us serve this one with death,’ snarled the old female whose howl had caused Gobor One Ear to attack. The pack leader turned to her and immediately she cringed and offered her throat in submission.
‘Nah nah, Descantra,’ the pack leader growled, after he had sniffed her muzzle as if to get the scent of her words. It seemed to me there was tenderness towards her in his mindvoice, yet she could not be his mate for he was in his prime and she was clearly long past bearing cubs.
‘Rheagor, this one do claim the right of blood for blood,’ the she-wolf said. ‘No matter what this she-dinrai says, she be brethren to the one that did kill this one’s brothers.’
‘It is tha right to request blood for blood an’ this she-dinrai is brethren to the dinrai tha do justly hate, Descantra, yet would tha have blood if truly it is that this one’s death would bring an end to all things?’
‘Gobor speaks true when he warns tha not to heed the luring, lying tongue of a dinrai. This one believes not that the she-dinrai seeks the help of the Brildane, but even if all the words said by that one are true, better for us all to die than for us to let a dinrai live.’
‘Tha do speak who have no cubs,’ Rheagor sent in mild reproof.
‘That be the doing of the dinrai,’ she snarled, drawing herself up. ‘This one do ask what is this one’s right, Rheagor, pack leader of the Brildane. Will tha say nah nah for the sake of a dinrai?’
‘For the sake of the Brildane, this one will go seliga,’ he said with deep solemnity.
I was startled to hear him use a beast symbol I had only ever heard used to describe Maruman’s fey mental wanderings. Behind, it meant, but also under and back and even between. Given what the wolf leader now said, perhaps it simply meant he would enter a trance that would enable him to spirit-travel while he was awake.
‘Journey tha seliga and this time tha may find tha doom, pack leader,’ Descantra said coldly, and she turned away and stalked into the trees. As if her departure was a signal, the rest of the pack melted into the trees, too. Only the pack leader remained.
‘There be much anger and sorrow in the pack for tha kind, an’ Descantra do rightly claim blood, but maybe tha do speak true and so this one must journey seliga to see if tha words have merit. Go tha to the Skylake an’ wait. This one will come to tha there. But if tha has spoken luring lies, the pack will want blood and this one will lead them to the kill.’
A red flame flickered in the wolf’s eyes for a moment, and then he padded away.
Maruman led us from the other end of the fissure into a canyon that ran north-west. The air felt bitterly cold after the hot dampness of the spring-fed forest in the crevice, and the mountains rearing up on all sides seemed darker and more barren than ever. There was no sign of a lake, but Maruman said we would reach the valley where it lay before the day ended. Darga said nothing and it struck me that he had not spoken since the encounter with the wolves. Perhaps it had shattered him to find how much contempt the wolves had for dogs, or maybe he had simply been afraid. The sun rose and the sky lightened but neither its light nor its warmth reached into the canyon, so it was a cold walk made all the colder by the memory of the previous night. But there were patches of blue sky between great banks of grey cloud overhead and the brisk chill wind might rout them yet.
My coat was buttoned and as well as wearing gloves and my woollen cap, I had raised my hood to encompass Maruman who was draped around my neck and over one shoulder. For once he was gazing forward instead of sleeping and it struck me that the encounter with the Brildane had shaken the old cat, too. He had told me that it was the wolf musk that had paralysed us, but for all he claimed not to have been intimidated, it
must have terrified him to have the wolf looming over him, when he could not run or lift a claw to defend himself.
‘You sent Gahltha to wait at the lake because Atthis told you that the wolves would send us there to await their decision,’ I said, careful not to couch my words as a question.
‘The oldOnes told Marumanyelloweyes that if ElspethInnle could convince the wolves to hear her, we would come to the Skylake,’ Maruman sent.
‘The irony of it is that I think Rheagor would have refused to hear me if that old wolf had not beastspoken me when he tried to attack.’ I heaved a sigh. ‘I will be glad when we finally get to the ken and Atthis tells me why we need them.’
‘We will not go there,’ Maruman sent.
I turned my head to look at the old cat. ‘I know we have to go to the lake first,’ I said.
‘No,’ Maruman said. ‘We will not go to the ken.’
I stopped, baffled by his words. ‘Atthis …’ I began.
‘Is dead,’ Maruman concluded, his tone flat and sorrowful. ‘She died the night she sent Darga and me from the ken to the barud-ha.’ He wriggled from the hood and sprang to the ground, no doubt discomforted by the emotions his words had roused in me.
‘That can’t be.’ I sent. ‘I was supposed to talk to her before I set off on the final part of my quest. She promised she would answer my questions! She would have seen if she was to die!’
‘She saw it,’ Maruman said, sitting down and curling his tail composedly around himself. ‘She said that was the price you had agreed to pay, to save your mate. She said it was too soon to call you to her for there were things you had yet to do. That is why Marumanyelloweyes was summoned to the ken. The oldOne showed and told me many things. Go to Innle and say this and that. Lead Innle to the mountains this way and go that way. Bring her to the wolves’ barud, and thence to Skylake.’
My mind raced. The last memory I had of Atthis was of calling to her to help me from within the depths of Rushton’s mind. He had been striving to die, stricken by what had been done to him and what he had almost done to me. Atthis had warned me not to let Rushton drag me with him into the mindstream, for he had been too heavy for me to resist. I had refused to let him go, begging her to help me hold him. She had done so, warning me that a price would have to be paid for her intervention. ‘I will pay it,’ I had sworn, desperately heedless.
‘You will not be the one to pay …’ she had answered.
I had been too frantic to wonder at the time what her words meant. But now I thought I understood. Helping me must have burned up Atthis’s reserves and so, instead of living long enough to be able to tell me what I needed to know to complete my quest as she had sworn to do, she had been forced to tell Maruman instead. Once she might have communicated directly with his mind, but maybe her frailty had made that impossible, and so she had summoned him to the ken.
‘You said you didn’t know anything about Cassandra’s key,’ I said, trying to speak calmly.
‘Marumanyelloweyes knows much of this thing from ElspethInnle’s mind, but the oldOne did not speak of it,’ he told me.
‘But how am I to find it, then? And what of Sentinel? Did Atthis say it was in the Red Land and if it is, how I am to get there if I am not to go back to the Land?’ I realised I was shouting the words as well as beastspeaking them, and struggled again to calm myself.
‘The oldOne said that you will learn what you need to know from those who come to meet you in the valley of the Skylake.’
‘The wolves are to meet us there,’ I murmured, wondering if going seliga would enable the pack leader to learn what I needed to know. But why had not Atthis simply told Maruman everything?
Then it struck me with renewed force that Atthis was dead. I saw in my mind’s eye the dusty red feathers and blind eyes of the ancient bird that had guided me in my quest since the beginning, and understood that her death was more than the death of a single creature. It was the severing of a link running back to the Beforetime, for Atthis had carried within her mind the memories of all of the Elders of the Agyllians before her right back to the flamebirds of the Beforetime. It was a flamebird that had sent Cassy Duprey in search of Hannah Seraphim and Obernewtyn in the first place and my past-dreams had shown me that the flamebird that had beastspoken Cassy had been the last one living, aside from the pair that had been transported to Eden after Doktaruth had put them into sleep pods, or so they had believed. But the great flock of Agyllians I had seen wheeling about the ken could not possibly have come from a single bird. The flamebird whose mind had been altered by experimentation in the Govamen compound in Old Scotia had to have been released before the Great White or it had escaped and had found wild flamebirds, despite the fact that humans had believed them extinct. The altered bird must have mated with the wild birds, passing on its abilities and the changes in its mind to their offspring. So had the flamebirds evolved into the Agyllians.
I wanted to ask Maruman why he had not told me at once that Atthis had died, but I did not. Probably he had feared I would refuse to go with him or fall apart with grief. I was grieved but I was also frightened at the thought of having to face the remainder of my quest without the ancient bird’s guidance, but who was to blame for what had happened? Atthis had warned me that there would be a price to pay for saving Rushton, and I had agreed to pay it. I would pay it again, I knew, even knowing what would come.
I bent down and lifted Maruman into my arms. ‘The OldOne would not have let things come out like this if she had not foreseen that it was still possible for me to complete my quest,’ I told him gently. The old cat stretched up and butted at my chin before clawing his way back onto my shoulder.
Despite my hopes, the clouds soon closed over again and it had just begun to rain as we came up a slight slope and found it ended abruptly at the eastern edge of a vast, deep cirque with smooth high stone walls curving up to jagged edges. Cupped at the base and centre of the crater was an unnaturally perfect round lake that reflected the sky with such fidelity that it made me feel dizzy to look down into it.
‘The valley of the Skylake,’ I murmured, wondering how we would get down into it.
I pushed back my hood, to Maruman’s disgust, and ran my eyes around the outer rim, ignoring the rain wetting my cheeks. There was no way to climb down the smooth, steep concave walls, and no possibility of using a rope. The valley was bare, save for a dark swathe of greenery growing around the southern end of the lake and running up against a deep fold in the wall at that end of the crater. It might be a gorge, given that the two mountains rising up behind it met at that point. I could see no other means of getting into the valley.
I glanced at Maruman and then at Darga to see what they made of my idea, but neither commented or offered any suggestion, perhaps because there was only one obvious course. We would have to make our way around the rim of the crater, and it frustrated me to know that we would be literally heading back the way we had come.
I scanned the base of the cirque again, but there was no sign of Gahltha. Doubtless he was grazing under the trees. I tried to seek him out, but the result was a flabby probe too weak and unfocused to send anywhere. It was a reminder, timely maybe, that using the spirit-force always took its toll. From past experience, it would be at least a twoday before I would be able to use my senses effectively again, though if I could sleep, my healing abilities would effect their repairs more quickly. I let the probe dissolve, consoling myself with the fact that the buzz at the edge of my senses meant there was tainted ground nearby, which would undoubtedly have blocked any probe I had managed to send out anyway.
Darga sent gravely that he could scent tainted ground, too, but that it was not close by.
‘Maybe down there,’ I wondered, noting again how barren the ground was, save at the southern end, and reflecting on the unnatural symmetry of a perfectly circular pool of water forming in the centre of an immense, perfectly round hollow, with only that one area of fertile growth. Then I looked up at the sky, which had been da
rkening even since we had reached the edge of the valley. Returning my gaze to the valley I noticed that the Skylake had dimmed to grey, too. The valley and the silver-grey lake resembled a great staring eye and I was not sorry when, soon after I had set off around the rim, we found ourselves walking in a furrow which deepened until I could no longer see into the crater.
Rain continued to fall steadily for a good hour and then stopped. By this time, the defile had sloped further and I reckoned we were halfway down to the base of the valley. We had to clamber over two long sections of fallen stone, then the defile widened into a narrow canyon where we could again walk side by side. Glancing up I saw that the clouds had cleared after all, but it was evident to me that, even with no further delays, it would be well after dusk before we reached the southern end of the valley. So when the sun rose high enough to cast its light directly down into the canyon, I suggested a halt.
Only after I spoke did it occur to me that I had taken the lead and I half expected my companions to argue, but Darga merely acquiesced and Maruman said nothing. The dreamy vagueness in the old cat’s eye worried me and I prayed that the encounter with the wolves had not set off one of his fey fits. The last thing I needed was for him to go seliga along with the pack leader of the wolves.
I sat down and lay back against the wall of the runnel, using my hood to pillow my head. The slight warmth of the sun on my face was very pleasant, as was the heat Darga gave off when he lay down alongside me. Then Maruman climbed into my lap and curled to sleep and a feeling of simplicity and contentment overswept me, despite the fact that our supplies were with Gahltha, we had no blanket, no food nor any means of making a fire. In truth we had been fortunate that it had rained, for we had been able to drink rainwater that had pooled in depressions in the rocks, and refill the single gourd I carried. I doubted we would find any water until we got into the cirque and I could only hope the lake water was drinkable. It was hard to believe I had been so careless as to forget to take my pack when Maruman had dismissed Gahltha before we entered the wolves’ territory. That I had done so seemed to tell me something important about myself, for on past expeditions I had always been meticulous about such things.
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