A Whisper of Wolves

by Kris Humphrey

  They ate a small meal together at the entrance to the cave – a sweet-tasting root and shreds of raw rabbit for Storm. Alice sensed her friend’s anxiety, the restless desire to act that matched her own. In a few hours dusk would come and the village would be so much more vulnerable.

  “We should go now,” she said to Soraya. “Thank you for the food. And for … everything.”

  Soraya inclined her head. “Do what must be done,” she said. Her eyes glittered, steely and bright.

  Alice nodded. “I’ll try.”

  Soraya took them to a secluded path that skirted the scree slope. Storm went ahead and Alice next, seizing her chance to ask the question that had been troubling her since their arrival at Blind Crag.

  “Your companion,” she said. “Why does she hide from us?”

  Soraya was silent for a moment behind her.

  “There are so few Whisperers now,” she said. “Especially here at the edge of the kingdom. Do you know how I grew so old, child?”

  Alice shook her head.

  “My companion and I have a way of sharing our time here. One sleeps while the other watches. It is an old skill, not much used, but it has allowed us a great deal more life than is normal. This is also the reason why I cannot leave my home. Our link is different to the one you have with Storm. To separate would bring the risk of death to us both.”

  “It felt as if your companion was waking,” said Alice. “Back in the cave.”

  “Yes,” said Soraya. “And now it is my turn to sleep. Perhaps for the last time.”

  “What do you mean?” said Alice.

  She turned sharply, but Soraya was already gone. Gone too was her calm and powerful presence, as abruptly as it had appeared that morning.

  CHAPTER 10

  They made good time back through the valley, Storm trotting a few paces ahead with her ears twitching and her nose sniffing the air.

  It was a relief for Alice to see that Storm seemed fully recovered – Alice needed her by her side tonight, ready to do battle.

  The techniques she had learned from Soraya had boosted her confidence, but they had brought new fears, too. Alice knew she could cast her senses wide, that she could embrace vast tracts of the forest, but with the Narlaw in among them everything would be different. She had no idea how the Narlaw’s touch would feel, or how she might react. No matter what Soraya had said, she was heading into the unknown and into danger.

  They continued into the forest. The sky had clouded over since they had left the mountain and a dimness had settled between the trees. Alice watched as Storm bounded ahead, nose raised to the air.

  No, she said. No, no, no. She darted in another direction, still sniffing.

  What is it? Alice asked, running to her side.

  Fire! said Storm.

  That single word sent a bolt of fear through Alice’s body and she ran beside Storm with a deadly panic inside her. She had heard tales of bush fires, down in the arid south of Meridina, terrible blazes that burned for days on end and consumed whole towns, whole stretches of the wild. But here in the north, they were unheard of. There was too much rain and moisture. It simply didn’t happen.

  In just a few moments, though, Alice saw that Storm was right.

  First came the smoke. It drifted through the trees, stinging Alice’s eyes and burning her throat. Then came the crackling, popping, creaking cacophony of the blaze. And slowly, building and building, came the heat.

  Alice stopped beside Storm as the smoke-shrouded flames flickered into view. Even at a distance the heat was intense. Alice raised a hand to shield her face and Storm darted left, becoming just a dark grey smudge in the blanket of smoke.

  Stay close! Alice shouted.

  Storm came back to her. We must find a way around.

  I know, said Alice. We’ll be cut off from the village.

  Somewhere in the midst of the blaze, a tree creaked and fell. A wave of hot air rushed out and Alice turned her back to the flames, retreating from the blast. Her eyes watered painfully and even with her hand across her mouth she tasted the hot, choking smoke with every breath.

  There has to be a way! said Storm.

  Wait, said Alice. I’m thinking.

  If we don’t go now, we’ll be trapped. We have to get help from the village!

  Alice stumbled further from the blaze. She knew how quickly a fire could spread, and how deadly the smoke and the heat were. What was more, the fire seemed to be spreading down the mountainside – straight towards their cottage and the village. They had to stop it. Alice thought back to her training; there was something Moraine had taught her, long ago, something powerful…

  A dousing ward! she cried, the words collapsing into a painful cough as she spoke.

  We don’t have time for that, said Storm.

  It’s all we have time for, Alice said. The fire will be too large to tackle by the time we reach the village. We have to try and stop it now. Come. Help me. We need fireweed blossom, arnica and … and dog lichen!

  She ran away from the blaze until gradually the smoke thinned and she could see the forest floor again.

  Dog lichen loves the knots of old oaks, she said. I’ll look for that. You sniff for the arnica and fireweed.

  Storm darted off with her nose to the ground and Alice ran in search of an oak amidst the pines. They were sparse at this altitude, but there had to be one at least.

  A few seconds later Storm raised a brief howl and Alice ran to her.

  Fireweed, Storm said, before rushing off to hunt for the arnica.

  Alice bent and picked a handful of the shrub’s lilac blossoms, stuffing the petals into her jacket pocket. She looked up. There between the arrow-straight pines stood a small, twisted oak. She hurried over and examined the bark, coughing from the drifting shreds of smoke as she circled the tree. There. One tiny green sprouting of dog lichen on the outside of an eye-shaped knot. She scraped it off with her thumbnail and added it to the fireweed in her pocket. She turned and, through the smoke, Storm appeared, a bright yellow spray of arnica flowers in her mouth.

  “That’s everything,” Alice said, breathing as shallowly as she could.

  She took the arnica and found herself a large flat rock and a fist-sized pebble with which to grind the ingredients together.

  The dousing ward was meant for small fires – a stove or a cottage roof, even. Strictly you were meant to scatter the mixture around the circumference of the blaze. But that was impossible here. There wasn’t enough lichen in the entire forest for that. No. Alice had a different plan. If she could ignite the mixture near the centre of the blaze then, instead of eating the fire from the outside, it might, just might, work the other way, expanding from the epicentre, dousing the blaze from within.

  When she told Storm they had to reach the centre of the fire, Storm didn’t object. She had noticed the same thing Alice had: the stream – the tiny river they had followed to find Soraya – it flowed directly into the blaze. Alice folded the mixture away in a scrap of cloth and they set off.

  Storm easily located the stream and Alice splashed in behind her. As they ran towards the heart of the fire, Alice found herself wishing she had four legs not two, so she could run low and fast below the choking, billowing smoke.

  The forest burned around them. Trees splintered and fell out of sight, sap boiled and hissed, and pine needles sparked, disintegrating into ash on the forest floor. The heat was almost unbearable. Alice slid off her belt sash and moistened it, wrapping it around her nose and mouth as she swept downstream behind Storm. The smoke rolled over her. Storm flashed in and out of sight a few paces ahead.

  Just then a hideous noise split the air. Alice looked up. A giant pine lurched, branches swaying, and sheared off at the bottom of the trunk.

  Storm! Alice cried.

  Storm leaped forward as the huge tree crashed across the stream, throwing up water, earth and flame where Storm had been a moment before.

  Alice stumbled backwards, covering her eyes. Branches
burned and sparked all around. The river was blocked.

  Storm! she called again.

  But the noise was deafening. She reached out with all her senses and felt her companion instantly.

  Go under, Storm said. Quickly.

  Alice glanced through her raised hand at the fallen tree. The stream hissed as burning pine needles fell. The heat was incredible.

  You can do it, Storm said.

  Alice took a long, burning breath and plunged below the water line.

  The stream was only waist deep, but that was enough. She peered through the churning water, saw the trunk dipping inches under the surface as if it were floating. There was room, but only just. She kicked out with her legs and scrambled along the pebbly river bed. The trunk scraped her head and she lost her handhold, floating up towards the blazing heat. Her lungs ached, already scorched from the smoke and now desperate for air of any kind. She twisted on to her back and used the trunk to propel herself forward. She surfaced under a burning branch and felt the flames singe her hair before she managed to duck back under. Seconds later she was clear, rising to her feet, water rushing down her face and the choking hot air flowing back into her lungs.

  She stumbled, but Storm held her steady.

  Alice coughed and spat water. A circle of ash and blackened trees spread out around her with the stream at its centre.

  Here, she said.

  Storm helped her to the nearest bank, up on to the dead patch of forest and across the scorched ground towards the flames. The river water helped against the searing heat, but she felt it burning away even as she stood.

  She took the damp parcel from her inside pocket and unfolded it with shaking hands. The words came back to her. She heard Moraine’s calm, thoughtful voice as she spoke them, scattering the mixture into the fire. A green flame shot up from the ground. It was cool, instantly shielding her from the burning trees. Alice chanted, calling to the earth, whispering to the life-giving soil. She stepped carefully around the inner circle of fire, casting tiny pinches of the mixture and calling up the green dousing flame, completing the circle.

  The new fire leaped up, consuming the orange flames and making the air inside the circle breathable again. It was working. The dousing fire spread into the forest, tree to tree, leaving the earth to quietly smoulder in its wake.

  Alice collapsed on to the riverbank, utterly exhausted. Minutes later an eerie silence fell. Only the tumbling of the stream could be heard. The forest fire was extinguished.

  Storm prowled across the bed of ash, the epicentre of the fire. She nosed into the charred black flakes, the fallen branches.

  There is a scent underneath, she said. Before the fire came demons.

  Alice looked up. Are you sure?

  They started this, said Storm. There are trails. I know the taste now.

  Alice rose to her feet. Her body ached. Her chest stung as she inhaled. So the Narlaw had tried to destroy the forest, to isolate the villagers.

  We have to go, she said.

  Yes, said Storm. They mean to take the village. Soon.

  Alice nodded. Tonight then. She would attempt what had not been done in a hundred years: a banishment of demons.

  CHAPTER 11

  The sun was already low in the sky when Alice and Storm approached the village. The palisade walls stood tall, still woven with the star-flowered stems of the protective ward, and the ward itself reappeared as a shining ring at the edge of Alice’s consciousness.

  A small group of villagers clustered around the north gate. They carried pails of water and looked tired and smoke-sick. They turned and grew silent as Alice and Storm emerged form the trees.

  “Did you find her?” called Elder Garth, separating from the group. “The ancient one. Where is she?”

  “She couldn’t come,” said Alice, crossing the clearing with Storm at her side.

  “But the fire,” Garth stuttered. “It … it vanished. There was magic done…”

  Alice strode past him towards the open north gate. “Not magic – Whisperer craft. An old trick Moraine taught me.”

  A ripple of surprise spread through the group and, for the first time, Alice caught on the faces of the villagers not scorn or distaste, but a fearful respect.

  The streets had been transformed. Blockades had been built, patchwork walls made of timber that reached to the roofs of the cottages. The people had completely altered their homes for the good of the village and that made her think of her own home. Although they had doused the forest fire, the cottage she shared with Moraine would have been badly damaged. It angered her more than ever that these demons could come into her forest and destroy everything in their path.

  Alice continued through the village. She turned sharply, following the route the barricades forced her to take. She arrived at a particularly narrow alleyway. It looked clear, but as she and Storm headed through towards the market square a voice called out and a hand appeared on her shoulder.

  “Wait! The trap is primed!”

  Alice stopped and found the apprentice boy, Owen, beside her.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  Storm had stopped a pace ahead, sniffing at the muddy ground.

  “It’s a hunting channel,” Owen said. “They use them to trap fast-moving animals in the forest. Stand back,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  Alice stepped into an open doorway and Storm followed her in with narrowed eyes. Owen squeezed past them into the cottage and came back out with a small barrel in his arms.

  “Watch,” he said.

  He carried the barrel back the way Alice and Storm had come, then he turned and hurled it down the alley. As it bounced through the mud beyond the doorway there was a loud click, and from the outer wall of the cottage swung a huge net set in a wooden frame. The net was more than two paces square and it was swift and powerful. It crashed into the wall of the cottage at the end of its arc, pinning the barrel against the wall. Owen ran and quickly wound a rope to secure the net to the cottage wall. The barrel was trapped.

  Alice turned to him, impressed. “You made this?” she asked.

  Owen nodded. “I’m a carpenter. Apprentice actually, but … well … the Narlaw took my father, so I’m in charge of his workshop for now.”

  “It’s incredible,” Alice said.

  Owen shrugged. “Just a footboard under the mud, a catch and some heavy-duty springs. There’s one near the south gate, too, but that was all I could build in time.” He cast a troubled look over towards the forest. “I’ve seen them move,” he said. “The demons. They’re so strong and fast. I thought trapping them might give us a chance. Give you a chance, I mean…”

  Alice nodded. No matter how clever and brave the villagers were, no matter how long they fought against the Narlaw, it would always come down to her.

  You can do it, Storm said. You will do it.

  Alice laid a hand on Storm’s warm, soft back. “We should go to the hall,” she said. “I have a ward to set.”

  In the emergency council meeting she and the elders had drawn up a defence plan. Those who felt willing and able to fight would take up positions around the village, slowing the Narlaw down, trying their best to confuse and blind them with lanterns and burning torches – and now, it seemed, funnelling them towards Owen’s traps. The rest of the villagers would stay in the hall, around which Alice would raise a protective ward – smaller and stronger than the one surrounding the village. She had no idea whether it would keep the Narlaw out, but it was the best she could do.

  As she and Storm crossed the market square it was clear that word of their arrival had already reached the village hall. Several elders came to meet her at the bottom of the steps.

  “It seems we have you to thank for extinguishing the forest fire?” Elder Byrne said. She was a school teacher and had something of Moraine’s gentle authority about her. She smiled, though her face was tight with worry. “We have gathered people inside,” she said. “Come. Tell us what you need.”

 
; Alice had arranged for certain of Moraine’s protective compounds to be brought here while she was searching for Soraya. And that was her first task: to set a strong ward around this building, something that would hold the Narlaw at bay and give her a chance to attempt the banishment. As she climbed the steps towards the hall, Alice realized Storm was not following her. She turned.

  I will call again for the wolf packs, Storm said. They fear the Narlaw more than ever now, but perhaps some will join us in this fight.

  Thank you, whispered Alice.

  She watched as Storm trotted swiftly across the square and out of sight, hoping that her friend would not be gone long. The thought of what might happen that night – of what she had to do – weighed heavily on her. Her stomach fluttered with nerves and she clenched her fists to keep her hands from shaking.

  Alice followed Elder Byrne into the village hall, into the murmuring mass of people; a hundred heads turned and all eyes fixed on her. Every gaze was charged with the desperate, terrified need for protection.

  Evening came. The ward was set.

  Alice stood in the bell tower scanning the forest canopy – the forest that had been her home for as long as she could remember, and that now was the domain of demons.

  The fire had left a scar on the mountainside much larger than she had imagined, making clear what might have been. The Narlaw truly were destroyers of life. If they were not stopped here, these few would spread from village to village, town to town, laying waste to the great forest. More Narlaw would creep across the passes from the Darklands, sinking more and more people into the ghost-sleep until all the north was in their grasp.

  Alice stared into the deep green, the swaying treetops burnished gold by the setting sun. Moraine was out there, too. And the village hunters. They would sleep forever if the banishment failed, if Alice could not save them. She practised casting out with her Whisperer sense; casting out and then withdrawing a little further each time, as Soraya had taught her. There was no sign yet of the Narlaw’s slick, unnatural presence – nor of help from the palace.