Fell (The Sight 2) (16 page)

Vladeran craned forwards, as if the closeness might carry his speaking thoughts more quickly into the world beyond.

“I woke you once, she-wolf, when we learnt that my son had been amongst your kind,” answered his thoughts, “and so learnt of the strange events on the mountain of Harja. Learnt too that through animals the pathway to beyond is closer than for man. And now another comes to meddle in the affairs of humans.”

“Another?” said the she-wolf’s thoughts, and her left ear twitched.

“Another wolf. A black loner.”

The she-wolf’s dark, impenetrable eyes grew like moons. For so long now she had lain amongst the spectres in the Red Meadow. Only once before had she been woken by this man, with the dark arts Vladeran had learnt of the secret power of blood and water and words to summon visions.

“Fell,” hissed Morgra in the water, for that was the she-wolf that looked back at Vladeran now. Fell’s hated aunt and the cause of so much darkness and death years ago. “It’s Fell, I’m sure of it.”

“Fell?”

“My little nephew,” said the she-wolf, “and the brother of Larka, the white Varg that you … that I told you of. He too has the powers of the Sight, and I commanded him once.”

“But what can a wolf want with a human?” asked Vladeran’s wondering mind. “The human he travels with now. A girl.”

“By the shadows in your eyes, Dragga, I see it’s more than just any human, is it not?” murmured Morgra’s cunning thoughts. “Has it not some great destiny, this child?”

Vladeran was silent, but his eyes narrowed angrily.

“But how should I know what he wants?” the wolf went on. “What do I really see in the Red Meadow, but visions of eternity? I’m not flesh and blood, human, but the stuff of dreams and of nightmares. Of myth.”

“But when you lived, you said that you communicated with the dead,” thought Vladeran angrily, for even though he was a brave, ruthless warrior, Vladeran feared death above all things, and even more so, what came after it, “summoned them from beyond.”

“The Searchers,” hissed Morgra’s thoughts, remembering that terrible night when she had used the powers of the Sight and a Summoning Howl to open the Pathways of the Dead, and call an army of spectral Varg from the Red Meadow to help her fight the rebel wolves. “Yes. They came at my howling, indeed.”

“Then the two worlds may communicate physically, even as we do now. Could you not send out these Searchers to …”

“No,” snapped Morgra. “I was a living wolf then, touched by the Sight, and a legend was being fulfilled. But Larka’s power closed that doorway, and there are none to call us from your side.”

“But I must find this black wolf, for if I find him I will find the girl he travels with. The girl they call changeling.”

“What’s this to me, human? I can see nothing from here of the warm, hot life of the world, unless you call to me with the blood in the water. I’m like one blinded forever.”

“But I reside in the world of the living,” answered Vladeran. “Teach me then of the Gift. The Sight.”

Morgra gave a low, snarling growl and, in the water, a shape seemed to wing past her head. A raven.

“The Sight is the gift of animals, human.” The she-wolf paused. “Yet, as Larka showed us all on the mountaintop, when she became the Man Varg up at Harja, man too is a Lera. An animal.”

Vladeran nodded gravely, remembering the strange dream he had had all those years ago. He had been standing amongst ancient Roman stones, and it had felt to him as if he had been able to see the history of the whole world, and all about him there had been wild animals. But amongst them was a strange humanlike creature climbing down from the trees. In that moment he had known, more certainly than he had ever known anything in his life, that the stories of his childhood, read from the great Bible, were as false as tales of fairies and changelings, and that man too was like these creatures around him. An animal.

Vladeran nodded coldly.

“Yes, Morgra. Man is an animal too, and so man must act like a wild beast.”

Morgra’s eyes narrowed. “Very well,” came the she-wolf’s thoughts. “We will see what I may teach you, human. You summon my spectre in the water with the gift of blood again, to warm the veins of the lost for a time, and make me remember what I’m not. So this time I shall instruct you.”

Vladeran smiled grimly.

“And in return you shall tell me of the world. Of the hot sun on a tumbling mountain river, and the smell of cornflowers in the open spring meadows. Of the eagle and the falcon swooping for a kill down the clean, bright air, and the taste of new flesh in the morning.”

For a moment the she-wolf had an expression that, if she were human, could be described as a smile.

“Larka has long passed to a place beyond even the Red Meadow, where I wait and suffer in purgatory,” she said, wondering at the mystery of it, like one tormented who was speaking of some mythical good that she could never understand. “She who taught that all must be free, and stopped me controlling the world through a human’s mind, and the child’s power. Very well then, Larka, my dear, once more perhaps we’ll see.”

Even as she said it, Morgra’s thoughts seemed to grow faint in Vladeran’s mind, and her image began to fade. It was as if she was helpless against the very name of Larka.

Vladeran raised his fist again and squeezed hard, breaking the seal of congealing blood on his palm and muttering dark words. As soon as the red drops hit the surface, Morgra was sharp and clear again in the font.

“And Fell. Her dark brother, Fell,” came Morgra’s struggling mind. “He was mine once, human, and lived in shadows. I tormented his heart and mind and made him kill at my command. So he’s closer to the shadows than he ever knows. Closer to you, my lord, than this child, I think.”

Vladeran’s heart was beating furiously and he smiled.

“We must hunt the girl and the wolf,” he growled. “Must track them down and kill them both.”

“You ask much of spectres,” whispered Morgra’s mind. “But I shall tell you then of Fell’s true nature, human, to trap him with, and together perhaps we shall teach the world of the real power of myths.”

“Myths?” whispered Vladeran.

“Not stories told by wolf or man to frighten children, of Wolfbane and of werewolves, of grasht and goblins and of silly vampires, fables to frighten cowards with the threat of evil and of sin. But the power that lives beyond those stories, and makes them strong indeed, that lives in nightmares and in sleep. That is ribbed into the very fabric of conscious being. The power of love and of hate.”

Vladeran shuddered, and even he wished to be away from this stony place of death, back in Romana’s arms, touching and loving the living.

“We’ve a pact then, she-wolf,” he said softly. “And I shall bring you more blood.”

“A pact?” said Morgra’s angry mind, remembering how she herself, a barren she-wolf who could never raise and love a family of her own, had once so longed to make a pact with Larka’s little family, to join them and protect them too. “A pact we have indeed then. So be warned, human, never to break it.”

Far away, a face, hidden in shadow, stared out through a high window at the mountains beyond. His eyes were filled with sadness and longing, and he clutched his left arm painfully, like one who had long been ill. He had a kingly bearing, but he was thinking now how he had failed in his duty in the lands beyond the forest.

“Is there any more news?” he asked sadly. His voice was as deep and passionate as water rushing over shiny pebbles.

The armoured knight he was addressing dipped his head respectfully, as he stood behind him in the great hall.

“We’re sending out riders.”

“And you believe the rumours?” came that powerful voice.

“Some,” said the knight.

“Search for any who might know of it.” His master felt a sharp pain in his arm. “And this strange story?” he added. “The wolf.”

“That I don’t know. That sounds like a tale made by children.”

“Yes. And yet …”

The story of a wolf was a strange one, indeed. Like Vladeran the man suddenly remembered that vision that had come to him years before. He turned and walked back to the throne in the hall and sat down wearily.

“What will you do?” asked the knight respectfully.

“Do? We must keep looking.”

The soldier was looking at his master’s finely worked jerkin as he said this last. It was emblazoned as Vladeran’s had been, yet unlike Vladeran’s tunic, beneath the red cross and yellow flames lay the image of a golden animal, part lion, part eagle, curled about itself, so that its tail was in its mouth and its wings folded. Only the secret leader of the Order wore such a thing. The Griffin.

“WE'RE CLOSE,” SAID ALINA WOVENWORD, “to the valley Ivan told me of. Baba Yaga’s valley.”

Alina poked at the fading embers, by the mouth of the cave where they had both just spent the night. Two cold months had passed since their escape from the ice field, and together the girl and the black wolf had climbed higher into the Carpathian Mountains, fighting through the swelling snows, but enjoying too the peace of clear, crisp days and winter sunshine. Now they could see the cairn on the mountain above, and with luck beyond was the valley.

The trail had been difficult at times, and Alina had often looked out across the sweeping white mountains and the great lonely expanses of Transylvania and gulped with the sense of her own minuteness in nature.

“Are you sure we must visit this blacksmith?” asked the wolf.

Fell growled at the strangeness of the conversation. He had always known that he could peer into humans’ minds with the Sight, but to communicate with the girl like this, to actually talk to her, as if Alina were a growling wolf herself, or Fell a chattering human, had astounded his thoughts and frightened his soul. It was like one of the cub’s stories. And now he knew the voice on the wind had been real.

Fell had already learnt how the power only came at moments of great pressure and intensity though, and how it did not seem to work at any distance. Perhaps being sealed together in that ice den had brought it on them, but Fell knew in his heart that it was more than that.

“I think so,” answered Alina. “If we are to journey to Castelu, I need help, and better clothes. This winter is too dangerous.”

Alina was far from sure of their journey, as she fed kindling into the rising flames, and felt a desperate pang in her heart. If Vladeran and Romana were really her parents, why had they wanted her dead, and was her little brother still alive? Yet an even darker mystery surrounded her now, if all this was to be believed: the very survival of nature itself. What could it all mean?

Alina looked for reassurance into the catching flames. Fire had kept her alive in these freezing weeks, and had brought the wolf comfort too. She had lost Ivan’s pack, but she still had his knife and, with her skill at carving, had made more of those clever little tools to light the kindling.

As the girl had cooked the meat Fell had brought after his hunts, the wolf had grown used to its heat and flames, and although he did not really understand its nature, he had come to fear it less and less. It sometimes made Fell almost guilty sitting there though, for the wild wolf sensed that he was being touched by the tameness that visited men’s dogs and, to the Varg, made them weak and lazy, or robbed them of their freedom.

Yet out here in the snows, travelling with the human was not the same as living in their strange homes, Fell kept reassuring himself. Their nights were lit by starlight and the great moon, the wolf goddess Tor, not the oil lamps that burned in the villages. They drank not from human cups, but from pools and mountain streams, and ate meat fresh from the kill, even if Alina WovenWord always insisted on cooking her own. The roof of their home was the endless sky, their walls the trees and rock slopes, and the bed where they laid their heads was the living earth itself.

“And we must be wary as we travel now, Alina,” came Fell’s thoughts suddenly. “The humans we saw yesterday were marching, like your kind always do. They were warriors, I think, Drappa, and I’ve seen what they can do to one another. It’s terrible when the bloodlust takes them.”

“Yes,” answered Alina, but another thought came to the girl. What a thing it would be to be a warrior, free of fear. Did those who had to face a great destiny not have soldiers at their back? Alina had nothing, except Malduk’s coat, a knife, and a strange wolf at her side.

Although she was desperately grateful to Fell and owed him her life, Alina had not forgotten how he had snapped at her on the ice bridge and killed Malduk on the glacier, and often in the nights she had woken fearfully to see the wolf lying near her, and wondered if he might suddenly turn on her too with his teeth. Whenever she was with him, she felt the power and anger lurking beneath the surface of the wolf’s being, a spirit at once vital and impetuous.

At times as they journeyed, Fell had sensed his own wild instincts begin to rise almost uncontrollably too, until he had recalled his vision of the young woman in the water and remembered that this was no ordinary human. She was the sister of the little baby that Larka had tended to in the snows and who Fell himself had carried on his back five years before. Some deep destiny was working itself out.

“So we go, human?” asked Fell, half rising.

Alina hesitated and went on gazing out into the distant, snowy expanses.

“After breakfast, perhaps.”

Fell’s eyes glinted and the wolf began to lick his paw cheerlessly, although his wound from the dam was healed. Three nights after the glacier, Alina had approached Fell to examine the cut. He had let her, and Alina had fetched herbs, as she had once seen Ranna do for Malduk, and made a poultice to bind to the wound with a piece of cloth torn from her shirt. In the days to come it had fallen from the wolf’s leg again, but the poultice had soothed Fell’s cut, helping it heal, and made him wonder again at the power of man.

“We’re united by the Sight, human,” he said suddenly, “but I cannot walk amongst your kind. I am wild.”

In that moment, Alina thought of how the villagers had feared her as a changeling, and how she had concealed herself from goblins, and realised then that they both knew what it was like to be an outsider, but a sudden fear flickered in her eyes.

“But you’ll stay near me, Fell?”

“I will, human.”

Alina sighed gratefully. Mia was gone and Ivan dead, and all her life she had been alone. Whoever the people in her dream were, they had failed to protect and care for her, and it had made poor Alina feel worthless. But at least Fell was at her side.

“Then we’ll find Lescu after breakfast, Fell,” she said firmly, “and ask him what he knows of the world. Of Lord Vladeran too.”

Alina looked at Fell.

“Besides,” she added almost guiltily, “it would be good to sleep in a warm barn for a while, and it’ll be easier to journey to the castle when the snows melt, I think.”

Fell felt sick at the idea of the human dens. “Very well then, Drappa, although it will be dangerous for me, let us be finding your human. Then I must stay in the shadows.”

The two of them breakfasted on a pheasant Fell hunted down, and then set off once more.

But the cairn was farther than it looked and a blizzard came up, so they were forced to shelter in a cave. Fell had gone hunting when Alina woke and in the ravishing day the girl decided to walk out into the snows. She soon found herself in a small forest of lovely silver birch trees, on the slope of the mountain. As the light sparkled in the snow about her and glittered on the strange silvery bark, Alina felt as if she were wandering through a wonderful dream, or one of her own stories, and for the first time in her life she felt like a real changeling child.

She seemed to walk for an age, confident that her tracks in the snow would lead her easily back to the cave and Fell, but as she went on, she heard the guttering of water, and then the most extraordinary sound. A furious snarling and a snapping, mixed with loud, delighted yelps.

Alina broke into a clearing and there stood Fell. The black wolf was on top of a dead boar, tearing at it furiously, sating his hunger and growling with pleasure. The snow was spattered red with blood, and Alina looked on in horror. She backed away again, hoping the wild beast wouldn’t see her, but she broke a branch beneath her foot and Fell swung his head immediately and his eyes glittered savagely.

Alina gasped. For a moment the girl thought there was blood in them, and Fell seemed so different from the creature she had laid her head on in the cave.

“Beware, human,” growled Fell’s mind, and Alina felt that pain to her forehead again, “for the bloodlust grips me.”

Alina backed away even farther, up against a silver birch that stopped her retreat, and Fell jumped off the boar and padded towards her. Alina was looking beyond the wolf at the dead animal, lying in the snow.

“But it’s so ugly,” she whispered, shuddering.

Fell stopped in front of her and growled.

“Ugly, human? Why? I am Varg, and live by the chase. I must eat, must I not? It is natural.”

“Yes.”

The savagery that had gripped Fell seemed to leave his staring gaze. He whimpered softly, and then rubbed his muzzle in the snow to clean it and looked up again and yawned.

“You’re horrified, Drappa?”

“I …”

There was a sudden sadness in the wolf’s mind, as there was in the girl’s. She thought of goblins and witches, and found these real facts of nature far more terrible.

“Is this the wild then, Fell?” she whispered, trembling against the beautiful tree, and almost wishing she was back in the barn. “Is this what nature really is?”

Fell blinked at her, but the wolf did not answer. He could sense the girl’s disgust, and her fear too. Animals sense nothing so quickly as fear.

“You’re Putnar too, Alina WovenWord. Man is.”

“What do you mean, Putnar?”

“Man is a predator, like the wolf. You eat animals, do you not? To live.”

“Yes, Fell. But … but not like this. I could not do this. I …”

“Could you not?” growled Fell angrily. “I wonder, Alina. For I have seen many of the works of man, far worse than the fighting wolf, since we learned the Great Secret on the mountain.”

“What Great Secret?”

“The secret that a vision brought us, Alina, when man and wolf’s thoughts were united. Larka and your baby brother. The secret of man.”

“Tell me.”

“That man too is an animal.”

Alina WovenWord’s eyes opened in amazement almost as great as when the wolf had spoken of her destiny. What was it that was moving through her mind now? Alina loved animals dearly, and had always wanted to know of the wild, thinking it part of her changeling power, but she had never really thought of herself as one of them.

Why was that? she asked herself, as she cowered against the tree. Was it because of the story she had heard in the wooden church in Moldov, of a fabled garden where the first man, Adam, had been placed by God himself? There, woman, Eve, fashioned from Adam’s rib, had joined him, and together they had lived with the animals. Until they had eaten from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and been banished from paradise forever.

That story placed man above the animals, until man’s fall at Eve’s hand, and linked humans to God himself, fashioned in his image. But now a black wolf was telling the girl a grave secret. That man was an animal too.

Alina remembered her dream in the ice cathedral when she had slept on the wolf’s side, of that creature that had looked so human, climbing down from the trees and rising on its legs. It had been like that dancing monkey that travelling players had brought one festival to the village of Moldov.

Could it be true? Was Alina herself, were Malduk and Mia, Ivan and Ranna all just animals, like Fell? There might be no goblins, but the world was suddenly filled with changelings again. Alina gazed at the dead boar and thought of how Malduk had taught her to butcher that sheep at festival. She ate meat like Fell. She was a Putnar, as he had said.

“Yes, Fell.”

Fell could see that Alina’s hazel eyes were glistening with tears.

“Alina. Come with me. There’s something I must show you.”

The black wolf turned slowly, then with a yelp began to bound down the snowy slope towards the stream below. He stopped and looked back.

“Come and see, Drappa.”

Alina hesitated and then walked nervously past the dead boar. Fell was waiting for her by a small thicket, and as Alina neared him, he spoke again.

“You must stay concealed, human. Must not disturb them.”

There was a tenderness in Fell’s mind, and the girl crouched down by him, wondering what he wanted to show her. His muzzle was pointed towards the far bank of the stream. Alina’s heart quickened as she saw what Fell was looking at. Two large grey shapes were lying in the snow beyond, several little bundles of fur bounding around them, squealing and yelping, tumbling over one another and fighting with their little paws. It was a small wolf pack, just two adults and their four cubs.

“Why don’t you approach them, Fell?” whispered Alina, but the wolf simply gave a sad little whine.

As Alina asked it in her thoughts, one of the cubs set off boldly from the others, and reaching the verge above the water, he gave a spring and found himself skittering and tumbling down the bank. He landed in a painless heap, then picked himself up and padded towards the water. It was the most beautiful little animal, about the size of a large puppy, with huge paws and enormous eyes, and its tail wagged happily as it stood there. Its bright young gaze seemed mesmerised by the glittering water, as its little tongue lolled from its tiny furry muzzle.

In that moment it looked up and saw Alina. There was no fear in the look, just a fascinated questioning, and as Alina gazed back at the lovely little thing across the water, a sudden awe enfolded her. The day was so bright and clear, the air so wonderfully fresh, the cub so pretty and artless, that, as the strangers looked at each other, Alina Sculcuvant felt then the deep, grave wonder of being, and the power and mystery of nature, all around her.