Ghost Hunter (26 page)

He stumbled sideways. They circled the altar: Eostra jabbing, Torak staggering out of reach.

On the far side of the cavern, a shadow moved.

Renn caught her breath. In disbelief, she saw the Walker on all fours, shaking his head.

"Hidden Ones," he croaked.

Torak and the Soul-Eater went on circling the altar.

"Hidden People of the Mountain! The Walker calls on you! Rid the world of this canker!"

At first, Renn felt nothing.

Then: a faint tremor beneath her hands.

The Walker lifted his scrawny arms, his voice gathering strength. "The Walker calls on you! Let the jaws of the Mountain snap shut!"

In the cavern, the stone teeth shuddered. Renn saw a great, jutting pillar topple and fall with a crash.

"Rid us of the Soul-Eater forever!"

A hanging column thundered down upon the altar, splitting it in two. Still clutching the fragments of the fire-opal, Eostra staggered back from the ruins. She teetered

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on the brink of the chasm. With a terrible, unearthly cry, she lost her balance and fell.

But as she fell, her spear caught the hem of Torak's tunic.

In horror, Renn saw him pull back. The weight was too great. He had no knife to cut himself free.
"Torak!"
Renn screamed. Torak dropped to his knees.

The Soul-Eater dragged him with her into the chasm.

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THIRTY-NINE

He is deep in the earth. It is cold and dark, and there is a roaring in his ears and a smell of rottenness in his nostrils. Is he already dead?

Someone is carrying him. They must be taking him to the bone-grounds.

Now they're laying him down, passing hands over his face, muttering a death chant. Leaving him alone.

The stars wheel above him. Moons rise and set and rise again. All that has been, and is, and will be flows through him. He is a baby in the Den, suckling his wolf mother. He is running from the clearing where Fa lies

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dying. He is falling into the chasm in the Mountain of Ghosts.

He is back beneath the stars. Small, shadowy people are bending over him. He gazes up into strange, gray, pointed faces and moon-bright eyes.

Where's Renn? he tries to ask. Where's Wolf?

The eyes blink out. Once again, he is alone.

Still the stars wheel above him.
Coldest of all, the darkest light.
The last light a man sees before he dies.

He feels no pain; only a great emptiness. He doesn't want to die alone.

But he is so tired.

He stands looking down at his body. He doesn't want to leave, but he has to, he is so tired. With a reluctant sigh, he turns and begins to climb toward the stars.

The First Tree was shining brighter than Renn had ever seen. The whole sky was alive with rippling, shimmering green, waiting to welcome Torak's spirit.

The white-haired boy drew the hanging across the mouth of his cave and made her sit by the fire, where he wrapped a woolly mantle around her shoulders and put a steaming beaker in her hands. She was shaking so hard that she spilled most of it. Torak and Wolf were gone. They had left her behind in the emptiness.

Numbly, she took in the white stone creatures peering

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from every crack. Nothing was real. Not this cave, not that nightmare rush through the tunnel, with the rocks falling and Dark dragging her to safety. Torak was dead. Not real.

On the other side of the fire, the ravens--the white and the black--awoke, and irritably snapped their wings.

"It was the ghosts that woke them," said Dark, warming his hands at the fire. "Most have gone to be with their clans, but a few always get left behind." He went on talking--something about his sister not being here, so maybe this time she'd found peace in the sky-- but Renn had stopped listening.

Souls' Night. She pictured the Mountain clans feasting with their dead; and her own clan, far away in the Forest. Perhaps already they'd sensed that the menace of Eostra was ended.

"Renn," said Dark, wrenching her back. "He'd put on the Death Marks. At least his souls will stay together."

But he hasn't got a guardian, she thought bleakly. So who will come for him and guide him up to the First Tree?

Wolf watched the last of the Walking Breaths disappear down the gorge.

He'd followed them out of the Mountain, hoping they would lead him to Tall Tailless. They hadn't. Now he stood in the howling Dark, with the wind clawing his fur

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and snatching the scents away.

Wolf was frightened. This was different from the other times when he and his pack-brother had been parted. This was as if a great Fast Wet was rushing between them: one that couldn't be crossed.

Whimpering, Wolf raced over the Bright Soft Cold and back again.

Above the yowling of wind and Wet, he caught a whine so high that it was like hearing light. He knew that whine. It was the voice of the deer bone which Tall Tailless carried at his flank: the deer bone which held the dusty earth that he sometimes smeared on Wolf. The deer bone which, once before, in the Forest, Wolf had heard sing.

Eagerly, Wolf sped after the singing: down the slope, past where they had fought the dogs, toward the Fast Wet which bubbled from the Mountain.

Tall Tailless lay beside it.

Wolf pounced on his chest and licked his nose.
Wake up!
Tall Tailless didn't move.

Wolf barked in his ears. He scrabbled and pawed, he nipped the cold face. No response.

Wolf's world broke apart.
No. No. Tall Tailless was Not-Breath!

But the horn was still singing.

The singing sank deep into Wolf and became the strange, clear certainty which came to him at times. At last he knew what to do.

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Filled with new purpose, he cast about for the scent. There: faint, but very familiar. The scent of his pack-brother. Wolf loped after it.

He hadn't gone far up the Mountain when he saw it. It was the same size and shape as Tall Tailless, but a bit fuzzy at the edges: the Breath-that-Walks.

Wolf sensed that it was lost and confused. He slowed to a trot, so as not to startle it, and wagged his tail. It saw him and stood, swaying and blinking. Wolf leaned against its legs and gave it a gentle push. The Breath-that-Walks staggered. Nudging it along, Wolf guided it down the slope. When at last they reached the body, he nosed it back inside.

Tall Tailless gave a shuddering gasp--and breathed.

Wolf licked his pack-brother's face to warm him up, then lay down on top of him, to make quite sure that this time, the Breath-that-Walks stayed in.

Dark said he was going to fetch Renn's gear that she'd left on the Mountain, and maybe she should come too, as seeing the sun come up might make her feel a bit better--it sometimes helped him.

It had snowed in the night. Eostra's dead cold was gone. The ravens chased one other through the shining sky, and the new snow sparkled gold in the rising sun.

Dark was wrong. This didn't help. It was her first dawn without Torak.

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As she crunched along in Dark's trail, she thought of the long journey before her, back to the Forest. She would have to tell everyone what had happened. And with Saeunn dead, they would want her to be the Raven Mage. A life of aching loneliness stretched ahead. She couldn't bear it.

They neared Torak's old snow hole, and Dark went in search of her gear.

"Something odd," he said when he came back.

Renn couldn't bring herself to care, but he was shyly insistent, so she let him show her what he'd found.

Big, blunt footprints in the snow.

She thought, so the Walker found a way out. That's good. But she couldn't feel it.

The white raven gave a deafening croak, and veered west.

Dark hurried off in pursuit. Renn stayed where she was.

The raven's wings flashed like ice as she flew down to a stream bubbling from a small cave in the boulder field. Settling on a snow-covered hillock, the raven fluffed up her chin-feathers and cawed, exhaling little puffs of frosty breath.

"Renn," called Dark.

Renn kneaded her temples. What now?

The white raven lifted off sharply as the hillock heaved, and Wolf burst out, shook the snow off his pelt,

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and bounded toward her.

"Wolf."
Her voice cracked. She floundered down the slope. Wolf leaped at her, knocking her backward and covering her in slobbery wolf kisses. She flung her arms around him, but he squirmed away and loped back to Dark.

The white raven was still cawing, and now Rip and Rek were joining in. Wolf was lashing his tail as he bounded in circles around the hillock, and Dark was sinking to his knees beside it, shouting, "Renn! It's Torak! He's
alive!"

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[Image: Wolf and a cub.]

FORTY

The cub woke with a start. Those were wolf howls! No they weren't. It was only the ravens making wolf noises. They did that a lot. They laughed when the cub raced about, searching for his pack.

Crossly, he slumped down and flipped his tail over his nose. But he couldn't get back to sleep. He was too hungry.

Crawling out from under the rock, he stood at the mouth of the Den and snuffed the air.

The Light had come, but not the ravens; so no chance of any meat. It was warmer, and the Bright Soft Cold was

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deeper. From where the cub stood, the white hill dropped steeply, then rose again to make the Mountain. Even that looked kinder. Once, the cub had tried to reach it, but the ravens had driven him back. He'd been annoyed. Then he'd heard the baying on the Mountain: dreadful, angry dogs who sounded as if they ate wolf cubs. He hadn't tried again.

Blinking in the glare, the cub padded out into the Bright Soft Cold--and sank to his belly. Anxiously, he scanned the Up for the terrible owl. Nothing. Maybe the big tailless had scared it away.

The big tailless had come in the Dark, when the cub--who'd been trying to hunt lemmings--had fallen into a hole and couldn't get out. The cub had been yowling for a long time when the big tailless had peered in. He had a rich, reassuring smell, so the cub had wagged his tail. The big tailless had scooped him out, tossed him a scrap of beautiful slimy meat, and shambled off.

It was very quiet on the hill. Even the wind was gone. The stillness was frightening.

The cub barked.
I'm here!

Nothing replied. The cub began to whimper. He missed his pack so much that it hurt.

Suddenly, he stopped whimpering. In the distance he heard the deep, echoing croaks of ravens. He swiveled