Authors: Michelle Paver,Geoff Taylor
Tags: #Good and evil, #Death, #Animals, #Wolves & Coyotes, #Juvenile Fiction, #Philosophy, #Prehistoric peoples, #Battles, #Fiction, #Voyages and travels, #Good & Evil, #Prehistory, #Adventure fiction, #Historical, #Fantasy & Magic, #Demoniac possession, #Friendship, #Murder, #Enemies
Beside him, Renn stirred. "It was you," she said to the woman. "You put the sleeping-potion in their water."
The woman twisted her dry red hands. "The fire let him live! They had no right to kill him."
Angry murmurs from the crowd, and the Forest Horse Leader shook her spear. "Speak the word," she told Torak, "and she dies."
Torak looked from the vengeful green face to the ash
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haired woman. "Leave her alone," he said. There was a storm of protest.
"But she drugged us!" cried the Forest Horse Leader. "She released the great fire! She
must
be punished!" Torak turned on her. "Are you wiser than the Forest?" "Of course not! But--"
"It shall be as you say," she muttered.
"Ah," breathed the crowd.
Durrain stood motionless, observing Torak.
Suddenly he wanted to be rid of them all, these wild-eyed people with their caked heads and scarlet trees.
As he pushed through the crowd, Renn hobbled after him. "Torak, wait!"
He turned.
"You did the right thing," she said.
"They don't know that," he said in disgust. "They'll let her live because I told them to. Not because it's right."
"That won't matter to her."
"Well, it matters to me."
He left her and headed out of camp. He didn't care where he went, just as long as it was away from the Deep Forest clans.
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He sensed someone behind him, and turned to see Durrain. "Go away," he growled.
She came closer and sat down.
He tore off a dock leaf and started shredding it along the veins.
She held out her hand, and a spotted moth settled on her palm. "The night you were born, the World Spirit came to her in a vision. He decreed that you must fight all your life to undo the evil which the Wolf Mage had helped create. She was frightened. She begged the World Spirit to help her child fulfill so hard a destiny. He said he would make you a spirit walker--but that you must then be clanless, for no clan should be so much stronger than the others." She watched the moth flutter away. "And he decreed that this gift must cost your mother her life."
he decreed that this gift must cost your mother her life."
Torak stared at the leaf skeleton in his hands. "To seal the pact, the World Spirit broke off a tine of his antler and gave it to her. She made it into a medicine horn. The day she finished it, she died." A redstart alighted on an alder, wiped its beak on the branch, and flew off.
Torak cast the leaf skeleton on the water and watched it carried away. The Great Yew. His birth tree. His mother's death tree.
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A painful anger kindled within him. She could have lived, but she'd chosen to die. She had done it for him; but she'd left him behind.
Unsteadily, he got to his feet. "I never wanted this."
Durrain made to speak, but he motioned her back. "I never
wanted
it!" he shouted.
Blindly, he ran through the Forest. He kept running till his thigh hurt too much to go on.
He found himself in a green glade netted with sunlight, where swallows swooped and butterflies flitted over windflowers. Beautiful, he thought. And his dead would never see it.
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under his breastbone, and he cried out. He went on crying: loud, heaving, jerky sobs. Crying for his dead, who had left him behind.
Eventually, she could bear it no longer. Grabbing her crutches, she hobbled from the shelter.
It was middle-night, and the camp was quiet. She made her way to a fire and lowered herself onto a log, where she sat watching the sparks fly up to die in the sky. Where was Torak? How could he do this? Running off without telling her, when she was desperate to get back to the Open Forest.
He glowered at the fire. "I want to get out of here. Back to the Open Forest."
"Me too! If you hadn't gone off like that, we'd be on our way."
With a stick he stabbed the embers. "I hate being a
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spirit walker. It feels like a curse."
"You are what you are," she said unsympathetically. "Besides, some good comes out of it."
"What good? Tell me what good ever came out of it?"
He laughed.
With her crutches, she pulled herself to her feet. "Get some sleep. I want to leave as soon as it's light."
He threw the stick into the fire and stood up. Then he reached behind him and put something into her hands.
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"Here. I thought you'd want this." It was the pieces of her bow.
"Now you can lay it to rest," he said. He sounded uncertain, as if he wasn't sure he'd done the right thing. Renn couldn't trust herself to speak. As her fingers closed about the much-loved wood, she seemed to see Fin-Kedinn carving it. It
was
a sign. It had to be. "Renn," Torak said quietly, "it's not an omen. Fin-Kedinn is strong. He will get better." She drew a breath that ended in a gulp. "How did you know I thought that?"
"Well. I--know you."
"It wasn't much."
"Not just for this. For what you did. For breaking your oath." Putting her hand on his shoulder, she rose and kissed his jaw, then hobbled quickly away. Wolf watched Tall Tailless blinking and swaying after the pack-sister had gone, and sensed that his feelings were as scattered and blown about as a flurry of leaves. Taillesses were so complicated. Tall Tailless liked the pack-sister and she liked him, but instead of rubbing flanks and licking muzzles, they ran away from each 280
other. It was extremely odd.
The Thunderer was a great mystery. When Wolf was a cub, the Thunderer had made him leave Tall Tailless and go to the Mountain. Later, when Wolf ran away, the Thunderer had been angry. Then Wolf was forgiven, although he wasn't allowed back on the Mountain. All this was very strange; but then, the Thunderer was male and female, hunter and prey. No wolf could understand such a creature.
A faint scent drifted past Wolf's nose, and he sprang alert. Darkfur's eyes gleamed.
Demons.
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Eagerly, Wolf put his muzzle to the ground, taking deep sniffs as he followed the trail. It led past the ancient trees and up the rise.
Inside, he caught a whiff of demon, but the scent was old. No demons here. Just a very thin, smelly tailless cub.
Wolf whined softly and licked her nose. She didn't even blink. Something was wrong. Wolf backed out of the Den and raced off to fetch Tall Tailless.
The Light had come when he drew near the Dens of the taillesses, and he saw at once that he would have to wait. On the edge of the Fast Wet, a group of floating hides had drawn up. Wolf watched the leader of the Raven pack climbing the bank, and the pack-sister throwing away her sticks and hopping toward him, and the pack leader laughing and swinging her into his forepaws.
How long till we reach the Open Forest?" asked Torak. Fin-Kedinn, rolling up his sleeping-sack, said, "We should make it by dusk." "At last!" sighed Renn.
It was two days since they'd left the Deep Forest 283
Around him, Torak sensed a great healing. Even among the Deep Forest clans, there had been a coming together, sparked by the need to heal the stolen children. Five had been freed from holes dug into the slopes behind the sacred grove. All were stick thin, their teeth filed to fangs, their minds scoured white as mistletoe berries. But after peering into their eyes, Renn had declared that Thiazzi hadn't yet trapped demons in their marrow, so they were still children, not tokoroths; and since she had more experience of this than anyone, even Durrain had deferred to her. The last Torak had seen of the Deep Forest clans, they'd been earnestly debating the best rites to aid the recovery.
And yet, he thought as he stowed the waterskins in the canoes, some hurts would never heal. The Aurochs' scars would never fade. Gaup was maimed for life. His 284