The Sight (41 page)

Tsarr paused.

‘What he means,’ said Skart, ‘is what Tsinga told him once.  That you may not be able to return.’

Larka blinked back at them both stupidly.

‘You will need a strong root to this world,’ said Tsarr, ‘something or somebody strong enough to bind you back.  Those you love above all else, they must be with you.  To call you back if they ever touch you.  I am glad we have found Huttser and Palla again.’

Larka was exhausted and, as they watched her, she slumped to the ground again and gave herself up to sleep.  At first Larka’s dream was filled with pain.  Bran was lying in the grass and, as she watched the little human, a shadow fell across its body.  Larka began to tremble, for in her sleep she knew it was the presence that frightened her more than anything now.  It was a presence that she knew she would have to face.  The Evil One.

But then Larka dreamt of Kar.  He was talking to her quietly and his voice was strong and clear.  ‘You mustn’t fear, Larka,’ he was saying gently, as Fell had once done in her dreams, ‘only fear can defeat us.  Remember the pact we made.  Have faith.  And hope.’

Larka stirred, for in her dream that face was exactly as she had seen it in the pool.  Still Larka couldn’t touch the nagging doubt inside her.  What was it about Kar’s face that made her wonder? But as Larka’s mind stirred from the murky depths of sleep and rose towards the clarity of consciousness, suddenly she realized.

‘Of course,’ Larka cried as she opened her eyes and felt a thrill of real hope tremble through her body.  ‘Your fur, Kar, it was singed from the fire.  You are alive.’

Larka looked about, but it was raining heavily, the dreariness of the morning already dispelling her swelling optimism.  Larka was thinking of Kar now and, as she thought of what lay ahead and remembered, too, all she had been through with Kar, the second power of the Sight came on her once more.

The images flashed before her eyes, leaping across the sheet rain that curtained in front of her.  At first Larka saw a great sea, the same sea that Morgra had looked upon, and from its waters hundreds, thousands of fish were leaping and crawling on to the face of the land.  Then Larka saw a forest and through the trees shapes were moving, swinging through the branches.

Then suddenly the forest was gone and Larka was looking at herself, but not as a reflection.  She was somewhere high, high in the mountains, on the edge of a yawning chasm, filled with vicious rocks.  As Larka padded along she came to an old stone bridge that arched over the rocky void, and all around lay an eerie sight.  She knew immediately they had been made by man.  The stones were regular, in criss-crossing lines that spread wide across the mountain.  They were the remains of human dens.  Larka remembered the castle, high above the valley where she had been born.

‘Harja,’ murmured Larka, ‘the gateway to heaven.’

Larka knew immediately it was the work of man, though the she-wolf could hardly comprehend what she was seeing.

The stone dens lay everywhere, spread out across the rise of the mountain, stretching as far as the eye could see.  In their first aspect, they gave the impression of unity and completion, but as Larka looked she saw that most of them were broken down.  Roofs had long fallen in, piling rubble among the walls of stone and the tall pillars that stood everywhere like ossified tree stumps.

Here and there among the pillars stood strange statues.  Some had fallen from their plinths and smashed to pieces on the hard, formless earth.  Others stood upright still, human forms that had been worked by long forgotten souls in their attempt to represent their lives.  Some were so badly weathered that the human faces were worn completely flat, so that only their shapes remained, as an impression of what had been.  There was something  infinitely sad about  these unmoving shapes.  Something too that the she-wolf could not understand.

Larka watched herself drawing nearer to the stone bridge and the terrifying drop made the wolf’s head reel.  As she looked down she felt her thoughts tumbling into the rocky abyss, spinning, falling helplessly into nothingness.  Larka snarled and closed her eyes.  There was a stillness about her and everything was dark again.

When Larka opened her eyes she was still looking at herself walking along the ravine.  Larka saw herself pad on to the bridge and ahead of her was a strange statue that made her ears cock forward.  It was a giant statue of a she- wolf and, at its stone belly, two suckling human infants.  Larka noticed too a blue light all around her and, beyond, a giant moon, bright and still and perfectly full.  The words of the verse entered her mind.

‘When the eye of the moon is as round as the sun.’

But, as Larka watched, the hairs rose on the back of her neck and her face curled into a snarl.  Her whole body began shaking violently and her eyes widened in horror.  The pictures dissolved again, but her muzzle was dripping with rain and sweat and she was growling furiously.

‘What is it, Larka?’ cried Tsarr, stirring from sleep.

‘Have you had a dream?’ said Skart, opening his wings.

‘You are fretting about the path ahead.’

‘No, Skart,’ whispered Larka bitterly, ‘it was not a dream.  I looked into the water...’

Skart turned nervously to Tsarr and Larka suddenly swung her head towards Bran.

‘What, Larka, what did you see?’

‘The future, Skart,’ answered Larka, recalling bitterly what Tsinga had once said about many not being able to bear living with such knowledge.  ‘The verse says we would need courage to face this thing.  A courage as deep as despair.  Tsinga could not know how true those words would be.  For I have been to the citadel, Skart, and I know why it is called the gateway to heaven.’

‘Why, Larka? What future have you glimpsed there?’

‘My own,’ answered Larka, shuddering helplessly, ‘I have seen my own death.’

‘I am! Yet what I am none cares nor knows My friends forsake me like a memory lost, I am the self consumer of my woes.’ John Clare, ‘I Am’

Quickly, we must travel back in time, on wings as fast as memory itself, back to Kar, and learn something of his own terrible journey.  For what Larka had seen in the water was true.  As the flames engulfed her friend, he had swung left and right growling in agony.  The fire was everywhere, blinding him, burning his eyes.  At last, in desperation, the wolf turned to a part of the forest where he thought the fire was at its weakest and hurled himself into the heat.  The agony gripped him as his fur flamed and he sprang through the air.  But suddenly the flames were gone and Kar was rolling around and around in the snow.

The pain was rippling all over his body and practically all his fur had been burnt away, but he was no longer on fire and at least he was alive.  For four suns the wolf lay there, sleeping feverishly, and when he woke he managed to lap at the snow for moisture.  He got up and wandered around looking for Larka, but it had snowed again and her tracks were lost completely.

For a while the wolf thought of returning to the human village to try and scavenge, but at last he set off, travelling he hardly knew where, his body still smarting with pain.  It was after two more suns that Kar stumbled on an extraordinary sight.

It was a high wooden den with a sloping roof that stood on its own in a snowy meadow.  Kar was reminded of the stave church, but where before it had been as dark as the forest, this was coloured as brightly as a spring field.  Its back was painted with scenes of Man and animals, locked in some strange communion with the skies.  In the heavens the people seemed to have changed into birds, for wings were sprouting from their backs, but below they had been cast into pits of burning air and flame and around them wild animals tore at their flesh, pulling them earthwards.  Kar growled, but as he stood silently before the walls of the painted monastery he understood nothing of this fable of judgment and redemption.

Kar suddenly thought of Tor and Fenris, and he wondered if the humans had gods too, or if they thought that Man and Lera were somehow connected.  But as Kar looked at those wild beasts, tearing at Man’s flesh, it did not seem to him that the humans who had built this place could believe that Man and the Lera were anything but enemies.

Kar padded on, and now he came to another human village but this time the dens were broken down, charred and blackened in the snow.  Though the wolf didn’t know it, the Turks, pushing deep into Transylvania, had attacked one winter night and put the village to the sword.  Thinking of the fire and all he had experienced of Man, Kar passed quickly on, but as he was coming to the end of the broken dens he stopped.

Kar saw a strange den surrounded on all sides by poles made of the same substance as the metal crosses in the graveyard.  The poles were buried deep in a line of even stones.  On the hard ground inside was a shiny, rounded object filled with water. There were the last remnants of bone on the floor next to it, and the wolf blinked and growled as he looked at the prison.

Suddenly Kar heard a grunt and a shape emerged from the den.  It was the strangest dog Kar had ever seen.  It was even taller than Kar, though really most remarkably thin.  So thin in fact that Kar could almost see the ribs sticking out from its sides.  Its legs were as slender as twigs, and fine, long fur, which curled here and there into ringlets, hung about its body.

But strangest of all was its muzzle.  It was so long and tapering that it seemed to go on for ever and to Kar’s eyes made it look a little like a giant stoat.  Yet despite the almost feminine delicacy of its body and bones, there was a tremendous vigour about it too, a lean, springy energy that spoke both of strength and speed.

The dog was half asleep and did not notice Kar watching him through the bars.  It yawned and, pushing its front legs forward across the floor of the kennel, its body dropped as it began to stretch.  Its fine muzzle opened and its legs quivered with delight as it shook the energy through its muscles.  Then it yawned again and opened its eyes.

As soon as it caught sight of the wolf the dog began to growl furiously, and the barking that came from its throat seemed so loud that it could have broken open that slender frame.  Another shape sprang from the den behind it immediately.

‘What is it, Manov, have the masters returned?’

But the second dog had seen Kar too.  Her body braced, but rather than barking, her eyes glittered hopefully.

‘Hush, Manov,’ she whispered.  ‘Perhaps it can help us.’

‘Help us?’ snorted Manov.  ‘Are you forgetting what we were bred for, Mitya? To be Putnar.  We were born to drive the wild wolf from the land so that the grace and ease of the true dog may be bred into future generations.’

Kar was amazed.  Firstly, that he could understand the dogs at all and secondly, that this creature had used the word Putnar.

‘Oh, be quiet, you old fool,’ said Mitya irritably.  ‘We can’t hunt anything, can we, stuck in this kennel? And if we don’t eat soon there won’t be any future generations.  You and your breeding, Manov.’

Manov seemed rather embarrassed and he started muttering to himself.

‘But it’s only breeding that matters, Mitya.  Match the finest with the strongest.  Allow only the best to survive, for the purpose they were intended.  That’s what our masters teach.’

Mitya shook her head and came closer to the bars.

‘Forgive us,’ she said gently to Kar, ‘but since the humans fled the village we’ve been cooped up here and it strains our nerves.  By nature we are rather highly strung.’

The wolf wanted to laugh as he looked at them, so absurd did they seem, but Kar liked this female immediately.

‘What are you?’ he growled.

‘Borsoi, of course,’ answered Manov behind his mate, raising his head again, so high that he might have snagged his nose on the clouds.  ‘Can’t you use your eyes? Thoroughbreds, raised on the great northern Steppes, for our speed and courage.  Raised only by the greatest and most powerful of the humans.  We are royal dogs and should be treated as such.’

Mitya raised her own eyes to the heavens.

‘Don’t mind Manov,’ she said as humbly as possible, although it wasn’t really in her nature to be humble.  ‘We need your help.  If you don’t help us, we’ll be dead before long.’

Kar padded closer and thrust his muzzle through the bars to sniff at the dogs, but as soon as he did so Manov began to growl in the kennel.

‘What did I say?’ he cried scornfully.  ‘No breeding.  No breeding at all.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by this breeding,’ growled Kar, ‘but if it gives you legs and a muzzle like that I’d rather be a wolf runt.’

Manov leapt forward, barking angrily, and when he opened his long snout Kar saw the sharpness of his teeth.  But Kar would not allow himself to be intimidated by this absurd creature.  He let the growl start deep in his stomach, rumbling up through his throat, until it exploded into an angry snarl that made Mitya shiver and back away.  It was a strange and almost humorous sight – the wolf outside the cage, wild with an instinctive anger; the two Borsois within, so refined and inbred that it seemed a gust of wind might blow them over.  But suddenly Kar turned and, flicking his muzzle scornfully, he sprang away.

He heard Mitya scolding Manov as he ran, but he didn’t look back.  Kar was desperately hungry himself and, as he thought of what the Borsoi had said and felt the anger in his belly, he wanted to strike out at something.

It was getting dark and Kar had begun to feel guilty about the dogs in their prison, when he came close to the remains of another human den.  It was edged by a sheep fold and, as Kar approached, he felt a furious hunger rising inside him.  There was no one about and the sheep had begun to bleat pitifully as they sensed the Varg.

In a single bound Kar leapt the fence and almost as soon as he was among them he felt anger overcome him.  He had meant to take only one, but as soon as he began to bite a feeling mastered him, as liberating as it was violent.  Kar swung left and right at the sheep, snarling and snapping blindly as the bloodlust took him.  His head was swamped with their scent and, as they tried to get away from him, his anger consumed him.