The Sight (8 page)

‘Things grow dangerous, Palla.  The Night Hunters are crossing heedlessly into pack territories  now, breaking Tratto’s Blessing wherever they go.  They murdered Kar’s parents.’

‘Poor little thing,’ gasped Kipcha.

‘That’s why I brought him here.  I don’t know what else to do with him.’

‘But why are they attacking?’ asked Khaz.

 ‘To spread hatred and fear among the free wolves.  But they wanted the cub too.  They took his brothers and sisters and it was only because he was playing beyond our Meeting Place that I managed to get him away at all.’

‘What does she really want with them?’ growled Huttser angrily.  ‘It has nothing to do with a census, that’s for sure.’ Palla shuddered as she thought of how close her half-sister had come to the den and her own cubs that night.

‘The talk gets darker and darker,’ said Skop, lowering his voice even further, ‘of the old evil and of the cult of Wolfbane.’

Bran looked up and they all thought of Morgra and this child.  The legend had said that Wolfbane would return.  Bran wished he knew what it all meant.

‘What of it?’ growled Huttser.

‘Think about it, Huttser, is not the Evil One said to feed on cubs?’

The pack shuddered as they listened, and now they all turned to look at the children.  The three of them were chatting blithely together.

‘Skop,’ said Palla suddenly, ‘Morgra is around here somewhere.  She tried to join our pack.’

Skop looked at his sister in amazement and his muzzle curled into a snarl.

‘And now this human too,’ said Kipcha.  ‘This legend of the Man Varg.’

‘Hush, Kipcha,’ snapped Huttser immediately, but Skop’s ears were quivering.

‘I know about it already, Huttser,’ growled Skop, ‘word is spreading through the forests.’

‘If Morgra has taken a human child—’ said Huttser.  But Skop interrupted him.

‘But I don’t think Morgra has stolen it,’ he said.  ‘On my way here I heard a rumour.  That a Dragga has taken the child.’

The pack looked at each other in bewilderment but Huttser seemed pleased.

‘I would believe anything of Morgra,’ he growled.  ‘But I don’t think this has anything to do with a legend.  Brassa says that a wolf with the Sight would steal a human.  Even if Morgra did have the Sight she hasn’t taken this child.  No.  It’s just wolves hunting, that’s all.’

Again came a rumble of thunder, but this time it was more muted and as Palla’s eyes turned to the castle she saw the sky was clearing again.  The storm had passed the valley by.

‘Come,’ said Huttser suddenly, as he saw the three cubs walking back towards them.  ‘The dogs may come back.  Skop, you’ll join us for a while, won’t you?’

Skop nodded and he picked up Kar.

‘But keep a keen eye,’ growled Huttser.  ‘Tonight is the full moon.’

It was Kipcha who grabbed Fell in her jaws now, more carefully than Huttser had done and Palla went to pick up Larka, but Khaz stepped forward.

‘No, Palla.  You’re tired.  Let me.’

As Khaz approached the she-cub, she suddenly looked up at him.

‘Khaz?’ asked Larka softly.  ‘Wolfbane and this Man Varg.  Are they coming to gobble us up?’

Khaz smiled and shook his head reassuringly.  He was looking at Kipcha and, as he saw her holding Fell, he suddenly wondered why he had never told the beautiful she-wolf how much he cared for her.

‘No, Larka.  No one’s going to gobble you up.  And if anything tries they’ll have to get through us first.  For we will all give our lives to protect you.  You are the future.’

Next to Huttser, Khaz had the strongest jaws in the pack, but as he bent to pick up Larka, so carefully did his teeth grasp her fur that the cub hardly felt a thing.
But suddenly Skop stopped and put down Kar again.

‘I’ve just thought,’ he cried, ‘this legend can’t have anything to do with your pack.’

‘Why not, Skop?’ growled Palla hopefully.

‘Because I remember now.  The story always went that it could only happen in a place where some great crime or injustice had been committed.’

The pack seemed reassured, but Brassa suddenly looked away.  There was a terror stirring in her eyes.  And a secret too.

The pack had been travelling all day but, frightened of the humans now and their hunting dogs, had threaded slowly east through the forest, stopping often to rest the cubs, and now and then letting them walk along on their own.  But at last the wolves had left the cover of the trees and begun to double back.

Though he knew the best spot for a den and a Meeting Place was by the river, Huttser didn’t want to take them anywhere near the cave until he was sure the dogs had gone, so they had taken a path towards the hills, as he had suggested.  Evening found the wolves and their cubs high in the mountains.  A mist had come down as the night thickened and they were padding along a winding mountain path.  It climbed above a ravine, almost parallel with the castle.  The ravine plunged towards the river below, and as they walked they heard the distant growl of thunder in the heavens.  The storm seemed to be returning.  As they thought of this legend and Morgra’s threat to return, their pace got quicker and quicker.

The river had swollen greatly in places as the snows in the high mountains melted, and it rumbled angrily far below.  All around the wolf pack the air was sharp with rock and stone and the full moon had risen.  They all thought of Morgra as they looked into its sallow face, and in the distance storm clouds began to gather.  As the storm began to swell above them, flashes of electricity rippled through the sky, forking and branching through the heavy air and suddenly illuminating the valley in flashes of hard blue light.  The wolves’ fur began to tingle with the energy pulsing about them.

The lightning suddenly lit up the castle ahead of them and Bran shuddered as he thought of the stories of Wolfbane living up there in the shape of a Grasht.  This news of a Man Varg was already mingling in his mind with tales of Wolfbane and as he remembered Morgra’s blessing to them, and thought of the theft of a human cub, he felt a sickening churning in his stomach.

Around them jagged cliffs and craggy promontories butted from the mountain, among a welter of stranded trees and clinging scrub.  In the night they began to take on strange and mysterious shapes.  Here they would suddenly seem to see the shape of a wolf or a lynx, there the form of a bird in flight.

The wolves knew this country well.  Lying in the Carpathian foothills, it was only an impression of the giant ravines and thunderous, pine-strewn gorges that rucked through Transylvania, growing into towering precipices as the Carpathians curled like a sleeping dragon across the country’s wide, flat plains.  Normally the pack would have felt safe here, but they grew more and more nervous as the night and the mist and the coming storm fed their imaginations.

Huttser was leading them in single file and the air had grown strangely still as the mist furled about them.  On the wolf pack went.  Huttser was peering into the gloom when the lightning flashed again.  There, on a ledge above him, stood Morgra.

She was holding a bleeding rabbit in her mouth and the moon was behind the old she-wolf, breaking through the and shimmer as the mist clung like smoke around her head.  The she-wolf looked larger than when he had first met her and her eyes glittered savagely.

‘Morgra,’ snarled Huttser.

Kipcha put Fell down in the mud, nudging the cub behind her towards Khaz.  Fell blinked up in horror at the strange she-wolf as Khaz put down Larka and stood towering over the children.  Skop was trailing behind and as he put Kar down the young wolf tried to crawl under his legs.  Fell and Larka were standing side by side now.

In the sky the storm was above them, yet beyond the edges of the cloud the night was still perfectly clear, glittering with starlight, and it seemed for a moment that the heavens had been split in two.  They felt the first spatterings of rain on their muzzles and then, the thunder closing around them, the downpour began.  Soon the wolf pack was drenched in the deluge and great streaks of livid blue lightning flashed in the sky.

‘I have come again, Huttser,’ cried Morgra, dropping the rabbit, ‘as I promised I would.  I always keep my word.  Where are you going with the little ones?’

Morgra’s voice was full of cunning as it rang out above them and Huttser gave a dangerous growl.

 ‘Trying to hide them from me perhaps?’ snorted Morgra, smiling at the threat.  ‘It’s impossible, Huttser.  I wield the powers of the Sight.’

‘We are not trying to hide,’ lied Huttser angrily.  ‘The humans have been hunting and their dogs uncovered our den.’

‘Then let me help you.  Against the humans and against the many dangers that face a pack in the wild.  For I know much of Man.  We shall be allies, you and I, and as an honoured member of your pack your poor, barren sister shall give you Wolfbane’s protection and aid you to survive.’

Huttser’s eyes narrowed in disgust.  He looked over to Palla, who had come up next to him, but he could see that she was confused by her sister’s presence and he turned back to Morgra.

‘You would help us against Man?’ he cried scornfully.  ‘Yet you rouse their wrath by creeping through the night to steal their cubs.  Where is it now, Morgra? Or are its little bones already whitening the earth to feed the crows?’

As soon as Huttser said it, Morgra’s angry eyes fixed on Palla.

‘What is he saying, sister?’ she snarled.

‘You deny you are a cub killer,’ answered Palla coldly.

‘Are you also denying that you stole it? A human child?’

‘A human child?’ gasped Morgra.  ‘When did this happen?’ There was something in the she-wolf’s surprise, some ring of startled truth, that made Huttser wonder.

‘Tsarr,’ whispered Morgra suddenly, lifting her head to the skies.  ‘That old fool Tsarr.  But he found it sooner than I had imagined.  The Marked One.  It is the ancient verse.  It is the legend of the Sight.’

The rain was stinging Morgra’s eyes and the storm seemed to have reached a fever pitch as rolls of thunder crashed against the clouds.  Morgra broke from her thoughts.

‘Well, then,’ she whispered coldly, the rain whipping off her muzzle, ‘you have more need of me than you think, for dark forces are at work, Palla.  Forces none of you can understand.’

‘We don’t need your aid, Morgra,’ cried Huttser.  ‘We can deal with Man on our own.  We just ask you to leave the pack in peace.’

‘Peace? And when Wolfbane comes again, Huttser, when the Evil One returns to summon the dead?’ Bran shivered.

‘What is she talking about?’ growled Palla.  Huttser snarled.

‘These are stories to frighten cubs,’ he cried, ‘and my cubs have been frightened enough.’

‘Mamma,’ whispered Larka suddenly, shivering next to Fell, ‘tell her to go away, Mamma.’

‘Hush, Larka.’

Larka’s sudden terror had a quite startling effect on Morgra as she saw the cubs standing side by side in the moonlight.

‘Let me touch them,’ she snarled.  ‘Let me smell them.  I come to protect the cubs.  To help them.  To help them grow.  Come here, children.  Come to a mother worthy of the name.’ Palla could bear it no longer.  She sprang forward, her paws splashing though the mud.

‘Get out of here, Morgra,’ she cried bitterly.  ‘Haven’t you done enough harm? You can never be a member of our pack.  Fooling with legends! Spreading rumours and superstition.  Go back to the Balkar and your superstitions and your lies.  Go back and leave my family in peace, or I shall kill you myself.’

Morgra drew back a little but there was no fear in her eyes, only the steely glint of hate.  But those eyes began to flicker.

‘Your family?’ she hissed, and Huttser fancied he heard a note of genuine fear in Morgra’s voice.  ‘And only a family.  ..’

Suddenly, there was a crash in the heavens and a bolt of living electricity forked past the wolves.  It struck a tree above Morgra and the darkness blazed with fire.  The whole pack shrunk back and Larka and Fell looked up in astonishment at the burning branches.

‘So be it,’ cried Morgra smiling delightedly, the shadows from the burning tree dancing around her scarred muzzle.

‘You have chosen your own destiny, Palla.  And since you cannot forget the past, then let it return to haunt you – as Wolfbane always returns, the friend of the dead.  For you shall truly learn of the past, Palla, when the Searchers are summoned.’

The cubs’ ears pricked up immediately.

‘For they are waiting, Palla, in the cave of the dark, now and always.  They are with us here.  They wait in dreams and in nightmares, watching and judging.  They prowl angrily through the shadows, at the gates of death, waiting to pounce on the living.’

The pack thought Morgra had lost her wits but they were too terrified to do anything but stand gawking at her in the pouring rain.  The flames on the tree were dying again, fizzling into silence.

‘You talk of bones whitening to feed the crows.  Then let them be your bones, scavenged by the creatures of the air.  When Wolfbane comes.  When the final power is unleashed.’ Suddenly there was a flapping of black wings above Morgra’s head.

‘And let this be my real birthing gift to you, Palla.  For I curse your family and your pack.’

‘Huttser,’ whispered Brassa, trembling all over, ‘for Tor’s sake stop her.’

‘By Wolfbane I curse you.  By the power of the Sight, the power that has cursed me all my life.  Your little ones shall grow and as they do you shall all suffer.  One by one your pack will be broken, until you are ready to give me the cubs.  And if you do not, they too shall reap your fate.’

‘Stop her!’ cried Brassa again.

Before they could do anything, Morgra threw her head up and let out a howl that seemed to rock the ravine.  Then, in a voice full of malevolence, she hissed.

‘May the past that’s dark with crimes, bring revenge in future times!’

The words sent a strange shudder through the old nurse.

‘The Sight,’ Brassa snarled as though she had been bitten, turning her face to the clouded moon and the drenching heavens.

‘Morgra,’ whispered Palla.  ‘Please, Morgra.’

Huttser and Palla started to move forward.  The pack came too and, as she spoke, Morgra began to back away.  She was set at a slight angle to the path and now her hind legs were getting closer and closer to the drop.