Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Chapter 114 : Death Marks. Yes. The souls must be kept together, or Bale might become a demon or a g

Death Marks. Yes. The souls must be kept together, or Bale might become a demon or a ghost.

At least I can do this for you, thought Torak.

With clumsy fingers, he untied his medicine pouch and shook it. Out fell the medicine horn which had been his mother's, and the little mussel spoon. He blinked. He hadn't even thanked Bale for it. They had eaten in silence. Then they'd fought. No, he corrected himself. Bale didn't fight. You did the quarrelling. The last thing you ever said to him was in anger. Death Marks.

He shoved the spoon back into the pouch. Shaking earthblood into his palm, he tried to spit on it, but his mouth was too dry. He stumbled to a rockpool and made the red ochre into a paste with seawater. On his way back, he wound oarweed round his forefinger, so as not to touch the corpse.

Bale lay on his back. His face was unmarked. It was the back of his skull that had cracked like an eggsh.e.l.l. Numbly, Torak daubed earthblood circles on the forehead, chest and heels. He'd done the same for Fa. The mark on Fa's chest had been the hardest, as he had a scar where he'd cut out the Soul-Eater tattoo. Torak's own chest bore a similar scar, so when his time came, that mark would be difficult, too. Bale's chest was smooth. Flawless.

When it was done, Torak sat on his heels. He knew he was too close to the body, that this was the most dangerous time, when the souls are still close, and might try to possess the living. But he stayed where he was.

Someone was crunching through the seaweed, calling his name.

He turned.

Renn saw his face and stopped.

'Stay back.' His voice was rough, as if it belonged to someone else.

She ran to him. She saw what lay beyond. Her cheeks drained of colour.

'He fell,' said Torak.

She was shaking her head, her lips soundlessly shaping No, no. Torak saw her take in the empty gaze, the spattered brains, the blood under the nails. These things would stay with her for ever, and he could do nothing to protect her.

The blood under the nails.

The meaning of it drenched him like an icy wave. That blood wasn't Bale's. Someone else had been with him on the Crag. Bale didn't fall. He was pushed.

Fin-Kedinn appeared behind Renn. His fingers tightened on his staff and his shoulders sagged, but his face remained unreadable. 'Renn,' he said quietly. 'Go and fetch the Seal Clan Leader.'

He had to repeat it twice before she heard, but for once she didn't argue. Like a sleepwalker she trudged towards camp.

Fin-Kedinn turned to Torak. 'How did it happen?'

'I don't know.'

'Why? Weren't you with him?'

Torak flinched. 'No, I . . . I should have been. I wasn't.' If I'd been with him, he wouldn't have died. This is my fault. My fault.

Their eyes met, and in Fin-Kedinn's sharp blue gaze, Torak saw understanding and sorrow: sorrow for him.

The Raven Leader raised his head and studied the Crag. 'Go up there,' he said. 'Find out who did this.'

The morning sun glinted on the juniper thorns as Torak climbed the steep path towards the Crag. Bale's bootprints were unmistakeable Torak knew them as well as he knew Renn's or Fin-Kedinn's or his own and they were the only ones on the trail. So whoever had killed him hadn't come this way; not from the Seal camp.

Whoever had killed him. It still wasn't real. Only yesterday they'd been gutting cod together on the foresh.o.r.e; Rip and Rek sidling closer to the steaming entrails, Bale tossing them sc.r.a.ps now and then. At last the final cod hung by its tail from the rack, and they were free to go skinboating. Asrif had lent Torak his boat, and Detlan and his little sister had come to see them off, Detlan on his crutches, waving so hard he nearly fell over.

Only yesterday.

The neck of the Crag was s.h.a.ggy with rowan and juniper, but from there it broadened into a huge, flat boat shape jutting over the Sea. Long ago, the surface had been hammer-etched with a silvery web of hunters and prey. In the middle squatted a grey granite altar shaped like a fish.

Torak swallowed. Two summers before, the Seal Mage had tied him to that altar and prepared to cut out his heart. He could still feel the granite digging into his shoulder blades; still hear the click of the tokoroths' claws.

From far below came a cry like a creature being torn in two. Torak sucked in his breath. Bale's father had found his son.

Don't think about that. Think about this. Do this for Bale.

The Crag glistened with dew. It was naked rock, except for the odd crust of lichen or stonecrop. Tracking would be hard, but if the killer had left any trace, Torak would find it.

From the neck, he scanned the Crag. Something wasn't right, but he couldn't work out what. Storing that for later, he moved forwards. Fa used to say that to track your quarry, you must think yourself into its spirit. This took on a dreadful meaning now. Torak had to see Bale alive on the Crag. He had to see his faceless killer.

The killer must have been strong to have overcome Bale, but that was all Torak knew. He had to make the Crag tell him the rest.

It wasn't long before he found the first sign. He crouched, squinting sideways in the low morning light. A bootprint, very faint. And there: the suggestion of another. An older man walks on his heels, a young man on his toes. Bale had walked lightly onto the Crag.

Step by step, Torak followed him. He forgot the voice of the Sea and the salt wind in his face. He lost himself in the search.

The sense of being watched brought him back. He stopped. His heart began to pound. What if Bale's killer were still hiding in the rowans?

Whipping out his knife, he spun round.

'Torak, it's me!' cried Renn.

With a harsh exhalation, he lowered his knife. 'Never do that again!'

'I thought you'd heard me!'

'What are you doing here?'

'Same as you!' She was angry because he'd frightened her, but she recovered fast. 'He didn't fall. His fingernails . . . ' They stared at one another. Torak wondered if he, too, wore that bleak, stretched look.

'How did it happen?' she said. 'I thought you were with him.'

'No.'

She met his eyes. He glanced away. 'You go first,' she said in an altered voice. 'You're the best tracker.'

With his head down, he resumed his search, and Renn followed. She rarely spoke when he was tracking; she said he went into a kind of trance which she didn't like to break. He was grateful for that now. Sometimes, she saw too much with those dark eyes; and he couldn't tell her about his quarrel with Bale. He was too ashamed.

He hadn't gone far when he found more signs. A crumb of lichen sc.r.a.ped by a running boot; and behind the altar, a lobe of stonecrop ground to a green smear. Snagged in a crack, a strand of reindeer hair. Torak's skin crawled. Bale wore seal hide. This had belonged to his killer. An image began to take shape, like a hunter emerging from mist. A big, heavy man clad in reindeer hide.

At once a name sprang to mind, but Torak pushed it aside. Don't guess. Keep your mind open. Find proof.

He pictured Bale leaving his hiding-place in the rowans, running towards the figure kneeling by the altar. The killer rose. They circled one another, moving closer and closer to the cliff edge.

At one point, the lip of the Crag was cracked, and in the soil the wind had blown in, a juniper clung to life. It had been half yanked out by the roots, and was still oozing tree-blood. Torak saw Bale desperately clutching a branch, his free hand clawing mud. He had fought so hard to live. And the killer had stamped on his fingers.

A red mist descended over Torak's sight. Sweat broke out on his palms. When he caught the killer, he would . . .

'Whoever it was,' said Renn shakily, 'he must have been hugely strong to have beaten B-' she jammed her knuckle in her mouth. For the next five summers, it would be forbidden to speak Bale's name, or else his spirit might return to haunt the living.

'Look there,' said Torak. He picked up a tiny speck of dried spruce-blood. 'And this.' He drew aside a branch to reveal a handprint.

Renn breathed in with a hiss.

Bale's murderer had leaned on one hand to watch his victim fall. That hand had only three fingers.

Torak shut his eyes. He was back in the caves of the Far North, facing the Soul-Eater. Wolf sprang to his defence, leaping at the attacker, snapping off two fingers.

'So now we know,' said Renn in a cold voice.

They stared at one another, both remembering cruel green eyes in a face as hard as cracked earth.

Torak's fist closed over the spruce-blood. 'Thiazzi,' he said.

THREE.

The Oak Mage had made no attempt to cover his tracks. He'd found his way down the steep north flank of the Crag to a small pebble beach, picked up his skinboat, and paddled away.

Torak and Renn tracked him to where the trail ended in the Sea.

'From where I was,' said Torak, 'I might have seen him.'

'Why were you camping out here?' said Renn.

'I I needed to be alone.'

She gave him a penetrating stare, but didn't ask why. That was worse. Maybe she'd guessed that he'd made a terrible mistake; so terrible that she couldn't bring herself to talk of it.

'He might be anywhere by now,' she said, turning back to the waves. 'He could've made for the Kelp Island, or one of the smaller ones. Or gone back to the Forest.'

'And he's got a head start,' said Torak. 'Let's go.'

To return to the Seal camp, they had to climb all the way to the Crag again. The altar still looked subtly wrong. It was Renn who noticed why. 'The carvings. The tip of the altar is lying across that elk's head. That can't be right.'

'It's been moved.' Torak was appalled that he hadn't seen it sooner. The sc.r.a.pe marks were as plain as a raven on an ice floe. He pictured the Oak Mage the strongest man in the Forest putting his shoulder to the altar to s.h.i.+ft it, then moving it back, but leaving it just out of true.

Under the tip of the altar, Torak found what Thiazzi had uncovered: a small hollow hacked from the surface of the Crag. It was empty.

'He found what he was after,' said Torak.

Neither of them voiced their fear. But among the rowans on the neck, Torak found proof: the remains of a little pouch of dehaired seal hide. The crumbling hide still bore the faint imprint of something hard, about the size of a sloe, which had nestled inside.

Torak's blood thudded in his ears. Renn's voice reached him from a great distance. 'He found it, Torak. Thiazzi has the fire-opal.'

'Tell no-one,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'Not that he was murdered, or who did it, or why.'

Torak agreed at once, but Renn was aghast. 'Not even his father?'

'No-one,' said the Raven Leader.

They squatted by the stream at the south end of the bay, daubing each other's faces with clay mourning marks. The roar of the waterfall drowned their voices. There was no danger of being overheard by the Seal women downstream who were preparing the funeral feast, or by the men readying Bale's skinboat for the Death Journey. The Seals worked in silence to avoid offending the dead boy's souls. Torak thought they seemed like people in a dream.

All day, they had worked, and he had helped. Now dusk was falling, and every shelter, every skinboat, every last rack of cod had been moved to this end of the bay, furthest from the Crag. To the north, only the shelter Bale had shared with his father remained. It had been doused in seal oil and set ablaze. Torak could see it: a red eye glaring at him in the gathering dark.

'But that's wrong,' protested Renn.

'It's necessary.' Her uncle caught her gaze and held it. 'Think, Renn. If his father knew, he'd seek revenge.'

'Yes, and so?' she retorted.

'He wouldn't be alone,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'The whole clan would want to avenge one of their own.'

'So?' repeated Renn.

'I know Thiazzi,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'He won't hide in the islands, he'll head back to the Forest, where his power is greatest. The quickest route takes him past the trading meet on the coast . . . '

'And if the Seals came after him,' put in Torak, 'he'd set them against the other clans and get away.'

The Raven Leader nodded. 'That's why we say nothing. The Sea clans and the Forest clans have never been on easy terms. Thiazzi would use that. That's his strength, he fosters hate. Promise me, both of you. Tell no-one.'

'I promise,' said Torak. He didn't want the Seals going after Thiazzi. Revenge must be his and his alone.

Reluctantly, Renn gave her word. 'But his father's bound to find out,' she said. 'He must have seen what we saw. The the blood under his nails.'

'No,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'I saw to it.' With the grey bars across his brow and down his cheeks, he looked remote and forbidding. 'Come,' he said, rising to his feet. 'It's time we joined the others.'

On the sh.o.r.e, the Seals had set a ring of kelp torches: a leaping orange beneath the dark-blue sky. Within this, they had laid Bale in his skinboat. Greasy black smoke stung Torak's eyes, and he breathed the stink of burning seal oil. He felt the mourning marks stiffening on his skin.

He thought, Bale's funeral rites. This can't be.

First, Bale's father stepped towards the boat and gently covered the body with his sleeping-sack. He had lost both his sons to the Soul-Eaters, and his face was distant, as if he weren't experiencing any of this. As if, thought Torak, he was at the bottom of the Sea.

After him, every member of the clan added a gift for the Death Journey. Asrif gave a food bowl, Detlan a set of fis.h.i.+ng-hooks, while his little sister who'd been very keen on Bale managed to keep from crying for long enough to put in a small stone lamp. Others gave clothes, dried whale meat or cod, seal nets, spears, rope. Fin-Kedinn gave a harpoon, Renn her three best arrows. Torak gave his pike-jaw amulet, for hunting luck.

Standing to one side, he watched the men raise the skinboat on their shoulders and carry it down to the shallows. There they lashed two heavy stones to prow and stern, and Bale's father got in his own skinboat and began towing his son out to Sea.

The others trudged back for the silent feast, but Torak remained, watching the skinboats dwindle to specks.