Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Chapter 156 : Slipping off his mittens, he drew his knife and followed. The tunnel was cold; he felt

Slipping off his mittens, he drew his knife and followed. The tunnel was cold; he felt his way through a dank cloud of breath. Shadows scuttled. His hand moved over rock as ridged and slimy as guts. In a crack, something scaly withdrew from his touch.

Around him he felt the awesome weight of the Mountain. He was inside it: this vast, ancient creature which had only to twitch, to crush him to pulp.

Behind him came the subdued click of Wolf's claws. He'd stopped growling, and hadn't tried to attack the tokoroth, perhaps sensing it would stay out of reach. But what alarmed Torak was that the tokoroth ignored Wolf, as if it knew that he posed no threat.

As they went deeper, Torak began to regret having let his pack-brother come with him. Eostra would never allow Wolf to reach the Whispering Cave. She would find some way to separate them and Wolf would be killed.

He wondered how many more tokoroths lay in wait. Where was Eostra's pack? Her owl?

Crouching, he asked Wolf if this cub-demon was the only one.

More, replied Wolf, his whiskers brus.h.i.+ng Torak's eyelids. Can't smell where.

Up ahead, the tokoroth bared its fangs and snarled at them to keep up.

On they went, always downwards. The cold lessened. Torak felt an uprush of warmer air. Strange signs loomed at him from the dark. A chalk zigzag. A yellow handprint. An alarming charcoal creature with many limbs. Were they a warning? Or had they been put here to keep the demons behind the rocks?

His groping fingers found a nest of pebbles, smooth and rounded as eyes. A memory surfaced from three summers ago: the riddle of the Nanuak. Deepest of all, the drowned sight.

Behind him, Wolf gave a low uff!

The tokoroth disappeared round a corner.

Torak felt his way past and jolted to a halt.

Firelight glimmered beyond an arch of white rock; around it, a chaos of red handprints: Go back, go back!

Then everything happened at once. Torak saw the tokoroth douse the torch in a pool and scramble up the arch. Something came cras.h.i.+ng down behind him: a wall of rawhide, barring his way. On the other side, Wolf was yowling and scrabbling to reach him. Torak tried to cut through, but the rawhide was tough, his knife bounced off. The tokoroth dropped on him like a spider, gouging at his face. As he sank to his knees, it yanked back his hood to throttle him. He slashed with his knife. The tokoroth shrieked, let go of his hood. Torak grabbed its arm and twisted. It squirmed out of his grip and vanished through the arch.

Panting, sick with the demon stench, Torak hauled himself upright. He stumbled, took a step back.

Into nothingness.

Wolf lunged and snapped at the cub-demons, and they fought back with their great stone claws.

Wolf pretended to spring one way, they leapt after him; he turned the other way, sinking his teeth into a scaly leg. The cub-demon howled and dropped its stone claw. Another bit Wolf's shoulder. He went for it, missing by a whisker. Both demons fled up the rocks where he couldn't reach.

It was too dark to see, but he sensed them. He heard their breath; the lice crawling on their flesh. Why didn't they attack?

In a snap, he knew. They might be demons, but they were in tailless bodies, so they had only feeble tailless ears and noses. If Wolf didn't move, they didn't know where he was.

Quietly, he closed his muzzle and took a silent sniff.

The stink of blood and hate was all around; but it was strongest above.

He heard Tall Tailless yowl on the other side of the hide. Wolf couldn't bear it, he leapt at the hide and the cub-demons were on him.

They were quick, but Wolf was quicker. Whipping round, he sank his fangs in a bony neck. It snapped. The demon went limp. Wolf smelt the other and gave chase. It disappeared over the hide.

Wolf went to sniff the fallen tailless cub to make sure it was really Not-Breath. Yes. The meat was cooling. But Wolf saw the demon which had hidden inside the carca.s.s slip out and scurry off to find a new body. He raced after it, cornered it in a Den where it couldn't escape, and chased it into the rocks. There. Now it couldn't get out again.

When he got back to the hide, he found the Breath-that-Walks of the tailless cub s.h.i.+vering beside its carca.s.s. It was bewildered. After so long trapped with the demon, it didn't know what to do.

Wolf felt a lick of pity. It was only a cub. He nosed it up the tunnel towards the others. Go on, up there. You won't be lonely, we pa.s.sed lots of your kind on the way down.

Whimpering, the Breath-that-Walks wandered off to find its pack.

From the other side of the hide came many noises. Wolf caught the growls of dogs and the click of cub-demon claws; the sly hiss of owl wings, and the distant whisper of a Fast Wet, all coming from far below.

He smelt his pack-brother, and another tailless he'd once known, but couldn't remember. Then the air s.h.i.+fted and he caught a smell that made his fur stand on end: the Stone-Faced One with the terrible, stiff muzzle.

Wild to reach his pack-brother, Wolf made a desperate leap at the hide. It was too high, he couldn't get over. He tried to tear it with his fangs, but it was too flat, he couldn't get his jaws around it. He had to find another way.

Turning tail, he hurtled up the Den. Through the twisting tunnels he loped, b.u.mping his nose and stubbing his paws. He burst into a bigger Den, where air from many smaller ones swirled around him.

Faint and far, he caught a scent that gave him hope. It was the scent of the new tailless with the white head-fur, and with him Wolf could hardly believe his nose with him was the pack-sister.

THIRTY-FOUR.

'Who are you?' demanded Renn. 'Dark,' the boy replied.

'What?' Twisting out of his grip, she drew her knife.

'My name. It's Dark!'

Renn tossed her head. 'Whoever you are, you say you know Torak, but how do I know that's true?'

'I knew your name, didn't I?'

'You could've made him tell.'

'You've got red hair. He's got a strand of it round his medicine horn. There! Now d'you believe me?'

Renn hesitated. 'Where is he?'

'I told you, in the Mountain! I tried to go in too but they shut me out. But there's another way in. You coming or not?'

Still she hung back.

A white bird swooped onto his shoulder.

A raven. A white guardian.

Renn threw off her waterskin and sleeping-sack. 'Let's go,' she said.

Grabbing her wrist again, he set off at a run, the white raven flying ahead. The boy called Dark must have the eyes of a bat to see in this murk Renn could hardly make out the ground in front of her and he was sure-footed. 'I won't let you fall,' he told her, as if he'd heard her thoughts. And somehow, she believed him.

After a stiff, winding climb her ankle was hurting, and she was relieved when he halted at the foot of a rockface.

At least, she thought it was a rockface. Clouds blotted out the stars; the night was black as basalt. She watched the raven fly off, a white glimmer swallowed by the dark.

'Light,' muttered the boy, dropping to his knees. A birchbark torch flickered awake, lighting his strange, pale face. 'In there,' he said.

Renn's belly clenched. It was a jagged fissure, like a mouth with broken teeth, and hardly big enough for a badger. They would have to crawl in on their bellies.

'I can't go in there,' she said.

'You won't get stuck. I'll go first, you push your axe and bow in front, I'll take them. It'll be all right, you'll see.'

As Renn crawled in after him, she felt the stone jaws clamp shut, squeezing the breath from her chest. She wriggled forwards, trying not to think of the Mountain on top of her. Panic surged. Her arms were squashed against her chest. She couldn't move. She was stuck, as she'd been stuck in the Far North. But this time she wasn't getting out.

'We're through,' said the boy, grasping her hood and hauling her into an echoing s.p.a.ce.

She b.u.mped her head, and gave a jittery laugh.

'Hus.h.!.+ Some of these stones are loose, you could start a rockfall. And watch out for holes.'

It was frightening, seeing only a pace ahead. Beyond the jolting torchlight, the dark was so intense that it pressed on her eyeb.a.l.l.s.

With an arrow she probed the ground ahead. She tripped. Her groping hand found something smooth and domed. A skull. Her whimper brought the boy running back. The light revealed the skull of a bear: huge, drowned in stone.

'Yes, lots of bones,' said Dark. 'From the old times, when the Mountain was more awake. It drowned many creatures.'

As they went deeper, Renn heard water trickling. She felt cold air from unseen tunnels. She glimpsed wet grey pillars cl.u.s.tered together. As she pa.s.sed, shadows darted. She averted her eyes from the Hidden People of the Mountain.

'Careful, that's deep,' warned the boy.

She stepped over a crevice, and caught a whisper of water far below.

Dark stopped so abruptly that she walked into him.

'What is it?' she said.

'It's shut,' he said blankly.

A boulder blocked the tunnel. On it, an image had been daubed in gypsum, so that it glowed sickly white. An enormous owl. Its body was turned away Renn saw its wings folded over its back but its head was twisted round to glare at them. The meaning was plain. Eostra sees all.

'She knows we're here,' said Renn.

'Of course she knows,' said Dark.

He moved aside, taking the light with him, and the owl sank into shadow. Renn still felt its glare.

'I think there's another tunnel,' murmured Dark, trailing his long pale fingers over the rocks, as if feeling their message. 'Ah. That's it!'

He led her over a rockpile, then down into a clammy hole. This tunnel was narrower they squeezed sideways but to Renn's relief, it soon opened out.

Again Dark halted. 'I don't remember this.'

Raising the torch, he showed Renn a cavern roofed with folds of yellowish rock. Three tunnels yawned. The left one was low, fringed with dripping stone teeth. The middle one opened above a reddish stump like a severed limb. The third was the biggest, cut in two by a spear of stone jutting from the floor.

'Which one?' said Renn.

'I don't know. They all feel wrong. I think-'

'You don't know?' Pus.h.i.+ng past him, Renn ran to the first tunnel and placed her hands on the edge, avoiding the stone teeth. The rock throbbed beneath her palms with the unclean heat of the Otherworld.

She ran to the tunnel with the stone spear. She felt the same pulsing demon heat.

Desperate, she scrambled up the stump and groped for the third opening. For a moment, the rock seemed to buckle under her fingers as demons jaws gaped to bite.

She pulled back. 'All three have demons behind them.'

'That's what I was going to tell you,' said Dark.

'So which one do we take?'

'Don't move,' he said in an altered voice.

'What?'

's.h.!.+' He jerked the torch upwards.

In a crack above her head, Renn made out another stone owl. Its eyes were shut, its tufted ears erect.

'Climb down as quietly as you can,' said Dark.

The owl opened its eyes and hissed at her.

With a cry Renn fell, knocking Dark backwards. The torch went flying. Just before the blackness came down, Renn saw the eagle owl spread its wings and glide away.

Silence. A distant splash.

'That's the torch,' said Dark.

'Have you got another?'

'No.'

Panting, Renn got to her feet. 'What do we do now?'