Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Chapter 147 : Krukoslik did not speak again, and they went on in silence.The shadows were darkening

Krukoslik did not speak again, and they went on in silence.

The shadows were darkening to violet as they reached camp. From a distance, it looked tiny, nestled beside a grey lake in the immensity of the fells. As they drew closer, Renn saw many shelters honeycombed with golden light: the huge hide tent of the Mountain Hares, the turf domes of the Rowans, and long mounds banked with snow, which Krukoslik said were Swan.

'These are terrible times,' he said. 'The Mountain clans must stay together. It's our only chance.'

The dogs barked as the sleds slewed to a halt, and shafts of gold speared the snow as hunters emerged to greet them. Krukoslik handed Renn a bone blade for brus.h.i.+ng the snow from her clothes. Stiff with cold, she followed him inside.

She was greeted by a blast of heat and a wonderful, smoky smell of hot food and people. A large peat fire glowed in a ring of stones. Around it, on reindeer pelts flung over layers of springy birch, men and women sat sewing or grinding spearheads. Steam wafted from cooking-skins. Renn's hunger came back in a rush.

Taking off her outer clothes and hanging them to dry on a cross-beam, she followed Krukoslik round the fire, careful not to turn her back on it. Those she pa.s.sed nodded to her with wary friendliness, but she felt conspicuous, and wished Torak were here.

Krukoslik settled himself at one end of the shelter. 'Nearest the Mountain,' he said as she sat beside him. He thanked the fire and the antlered ones for the food, and everyone did the same, while Renn mumbled a prayer to her guardian. Then the eating began.

A woman handed Renn a bowl, and explained that the stew was mostly fat: crushed marrow and back fat, tongue, and the fattiest innards.

'Meat is good,' said the woman, 'but fat's better when you live on the fells.'

Renn found the stew strengthening, but the fat stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she had to wash it down with heather tea. After that there was reindeer paunch stuffed with chewed lichen this she politely declined and platters of ribs and chewy, roasted ears. The toddlers had bowls of reindeer-foot jelly, and a mother gave her teething baby a stick of frozen marrow to gnaw. The elders got the reindeers' eyeb.a.l.l.s, and nibbled the fat off them before popping them in their mouths and munching them whole.

Krukoslik apologized that there were no berries. 'Because of the ice,' he said. It was the only time he mentioned it.

When Renn was full, she curled up and lay listening to the sound of the fire and the murmur of voices. She was exhausted she could still feel the movement of the sled b.u.mping over the ice but for the first time in days, she felt safe. Outside, the fells lay in Eostra's grip. In here, it was almost possible to forget.

Drowsily, she heard the creak of the tent-poles, and the snow blowing against the shelter. In the smoky half-darkness, she watched naked toddlers clamber over their elders, who steered them clear of the fire without glancing up from their work. The Mountain clans lived with more uncertainty than most; maybe that was why they took such pleasure in the good things.

And yet, Renn saw the hards.h.i.+ps they endured. Some were missing an eye from encounters with antlers. Others had lost fingers to frostbite. Krukoslik had said that his people didn't name their children till they reached their eighth summer, in case they fell sick and had to be left to die.

Thinking of that, Renn fell asleep.

She woke to shouting and laughter. Torak and Chelko were back.

Chelko beamed as he told everyone how Torak had summoned the ghost hunter, who'd helped them track the wounded reindeer. 'I killed it with a single spear-cast. Then some Rowans came by with their sleds and helped us.'

The clan looked at Torak with cautious respect, and a woman took a reindeer head outside as a present for Wolf.

Torak spotted Renn and came to sit beside her, bringing with him the clean, cold smell of the night. As he gulped a bowl of stew, he asked if she was feeling better.

'Of course I am,' she said tartly.

He warded off an imaginary blow.

Around them, talk sank to a murmur, and children snuggled into their sleeping-sacks. The Mages of all three clans came in and began to circle, mouthing spells.

'To keep us safe,' murmured one of them to Renn. She wore a necklet of white feathers, and her clan-tattoo was a ring of thirteen red dots on her forehead, for the thirteen moons of every cycle. Her eyes were pale, as if bleached by staring into great distances, and with a swan's thighbone she blew earthblood on the walls, breathing life into images of the guardians. A hare sat up on its hind legs and scanned for danger. A swan glided on wide wings. A tree spread protecting arms. There were spirals, too, and reindeer, and bison-like creatures with downward-curving horns.

Renn s.h.i.+vered. The Swan Mage had reminded her that only the thickness of a reindeer hide stood between them and the dark.

Torak sat with his arms about his knees, watching sparks shooting up the smoke-hole.

Suddenly, Renn felt the distance between them of things unsaid. She knew he had secrets from her. When he'd emptied his medicine pouch during the ice storm, she'd seen a sc.r.a.p of the black root that made him spirit walk. He must have got it from Saeunn. And he hadn't told her.

But that paled beside what she hadn't told him.

'Renn,' he said quietly. 'Do you remember your dreams?'

'What?' she said, startled.

'Your dreams. When you wake up. Can you remember them?'

'Mostly. Why?'

'Since we left the Forest, I can't. It's all just black. What does that mean?'

She swallowed. Tell him, tell him.

At that moment, a strange, booming groan echoed through the night.

Krukoslik saw them jump. 'It's the lake. It's freezing. Crying to the Mountain to send more snow to keep it warm. We need this too. An end to this accursed ice that's starving the antlered ones.'

Firelight leapt in Torak's eyes. 'The Mountain,' he said. 'It's time for you to tell us what you know.'

NINETEEN.

Krukoslik laid more peat on the fire, releasing a bitter tang of earth.

Renn glanced from him to Torak. In the red gloom, their faces were shadowed and unfamiliar.

'We who live at the edge of the world,' said Krukoslik, 'call two mountains sacred. The Mountain of the North, which is home to the World Spirit, and the Mountain of the South: the Mountain of Ghosts. But no matter how far we hunt from the Mountain of Ghosts, it's mother and father to us. It makes the rivers and the snow. It holds up the sky. It sends the sun, the bringer of all life. It takes the spirits of the antlered ones and gives them new bodies. And it shelters our ghosts, the souls of the dead who have lost their way.'

Renn said softly, 'Souls' Night. What happens on Souls' Night?'

'Souls' Night?' Torak turned to her. 'You think that's what she's waiting for?'

She signed him to silence.

'On Souls' Night,' said Krukoslik, 'the Mountain gives up its dead. When the wind howls, we hear them: the thundering hooves of the antlered spirits, and the lonely cries of the hungry ghosts.' His face softened. 'We comfort them. We put out piles of lichen for the antlered spirits, and for our ghosts we build a shelter. We fill it with warm clothes, their favourite foods, toys for the young ones. And a fire to banish the dark.'

He smiled. 'Oh, it's a good time! For a day and a night we keep them company, singing songs, telling stories. Then it ends, as it must, and we send them from us. Many of them find their way to peace,' he pointed to the smoke-hole, 'and join the ancestors, hunting the great herds which trek across the sky. Others don't, and go back to the Mountain. But they'll try again next winter, and we'll help them. We'll never let them down.'

Torak said what Renn was thinking. 'But this winter . . .'

Krukoslik's face darkened. He reached out and touched one of the painted guardians. 'It began the spring before last. We lost children. They vanished without trace. Dog sleds went missing. The wreckage turned up far away. Then the moths came, and the shadow sickness. Yes, Renn, we've had them too. Now ice starves the antlered ones. And yet it was less than a moon ago that our Mages began to suspect where the evil one had made her lair.'

'But what does she want?' said Renn. 'What will happen on Souls' Night?'

'No-one knows,' said Krukoslik. 'Terrible cries have been heard in the foothills. Small, owl-eyed demons have been glimpsed flitting among the stones. Our Mages see visions: the grey terror gnawing the innards of the Mountain.' He swallowed. 'We fear that she has taken it for her own. This this was always her way.'

'You knew her?' said Torak.

'Even the evil one was young once. When I was a boy, some of the Eagle Owl Clan still lived. Good people, we used to see them at clan meets. Eostra was different. Hungry for the secrets of the dead.' He glanced about him. The Mages had moved on to another shelter; everyone else was asleep. 'It's said,' he went on, 'that when she became a Mage, she carried out the forbidden rite.'

Renn gasped. 'She did that?'

'What?' said Torak. 'What did she do?'

Krukoslik leant forwards. 'One of her clan had been killed in a rockfall: a boy of ten summers. They say that on Souls' Night, in the moon's dark, she went to the cairn where the body lay. To raise the dead . . .'

Renn put her hand to her clan-creature feathers. She shut her eyes. She saw a windswept hillside, a tall woman with long dark hair standing before a cairn.

The cairn heaves. Rocks fall away. Eostra peels back her sleeve and draws her knife across her forearm, anointing the lifeless flesh with blood. The dead boy sits up. His head turns. His clouded eyes meet hers. From his mouth bubbles the froth of decay. Like a lover, Eostra stoops. Her long hair caresses his face as she brings her head close, close as she licks the corpse-froth from his mouldering lips . . .

With a start, Renn opened her eyes. Torak's hand was on her shoulder. 'Renn,' he whispered.

She wiped her mouth with her hand.

Krukoslik was scowling at the fire. 'She'd got what she wanted,' he said. 'Henceforth, she could talk to them. Soon after, sickness took the rest of her clan. And Eostra disappeared.'

'And joined the Soul-Eaters,' said Torak.

'She became a Soul-Eater,' said Krukoslik with peculiar intensity. 'This is what you must understand, Torak. People say the Soul-Eaters took that name merely to frighten, but with Eostra, it's true.'

'What do you mean?' said Renn.

'The Swan Clan frequents the high pa.s.ses. Sometimes they venture near the Gorge of the Hidden People. They've seen her. They say she walks with a three-p.r.o.nged spear for snaring souls. They say that if you hear her cry, you're lost.'

Lost . . . Renn's fingers tightened on her clan-creature feathers.

'That cry,' said Krukoslik, 'rips the souls from your marrow. With her spear she snares them. She devours them. Eostra truly is an eater of souls.'

Torak placed his hands on his knees. 'But I have to find her,' he said.

Renn shot him a glance. 'You said "I". Not "we".'

He didn't reply.

Krukoslik was shaking his head. 'They say this is your destiny, Torak. But after what I've told you-'

'Krukoslik. Three winters ago, in the time of the bear, you helped me find a Mountain. Will you help me now?'

'This is no small thing you ask,' said Krukoslik. 'Our Mages used to go into the Mountain, but not any more. There's only one way to reach it, and that's secret.'

'You have to tell me.'

They faced each other, while the wind moaned and the lake cried out to the Mountain.

Krukoslik sat straighter. Once again, he was the Clan Leader who must be obeyed. 'We'll sleep now. I'll give you my answer in the morning.'

Renn woke to an unnatural silence that made her skin crawl.

The fire burned, but it made no sound. The walls of the shelter heaved in and out, but she couldn't hear them, or the moaning of the wind. Torak turned his head and muttered in his sleep. His lips moved noiselessly.

Slowly, Renn sat up.

At the far end of the shelter, in the dark of the doorway, someone stood.

Renn's heart began to pound.

The figure was tall. Its back was turned towards her. She saw ashen hair hanging in lank coils. From the shadowy head rose the spiked ears of an eagle owl.

Renn wanted to wake Torak, but she couldn't move. Her hands lay in her lap like stones.

The figure in the doorway must not turn round. If it did if it faced her her heart would stop.

Slowly, the figure turned.

TWENTY.

Eostra the Masked One, whom even the other Soul-Eaters had feared. Her carved mouth gaped on darkness. Her unblinking glare froze Renn's souls with dread.

A dead chill settled on the shelter. The fire sank to ash. Ice crusted the reindeer hides and the faces of the sleepers. Renn's breath smoked.

Beside her, Torak slept with one arm flung above his head. Frost spiked his eyelashes and glittered on his skin. His lips were white.

Renn spoke his name. He didn't stir. She cried it aloud. Only a wisp of frosty breath showed that he was still alive.

'They hear nothing,' said a voice like the rattle of bones. 'They know nothing. Eostra wills it so.'

'You're not real,' said Renn.

'What Eostra wills shall be. Eostra commands the unquiet dead. Eostra rules Mountain and Forest, Ice and Sea.' Her voice was barren of emotion. The Eagle Owl Mage was dead to all feeling save the hunger for power.

Renn told herself that she, too, was a Mage. She started to speak a charm of sending, to banish this evil from the shelter.