Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Chapter 32 : He couldn't see anyone. The bracken was man-high, filled with shadow.'Who are

He couldn't see anyone. The bracken was man-high, filled with shadow.

'Who are you?' he said. He took a step forward then realised he'd left his weapons by the carca.s.s.

That was when he saw it. A face in the bracken, staring at him.

A face of leaves.

ELEVEN.

The creature with the face of leaves was not alone. Another appeared close by. Then another and another. Torak was surrounded.

As more emerged from the trees, he saw that although their faces resembled that of the Follower, they were full-grown men and women and they didn't have claws.

They wore their brown hair long, and braided with the tail-hairs of forest horses. The men's beards were dyed green, like the moss which hangs from spruce trees. The lips of both men and women were stained a darker green; but most startling of all were the leaves on their faces. Torak saw that these were dense greenish-brown tattoos: oak leaves for the women, holly for the men. The tattoos gave the disquieting impression that they were peering from the trees even when, as now, they stood in the open.

They went barefoot, with knee-length leggings and sleeveless jerkins of wovenbark, although of a finer, suppler weave than Torak had ever seen. Each carried a magnificent, well-oiled bow; and each bow was nocked with a green slate arrow fletched with woodp.e.c.k.e.r feathers. All arrows were trained on him.

Swiftly he put his fists over his heart in token of friends.h.i.+p.

The arrows didn't move.

'You are of the Deep Forest?' he said hoa.r.s.ely. It was a guess. Something about them felt different from the Follower. He sensed wildness and danger but not evil.

'And you,' said the woman who had first addressed him, 'you have reached its borders and must turn back.'

'I thought the Deep Forest was further east -'

'You were wrong,' said the woman in a voice as chill as a deep Forest pool. She had a narrow, distrustful face with hazel eyes set too close together, and she looked older than the others. Torak wondered if she was the leader.

'You have reached the True Forest,' she said. 'You may not pa.s.s.'

The 'True Forest'? In spite of himself, Torak was annoyed. What was wrong with the Forest where he'd grown up?

'I come as a friend,' he said, trying to sound friendly but not quite succeeding. 'My name is Torak. I have bone kin in the Deep Forest. Oak Clan and Red Deer by my mother. What clan are you?'

The woman drew herself up. 'Forest Horse,' she said haughtily. 'As you would know if you were telling the truth.'

'I am telling the truth,' said Torak.

'Prove it.'

Face flaming, Torak went to his pack and brought out his mother's medicine horn. It was made from the hollowed-out tip of a red deer antler, fitted with a black oak base and stopper. Fin-Kedinn had told him to keep it hidden; but he couldn't think of any other proof.

'Here.' He held it out.

The Leader recoiled as if he'd threatened her. 'Put it down!' she cried. 'We never touch strangers! You might be a ghost or a demon!'

'I'm sorry,' Torak said hastily. 'I'll put it here.'

He set it on the ground, and the Leader leaned forward to inspect it. Torak reflected that the Forest Horses seemed to have more in common with their clan-creatures than merely their horsetails.

'It is of Red Deer making,' declared the Leader.

A murmur of surprise rippled through her people. Taking a step towards Torak, the Leader peered at his face. 'You have something of the True Forest in you, despite the evil you did here; but your clan-tattoos are unknown to us. You may not pa.s.s.'

'What?' said Torak. 'But I have to!'

'He cannot enter the True Forest!' said one of the clan. 'See how he treated the boar!'

'And the willow tree!' said another. 'Look at her lying in the mud! Dying with nothing to ease her pain!'

'How do you ease a tree's pain?' said Torak indignantly.

Seven pairs of hazel eyes glared at him through their leaf-tattoos.

'You have used our brother and sister very ill,' said the Leader. 'That you cannot deny.'

Torak glanced at the shattered tree and the muddy carca.s.s. 'Take them,' he said.

'What?' said the Leader, her eyes narrowing.

'Take the boar and the willow,' said Torak. 'There's only one of me, but seven of you. You could deal with them much better than I could. And that way, we'd avoid the bad luck.'

The Leader hesitated, as if suspecting a trick. Then she turned to her people. To Torak's surprise, she didn't speak, but made a series of slight, subtle gestures with one hand.

Immediately, four of them stepped forwards, whipped out slender knives of green slate, and descended on the carca.s.s. With astonis.h.i.+ng speed and skill they cut it up, then packed it with the hide and innards in wovenbark nets drawn from their packs, and slung them over their shoulders.

'We will return for our sister,' said one, with a nod at the willow and a scornful glance at Torak. 'We will lay her to rest.' Then he was gone, melting into the Forest with his three companions.

All trace of the boar had vanished, apart from the tusks, which one of the Forest Horses now set before Torak. 'These you must keep,' she told him severely, 'to mark the great wrong you did to the prey. If you were of the True Forest, you would be forced to wear them for ever as a penance.'

Torak appealed to the Leader. 'I know I did wrong, but I didn't mean it.'

'That doesn't matter.'

He took a deep breath, and tried again. 'I came here because we need your help. There's a sickness in the Forest -'

'We know of this,' cut in the Leader.

'You do? Has it struck here too?'

The Leader raised her chin. 'We have no sickness in the True Forest. We guard our borders well. But the trees tell us many things. They tell of the evil that haunts their sisters in the west. They whisper whence it came.'

Torak thought about that. 'It's said that one of your Mages has the cure.'

'We have no cure,' said the Leader.

Torak's jaw dropped. 'I know I've angered you,' he said carefully, 'and I'm sorry. But if your own clan doesn't have the cure, then maybe another -'

'We have no cure!' insisted the Leader. 'There is no cure in the Deep Forest! The people of the Otter spoke too hastily! They are always too hasty, just like their clan-creature!'

'Can you really not help at all?' said Torak in disbelief. 'Not you or anyone else in the Deep Forest? People are dying.'

'I am grieved,' said the Leader, not sounding grieved at all, 'but I cannot alter the truth. What you seek is by the Sea.'

Torak stared at her. 'The Sea?'

'You must head west. This is the message of the trees. Head west till you can go no further. There you shall find what you seek.'

'Why should I believe you?' said Torak. 'You're just trying to get rid of me.'

The Leader's green face closed. 'The trees never lie. If you had more than a splinter of the True Forest in your souls, you would know this. But you do not or you would not have done the evil you did here!'

'I didn't want to kill the boar,' said Torak, 'but I had to. It attacked me. Someone had wounded it and left it to go mad.'

The remaining Forest Horses cried out in horror.

'This is a terrible evil!' said the Leader. 'Where is your proof? How could we be unaware of this, when not a twig may snap in our Forest that we do not hear?'

Torak stooped and picked up the dart he'd dug from the boar's side. Then he remembered the Forest Horses' reluctance to touch a stranger, and put it back on the ground.

He was unprepared for their reaction. The Leader snarled, revealing shockingly white teeth between her dark-green lips. 'You dare accuse us?'

'Of course not!' said Torak. Then he saw what he'd missed before: a clutch of dark wooden darts exactly like the one that had wounded the boar dangling from her belt.

'Then whom do you accuse?' demanded the Leader. 'Some other Deep Forest clan? Speak quickly, or you die!'

'I don't know!' cried Torak. 'I mean I've seen it, but I don't know what it is! I only know that I found this dart in the boar's side!'

To his relief, the Forest Horses lowered their bows.

'I call it the Follower,' he said. 'It has a face like yours no, no, I mean a face tattooed with leaves, but smaller, like a child, and with claws on its hands and feet.'

The Leader backed away. Her green lips thinned, and beneath the leaf-tattoos her face went pale. 'You must leave at once,' she said, breathing hard. 'If you take one step into the True Forest, I swear by all the trees who gave me birth that you will not live to take another!'

Torak met her eyes, and saw the fear in them. 'You know what it is, don't you?' he said. 'The Follower. You know what it is.'

The Leader did not reply. She made another sign to her people, and they turned and melted into the trees.

'No!' shouted Torak, running after them. 'Tell me what it is! At least tell me that!'

An arrow whipped past his face.

'Tell me what it is!' he yelled.

Just before she vanished, the Leader turned. 'Tokoroth . . .' she whispered.

'What does that mean?' said Torak.

'Tokoroth . . .'

The green face faded into the leaves.

Long after she had gone, the name hung on the air like an evil thought.

Tokoroth . . .

TWELVE.

'Atokoroth?' said Renn, nursing her bandaged hand. 'What's that?'

'Not here,' snapped Saeunn.

Without another word she started through the camp. Though she was bent as an old tree battered by storms, she moved with surprising speed, clearing the way with her staff: past the people working at the smoking-racks, past the Guardian Rock, and into the shadow of the gorge. She did not look round. She simply a.s.sumed that Renn would follow.

Biting back her irritation, Renn did. As she went, people cast her the same wary glances they normally reserved for the Mage. More and more, they regarded her as Saeunn's apprentice. Renn hated that.

It was three days since the sickness had struck, and in that time, four more Ravens had fallen sick. To stop them harming others or themselves, Fin-Kedinn had taken drastic action, shutting them in a cave on the other side of the river, and setting a constant guard.

Renn could taste the fear in the air. She could see it in people's eyes. Will I be next? Will you?

She was horribly afraid that the bite on her hand meant it would be her. She needed to talk to someone; to be told she was wrong. But Saeunn had forbidden her to speak of it.

In the past, that wouldn't have stopped Renn; she'd been defying Saeunn all her life, and saw no reason to stop now. But everyone to whom she usually told her secrets was gone. Oslak was dead. Vedna had returned to her birth-clan, the Willows. Torak had disappeared.

Torak. It was two days since he'd left, and even thinking about him made her furious. He was no friend of hers. Friends do not run away without a word, leaving only a pebble, a painted pebble.

To work off her feelings, she'd been hunting every day; and since she was a good hunter, Fin-Kedinn had let her go. It was while she was hunting that she'd got bitten. So in a way, that was Torak's fault too.

It had happened that morning. She'd risen at dawn and started through the misty Forest to the hazel thicket on the south-east side of the valley, where she'd set some snares.

When she'd reached the thicket, she'd thought it was empty. Then, from deep within, had come a rustling of leaves.