Ghost Hunter (2 page)

Around midday, the fog lifted and the sun came out. Beads of moisture sparkled on amber bracken and silver-green beard-moss. The last of the willowherb gleamed purple beneath golden birch and blazing rowan: the Forest's final burst of brilliance before going to sleep for the winter. It had been a good autumn for nuts and

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berries, and the undergrowth rustled with small creatures enjoying the feast. Jays squabbled over acorns. Squirrels buried hazelnuts in the leaf mold.

Rip and Rek flew past, making woodpecker noises and pretending to ignore Torak. They were in a sulk at having to leave the Raven camp, where they'd grown fat on offerings, especially Rip. He'd lost a wing-feather fighting the Oak Mage in the spring, and it had grown back white. This meant he was revered by the clans.

Torak barely noticed the ravens. He hated leaving Renn behind. She would never forgive him. And yet he knew this had to be. His vision of the slaughtered camp could have been real. When he faced the Eagle Owl Mage, it had to be without Renn.

And without Wolf.

This was why he'd decided on an indirect route toward the Mountains. The quickest way would have been to cross the Ashwater and head southeast, following the Fastwater upstream, then on to the fells. Instead, he headed northeast up the Horseleap, toward the ridge above the river, where Wolf and Darkfur had recently moved the cubs.

To say good-bye.

The resting place was a patch of level ground on top of the cliff, bordered on one side by a fallen ash and by a bramble patch on the other. It was late afternoon when

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Torak reached it, and Darkfur and the cubs gave him an ecstatic welcome; but Wolf was away hunting.

Torak was relieved. Now he would have to make a shelter and wait for his pack-brother. He could put off leaving until tomorrow.

As dusk came on, he woke a fire and built a spruce bough lean-to against the ash tree, hanging his gear out of reach of inquisitive muzzles. There were only two cubs to get under his feet. The one with the foxy ears, whom Renn had named Click, had died of a sickness the moon before.

When the shelter was finished, Torak went to pick blackberries, and the cubs came too: Shadow, the black cub with a passion for gnawing boots, and Pebble, who'd been the first to emerge from the Den and greet Torak in the summer.

The blackberries were so ripe that they fell to pieces in his hands, and the cubs snuffled them up from his palm. Shadow placed her forepaws on his knee and rose on her hind legs to give him a sticky wolf kiss, while Pebble, his muzzle stained purple, bounded off to attack the shelter. Seizing a branch in his jaws, he gave a tug that made the whole thing shudder and sent him hurtling back to his mother.

As Torak watched Darkfur licking her cubs, he knew he was doing the right thing. They were only three moons old: too small to make the trek to the Mountains.

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And Wolf would never leave them behind.

Thinking of this, Torak crawled into his sleeping-sack.

It was a frosty night, and he was glad of his winter clothes: a duckskin jerkin and under-leggings, with a parka and over-leggings of warm reindeer-hide, and beaver-hide boots. He hadn't been asleep for long when he was woken by excited whimpering.

Wolf had returned. Darkfur and the cubs were lashing their tails as they gulped the meat he'd sicked up for them, while Rip and Rek sidled about looking for scraps. Darkfur was too clever for them, and the cubs had learned the hard way about raven thievery, and warded them off with growls and body slams.

In the moonlight, the resting place was spangled with frost, and the eyes of the pack shone silver. Wolf bounded over to Torak and they rolled together, nose-nudging and licking each other's muzzles.
The hunt is good, the cubs are strong!
said Wolf.

Glancing up, Torak saw that the black sky was spotted with downy white flakes.

It was the cubs' first snow, and they loved it. They chased and snapped and stalked this strange, silent prey, batting it with their paws and licking it off each other's fur. Torak knelt and they clambered over him, butting him with small, cold noses. Wolf and Darkfur joined in, and they all chased one another up the ridge and around

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the resting place, skittering so near the edge that they sent pebbles splashing into the Horseleap far below.

At last, Torak squatted by the fire, and the wolves lifted their muzzles and howled to the moon. Torak listened to the cubs' wavering yowls and their parents' strong, sure voices. It didn't seem possible that he could bring himself to leave. And the worst of it was that he couldn't tell Wolf, as that would only force him to make an agonizing choice: either to follow Torak and desert his family, or to stay with them and abandon his pack-brother.

Sensing Torak's unhappiness, Wolf stopped howling and trotted toward him. His thick winter pelt sparkled with snow, but his tongue was warm as he licked Torak's cheek.

You're sad,
he said.

No,
lied Torak.

Wolf didn't ask again, but leaned against him, comforting by his presence.

Safe with the pack, Torak slept without fear of Eostra's gray moths, and woke at dawn. The cubs lay in a snow-sprinkled huddle, with Darkfur and Wolf curled nearby.

Quietly, Torak put the fire to sleep and shouldered his gear.

Wolf's paws twitched in his dreams, but as Torak knelt beside him, he opened his eyes and stirred his tail.
You go to hunt?
he said with a tilt of his ear.

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Yes,
Torak replied in wolf talk. Burying his face in his pack-brother's scruff, he inhaled deep breaths of the beloved scent. Then he tore himself away.

It was a bitterly cold morning, and the snow-crust crackled under his boots. On the higher ground, the wind had exposed patches of flat bearberry scrub: the startling scarlet of spilled blood. On one patch, Torak found a dead gray moth. He touched it with his boot, and it crumbled to dust.

As he went on, he found more dead moths littering the undergrowth. The frost had put an end to them.

Or maybe, he thought uneasily, Eostra no longer needs them. Maybe they've already done their work.

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THREE

"Can't you hear them?" whispered the sick boy. "Hear who?" said Renn.
"The demons...."

Renn took a brand from the fire and showed him every corner of the Boar Clan shelter. "Aki, look. There are no demons here."

"The moths drew them," he muttered, rocking back and forth. "They'll never leave me now."

"But there's nothing--"

Grabbing her arm, he breathed in her ear.
"They're in my shadow!"

Renn jerked back.

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Aki stared about him with haunted eyes. "I hear them all the time. The clicking of their jaws. Their angry breath. In the morning when my shadow's long, I see them. At midday, when my shadow creeps closer, they're inside me. Under my skin, gnawing my souls. Ai! Get away!" He clawed at his shadow.

Renn wondered what to do. She was exhausted. For days she'd done her best to keep the gray moths from the Boar Clan, while their own Mage was laid low with fever. And now this.

Aki's fingers were bleeding as he clawed the mat. Renn tried to stop him, but he was too strong. She called for help. Aki's father ran in and clasped his son in his arms. A second man, haggard from fever, raised a spiral amulet and made the sign of the hand.

"He says there are demons in his shadow," Renn told him.

The Boar Mage nodded. "I've just seen two more with the same sickness. Renn. If it's here, it'll be with the Ravens, too. I'm well enough now. Go back to your clan."

The Boars had camped on the River Tumblerock, less than a daywalk north of the Ravens, but the fog made Renn's progress slow. As she stumbled through it, she thought of gray moths and Eostra the Masked One. Every falling leaf made her jump. She regretted having declined the Boar Clan Leader's offer to accompany her.

Her tired mind went in circles. How to stop the

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gray moths? How to fight the shadow sickness? What if Saeunn was too old and weak to cope, and everything came down to her?

And like a dark current beneath it all was the gnawing anxiety about Torak.

For days she'd been reading the embers, and last night she'd placed a dream-stave under her sleeping-sack: a stick of rowan wound with a lock of his hair. Now she wished she hadn't. Everything pointed the same way. She prayed that she'd gotten it wrong.

The fog was gone by midafternoon, and she paused for a salmon cake under a beech tree. She was opening her food pouch when the zigzag tattoos on her wrists began to prickle. Quietly, she closed the pouch and examined the tree.

On the other side, someone had gouged a strange, spiky mark in the trunk. It was about a hand wide, and it had been hacked--not carved but
hacked
--into the smooth silver bark.

Renn had never seen anything like it. It resembled a huge bird with outstretched wings. Or a mountain.

And it was fresh. Tree-blood oozed from the wounds. Whoever had done this had acted from hatred and a desire to inflict pain.

Drawing her knife, Renn scanned the Forest. The light was beginning to fail. Shadows were gathering under the trees.

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She knew of only one creature who could treat another with such savagery. A tokoroth. A demon in the body of a child.

She touched the scar on the back of her hand, where one had bitten her two summers before. She pictured filthy, matted hair. Vicious teeth and claws. She fancied she saw branches stir, heard a cackling laugh as the creature leaped from tree to tree.

There's nothing here, she told herself.

But she was running up the slope.

Not far now. Just over the ridge, then I'll be back in the valley of the Ashwater, and it's downhill all the way.

It was a frosty night when she reached the Raven camp. Her clan, hunched around the long-fire, greeted her with subdued nods. Nobody asked why she was frightened. Fear hung in the air. The Boar Mage was right: things were worse here too.

Two young hunters, Sialot and Poi, had fallen sick; they said there were demons in their shadows. All day they'd been gouging strange, spiky marks on everything: earth, wood, even their own flesh. Fin-Kedinn was at the river, making an offering. And Torak was gone. He'd left for the Mountains that morning.

When she heard this, Renn gave a strangled cry and rushed to her shelter.

Inside, the Raven Mage was reading the embers.

"Why didn't you stop him?" cried Renn.

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Saeunn didn't look up. She sat beneath her elk-hide mantle, feeding slivers of alder bark to the fire, watching how they twisted, straining to catch the hissing of the spirits. "The Mountain of Ghosts," she breathed. "Ah ... yes...."

Renn flung down her gear and scrambled closer. "The Mountain of Ghosts. Is that the mark I found on the tree?"

"She has made her lair in the Mountain. She seeks power over the dead. Yes ... this was always her desire."

Renn thought of Torak making his way through the Forest, not knowing what he was heading into. She started cramming salmon cakes into her food pouch.