Ghost Hunter (23 page)

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[Image: A white bird.]

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 around 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

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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 surefooted. "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 rock face.

At least, she thought it was a rock face. 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 birch-bark 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.

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"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 forward, 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 space.

She bumped her head, and gave a jittery laugh.

"Hush! 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 eyeballs.

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.

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She felt cold air from unseen tunnels. She glimpsed wet gray pillars clustered together. As she passed, 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 around 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 rock pile, 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."

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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?"
Pushing 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?"

"Sh!" He jerked the torch upward. 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.

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The owl opened its eyes and hissed at her.

With a cry Renn fell, knocking Dark backward. 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?"

"I don't know."

Renn jammed her knuckles in her mouth. Somewhere in this terrible Mountain, Torak was facing Eostra alone. A cold hand touched her wrist. "Is that you?" she whispered. "What?" said Dark, some paces away. A chill finger touched her cheek. "Stop it!" she cried. "I didn't do anything!"

Renn screwed her eyes shut. She opened them. She saw. It wasn't possible in this darkness, and yet--she
saw.
"Do you see it too?" she breathed.

"I see it," Dark said softly. "But I don't know who it is."

Renn did. It was indistinct, as if in a mist, yet it seemed to hold its own light, as spirits do. Renn's fear drained away, leaving only a distant sense of loss.

Before her stood the wizened figure against whom she had rebelled all her life. For the last time she took in

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the flinty gaze; the lipless mouth which had never been known to smile.

Noiselessly, it extended one frail arm and pointed at the tunnel of the stone spear.

"Thank you," murmured Renn. "Thank you ... And may the guardian fly with you." With both hands on her clan-creature feathers, she bowed to the spirit of the Raven Mage.

When she straightened up, it was gone.

Renn hoisted her quiver and bow higher on her shoulder. Then she reached out and took Dark's hand. "Come," she told him. "We know the way now."

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THIRTY-FIVE

Torak was tumbling down a waterfall of stone. The ground rushed to meet him. Pain exploded in his shoulder and skull.

He lay still. His cheekbone hurt savagely, but he could move his arms and legs. Somehow, he'd kept hold of his knife.

Above him the stone waterfall disappeared into the dark. Unclimbable. No getting back. He thought, at least Wolf isn't here. At least he's got a chance of getting out.

He had a sense of a vast, shadowy cavern. Stone had once flowed like honey: dripping, pooling, then freezing hard. Twisted fangs of rock hung down; others jutted from

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the floor to meet them. Like teeth, thought Torak.
Oldest of all, the stone bite.
I'm in the jaws of the Mountain.

Firelight glimmered. He caught the whisper of water far below. Closer, he heard the rhythmic clink of bones. A voice chanted.

By power of bone

By power of stone

By power of demon eye

Eostra summons the Unquiet Dead

Eostra binds them to her!

Torak stumbled toward the light. No point trying to hide. She knew he was there. Then he saw it.

In some ancient catastrophe, rocks had fallen in a pile as tall as two tall men. On the pile rested a slab of black stone, where a fire burned. Behind this altar, flanked by a pair of tokoroths rattling bones, stood the Eagle Owl Mage.

Her feathered robe seemed to gather the darkness to it, but her mask glowed ghastly white. In one corpse hand she grasped the mace which bore the fire-opal; in the other, the three-pronged spear for snaring souls.

By power of bone

By power of stone

By power of demon eye .

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Torak tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry.

The arms of the Masked One rose, and her winged shadow engulfed the cavern. The tokoroths groveled, their evil child-faces alight with terror and adoration.

"You know I'm here," panted Torak. "You know I'll stop you."

The Masked One never faltered in her chant, but her spear swung around and pointed at him. At the foot of the rock pile, seven pairs of eyes lit up. Dark shapes sped toward him.

Jamming his knife into its sheath, Torak kicked off his boots and scrambled up the nearest fang of rock. The pack was almost upon him. Heaving himself onto a ledge a few fingers wide, he drew up his legs. The dogs swarmed about his refuge, leaping, snapping. Their breath scorched his bare feet, their jaws clashed empty air. Snarling, they fell back and sprang again, their hatred sucking at his souls.

An arm's length above him, his rock fused unevenly with a hanging tooth. He could climb higher. But then, a tokoroth could climb down. A shadow swept toward him. He lashed out with his knife. The eagle owl veered and flew back to its mistress.