Ghost Hunter

by Michelle Paver

  Up the rise he loped, and down into the valley where he'd had his Beginning. His claws clattered as he sped across the Bright Hard Cold that had once been the Fast Wet.

  The owl swept so low that he heard the hiss of its wings. Then it rose over the treetops and disappeared. Tirelessly Wolf ran, as only a wolf can run. But at last

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  he halted. The wind was at his tail, he couldn't catch the scent, and he couldn't see the Up for the trees. He could no longer hear the caws of the ravens.

  Wolf felt in his fur that this time, the owl wasn't coming back.

  A great emptiness opened inside him.

  Darkfur was gone. The cubs were gone. This could not be.

  The cubs were part of him. He could no more lose them than he could lose a paw. And he and Darkfur were one breath. As one wolf, they hunted in the Forest. As one wolf, they sensed which cub was planning to stray too far, and which had got stuck in the brambles. When they howled, their voices rose together into the Up.

  This could not be.

  Wolf lifted his muzzle and howled.

  Wolf's howls drifted to Torak as he knelt on the clifftop. Such desolation. Grief without end.

  Torak resolved that his pack-brother would not bear it alone. He would go after him and find some way to comfort him.

  But as he got to his feet, the resting place went around and around. He touched his forehead. His fingers came away red. Better do something about that, he thought fuzzily. And yet he made no move to open his medicine pouch.

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  The resting place was a dismal mess of ravaged snow. Shadow lay by the ash tree, as if asleep. There was no blood. The eagle owl must have snatched her up, then dropped her from a great height. The fall had killed her instantly.

  Kneeling by the corpse, Torak pictured her small souls padding about, seeking Wolf and Darkfur and her pack-brother. He longed to help her, but he didn't think wolves had death rites, or Death Marks. He'd asked Renn about that once, and she'd said that wolves don't need them. Their ears and noses are so keen that their souls always stay together and never become demons. So instead, Torak simply prayed for the guardian of all wolves to come and fetch Shadow's spirit soon, before she got scared.

  As for her body, he carried it to the edge of the brambles and laid it on a bed of ferns. There he let it lie, with the moon and the stars wheeling over it; and in time, like all creatures, it would become food for the other inhabitants of the Forest.

  It was dark. There was a ring around the moon, which meant it would get even colder. He couldn't go after Wolf tonight. He'd have to sleep here and head off at dawn.

  Numbly, he collected his scattered gear and woke up a fire in front of the shelter he'd left only that morning. Then he took dried yarrow from his medicine pouch and pressed it to his forehead, bandaging it with the buckskin

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  headband he'd worn when he was outcast.

  The musty smell of yarrow reminded him of when he'd hit his head going over the waterfall, and Renn had treated his wound. He missed her. He wondered if he'd been wrong to leave the Raven camp without her. At the time, he'd been convinced he had to be on his own. But maybe that had been Eostra's trick. She wanted him alone. And now she'd made brutally sure that he stayed alone, by sending her creature to slaughter the pack and lure Wolf away.

  From the south came his pack-brother's howls. Torak did not howl back. He knew the only howls Wolf wanted to hear were those he never would again.

  At dawn, Torak found a precipitous way down the cliff-face and half-climbed, half-fell to the bank below.

  Wolf's trail led across the pine trunk that spanned the river, but Torak did not follow it. First, he headed downstream, searching the ground beneath the cliff. Maybe-- maybe --Darkfur hadn't been killed in the fall. Maybe she'd got ashore, and was lying battered but alive....

  The snow was untouched, the shallows crusted with unbroken ice.

  Torak crossed the Horseleap by the pine trunk and checked the other bank. Again, nothing. Darkfur was gone.

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  Gone, gone, echoed Wolf's lonely howls.

  Torak started along his pack-brother's trail. When the snow-crust is too hard for paw prints, a wolf leaves barely any trace--a few flakes of frost brushed off a branch, a frond of bracken bent slightly out of place--but Torak tracked Wolf almost without having to think. His trail headed south, up the side of the valley and down into the next: a rocky, steep-sided gully.

  Torak recognized it at once: the valley of the Fastwater. When he was little, he and Fa used to camp there in early summer, to gather lime bark for rope making.

  The river was frozen now, but three summers ago it had been a torrent. Torak recognized the big red rock shaped like a sleeping auroch. Beneath it he had found a pack of drowned wolves lying in the mud. And a small, wet, shivering cub.

  Crossing the frozen river, he started to climb.

  He went very still.

  An arrow had been lashed with a twist of creeper to the trunk of a birch tree about ten paces above the auroch rock. It pointed east, toward the High Mountains.

  Holding his breath, Torak climbed closer. He studied the fletching but didn't dare touch. The arrow had belonged to Fa.

  As if his father had spoken aloud, Torak heard his voice in his mind. Help me. Set my spirit free.

  Maybe Fin-Kedinn was right, maybe Eostra was

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  making use of Fa's arrow. But Torak couldn't forget that lost spirit calling in the night. If Eostra was summoning him to her Mountain lair, then so was Fa.

  And yet--if he headed east, as Fa's arrow begged him to, he would be abandoning Wolf.

  Torak stood irresolute, fists clenched inside his mittens. Should he follow the dead, or seek the living?

  He knew what Fin-Kedinn would have done.

  Facing the invisible Mountains, he lifted his head. "You tried to separate me from my pack-brother," he shouted to the Eagle Owl Mage. "Well, you won't succeed. I won't let you!"

  Turning his back on his father's arrow, he headed south.

  To find Wolf.

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  SEVEN

  It turned colder and colder as Fin-Kedinn headed north.

  The night before, there had been a ring around the moon, and the stars had flickered with an intensity he'd rarely seen. Storm on the way. The clan would have pitched camp early. He must do the same.

  He crossed the Tumblerock at the Boar Clan camp, then made his way into the valley of the Rushwater. He was now less than a daywalk from the Windriver, where the Ravens had camped in the time of the demon bear. He thought of the day when Renn and her brother had brought in two captives: a wolf cub squirming in a

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  buckskin bag, and a bedraggled and furious boy....

  The Rushwater echoed noisily between its ice-choked banks, but the Forest had a peculiar, waiting stillness. Fin-Kedinn realized that he'd seen no birds all day, save for a few last, lonely swans flying south.

  And no people. The frosts had killed the gray moths, but the victims of the shadow sickness remained terrified, and their terror infected others. Most people were staying close to camp, only braving the Forest when hunger drove them.

  So it was good to encounter a small Viper hunting party: three men and a boy, hurrying west to rejoin their clan. They'd caught two squirrels and three wood pigeons. It wasn't much, but they urged Fin-Kedinn to come with them and share.

  "Bad weather on the way," said one. "Dangerous to be in the Forest alone." Out of respect, he didn't ask what the Leader of the Ravens was doing so far from his clan.

  Fin-Kedinn declined the offer and ignored the unspoken question. Instead, he told them of the gathering of the clans.

  "The Ravens have already set off, and I told the Boar Clan when I passed their camp; they'll have left by now; and Durrain has sent word throughout the Deep Forest. Go back to your people and tell your Leader. If the clans stay together, we will remain strong. Even against Eostra."

&nbs
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  That he dared speak her name aloud gave them courage. But the hunter who had spoken grabbed Fin-Kedinn's arm. "Come with us, Fin-Kedinn. We need you. You can't leave us now."

  "Others can lead," said Fin-Kedinn. "I must seek the one who can bring down the Soul-Eater. The one who knows the dark places under the earth."

  "Who? Where are you going?"

  "North" was all Fin-Kedinn would say.

  Before they could ask more, he was on his way. Time was against him. And to find the one he sought, he must rely on knowledge many winters old.

  He hadn't gone far when the boy came racing after him. "My father says to give you this," he panted, holding out a squirrel.

  Fin-Kedinn thanked him and told him to keep it. The boy glanced up at him shyly. "Can I go with you? I know the land to the north--I could help you find your way."

  The Raven Leader bit back a smile. He'd hunted in this part of the Forest since before this boy was born.

  He was about twelve summers old, with loose limbs and a sharp, intelligent face; a little like Torak at that age. "They say you've journeyed farther than anyone," he ventured. "To the Far North and the Seal Islands and the High Mountains. Can't I come too?"

  "No," said Fin-Kedinn. "Go back to your father."

  As he watched the boy plodding off, Fin-Kedinn

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  became suddenly alert. The crunch of the boy's boots had an odd, brittle sound, which rang too sharply through the trees. And the snow looked wrong. It had an almost greenish tinge.

  Fin-Kedinn's hand tightened on his staff. No wonder the Forest was bracing itself.

  "Tell your father to hurry," he shouted to the boy. "Get back to camp, quick as you can!"

  The boy turned. "I know! Snowstorm on the way!"

  "No! Ice storm! Much worse! Tell your father! Run!"

  Fin-Kedinn watched till the boy was safely back with the others. Then he started looking for a place to build a shelter. As he did so, he prayed to the World Spirit that Torak and Renn--wherever they were--had seen the signs too, and gotten under cover.

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  [Image: Fa's arrow.]

  EIGHT

  A sense of foreboding had been growing on Renn . since she woke up. It was cold. Too cold for snow. The night before, there'd been a ring around the moon. Tanugeak the White Fox Mage had once told her that this meant the moon was pulling the ruff of her parka closer around her face, because bad weather was coming.

  And to make matters worse, Renn had heard Wolf howling in the night. She'd never heard him howl like that before.

  The River Horseleap was beginning to freeze, the shallows congealing in fragile, pale-green swirls. In an inlet, Renn found splintered ice and a trace of a paw

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  print; farther on, boot prints, unmistakeably Torak's. She was puzzled. He'd headed downstream, then backtracked. Why?

  Soon after, she drew level with the resting place on the other side of the river, and craned her neck at the cliff. She howled, but no wolves peered over the edge. She told herself they must have taken the cubs exploring. But her uneasiness grew.

  Her spirits rose when she found the pine trunk where Torak had crossed the river. His trail was fresher than she'd dared hope, and he'd been walking with his usual long strides, so he must be all right, which meant that Wolf couldn't have been howling for him.

  She followed the trail into the gully of the Fastwater. She didn't know it well, except from Torak's description of where he'd first met Wolf, but halfway up, she spotted an arrow, tied to a birch tree and pointing east. This was baffling. Torak must have put it there as a sign for her. But if he wanted her to follow, why not just wait?

  For some reason, she passed the arrow without examining it, and hurried on. But to her dismay, she found no more tracks. Torak hadn't come this way.

  She went back to the birch tree, and came to a dead stop. The arrow had been tied in place with nightshade: a deadly plant, beloved of the Soul-Eaters--especially Seshru, her mother. Torak would never have used it. This wasn't his sign. It wasn't his arrow.

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  A gust of wind threw back her hood. She shivered. While she'd been tracking, the wind had strengthened, and the sky had darkened ominously. Storm coming. She should make camp right now.

  But then she would fall even farther behind.

  Fighting a rising tide of panic, she decided to flout everything she'd ever learned, and keep going.

  As the wind strengthened, she found Torak's trail and followed it into the next valley. She paused for breath under a huge, watchful holly. Her sense of wrongness deepened. It wasn't even midafternoon, but it was as dark as twilight. The snow had an odd, greenish tinge. She hadn't seen a single living creature all day.

  Fin-Kedinn would have called a halt long before now. "The first rule of living," he'd told her once, "is never leave it too late to build a shelter."

  And this was a good place for a camp: a patch of level ground near the holly tree, even if it was a bit far from the river.

  Renn chewed her lip. "Torak?" she called. "Torak!"

  Angrily, she flung down her gear. Why had he left without her? And why hadn't she caught up?

  Now that she'd stopped, she realized how little time she had left.

  Come on, Renn. You know what to do. First, the fire. Wake it now, before you're tired from chopping wood, and build the shelter around it. Plenty of tinder in your

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  pouch, keeping warm inside your jerkin; and you've got a bit of horsehoof mushroom smoldering in a roll of bark, so no messing about with a strike-fire.

  Which was just as well. The trees were moaning, and the wind was tugging at her clothes and whipping branches in her face. It was malicious. It wanted her to fail.

  Gritting her teeth, she woke the fire, then wrenched her axe from her belt. Now for the shelter. Bend saplings and tie them together with willow withes, leaving a smoke-hole at the top. Build long and low to weather the storm, and cut off the saplings' heads so the wind can't pull them over--sorry, tree-spirits, you'd better find a new home. Fill in the sides with spruce boughs, plug the gaps with bracken, and weigh it down with more saplings, as many as you can.

  Despite the cold, sweat ran down her sides. Too much to do, and the trees were thrashing and creaking. They sounded frightened.

  Bracing herself against the wind, she wove a rough door from hazel and spruce branches, then crawled inside, dragging in firewood, and more spruce boughs for bedding. The shelter was thick with smoke, it was swirling close to the ground, too scared to leave. Coughing, Renn pulled the door shut. The smoke-hole sucked the haze upward, and the shelter cleared.

  She'd made it just big enough to take two people, in

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  case Torak needed it too. Now she recognized that for the delusion it was. Torak was long gone.

  "Water," she said out loud, trying to banish her fears. The river was too far, so she'd have to melt snow. Yanking her parka and jerkin over her head, she used the jerkin's lacings to tie its neck and sleeves shut, to form a makeshift bag. Then she pulled her parka back on and crawled out into the jaws of the storm.

  The wind pelted her with flying branches and stung her face with ice needles. Quickly, she crammed snow into the jerkin, and crawled back inside. With her spare bowstring, she hung the snow sack from a support sapling, and placed a swiftly made birch-bark pail underneath to catch the drips.

  The wind screamed. The shelter shuddered. Suddenly, the World Spirit speared the clouds and sent the hail hammering down. Renn hugged her knees and prayed for Torak and Wolf.

  A thud shook the shelter.

  She gave a start. That wasn't a branch.

  Pulling up her hood, she shifted the door and peered out.

  Hail struck her face.

  Only it isn't hail, she thought, it's rain --and it's turning to ice on everything it strikes.

  Screwing up her face against the onslaught, she saw the freezing rain hitting twigs, branches, trees--impriso
ning

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  all it struck in a heavy mantle of ice. Boughs bent beneath the weight. Already ice was forming on her clothes.

  She groped to find whatever had fallen against the shelter. Her mitten struck a lump which didn't feel like a branch. She squeezed.

  The lump squawked.

  Rek's wings were clogged with ice, but once Renn got the raven inside and brushed her off, she began steaming gently in the warmth.

  Shivering with terror, she cowered on Renn's lap. As Renn gazed into those deep raven eyes, she sensed in them more than terror of the storm. Where had Rek come from? Where was Torak?

  A thunderclap split the sky. The Forest roared as Renn had never heard it roar before. She heard deafening cracks and tremendous, splintering crashes.

  And then, quite distinctly, she heard a voice in the storm. She strained to listen. Was that--could it be Torak, calling her name?

  It would be madness to go out again.

  And yet--if there was a chance that Torak needed help ...

  She grabbed a brand from the fire.

  The fury of the storm beat upon her. The Forest was under attack. She saw trees flailing wildly, desperate to break free of their burden of ice. Branches crashed. A

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  pine snapped like kindling. Even the boughs of the great holly bowed so low, they threatened to split the tree in half.

  "Torak!" yelled Renn. The ice storm ripped away his name like a leaf. "Torak!" It was hopeless.

  A flash of lightning, and from the holly, a face peered down at her. Icicle hair. Eyes glittering with malice.

  Renn screamed.

  Thunder boomed.

  The tokoroth leaped into the dark.

  The holly gave a groan--and tore itself apart.

  Renn threw herself out of the way a heartbeat too late. One of the holly's limbs crashed across her calf, pinning her to the ground.

  Wildly, she struggled, but the tree held her fast. She'd left her axe in the shelter. With her knife, she hacked at the branch. The wood was like granite; the blade bounced off. Frantically, she dug at the earth beneath her leg. Frozen hard.