Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  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 hardships 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 shivered. 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 scrap 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 passes. Sometimes they venture near
the Gorge of the Hidden People. They’ve seen her. They say she walks with a three-pronged 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.

  The Masked One never moved, but Renn felt icy fingers on her throat, choking off the spell.

  ‘None may hinder Eostra.’

  ‘You’re not real!’ gasped Renn. ‘I’m not afraid of you!’

  ‘All fear Eostra.’ Slowly, the feathered arms rose, and their shadows took wing. In an instant, the Masked One stood by the dead fire, looming over Renn.

  Torak lay between them. Renn saw the unclean robe pooling about him. She saw the pulse beating in his throat. Exposed. Vulnerable.

  ‘You can’t have him,’ she said.

  The terrible mask leaned towards her, unbearably close. Ashen hair slithered across her cheek. She caught the stench of rottenness.

  ‘The spirit walker,’ said Eostra, ‘is already lost.’

  Renn stared into the pitiless, painted glare. Horror tightened its coils. Hope fled.

  With a cry, she tore her gaze away. She saw the Soul-Eater’s hand clenched on the head of a mace. Her flesh had the grainy density of granite; her talons were tinged blue, like those of a corpse. Between the fingers bled a fiery glow. The fire-opal.

  ‘His time draws near,’ said the Masked One.

  Terror hooked Renn’s heart and jerked it like a fish. ‘You can’t know that for sure.’

  ‘Eostra knows all. He cannot escape.’ One feathered arm reached out and she raked the ruins of the fire. She opened her talons. Ash fine as crumbled bones hissed down onto Torak’s unprotected face: filling his mouth, covering his eyes.

  ‘No,’ said Renn.

  ‘Eostra shall suck the power from his marrow. She shall devour his world-soul and spew what remains into endless night.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘From host to host her souls shall spirit walk down the ages. Eostra shall conquer death. All shall cower before the undying one. Eostra shall live for ever!’

  ‘No!’ screamed Renn. ‘No no no no no!’

  Men shouted. Dogs barked. The shelter was in uproar.

  ‘Renn!’ Torak was bending over her. ‘Wake up!’

  She went on screaming. ‘No! You can’t have him!’

  The eagle owl glared down at her from the rim of the smoke-hole. Then it spread its wings and lifted into the dark.

  ‘Was it a vision?’ said Torak. ‘Renn? Was it one of your visions?’

  ‘She was real.’

  ‘But she wasn’t here, in the shelter.’

  ‘She was.’

  They sat with their backs against the peat-pile: Renn rigidly clutching her knees, Torak with one arm around her shoulders. Krukoslik had gone to the Swan Clan shelter to talk with their Leader. Most of the men were outside, calming the dogs. On the other side of the fire, women soothed children and cast fearful glances at Renn.

  She’d stopped shaking, but she felt drained, as she always did after a vision. This had been the strongest and the worst ever. Dully, she stared at the glowing embers. No trace of the ash which Eostra had poured over Torak like a death rite.

  ‘Tell me what you saw,’ he said in a voice so low no-one else could hear.

  Haltingly, she told him: about Eostra planning to rule the unquiet dead, and become the spirit walker. ‘She means to eat your world-soul. That’s where your power lies. She will eat it and – and spit out the rest. Then she’ll be the spirit walker. She’ll move from body to body. She’ll live for ever.’

  ‘And I’ll be dead.’

  She turned to him. ‘No. That’s the worst of it. You wouldn’t die. You’d be Lost.’

  ‘Lost? What’s that?’

  She sucked in her breath. ‘It’s when you lose your world-soul. You’re still you – name-soul and clan-soul – but you’ve snapped your link with the rest of the world. You’re adrift in the dark beyond the stars, in the night that has no end. Eternally alive. Eternally alone.’

  In the fire, peat smoked and spat.

  Torak withdrew his arm and leant forwards so that she couldn’t see his face. ‘When I was sleepwalking, I felt lost in nothingness. You were shaken when I told you. That’s why, isn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But why did I feel it then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was trying out a spell. I don’t know.’

  He pushed the hair from his face, and she saw his hand shake. ‘Can it happen to anyone? Or am I more at risk?’

  ‘I think – you’re more at risk. Because you’re the spirit walker. And . . .’ she hesitated. ‘Because you broke your oath.’

  He waited for her to go on.

  ‘When you swore to avenge the Seal Clan boy, you took your oath on your knife, your medicine horn, and your three souls. When you broke that oath, it may have weakened the link between them.’

  He was silent, staring at the fire.

  ‘But Torak,’ Renn said fiercely. ‘All this is onl
y what Eostra wants, not what has to be! We won’t let it happen. We can fight it together!’

  Torak gave her a look she couldn’t read.

  Then daylight was flooding the doorway, and Krukoslik was stamping snow off his boots and letting in the dawn.

  ‘It’s decided,’ he said. ‘We’ll take you to the Gorge of the Hidden People, but no further. You’ll have to find your own way in.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Torak had no time to take in what Renn had told him. The camp sprang into action, people running to harness dogs and prepare the sleds.

  He and Renn were hustled off and given clothes ‘fit for the Mountain’. When Torak got outside, the sky was overcast, and the peaks were hidden from sight. But he felt them as a tightness in his chest.

  Renn emerged, looking ill at ease in her new clothes. They both now wore an inner jerkin and leggings of diverbird hide, the plumage warm against their skin, and a calf-length tunic of supple reindeer fur, cinched at the waist with a broad buckskin belt; socks and under-mittens of soft, light woven stuff which the Swans said was musk-ox wool; and long boots and over-mittens of tough reindeer forehead skin.

  Such clothes must have taken days to make. When Torak remarked on this, Renn gave him an odd look. ‘Can’t you guess? These were made for Souls’ Night. They’ve given us clothes for ghosts.’

  Krukoslik came over to them. His face was grim – his camp had been menaced by a Soul-Eater – and he would not be going with them. A party of Swans would take them as far as they dared.

  Krukoslik introduced their Leader, Juksakai, a slight man with disconcerting pale-blue eyes and a permanent frown. With a jerk of his head, he indicated that Renn would go on his son’s sled, Torak on his. Torak thanked him for helping them, but Juksakai only scowled and shook his head.

  As Torak got on the sled, Krukoslik said, ‘I wish you’d change your mind, Torak.’