Oath Breaker

by Michelle Paver; Geoff Taylor

  But her thirst was becoming pressing, and it was a long time since she'd left the lake. She had no idea which way she'd come. Where wasshe? She should never have escaped from the Red Deer.

  Durrain had sensed the fire almost before the prey, and the whole clan had taken to the lake, seeking refuge in canoes, which they'd moored to the islet in the middle. There Renn had done as they did, soaking her cloak, huddling beneath it.

  She hadn't been frightened, not then. She'd been too angry with Torak for leaving her. A whole day of patient 174

  questioning.Where did he go? I don't know. Where did he go?It astonished her that they didn't guess, but they seemed to think it impossible that anyone would brave the sacred grove alone. It would've served him right, she'd thought furiously, if shehadgiven him away.

  But as she lay in the rocking gloom with the fire roaring toward them, she forgot her anger. A child sobbed. A woman whispered a charm. Renn shut her eyes and prayed for Torak and Wolf. Please, please, let them live.

  Then it burst upon them, and the canoe rocked wildly and people shouted prayers. It had taken Renn a while to realize that the fire had jumped the lake and swept on without devouring them. Then the World Spirit had lanced the clouds and released a torrent of rain, and in the confusion, she'd slipped overboard and swum away.

  Shethoughtshe'd headed south, but in the smoke and the rain it was hard to tell. Now, as a breeze cleared the haze, she saw that she stood in a narrow gully where a stream had once run. Maybe it led to a river.

  She hadn't gone far when a branch crashed behind her. She turned. The dead trees looked like hunters stalking her. One of them moved. She ran, blundering down the gully. She ran till she had to stop, hands on knees, gasping for breath. Around her, the gully was quiet. Whatever had 175 moved hadn't come after her. Maybe it had been a tree, after all.

  She stumbled between the smoking spikes. Beyond a spur, she saw green. She blinked. Yes,green!

  Moaning, she rounded the spur--and the green of the Forest blinded her. Rowan and beech and whitebeam rose before her, their boughs a little sooty, but alive.

  Panting with relief, she sank to her knees amid ferns and celandine. By her hand lay a sky-blue shard of thrush's egg, pushed from the nest by the hatchling. On a log she saw a spruce sapling as tall as her thumb, thrusting bravely through the moss. She thought, The Forest is eternal. Nothing can conquer it. But there was no sign of a river. Straining for sounds of water, she wandered among the trees.

  At last she was halted by a grove of tall pines which had been toppled by a storm. Dead trunks and earthy root discs blocked her way in a crisscrossed tangle. She ought to turn back; that was what you did when you were lost. But she couldn't face returning to the wasteland.

  The pines didn't want her in their bone-ground. Their mossy trunks tried to throw her off, their branches jutted like spears. It was a relief to get out the other side, back among living oaks and limes.

  But these trees didn't want her either. Furrowed bark faces glared at her, and twig fingers dragged at her hair. Some of the trunks were hollow. She thought what it 176

  would be like to be trapped inside, and hurried on.

  The wind strengthened, blowing soot in her face. She coughed and went on coughing, doubled up, leaning against a tree.

  Beneath her fingers, she felt eyes.

  With a cry she snatched her hand away.

  Yes, eyes. A fierce red gaze had been carved in the trunk, and a square mouth, edged with real human teeth.

  Renn had never seen such a thing. She guessed it had been done to give voice to the tree's spirit. But who would give a tree teeth?

  Uneasily, she scanned her surroundings. Lime trees, nettles, a scattering of boulders.

  She went on.

  When she glanced back, the trees had moved. They'd been much closer to that boulder, she was sure of it. Now they were more spread out. She started to run. A root tripped her and she fell--and came face-to-face with another trunk mask, its eyes tight shut in its lichen-crusted face. Panting, she got to her feet.

  The eyes opened. Bark limbs detached themselves from the trunk. Bark hands reached to grab her. Whimpering, she fled.

  To her left, another bark creature separated from a

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  trunk. Then another and another. Bark people moved to surround her, reaching for her with ridged hands and blank, fissured faces.

  As she ran, her axe banged against her thigh. She wrenched it from her belt, but knew that she'd never dare use it.

  Her breath rasped in her throat. With nightmare slowness she waded through piles of crackling leaves. She stumbled down a slope and into another tree bone-ground where she wobbled over fallen trunks, while the bark people ran along them like fire, hunting her in eerie silence.

  Something yanked at her shoulder, pulling her back. Her bow had snagged on a branch. She struggled to free it.

  Bark hands seized her and dragged her down.

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  TWENTY-TWO

  "Where are you taking me?" said Renn. The bark men did not reply. "Please. Why won't you speak? What have I done?" One of them jabbed at her with his spear. She didn't wait for him to do it again.

  All day she had walked in a silent throng of hunters. They'd taken her weapons, but they hadn't touched her again. They seemed to regard her as unclean. In vain she'd begged them for water. They ignored her. She stumbled through a haze of thirst and a forest of poisoned spears. She had no idea where she was. The great fire hadn't 179 touched this part of the Forest, but its stench hung in the air, so she guessed that the wasteland wasn't far.

  From her captors' green headbands and horn amulets, she guessed they were Aurochs, but in her mind they were the bark people. Their clothes were yellowish-brown wovenbark, and rolls of bark pierced their earlobes. Their shaven scalps were caked with yellow clay to resemble bark, and the men's beards were clogged with it, like straggly tree roots. But unlike the Aurochs she'd seen at clan meets, they hadn't stopped there. They had carved their very flesh into bark, disfiguring their hands and faces with rough, ridged scars.

  Renn knew a little about such scars. Some of her own clan, including Fin-Kedinn, bore a raised zigzag on each arm, to ward off demons. Creating them was very painful. After slitting the skin with a sliver of flint, a paste of ash and lichen was rubbed in, and the wound bound tight. Renn thought about having her face slashed, and felt sick.

  They reached another stream, and again she begged to be allowed to drink. The hunters stared at her, their eyes unresponsive. No drink. The light was failing when they finally reached camp. By then she was dizzy with thirst.

  The Auroch camp lay in a hollow guarded by watchful spruce. Smoldering pine knots dispersed a smoky orange light and an eye-stinging tang of tree-blood. Birch-bark 180

  shelters squatted around a central pine. Outside each shelter lay a pile of wooden shields like a nest of giant beetles, and a fire ringed with stones. From the trunk of the pine hung an auroch's horned skull.

  Beneath it, a group of silent children twisted piles of pounded spruce root into twine. All stared at Renn without expression. Like the adults, their faces were disfigured with ridges, many still crusted with blood.

  Renn couldn't see anyone who looked like a Leader or a Mage, but she noticed that not everyone was Auroch. There was another clan here, too. Dark hair was braided tight, two braids for women, one for men, and faces were unscarred, but dusted red with ground pine bast. In fact, everything was stained red: lips, partings, even fingernails. The women were dressed in plain buckskin, but the men wore splendid belts of black and gold fur. Lynx Clan.

  Auroch or Lynx, all gave her the same unfeeling stare. They didn't know what pity was.

  As her captors approached the fires, they squatted in the smoke, wafting it over themselves. They pushed Renn in too, as if to cleanse her, then dragged her to the pine tree and forced her to her knees.

  Women emerged from the shelters. Like the men, their faces were bark scarred, bu
t their caked scalps were studded with tiny alder cones, and they wore tunics, not leggings.

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  One carried a waterskin.

  "Please," mumbled Renn. "I'm so thirsty."

  The woman glared at her. Weakly, Renn beat the ground with her fists. "Please!"

  An old man stooped and peered at her. He was the ugliest, hairiest old man she'd ever seen. Although he was Auroch, he hadn't shaved his scalp, but had simply smeared his mane and beard with clay, which hung in clots. Bristles sprouted from his ears and nostrils, and his brows were tangled creepers overhanging the caverns of his eyes.

  With a horny finger he prodded her greenstone wrist-guard. She jerked back. He spat in disgust and hobbled away. A younger man emerged from a shelter. His face was a web of scars. Renn pointed to the waterskin. "Please," she begged. Using hand speech, the man gave a command, and the woman set the waterskin before Renn.

  She fell on it and drank greedily. Almost at once, the throbbing in her head eased, and strength flooded back into her limbs."Thankyou," she said. Another woman brought a large bark bowl, which she placed before the hunters. Renn felt a surge of hope. The

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  food smelled good. It made the Aurochs seem a little more human.

  The woman scooped some into a smaller bowl and put it in a fork of the pine as an offering. Then she scooped up another helping and laid it before Renn. It was an appetizing stew of nettles and scraps of meat, possibly squirrel, and Renn's belly growled.

  The woman bunched her fingers to her mouth and nodded.Eat.

  The man who'd allowed her to drink cleared his throat. "You," he said to Renn in a voice that sounded hoarse from disuse. "You must rest. And eat." Renn looked from him to the bowl, then back again.

  They told me to rest,Gaup had said.They gave me food. Then they cut off my hand. 183

  TWENTY-THREE

  Fear is the loneliest feeling. You can be in a throng of people, but if you're afraid, you're on your own.

  Renn felt like an offering being prepared for sacrifice. When she refused to eat, she was taken to a pool and made to wash, while women wiped the soot from her clothes with moss. By hiding in the reeds, she managed to conceal the beaver-tooth knife tied to her calf and the grouse-bone whistle at her neck; but when they gave her back her clothes, her clan-creature feathers were gone.

  Back at camp, hunger got the better of her and she forced down some of the stew under the watchful gaze of both clans. Scarred hands flickered in silent speech, and 184 a young man with a mouth like a sliver of flint sharpened an axe and eyed her wrists.

  The hairy old man sat cross-legged, straightening a pile of arrowshafts. Renn watched him drawing each stick through a grooved piece of antler. Her own clan used the same method. Now and then, he slapped one hairy paw with a bunch of nettles to sting away the stiffening sickness. Older Ravens did that, too.

  She edged closer to him. "What will they do to me?" she said in a low voice.

  He scowled and bent over his arrows.

  She asked if he was the Clan Leader.

  He shook his head and pointed an arrowshaft at the man who'd ordered that she be given water.

  "Are you the Mage?"

  Another shake of the head. "I make the best bows in the Deep Forest," he growled.

  "Don't talk to her," warned the young man with the axe. He clapped his hand to his mouth. "She tricked me into talking! She's a Forest Horse spy!" "I've never even met a Forest Horse," protested Renn.

  "Wehatethem," muttered the young man. "But why?" she said. "You all follow the Way."

  "We follow it better," he snapped. "They use a bow to waken fire. We use sticks. That's proof."

  "Onlywefollow theTrueWay," said a clay-headed

  185 woman. "That's why we bear the scars. To punish ourselves for ever having left it." "All other clans are wicked," declared the young man, sprinkling sand on his grindstone. Renn thought that if she could keep them talking, maybe they wouldn't hurt her. She asked him why.

  He glared at her. "The Mountain clans are wicked because they use stone to waken fire, and worship the fire spirit. There isno fire spirit, there is only tree! Ice and Sea clans are wicked because they live in terrible lands thathaveno trees, and wake false fire from the fat of fishes. You in the Open Forest are worst, because youknew the Way, but turned your backs on it."

  An Auroch woman threw him a reproving glance. "Don't talk to her, she's evil. She stole my child!"

  "No I didn't," said Renn.

  "No more talk!" ordered the Auroch Clan Leader.

  After that, they made her crouch among the roots of the pine tree. Men scowled at her. A girl spat in her face. Her hand went to her grouse-bone whistle, but she saw the young man staring, and tucked it back in her jerkin.

  The camp had fallen silent again, but hands flickered, weaving hidden meanings. Renn thought of the Raven Camp, with its squabbling children and dogs nosing for scraps, and Fin-Kedinn telling stories by the fire. Her heart twisted with longing. Fin-Kedinn, help me. What do I do?

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  Clear and bright, she remembered--a frosty morning many winters ago, when he'd taken her into the Forest to try out her new bow. She hadn't wanted to go. Her fa had just died, and the other children were ganging up on her; she'd wanted to stay in her sleeping-sack and never come out. But there was her uncle, warming his hands at the fire, waiting for her.

  Their breath had smoked as they'd crunched through the snow. Fin-Kedinn had found tracks and shown her how to read them. "When the red deer know that the wolves are hunting them, they trot proudly and lift their hooves high.See how strong I am,they're telling the wolves.Don't attack me, I can fight back!"His blue eyes met hers. He wasn't only talking about the deer.

  Renn gripped the pine roots with both hands. Fin-Kedinn was right. She would not sit meekly while others decided her fate. "What are you saying about me?" she called in a voice that carried across the camp.

  Heads turned. Hands stilled.

  "If you're deciding what to do with me, tell me. Keeping it from me--that's not justice."

  The Auroch Leader stood up. "The Aurochs are always just."

  "Then talk to me," said Renn.

  For the first time, the Lynx Leader spoke. "Whoareyou?"

  She rose to her feet. "I am Renn of the Raven Clan.

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  I am a Mage." As soon as she said it, she knew it was true.

  "Women can't be Mages," sneered the young man with the axe. "It's against the Way. I'll show you how much of a Mage she is!" He ran to snatch her grouse-bone whistle.

  "Stay away!" she warned. "This is a Mage's bone for summoning spirits! None may touch it but me!"

  He drew back as if she'd burned him.

  Putting the whistle to her lips, she blew. "None of you can hear its voice," she said, "but I can. This bone speaks only to Mages and to spirits."

  Now she had the whole camp's attention. Raising her head, she cawed a raven summons to the stars. Then she held up her hands and showed the zigzag tattoos on her inner wrists. "See the marks I bear! It's lightning: the spears of the World Spirit, who chases demons into rocks and wakes the fire from trees. Harm shall come to any who attempts to harm me!"

  That was an eerie echo of her mother, but she didn't care; whatever else she was, Seshru had been a powerful Mage.

  She saw the gibbous moon riding high above the trees. It had been dead when Bale was killed, but now it was stronger. So was she.

  "If she's a Mage," said the Lynx Leader, "she's an Open Forest Mage. The World Spirit doesn't want her

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  here. That's why it stays away."

  A nodding of heads and fluttering of hands.

  "She stole my child," repeated the Auroch woman. "She took him for a tokoroth!"

  "No," said Renn. "I hunt the one who did."

  "And who is that?" said the Auroch Leader suspiciously.

  "Thiazzi," she replied. "Thiazzi the Oak Mage."

  People frowned in disbelie
f, and the old man looked disappointed, as if he'd caught Renn lying. "There's no one left from the Oak Clan," he said. "They all died out." "The Soul-Eater didn't," said Renn. "Take me to your Mage and I'll give him proof." "Our Mage keeps to his prayer shelter," said the Auroch Leader. "He doesn't see outsiders." "If you were really a Mage," snarled the young man, "you'd know that."

  People nodded. The throng closed in around her. Scarred faces leered. Red hands gripped poisoned spears. Her knees shook, but she stood her ground. To waver now was to fall.

  A harsh caw echoed through the Forest. All heads turned skyward. A shadow cut across the stars--and Rip lit onto a pine branch, his black eyes fixed on Renn. She cawed a greeting and he swooped, landing with 189

  a thud on her shoulder. Talons dug into her parka, stiff feathers brushed her cheek. She made a gurgling sound, and Rip raised his bill and half spread his wings in reply.

  People drew back, clutching clan-creature amulets.

  At the edge of camp, a wolf appeared.

  Relief washed over Renn. If Wolf had survived the fire, maybe Torak had too.

  Wolf's amber eyes grazed the camp, then returned to Renn. His hackles bristled. The sinews of his long legs were taut. One sign from her and he would spring to her aid.

  He had helped her simply by showing himself. It would be dangerous for him to do more. "Uff," she warned.

  He tilted his head, puzzled.

  "Uff!" she said again.

  He turned and vanished into the trees.

  The clans breathed out. The young man stood dumbstruck, his axe dangling from his hand.

  The old man cleared his throat. "I think," he said, "we'd better not harm her just yet."

  Wolf was frightened and confused. His paws hurt from the hot earth, and he couldn't find Tall Tailless because the Bright Beast had eaten all the scents. And now the pack-sister had howled to him, then told him to go.

  He didn't. He stayed near the Den.

  The taillesses stank of fear and hatred. They hated

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  the pack-sister but were too scared to hurt her. The pack-sister was frightened too, but she hid it extremely well. This was something taillesses did much better than normal wolves.