Of one thing he was certain. These “gongs” or mydlsvarls were not structures made by bears. These had happened most likely after the Great Melting and in the present time. It could have been the earthquake that wreaked havoc in this region some years before that had opened them here or cleared the way for them to form. The bears of the Ice Clock had realized this. They had been handed a gift, so to speak, by the earthquakes. And the Hrathlands, as some called them, were periodically tormented by quakes. The land was often left jumbled, discombobulated—mountains flattened. New ones rising, glaciers shattered. Perhaps this was how these frost tunnels had come to this region. How long had they been here? When had the bears of the Ice Clock discovered them?
Born in the Distant Blue, Alasdair since a very young age had a longing, a yearning, for a place in the Beyond that she never knew. It was as if she could smell this place without ever having been there. It was like a scent thread that streamed through her. When the MacDuncan clan had returned and she was still just a pup, she had been made a scout because of her extremely sharp sense of smell. She seemed to be able to track down the trail of any creature. Not only that, she could pick up the scent of a season before it actually arrived. She could smell the Moon of the Salmon before the salmon began to swim up the streams in the fall. She could catch a whiff of the mossflowers in the spring before they had pushed up from the ground during the Mossflower Moon. But there was one tantalizing smell that had nothing to do with any season. It was an earthy smell—of clay, of mud long hardened from streams. It had taken her several years to finally find the source. It was in the Slough, and the closer she got to it the more fearful she became, for this Slough was known for only one thing—the witch known as the Sark of the Slough. Even when the wolves were hunting, a byrgiss formation would give it a wide berth. But finally Alasdair knew she could not avoid it any longer, and some moons before, she had gone there, to its very center, and discovered the ruins of the Sark of the Slough’s cavern. The Sark’s old kiln, where she had fired her pots, her jugs and pitchers, was in shambles. Yet Alasdair recognized it immediately. She had heard the stories about the crazy old witch wolf who made all manner of vessels and whispered her secrets and magical charms into them. But she was also known as a healer.
The clan wolves were profoundly superstitious, particularly of knowledge that was not related to hunting or territory. They believed that the Sark had “disturbed the order,” the order of the Great Chain by which the clans organized every aspect of their lives. When Alasdair finally got up her nerve to enter the cave, she instantly felt wrapped in the hwlyn, the spirit of the Sark. She had found her pack! Although it was only a pack of one.
Whenever Alasdair could, she traveled to the cave. She had to be careful, however. If the wolves knew, they would become leery of her. In the wreckage of the cave, she began to find shards of more pots and bowls and jugs. She started to piece them together, to make them whole again. She had an amazing instinct for mending them. She created beautiful shapes, the ones the Sark must have originally envisioned. And when she had completed putting together the first jug, she knew instantly that there were no charms, no dark magic in them, but only memories and stories. Memories of the amazing wolf Faolan. A slightly deformed foot had deemed him a malcadh and cast him out of the pack he was born into. Left him to die on a tummfraw. But he had survived. Survived and been selected to be Watch wolf at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. When the time of the great earthquakes came, he had led the clans out of the Beyond to the Distant Blue. By the time the clans had returned, he had been long dead. But part of his story was in the first jug.
It was only in the previous moon, the Frost Star Moon, that Alasdair discovered a story relating to herself. She caught her breath as she put into place the last fragment of the broken jug. She knew instantly that this was a pot about her, even though she and the Sark had never shared life on this earth together. But the story was here, in the burnished glaze of the jug. It was as if an ancient voice swirled up from its shadowy depths and in a dim whisper said, I was born a malcadh. My defect was ugliness and my skittering eye, and yet, although my mother’s form was perfect, my mother was a malcadh as well for she was twisted inside her head. On the inside, she was as ugly as I am on the outside. I always thought it was a blessing that I was as ugly as my mother was beautiful, for then no wolf would try to make me his mate. But now here is my deepest secret. A male, a good male yet one who decided to be an outclanner and never joined a pack, fell in love with me. He died soon after I gave birth. I knew I could not take care of her alone. I knew it would be a hardship for her to endure with the teasing of having me as a mother. I am not a particularly good hunter. I can hardly get enough for myself. So I left her with the MacDonegal clan. She grew up. She found a mate in the MacDuncan clan and went off I think to the Distant Blue. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But it was the right choice, I believe.
“The Sark was my grandmother!” Alasdair whispered to herself.
It had been almost two moons since Alasdair had made this remarkable discovery. She had not had time to come back. During the hunger moon, she rarely got a break but was always out scouting for any herd or single animal she could find. However, finally, she was able to get back to the Slough. When she arrived, she picked up a new scent. Not prey, at least not any kind that would interest a wolf. It was an odd smell. Slightly bearish but not exactly. Not like the four bears she had met and guided to the chieftain. Those she would have recognized. And was there a whiff of MacHeath? That was an alarming thought. She thought about the four bears now. She had heard they were at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. This actually had irritated Duncan MacDuncan a great deal. He had been stomping around day and night complaining about the ridiculous MacNab clan and how they squandered their resources and next thing you knew they would be wanting to hunt with our byrgisses. Damn fools, he had thundered. And now promising fighting coals from the Sacred Ring. I tell you nothing’s sacred anymore! We’re giving away too much! We need to stay out of bear business and all that nonsense about some Ice Clock!
There of course was nothing to be done about this. So Alasdair decided to go back to the place she felt now was home—the caverns of the Sark of the Slough.
Sometimes she wondered if perhaps like the Sark’s mate, her own grandfather, she was really more of an outclanner wolf than a clan one. But to leave a clan was a momentous decision. She was certain that the chieftain would take it as an insult, a personal affront. He was not at all like his own great-grandfather who had been the chieftain and died long before the wolves had gone to the Distant Blue. He craved attention. He wanted to be revered. Alasdair secretly felt that he was not. And it rankled Duncan MacDuncan greatly.
Now, as she carefully pawed over the fragments of another jug, Alasdair caught a freakish scent. Freakish was the only word she could think of. It seemed to be at odds with everything in this cavern, which had to do with beauty and memory and the incredible loveliness of her grandmother the Sark of the Slough. A shadow of a single wolf slid across the opening of the cave. Then another shadow. One that was distinctly recognizable. A crescent was bitten from one of the wolf’s ears. Quint! The leader of the MacHeath slink melf!
A slink melf was entering the cavern. Her grandmother’s cavern. Alasdair couched farther into the cave. She was behind a small mound of shards waiting for her care, her attention—waiting for the pots to be mended, the memories to be completed, the stories to be told.
“The wolf king will be proud!” Quint snarled, and leaped.
Rags flipped her head around and upside down to look back as she flew over the four racing bears. Almost keeping up with her, they were just blurs in the light snow that swirled over the land. From her vantage point, she could see the humps of hillocks that, according to Third, marked the place on the map where the Sark’s cavern was. She plunged down and angled her wings. Third looked up.
“Two points south and east?” he bayed.
“Confirmed,” Rags ho
oted. “Sark’s cavern less than a quarter league to port.”
Rags and the four bears had left the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes at dawn. The urgency of Third’s dream as he had described it propelled them at a speed that the wolves would have called press paw. But they were all filled with a mounting dread that something horrific had happened to their trusted guide Alasdair. Nevertheless they felt torn. Especially Stellan. They had accomplished much: the Frost Beaks unit from Silverveil as well as the services of their blacksmith Gwynn. And from the MacNabs, they had gained entry to the Sacred Volcanoes, where the Fengo himself promised to allow access to the collier owls. But this detour to Alasdair would delay them, and the Ice Clock was still ticking. It had to be stopped. There were no hours or even seconds to be wasted. And yet he remembered so well that peculiar grief, the desolation he sensed in Alasdair and now suddenly that fear he had felt for her. They must go. There was no choice.
The marshy terrain of the Slough slowed their pace but not their determination. Third was in the lead. It was as if in his dream a map had been etched in his brain. “We follow the river due south. When we get to a place where once there were trees, then we head east.”
“Once there were trees?” Jytte asked. “The trees are gone? Why? How are we to see them if they’re are gone?”
“They were swept away in the big earthquake,” Third replied.
It was not long until they saw the once-there-were-trees place. Random stumps poked up from the ground. Stellan approached one and crouched down. “Look! There’s green poking out of this stump … It’s as if a little tree is coming back, growing out of the ruins of the dead tree.”
“A gilly tree?” Froya asked.
“No, a real little tree,” Stellan replied.
“There’s one here too,” Jytte called out where she stood over another stump.
“A miracle!” Froya exclaimed.
“Yes,” Third said. “But we must hurry. We must.” He could only hope that they would find another miracle waiting for them. He dashed off due east. The other bears followed.
It was twilight when they arrived at the Sark’s cave. The stars were just breaking out.
“So this is it?” Stellan said as he stood by the wreckage of the Sark’s kiln. Then they heard a terrible moaning from inside the cave where Third had already dashed.
The three other bears stopped short at the wrenching sight before them. Third sat on the blood-soaked floor of the cave with Alasdair’s head in his lap.
“She’s dying,” Third whispered as tears ran down his face. “I found her right here. She dragged herself here from deep inside.”
“I … I want to see the Cave of Souls … see … my … my grand … she is waiting, but first … before I go …”
“Try not to talk, Alasdair.”
“No, I have things to tell, but … See, the Great Wolf points to the Cave of Souls. There’s the spirit trail to the star ladder and … and Skaarsgard, the guide.” She began to cough. Foamy blood dribbled from her mouth.
“Hush,” Third said softly, and stroked her head. But a fierce glare suddenly sparkled in Alasdair’s blue eyes. “Quint … Quint.”
“Quint?” Third asked.
“Go … go to the Namara … the Namara!” Her eyes rolled back into her head. There was one last breath. A faint breeze stirred in the cave, and with it a spirit passed. Alasdair, granddaughter of the Sark of the Slough, was gone.
The four bears were quiet for a long time. They then had a sense of what needed to be done. It was almost as if Stellan had riddled her dying thoughts.
“We must take her body deeper into the cave. We don’t want scavengers to get to her.”
So with Stellan carrying the body of Alasdair gently as if she were just a cub, they went deeper into the cave. At first, they felt that perhaps there were other bones in this cave. But the deeper they went, it was not bones that they found but shards of broken pottery. Gradually, they began to pick out in the dim light perhaps a dozen or more pots that seemed to have been reassembled from those shards.
“This is where we must put her,” Stellan said. “Here with these pots.” Tenderly, he lay her down on top of a mass of shards that were not merely discarded but seemed to be awaiting mending. They sat in complete silence for another moment and then began to make their way toward the opening of the cave.
When they stepped into the deep blue of the night, Jytte exclaimed, “There it is!” She was pointing toward a constellation just above the Great Wolf that was rising high in the eastern sky. “The star ladder to the Cave of Souls!”
“And look. There is a blue mist gathered at the bottom of the ladder!” Third exclaimed. “A mist exactly the color of Alasdair’s eyes!”
“At the top! See the top of the ladder!” Stellan cried out. A starry wolf appeared to be waiting for Alasdair.
And no one needed to say it, but they all felt it. This was the Sark of the Slough awaiting her granddaughter from the Beyond, to lead her to yet another Beyond.
Stellan felt a great peace surge through him. The howling of the skreeleen, of Greer da Greer and her story of the Sark came back to him. How vividly he remembered those tears trembling in Alasdair’s eyes. The story is complete, he thought. Finally complete.
Stellan rose up. “To the Namara!”
No sooner had the four bears left the Slough, the cave of the Sark, and the earthly remains of the lovely Alasdair, than an immense blizzard began to blow. This did not stop them in the least. They were, after all, bears of the Nunquivik, accustomed to the strongest winds known and the fiercest blizzards. Drifts that would swallow wolves or blinding winds with barreling snow that erased the horizons of any landscape did not intimidate these bears. Stellan had taken the lead now. This would be the third clan they had visited, and when this clan heard that Alasdair had been murdered, he sensed that this might turn the tide for them.
Quint … ? Was it a word, or was it a name? Did it matter? But in fact, word or name, they must take it to the Namara. And Stellan sensed it might be crucial to their task of forming this alliance. Quint … the word rattled in Stellan’s mind. Quint—whatever it was could be a key, another key, Stellan realized, as important as the one tucked away in the Great Tree. A key to a deadly secret, perhaps, in this enigmatic land.
They were trying to make as good time as they could as they headed toward the MacNamara territory in the northern reaches of the Beyond that was near a point jutting out into the Sea of Hoolemere. But finally after a night, then a day and another morning, they were exhausted and had to stop. Rags herself was too tired and had spent the last several hours perched on first Stellan’s back, then Jytte’s, and now Froya’s. She tried to grip hard with her talons to their fur. Her talons were sharp, and she worried about puncturing their skin. But soon she mastered the “fur grip,” as she thought of it.
They found a den and nearby a musk ox. His leg was badly broken, and he was in a great deal of pain. “I think we should end his pain,” Jytte said. They were all very hungry. She looked at the others, and they nodded.
“Wait just a second,” Froya said.
“What?” Jytte replied. “Wait? I’m starving.”
“Lochinvyrr?” Stellan asked.
“Yes,” Froya nodded.
As part of their studies of the Beyond. they had read about the wolf ritual of lochinvyrr. It was a ceremony practiced by the wolves when an animal they had attacked was dying. It had been described to them by Otulissa as an instinct as much as a ritual. An urge that flowed through them to acknowledge the dying animal’s value. It became a demonstration of respect for the dying animal.
“How do you do it?” Third asked.
“I’m not exactly sure. I think we all have to get down on our knees. Then, one by one, we look into the creature’s eyes,” Froya tried to explain as best she could.
And so they did, each one of them, and when the last bear, Jytte, rose up, Stellan sliced quickly with his claw, opening the life-giving artery in the musk o
x’s neck. It died instantly.
They ate until they were full, then dug out a snow den near the creature’s body. Third turned to his sister, Froya. “Froya, you’ve studied the history of the MacNamaras the most. Tell us what must we know, for Alasdair said we should go to the Namara. It was a slink melf that killed her—a MacHeath slink melf.”
Froya took a deep breath. “You see, it is because of the MacHeaths that the MacNamara clan began. The MacHeaths were and still are tragten wolfyn, that means—”
“Terror wolves!” Jytte murmured.
“Yes, they especially terrorized the females in the clan, who were virtual slaves. The first of the MacNamara clan was a wolf called Hordweard. She killed her mate Dunleavy MacHeath. But this was all more than one thousand years ago, in the time of Hoole, the first owl king of the Great Tree.”
When there is a blizzard as strong as the one sweeping across the Beyond, there is no day or night. So for many hours, Froya told them about the MacNamara clan. How the word Namara had actually been the name of a she-wolf, her own mother, who had been slain by Dunleavy MacHeath. That the word itself had come to mean over the centuries maker of strong spirits. It was a clan in which females held all the most high-ranking positions. They were known for their hunting skills, but also like the owls of Ga’Hoole they performed noble deeds. “They spoke no words but true ones,” Froya murmured, and began to repeat the oath of honor of the owls. The three other bears joined her softly. “Their purpose was to right all wrongs, to make strong the weak, mend the broken, vanquish the proud, and make powerless those who abused the frail.”
Froya paused. “The MacNamara clan are all strong fighters. Alasdair told us about the MacHeath slink melf. They need to know. Soon!” She paused for several seconds. “And there is one more thing.”
The Keepers of the Keys Page 16