Outcast

by Michelle Paver

  Now the rocks had forced him from the gully. Or maybe it was the Hidden People. They were

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  everywhere: in tree and rock and stream. Maybe they were watching him right now.

  Shouldering his bow, he headed off. "Step by step," he muttered, "that's the way."

  He twitched. Fin-Kedinn had told him that. But Fin-Kedinn had cast him out. Thinking of him hurt.

  It hurt to think about Renn, too. She had Bale now. He'd seen that. She didn't need him anymore.

  At the Axehandle he stooped to drink, and his name-soul stared back. He recoiled. He looked like the Walker. Filthy. Mad. Was that how he was going to end up? He stumbled upriver, talking to himself, fingering the wound on his chest. He'd yanked out the stitches, but it still refused to heal.

  He walked for a long time, till he reached the very edge of the Forest. He found himself on a hillside, with the east wind cold on his face, like icy breath. Before him, stretching all the way to the High Mountains, lay a vast inland sea: an endless expanse of misty, shimmering gray. Lake, mist, rain. He couldn't tell where one ended

  and the other began. The world had turned to water. and the other began. The world had turned to water. Lake Axehead, he thought muzzily. This must be Lake Axehead. A strange, shivering cry split the air. Torak gave a start.

  The cry fell away. Its echo lingered in his mind.

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  "Lake Axehead is--different," Renn had told him once. "So are the Otters." Torak had seen some at last winter's feast, but he didn't know what kind of people they were, except that the Walker had been Otter Clan, and they'd cast him out.

  Below him, the Axehandle seeped from the Lake through a marshy bed of reeds. To the south, needle-pricks of watery green light glimmered in the haze. That must be the Otters' camp. He remembered hearing that they only camped on the south shore. He didn't know why. Better avoid the south shore, then, and keep to the north.

  Wolf appeared and gave him a subdued greeting, rubbing his wet flank against Torak's thigh. Together they descended the slope.

  The ground turned boggy. They leaped from tussock to tussock, sending up silver darts of water. The reeds--which had appeared knee-high--now loomed taller than the tallest man.

  Torak hated them. He hated the murky, rotten-smelling water lapping their stems; their menacing, knife-sharp leaves; their bent brown heads that slyly watched him pass. He came to a tussock like a hunched man about to rise. Beyond it, a walkway disappeared into the reeds. It was only logs lashed together with wovenbark rope, but 114

  Torak felt its power, and caught a faint hum at the edge of hearing.

  Nothing would make him go in there.

  With the reed-bed on his right, he squelched north. To his relief, Wolf found firmer ground: an elk trail skirting the shore. But shortly afterward, the mist closed in, and his spirits sank.

  Wolf, too, seemed cowed as he padded forward. Then the mist swallowed him, leaving Torak on his own. He didn't dare howl. He dreaded to think what might answer. Putting out his hands, he groped forward. Suddenly Wolf hurtled toward him, eyes bulging with terror. He sped past Torak and vanished the way they'd come. At the same moment, Torak's fingers sank into a clammy, stinking softness. With a gasp he sprang back. Something red flapped wetly in his face. He tore it off. The mist thinned. His heart jerked. The trail was barred: strung across with a nightmare tangle of fleshy, glistening coils. He breathed the stench of blood, saw plump, wriggling maggots. He'd stumbled into a web. A web of entrails.

  Whimpering, he fled, rubbing his face where the web had touched it. Splashing back into the marsh, he sank to his knees, and the reeds rippled with laughter. He was back at the walkway.

  "No," he whispered. "Not in there."

  He ran south. The marshy Axehandle was easily

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  crossed, and Wolf joined him, his big paws scarcely sinking.

  They hadn't gone far when they heard voices, saw lights bobbing up and down. Otter Clan hunters.

  Then there they were: small, lithe people with spears and fierce green faces, paddling swift craft of yellow reeds.

  "There!" shouted one. "Near the reeds!"

  Reeds to his left. To his right, a hillside of crowberry scrub, giving no cover. He barked a command to Wolf to split up--Wolf obeyed--Torak waded into the reeds. Grimacing as his feet sank into slime, he forced himself deeper, up to his neck. They wouldn't find him here.

  The mist parted, and ahead there were no more reeds. He'd reached open water.

  He spotted a floating beech bough, probably ripped off in a storm. He ducked behind it.

  Something slithered over his foot. He cried out.

  More shouts from the Otters--they'd heard him. Now they were coming through the mist: three reed boats curved at prow and stern, like water birds. Two hunters in each, one with a paddle, the other a rushlight and a greenstone fishing spear. Dipping behind the branch, Torak peered through the leaves.

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  Somewhere behind him rose the eerie, shivering cry he'd heard before.

  The Otters froze. Then the woman in the middle boat dug in her paddle and slid forward, coming to a smooth halt not two paces from Torak's branch. He didn't dare duck, in case the movement caught her eye.

  As she steadied the craft, her companion scanned the reeds, unaware that the quarry lay under his nose.

  Like his mate, he wore a sleeveless tunic of golden wovengrass. His long brown hair flowed free, except for a band of silver fish-skin at his brow, and another that braided his beard into a fish tail. His earlobes were pierced by bone fish-hooks carved to look like leaping trout, and from one hung a tuft of dark-brown otter fur. The man's face was covered in green clay--Torak saw the fine cracks around his eyes and mouth--and his clan-tattoos were blue-green waves undulating up his throat, so that his head resembled an outlandish pod emerging from reeds.

  A pod with eyes. Restless with watertight, they flickered past Torak's branch--then returned for another look.

  In the distance, a wolf howled.

  The Otter man hissed, and his mate touched her clan-creature fur.

  More howls. Torak knew it was Wolf, but he couldn't

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  understand what he was saying. He could only hear the urgency.

  The howling unnerved the Otters. The woman steered her craft away from the branch, and Torak sent Wolf silent thanks.

  There was a splash behind him, and he turned to see a large gray bird staring at him with a vivid scarlet eye. It flew off, swooping over the Otters.

  The woman followed its flight, and nodded as if it had spoken. Raising her hand, she made an undulating signal to her companions in the other boats, and Torak saw them spreading out. If he left the shelter of the branch, they would see him. If he stayed, they would surround him.

  Unless ...

  He still had that elder-stem pipe. It was less than a forearm long, and he couldn't remember checking if it was hollow all the way through. He'd soon find out. Taking one end between his lips, he sank.

  Water filled his nostrils, but he forced himself to breathe through his mouth, praying they wouldn't hear him. Slowly he swam sideways into the reeds, hoping to slip past their cordon.

  Staying at the right depth was harder than he'd expected. His gear weighed him down, and to keep the stem upright, he had to tread water and tilt his head back. With aching neck, he stared through a forest of 118

  reeds. Above him the skin of the Lake was bright and hard as ice, flecked with drifting constellations of dust.

  He heard the nibbles of feeding fish, caught a red flash as a school of char sped past. Glancing down, he saw that the bottom of the Lake was within reach. Bars of light slid over boulders and tree trunks furred with weeds. His feet sank into mud, which eddied like green smoke. His free hand touched a lattice of reeds, which sagged, then sprang back.

  It wasn't reeds--it was a net, a wovenbark net, hanging from wooden floats and weighted with stones: too tough to cut, and so big that
he couldn't see the ends. Whipping around, he glimpsed another. The Otters were surrounding him.

  He threw away the elder stem and dived.

  Shouts above: they'd spotted him.

  He swam deeper, under the nets, dreading the stab of a fishing spear between his shoulder blades.

  Lights flashed in his head, and the shouts faded to a dull boom as he swam down.

  Suddenly he became aware of a distant shrilling. Faster than thought it sped toward him, louder and louder, a needle of ice piercing his mind.

  A dizzying trail of bubbles swept past him. Then another crisscrossed the first, and another. He caught a flicker of fins, a ripple of watery laughter. Dread seized him. He'd heard it before, when he'd been swept over 119

  the Thunder Falls. The Hidden People of the Lake had come for him.

  They swarmed around him, boneless fingers trailing over his eyes and mouth.You are form,they gurgled,boy with the drifting souls! Give us the silver bubbles of your breath, and we will draw you into the deep!

  His chest was caught in a rib-crushing grip. Darkness bled across his sight. Wriggling like an eel, he shrugged off his sleeping-sack, and the Hidden People whirled it away.

  His bow went next, but his quiver-strap snagged in his belt. He drew his knife and cut it; felt the tug of hands dragging it into the murk. Grabbing his chance, he kicked for the glimmer of the world above.

  Heedless of spears and hunters, he burst from the surface.

  The reeds were all around him; silent and still. Then he recognized the humped tussock. He was back at the walkway. Narrow as a hand, it beckoned him into the dripping green tunnel. In the distance, he heard voices. Hushed, frightened.

  "Arrin found a bow," said a man. "A little west of south."

  "The Hidden Ones have taken him," said a woman. "Or the Lake," put in another man, older than the first. 120 "Quiet, they'll hear!" said the younger man. "Let's go, or they'll take us too!" "If we go now," said the woman, "we go empty-handed. The bow of a drowned outcast isn't what Ananda sent us to fetch."

  "If Ananda wants healing water," growled the older man, "she can fetch it herself. I'm not going near that spring now."

  Their voices became less distinct as they paddled away: "... keep watch here, in case he tries to come south ..."

  Wretchedly Torak hauled himself onto firmer ground and stared at the walkway. To the south were the Otters. To the north that terrible, stinking web. He had no choice. Wolf emerged from the mist and stood beside him. He didn't seem frightened--but then, it was getting harder to read his moods.

  Torak knew now that it was to this place that he'd been driven ever since he'd been cast out. East, always east--till he'd ended up here.

  The wound in his chest throbbed. Through the hissing of the reeds, he seemed to hear the voice of Seshru the Viper Mage. "...like the harpoon head beneath the skin of the seal. One twitch, and it will draw you, no matter how hard you struggle...." 121

  He no longer had the will to resist. He stumbled past Wolf and onto the walkway.

  High above the north shore of the Lake, on a stony headland that rose clear of the mist, a stream bubbled.

  Beside the stream burned a ring of green fire.

  Within the ring of fire lay a pebble marked with the tattoo of the Wolf Clan.

  Upon the pebble lay the shriveled scrap of Torak's skin, which bore the mark of the Soul-Eater.

  Around pebble and skin wound the coils of a green clay serpent.

  Slowly the clay dried. Inexorably, the serpent tightened its grip upon skin and stone.

  A green hand passed over the pebble: once, twice, three times.

  A voice began to murmur, mingling with the hissing of the flames, like a demon slipping in and out of evil dreams.

  When reed quakes, when storm breaks, remember me When thunder growls, when wind howls, remember me I am the reed and the storm, the thunder and the wind I summon you, I bind your souls to mine You can never be free

  You belong to me

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  FOURTEEN

  The walkway lurched, nearly tipping Torak into the Lake. He dropped to all fours and clung on with both hands. Behind him Wolf stood, his claws digging into the wood. He hated this.

  There was no room for Torak to turn, so he cast an encouraging glance over his shoulder. Wolf dropped his ears and gave an unhappy twitch of his tail.

  The walkway stopped rocking, and Torak rose. The logs were treacherous, the reeds so thick he had to push them aside. He shrank from the touch of their long, clammy fingers.

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  The mist closed in. The walkway dwindled to a line of single logs lashed end to end, secured by posts sunk in the reed-bed. There were so many turns that Torak lost his bearings. He didn't know if he was heading out into the Lake or skirting the shore. At times sour brown water slopped over his feet. At others he found himself crossing a stinking swamp. And the reeds kept changing: from ashen spears with feathery purple plumes to creaking canes with brown club heads that tapped him furtively on the shoulder. They didn't want him here. If he fell in, they would hold him under till he drowned, or the Hidden People dragged him into the slime.

  He'd seen it happen. Once, he and Fa had found a red deer stag trapped up to its neck in a swamp. It was half dead of exhaustion, but they couldn't end its misery. It was bad luck to interfere with those the Hidden People had claimed. Instead, Fa had knelt and stroked its cheek, murmuring a prayer to help it on its way. Afterward Torak had been haunted by the look in those dull brown eyes. He'd wondered how long the stag had taken to die.

  Wolf's warning dragged him back to the present.

  Ahead, something crouched on the walkway. Torak's hand went to his shoulder--but of course he had no clan-creature skin. Nothing to protect him from demon or tokoroth. 124

  As he drew nearer, he saw that it wasn't a creature but a post, planted by the walkway and rising to chest height. It had been limed a sickly gray, and painted with a dizzying fish-bone pattern of tiny green dots. It was topped by a small, misshapen head of green clay into which were pressed two white snail-shell eyes. The shimmering dots made Torak giddy, but he couldn't look away. The power of the thing filled his mind, like the silent boom after thunder. Wolf felt it too, and set back his ears. Even the reeds leaned away, fearing to touch. Torak remembered that he still had Renn's swansfoot pouch, with his medicine horn inside and the strand of her hair. What would she have done? The mark of the hand. Maybe that would help.

  The ochre in the horn was clogged with damp, and he had to spit in it to make it runny; nothing would have made him use Lake water. Pouring the red liquid into his palm, he daubed the mark on his cheek. He tried to do the same for Wolf--on his forehead, so he couldn't lick it off--but only managed a crude smear. As he finished, the humming in his head grew worse. Someone didn't like him using earthblood.

  Holding his breath, he edged past the post. Wolf followed, hackles raised. As they passed it, the reeds stirred angrily, and the humming grew stronger. Torak reached a turn in the walkway--and there, 125 guarded by club-headed reeds, stoodthreeposts, their white eyes staring from mouthless faces of green clay.

  Something slithered across his cheek. He dashed it away, and the walkway rocked wildly. Too late, he saw that its far end had been untied and was floating free. He lurched--righted himself---and backed into Wolf, who yelped and nearly fell in. Trembling, they stood together, while around them the reeds rustled.

  "What do you want?" cried Torak.

  The reeds fell silent. That was worse. He shouldn't have shouted.

  He made to go on--and caught his breath.

  The posts were gone.

  The reeds were different too. Those surrounding the posts had had brown club heads, but these were a feathery purple.

  With a shiver, Torak realized what this meant. It wasn't the posts that had moved, it was the walkway. While he'd been fighting for balance, someone had rearranged the logs.

  For the first time since entering the reed-bed,
it occurred to him to turn back. But he couldn't, and that frightened him more than anything. His thoughts were no longer his own. The mist had seeped inside his head. Here, in this nebulous half-world which was neither land nor lake, he was losing his very self. 126

  Wolf nose-nudged his thigh and gave an anxious whine. Torak glanced down--and frowned. Wolf was trying to tell him something, but he couldn't understand. He, Torak, who had learned wolf talk as a baby-he couldn't understand.

  He stumbled on, with Wolf padding after him.

  They hadn't gone far when the walkway forked. Each way was marked by a post. The left-hand post had been beheaded; the right-hand one bore a green clay head, but the eyes had been plucked out, leaving blind hollows. Tied around the brow was a viper's shed skin. Skewered to it by a bone needle was a tiny, shriveled heart. Seshru the Viper Mage.

  Torak wiped icy sweat from his face.

  Behind him he caught a flash of movement vanishing into the reeds. There, among the leaves. White eyes.

  "Who's there?" he said.

  The eyes blinked--then reappeared on the other side of the walkway: blue-white, flickering like flame.

  "Who's there?" Torak whispered.

  Eyes glowed all around him. The humming rose to an earsplitting whine.

  Whimpering, Torak ran for the nearest walkway, the one with the viper skin. The log shuddered-- tipped--and threw him off. The murky waters of the 127

  Lake closed over his head.

  Down he went, groping for reeds, walkway, anything. Couldn't find it, couldn't tell up from down.

  A splash and a flurry of bubbles as Wolf leaped in after him. Desperately Torak swam for the flailing paws--but Wolf had disappeared.

  Wolf! he screamed in his mind. But his pack-brother was gone. Frantically he swam through a slippery mass of reeds. Suddenly there were no more reeds and the water was freezing and he was swimming over bottomless dark. 128

  FIFTEEN

  Torak was woken by something slithering over his face. With a shudder he started up--and glimpsed a scaly tail vanishing into the undergrowth.