Outcast

by Michelle Paver

  She opened her fist--and he breathed again.

  She laughed, and on her breath he smelled the carrion stink of the root which turned her mouth black. How could he have thought her beautiful? Her spirit was hollow, and where her heart used to be there was only a shadow, like the dark stain where a carcass once lay. Now she was casting off the lid of the basket, and a viper was sliding over the edge. Silently, silently it

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  flowed into her lap. Its zigzag markings were stark down its glistening silver length, and its lidless red eye was fixed on its mistress.

  Seshru picked it up, and it wound itself about her arm, its black tongue flickering out to meet hers. "Keep very still," she told Torak. "Their bite is worse than any you will encounter in the Forest. Their bite can kill...."

  A second viper, black as a moonless night, poured from the basket, and Seshru showed it the pebble. As its forked tongue flicked out to taste it, Torak gasped. He had felt that tongue on his skin. "You wanted this, spirit walker," breathed the Viper Mage. "You put yourself in my power. You left the stone for me to find."

  "No," he whispered.

  Her eyes pierced his souls. "Then why make it?"

  "A--a present," he stammered.

  "For whom?"

  "... A girl."

  "Why take it back?"

  "To tell her I was gone." He tried to push Renn's image from his mind, but the Viper Mage was faster.

  "Her name is Renn," she said. "Who is she?"

  With a huge effort, he dragged his gaze from hers-- only to settle on the greenstone axe. Seshru was on it in a heartbeat. "Fin-Kedinn's. She's Fin-Kedinn's child." 236 "... His brother's."

  There was a moment of stillness. Then the Viper Mage turned her back on him and sat, staring at the Lake, while the snakes in her lap twined their sleek coils about each other. "... His brother's child," she said tonelessly. "Of course. He would have cared for his brother's child."

  Torak couldn't bear to hear her mention Renn.

  But Renn is far away, he told himself. Renn is safe.

  "No." Seshru twisted around again. "She is here on the Lake. I saw her in a boat with a boy, a tall boy with yellow hair. But they can't help you now." Was she telling the truth? Were Renn and Bale looking for him, or was it another of her lies?

  "Why do you want me alive?" he said. "What do youwant?"

  "You know what I want."

  "My power. You want to be the spirit walker."

  "I have that already. I can make you spirit walk whenever I wish. I want more. I want--the fire-opal."

  To hear her name it... Her voice breathed life into the image in his mind. He saw its pulsing red heart.

  "It--it was lost in the ice," he said.

  "Don't lie to me," said Seshru. "I am a Mage--don't you think I have ways of knowing? When your father shattered it, three pieces were left-three!One held by the Seal Mage, one taken by the black ice. One 237

  remains. Your father must have told you before he died."

  "No."

  "He hid it. He hid it and he told you where, as he lay dying--"

  "No--"

  "--as he lay in agony, his life bleeding away, his guts ripped out by the demon bear--"

  "No!" he screamed.

  Clawing the nightshade from her brow, she flung it on the fire. Blue smoke wound about her, pungent, dizzying.

  Powerless, Torak watched her open a pouch at her breast and dip in her finger. He tried to resist, but she held his jaw and smeared a stinking black sludge on his lips. Grasping the dark viper in one hand, the silver in the other, she brought them to her mouth and whispered a charm. Then she placed both snakes on his chest. He didn't dare breathe. He felt their cool softness gliding over him, the tiny contractions as their scales gripped his flesh. He felt their tongues on his skin. Seshru observed his terror with the dispassionate gaze of a serpent watching its prey. "Your body can't move, but your souls can. Your souls will go wherever I command. Your souls will do whatever I want."

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  The black sludge was bitter in his mouth. Lights flashed behind his eyes, sickening spirals of light.

  He saw the dark hair of the Viper Mage floating like snakes about her white face. He felt his souls ripped from his marrow. He screamed ... ... silently, his black tongue tasted the air.

  The last thing he heard before he became snake was the voice of the Viper Mage, commanding him to find Renn.

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  TWENTY-NINE

  Faster than thought, the snake slithered down the rock face. It tasted the scent of cricket and fern. It felt the scurrying of ant and shrew. Air, leaf, water, prey, light-- it ignored them all. Its mistress had sent it after richer quarry.

  The rocks burned with the heat of the vanished sun, and the snake took in that heat as it passed. Noiselessly, it slid off the rocks; the water enfolded it, and it took in the chill of the Lake. The snake felt this change, but that was allit felt. No pleasure or discomfort, eagerness or fear. Those

  240 feelings it recognized, because it tasted them on the struggling prey and on the mountains of warm meat which shook the earth--but such feelings were not snake.

  This made the souls of the snake very strong: pure intent, unclouded by emotion. Torak would not have believed such strength could exist in so slender a body. His own souls were weak from the poison; he couldn't turn the snake from its purpose. He could only shiver inside its small, cold brain as it sped through the Lake, deadly as an arrow.

  He felt the coolness of weed and water flowing over his coils. His lidless eyes knew the flash and flicker of fish. Then he was out in the heat again, and the scent of pine was thick on his tongue. The sand was rough; he gripped it with his scales. Raising his snake head, he tasted the scent of raven.

  The hot bird swooped--its cries muffled by air, then piercingly loud as it thudded to earth. The snake darted into a hole and prepared to strike. He felt the raven hop toward the hole. It smelled him, but it couldn't reach. Frustrated, it pecked the tree-root which sheltered him. The ground shuddered as it flew away. When the threat was past, he emerged. He crested the mossy hillside of a log, slithered under bracken taller than trees. At last he caught the scent of 241 slumbering male, and beyond it, the sweeter scent of female.

  Torak's souls fought to get free--to turn the snake from its purpose--but it glided on, relentless. And now as he slid under leaf and over stone, he felt waves of heat from sleeping flesh. Bite, bite. The voice of his mistress wove in and out of his snake mind. Again the part of him that was Torak tried to turn the creature, but his muscles would not obey.

  Bite, bite.

  His coils gripped a naked foot, slid up a pale calf; over soft elkhide and rough wovengrass, into a band of warm raven feathers heaving in sleep. His snake head recoiled from the markings on the wrist--so like his, yet different--but beyond, his cloven tongue tasted uprotected flesh. No! shouted Torak in the cold snake brain.No! This is Renn!

  The snake stretched its jaws wide--its fangs unfolded from the roof of its mouth and pointed down--they filled with venom, ready to strike.... Bite, bite.

  Torak woke.

  Above him the clouds spun, jolting him on a sea of sickness. Gradually, he became aware of the sound of

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  the spring. At his side the Viper Mage sat motionless, her face as white as bone. The vipers were gone.

  "It is done?" she said.

  He nodded.

  She breathed out. Rising to her feet, she gazed across the Lake. Then she turned, and he could tell that she wasn't seeing him, but was looking through him to the power he could give her.

  "Until now," she said, "not even I understood the strength of the spirit walker." Returning, she knelt, and her long hair brushed his chest as she brought her face close to his. "Think what I can do with such power! I can learn the darkest secrets. I can bend all, all to my will!"

  Torak shut his eyes. That made the churning worse. He tried to sit up--but although movement was returning to his limbs, he
remained weak as a fledgling. Seshru pushed the sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead."Thisis the will of the World Spirit.Thisis why it sent such a gift to me--with the spirit walker and the fireopal I shall rule! All creatures, all demons will fear me and obey!" Sickness engulfed him. He raised himself clumsily on his elbow and retched.

  With her icy hand, the Viper Mage pressed him to her breast. "Great power is bought with suffering, I know. But now you understand. You belong to me." 243

  Exhausted, he slumped against her.

  "Say it," she whispered, and her breath was hot and fetid on his skin. "Say that you belong to me!"

  He gazed up at her, and she was very beautiful. Even her black smile was beautiful.

  He said, "I belong to you."

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  THIRTY

  Renn was shaken by her dream about the viper.. "What did it mean?" said Bale as they loaded the skinboat. "I'm not sure. But it was in color, so it must be true. I think ..." "Yes?" "I think it means she has him now."

  Bale stopped with his paddle in his hands. "You said the Magecraft had worked."

  "I said Ithoughtit had. You can never be certain."

  He considered that. "Well. I've got more faith in you. And in Torak."

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  Renn didn't reply. She hadn't told him about the real viper she'd glimpsed as she'd started awake. What would have happened if those ravens hadn't chased it away?

  Oh, Seshru was cunning! She'd cut Torak off from the clans, from his friends, even from Wolf--and now she had him to herself, on this Lake which she was taking for her own. Somewhere, she was laughing at them all.

  It was a hot dawn, and with the wind at their backs they made good speed. Their islet turned out to have been much farther west than they'd thought, and by midafternoon the Island of the Hidden People came into view.

  As they bobbed in the shallows, Renn made an offering, asking leave to go ashore; then they landed the skinboat on a black beach backed by a watchful Forest. It had rained recently, and a steamy haze rose from the trees. A smell of decay wafted from a band of reddish pine-needles which reminded Renn of a snake. "No sign of Torak," said Bale, returning from a search farther up the beach. "But I found other tracks."

  When Renn saw them, her heart quickened. "A wolf." She blew her grouse-bone whistle, but got no answer. Her unease deepened.

  As soon as they entered the Forest, the wind dropped and the heat settled on their skin. Clouds of

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  midges whined in their ears. The rasp of crickets was loud, but there was no birdsong, except for the brief warble of a redstart.

  Wading through springy lingonberry scrub, they followed a rivulet upstream. They passed man-high nests of wood-ants, and hunched boulders mantled with steaming moss. Over her shoulder, Renn caught the glint of the Lake between the trees; then the pines closed in and she saw it no more. The presence of the Hidden People was strong. She saw Bale touch his seal-rib amulet.

  They reached a clearing where the stream had been dammed by branches. Brown pools spread amid gnawed stumps and piles of wood chips. The air was fresh with the tang of tree-blood. "Beaver," they said together.

  Bale gave a lopsided smile, and Renn's unease lessened. If the Hidden People allowed beavers on their island, then maybe Torak ...

  Again that redstart.

  Renn froze. "Torak?" she called softly. "Is that you?"

  Bale raised his eyebrows, and she explained that it was a signal they sometimes used.

  Once more she called. The Forest tensed. Her heart raced.

  "Maybe it's our weapons," said Bale in a low voice. "He'll be wary."

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  Renn stared at him. "Not of us!"

  "Renn. He's been outcast a long time. Let's set them aside; and we should move into the trees. If it is him, he won't come into the open." Propping their weapons against a stump, they left the clearing and reentered the Forest.

  "Torak!" Renn breathed to the watching pines.

  "We came to help you," whispered Bale.

  They hadn't gone far when they rounded a boulder and found their weapons neatly laid on a lingonberry bush--except for Renn's bow, which hung from a birch tree. "Couldn't let it get wet," said Torak.

  There was no time for greetings.

  Torak jerked his head at them to follow and headed into the trees. "Got to get deeper in, or she'll see us."

  "She'shere?"cried Renn and Bale together.

  "Up on the north cliff," muttered Torak, "that's her eyrie. I don't think she'll risk the island because of the wolves."

  Renn's skin prickled. "You've actually seen her?"

  "She lured me there. She thought I was going to help her. I--I got away."

  "How?" said Bale.

  Torak's face closed. "Even the Viper Mage has to sleep." 248 "Not for long," said Renn.

  Torak didn't answer. His expression was taut and unsmiling, and he kept turning to listen for sounds of pursuit. There was a bruised look about his eyes that told of broken nights and not enough food. And Renn noticed with a pang that he no longer wore the rowanberry wristband.

  She couldn't tell if he was glad to see them. She couldn't tellwhathe was feeling. She tried to overcome the awful sense that he'd become a stranger. And he looked so different! He'd been a skinny boy when he'd left, but now he was as tall as Bale, and the veins on his arms stood out like cords. There was a scab on his chest where the mark of the Soul-Eater had been, and some puzzling scratches on his shoulders; and although he still wore a headband, it only reminded her of the outcast tattoo beneath, and of all the dangers he'd survived on his own. Without her.

  They found a fallen pine and hid behind it while Bale shared out dried duck meat from his food pouch. Torak ate fast, like a wolf. He didn't say much about the past two moons, just told them briefly about Wolf joining a pack. Bale told how they'd met the Otter Clan and wrecked the boat, but to Renn's relief, he didn't mention her attempt at Magecraft. Throughout, Torak spoke mostly to his kinsman, and avoided looking at her.

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  Silence fell and she plucked up courage. "You got rid of the Soul-Eater mark."

  He nodded. "I did the rite, but I'm not sure it worked. I got sick. A kind of madness."

  "Soul-sickness," said Bale.

  "Is that what it was?" said Torak. "Well. I got better."

  "How?" said Renn.

  "I don't know. I just did."

  There was a whirring of wings, and a raven flew down onto Torak's shoulder. Wincing, he lifted it off. "I told you not to do that!"

  Renn and Bale exchanged startled glances.

  Another raven alighted on a juniper bush. Torak gave each bird a scrap, and they flew to a nearby tree, where they eyed the newcomers suspiciously. Renn was astonished. Ravens are supremely wary birds, but with Torak they behaved with perfect ease.

  "Where did they come from?" said Bale.

  "There was a hailstorm," said Torak. "They fell out of their nest, and I--I had to look after them. It's odd, but after that I got better."

  Bale caught Renn's eye and smiled.

  She didn't smile back. She didn'twantto be good at Magecraft. And she was a bit envious of the ravens.

  "I call the bigger one Rip," said Torak. "The smaller one's Rek. Watch your gear, because they like to steal;

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  and what they can't steal, they shred. And when Wolf's around,don'tmake a fuss of them. He gets jealous."

  Feeling self-conscious, Renn bowed to the ravens. "Well met, little grandfathers, and thank you."

  Rek flapped her wings and croaked, "Well met well met!" and Rip lifted his tail and spattered the ferns with droppings.

  Torak glanced at Renn in surprise, but she didn't speak. Let him think the ravens had come to him by chance.

  Bale stood up and said he was going to hide the skinboat, and suddenly Torak and Renn were alone and the awkwardness was worse. Torak frowned. "Renn ..."

  "What?"

  "That elk. The one that attacked you--" />
  "I know," she said quickly.

  "Do you?" His frown deepened. "I was so worried. That's why I went back to camp, to see if you were all right."

  "I know. Torak--"

  "She made me do it!" he burst out. "She made me do terrible things! Attacking you, then Ak--the Boar Clan boy ..."

  "Aki?" Renn snorted. "He's all right!"

  He stared at her. "He is?"

  "Broken arm, but it's on the mend."

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  "He'salive."

  "Actually, I wish it'd been a bit worse. Bale said that when he left, Aki was trying to get his clan to come after you."

  Torak wasn't listening. He had both hands to his temples, and he looked younger and more vulnerable. Renn said, "Maybe you haven't changed as much as I thought." He blinked. "You're the one who's changed."

  "Me?"

  He touched his cheek, to show that he'd noticed her moon-bleed tattoo. "You seem older."

  She was embarassed. "Ihatesharing with Saeunn. She grinds her gums in her sleep. First time I heard it, I thought someone was sharpening a knife. But it went onall night." His lip curled. "Does she smell?"

  "Like a three-day-old carcass."

  He grinned. And suddenly he wasn't a stranger anymore.

  Bale returned, looking worried. "I should have hidden the skinboat earlier; she might've spotted it."

  "Whatever you do," said Torak, "she'll soon know you're here. She knows everything."

  Renn went cold.

  "But what does shewant?"said Bale.

  "She wants to crush the Lake into submission," said

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  Torak. "She wants me to help her find the last piece of the fire-opal. She wants to rule."

  "How would she get you to help her?" said Renn, feeling breathless.

  Torak hesitated. "That pebble I made for you? She has it."

  Renn shut her eyes. She'd been dreading this.

  "But--I still got away," he said uncertainly. "And I fought off the soul-sickness. And when she made me spirit walk in the viper, I fought back."

  No you didn't, thought Renn. The ravens woke me in time. Out loud she said, "She'll make you do it again, Torak. Or she'll think of something else. She's like a snake. If she meets an obstacle, she slithers around it." Torak stood up. "Then we'll have to find the fire-opal before she does. Come on. We'll be safer with the wolves."