Fell (The Sight 2) (13 page)

The girl knew that her words meant nothing to the wolf, but she grabbed Ivan’s pack and, without looking back, began to pull herself through the opening. She found herself in an ice tunnel that slopped downwards at first, wet with water from the fire, and then rose again and seemed to open into another chamber beyond. Alina scrambled up the passage and gasped in utter amazement as she reached the end.

It was a chamber, fifty times larger than the first. It dropped before her like a great frozen waterfall, a gigantic ice cathedral, shimmering with greens and brilliant blues and plunging downwards towards a field of jagged white spikes far below. As Alina looked down, she felt like a fairy queen, but her heart was in her mouth, and when she looked up it soared like an eagle, for the chamber ceiling was almost transparent, and through it Alina caught the faint impression of sky and moving cloud above. The top of the chamber lay on an exposed part of the glacier, where the wind constantly cleared away the falling covering of snow.

She sensed immediately the breath of freedom above, and then she saw it, to the left of the chasm. A kind of gallery ran along the edge of the ice cathedral to a natural bridge that spanned the vast gulf itself and rose almost to the ceiling. It was a dangerous path, for it looked as if a god five miles tall had descended from the very heavens and sculpted that bridge in secret, with brilliant, immortal hands.

“Fell!” cried Alina happily, her voice dwarfed in the echoing immensity of that place. “Come on. There’s a way up.”

ALINA BEGAN TO INCH TO THE LEFT AND CRAWL along the ice gallery, her head dizzy with the plunging drop to her right. She heard a whimper, and then a growl, and turned to see the black wolf standing there, on the edge of the giant chamber, his tail shaking furiously, looking out on the beetling void.

“Don’t look down, Fell. Follow me.”

The girl surprised herself with her confidence and rose now, clutching at the wall on the left to keep her balance and tottering as she crept towards the bridge. Then she was standing before it, and her heart felt like stone. She could not tell how thick the ice was, and neither could she see any support below it: no natural arches or buttresses that might hold it up.

In that moment her courage failed her and she wanted to turn and run. Yet there was nowhere to go. Hopeless and afraid, she wanted to be in the barn, curled up in a ball, listening to Mia tell her a story. Alina wanted what all children want, and adults too, to be safe. As she stood frozen to the spot, she heard the wolf growling, and a thought came to her that freed her from her fear, the realisation of what she had achieved over the past few days, more than she had ever thought possible.

After years of mistreatment and loneliness, after swallowing for so long the criticisms of Ranna and Malduk, and the lies about her changeling past, she had taken control of her fate, and escaped being murdered and survived on her own in the open, despite being hounded by dogs and chased by a terrible storm. This knowledge gave her a sense of pride she had never known before, and courage too.

Alina hurled Ivan’s pack forwards, and it landed on the bridge with a thud, sending a shower of snow crystals into the gulf, but the span held.

A growl came from behind her, low and deep and angry, and there was the black wolf almost at her back. Fell’s ears were pressed forwards, quivering, and his eyes glowed with the intensity of a vision. Fell was remembering Larka on a similar bridge.

With the power of the Sight his sister had foreseen her own death, but Larka had gone on anyway, to save her brother and rescue the man child. So she had faced Morgra. Was Fell facing his own death now too? he wondered. Did life move in strange patterns that simply reflected one another, like sunlight on water, moving always towards one end alone—death? Yet if Fell died here, on this icy bridge, it would not be for any purpose, as Larka’s death had been, but a lonely end, in the secret heart of the mountain.

Alina was already moving out onto the span. One step after the other the brave girl took, feeling the ice arch tremble beneath her and testing its strength with her weight. Then the black wolf came too, following slowly in her paw marks, giving himself up to what he already knew was a greater intelligence than his own. Soon they were halfway across, and the whole ice bridge seemed to shake beneath them.

“Quickly, Fell!” cried Alina as she felt the ice start to give under her feet, and flung herself forwards desperately. Fell felt it too, and with a fearful whimper, as if he had been caught in a trap, he veered to his left and sprung backwards.

Then the bridge was gone, tumbling and crashing down with Ivan’s pack towards those bitter spikes, nearly a quarter of a mile below. The whole centre of the mighty ice bridge had disappeared into the gulf, leaving Alina on one side of it, near the ceiling of the chamber, and Fell on the other.

They looked at each other across that huge chasm, the girl and the wolf, and a void, both real and imagined, opened between them. Fell raised his tail and lifted his throat. His great mouth let out a howl that seemed to come from the belly of the world. It filled that mighty chamber with frustration and despair—“Aaaooww.” All his life Fell had longed for freedom, and now it had brought him to this.

Alina had not given up yet though, on herself or the strange wolf, a creature she had touched with her mind. In that moment she learnt one of the greatest secrets of life: It is often easier to fight for others than it is for yourself.

“Fell!” she cried. “You must jump.”

Alina could see that the black wolf did not understand her, and she stood, speaking urgently.

“Listen to me, Fell. You must listen. We spoke before. Why not now?”

Then suddenly their eyes were locked, those slivers of green, and that pain had come in their foreheads.

“Fell. It’s me, Fell. Understand me now, before it’s too late. Jump towards me, before the rest of the bridge goes.”

“No, human. I can’t. It’s too far. I’ll fall.”

“You must, Fell. It’s your only hope. Have faith. Please. Do it now, Fell. I order you.”

Fell looked back at her, and it was as if her thoughts were controlling his. He felt the remaining edge of the bridge rock below him, and with a furious spring, the black wolf leapt towards her across the giant gulf.

A dog would never have made the jump, but a wolf’s legs are far more powerful, honed by nature and evolution, by the survival and success of the fittest, and the black wolf was sailing through the air, springing across the void. His front paws made the distance and landed on Alina’s side of the chasm, and his back paws too, but only just, for they were slipping backwards, scrambling desperately on the edge. Fell would have fallen, if Alina hadn’t reached out and grabbed at the wolf’s coat. She felt the loose folds of fur and skin around his neck and tugged as hard as she could.

She saved Fell, but the black wolf felt such anger at the human’s touch that he could not help himself. He turned and snapped at Alina’s arm, and would have sliced it in two if their momentum, as they fell backwards to safety, had not made him miss.

“Don’t ever touch me, human,” snarled Fell’s angry mind. “I’m wild, unlike you, tame man cub. You may be a Drappa, but I will kill you if needs be. Do not forget the freedom of the untamed wolf.”

Even Fell was surprised by his own ferocity, and the instincts that had sprung uncontrollably from his being, and for a moment he dropped his eyes guiltily. Then, as they lay there staring at each other, both shocked by what had just happened, Fell’s thoughts began to calm.

Alina gave the wolf a cold, resentful look, then rose silently and turned towards the top of the chamber. She scrambled up and, still bitterly angry at what Fell had nearly done, began to bash at the ceiling of the ice cave. Her fist went through on the third try, and Alina felt a rush of fresh clean air on her face. They were almost free.

It took her a little time to make a good-sized opening, and she pushed her shoulders up and out. Another blizzard was coming up over the mountain, borne on the bitter wind, made in the heart of lowering clouds. It rose around the mountain like the ancient furies, raging perhaps at the child who had made fire for a wolf in an ice cave, like a goblin, or perhaps with no purpose at all, except the natural movement of hot and cold, and of the elements.

Alina crept back inside, under the howling sky, and felt a new emotion, long lurking beneath the surface of her gentle being: bitterness. The pride at her own escape, and the leap across the void, was pushed back into the shadows by thoughts of a world that had done her nothing but harm. It was all so unfair. For some reason it was a world that had named her changeling and wanted her death, and now the elements themselves, perhaps God himself, seemed to be conspiring in her destruction.

Alina turned back to Fell with a sinking heart. For hours that blizzard raged and the temperature sank so low that soon Alina’s teeth chattered furiously, and she could no longer move her hands. If she had lived with knowledge freed by science, she might have known to cover her head, for there the heat and energy of the body leaks out most quickly in the cold, but she did not have such knowledge.

Alina and Fell sat apart, still smarting with resentment and unable to communicate anymore. And so Fell did not sense the life beginning to ebb from this strange human, as the hours wore on. Being far larger than the previous cave, and close to the top of the mountain, where little tunnels made by meltwater had created air channels to the outside world that let in jets of icy wind, the place was also far, far colder than their little ice cell. And now the wood and food were gone.

Alina was young, but with her injured leg and the effort of mind and will that she had expended to bring them to where they were, she was finally succumbing to the bitter cold. But even as the cold attacked her from without, dark feelings attacked her from within: bitterness about Malduk and Ranna, guilt about her baby brother, and a terrible sense of her own worthlessness. Alina WovenWord wanted to die.

Other creatures had died there long before, and lay buried in the ice around them. Not fifty yards from where Fell sat panting in the cave, the body of a deer was still perfectly preserved. It had become lost in a storm more than a hundred years before and had eventually succumbed to a sleepy death. Then by the action of the glacier, seemingly solid but in fact a slowly moving river, it had been pulled downwards and squeezed tight within ribs of ice, but preserved too, so that if something had come to thaw it out, its body would have been perfectly edible, and almost as fresh as the day it had died.

But there were far, far older things within the mountain too. A man, a Stone Age warrior, was held in its unforgiving grasp. He had been hunting on the mountain some two thousand years before and had died at the hands of neighbouring villagers, murdered as Vladeran and Malduk and Ranna had tried to murder Alina. Although his features had been crushed flat, and the organs of life had perished within him, he was preserved like the deer. As were the myriad insects and microbes that had lived in the ancient waters that once swelled the river that had flowed freely down these mountains. The strange history of the world, of the earth and the animals that inhabited it, was piled up and frozen in this place, footprints in time that only insight, understanding, and imagination could ever hope to unlock.

Alina huddled up to try to stay warm, but it was hopeless, and at last she could battle tiredness and sorrow no more, and she fell asleep. When the storm finally ceased and the skies opened once more in their tranquil, blue immensity, Fell rose and managed to push his snout through the hole Alina had made into the friendly, sun-washed air.

But as the black wolf turned to the girl again, he whimpered. She was lying on the icy ground, overcome by cold. Her very spirit had been leaking out of her, and now Fell gave a loud growl to rouse her. Alina opened her eyes and saw him dimly. She tried to move her lips, and the wolf drew closer and sniffed at the air.

“Go, Fell,” said Alina faintly. “Go, my strange friend. I’m so terribly cold.”

The black wolf stared at Alina and whined. He still felt guilty at how he had snapped at her, and remembered those words about helping a child, as his sister Larka had once helped a baby in the snows. It was his turn to save a human, yet Fell, so long used to fending for himself, had no idea what to do.

He dipped his head and licked Alina’s hand. She felt the warmth of it and smiled a little, remembering Elak and thinking herself back in the barn. But then her thoughts grew dizzy and dark again with all that had happened. This wasn’t Elak, this was a wild animal. Perhaps she
was
a fairy child.

Fell stretched himself next to her and Alina felt the heat of his fur. Gently she reached out a trembling hand and placed it on his back. She felt Fell twitch slightly, but he did not move or growl at her this time, and her hand was soon warm in his fur. Alina could feel the power and the life of the wolf directly, and she pulled herself over to him and, very softly, laid her freezing head on his moving flank.

Fell gave a low growl, but it was to reassure her, and there Alina lay, her head on the black wolf’s side, rising gently up and down with his breathing. She could comprehend nothing of its meaning. How she could understand a wild wolf, or how and why the Sight had touched them both, but now Alina would never know. It was over.

The wolf whined again.

“It’s all right, Fell,” she whispered, in a voice so small it vanished into the vastness. “Some curse touches my life. But tell me, Fell, what was this great destiny that might have joined us?”

Fell thought of those strange words about it being linked to the very survival of nature, but in that place, it felt like almost a sacrilege to say it, and it filled him with fear. He held his wolf tongue.

“Go from here then, wolf. Be free. I shall never know.”

The wolf did not stir, and as he felt the girl drift to sleep once more against his flank, in the quiet stillness, a sense of peace came over Fell. Then something strange and wondrous began to happen. The cavern walls flickered with light and then images began to appear in the ice. They were of man and his journey out of nature, and Fell recognised them as the same vision that Larka and all the animals had seen at the citadel of Harja. The Great Secret.

Fell saw fish crawling from the seas and that strange furred creature again, a human ape, rise up on its haunches and clasp a flaming taper in its grip, as he and the Lera had seen it years before—man.

Civilisations rose and fell, and wars gripped the land. Nature and the Lera were being turned to man’s hungry purposes. The wolf growled as he watched, and in her sleep Alina cried out too, for the same vision had appeared in her dream. They saw the future and a huge metal sphere fall, and then a mushroom cloud of flame and fire, followed by a terrible warming of the world, and melting ice caps that in turn brought a winter of ice. Wolfbane’s Winter, the wolves had called it, after the Evil One.