Fell (The Sight 2) (35 page)

The other wolves’ ears began to tremble.

“And then we’ll mark you and Palla too, and laugh as we do it, before our muzzles and our jaws tear and rip your cowardly bodies into little pieces. We’ll find the lowest and meanest holes and crevices, and place the parts of you there in the darkness, in shame at your dishonour.”

The two wolves in the cave mouth were shaking, but Jalgan suddenly swung round.

“You,” he growled, “order it done. And drag this … this thing out into the open.”

The two Vengerid leapt forwards and bit at Huttser’s legs, hauling the dead weight of him out into the open next to Palla.

“Good,” said Jalgan, as they stood over the bodies outside. “Now summon the others to do this thing. But send some scouts to find Tarlar and the others too, or to try and pick up their damned scents. I want them to watch.”

“But, Jalgan, I tried to tell you,” said the scout. “We picked up their scent before. It was Tarlar.”

Jalgan’s eyes were suddenly burning furiously.

“And they’re fleeing towards the Great Waterfall, Jalgan.”

“Fleeing? Why didn’t you tell me, idiot? You’ll pay for it. But later. As Huttser and Palla must wait until later. Come. We go in pursuit, and now.”

Jalgan howled, and the Vengerid sprung forwards after the little family.

Fell was wandering, alone, still in that dark, gloomy cloud. He was glad to be on his own, and although Tarlar had warned him that the Vengerid were close, he little cared. Fell had given up on everything now, and he had no wish to help anyone anymore. He had tried to help Alina. He had tried to help everyone. But his journey had led him nowhere except towards death.

Suddenly a jackrabbit shot across Fell’s path, and almost out of reflex, the wolf turned to follow it. His pace rose steadily, as he jumped rocks and boulders and skirted sudden trees, feeling a little better with the effort and the chase.

The Sight and its visions did not come this time to impede the wolf’s instincts in the wild, and the rabbit was locked in his sight, running desperately towards the edge of the valley and a sheer cliff, where Fell could see no chance of escape, as he felt his stomach begin to churn. The wolf pounced, and his paws were about to close, when the rabbit suddenly vanished under him.

Fell rolled with a whine, and thought for a moment it was some kind of magic, until he spied the hole that the rabbit had found to flee down. He had picked himself up, panting and disappointed, when he heard a voice all about him.

“Run, wolf!” it cried, seeming to shake the very mountain. “Run for your life.”

Fell swung round with a furious snarl, but he could see no Lera around him at all. Instead he heard the voice again, like a low echo or the roar of the sea.

“Fear!” boomed the voice, shaking the very earth. “It’s a good thing to see it in others, no? But not to feel it yourself.”

Fell was shaking with terror.

“Who are you?” he growled. “Where?”

He swung left and right, but still saw no one at all.

“And who are
you
, Fell ShadowPaw?” came the booming answer. “For did not the ancient humans, who came to this land long ago and worshiped the wild she-wolf who suckled them at her belly, have oracles that told them this above all—
Know thyself
.”

An oracle? Fell was staring at the mountain suddenly, and he gasped as he realised just where the echoing voice was coming from. It had been hidden in the shadow of the cliff before, but the movement of the sun had just revealed it—there, in the side of the mountain, was a high cave, like a giant mouth. Fell’s eyes opened in astonishment. A giant stone mouth was talking to him.

“And do you know yourself yet, Fell of the Sight?” the mountain seemed to ask, as Fell thought he saw a shadow move inside the cave. The wolf was shaking furiously, as he listened to that echoing bellow, like a god speaking from the Underworld. What had Ottol said?
A Guardian that spoke with a mouth of stone
. It was true.

“Are you the Guardian then?” Fell whispered in a petrified voice, lowering his tail. “You do really exist?”

“That I am, wolf,” came the voice from the belly of the cave. “Of course I exist.”

Fell dropped his muzzle and sniffed the air.

“The Sight,” said Fell nervously. “You know of the Sight?”

“Yes, Fell,” said the cave, “and we’ve been watching you.”

“We, Stone Mouth?” growled the wolf.

“All the Lera watch you now, perhaps all the world, Fell LegendPaw, you and these humans. The winter robin tells me of it, and the great herons. The leaping trout carry it in the colour of their scales, and the wood lice in their trails through the forest.”

Fell blinked in amazement at the cave.

“The very ants trace it, as they build their archways in tiny, secret places, and the slithering snake wraps it deep in her belly, like the hardening eggshell she prepares to birth her young. All nature watches you, Fell of the Lands Beyond the Forest,” boomed the Guardian, “as the animals watched Larka when the vision came at Harja, and all nature listens too, wondering what you are, and what you shall do. What future you shall choose to make, as you struggle with the paradox of life, for their survival may depend on it.”

For some reason a single word sang in Fell’s mind then, and the word was “choose.”

“So what is it you want here, wolf?” asked the cave.

Fell blinked. He hadn’t come here on purpose at all.

“I … I don’t know. What are you? Are you a Lera?”

The ground seemed to shake under Fell’s paws, with the answer.

“That you shall never know,” bellowed the Guardian. “For some things can never be known, and the Guardian’s form is a secret. Though I shall tell you my name, if you wish it. For my name itself is the greatest secret of the Sight.”

“Yes,” answered Fell. “Your name.”

“My name … is …,” the cave’s voice seemed to rise to a gigantic boom and a wind to stir the grass, “PANTHEOS.”

Fell shuddered, but he fancied now he could smell a musky, feral scent on the breeze, like a lynx or a Borar, a bear.

“Now leave this place, wolf,” said Pantheos, “before I teach you the true meaning of fear.”

“Leave?” growled Fell helplessly, feeling himself in a dream. “But I’ve been hunting for you, Pantheos, for so long.”

“Many hunt me. What would you know then, wolf? Why do you search?”

“What is happening amongst the Lera?”

“Happening? The Sight is filling the world, of course.”

“Filling the world?” said Fell in awe.

“Yes, wolf. Larka began it,” cried the cave. “So can you end it, Fell? End it well.”

“But how? Why?”

“Larka showed all the Lera the Great Secret that man too is an animal,” cried the cave. “But does man know it himself yet, and will he ever accept it? For so often he thinks himself God’s chosen. And when he does, will he love us animals any the more because of it, or will he simply hate himself all the more, and so destroy all around him?”

“You said
us
animals. Then you
are
a Lera,” growled Fell doubtingly, stepping angrily towards the cave and remembering Ottol’s strange words of tricksters in the land beyond the font. “Just an animal, like me. Are you trying to trick me?”

There was suddenly a terrible roar, like a giant Borar’s, from inside the stone mouth, and Fell froze and his tail crept between his back legs.

“Fool!” cried Pantheos. “Why do you always need to know, like those restless, searching humans? Can’t you just accept, wolf? Do you not know yet, Fell DoubtHeart, that the very power of myth is that it is myth. Why do you think the ancient Roman oracles always spoke in riddles? Trust that power. It comes from deep inside, and it has purpose.”

“Purpose?”

“Like thought itself perhaps, or words. Where do they come from, and why do the humans’ stories so often echo each other?” asked the echoing cave.

Fell shook his head, feeling himself in a story again, and wondering why.

“Perhaps because they carry inside them the secret journey that all things make,” said Pantheos. “For does not everything feel itself to be somehow inside a story, like an unconscious being struggling towards thought? Struggling to see what it really is? As man evolves, does he not wake to that, as a child wakes from a story into adulthood?”

“Yes, Pantheos,” whispered Fell, understanding but dimly.

“In the caves of their own growing minds, Fell, the humans make gods and they make demons too, but tell me, Fell BlackCoat, which would you be? Would you bring light or darkness to the world?”

Fell thought of Alina and their journey together, and he felt a pang for her.

“Light,” he whispered.

“Then know, wolf, that the Sight now moves through nature like a great mind, joining together to try to show man the mirror of himself. Perhaps the Lera shall unite to do it at last, or perhaps it is your lonely path. A path that will free you at last, wolf.”

Fell shivered again and wondered if he would ever be free.

“But the Lera unite for another purpose. All nature unites to protect this child.”

Fell’s tail quivered, and his eyes opened wide. It was the most extraordinary thing he had ever heard, but he felt a strange jealousy too, having protected Alina himself for so long.

“Will you not help her too?” asked the cave.

“But why, Pantheos?” growled Fell. “Why is the girl so important? Tell me at last.”

“Think of her mark. A Helgra woman. It is a steppe eagle, like the great Helper Skart. The first power, to look through the eyes of birds, began with the ancient steppe eagles.”

Fell nodded slowly.

“With the Helgra’s faith and love of nature, the Sight has passed to man, or rather woman.”

Fell growled again.

“Alina Sculcuvant is the first. But not the last. For all she learns now in her journey shall be passed to her heirs, if she lives. And not just her heirs, but those of another great storyteller.”

“Catalin!” said Fell in amazement.

“Yes. It is their distant children who will one day play a role in protecting all the world.”

“All the world?”

“Yes, Fell. For one sun when you are gone, wolf, when they are gone too, when I am gone myself perhaps, there will come a time when man will threaten everything there is. Even the very forests that breathe the clean air of the world. Not because of a wickedness or evil, but simply because he will know a success greater than all the Lera, because of the cleverness of his mind and hands.”

The black wolf nodded gravely and shivered.

“A time when that success will threaten the very elements themselves,” said Pantheos. “But these heirs of Sculcuvant will help teach man balance once more, and will turn his greatest and most dangerous arts, the arts of scientia, that will themselves have been a cause of the growing disaster, to the very cause of nature itself. For it is there, in the power of scientia, along with the self-awareness that each human must learn, that man’s true salvation will lie. And the earth’s.”

The wolf’s yellow gold eyes flickered. He knew these things were beyond him.

“But there will also be a sun when scientia will threaten to rob man of spirit and hope and love,” said Patheos. “For he must overthrow his gods to come to his full power, but in doing so may forget the wonder and mystery of it all. So these heirs of Sculcuvant will remind man that although his fables and beliefs, his religions and all the conflicts they will cause, are a terrible danger in the world, the world is also a miracle beyond even man’s understanding. Teach man that he must cleave again to the spirit and the power of wonder. Like you, he must be reborn.”

“But, Guardian,” Fell whispered, thinking suddenly of his vision of Alina’s death, “Pantheos, if man is so dangerous, why do we not rise up against him?”

“You think man cruel, wolf?” said the Guardian softly. “You think man terrible?”

“I …”

“You have seen the ravening wolf, Fell. And if you had swum in the seas, you might have seen a pack of Marjan—orcas, man calls them—moving in packs too, to hunt a great grey whale mother and her calf,” said Pantheos. “Seen how they batter and strike her mighty sides, turning the sea blood red, and how she will never leave her child, but swivel her giant body and balance her own baby on her belly, to raise it safely out of the waters. Nature can be terribly cruel, Fell, and terribly brave. Is man any worse than that?”

“Yes,” growled Fell, “for animals do not know what they do, but man has knowledge of his cruelty. So why do you not lead us now, Guardian, and send out Draggas to defeat them?”

“Draggas?” cried Patheos. “Have you walked alone so long, wolf, because you think the force of the wild Dragga the greatest there is? As the Balkar once did?”

Fell remembered his thoughts before he had met Ottol, but he was remembering too what Palla had said of the strength of the she-wolf.

“I …”

“Wake up, fool,” cried the Guardian, and Fell felt as if his muzzle had been struck. “Do you not yet know that two forces live in nature, wolf, the Dragga and the Drappa, the masculine and the feminine? What is one without the other, for how else would the world exist? But each one contains elements of the other too. So use your power, but when others are too strong, be soft; when softness loses vigour, be strong.”

Fell blinked and growled.

“But be wary too, Fell. For those humans whose language still echoes in the lands beyond the forest, and who built Harja, taught this above all—health to mind, health to body. Balance.”

Fell thought of his vision after Morgra had visited him again, and his tail dropped.

“But something else is happening too,” whispered Pantheos.

“Something else?”

“To you, Fell. Can’t you feel it? Inside you, as it lies inside all the Lera.
Know thyself, wolf
.”

The cave seemed to shake, and the moving sunlight covered its face again.

“Now be gone from here,” bellowed the Guardian.

Fell was trembling furiously, and in the shadows surrounding him, in front of that terrifying, hidden voice, he felt as if he were inside the birthing den again.