Soul Eater (10 page)

Tall Tailless wasn't coming to rescue him, not ever ever ever.Something had happened. He'd fallen prey to a Fast Wet, or been attacked by the bad taillesses. Otherwise he would have come by now.As Wolf paced the tiny stinking Den, he shook his head to get rid of the fog, but only succeeded in bumping his nose on a rock. The Den was far away from all the other creatures, and so small that he could only take a single pace before he had to turn around and go back again. Pace, turn. Pace, turn.184He ached to run. In his sleeps, he loped up hills and down into valleys; he rolled about in ferns, waggling his paws and growling with delight. Sometimes he leaped so high that he soared into the Up, and snapped at the Bright White Eye. But always when he woke, he was back in the stinking Den. He could have howled--if he'd had the spirit to howl. But what was the use? Nobody would hear him except the bad taillesses and the demons.Pace, turn. Pace, turn.Hunger gnawed at his belly. In the Forest, when he hadn't made a kill for a long time, hunger sharpened his nose and ears, and put a spring in his lope that sent him flying between the trees. But this hunger was so bad that it didn't even hurt.All the pacing was making him giddy, but he couldn't stop, even though it got harder with every step. His tail was much, much worse. He'd tried licking it better, but it didn't taste like himself anymore, and it didn't carry his scent. It smelled like Not-Breath prey that's lain in the Forest for many Lights and Darks. It tasted bad. The badness was making him sick. He could feel it seeping through him, eating up his strength.Pace, turn. Pace, turn.He was deep in the guts of the earth, and far from all other creatures. He missed the whimpering of the otter, and the fury of the wolverine; he even missed the185stupid snarling of that stupid bear. And yet--he wasn't alone. His ears rang with the squeaking of bats and the gibber of demons. He could smell them behind the rocks, hear the scrabbling of their claws. There were so many. It was a torment not to be able to attack: to bite and snap and tear, as he was meant to do. Hunting demons was what he was for. Pace, turn. Pace, turn.It was demons that had put the badness in his tail; it was demons that were blowing black fog through his head. Because of them, he'd begun to see and hear things that weren't there. Sometimes he saw Tall Tailless crouching beside him. Once he'd heard the high, thin yowl that the female made when she put the grouse bone to her muzzle.Now, beneath the bat-squeaks and the scratching of demons, he caught a new sound, a real one. Two taillesses coming closer: one small, one heavier.For a moment, hope leaped. Could it be Tall Tailless and the female?No. This wasn't his pack-brother coming to rescue him. It was the bad taillesses: Viper-Tongue and Pale-Pelt.Knowing he was too weak to fight, Wolf cowered in the Den. He heard the covering being scraped back, and saw a lump of bark lowered onto the floor. He snapped up the wet. There was just enough to waken186thirst, but not enough to send it back to sleep.And yet--what was this? Another scent clung to Viper-Tongue's overpelt. A clean, well-loved scent: the scent of Tall Tailless!Wolf's joy swiftly turned to horror as he realized that this could only mean one thing. The bad taillesses had caught his pack-brother!He went wild. Yowling, hurling himself against the Den. He put up his muzzle to howl, but strong paws grabbed his head. He twisted--tried to bite--but he was too weak and they were too strong. Once again the hated rawhide was wound about his muzzle.Once again he was unable to howl.187TWENTY-THREEThe forest of stone was growing before Torak's eyes. Rocky trunks thrust upward with splintering cracks. Brittle branches spread with the jerky shudder of broken fingers.He shut his eyes, but still he saw it. He wondered if this was the "inner eye" that Renn had told him about: the one you used for Magecraft. He wished savagely that she were with him now.The black root was sweet and rotten in his mouth. He could feel it tugging at his souls, although he'd only chewed it for a moment, then hidden it under his tongue. He felt dizzy and sick, but more alert188than ever before in his life.He watched the Soul-Eaters circling the altar. Like the forest of stone, they had changed beyond recognition. The Bat Mage snarled through a wrinkled muzzle as she spread her leathery wings to shadow the cave. The Oak Mage towered over the stone trees, his gnarled bark crackling as he brandished twin rattles made of teeth and skulls. The Viper Mage glared with dead gutskin eyes through a hissing mane of serpents.Only the Eagle Owl Mage remained unchanged, as if rooted in stone.Forgotten in the shadows, Torak hung back. Now was the time to slip away: to go in search of Wolf. But the black root held him fast in an invisible web. He couldn't move.Sounds came to him more keenly than ever before. He heard every drip from the stone trees; every bat-squeak, every flicker of wet snake tongues. He knew why, and the knowledge sickened him. The blood of the owl had sharpened his hearing.Hating himself for doing nothing, he watched the Viper Mage whirl around and around, thrashing her snake head in dizzying circles. A serpent slithered past his face. He caught its split yellow stare, the black .lightning of its tongue.Suddenly the Viper Mage moved to the altar, and plunged both hands into a hollowed stone--then drew189them out, spattering red. Thrashing, swaying, she glided to the back of the cavern, and planted her palms on the rock.The Oak Mage and the Bat Mage bayed in ecstasy. Torak gasped.As the Viper Mage sprang away, her handprints smoked. The red stain was eating through the skin between this world and the Other.At last he understood the meaning of the yellow handprints he'd glimpsed on his way into the caves. They'd been made by someone trying to find the Door.And now, behind the serpent hiss and the rattle of tooth on bone--behind the groans of the earth itself-- Torak heard a sound that made his knees give, and the back of his neck crawl as if a spider were scuttling across it. A sound to suck the hope from the marrow, and stop the heart with dread: harsh, malevolent, rasping breath.Demons. Demons on the other side of the rock, lusting to be let loose.. In helpless horror he stared at the whirling, chanting Soul-Eaters. What should he do? He had to find Wolf. He had to stop them engulfing the world in terror.The Viper Mage was clutching the Walker's strike-fire and tapping it over the rock, pausing now and then to listen. Faster went the rattles. Faster went the tap-tap-tap of the black stone claw.Torak's head swam. He tried to move, but the190invisible web had him in its grip. Tap-tap-tap.Between the outstretched arms of the Viper Mage, the rock began to move.Torak blinked. It had to be just a flicker of torchlight....No. There it was again: like a hand pushing up beneath taut-stretched hide. Pushing up beneath the rock.This time there was no mistaking it. Behind the rock--in the burning chaos of the Otherworld--the demons were straining to break through. Smooth, blind heads tented and stretched the stone. Cruel mouths gaped and sucked. Savage claws scrabbled. The wall of the cavern was buckling, fragile as a day-old leaf. Not for long could it withstand such terrible, insatiable hunger.The Eagle Owl Mage rose and raised one arm, and Torak saw that she held a black oak mace surmounted by a fiery stone.The Soul-Eaters paused in their dance. "The fire-opal, " they breathed.Bewildered and fascinated, Torak sank to his knees--and the fire-opal filled the cavern with crimson light. It was the blistering heat at the heart of the fiercest ember. It was the clamorous scarlet of fresh blood on snow. It was the blaze of the angriest sunset, and the glare of the Great Auroch in the deep of winter. It was191beauty and terror, ecstasy and pain--and the demons wanted it. Their howls shook the cavern as they hurled themselves at the rock, redoubling their onslaught in their frenzy.Torak swayed. This was the secret power of the Soul-Eaters. With this they would bend the demons to their will."The fire-opal," they whispered, as the Eagle Owl Mage held the mace on high, and around her the stone trees thrashed in a soundless wind.As Torak watched, the Oak Mage and the Bat Mage gnashed their teeth until black spittle flew, and the Viper Mage planted her smoking palms against the rock--and threw up her head and cried, "The Door--is--found!"She staggered back, and Torak saw that on the rock she'd completed a great ring of handprints--and inside the ring, the demons were on the point of bursting through.At that moment, the Eagle Owl Mage lowered the fire-opal, shrouding it in her robes--and its scarlet light was quenched. The taut-stretched rock sprang back. The howls of the demons sank to a furious panting."The Door is found," hissed the Viper Mage, and slumped to the ground in a faint.The invisible web holding Torak snapped.He leaped to his feet and ran.192TWENTY-FOURTorak raced through the tunnels, skinning his knuckles and barking his shins. He stumbled, and the torch he'd snatched from the forest of stone lurched wildly. As he righted himself, a leathery wing fluttered past his face. He bit back a cry and staggered on.Twice he thought he heard footsteps, but when he paused, he caught only his own echo. He doubted that the Soul-Eaters would follow him. They didn't need to. Where would he go? The Eye of the Viper was shut. He closed his mind to that and ran on. Fragments of what he'd witnessed flashed before his eyes. The thrusting snouts of the demons, fighting to193break open the Door. The awful beauty of the fire-opal.He couldn't believe that it had held him for so long. What spell had it cast, that had made him forget Wolf? Was this how it had been for his father? Drawn in by his curiosity, by his fatal need to know--until it was too late.Too late. Terror seized him. Maybe it was "already too late for Wolf.As he ran, he spat out the black root, then bit it in two; crammed half in his medicine pouch, and chewed the other. The rotten under-taste made him gag, but he forced himself to swallow. No time for hesitation. He'd seen what the root had done to the Soul-Eaters. Now it had to work for him.With alarming suddenness the first cramps gripped. Clutching his belly, he staggered into the tunnel of the offerings, jammed the torch in a crack, and fell on all fours.He retched, spewing up a gobbet of black bile. His eyes were streaming; the tunnel was spinning. His souls were beginning to tug loose.Still retching, he crawled to the pit that held the ice bear. He caught the sound of furred pads on stone.Memory reached from the dark and pulled him down. A blue autumn dusk in the Forest. His father laughing at the joke he'd just made. Then, out of the shadows, the bear--194No! he told himself. Don't think about Fa, think about Wolf! Find Wolf.Shivering, he crawled closer, and rested his burning forehead against the rock, peering through the chink between the floor and the slab that covered the pit.Flinty eyes glared back at him. A growl shuddered through the rock. His spirit quailed. Even starved and weakened, the ice bear was all-powerful. Its souls would be too strong.More cramps convulsed him. He retched ...... and suddenly he was trapped in the pit, slitting his eyes against the painful blur of light. He was so hot, so terribly hot. Above him the frail body of a boy taunted him with the maddening scent of fresh meat. The blood smell was so strong that his claws ached as he paced and turned, and paced again.He caught the distant murmur of man-voices, and for a moment his mind turned from the blood smell, and he bared his teeth. He knew those voices. It was the evil ones who had taken him from the ice.As he remembered his lost home, dull pain coursed through him. They had robbed him of his beautiful cold Sea, where the white whales sleep and the succulent seals swim; of the faithful wind that never failed to waft the blood smell to his nose. They had stolen his ice, his never-ending ice, which hid him when he hunted, and carried him wherever he wished to go, which was all195he'd ever known. They had brought him to this terrible, burning place where there was no ice; where the blood smell was everywhere, but never within reach.He growled as he thought how he would seize the heads of the evil ones and crush them in his jaws! He would slash their bellies and feast on their smoking guts and their sweet, slippery fat! Like the pounding of the Sea, the blood-urge thundered through him, and he roared till the rocks shook. He was the ice bear, he feared nothing! All, all was prey!Deep inside the marrow of the ice bear, Torak's souls struggled to gain mastery. The bear's spirit was the strongest he'd ever encountered. Never had he been so engulfed by the feelings of another creature.With a tremendous effort of will, he overcame--and the ice bear ceased to rage at the evil ones, and turned to the blood smells: the tantalizing web of scent trails that led out into the dark, like the dragmarks after he'd hauled a walrus over the ice.Close--maddeningly close--he smelled the blood of lynx and otter, bat and boy; of wolverine and eagle. Farther off, he smelled wolf.Its scent was fainter than the others, and tainted with a badness he didn't understand--but for a bear who could scent a seal through the thickest ice, it was easy to trace.The trail led down through the dark, and around to196the side of his striking-paw--then up again, to where the air smelled cooler. They thought they were cunning to hide the wolf, but he would find it. And when he'd broken free and killed all the others, he would kill the wolf, too. He would catch it in his jaws and shake it till its spine cracked....No! shouted Torak silently. For a moment the great bear faltered, and in the pulsing marrow of its bones, Torak's souls struggled to escape. He'd smelled enough. His plan had worked. He knew where the Soul-Eaters had hidden Wolf.The bear's souls were too strong.He couldn't get out.197TWENTY-FIVERenn burst from the weasel hole and toppled headfirst into the snow. After the heat of the caves, the cold was a knife in her lungs. She didn't care. She rolled onto her naked back and stared up into a blizzard of stars.From high overhead came the caw of a raven. She gasped a fervent thanks--and her clan guardian cawed back, warning her that it wasn't over yet.Her teeth were chattering. She was losing heat fast. Getting to her feet, she discovered that she couldn't find her parka, jerkin or mittens, which she'd pushed before her out of the hole.198After an increasingly desperate search, she fell over them. She bundled them on, and they warmed her in moments. She blessed the skill of the White Fox women.Above her the stars glimmered as clouds sped across the sky. No sign of the First Tree. And no moon, either.No