The Sight (44 page)

‘So Kar, too, is alive,’ growled Huttser.  ‘Fenris is kind.’

‘Larka,’ whispered Palla, licking her daughter’s muzzle tenderly, ‘somehow before the spectres came I felt you were near.  How did you get through after the massacre? How did you find us?’

‘The rain, Mother, your paw prints spoke to us from the mud.  Several times they nearly discovered us in the forests.  It was only Skart’s eyes that kept the way open through the Night Hunters.  They must never find us.’

Huttser growled as they looked up to the mountains through the dense foliage.  The Balkar were still searching everywhere and each sun, though the rebels were well concealed, the flying scavengers ranged the skies above.

‘If Morgra is right,’ said Huttser, ‘and the place Slavka stumbled on beyond the stone face is Harja, then the creature is in more danger than ever.’

The rebels had found Bran a cave where he lay now, guarded by Rar, but as Huttser thought of the creature he felt no fondness for the human.

‘Yes, Father, and we must guard Bran day and night.  The altar is close.’

‘But what is happening amongst the Lera.’ Palla shuddered.  ‘It’s terrible.’

‘The Pathways of Death have been opened, Mother,’ growled Larka, ‘and I must try to seal them again soon.  Call back the Searchers.’

Palla’s eyes were suddenly full of fear.  Fear of the terrible journey her daughter was about to attempt.  A journey to the realms of the dead.

It was ten suns since Larka had saved them from the combat and seen the vision of her own death at Harja.  Her coming had worked a dramatic transformation among the rebel pack.  Though they all felt something of fear as they watched the odd little party, they had begun to hope again at Larka’s coming, and they kept talking of the family and a Deliverer.

Seeing how helpless Bran was, they had grown less fearful of the strange legend of the Man Varg.  They could no longer refute the power of the Sight after what they had seen of the Searchers, and some even started to mutter that Larka should find the entrance to citadel and look into the human’s mind herself.

They had argued over which wolf would have the privilege of guarding Bran.  They all wanted to hunt for it, too, and the little child had begun to grow quite fat.  It seemed to have no fear any more and, as the wolves came up to marvel at it, Bran would reach out with his searching hands and tug at their fur or smile and pat their muzzles.

Larka meanwhile had gone to speak quietly to Slavka and tried to convince her that her hatred of the Sight was misplaced.  As she told Slavka of her own journeys with Skart and what she could see in the water, Slavka’s eyes had grown as large as they had done when she had seen the Searchers come.  But as Slavka listened to Larka, again that voice crept into her mind.  Just as it had done the night before she made Huttser and Palla fight.  This time the words were different though.

‘
So
,’ they had whispered, ‘
now we have the child too.
 
Wait, Slavka.  Wait and watch
.’

Larka got to her feet and smiled down fondly at her parents.

‘I must leave you now,’ she said.  ‘Tsarr and Skart must tell me more of the rite – of howling to the dead.’

‘But when you return,’ growled Palla, trying to reassure her daughter, ‘at least then we shall face Morgra together, as a family once more.’

A bitter claw gripped at Larka’s heart.  ‘Together,’ she thought sadly.  ‘Oh, Mother, if only you knew what I have foreseen.’ As Larka turned and looked out on the beautiful day, she suddenly trembled – not with fear this time, but with a strange, tender passion.  A passion carried on the breeze stirring around her, for the trees and the grass, for the air and the clouds.  For all the things of this world.  For all the things that her vision had told her she must lose.

In that moment Larka’s heart stirred and beat faster and she longed to know if the Sight could carry her to the truth of everything, to a union with all, not just the Lera but the insects and flowers, the plants and the trees and the earth.  Even the stones themselves.  Did they have a nature she could touch, too? But even as she reached out with her senses and looked out through the trees, Larka felt afraid.  But not of Morgra.  Not of Wolfbane or the Searchers.  She was afraid because somehow to look out on the world like this, and to love it so very much, wounded Larka to her soul.

That night Larka slept near Tsarr and Skart, and dreamt of her vision on the bridge.  But as she dreamt something strange happened.  Larka fancied, as she lay there, that she could hear real voices in her head.  Not one voice but twenty, thirty voices whispering through the trees.  They muttered of the legend, of the Searchers and the citadel.  They whispered of hope and victory.  It was as though the rebel pack were talking to her as one mind.

‘You are touching the third power, Larka,’ growled Tsarr as light began to rib the trees.  ‘You were listening to the rebels’ thoughts.  It has entered the world with the Searchers.  It is time, Larka.’

‘Yes,’ said Skart, ‘and you must carry hope with you as you go.  But your parents are here to help you return.’

‘What point is there in returning,’ growled Larka suddenly, her voice was full of bitterness, ‘even if I can close them, even if I can call back the Searchers? I have seen my own death at the citadel.  The Sight has shown me my future.’

‘Larka,’ said Tsarr softly.  ‘There may be a way to change the future too.’

Larka lifted her searching eyes, but she shook her head sadly.

‘Then it is not the future, Tsarr.  Then the Sight lies.’

‘
Now
it is the future,’ insisted Tsarr.  ‘All that happens to us Larka, all that marks our journey through Fenris’s forests, has it not been made by what has gone before? But if we could return to the past, affect it in some way, then perhaps the future could be different as well.  Perhaps they may tell you there how to alter what is to come, in the realms of death.’

Larka lifted her muzzle and she remembered something Karma had once said about breaking patterns.

‘Return to the past?’ said Larka sadly.  ‘Before Morgra ever came, Tsarr, or before my mother’s parents ever drove her out? Before the legend ever began?’

But for a moment hope flickered across Larka’s face.

‘So you must come back to us,’ whispered Skart, ‘and listen to those who love you if they call.  Huttser and Palla.’

But Larka was suddenly thinking of another wolf.

‘Kar,’ she whispered, ‘I wish Kar was with me now.’ Tsarr and Skart began to tell Larka more of the ancient rite of howling to the dead.  Tsarr’s fur began to bristle as he described the most important part of Larka’s preparation.  She must attempt her journey after a kill and lay fresh meat at her side as she howled, for its shadow would follow her beyond, and then the dead Putnar would catch its scent and come at her bidding.  Tsarr told Larka that she must allow only one spectre to eat, and only after she had commanded it to answer her questions.  Then Larka could demand to know how she might affect her own fate and how the Searchers could be recalled.  How the Pathways of Death could be sealed once more.

As Tsarr told her these strange secrets, Larka thought of her journey to the Stone Spores all those moons ago with Fell.  Meeting him frightened her most of all.  As soon as Larka mentioned her brother, Skart grew frantically nervous.  It was by no means certain that he would come, but the eagle warned her that if she reached the place of the dead she must not let any spectre touch her, for then she risked being lost for ever.  But of all the warnings they gave her, the one they stressed most was this: all the while she was among the spectres, she must listen for those who waited for her on this side and come as soon as they called her back.  For to deny them would be to deny life itself.

That sun, Larka padded off on her own to think and to prepare herself inwardly for her fearful journey.  Below the camp a plain opened around a wide river and swept out towards the distant trees.  The she-wolf could see the water glinting in the sunlight as she crept stealthily from the wood, looking about her all the while.  The day was bright and fresh and Larka’s view ran clear into the shadow of the forests beyond.  Larka suddenly stopped.  As she looked out she realized there were no Balkar to be seen anywhere and only a pair of falcons were circling in the blue, as a flock of sheep grazed by the edges of the distant wood.

‘Morgra,’ whispered Larka, ‘why has she stopped hunting us?’

The she-wolf paused and breathed in.  She could scent summer powerfully on the breeze and the rich textures of swelling life quivered in her nostrils.  As she thought of Bran in his cave and wondered what Morgra was doing, she suddenly felt a desperate pang for the child and Larka knew that she loved it too.

Larka began to gulp at the river.  She was staring into the water and as her head swung sideways the great sun, swelling with the season, sparked on the river.  Larka growled furiously as the pain struck her eyes.  As soon as she opened them again the vision came.  As real as daylight, it seemed to rise from the river itself, but the sights were not on the surface of the water, but all around her now.

Where before there had been open ground, Larka was confronted by the sight of vast dens that reared into the sky. Here and there, topless trees of stone rose among them like giant pines.  The air above was dense with black smoke that climbed from their peaks and billowed into the sky, staining the clouds the colour of night.

Between these dens the ground had turned to stone tracks that wove like unmoving rivers into the distance.  Then, from the tops of the stone trees, came sudden flashes of angry fire.  Their livid red tongues leapt into the sky and seemed to eat up the air itself, snarling at the edges of the blackened cloud.  They looked like the flames that Kar had seen on the walls of the monastery, the flames of hell.

Larka peered at the river.  Before, the water had been clear and fresh.  Now it was almost as black as the sky, and it had grown thick and sluggish.  On its banks, where there was still grass, the ground was covered in a flaky black dust that clung to everything.  Larka noticed that her tongue had grown dry and she could hardly breathe, that the air tasted hot and sooty.  Here and there she also noticed great mounds of shiny black rocks that were heaped high between the dens.  It was coal.

But the sight that sent a shudder through the wolf lay to the right of her vision.  On the edge of the plain, where the dens grew smaller again and seemed to be made of wood rather than stone or metal, Larka saw what looked like a human.

It rose as high as a tree in front of her.  Its giant metal paws were held clenched above its head, and in their grip were held two great metal branches that forked like a shaft of lightning.  Larka half expected it to move but it stood there, silent and motionless, guarding the burning dens behind it.

Seeing the vast, flaming furnace, Larka gasped in horror.  In that moment Larka knew she was seeing another vision of the future.  Larka was looking out at a factory, which the mind and the hands of Man would one day build to harness the power of nature itself, to unleash the energy that dwells in all things and turn it to his service.  As Larka looked on, she shuddered.  The she-wolf had the strangest sense that she was looking on the image of a god.  A god just as violent and tyrannical as any that had stalked the earth.

Suddenly something did move.  It came from the left, and Larka swung round.  At the entrance to one of the wooden dens she saw three human cubs.  Larka was reminded of the woodcutter, for they were all dressed in tattered skins and their hands were blue with cold.  They gazed up at her and their eyes were dull and glassy, though filled now with an uncomprehending fear.  Their skin was layered with the same soot that covered the ground and they were all shivering.

Larka was terrified, appalled as she watched, but as she stood there a human cub bent down and picked up one of the pieces of coal scattered about their feet.  With an angry cry he hurled the coal through the air.  Larka winced and blinked as it sped towards her, but in that split second, when she opened her eyes again, they were gone; the burning dens, the fire-spitting stone trees, the ragged cubs, the giant metal man.  Once again Larka was gazing on the open plain and the sparkling river, the fir trees rustling in the wind, the falcons weaving peacefully through the clear, clean sky.

‘Man,’ gasped the she-wolf.  ‘I have seen Man’s future too.’

That night the rebels muttered amongst themselves.  They too wondered why Morgra was no longer hunting them, and the rumour had spread of what Larka was about to do.  Skart became more and more anxious as he perched in the trees watching Larka with his hard yellow-black eyes.  Both he and Tsarr had been terrified by Larka’s vision, and now they believed that the laws of the Sight were indeed bending.

Larka was almost ready to begin her journey, but first she went to see Slavka.  The rebels looked at Larka hopefully as she padded through camp, growling a greeting or wagging their tails, but there was little cheer in Larka’s heart.  She found Slavka lying by a beech tree, guarded by two rebels and by Keeka and Karma.

‘Slavka,’ Larka growled as she padded up.

As the older wolf looked up Larka was surprised to see that there seemed a new openness in Slavka’s look.

‘Slavka.  I must learn what you know of these human dens in the mountains.  Morgra seems to have stopped hunting and, if those dens are Harja—’

But Slavka interrupted Larka immediately.

‘Larka,’ she growled and her eyes narrowed.  ‘First I have something to tell you.’

Larka’s thoughts were too consumed with Morgra and her fearful journey to notice the glitter of cunning in Slavka’s eyes.

‘Well?’

‘I doubted the Sight, Larka,’ growled the rebel leader, shaking her head, ‘and I was a fool to do so.  Even after you came I wanted to kill the child.’

Larka looked up the slope to the cave where little Bran was sleeping.  Rar was standing outside, waving his tail proudly as he protected their charge.  The child was safe.

‘But now, Larka,’ Slavka went on, ‘now I see that there is real danger of the legend coming to pass.  You are this white wolf the legend foretold.  And your parents, Huttser and Palla.  ..’