Ren had never seen a spectacle like it.
He hurried on again, hugging the final bend in the hill that would take him swiftly to the top of the ridge. But at its steepest the hill puckered gently inward, and he was irritated to find that he needed to climb a short, almost vertical wall of rock. Desperate not to miss too much of the fight, he reached up and found the holds he needed. At no point did it occur to him that this might be a reckless venture. Indeed, it wasn’t until he was halfway to the top that his folly was realised and the first note of panic set in. Whup! Whup! Whup! A skaler was approaching. Ren’s heart immediately beat a new rhythm. Breathless with fright, he looked over his shoulder. The thing was out of sight, somewhere behind a bulge in the hill. But the onrushing clatter of wings suggested it would fill the sky at any moment. Ren was in a hopeless position, his arms and legs both fully exposed. If he was seen – and the skaler would have to be blind to miss him – the beast could melt him with an arc of flame. Frantically, he looked for somewhere to hide. Again, his luck was in. Down to his right the rock face darkened and he could see a crescent-shaped split in the stone. Using all his strength he swung himself sideways and dropped onto a sill just in front of the split, gouging his left knee as he fell. It was all he could do not to cry out in pain. Somehow, he managed to grip his knee before the blood could bubble freely to the surface and send its warm scent into the air. He rolled into the opening, out of sight. The skaler flew past, blowing up a cloud of dust and grit. Ren stalled for as long as he could before opening his lungs and coughing out the dirt. The skaler was gone by then, but something had heard Ren’s burst of noise. A growl, not unlike a row of deep clicks, came creeping out of the belly of the mountain. Ren turned his head and stared into the darkness. There was something in here.
Something huge.
8
That was the moment Ren should have escaped, while the skalers were diverted by the fight above the valley. He should have dressed his wound, counted his blessings and fled. Blood was leaking fast through his fingers. His lungs were lined with grime and dust. Climbing was going to be painful at best. And he didn’t need Targen the Old to tell him that whatever had made that clicking sound would not stop to think about taking off his head if he poked it close within biting range.
He stared into the darkness again. By now his eyes were making use of the light and he could see he was in a narrow cleft, no wider than his outstretched arms could span. The crack ran some way into the mountain, tightening at its end where the light grew dim. With the skalers occupied, Ren slid down and attended to his wound. The gash was the length of his smallest finger and dark with grit at its puffiest end. He picked out as many chips as he could, then spat on his hand and rubbed the spittle into the cut. It stung like the tips of a hundred spikers, so sharp he couldn’t stop himself yelping. Again the darkness answered, with a growl even more threatening than the last. But on top of the warning was a grating squeal that could only have come from the throat of something small. Ren’s heart pounded again. For now he had guessed what was in the mountain: a female skaler, maybe with young.
It was madness, he knew, to even think of going closer. He had once seen his mother give birth to a child (a brother that had not survived) and she had screamed foul murder at any man who tried to approach, especially Ren’s father. But Ren had also known the joy of seeing and holding a new-born mutt, and the lure of the skalers proved too much. Quickly, he tore off a piece of his under-robe (the cleanest patch he could find) and tied it tightly around his knee. Then he hopped to his feet and started to feel his way along the cleft. The light from outside was quick to grow faint, but he was soon drawn forward by a deeper, yellower glow. It occurred to him that it must be fire, because the air all around was thick and warm and seemed to be competing for his every breath. On he went, aware that the passage was leading him down, until sixty paces forward, his progress was stopped. A wedge of stone was blocking the upper half of the cave, creating what amounted to a tunnel beneath it. The only way through was on his belly or his back.
He got down and squeezed himself into the hole. The first push was the hardest, but once his shoulders were beyond the wedge the tunnel became a comfortable crawl. It took two painful scrapes off his arms, but the threat of small flesh wounds was soon to be the least of his worries. At its end, the tunnel opened out again. And there, almost filling the entire floor space of a huge cavern, was a beautiful skaler.
She was mid-green with white flecks around her head. Her incredible slanted eyes were the colour of the setting sun, but shone in all directions like broken ice. Ren could see her as clearly as day, thanks to a cluster of small fires burning low along the scorch-blackened stone behind her. It took him a moment to realise she was burning her own waste matter. It occurred to him then that she must have scented the dung on his robe. But if she knew he was there, she seemed unconcerned. She was curled up like a sleeping mutt, tenderly nosing a large blue egg that had just cracked open at its narrowest point. A tiny skaler, purple in colour, was struggling to break out. The mother whispered her encouragement and bathed the egg in a pale half-flame. The shell crackled and split in several places. A tail poked out, followed by a wing. The youngster shuddered and the shell exploded off its body. Ren held his breath in wonder. This was better than he ever could have hoped. To see a mother and—
Suddenly a second youngster clambered onto a rock in front of him. It was blue, this one, with wings the colour of black thornberries. Although Ren was still in shadow, the young skaler clearly had his scent. It flipped its head to one side and sniffed. Out of its throat came a weak roar. Grrrockle.
Ren took a breath. It was almost his last. Faster than an arrow, the mother’s tail lifted and shot towards the tunnel. Ren saw it coming and scrabbled back in time to avoid being speared. He realised then that she’d been waiting for him, working out precisely where he was before she struck.
The skaler’s tail lashed around the walls, its sharp points drilling into the darkness, stirring up another stifling dust cloud. Ren coughed and pressed back as far as he could, the tail twisting like a fire sprite in front of him. But for a bend in the tunnel, he would have been skewered like a roasting snorter. Maybe the skaler thought so too, for as she pulled her tail clear Ren heard her move and guessed she was turning, ready to fill the tunnel with flame. From that, there would be no escape. The flame would travel like a gush of water and make ash of anything it found in the space.
Ren slid down and covered his eyes. He begged the Fathers to forgive his folly and prayed that his mother would not weep long. A moment passed. But the fire did not come. The skaler moved again. And now she was not the only thing shifting. Ren could feel his entire body shaking, but fear was only part of the cause. He touched the wall behind him. The rock was trembling. Grit fell from a crack in the stone above his head.
The sleeping mountain was waking up.
The skaler knew it too. She let out another screaming call, so loud Ren thought his chest would burst. Silence thickened around him for a moment, as if he’d put his head in a bucket of mud. Again, the wall behind him shook. Dizzy with fear, he struggled to his feet.
He needed to escape, that much was clear. But as he turned he heard a pitiful cry. He knew right away that one of the new-born skalers was in trouble. The voice of survival urged him to go, but that bleat had torn a hole in his heart. In truth, he owed the beasts nothing. They would kill him as soon as look at him. But the code of honour that governed all life had been drilled into Ren from a very young age. All life is precious, his father had taught him. For Ren, that included the lives of skalers. He couldn’t desert the youngster now.
He staggered back to the lip of the tunnel. Rocks were falling like hard black rain, pounding the mother as she sought in vain to protect her young. She was curling her tail around the skaler that Ren had seen breaking from the egg and was all the while calling the blue one to her. Ren could see it, tra
pped in rubble, kicking its tiny skaler feet. One wing and half its body was buried. The mountain yawned. More rocks fell. A huge lump struck the mother on the head. She lurched forward and her skin split open. Dark green fluid poured out of the wound, coating her neck and the stones around her. Ren thought he saw a tear begin to form in her eye. A single tear, glowing with fire.
That was it. He leapt into the cavern. It took a heartbeat, no more, to free the skaler. It squealed like an angry storm of caarkers, but folded its wings as he drew it to his breast.
Through the hail and dust, he looked for the other. It was sheltered by a curl of the mother’s tail. Thinking he could place the rescued one with it, Ren started to pick his way back toward them. But the sleeping mountain was wide awake now. The floor of the cavern whined and split open. Ren was thrown back as a crack the size of a narrow stream divided him from the mother skaler. Pained and spluttering, he got to his feet. The youngster had fixed its claws into his robe as if begging him never to leave it, but the mother was slipping away. One last time she lifted her head – and fixed her gaze on Ren.
Her thoughts poured into his mind with such force that his neck almost snapped as his head jerked back. And these three words she spoke without speaking: GALAN AUG SCIETH.
Then her head slackened and thumped against the stone.
With a smokeless breath, her jewelled eye closed.
And her fire tear fell.
9
Other than when he’d been hunting with the men, Ren had only ever seen one animal die. A mutt so old it had buzzers laying eggs in its matted fur and legs so bent they wobbled when it walked. He was a boy of just six winters then, and life and death were still a mystery to him. Where did the ‘life’ go when something died, he wondered? He’d asked the mutt’s keeper that very question: Was that what the dead eyes were staring at, the life drifting to its next dwelling place? The keeper, none other than the gruff Varl Rednose, had bellowed with laughter and flashed his knife in a gouging motion. He had asked Ren if he’d like an eye to stew? Ren had said no. He didn’t understand why Varl had found the question funny. The tribe prayed for help from the Fathers all the time and some of them had been dead for ever. Surely their ‘lives’ must be floating over the settlement somewhere?
That day in the cave, Ren learned something about the death of skalers. For one thing, their eyes didn’t stare like a mutt’s. As the mother’s tear struck the floor of the cavern, every rock around it shone like gold, including those where Ren was standing. Her life filled his like rising water. His body grew light and his mind touched the stars. He felt the presence of something extraordinary. It moved around him and through him and somehow between him, blowing like a wind from another world. Perhaps the strangest thing of all was what happened to the darkeye horn he still carried. It was lying in a pocket close to Ren’s heart. Later, when he would think to look at his robe, he would find a scorch mark on the cloth around the pocket and remember a burning sensation there. But that was later and this was now.
The mother’s eye closed and Ren heard the erth breathe as if to welcome her home again. He shook himself alert. He was still in great danger. Rocks were falling. The erth was dancing. The sleeping mountain was no less angry. The skaler in his arms gave a pining cry. Ren stroked it and said a short prayer for the one still minded by the mother’s tail, then started for the tunnel.
In his bid to rescue the skaler he had jumped a fair way down into the cavern. Going back up would be a far stiffer challenge. The mountain had been kind to him, though. A number of boulders were heaped in a stack just under the tunnel entrance. Ren bounded over three, then had to stop. A wall of rock now stood in his way. He could rest his hands on the ledge without stretching, and would normally have scrabbled straight up it and away – but not with a skaler clinging to his chest. At best it might fall. More likely be squashed.
‘We climb!’ he said, aware that his words were stiffer than usual. But how did one talk to a baby skaler? He pulled it off his robe. It took several attempts; as one foot cleared, the other reattached.
Grracck, it skriked, looking frightened and lost.
No time to worry about that. Ren lifted it onto the ledge, forgetting that from there it could see its mother. He watched it turning circles with its wings outstretched, all the while calling mournfully to her. For a moment, Ren thought it would be kinder to leave it. But even as the idea entered his mind the mother’s voice was in his head again. Galan aug scieth. He pressed his hands to his eyes. What had she done to him?
Another shuddering movement underfoot reminded him survival was of primary concern. In one push, he scrabbled onto the ledge. The youngster called again, with a little less hope in its gravelly voice. Ren scooped it up and ran, relieved to see the tunnel wasn’t blocked by rubble. He pushed the beast in as far as he could, then dropped to his belly and started to crawl. The skaler, not surprisingly, was frightened by the dark and unsure of what to do.
‘Go!’ Ren snapped.
The youngster wailed and flapped. But after a couple of head butts and a squirt of dung that landed in Ren’s hair, it got the idea and skittered on ahead. Ren spoke to it all the way, but was in the cave before he saw it again. He had a moment of panic when he thought he’d lost it and another when he trod on something soft in the gloom. Horrified, he knelt down and patted the rock. Feathers. Old feathers that crumpled to dust. A beak. A wrinkled leg and claws. He’d stood on a caarker, dried and long dead. Sighing with relief, he pushed the carcase aside but stuffed the foot into his robe. A Kaal hunter wasted nothing. And to string a caarker’s claws around the neck was lucky.
By now his eyes were seeing shapes in the rock, but the youngster was absent still. ‘Pupp?’ he called, using a name he liked, one his father had given to a mutt they’d once owned. With a rustle of wings the skaler found him. Ren bent down and picked it off his ankle. As he tilted his head, a trail of the wet dung fell from his hair and Ren instinctively wiped a hand through it. Strangely, it didn’t burn too badly, though the smell was just as raw. He supposed that was because the skaler was young, and probably still to eat meat. ‘Galan aug scieth,’ he whispered to it. ‘What does this mean?’
Grracck, it said again, and nibbled his finger.
Ren pulled his hand clear of the mouth. The teeth, though small, were sharper than grit. To have come this far and be a skaler’s first meal would be a cruel outcome indeed.
A draught of cold air rolled through the cave, carrying the cry of an adult skaler. The youngster turned its head and gave a mystified skrike. Ren immediately clamped its jaws shut. It took the full wrap of his hand to do it; the little beast was strong for its size. It responded by pinching his chest with its claws. ‘No!’ Ren hissed, pulling it away. He raised it up until their eyes were in line. The pupp’s were glowing with a pale blue tint, making better use of the light than his. He loosened his fingers to allow it some air. A row of holes along its neck made a wheezing sound. Ren pointed to the far end of the cave. ‘They will hurt Ren if they hear you,’ he whispered. What gesture said ‘hurt’ without pain? He opened his mouth and made a quiet ‘agh’. The youngster mimicked him (as best it could). Ren sighed and looked toward the light. That call had raised a fresh round of dread. The skalers must be out like a hunting pack. If they saw him with the pupp they would ask no questions, they would simply kill. All he could do – or hope to do – was leave it outside, then hide until nightfall, assuming the mountain didn’t take him first, though its rage, for now, had largely blown out.
Folding down the pupp’s wings, he crept quietly forward. Never had a light been less inviting or shadows more difficult to find. But the task itself was simple enough: get as near to the outside as possible, wait until the skies were clear, then put the skaler out on the mountainside. They would see it soon enough (or more likely hear it), and the job was done.
The first part was easy. In the wall at the very
brink of the opening was a natural recess, deep enough to take Ren and the pupp. He got there just as a skaler flew past. He pressed himself into the shadows, holding tight to the youngster so it wouldn’t flap. Breathing slowly, he closed his eyes. Ten breaths later there was still no hint of wings outside and the youngster had settled quietly in his hands. All he had to do was step into the open, stand near to the edge and release the pupp. But as he rehearsed the action in his mind, his thoughts lit up with more pictures of the mother and her dazzling eyes. What did she want of him? Why did this feel like a terrible betrayal when all he was doing was giving the skaler back to those who could care for it?
He broke cover and ran for the light. It was almost the end of them both. The rocks at the brink of the cleft were smooth and weathered, but unevenly layered, eager to trip a careless foot. Ren stumbled to his knees, opening his hands as much to save himself from falling as to let the skaler go. Its wings paddled the air but made no flight. It hit the slope with an awkward splat, slid down on a gaggle of stones and pitched forward onto its back. The noise it made was unbearable, such an indignant squeal that Ren was tempted to bound down the mountainside and immediately retrieve it, as though it had all been a terrible mistake. But the air was trembling to the pulse of wings and a shadow had just swept over the hill. Ren scrambled back into the cleft and made himself as thin as possible. The pupp – still out in the open – squealed fearfully and not without reason. A huge skaler had just come down to land.
It was so close it ate up most of Ren’s light. Moving nothing but his eyes, Ren tried to see it. It stretched its sinewy neck and a ripple of colour ran down its scales. Green, Ren thought, but then most of them were, darkening a little towards the head. He stilled his breathing, expecting that he wouldn’t need to hold the air for long. All the adult had to do was pick up the youngster and fly it to safety. Ren’s heart wrenched at the thought. He’d cradled the thing for less time than it took to scratch his rear and yet…