‘What is it, Kar?’ cried Palla.
But Kar couldn’t speak. He had heard it first and the sound was getting louder.
‘Palla.’ He shivered suddenly. ‘Fell’s underneath me.’
Kar could see Fell’s face through the ice itself, his paws scrabbling desperately at the frozen surface, the bubbles of air swirling from his mouth, his claws only just preventing him from being swept downstream by the still living current.
But the surface here had grown thicker again and Fell couldn’t break through.
‘Help him, Kar,’ snarled Huttser. Kar was frozen with fear.
‘Do something, Kar.’
Kar just whimpered as Fell’s body began to slide, still scrabbling, still gasping for air. Huttser was at Kar’s side now and he snarled at him furiously as he pushed him aside and tried to break through, scratching and clawing at the river. The wolf began to jump and slam down with his paws. Kar watched transfixed as Huttser wrestled to save his son, drowning beneath his feet. A hairline crack appeared where Huttser was slashing at the surface, but still the ice held and still Fell was slipping away.
‘For Fenris’s sake help us, Palla,’ snarled Huttser desperately.
As Palla reached them, Fell lost his grip and the wolves sprang after him, clawing at the thin snow, mindless now of the ice and desperate only to save Fell. The whole family was clawing at the frozen river, but it was no good. They could see Fell just beneath them, his exhausted body finding it harder and harder to fight the current, the bubbles of air fading on his muzzle.
As his claws finally lost their grip and he was swept downstream, Huttser saw a sliver of green in his son’s closing eye. Palla lifted her head. As she saw the sweep of frozen water before her, bending round beyond the trees, and thought of Fell drowning beneath its icy surface, his soul doomed never to find a resting place, she let out a mourning howl so loud and angry and full of anguish that the whole river seemed to shake.
The family of wolves stood there motionless, frozen with horror and despair. But suddenly Huttser swung round.
‘Damn you, Kar,’ he cried furiously. ‘You should have called out sooner.’
But, as Huttser spoke, Palla reacted just as swiftly.
‘Don’t you dare, Huttser. Don’t you dare blame Kar. It was your fault. Yours. I told you, Huttser. I told you it wasn’t safe.’
Huttser looked blankly at his mate as the children watched them.
‘Too late,’ he stammered, ‘too late.’
Huttser’s mind was suddenly ringing again with Tsinga’s words, ‘If one is lost then I fear for us all,’ and at last the desperation of their flight and all that had happened to his pack overcame the Dragga.
‘And now he’s gone too,’ cried Palla bitterly. ‘My little Fell. Will it never end?’
‘Palla,’ whispered Huttser hopelessly, ‘we must survive...’
‘No,’ growled Palla furiously, ‘it’s all your fault. If you hadn’t made us cross there... I hate you, Huttser.’
‘Palla—’
Huttser didn’t finish. With a snarl and a sudden flash of angry teeth the she-wolf leapt forward, blinded with sorrow by the loss of her son. In that moment, to Kar, they looked like nothing so much as thoughtless children.
‘Father,’ cried Larka, ‘Mother. Stop it, please. Please don’t fight. The curse. We must...’
But her parents could no longer hear her and, as she thought of her dead brother, Larka’s own mind was suddenly swamped with bitterness and grief and guilt.
‘It’s me,’ she thought. ‘It’s all my fault. It’s because of me that Morgra is doing this. I have the Sight, I should have been able to foresee what was going to happen.’
Suddenly the young she-wolf turned and sprang away.
Larka wanted to run, anywhere, to get away from the curse and her family and the Sight. Kar leapt after her, but Larka had already vanished into the trees on the far bank, fleeing from the terrible sound of her parents’ anger. For instinct had made Huttser reply to his mate. He had sprung forward, too, opening his jaws, and for the first time since they had met and courted Huttser and Palla were fighting.
The wolves tore at each other and as their snarls echoed through the snowy trees the sound was answered only by winter’s bitter silence. They did not notice that the children had gone, or that the ice beneath their own feet was beginning to crack. Nor that among the trees on the far bank faces were emerging all around them, muzzles pressing through the branches, savage yellow eyes glittering angrily as they searched through the looming shadows.
Part Two - The Child
~
7 - Morgra
‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’ W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming
Larka ran, her white muzzle up, her young face contorted with anger and bitterness and sorrow. But as she ran someone was following her. Morgra’s eyes danced brilliantly as she watched Larka run.
‘Now,’ she whispered, ‘now it really begins.’
Morgra wanted to reach out with her paw and scoop Larka up. But as soon as she touched the surface of the pool, the image of the white she-wolf began to fade on the water.
‘Wolfbane’s teeth,’ Morgra snarled, and the scars on her muzzle looked like welts in the half-light.
She growled angrily as the picture dissolved completely and once more in the water she saw the ceiling of her cave and the stalactites that hung down from above like strands of petrified hair. Morgra did not notice it, but caught between the roof and one of these stone strands, was a tiny object, about the size of a human thumb. It seemed as though something had placed it there but, white like the rock about it, it might have been nothing more than a little pebble.
Night was coming and the shadows around Morgra crept like thieves across the cave floor, inching their fingers towards the rocky walls where a raven sat, preening himself on his perch of stone.
‘What’s wrong, Mistress?’ asked Kraar.
‘I cannot hold the pictures. My power is not strong enough. But she is alone at last, Kraar. We must find her. And soon.’
‘Send the Night Hunters, Mistress.’
‘I spared one pack,’ whispered Morgra, ‘but the rest are at work sniffing out the citadel and the human child. No, I will have to use your eyes, Kraar. We shall have to find her ourselves.’
‘With her power to aid you, will you be able to hold the pictures in the water?’
‘The second power is a mere nothing,’ snorted Morgra,‘compared to what will come. It is the ancient howl that I really need her for. If the Pathways of Death are opened to the Searchers, the power to look into minds and control wills will enter the world. And with it the chance of final success.’
‘But you’re already controlling the Balkar’s wills, Mistress,’ said the raven.
‘With tricks and threats, perhaps,’ hissed Morgra, ‘but when I touch the third power, then we shall truly see.’
‘Such genius, though,’ Kraar flapped, taking to the air suddenly and settling next to Morgra, ‘to invoke the Shape Changer. To use mere myth to wield true power.’
Kraar hopped nervously around Morgra’s greying jaws. They had begun to dribble.
‘Wolfbane must be dreamt of by all the Varg.’ Morgra nodded with pleasure, growling and licking her lips thoughtfully. ‘The wolves must fear him, it is part of the verse, Kraar, and all of it must be fulfilled if the Vision is to come. But although Wolfbane is now a game I play with the Balkar, who is to say that the Shape Changer may not really come?
If enough blood soaks the earth perhaps he too will be unable to resist the stink and come crawling out of legend.’
‘Mistress,’ asked the raven, ‘did Wolfbane ever live up at the Stone Den?’
Morgra began to smile, just as she had done that day she had looked up at the castle as she stood before Palla’s pack.
‘Of course not, Kraar. I climbed up there after they... after they drove me out. That’s
when I first went in search of him. The Evil One. There was nothing there but the humans’ stones. But it didn’t stop the animals fearing the place and it gave me shelter for a while, and later an idea of how to enchant the Balkar.’
Kraar shivered excitedly.
‘What does Wolfbane look like, Mistress?’
‘Ah,’ growled the she-wolf, ‘what does a myth look like, Kraar? Those that fear him for his evil say he looks like a giant toad. Others that he is an enormous bat. But I can tell you the story of what the Shape Changer looked like when he was a young Varg. Then he was the greatest Dragga of all, with a coat like a mighty bear and claws as powerful as the sun. Then, when he stood before Tor and Fenris and spat in their faces. ’
‘Why did he do that?’ asked Kraar nervously.
‘Why?’ growled Morgra scornfully. ‘Because of their commandments, Kraar. Because they would have everything obey them, like fearful little children. Because Wolfbane had used the Sight to look down on the world from the heavens and seen all its pain and suffering, and he knew that Tor and Fenris had made it so. Wolfbane longed to revolt, to be free to do as he chose. But they had made him too and called him evil, and so Wolfbane went before them and spat in their muzzles and called them liars. ‘‘‘If you are goodness, Fenris, and you made me,’’ he snarled, ‘‘but won’t even let me choose my own way, then how can I be evil? I am nothing but what I am.’’ ’ ‘‘‘Very well,’’ snarled Fenris, ‘‘then we shall send you down among the Varg to give them all a choice.’’ Tor and Fenris hurled Wolfbane from the heavens and he fell. Like a comet he plunged towards the earth, and as he hit the edges of the skies at first his fur burnt like fire. Yet as he went on falling, the air put out the flames and cold gathered around him and it started to snow.’
Kraar’s little eyes were on stalks but Morgra had finished her story.
‘So what we are doing ... it shall not cease?’
‘Oh no, Kraar, and if he did come, then such an ally I should have!’
The raven’s eyes sparkled with admiration for his mistress. He flapped back on to his perch and dipped his beak. When he lifted it again there was a thin strip of raw flesh dangling from the end, like an earthworm. The raven cawed delightedly and, with a snap, swallowed it whole.
‘You know it’s my favourite,’ he dribbled, opening his coal-black head feathers like a hood. ‘You spoil me, Mistress.’
‘Spoil you?’ said Morgra. ‘Oh no, Kraar, you’ve earned far more than that. You opened Larka to her gift and, besides, your kind are a part of this. Have the birds not always been a key to the Sight? Well, then, the legend shall give you your real due.’
‘You mean Wolfbane’s promise,’ cried Kraar delightedly, ‘his pact with the flying scavengers, that he made in the valley of Kosov?’
A light mist was creeping into the freezing cave and it seemed to wrap itself almost tenderly around Morgra’s body, as the she-wolf stood over her seeing pool.
‘Yes Kraar.’
Morgra lifted her muzzle and began to chant. ‘When Wolfbane is dreamt of with terror and dread,
And untamed are tamed, prepare for the dead.
For the Shape Changer’s pact with the birds will come true,
When the blood of the Varg blends with Man in the dew,
As the Searchers are tempted, who hunger and prowl,
Down the Pathways of Death, by the summoning howl.
Morgra’s voice filled the cave, and above her head something inside that little pebble moved. It was alive. ‘But if Wolfbane is just a story,’ whispered Kraar wonderingly, ‘how can you ever—’
‘Trust me, Kraar.’
‘Then,’ said Kraar, ‘when you have helped us fulfil the pact, Mistress. Then I too will wield power?’
‘Of course,’ answered Morgra quietly, though her eyes twinkled with mischief and malice.
‘All my life,’ screeched Kraar, flapping his black wings frantically, ‘all my life the Putnar have laughed at me and called me nothing but a filthy scavenger. Kraar the body- snatcher. Kraar the winged thief. ‘You’re not a true bird of prey, Kraar, you’re just a tricksy, sneaky, stealthy—’
‘Shut up, Kraar,’ snapped Morgra and Kraar’s head almost disappeared among his feathers with fright.
‘So where were you going Larka, my dear?’ growled Morgra suddenly, getting to her feet and pawing at the water. ‘Or are you lost in the wood?’
‘What of her pack, Mistress?’ Kraar asked nervously, raising his head again.
‘The curse must have done its work on the rest of her brood. Did you see the look in their eyes when I summoned it? They would have believed anything and, as it is, I frightened them half to death. That lightning bolt didn’t harm the effect either. But tell me again, Kraar.’
Kraar began to preen himself once more. When he spoke there was a new confidence in the raven’s clacking voice.
‘The old nurse went first, eaten up with—’
‘Slowly,’ hissed Morgra.
When Kraar had finished recounting the manner of Brassa’s passing Morgra growled delightedly.
‘So you have had your revenge,’ said Kraar, ‘on the nurse, at least.’
‘Brassa saw the truth and kept it hidden to her cost,’ hissed Morgra bitterly. ‘But her death is only a taste of the revenge I shall have.’
Morgra looked almost impressive as she stood there, shaking with anger, for resentment was a birth right. Long before she had been driven out they had feared her for her strange ways, even as a cub. How she had yearned for affection and, as she grew, she had craved cubs of her own. She had ached to share so much with others, to be a pack wolf and share the secrets she was learning about the Sight. About life. She had ached to be allowed to love something. Then, on that terrible night, when she had killed the cub by accident and they had judged her wrongly. How she hated the wolves then.
So Morgra had wandered, isolated, too, by her own gift, and discovered Tsinga and the legend of the Sight. In the promise of that she had found a way of sublimating her own pain and loneliness, for it was soon after that the she-wolf learnt the terrible truth that she was barren. When Tsinga, too, had driven her out, she had set her powerful will and all her secret hopes on fulfilling the strange destiny promised by the legend. She had sought power in control of the Balkar, but only as a stepping stone to a far greater ambition.
Suddenly they heard a growl from outside. Morgra swung round. The Balkar wolf waiting beyond shivered in the cold. He could hear the raven snapping and cawing inside the cave, and he trembled at the noise and the thought of Morgra’s strange ability to speak with the birds. But his fear was as much at the thought of disturbing Morgra at all. Although Morgra led the Balkar, they all knew how now she liked to live apart and in secret, hating to be disturbed except for the gravest of reasons.
The wolf stopped at the entrance and his tail quivered as he sniffed the air. He could see clearly to the back of the cave, for his eyes were particularly strong and all the Night Hunters had been chosen by Tratto for their ability to see perfectly in the dark.
‘Morgra,’ he called nervously.
There was a snarl from inside and the Night Hunter stepped suddenly into the blackness.
‘Why do you disturb me, Brak?’ cried Morgra, as he padded inside.
‘Forgive me, Morgra,’ Brak trembled, dropping his ears, ‘but there is news. The fortune-teller is dead.’
Kraar started to flap about as though there were hot coals beneath his feet.
‘Marvellous,’ he cried, ‘more carrion. That blind old fool . ..’
But as soon as Kraar said it Morgra swung at him and her eyes were so angry they could have knocked him over.
‘How dare you talk of her like that.’
‘But, Mistress,’ said Kraar, ‘she drove us out. You can’t feel—’
‘Silence. Tsinga drove us out, yes, but she taught me once and knew more than a flying scavenger like you ever will, Kraar. And she was a fine wolf herself once. Don’t ev
er speak of her like that again.’
Kraar dropped his beak.
‘Morgra,’ whispered Brak nervously between them, ‘there is more news. We caught one of the rebels in the forests two suns back, another of Slavka’s spies, and we ... we questioned him.’
Brak grinned coldly. The rebel wolf would never answer any questions again.
‘Well?’ snapped Morgra.
‘Slavka has summoned this Greater Pack, at last,’ said Brak. ‘With the snows few will come until the summer, if they come at all, but there are signs that they are already stirring. Though he died before he would tell us where their Gathering Place is.’
Brak hardly knew how Morgra would react but she smiled at the thought of the rebel’s death and he went on.
‘Word must have got out ... of what you are doing, Morgra. Perhaps it was when we attacked Skop’s pack.’
Brak dropped his gaze.
‘There is shame in you, Brak,’ cried Morgra immediately, trying to conceal how pleased she really was, ‘and shame brings weakness. Are you a killer or not? Did not Tratto himself train you to be the First Among the Putnar and to kill without mercy if called on to do so?’
Brak lifted his head in confusion as he heard the Night Hunters’ favourite title.
‘No Siklas here, no breath of fear,’ whispered Morgra, quoting the Balkar’s rallying cry, too, ‘to breed the pure we all adhere.’
Brak felt a wild stirring in him. He was a powerful wolf, larger even than Huttser, and he was not the Dragga in his pack, while of the six Balkar packs, his was only the third in dominance. But they had all been trained as fighters by Tratto, in the days of the old wars when Tratto had resisted the southern invasion.
But Brak shuddered too. There were times when he longed to resist Morgra. But, just as Morgra had said, he was too implicated in the Night Hunters’ crimes. Once their terrible work had begun, there was no turning back.
‘There is something else, Morgra,’ he whispered.
‘Well?’
‘The human child,’ said Brak nervously. ‘Slavka may not believe in the Sight but you know the rumours of what happened to her and why she so hates the humans. Now all the rebels have orders to kill it, if they ever find it.’