Torak looked from Nef to Seshru to Thiazzi. Their faces were alight with fervour. While he had been plotting to rescue Wolf, they had been hatching a plan to gain dominion over the Forest.
'Soul-Eaters, they call us,' said Thiazzi. He spat out a crumb of spruce-blood.
'A foolish name,' said Nef.
'But useful,' murmured Seshru with her sideways smile, 'if it keeps them in fear.'
Torak rose uncertainly to his feet. 'I should go,' he said. 'I should guard the offerings.'
'From what?' said Thiazzi, blocking his path. 'The Eye is shut. Nothing can get in.'
'Or out,' said Seshru.
Torak swallowed. 'One of them might escape.'
The Viper Mage slid him a mocking glance. 'He wants to get away from us.'
'I told you he was a coward,' sneered Thiazzi.
'Here.' Nef held out a length of shrivelled black root. 'Take it. Eat.'
'What is it?' said Torak.
Seshru licked her lips, showing her little pointed tongue. 'It'll send you into a trance.'
'This is part of being a Soul-Eater,' said Thiazzi. 'That is what you want. Isn't it?'
All three were watching him.
He took the root and put it in his mouth. It tasted sweet, but with an undertow of rottenness that made him gag.
They had trapped him. First the owl. Now this. Where would it end? How was he ever going to find Wolf?
TWENTY-TWO.
There was black fog in Wolf's head, and it told him that 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 round and go back again. Pace, turn. Pace, turn.
He 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 leapt 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 any more, and it didn't carry his scent. It smelt 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 the stupid 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 leapt. 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 waken thirst, 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 tree bark was wound about his muzzle.
Once again he was unable to howl.
TWENTY-THREE.
The forest of stone was growing before Torak's eyes.
Rocky trunks thrust upwards 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" which Renn had told him about: the one you used for Magecraft. He wished savagely that she was 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 alert than 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 round and round, 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 in a hollowed stone then drew them 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 the invisible 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 was beauty 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 leapt to his feet and ran.
TWENTY-FOUR.
Torak 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 to break 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 undertaste 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 - No! 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.