A weasel in its white winter coat rose on its hind legs to snuff the wind. Wolf pricked his ears, and shot off in pursuit.
Fin-Kedinn watched him go. Then he turned to Torak and said, 'I told you once of the great fire that broke up the Soul-Eaters.'
Renn froze with a fish in one hand.
Torak stiffened. 'I remember,' he said carefully.
Scrape, scrape, scrape went Fin-Kedinn's antler knife, scattering fish-scales. 'Your father caused it,' he said.
Torak's mouth went dry.
'The fire-opal,' said the Raven Leader, 'was the heart of Soul-Eater power. Your father took it. He shattered it into pieces.'
Renn put down the fish. 'He shattered the fire-opal?'
'Then he started the great fire,' said Fin-Kedinn. He paused. 'One Soul-Eater was killed in that fire. Killed trying to reach a fragment of the fire-opal.'
'The seventh Soul-Eater,' murmured Renn. 'I wondered about that.'
Torak stared into the red heart of the embers, and thought of his father. His father, who had started the great fire. 'So he didn't just run away,' he said.
'Oh, he was no coward,' said the Raven Leader. 'He was clever, too. He made it appear that he and his mate had also perished in the fire. Then they fled to the Deep Forest.'
'The Deep Forest,' said Torak. The previous summer, he'd reached its borders. He remembered the dense shadows beneath the secretive, watchful trees. 'They should have stayed there. They would have been safe.'
With his knife, Fin-Kedinn woke up the fire. In the flaring light, his features seemed carved in granite. 'They should have stayed with your mother's people, yes. Leaving was their undoing.' He looked at Torak. 'But they were betrayed. Your father's brother learned that they still lived. From then on, they were hunted. And your mother ,' he drew a sharp breath, 'your mother wouldn't endanger her people by staying. So they left.' Again he stirred the embers. 'The following summer, you were born.'
'And she died,' said Torak.
The Raven Leader did not reply. He was gazing into the past, his blue eyes bright with pain.
Torak turned his head and stared at the birch trees that stretched their naked branches to the cold sky.
Wolf returned, with a hare's front leg dangling from his jaws. He splashed into the shallows, tossed the hare's leg high, then made a spectacular leap and caught it in mid-air.
'The fire-opal,' said Renn. 'You said it was broken into pieces.'
Fin-Kedinn fed more wood to the fire. 'Tell me, Renn. When you held it in your hand, how big was it?'
Torak twitched in irritation. What did that matter now?
'About the size of a duck's egg,' said Renn. She caught her breath. 'It was only a fragment!'
The Raven Leader nodded. 'That from which it came was almost the size of your fist.'
There was a silence. Wolf lay on the bank, quietly demolishing the hare's leg. Even the alders had stopped talking.
Torak said, 'So the stone that went down with the Bat Mage was only one piece. There may be more?'
'There are more,' said the Raven Leader. 'Think, Torak.
There was at least one other that we know of. The Soul-Eater across the Sea must have had one, to have made the demon bear that killed your father.'
Torak struggled to take it in. 'How many in all?'
'I don't know,' said Fin-Kedinn.
'Three,' said Renn in a low voice. 'There were three.' They stared at her.
'Three red eyes in the dark. I saw them in my dream. One taken by the Sea. One by the Bat Mage. And one . . .' she broke off. 'Where's the third?'
Fin-Kedinn spread his hands. 'We don't know.'
Torak raised his head and stared into the gnarled branches above him. High up so high that he hadn't spotted it till now he saw a ball of mistletoe. The oak wasn't asleep after all, he realized. There above him was its small, green, ever-wakeful heart. He wondered what secrets it knew. Did it know about him? Did it see the mark on his chest?
Slipping his hand inside his parka, he touched the scab. This mark by itself endangered those around him, just as Renn's lightning tattoos protected her. And somewhere in the Forest, or in the Far North, or beyond the Sea, the three remaining Soul-Eaters were plotting: to find the final fragment of the fire-opal; to find him, Torak the spirit walker . . .
'Renn,' said Fin-Kedinn, making him start. 'Go back to camp, and tell Saeunn about the fire-opal.'
'But I want to stay here,' protested Renn.
'Go. I need to talk to Torak alone.'
Renn sighed, and got to her feet.
Suddenly, Torak felt that it was terribly important to speak to her before she left. 'Renn,' he said, drawing her aside and talking under his breath so that Fin-Kedinn wouldn't hear, 'I need you to know something.'
'What?' she said crossly.
'There are things I haven't told you yet. But I will.'
To his surprise, she didn't roll her eyes impatiently. She fiddled with her quiver-strap and scowled. 'Oh well,' she muttered, 'everybody has secrets. Even me.' Then she brightened up. 'Does this mean you're staying?'
'I don't know.'
'You should stay. Stay with us.'
'I don't fit in.'
She snorted. 'I know that! But you don't fit in anywhere else either, do you?' Then she flashed him her sharp-toothed grin, hoisted her bow on her shoulder, and walked off through the trees.
For a while after she'd gone, neither Torak nor Fin-Kedinn spoke. The Raven Leader skewered a big bream on a stick, and set it to roast in the embers, while Torak sat brooding.
'Eat,' said Fin-Kedinn at last.
'I'm not hungry.'
'Eat.'
Torak ate and discovered that he was ravenous. He'd finished off most of the bream before he realized that the Raven Leader had eaten little.
It was the first time they'd been alone together since Fin-Kedinn had rescued them on the ice. Torak wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and said, 'Are you angry with me?'
Fin-Kedinn cleaned his knife in the snow. 'Why should I be angry?'
'Because I went off to seek Wolf without your leave.'
'You don't need my leave. You're nearly a man.' He paused, then added drily, 'You'd better start acting like one.'
That stung. 'What was I supposed to do, let the Soul-Eaters sacrifice Wolf? Let them overrun the Forest with demons?'
'You should have come back and sought my help.'
Torak opened his mouth to protest, but the Raven Leader silenced him with a glance. 'You survived by luck, Torak. And because the World Spirit wanted you to. But luck runs out. The World Spirit turns its favour elsewhere. You need to stay with the clan.'
Torak remained stubbornly silent.
'Tell me,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'What tracks can you see around you?'
Torak stared at him. 'What?'
'You heard me.'
Puzzled, Torak told him. The deep, dragging hoof-prints of an auroch. A few raggedly bitten-off twigs left by a red deer. A cluster of barely visible hollows, each with a tiny pile of frozen droppings at the bottom, where some willow grouse had huddled together for company.
Fin-Kedinn nodded. 'Your father taught you well. He taught you tracking because it teaches you to listen: to stay open to what the Forest is telling you. But when he was a young man, he never listened to anyone. He was convinced he was right. Tracking, listening that was your mother's gift.' He paused. 'Maybe by teaching you tracking, your father was trying to prevent you making the same mistakes he did.'
Torak thought about that.
'If you left now,' Fin-Kedinn went on, 'it would be you against three Mages of enormous power. You wouldn't stand a chance.'
On the riverbank, Wolf had finished the hare's leg, and now stood wagging his tail at his name-soul in the water.
Fin-Kedinn watched him. 'A young wolf,' he said, 'can be foolhardy. He may think he can bring down an elk on his own, but he forgets that it only takes one kick to kill him. And yet if he has the sense to wait, he'll live to bring down many.' He turned to Torak. 'I'm not telling you to stay. I'm asking you.'
Torak swallowed. Fin-Kedinn had never asked him anything before.
Leaning towards him, the Raven Leader spoke with unaccustomed gentleness. 'Something's troubling you. Tell me what it is.'
Torak wanted to. But he couldn't. At last he mumbled, 'The knife that you made for me. I lost it. I'm sorry.'
Fin-Kedinn read the evasion in his face, and sighed. 'I'll make you another,' he said. With the aid of his staff, he rose to his feet. 'Watch the catch. I'm going up the hill to check the snares. And Torak . . . Whatever it is that's wrong, you're better off here, with people who with your friends.'
When he'd gone, Torak remained by the fire. He could feel the Soul-Eater tattoo burning through his parka. You will never be free of us . . .
In the shallows, Wolf had found fresh prey: the battered carcass of a roe buck which had drowned further upstream, and was now drifting slowly past. He pounced on it, and it sank beneath his weight, taking him with it. He surfaced, scrambled onto the bank, shook the water from his fur, and tried again. Again the buck sank. After the third attempt, Wolf sat down, whining softly. A raven alighted on the carcass, and laughed at him.
Maybe the Viper Mage was right, thought Torak. Maybe I will never be free of her.
He sat up straighter. But she will never be free of me.
You know who I am now, he told the Soul-Eaters silently, but I know you, too. I know who I'm fighting. And I'm not alone. I can tell the Ravens what's happened. I will tell them. Not today, but soon. I can trust them. Fin-Kedinn will know what to do.
The breeze loosed a flurry of snow from the branches overhead, and at the same moment, the sun came out, and turned the falling flakes to tiny slivers of rainbow.
Wolf came loping up the bank, bringing the fresh, cold smell of the river. They touched muzzles. On impulse, Torak pulled down the neck of his parka, and showed Wolf the Soul-Eater tattoo. Wolf gave it a sniff and a lick, then wandered off to snuffle up the fish-scales around the fire.
He doesn't mind, thought Torak in surprise.
With a new sense of hope, he glanced about him. Signs of spring were everywhere. Fluffy silver catkins bursting out on the willow trees. Sunlight gleaming on the sharp buds of beechlings pushing through the snow around their parents.
He remembered the offering he'd made on the night that Wolf was taken. He'd asked the Forest to watch over Wolf. It had heard him. Maybe now it would watch over him, too.
Around mid-afternoon, Fin-Kedinn returned, carrying three woodgrouse and a hare. He didn't look at Torak, but Torak could see the tension in his face as he went to the oak tree and began untying the lines of fish.
Torak stood up and started to help. 'I want to stay,' he said.
Fin-Kedinn's blue eyes glinted. He pressed his lips together in a smile. 'Good,' he said. 'That's good.' Then he put his hand on Torak's shoulder and gave it a shake, and together they started back for camp.
Soul Eater is the third book in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, which tell the story of Torak's adventures in the Forest and beyond, and of his quest to vanquish the Soul-Eaters. Wolf Brother is the first book, and Spirit Walker is the second. The fourth book, Outcast, will be published in 2007. There will be six books in all.
A WORD ABOUT WOLF.
At the start of Wolf Brother, Wolf was three moons old. By the beginning of Soul Eater, he's twenty moons old, and he looks like a full-grown wolf but he isn't, not in terms of experience.
When he ran with the pack on the Mountain of the World Spirit, he picked up some of the hunting skills he'll need if he's to survive, but he's still got a lot to learn.
And although he'll soon be physically capable of fathering cubs, he won't be doing that for a while. Many wolves are three years old or more before they find a mate and start a family. Until then, they often act as baby-sitters for their younger brothers and sisters, looking after them while the rest of the pack is out hunting.
Because Wolf's chest is narrow, and his legs are long and slender, he can plough through deep snow quickly and easily. His big paws act like snowshoes, letting him run over the top of crusted snow, where the sharp hooves of deer might sink right in.
Because it's winter, Wolf's fur is much thicker than it was in Spirit Walker, which makes him look even bigger. His pelt has two layers: the short, fluffy underfur, which traps air to insulate him from the cold; and the long, coarse guard hairs which protect him from rain, snow, and scratchy juniper bushes. It's because of his superb winter pelt that Wolf can brave the Far North without feeling the cold like Torak and Renn.
Unlike them, Wolf has incredible endurance. Even his walk is twice as fast as Torak's (unless he's deliberately slowing down to let Torak keep up), but most of the time he prefers to trot: a beautiful, fluid, floating gait which he can keep up for hours. And his run, of course, is much faster than Torak's.
Some of Wolf's senses are much better than Torak's, while others are about the same. We don't know very much about a wolf's sense of taste, although we know that their tongues can sense the same kinds of taste as us: salty, sweet, bitter and sour. But we don't know how meat tastes to Wolf; or water, or blood.
It's thought that wolves' eyesight is roughly similar to ours, although they're better at distinguishing shades of grey, and seeing in the dark. They also seem to be better at spotting movement which is useful for hunting in the Forest and it's thought that they don't see in colour, at least, not as well as we do.
Wolf's sense of hearing is better than Torak's. He can hear sounds that are too high for Torak to catch, and his large ears help him pick up very faint sounds. This partly explains why not even Torak will ever be able to grasp all the subtleties of wolf talk, or express himself as well as a real wolf: because he can't make or hear the highest yips and whines, as Wolf can.