'Then why?'
'I'll tell you when you're older.' He takes her hand in his warm, strong grip, and she clings on fiercely.
Now she was back on the Hogback; but there was no Fin-Kedinn to cling to.
By the time she had made her way down the ridge, she'd begun to see the hopelessness of her task. She had no idea where Torak had gone, and there was no-one to ask. No trail led along the shore the Otters didn't need one, they always travelled by water and even if she reached their camp on foot, what then?
She'd started picking her way south when she heard a stirring in the reeds.
'Bale?' she said uncertainly.
No answer. Only the creak and crunch of reeds, as if something were pushing its way towards her.
She stumbled backwards over the tussocky ground. 'Bale!' she whispered. 'If that's you, come out now, it isn't funny!'
The wind veered round, engulfing her in a stink that made her gag.
The reeds trembled parted and a boat slid towards her. From it stared a green man made of mouldy reeds.
Renn sprang back and collided with something solid.
'What is that?' said Bale, behind her.
'What was that?' he said again, when they'd retreated a safe distance to a bay at the southern edge of the reeds.
'I think the Otters made it,' said Renn, 'to honour the Lake. They put food in it and leave it to go where it will. It's sacred. We shouldn't even have seen it.'
Bale bit his lip. 'I'm glad I found you. This place. I don't know its ways.'
Renn shrugged. 'Well, I need a boat, so I'm glad you found me, too.' That didn't sound as friendly as she'd intended, so she went on quickly, 'Before we do anything, we must honour the Lake. The Otters ask its permission for everything.'
Bale nodded. 'What do we do?'
Feeling a bit self-conscious, Renn left an offering of salmon cakes near the reeds. Then she made a paste of earthblood and Lake water and daubed a little on her forehead and her bow, asking the Lake to let them go in peace. Bale let her daub some on his forehead, and after some persuasion on his skinboat. After that they had a meal of dried deer meat, and he made a fish trap out of willow withes, and set it in the water.
The sun sank lower and the wind dropped. The Lake turned as smooth as polished basalt.
'The Viper Mage,' Bale said quietly. 'She's after Torak because he's a spirit walker. Isn't she?'
' Yes,' said Renn. She wished he hadn't mentioned Seshru.
'And she's after the fire-opal, too.'
'Yes,' she said again. Lowering her voice, she added, 'It's the last piece left. One piece was lost in the black ice with the Bat Mage. One when the Seal Mage was taken by the Sea.'
'The Seal Mage?' Bale was startled. 'He had a piece of the fire-opal?'
'How else could he have made the tokoroths?'
He frowned. Renn guessed that he was remembering the bad times on his island, when the Seal Mage had created the sickness. Bale's little brother had been one of its victims.
A lonely, wavering cry echoed over the Lake.
Bale sprang to his feet. 'What was that?'
'A diverbird,' said Renn. 'They're the best swimmers in the Lake. The Otters make offerings to them, too.' She paused. 'Fin-Kedinn says the Otters are like their clan-creature. Always leaving little piles of half-chewed fish at the water's edge.'
Somewhere a trout leapt, and they jumped.
Bale shook himself, and went off to check his fish trap.
Renn stayed, brooding, on the shore.
'Renn,' called Bale in an altered voice.
'What?'
'You'd better come and see.'
EIGHTEEN.
The big bream wriggled and gasped in the trap. It was a fine catch except that it had two heads. Mouthless, misshapen, the second bulged like a canker, fighting its twin with horrible vigour.
'What did this?' said Bale with a grimace.
'Kill it,' said Renn.
'No!' ordered a voice behind them. 'Throw it back. Don't touch!'
They turned to face a cluster of sharp green faces and sharper spears.
Bale moved in front of Renn, but she stepped aside. With her fists on her heart, she addressed the woman who to judge from her armlet of otter fur was the Leader.
'I'm Raven Clan,' she said, 'my friend is Seal. We mean no harm.'
'No talk!' admonished the woman. Then to the others, 'Return that accursed thing to the Lake. We're taking the strangers to camp.'
'But Ananda, why?' protested a man. 'At a time like this '
'At a time like this, Yolun,' cut in the Leader, 'we can't let them go free, they'd only make it worse.'
The man called Yolun lapsed into tight-lipped silence, while two others broke up the trap and set the monster free.
After that, things happened fast. Renn and Bale were seized and bundled into a reed boat with Yolun and another man. When they tried to resist, knives were pressed against their spines. They could only watch as their gear was tossed in the skinboat, which was lashed to the stern of another craft and towed.
They headed south. Beside her, Renn felt Bale shaking with rage. She threw him an urgent glance and shook her head. Fighting was useless. The Otters bristled with greenstone spears and arrows tipped with the beaks of diverbirds. Trying to escape would be futile. The only reason they hadn't been tied up was because there was no need.
Renn studied Yolun as he sat hunched in the prow, stabbing the water with his paddle. His fish-skin jerkin was fringed at neck and hem, evoking the reeds. His eyes were outlined with earthblood to imitate the red glare of the diverbird. He kept glancing resentfully over his shoulder; but beneath his hostility, Renn sensed something else.
Bale bent and whispered in her ear. 'Their craft are heavy and slow. If we could reach my skinboat, we could outrun them.'
'And go where?' she whispered back. 'They know the Lake, we don't. Besides, I don't think they're angry so much as frightened.'
'That makes them even more dangerous.'
He was right.
The reed craft might not have the speed of a skinboat, but the Otters made steady progress, weaving unnerringly between the islands which dotted the Lake. As the light summer night wore on, their camp rose into view.
Like Bale, Renn was seeing it for the first time. Like him, she gasped.
'Why do they live like this?' he murmured.
'To be close to the Lake,' said Yolun. He stopped paddling, and for a moment his austere features glowed with fervour. 'The Lake is Mother and Father to us. From it comes all life. To it all life must return.' The resentment returned. 'We don't expect strangers to understand.'
'I'm no stranger,' said Renn. 'I'm Open Forest, like you.'
'You're not Otter Clan!' he snapped. 'No more talk.'
Wreathed in greenish smoke, the camp of the Otters floated above the Lake, linked to land by a single narrow walkway.
'It's built on stilts,' said Bale, amazed.
A forest of logs had been planted in the Lake, and on these lay wooden platforms bearing many squat reed domes. A bitter tang of smoke wafted towards them, with a powerful smell of fish. They saw smouldering brands mounted on posts; men and women gazing down at them, their eyes wide in their green-painted faces.
Renn was perplexed. The Otters were known as happy, playful people, like their clan-creature. Something had changed.
And all wore the green clay. Until now, Renn had never seen it, although she knew it was sacred to the Otters, who took it from a secret place on the north shore, and mixed it with fish oil. But they only ever used it to protect the sick and the dying. She wondered why the whole clan needed it now.
Yolun's companion moored the craft to one of the outer piles, and a hatch opened overhead. A rope ladder dropped down, and Yolun ordered them to climb.
They emerged into an acrid haze. Renn saw that what she'd taken for brands were chunks of horsehoof mushroom burnt, she guessed, to keep away midges. And still the Otters stared.
She and Bale were pushed towards the largest shelter: a smoky hut lit by rushlights. Inside, she was assailed by a stink of rotting fish. The Otters seemed unconcerned, and even Bale merely wrinkled his nose. Out of politeness, Renn pretended not to notice.
When everyone had crawled inside, Ananda called for food. Seeing Renn's surprise, she said, 'We have a saying on the Lake. A stranger is my guest until proven my enemy.'
Yolun snorted, as if he'd had proof enough.
'We're not enemies,' said Bale.
'So you say,' said Ananda. 'Eat.'
There was silence while a boy and a young woman brought fish-shaped bowls of tight-woven sedge filled with reed-pollen gruel, and a basket piled with baked reed stems: charred on the outside, white and starchy when peeled.
Renn recognized the young woman as a Raven who'd mated with an Otter the previous summer. 'Dyrati?'
Dyrati avoided her eyes. 'Eat,' she said, ladling a grey sludge over Renn's gruel. It looked like thick honey, but the stench of rotten fish made Renn's eyes water.
'Stickleback grease,' said Dyrati. 'Eat!'
'Eat!' commanded Yolun. 'Or do you scorn our food?'
They were all watching her.
She prodded the stinking mess, and felt her gorge rise.
Bale came to her rescue. 'She isn't used to boats, it's turned her stomach.' Emptying her bowl into his, he started eating with every appearence of relish and the Otters relaxed.
'How can you?' whispered Renn.
'I like it,' he mumbled with a shrug. 'We make the same thing in the islands, but with cod.'
'You'll be wondering why we have no fish to give you,' said Ananda. 'Even this grease is from last spring.' She searched their faces. 'Someone is making the Lake sick.'
The Otters began rocking and moaning, and many touched the tufts of clan-creature fur hanging from their ears.
'A while ago,' Ananda went on, 'a child fell ill, and our Mage sent us to fetch the sacred clay. We found the healing spring plundered. A stranger had stolen what only an Otter may touch. That's when the troubles began.' She shuddered. 'People would fall into a death-like sleep and wake screaming, bitten by slithering demons in their dreams. Then the catch failed.'
Yolun shook his head. 'There used to be times when the fish were so plentiful that you could step from your boat and run across their backs, all the way to the shore. But this spring hardly any. And what we do take is twisted. Cursed.'
'Every spring,' said Ananda, 'the ice river in the east sends much water to the Lake. It's a time of great blessing, when the water rises so high that its voice beneath our shelters laps us to sleep. Not this spring. The Lake sinks lower and lower.'
'Trouble always comes from the west!' cried Yolun, fixing his red-rimmed eyes on the strangers. 'We heard tell of an outcast, heading for the Lake. Then we saw him. He stole the sacred clay, he brought the troubles! And now these strangers have come to make it worse!'
At the mention of Torak, Renn and Bale stiffened. Neither dared meet the other's glance.
The Leader was on it at once. 'You know the outcast. Who are you?'
'I'm Bale of the Seal Clan,' Bale said proudly.
'And I'm Renn of the Raven Clan. I'm Fin-Kedinn's brother's daughter. Dyrati knows me.'
Dyrati folded her arms and said not a word.
Renn showed them her wrist-guard. 'See this? It's greenstone. Fin-Kedinn made it for me in the Otter way, which he learnt when he lived with your clan.'
An old man lifted rheumy eyes from his bowl. 'I remember. An angry young man, but he honoured the Lake.'
'Even if the girl is who she says,' said Yolun, 'what of the boy? A Seal on the Lake? How can that be right?'