The birds crowed and flapped about delightedly and the young wolves watched in amazement as Palla joined her mate. Larka had never seen such a fury in her parents before, even when they quarrelled, and the sight suddenly terrified her. Fell too remembered resentfully the pain he had felt when Huttser had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck that sun Skop had arrived. But as they watched, suddenly all three children began to grow angry themselves.
The bloodlust was on their parents and the fur round their muzzles was already drenched with gore. Their eyes had grown almost sightless with the furious pleasure of the feast, and as the wolves joined them, biting and snarling at each other as they found their place around the body in their natural pecking order, they all settled in to gorge themselves.
‘Come, children,’ growled Palla at last, as she saw them hanging back.
Fell leapt forward. A frenzy had woken in his eyes and as he tugged at the meat and tasted the fresh blood he was mastered by the thrill of a wholly unfamiliar passion. That wild sense of freedom was mingled now with a strangely liberating anger. Kar joined him and Larka pushed in beside them too and started to tug at the buffalo. But as the crows flapped and cawed about them, Larka suddenly fancied that amid the noises she could understand words. The birds were talking.
‘Tear it,’ one seemed to say, ‘crack its bones.’
‘Hunger,’ snapped another, ‘time to feast.’
‘All in good time,’ crowed a raven. ‘Let the Putnar gorge and the scavengers wait. For when Wolfbane returns and his promise is fulfilled, all nature shall rebel and then we shall feed on them too.’
Larka’s head was dizzy, and suddenly she grew hot all over. She turned her head and noticed the raven watching her intently. Larka shivered, for she thought she had recognized it, and then something even more extraordinary happened.
For a moment Larka could no longer see and then, with a flash, she felt that she was in the air itself. Below her was the ravening pack tugging at the sides of the dead buffalo, pulling away at the skin that contained its flesh, desperate to get to the meat and tendons and bone inside. As Larka looked down she gasped, for there was her own body lying still in the grass next to the carrion. Larka seemed to hover and dive over the bloody ritual and then, almost as suddenly as it had happened, she found herself stirring in the grass again, as the sounds of the pack came once more to her ears and the raven settled quietly nearby.
Huttser lifted his head. Fell was trying to push Kar out of the way, but Larka had vanished.
‘Kar, where is Larka?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ stammered Kar, looking round with surprise.
‘Damn you,’ snarled Huttser, ‘are you a Dragga or not?’ The pack had stopped feeding altogether.
‘Something must have frightened her,’ growled Huttser.
‘She can’t have gone that far. We’ll follow her scent.’
But as they began to scent for her, Palla grew frantic. The smell of the buffalo was so fresh in their nostrils and its blood so strong on their lips, they could not pick up any sign of Larka at all.
‘Split up,’ cried Huttser.
Larka was in a torment. As soon as she reached the cover of the trees she had looked for somewhere to hide, anywhere where she could be alone to think as she tried to understand what had just happened. She found an abandoned hole by the bowl of an old elm tree, and scrabbled angrily at the soil, pulling her body inside, eased by the darkness and the warm earth. There she lay and tried to calm her breathing. Her eyes were still swimming and she felt a terrible throbbing in her head.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ Larka whispered bitterly to herself. ‘I was looking through that bird’s eyes.’
It was as if she had left her own wolf body and become one of the birds, flying above the feeding pack. Larka began to tremble violently.
‘The Sight,’ she gasped suddenly. ‘The first power is to look through the eyes of birds.’
As she said it the air seemed to have been sucked from the den. The revelation so startled Larka that for a moment she mistook the beating of her own blood for the sound of an animal stalking her.
‘Is this the curse, then?’ she whispered in terror. ‘Is this what Morgra threatened? Wolfbane made a pact with the birds and what those crows said...’
Larka suddenly heard voices approaching. Her mother was calling and Palla and Fell were walking right past the hole.
‘Larka, where are you, Larka?’
Larka remembered the cold ferocity she had seen in her mother as she had begun to feed and she felt so terrified that she pulled herself even further into her hiding place. She was still trembling badly and now she began to shiver too as she heard her mother and her brother disappearing into the distance.
It was getting dark when Larka pulled herself out of the hole. The forest was empty and perfectly quiet. The foliage glowed in the half-light and the fading sun cast a web of darkening shadows through the branches like some kind of net of light.
‘The Sight,’ she whispered, looking about her fearfully. Larka set off in the direction she fancied she had heard Palla going and she grew lonelier and lonelier as she went. After a while she realized how desperately hungry she was too. Every now and then the she-wolf would stop and let out mournful howls, though no sound came to answer her. The shadows got deeper and Larka kept looking up at the looming trees. She had the feeling that somebody or something was watching her.
‘I’m a Varg,’ she kept saying, to reassure herself, ‘a wolf. The forest fears me and I’ve nothing to be scared of.’
But even as she said it Larka felt desperately scared. She might be a wolf, but what kind of wolf was she? Suddenly Larka stopped. Sounds were drifting towards her through the trees. At first it was like the high-pitched scream of the she-wolf caught in some careless trap, but then it sank lower and rose again in a lilting, dancing cry. Larka was strangely drawn by the sound. She caught a flickering, orange glow through the trees ahead.
Larka crept nearer and her ears were suddenly filled with a raucous noise she did not understand was laughter. She caught sight of a clearing and the smell she had sensed so faintly at the Stone Spores was all around. As Larka pushed her nose gingerly through the branches and saw them, she gasped.
‘Man,’ she whispered.
A terrible feeling gripped her stomach.
‘The Man Varg. The legend of the Sight.’
But the eye cannot resist a moving object and now Larka was caught. The group of humans was seated in a circle. One was holding an odd wooden object to his cheek as his arm drew a stick across it that produced the beautiful sounds drifting all about them. From the fur sprouting from his muzzle and his size Larka guessed he must be a Dragga.
Another male was seated on a tree stump nearby and in front of him was crouched what Larka guessed from her soft features was the Drappa. She was holding one of the man’s paws in her own and gazing intently at the palm, so intently that it seemed as though her very life depended on it. There was a fire in the centre of the circle that sent out a lurid glow that danced about their dark, leathery faces.
There was something cunning in those faces, hunted too, for these were Roma, or Gypsies, and like the wolf they moved through the trees like shadows. Their kind had not that long since arrived in the land beyond the forest, but they had soon been persecuted and enslaved for their ways and beliefs. They had once drifted far from the south from a country called India, in search of freedom and land, and escaping from a system of power and belief that had made other men try to keep them for ever the Siklas of their own world.
In the woods and mountains some had found a taste of freedom. But they had also found fear and hate and mistrust. Because they kept apart and called any not of their own kind Gadje´ , they had crystallized the fear that surrounded them, living on the edges of society, and some had been forced to survive through crime and deceit, or to make their livings by trying to tell the future. Yet others had developed skills and adopted trades. Like the Argintari, the tinkers and theFierari, the blacksmiths. This little group of Gypsies called themselves Lautari, for they were musicians.
Larka’s attention left the humans and was suddenly consumed by the firelight. She remembered the bolt of lightning that Morgra had dropped from the skies to burn the tree that stormy, grey night when they had been cursed. But this fire was different somehow. Surrounded by stones, it seemed almost contained by the circle of humans. Larka found it almost irresistible, for she could not feel its heat on her fur. As the she-wolf gazed into it and saw the glowing red embers rippling along the wood like water, bursting here into flame, dying down again, she found her thoughts and her young memories following it, almost drawn into the dancing flames. Larka felt as if her own mind had suddenly entered a brilliant dream.
Palla was searching desperately for her daughter on the other side of the forest when they too heard a sound. The ground dipped suddenly towards a deep hollow and there were two wolves standing in the clearing below them. They were strangers.
‘Balkar?’ whispered Palla immediately, backing behind a tree and grabbing hold of the skin around Fell’s neck to pull him after her. The wolves were whispering, but the air was still and the sound came clear and true through the wood.
‘I don’t like it,’ one wolf was growling, ‘crossing into this pack’s territory without even asking Tratto’s Blessing. It’s bad luck all right.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Darm. Do you think the Balkar would ask permission?’ said the other. ‘Besides, Slavka has given orders. Loyalty always.’
Palla’s ears twitched as she remembered what Skop had said about the leader of a rebel pack.
‘I still don’t like it, Gart. Going so close to their horrid stones.’
‘This is where the human cub was taken from,’ said Gart sternly, ‘and it’s our job to find it.’
Palla’s ears came up and Fell’s nose twitched.
‘Legends,’ snorted Darm in the hollow, ‘that’s all I hear nowadays. Isn’t it enough that Morgra has begun to worship the cult of Wolfbane again, without our believing in the legend of the Sight as well? Isn’t it enough that she is trying to summon the Shape Changer?
‘If the legend is true,’ growled Gart nervously, ‘it is not Wolfbane she should fear, but what comes after Wolfbane. His pact with the flying scavengers, and the final power of the Man Varg.’
‘What is this final power?’ The wolf shook his head.
‘Tell me the verse again.’
Palla strained forwards immediately but his companion had paused.
As a she-cub is whelped with a coat that is white,
And a human child stolen to suckle the Sight
From a place where injustice was secretly done
Then the Marked One is here and a legend begun.
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.
Then the third of the powers will be fleshed on the bone
And the Searchers tempt nature to prey on its own.
With blood at the altar, the Vision shall come
When the eye of the moon is as round as the sun.
In the citadel raised by the lords of before,
The stone twins await – both the power and the law.
Then the past and the future shall finally show,
To the wounded, the secret the Lera must know.
And all shall be witness to that which will be,
In the mind of the Man Varg, then none shall be free.
And only a family both loving and true,
May conquer the evil, so ancient, so new.
As they fight to uncover what secrets they share
And behold in their journey how painful is care.
Their faith shall be tried by the makers of life,
Beware the Betrayer, whose meaning is strife
For who shall divine, in the dead of the night,
The lies from the truth, the darkness from light?
Like the cry of the scavenger, torn through the air
A courage is needed, as deep as despair.’
‘Larka,’ she said, trembling, ‘I must find Larka.’
Fell began to growl at her side but Palla shook her head to silence him.
‘This family,’ Darm went on suddenly in the hollow, ‘the family to conquer the evil. Shouldn’t we put our trust in them?’ Gart growled scornfully now, for he had remembered himself and he valued his leader’s orders. ‘You know Slavka trusts only to teeth and claws.’
‘Yes,’ said Darm almost angrily, ‘and the Combats and the Gauntlet too.’
Fell’s ears twitched.
‘Slavka says if another wolf has been born that claims to wield the Sight,’ said Gart, ‘then it is our enemy too. We must destroy anything connected to the old beliefs. And if Morgra finds this human, Slavka fears for us all.’
‘Why,’ said Darm, ‘if Slavka doesn’t believe the legend?’
‘Because Morgra could use the human to stir up the ancient fears and fool the Varg, just as she is doing with Wolfbane. It’s clear it’s not around here any more, so we will travel east. That takes us towards Tsinga’s valley too.’
‘Tsinga,’ growled Darm fearfully, ‘in the Vale of Shadows?’
‘The fortune-teller was always dangerous,’ said Gart coldly, ‘and quite mad. But perhaps she can tell us more, if she still lives. Then we will track down the human cub.’
‘And when we find it?’
Gart’s voice suddenly grew cold with cunning. ‘Kill it, of course, Darm. As Slavka decrees we must kill all connected to the Sight.’
Palla’s eyes glittered fearfully in the darkness as a breeze stirred the leaves around their paws and made them whisper mournfully through the forest.
As Larka stood mesmerized by the fire she suddenly heard another sound, a low wail. Outside the circle of Gypsies lay a little moving bundle, in a crib made of intercrossing branches. As it turned over Larka gasped and backed away. It was a human cub. As she stood there fascinated by these strange creatures, she shivered and thought again of the theft of a child. But in her belly Larka felt the stirrings of hunger and, as she looked at the defenceless creature, Larka shuddered.
She was about to turn when she noticed that one of the humans had bent down and picked up a branch from the fire. It flared furiously at the end of his arm, and Larka was so startled that a thought flashed through her mind that perhaps Man made it and controlled it.
Larka suddenly broke away from the firelight. Noiselessly she skirted the humans and passed on as the strange music faded into the distance. The forest grew darker and darker and her spirits sank even more, for she was growing hungry. She kept looking about her for the signs of Lera, though she didn’t really know how to hunt.
Larka was coming towards another clearing when she suddenly caught a scent. The she-wolf looked up in amazement, for it was as if, just as she had begun to look for food, it had been provided for her.
In front of Larka stood a great tree in the centre of the clearing and its branches were twisted into gnarled and ancient shapes. It was in full leaf and a chunk of raw flesh was dangling from a vine of trailing ivy below one of the bows. As it hung there, red and raw, Larka thought the hanging meat looked like nothing so much as fruit. Strangely Larka tried to remember what Fell had said about a golden deer pelt, the pelt of knowledge.
Larka suddenly felt very nervous again, for there was something else in the odour filling the air that reminded the wolf of the Gypsies. She peered about and noticed that the floor of the clearing was thick with dead leaves, though the tree hadn’t shed.
The place gave Larka an eerie sensation, but the meat looked far too tempting to resist. Larka sprung at it but she was still too small and her paw missed the meat. She was going to spring again when suddenly a howl came to her that made her heart leap.
‘Skop,’ cried Larka delightedly. ‘Oh, Skop, I’m over here.’ There was Skop, with Khaz and Kipcha at his side too, coming straight through the trees on the opposite side of the clearing.
‘At last, little sister,’ cried Kipcha delightedly, as they bounded towards her.
Larka backed away a little for she suddenly remembered what had happened to her at the hunt.
‘Thank Fenris,’ shouted Khaz but as he did so, and was nearly at Larka’s side, Khaz slowed and a strange expression came into his face as he caught the scent of death swaying in the trees. Larka would remember that look for the rest of her days. The hesitation, the questioning, the fear as he spotted the meat. Kipcha and Skop had seen it too and suddenly Kipcha’s eyes woke to horror.
‘No, Khaz,’ she cried, ‘don’t.’
Khaz couldn’t hear Kipcha. An extraordinary feeling had just come over him. It was as though he was travelling along a deep ravine he could not escape, at the end of which lay he knew not what. He wanted to pull up but the fear consuming his mind kept him running.
He reached the strange carpet of leaves ahead of the others and suddenly there was the sound of snapping twigs. Khaz’s whole body contorted into an unnatural, writhing dance as the leaves rose in a flurry around him and the wolf vanished with a yelp. Larka gasped as a hole suddenly yawned in front of her.
Kipcha and Skop were at the edge of the pit too. It must have been a good two branches deep and Kipcha shuddered as she saw the vicious stakes at its bottom. Khaz was on his side and struggling furiously. One of the stakes had pierced his chest.
‘Khaz,’ cried Kipcha desperately. ‘Oh, Khaz.’ Khaz tried to raise his head.
‘Kipcha,’ he growled dreamily from the pit below her, ‘what happened to me, Kipcha?’
Kipcha’s eyes were wrought with pain, but she shook her head hopelessly as she stood above him.
‘Kipcha,’ gasped Khaz faintly, ‘I’ve been wounded.’
As he said it Larka felt as though a gust of wind had just passed through her body.
‘The humans,’ snarled Skop angrily. ‘It’s a hunting pit. The meat was a trap.’
Larka was trembling terribly as she looked down at her friend kicking on the earth floor. Khaz’s blood was already staining the ground.
‘It’s all my fault,’ whispered Larka, starting to shake.
‘Stop it, Larka,’ growled Khaz painfully, ‘Kipcha, Skop. You must get Larka away from here.’
Larka began to tremble again. Sounds were coming through the trees. Strange cries that reminded the young wolf of the flight down the river. Then, across the ground, the wolves felt a distant tremor.
‘Horses,’ snarled Skop.
‘Listen to me, Kipcha,’ groaned Khaz. ‘Take Larka and run. As fast as you can. I’m finished anyway.’
‘But, Khaz,’ cried Kipcha bitterly, ‘what about us... our cubs.’
‘The pack. Look to the pack. Save Larka. You must, Kipcha, for me.’
Fear had Kipcha by the throat and all her instincts told her to flee from the approaching sounds. But as she looked down at Khaz she felt as if her heart was breaking apart.
‘Kipcha,’ whispered Skop kindly, ‘we must get out of here.’
Larka was wracked with grief and guilt as she watched Kipcha whimpering sadly above Khaz. The sounds were getting closer and, Skop kept turning his head towards the trees, but still Kipcha couldn’t move. It was Khaz, who released them. The wolf gave a violent shudder and, with a last effort, he shook the dying voice from his body.
‘Go, Kipcha,’ he gasped, ‘if Tor and Fenris had meant me to be your mate you would obey me. So now I order you. Go.’
Khaz’s body shuddered and his red tail sank lifelessly to the ground. The wolf was dead. As his head flopped to the earth floor Khaz’s words by the river echoed through Larka’s mind. They will have to get through us first. Kipcha lifted her muzzle and gave a bitter howl but the sounds from the trees were almost on them.
‘Quickly, Kipcha,’ said Skop.
Suddenly the she-wolf turned and cried to Larka.
‘Run, little one. Run for your life.’
The wolves’ hearts beat with horror and sorrow as they sprang away. They only just vanished into the trees as, behind them, the clearing was turned to a churning fury of men and horses. The hunters had arrived.
On they ran, blindly. The bushes scratched their fur and briers and brambles cut their pads, but at last they reached the edge of the wood. The rest of the pack was nowhere to be seen but there in the grass lay the carcass of the buffalo and in the moonless night the birds, fattened on their gorgeous feast, had begun to pick it clean.