The Sight (25 page)

‘Follow me,’ cried the bird.

The she-wolf was still consumed with fear and pain as she fled through the wood, and hope gave way to something else as Larka realized that she had escaped.  Hate rang through her mind as she left Kar behind her, and although she was no longer on fire, her tail was smarting furiously.  On the bird led her.  They came to a stream that snaked out of the mountains and was so fast that it had not frozen in the cold.  Next to it was an almond tree by a great mossed rock, and suddenly the bird dived and settled on top of the rock.

‘There,’ it cried with relief.  ‘Now you are safe again.’

As it closed its great wings Larka saw that its feathers were a beigy brown where it hadn’t been singed, speckled with black and grey and thrown around it like a robe.  The strange bird fluffed them up on its thin, long body as it looked back at Larka and shifted to and fro on its huge talons.  Most extraordinary of all to Larka were the bird’s piercing eyes.  Two points of jet-black set in little pools of pure yellow.  Larka thought suddenly of Wolfbane, but she knew now she had seen those eyes before.

This was not the only thing Larka had seen before.  She growled as her gaze took in the stream and she saw it lying there, beneath the water.  Just as she had seen it in her first vision, there glinting brilliantly in the frosty sunlight, lay a fleece of gold.

As Larka’s eyes opened wider and wider she heard a stifled moan, too, from a clearing just ahead.  She turned from the bird and, prowling forward, gasped as she saw the little creature in front of her.  It was fast asleep.  A human baby, no bigger than a young cub.

The human cub was lying on the frosted ground, next to the mouth of a wide, sunken earth den.  It was totally unaware of the she-wolf and though she was still far off, Larka’s jaws began to slaver and she remembered what she had sworn among the flames.

‘You don’t want to eat it, do you?’ said the bird suddenly from the rock.  ‘You may want revenge, but I really don’t believe the humans taste very good.  Not like the stoat or the roe deer, eh?’

The bird blinked slowly, as Larka turned back to it, as though it was just about to fall asleep.  But there was a strength and a pride in those eyes too, and something sharp with intelligence, that Larka liked immediately.  She noticed the bird’s beak now, as it spoke to her, yellow and hooked forward like a claw.

‘What are you?’ Larka asked angrily.  ‘Are you a flying scavenger?’

The creature opened his wings immediately and beat the air furiously.

‘How dare you,’ he screeched.  ‘I am Putnar and one of the noblest of the great birds.  Flying scavenger, my beak.’

Larka prowled back around the rock towards him, but as she came around behind him the bird did something extraordinary.  Its whole head swivelled round on its body, ninety degrees, so that it was still facing her.  The bird’s strange, blinking eyes were smiling.

‘Doesn’t the Sight teach us that it is just as useful in life,’ he shrugged, as he saw Larka’s surprise, ‘to look backwards as well as forwards? Now, tell me your name.’

As soon as the bird spoke of the Sight recognition stirred in Larka’s mind.  The eagle cocked its head and seemed to be looking intently at Larka’s forehead, as though searching for something.

‘My name is Larka,’ growled the she-wolf quietly, ‘and you’re Skart, the Steppe eagle, aren’t you? Tsarr’s Helper.’

The eagle nodded slowly.

‘You are learning quickly, Larka.  That is good.  But now we are here to teach you even more.’

‘Teach me?’

‘How to use the Sight.  How to fight Morgra.  That’s what you came for isn’t it?’

Larka blushed in surprise.  ‘I...  I didn’t come here, did I?’ she said in a daze.  ‘I mean.  You brought me here.  Though I saw this place before, Skart.  I saw it in the water.’

‘Exactly,’ said Skart, ‘and it is strange indeed that you have already touched the second power.  But then you and the child.  You already have a connection, Larka.’

Larka shivered.

‘It’s all like a dream,’ she whispered mournfully.  ‘A nightmare that began when Morgra cursed us.’

‘And do not dreams tell us truths and secrets of the world,’ said Skart in an odd voice, ‘before we recognize things with our waking thoughts?’

Larka looked hard at the bird and she felt the strangeness of talking to another Lera.

‘Yet the Sight is no dream, Larka,’ cried Skart suddenly, ‘it is a real power and you have already used it to see the future.  Now it will grow rapidly in you.’

Larka was shaking her head helplessly.

‘Sometimes I wish I could just wake up,’ she said cheerlessly, ‘and be back in the den with my brother.’

‘Wake up?’ said Skart, nodding his feathery head thoughtfully.  ‘Most of the thoughtless Lera believe that their suns are simply split into two, Larka, between sleeping and waking.  But my sort believe that there is more to life than those simple states; Larka, there is also knowing.’

Larka wondered what Skart could mean.

‘I saw that fleece,’ she muttered.  ‘What is it, Skart?’ The eagle smiled.

‘Just a sheep skin, Larka.  There’s nothing really magical about it.  Though Man seems to prize the yellow metal above everything else.’

‘Man,’ growled Larka angrily, thinking suddenly of the child again, ‘I don’t want to know about Man and I don’t want to learn anything anyway.’

‘I think you’ll find,’ said the eagle gently, ‘that you’ve been learning all along, without even knowing it, whether you want to or not.  But sometimes all of us need teachers.’ But Skart was suddenly looking past Larka and, as she turned, she saw two wolves walking slowly up the slopes towards them.  The older was a male, with along grey muzzle deeply whitened around the snout, while the younger she- wolf at his side looked nervous as she spied Larka.  She pushed straight past her into the clearing, growling protectively and lying down beside the baby, curling her bushy tail across its belly.

The old grey wolf came to a stop right in front of Larka by the mossed rock.

‘So, you’re here at last,’ he growled.  ‘You took your time.’

‘Didn’t I tell you she would pick up the scent, Tsarr?’ said Skart.  ‘Her name is Larka.’

‘Tsarr,’ whispered Larka.  ‘Then you all know who I am?’

Larka had lost everybody she loved, but Lera were all around her again, and Lera that knew of the Sight.

‘Oh yes,’ growled Tsarr quietly, ‘it’s the legend, Larka.  Besides, Skart here has been watching your adventures for a long while now and he doesn’t miss much.  Skart’s eyes can spot the tiniest spider from far above the clouds.’

‘Then why didn’t he talk to me before?’ growled Larka, suddenly feeling a bitterness again for all that had happened to her.  ‘If he’d helped us before perhaps Kar…’

‘Don’t be ungrateful,’ snapped Skart.  ‘I saved your life, didn’t I? Before you were far too young, Larka.  Your eye wasn’t open yet and I didn’t want to frighten you away.  Though if I’d realized quite how much you know already, perhaps I might have come even sooner.  But anyway, I needed to wait.’

‘Wait for what?’ said Larka sullenly.

‘Wait for you to ask for help, of course.’

Larka felt as though she had been stroked by some unseen hand.

‘But come, Larka,’ cried Tsarr suddenly, turning his muzzle towards the strange clearing.  ‘It is high time that you met the source of so much trouble.’

As Larka followed them nervously into the clearing, the baby was still asleep, curled up outside its den, and one of the fingers on its little paws was thrust into its mouth.  It shivered as it lay there, but Jarla’s body had given it warmth.  Larka growled menacingly as she padded up and nodded her head to the she-wolf nestling the human to her belly.

‘This is Jarla,’ said Tsarr, ‘she has been suckling the creature for us.’

‘And never has a creature suckled so long,’ growled Jarla, shaking her head in wonder.

‘I asked her to help us,’ growled Tsarr quietly, ‘after the Balkar took her own cubs...’

Tsarr paused and Jarla’s eyes were full of bitterness.  Larka stepped closer and, as she looked down at the baby, she shivered.

‘It’s not natural to be so near to such a thing,’ Larka growled.  ‘I feel...  feel so strange.’

‘So did we both,’ whispered Jarla sympathetically, ‘at first.’

Larka sniffed at the human nervously, but she felt a sense of recognition too, for she had seen a child once before.  Yet as she caught its scent again, a hunger stirred inside her.  Suddenly the baby’s eyelids opened and looked up at her.  Larka blanched at the creature’s striking, clear blue eyes.

Larka felt almost ashamed as it looked at her, for she could hardly hold its gaze, but the child made some peculiar sucking noises and then it reached out its little hand to touch Jarla’s coat.  The human was barely a tail’s length from Larka now.  Her tail rose and her claws dug into the ground.  Its hide was so thin she could almost smell the blood beneath its skin.

‘Be careful, Larka,’ whispered Skart.  ‘To master the Sight, first you have to learn to master yourself.  To control your instincts.’

Larka held back her hunger.  The human’s face was so close to Larka’s muzzle now that she could have taken its head off in one snap.  But suddenly it turned to Jarla.  It nudged at her belly and began to suckle greedily, just as Larka had once done in the den.

Larka snarled at the sight.

‘No,’ she cried, ‘stop it.  We should kill it, or at least leave it to perish in the snow.’

Jarla gave an angry growl.

‘Peace, Jarla,’ whispered Tsarr.

The she-wolf dropped her muzzle over the baby’s body.

‘We should have nothing to do with Man,’ said Larka bitterly.  ‘Can’t you see what they do? What they did to Khaz and Kar? What they nearly did to me?’

‘At first I thought we should kill it too,’ growled Tsarr quietly.  ‘But even if the Varg decides to have nothing to do with Man, Larka, Man may have something to do with us.’

‘But it is the oldest law, Tsarr,’ growled Larka.

As she said it Tsarr looked sad and suddenly very old.  A strange nostalgia was stirring in him.

‘I was taught the law too, Larka,’ he said quietly.  ‘But there are even older laws than the laws made by the Varg in these parts, frightened of the humans and their wars, of legends and superstitions.  Laws that are written into storytelling itself.’

Larka suddenly recalled what Tsinga had said of deeper laws.

‘In the beginning the tales tell of a very different relationship with man, Larka, when wolf and Man lived together in peace.  Besides, after I stole the child, I found I didn’t really have the heart to kill it.’

‘Why not, Tsarr?’

‘Perhaps because I know the bitterness of survival.’

There was a tenderness in the old Varg’s voice that touched Larka to her guts and she thought, too, of her own narrow escape.  But as she looked down again the baby brought back memories of Kar.

‘I hate it, Tsarr,’ she growled.

‘No, Larka,’ cried Tsarr immediately, ‘you mustn’t hate.  The Sight has a dark and a light side, like all things, and hate will call to the darkness in you.  Call to Morgra.’

‘But the humans murdered my friends,’ hissed Larka, wondering suddenly if Morgra really was trying to call to her.  ‘They have always hunted us, always tried to make us their slaves.’

‘They are Putnar too, the greatest of the Putnar,’ said Tsarr.  ‘And perhaps it is their destiny to master the world.’  Larka looked down with surprise at the baby, and its eyes seemed to hold a deep mystery.  Some dark potential that made her think of the soldiers she had seen in the mountains.  What would this thing become if it was allowed to grow, she wondered fearfully.

‘It’s marked, isn’t it?’ she growled.

‘Yes, Larka,’ answered Tsarr, ‘that was the secret Tsinga entrusted to me and why Morgra never found it herself below the Stone Den.  Look.’

Tsarr tipped his nose and muzzled away the hide that was covering the child’s belly.  Above its little stomach was a ribbon of hair that looked like wolf fur threading in a thin, straight line right down its belly.

The child began to cry, but the old wolf leant forwards again and touched the baby very gently in the middle of the forehead with the tip of his muzzle.  It seemed to calm the child immediately.

‘What did you do that for?’ growled Larka.

‘It is just a baby, Larka and understands little now but fear and hunger,’ answered Tsarr quietly.  ‘But some believe that is where the humans really see from.  That there is a third eye, far stronger than any ordinary eyes.’

Larka felt as if she had stepped into another dream as Tsarr turned away from the child and began to tell her of their journey.  It had been easy to pick the baby up by the cloth bound around its middle and spirit it away from the village, while the humans were busy celebrating its birth; a birth that the pack had witnessed, without ever even knowing it, as they lay by the boulder above the den.

They had hidden the child not far from where Larka’s pack had found their Meeting Place, but one night they had overheard wolves from the rebel pack stalking the mountain too and learned that Slavka, their leader, was hunting for the child also.  So they had been forced to move on with the infant, escaping yet another enemy.

During their flight they sheltered in the abandoned castle that the wolf pack had stumbled on.  At first, after one kill, Jarla had not understood what Tsarr had been trying to tell her about making a hole in the hide through which its head might push, but she had understood the need to cover up its furless skin.  So the young she-wolf had sat there, gnawing away, until her teeth had cut an opening in the hide and together Jarla and Tsarr had managed to lift it in their muzzles over its head.

They had felt the need to bind it somehow, as Tsarr had once seen the entrances to the humans’ dens bound tight shut with rope, and Jarla had brought some vine from the wood in her mouth.  They had managed to get it round the cub’s middle, but there was nothing they could do with their snouts to lock it together.  At last it had begun to play with the vine in its strange paws and, by luck as much as anything, had wound the rope together.