The Sight (49 page)

‘Quick, Palla,’ he cried, ‘follow my tracks.’

The Balkar were engaged in the fight and none of them noticed Huttser and Palla as they threaded past them.  As they began to descend they saw that the Night Hunters had started to regroup, and that the rebels were being pushed back down the pass, howling and snarling furiously.  But Huttser and Palla were on level ground once again and they bounded away.  They did not notice the tiny shadow that had scudded across the ground behind them.  Nor the silent wings flapping in the sky above them.

Huttser and Palla sped on up the ravine, the great granite walls rearing around them.  They didn’t slow until they had left the Balkar and the rebels far behind, and the twists and turns in the rising gorge had long obscured their path.  It was only as evening came in that they began to feel a little more secure.  But it did not last.  They had rested on the edge of the ravine and as they moved off again, their attention no longer on flight, Palla began to scent the ground and called Huttser to her side.

‘Can you smell it?’ he whispered nervously.

‘Bear,’ growled Palla in surprise.  ‘It’s the scent of a bear.  Do you think...’

‘And another,’ growled Huttser, sniffing the earth, ‘Slavka.  I’d know her anywhere.’

‘And here,’ said Palla, ‘Morgra has been this way too.’ But Palla had paused again and, this time, her muzzle was close to the ground.

‘What is it, Palla?’

Palla didn’t answer.  She suddenly lifted her muzzle and shook her head.

‘It can’t be,’ she whispered.  ‘For a moment...’

‘We should get on,’ said Huttser and he led Palla up the slope.

They rose up and up as the darkness came in, hardly speaking as they thought of the mysterious citadel above, their forms illuminated by the swelling moon. Instinctively the wolves walked together, brushing each other’s flanks for comfort.

At last, the path between the cliffs began to bank steeply and the two wolves climbed towards the mountaintop.  They stopped together as they crested the slope and came upon the citadel, glittering before them in the moonlight.

‘Harja,’ gasped Huttser.  ‘The gateway to heaven.’

All around them stood temples and statues, shining in the moonlight.  But now they saw something that made their thoughts quiver.  Beyond these statues lay a wide ravine, and spanning its cavernous drop was an arched stone bridge, old and crumbling.  Just beyond the bridge on a kind of raised platform, set well above the rest and fronted by a flat stone circle, was another statue.  The statue of the giant she-wolf.  Huttser and Palla shivered as they saw the stone children suckling at her belly and, at its base, a wide, flat dais.  The sacred altar.

The wolves wondered now what they were seeing.  They could not know that here the Romans’ priests and fortune- tellers had worn wolf skins on their heads, and in the trenches below the temples had kept live wolves, and during the feast of the Lupercal they had made sacrifice and tried to interpret the future, as Diana, the huntress and the goddess of the moon, looked down on them all.  So, among the wolves that had once been kept at Alba Mutandis, their own story had grown up, like a memory.  A legend of a place called Harja, relayed through every new generation of cubs, living long after the city itself had fallen into disrepair and been lost to the memories of both Man and animal.

The Romans had needed a more powerful myth for their origins than the brutalities of conquest and power.  They wanted to participate in all life, both human and animal.  They valued the strength and anger of the wolf, its cunning too, and the way it cared for its own cubs.  They saw the wolf not as later peoples that inhabited this land who, putting aside their swords to become farmers and shepherds, had reviled the wolf as a threat to their animals.  Nor as some Christians, looking for sin in everything, as a symbol of evil to be judged and put on trial.  Instead, they had seen the she- wolf as a great symbol of strength and cunning and fertility.

Palla blinked and shivered.

‘What now?’ she whispered.

‘Morgra.  We must find her before Larka comes.’

They walked on and the place seemed to be deserted.  The air was still and dead, and Palla growled quietly to herself as they went.  They saw no signs of life among those ancient stones until suddenly Huttser stopped.  Ahead of them on the ground, among the human’s stones, something was moving.  Huttser’s eyes sliced through the night.

‘Kraar,’ he whispered, ‘the raven.’

He was hopping along on the ground and his wing seemed to be broken.

‘What if we capture it?’ Palla growled.  ‘Use it against

Morgra.  If it’s her eyes we might blind her a little.’

Huttser had had the very same thought, and he was already hugging the ground, trying to steal up on the bird.  It seemed completely unaware of them and, as Huttser and Palla drew closer, they could see that it was on the edge of a wide trench.

Huttser sprang, but suddenly the tricksy raven opened its wings and fluttered away.  Palla had sprung too, and missing the raven, landed at Huttser’s side.  But suddenly she realized they were not alone.  Before they could turn they heard a furious bellow behind them and their bodies were thrust violently forward.

They landed in the deep trench, gasping for breath, and the air knocked from their lungs by the fall.  They got up, side by side, and around them now the Dragga and Drappa noticed stone tree trunks strewn everywhere.  But their attention was suddenly drawn above them.  The smell of bear was flooding their nostrils, and it seemed to flow down over the edge of the trench like a river of fear.  Palla growled.  Above them, a little black shape had appeared.  The raven fluttered its wings and its beady black eyes glinted as it clacked with satisfaction.  The Night Hunters appeared around it.

‘Tricked,’ snarled Huttser.

But before he could say anything more Huttser sensed Palla trembling furiously and his tail rose.  Two more eyes had appeared above them.  Large and knowing and glinting yellow in the darkness.

‘Morgra,’ whispered Palla, and the strength seemed to go out of her.

‘So we meet again, sister,’ smiled Morgra.  ‘And this time you are in my power.’

Larka gazed up at the stars fading in the sky as the night deepened, and the moon climbed higher and higher above the thundering mountains.  The pounding in her head had become so furious as they sought out the second entrance to the east that they had decided to rest for a few hours.  Around them the air was warm and still.  The swelling moon shone down through the trees and its strange power, that far beyond Transylvania tugged at the great oceans and made them move against troubled and untroubled shores, seemed to be calling to the elements themselves.

Tsarr was beginning to doze in the grass and Kar padded up quietly to Larka.

‘Larka,’ he said softly, ‘why don’t you try and get some sleep?’

‘No, Kar.  I must stay awake and think, for I shall need all my senses about me when it comes.  But, Kar, will you stay awake with me for a while?’

Kar lay down beside Larka and, side by side, their hearts beat together.  About them the moonlit air rustled through the trees and flowers, and nearby they heard the drone of a beehive.  The place was like some ancient garden, the Garden that mankind dreamt of at the beginning of the world, made by hope, with nurture and care and intelligence, out of the wilderness of the mind.  It was so beautiful that Larka’s heart ached.

‘Kar,’ the she-wolf whispered sadly, ‘I love life.  But sometimes I think this power to touch it all is too terrible for any to bear.  I am wounded and I don’t know why.  I try to shut it out, with anger, by trying to hate Morgra, but in the end I cannot.’

Larka turned her head to her dear friend, but she could see that the wolf’s eyes were beginning to droop with weariness.

‘Kar,’ she whispered, ‘dear Kar, stay awake.’

‘I am awake,’ muttered Kar sleepily, raising his head and shaking himself.

Larka looked up sadly at the moon and Kar followed her gaze.  Kar had no real words to talk of the living force that pulled the earth and the moon together, nor of the current that flows between all things; but in his bones he could sense its strength and in the wolves’ tales of Tor and Fenris, of the moon’s birth, they had tried to make sense of it.

But Larka could feel that energy too and she knew it as the energy of the Sight.  For her that glowing orb above them had a very clear meaning, too, one that made her shiver as she gazed up into the endless night.  As she looked up at the moon, she knew that in just one sun’s time that uneven sphere would grow round as a dandelion, as it had so many times since her birth, and that the inevitability of its cycle brought the inevitability of destruction.

‘Kar,’ she said quietly, ‘you know I no longer believe in the stories they told us as children.  I no longer believe in Tor and Fenris, or gods that look down kindly on wolves.  Sometimes I don’t know what to believe in, Kar.  Except...’ Larka paused.  ‘Except perhaps truth.  I believe in that.’

Larka whimpered and again the story of Sita came to her mind.  Now she found it strangely beautiful.  She turned tenderly to Kar, but he had fallen fast asleep.  Larka did not wake him.  She could not bear to tell Kar what was to be and although Kar had fallen into a blissful, unconscious sleep, despite his promise to her, now Larka was just grateful to have him at her side.

It wasn’t until noon was brightening the sky that Larka led them on and they soon heard the sound of water.  Just as the Searchers had told her, a little stream ran down the rock face and next to it Larka saw an opening.

‘The tunnel,’ she cried, ‘they told me it leads right through the mountain.’

As soon as she ducked inside she whimpered with frustration.  The narrow cave entrance was almost completely blocked with fallen rubble.  Kar and Tsarr began to scrabble at the stones, but Larka ranged angrily back and forth.

‘What is Morgra doing?’ she kept growling to herself.  Larka padded up to the stream.  She closed her eyes and let the memories wash through her.  As soon as she looked into the water she saw the swirling vortex and her fur began to bristle.  Morgra was looking at her, but this time a voice echoed around her and it was as clear as day.

‘So, you have come.’

‘Morgra.’

‘But what  have you come for?’ Morgra  growled scornfully.  ‘To steal the Vision? You cannot, my child.  I am too powerful already.  I do not even need to look into the water to see you, and we have mastered the third power, Wolfbane and I.  Tonight is the full moon and nothing can stop us now.  You are close, but no wolf shall pass my guards a second time, no matter how clever the ambush or how cunningly they sneak about.’

Larka gasped.  Her parents must have reached the entrance already and there had been fighting.  Morgra spoke again.  Mockingly.

‘When the legend comes to pass I will tame all the Lera.  All shall be my slaves.’

‘No,’ cried Larka, ‘we are here.  The family to conquer the evil.  To conquer you.’

‘You have survived, it is true,’ Morgra whispered coldly.

‘But why didn’t you try to sneak past my guards, too? With your dear parents.’

Morgra paused.

‘You have found the tunnel, Larka.  You thought I didn’t know of its existence.  It is blocked, my dear, is it not? The earth is ancient and quakes here – time has blocked the entrance.  But even if you get through, he is waiting on the other side.  Wolfbane.’

‘I will find a way.’

‘No,’ laughed Morgra, ‘you are too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘You know what the ancient verse says, Larka.  ‘With blood at the altar the Vision shall come’.  And it shall be their blood.  Your parents’.  Then we shall put an end to this family for ever.’

Larka let out a howl and sprang away.

‘Larka, what is it?’ cried Kar.  ‘What’s wrong?’

 ‘Kar, we must hurry.  Morgra has Huttser and Palla, and tonight she will kill them.  Tonight is the full moon.’

‘And if we don’t stop her in time,’ snarled Tsarr, ‘none of us will be free.’

Larka began scrabbling desperately at the stones in front of them.

‘But, Tsarr,’ she whispered, ‘the Evil One waits.  He waits up ahead.’

The sun burnt above them as Huttser and Palla paced angrily in the trench.  The wolves were panting badly as the heat among the stones was beginning to sing.  They had to squint as they looked up at the furious orb and felt its broiling energy burn their eyes, yet there was comfort, too, in the light it brought.

‘We never escaped, Huttser,’ growled Palla.  ‘Not from the pack boundaries, from the shadow of the Stone Den, from her curse.’

Huttser growled up at the sun, but as he did so a shadow fell across them.  Morgra’s eyes were smiling as she gazed down.

‘So, sister, are you prepared to pay for the injustice of what was done to me? For what must come? For the altar is hungry.’

Palla dropped her eyes sadly.

‘Why do you hate me so, Morgra? I never even knew what happened.’

‘You never cared to know.  Wolves have no justice.’

‘And was it out of justice,’ snarled Huttser suddenly, ‘was it out of goodness that you cursed us that night? You killed my friends.  You killed my cubs.’

‘Is it not strange,’ said Morgra slowly, and her eyes smiled, ‘that you believe in curses more than I?’

‘But you—’

‘Your own fear and weakness, your own guilt have worked on you all, Huttser,’ snarled Morgra.  ‘Your own desperate clinging to life.  As Wolfbane worked on the Balkar.  That is the meaning of a curse.  Nothing more.  But the Sight is a true power, and soon I will use it to control all.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us, Morgra?’ pleaded Palla.  ‘Why didn’t you show us the truth of what happened to you? We would have understood.  We would have given you justice.’

Morgra began to growl uncomfortably.

‘Understood? What understanding does the wolf have? All they know is fear.  Fear for their cubs and for themselves.  Fear for their worthless lives.’

‘We can all understand pain, Morgra,’ said Palla, ‘but can’t you remember how to love?’

Morgra’s eyes were cloudy and her tail lowered.