‘It’s another way of being, Larka, of communicating.’
‘That’s why we can talk to each other?’
‘Yes,’ nodded Skart, impressed with his young pupil, ‘though some say that once all the Lera possessed the Sight, and that they could still talk to each other if they could only remember how.’
‘All the animals?’ said Larka with surprise. Suddenly that voice she had heard in the forest seemed to be calling to her again, ‘Remember, Larka, remember.’
‘Yes, and that the instincts of the animals, to sense things before they happen, or feel a change in the weather, is a residue of the power.’
Larka nodded slowly.
‘There is an old story of a Herla, a red deer, who learnt how to do it. His name was Rannoch and he lived on an island to the north-west. But the Sight is linked to language, it is a kind of language, just like touch or taste or smell, and that’s how those Lera possessed by the gift can understand each other naturally.’
It was as though Larka had entered an almost unfathomable world. The wolf noticed a tiny spider in the bushes nearby weaving busily across its web, and she found herself suddenly trying to imagine what the spider was thinking and feeling as it worked towards a struggling fly. But every time she tried she failed.
‘But why is it connected with so much evil, Skart?’
‘Evil?’ said the eagle.
‘Wolfbane. Man. The Searchers.’
For a moment Skart’s eyes closed and he fluttered his feathers uncomfortably. Larka was reminded strangely of Tsinga. As she lay there, though, Larka remembered vividly the terrible feeling she had had with the snow hare.
‘What happened to me was evil. The Sight makes the life of a Putnar impossible, Skart. When I hunt. It’s horrible.’
‘That is the pain the Sight can bring to the Putnar, Larka,’ said Skart. ‘But you must not fear it, as you must never fear your own nature. If you do that it will control you. But you will learn.’
‘No,’ snarled Larka suddenly, ‘I wasn’t meant for this, Skart. I am a she-wolf. A Putnar must hunt and kill to survive. Must use its instincts and its teeth. This power is a terrible thing and it wounds me.’
‘The Wounded One,’ whispered Skart gravely.
Larka turned and licked the burnt skin on her tail, but her eyes were full of pain and a sudden, bitter self-pity. As Skart looked at Larka lying there feebly his eyes grew colder and harder, though strangely clear too.
‘Larka,’ he snapped suddenly, ‘do you pity yourself more than other things? More than your pack, or Fell, or your parents?’
Larka dropped her head shamefully.
‘You have a power, Larka, and it is high time you used it.’
Larka raised her head.
‘Perhaps,’ said Skart, ‘you are ready to experience the wonder of the Sight.’
‘Wonder?’ whispered Larka sadly.
‘Oh yes, Larka,’ cried the eagle. ‘Come into my eyes.’
9 - Teachers
‘How do you know but ev’ry bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five.’ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Larka let her mind empty again and the energy bubble up through her feet. Suddenly the wolf was looking through the eagle’s eyes once more. Skart opened his great wings and lifted from the ground as Larka’s sightless body lay by the rock. She gasped as the ground dropped away and her vision rose into the blue. Higher and higher Skart flew, and Larka was surrounded by billowing white clouds. A great calm suddenly suffused her mind.
Below her, as Skart glided on the currents of air, the ground opened like a dream. Larka could see everything with the sharpness of the eagle; the mountains and the forests, the rivers and the streams, the great land of Transylvania sweeping before and below her. The cold sunlight sparkled on the water and quivered in the sea of white, and Larka felt her heart lighten and her fear drop away.
It was as though the she-wolf had suddenly been transported to the highest mountaintops, hurled into the clouds and with the glory of that vision, came feeling too. She could feel the wind on Skart’s feathers, the swooping, rising pressure of the air. She felt suddenly transported, gloriously elated and more alive and at one with the world around her than she had ever known.
‘See, Larka,’ whispered a voice in her head.
‘Skart?’
‘Yes, Larka. It’s me. Talk to me with your mind.’
‘But, Skart,’ cried Larka, as they flew, ‘it is wonderful.’
‘Yes,’ screeched the eagle, swerving and diving proudly on the air, ‘this is the glory of the Sight. The wonder and the freedom that the Varg may share with the birds. And it is strong in you, Larka. That’s why you can hear me now and feel what I feel.’
As Skart soared amongst the clouds, his wings catching faint thermals or tilting to let them slide down the sky, Larka could feel the air ruffling the bird’s feathers and the glorious tension in his wings. On and on they sailed, and this time Larka felt as though she was lost in a wonderful dream.
‘Skart,’ she cried, ‘where does the Sight come from?’
‘Where does anything come from, Larka?’ answered Skart. ‘For the Sight is far older than even the oldest faiths. Did your Tor and Fenris make the power of the Sight, or is it just there? You might as well ask where the sea or the wind or the stars come from, Larka.’
The snows were like a great shiftless sea below them. The land lay as smooth as a sigh as they hurried through the air on Skart’s soaring wings and, as Skart’s head turned this way and that, Larka would suddenly spy a shape moving through the white and she felt as if, with the effortlessness of thought, she could open her paws and pounce on the Lera below her. But she felt superior to the feeling too, there was no hunger in her now. The wolf was as free as the wind. On they soared, the wolf and the eagle together, looking down on the great winter tapestry.
‘Skart,’ whispered Larka as they flew, and she noticed that she could no longer feel the pain in her tail either, ‘I feel so light and free. So is this what it’s like to be a bird?’
‘This is only a breath of it, Larka,’ said the eagle. ‘My brothers and sisters could show you even more, but it is winter and they have long gone south on the great migration. I was there at the delta before they went and the skies billowed with thunder clouds of birds. The delta was a forest of fowl then, but freedom was already stirring in their hearts.’
‘The delta?’
To speak of the delta was a sacred thing for the birds, but the eagle began as they swooped through the wintry clouds.
Skart started by telling Larka that the great delta lay at the end of the south eastern land, where the mighty river that men call the Danube splits into three and plunges out into a boiling black sea. Where the hard earth turns into miles upon miles of swamp and marshland, cut with islands of silt crowned with oak and ash, and ringed by floating reed beds stirring in the rippling breeze. He told her of the little banks that appeared and disappeared suddenly with the incessant floods, and the ever-shifting contours of mud and sand and soil.
‘Skart,’ asked Larka suddenly as she listened, ‘why birds? Why are birds the Helpers?’
‘When you look at the fur on your paw, Larka, does it not seem to you, so close-up, that it could be a forest, or a bank of fresh grass. Yet you know it is your paw and a part of your own body.’
‘So, Skart?’
‘If you are too close to a thing it can sometimes fool you, Larka. The fortune-tellers believe that the birds became the Helpers because they were the first to really see. To rise into the air and look down on the land and the rivers and the seas and behold things in their entirety. As they really are.’
Larka’s spirit was suddenly soaring, too, and in her gut she felt something of that old spirit of rebellion that had carried her after Fell along the river bank, or away from her parents on the ice. But as she listened, the energy of the feeling turned to something else, a kind of humility.
She suddenly felt that she could learn much from this strange bird, whose experience was so different from her own.
‘Skart,’ whispered Larka gravely, ‘tell me more of the sacred delta.’
Skart spoke now of the land creatures that made this strange place their home – the red fox and wild boar, the polecat and the mink. But Skart didn’t really like to think of the predators that came to eat his own, so instead he turned to the myriad birds that swarmed to the delta.
He told Larka how the birds always knew when it was time to travel and, like the salmon that turn from the deep oceans and find their way back to their birthplace, their secret instincts could guide them through storm and fog, speeding them across tens of thousands of miles, navigating the very currents of the air to the same annual feeding grounds. He told her of the soaring white-tailed eagle and the chattering cormorants, of the shelduck and the bittern and the brightly painted kingfisher.
As Skart named these birds, although she had little idea of what they really were or looked like, Larka felt a joy stirring inside her. The hypnotic, magical naming sung in her ears like the wind, and pictures began to flash through her mind. Larka fancied she could hear the birds’ cries, or see the wind stroking the sedge, or smell the water thyme and peonies.
‘Skart,’ cried Larka, as he finished and the wind whistled about their ears, ‘the other sun, you said that I wasn’t ready. That my eye wasn’t open yet. What did you mean?’
‘The eye in the forehead, Larka. The eye that really sees. The eye of the Sight. But now it is opening,’ cried Skart delightedly.
‘The eye in the forehead,’ said Larka, ‘like the humans?’
‘Yes, Larka. Then you may understand what you are becoming.’
‘Becoming?’ growled Larka with surprise, and by the rock her body stirred and twitched.
It was twilight when Skart finally turned in the sky and sailed for home. Before them once more the great sun was sinking in the west and its light bruised the ribbons of cloud a deep and angry purple. The funnel of clouds had made a kind of bowl for the sinking sun and, as it blazed for a final time beyond the edge of the mountains, firing the horizon with smouldering pinks and burning oranges, it looked like a wound from which the earth itself might die, or a great furnace on the edge of creation that was trying to forge the world anew.
As they spied the rock and the clearing, and Larka saw the human child, it seemed so small and insignificant lying there with the wolves in the snow that Larka almost felt a pity for it. Her heart had lightened, and somehow her extraordinary journey with Skart had given her an even greater inquisitiveness. What could this vision be and this great secret, prophesied at Harja? As Larka returned to her own eyes, though, she felt a terrible ache, like the pain of loss.
‘So that is the Sight?’ she growled, as she blinked back at the bird in awe.
‘Larka,’ cried Skart, ‘that is only the beginning.’
‘Why,’ Morgra snarled, slicing at the air with her yellowing teeth, ‘why can’t I find it?’
Morgra spat angrily in the night as she glared down at the pool in her frosty cave. All she could see in the water was Kraar’s face peering stupidly back at her.
‘The human?’ whispered the raven.
‘Yes, idiot,’ snapped Morgra, ‘Brak has-been out searching for too long now, and the Sight shows me nothing of any real use in the water. Fragments of the past. Bits of what might be the future. But nothing substantial.’
Morgra touched the pool with her paw.
‘But I fear something else, Kraar. If Larka is somehow with the child, perhaps her very presence is blocking the pictures.’
‘Mistress,’ said Kraar suddenly, ‘there is news from the flying scavengers.’
‘Well?’
‘They have spied Larka and the young stranger.’
‘But Larka was alone,’ said Morgra almost disinterestedly.
‘You must have been mistaken, Mistress.’
Morgra’s eyes blazed and she swivelled her jaws towards the bird.
‘But she is alone now,’ added the raven quickly.
‘Why, Kraar, what do you mean?’
‘They lost her again below the trees,’ answered Kraar, ‘but before they did they saw the stranger perish. He was eaten by the humans’ burning air.’
Morgra’s cruel eyes began to glitter.
‘It was wonderful, Mistress. The fire sent up such a blaze that my cousins could see it for miles around. They warmed their wings on it. Is it not fine? Even the elements seem to be coming to fulfil your curse.’
Morgra swung her head to face the bird.
‘What did you say, Kraar?’ snarled Morgra.
‘What’s wrong, Mistress?’ whispered Kraar nervously, backing away from the she-wolf’s straining jaws. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Fool,’ hissed Morgra, ‘why didn’t I think of it before. The elements.’
Fear had crept back into Morgra’s eyes.
‘Huttser and Palla,’ she cried, swinging round suddenly, ‘have they been spotted too?’
‘No, Mistress.’
Morgra seemed to relax a little.
‘No,’ she muttered, ‘the pack is destroyed, at least. Larka may still be alive, but if they weren’t with her, her parents must have perished in the snows long ago. A family that’s loving and true,’ she cried scornfully, ‘what good has their love ever done them?’
Kraar flapped his wings furiously.
‘And if Larka is with the child,’ said the bird, trying to appease his mistress, ‘surely that would be for the better. For when you find them both you will force her to aid us.’
‘Feathered idiot,’ snapped Morgra, ‘I no longer need Larka’s aid. My power is swelling with each sun, as I draw on his.’
Suddenly Morgra turned and sprang out of the cave. But as Kraar followed her, the tiny pebble shook on the ceiling of the cave. The thing inside it was ready. Then, suddenly, the chrysalis split open. Within was a winged shape, wet with foam. It spread its wings to dry them in the cold air, and the antennae on its head uncurled like little tongues. As its wings opened they revealed a shape on its back, something like the skull Fell had seen in the graveyard. But its finely painted, living wings were utterly beautiful. It was a moth, one which the humans, linking their understanding of life together in symbols, would call a Death’s Head. Suddenly it fluttered into the free air.
Morgra prowled up the hill towards the wood, by the spot where the meat had once lain for the creature of the forest. It was all gone. As soon as she passed into the trees her eyes swept the ground and Morgra shivered with pleasure. Everywhere Morgra looked there were dead animals. The Lera had literally been torn to pieces. There were stoats and mice, voles and squirrels, rabbits and fledgling birds. Their entrails were strewn across the ground or hanging from the lower branches of the trees.
‘Wolfbane,’ growled Morgra with pleasure.
The snow was thick with blood, which in the night looked black and oily.
‘Good, my friend,’ Morgra went on delightedly in that cold, hypnotic voice, ‘drink deep on the lives of the Lera. Gorge yourself on blood. And when you are full, drink and drink again. Then you may step beyond even the instincts of the Putnar. Your power will swell like the night and mine will grow with it too, until together we open the Pathways of Death. Soon. So soon.’
Kraar shivered as he hopped after his mistress, his beak clacking at the sight of all that food. They heard a sound in the trees beyond and the raven fluttered nervously on to a branch. A shadow fell on the snow, but as Morgra stood there she caught sight of a group of Night Hunters moving up the hill past her cave.
‘I saw them last sun,’ whispered one as they came. ‘They were bear marks.’
The Balkar at his side slowed nervously.
‘But I was coming close the other night and I heard him,’ he growled, ‘a great fluttering of wings.’
‘Then he comes in different guises,’ growled the first wolf, ‘
the Shape Changer.’
‘Why won’t he show himself?’
‘He shows himself in my dreams. But Morgra commands him and she shall protect us. The Evil One fights for the Night Hunters now, and when she finds the rebels’ Gathering Place he shall lead the Searchers into battle too.’
By the wood Morgra lifted her tail.
‘They are petrified of him, Kraar,’ she growled coldly as she watched the Balkar and read their thoughts in the language of their bodies, ‘for they suffer from the weakness that infects all the Lera. They are ruled by their fear for their own miserable lives.’
But as the shadow in the wood came closer Morgra suddenly turned violently.
‘No,’ she hissed, ‘stay hidden in the wood. Trust me, my dear, you are so ugly anyway that they would simply run in terror. Or even worse, they might laugh at you.’
The shadow turned away and Kraar looked up questioningly.
‘Fear is a secret thing, Kraar,’ whispered Morgra, ‘so we must keep him hidden. But we shall turn him into the thing they dread most. The shadow that is already beginning to haunt their dreams and the name that shall be spoken on the mouth of every Varg.’
Larka was lying by the mossed rock next to Tsarr. She turned her head towards the clearing. She could still not decide what to do with the child, and she still felt uncomfortable in its presence.
Larka’s mind was full of questions now, although she had already been learning much from the wolf and the eagle. She had soared over the forests with Skart many times, and she had started to look into the water again too, although she had seen little there but painful pictures of the past. Skart had told her that as the Sight grew she would be able to see the pictures more clearly and even direct her vision into the present or the future as she chose. But Larka’s mind seemed to be too consumed with all that had happened already to have any effect on the visions.
Larka had learnt other things though. How much Skart hated the flying scavengers like Kraar, and why Tsarr’s power had faded. Skart had left Tsarr for a long while after their quarrel and it seemed that the power of the Sight, if not used regularly, could dwindle, much like the weakening of a wolf’s jaw if there are no Lera to hunt. Tsarr had shaken his head bitterly as he told her of it and looked over to the eagle almost resentfully.