Outcast by Michelle Paver Page A

Torak," he said to Saeunn, "I've a right to hear. I'm his kin."
"Then why don't you act like it," said Renn, "and try to help him?"
"Why don't you?" he shot back.
"No one may help the outcast," Saeunn reminded them.
"And squabbling won't help anyone," said Fin-Kedinn, appearing behind Bale.
Saeunn indicated Renn. "She says she sees signs."
Renn bridled. She wasn't ready to speak of this to Fin-Kedinn, let alone Bale.
"What signs?" said Fin-Kedinn, sitting on the bank and motioning Bale to do the same.
Renn picked at a hole in the knee of her legging. "He took your axe. He went into my medicine pouch and took a pebble he'd left me last summer. He spirit walked in the elk and he--he attacked me."
    "I'll never believe that was Torak," said Bale.
"Well, I'm not making it up!" snapped Renn.
"The pebble," Saeunn cut in. "Why wasn't I told?"
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"Why should I tell you?" muttered Renn. "Tell me now," said the Raven Mage. Renn swallowed. "He'd put his mark on it. In alder juice."
"His mark?" said Saeunn. "His clan-tattoo?"
"Right down to the scar on his cheek."
"Ah," breathed the Raven Mage.
Renn felt a prickle of unease. "I--I kept it safe. But at the clan meet he took it." And I know why, she thought miserably. He took it to tell me that he isn't coming back. "Ah." Saeunn picked up one of the white stones and turned it in her fingers. "Now it becomes clear."
"What does?" said Renn.
The Raven Mage leaned close, and Renn saw the threads of spittle webbing her toothless gums. "The outcast," said the Raven Mage, "has fallen prey to the soulsickness."
    For a moment there was silence. Then both Renn and Bale spoke at once.
"What's that?" said Bale.
"Is it because of the Soul-Eater tattoo?" said Renn. "Did he try to cut it out and it didn't work and it made him sick?"
"Tattoos?" Saeunn spat. "No! Even without tattoos, souls get sick, as well as bodies! They fall prey to demons. Spells." 142
    From her medicine pouch she shook three small, mottled bones and set them on the black earth. She touched the first with her knotted forefinger. "If your name-soul falls sick, you forget who you are. You become like a ghost." She touched the second. "If the canker attacks your clan-soul, you lose your sense of good and evil. You become as a demon." Her horny talon moved to the last bone. "If your world-soul becomes palsied, you lose your link with other living things--hunter, prey, Forest. You become as a Lost One." Tilting her palm, she dropped the stone, and it struck the world-soul bone, which jumped as if it were alive. "If his name-pebble fell into the wrong hands ..."
    Renn shut her eyes. Bale said, "I don't believe this. Torak isn't sick; he's furious. I would be too, if I'd been cast out for something that wasn't my fault."
Saeunn bristled like an angry raven, but Fin-Kedinn said, "I think Saeunn's right; Torak is soul-sick. But who did this to him? Which of the three?" "You mean the Soul-Eaters," said Renn.
"Three survived the battle on the ice," said Fin-Kedinn. "Thiazzi. Eostra. Seshru. At the clan meet I spoke to people from all over the Forest and beyond, seeking clues as to where they might have gone. No one's seen any trace of them." He paused. "And yet it seems to me that the manner in which Torak's tattoo
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was revealed, and his spirit walking in the elk--these bear the print of a single mind, working alone."
Saeunn nodded. "One mind, but which? For days I've fasted and read the bones. The Oak Mage and the Eagle Owl Mage feel far away. The one who haunts the Forest--who draws the outcast to her--is Seshru the Viper Mage."
    Fin-Kedinn bowed his head.
Renn dug her fingernails into her palms.
Bale was puzzled. "But--she's only one woman. How much harm can she do?"
"More than you could possibly imagine," said Fin-Kedinn.
Saeunn turned to Renn. "You were the last to have seen her. Tell him what she is."
Renn couldn't speak. She was back in the forest of stone, in the flickering torchlight and the stink of slaughter, watching the