He stopped and forced himself to become calmer.
The uproar in his mind silenced, the sounds around him began to impinge again. He leaned forward, listening carefully. Beneath the ceaseless rustle of the trees he began to detect other noises, though they were diminishing rapidly. There were cries and squeals, and the crackling of undergrowth being hastily swept aside and trodden underfoot.
They were fleeing! All those creatures that could do so were fleeing from him. Running from him as if he were a summer fire.
He smacked the edge of his clenched fist against a tree in both frustration and elation. The rough bark grazed his hand but he did not notice. They knew what he could do. The simple creatures of the forest knew. They needed no painstaking reasoning and explanation. No demonstrations. They did not have to struggle with disbelief. They had confirmed his new-found skill with their flight as effectively as if they had remained there to be hurled to and fro like the rocks themselves.
It was good.
Then his hand throbbed. He looked at it. The skin had been broken and peeled back slightly. Absently, he raised his hand to his mouth, bit off the torn skin and sucked the small, bleeding wound clean.
It was good, he thought again as he spat out the dead skin.
Good…
The sensation resonated in his mind as if it had echoed and re-echoed from some towering cliff face, and his mouth suddenly became alive with the taste of blood; bitter… warm…
Good…
For a moment terror flooded through him. As surely as he knew his own power when it reached out and touched things, so he knew now that that same power was reaching out and touching him.
The realization transformed his terror on the in-stant. No! His whole being cried out in rage. Grasses and bushes bowed flat before him and the branches of the trees around him swayed frantically. Somewhere, stones rattled. This could not be. This would not be. This was his gift, his power. He would share it with no one and he would destroy anyone who sought to use it against him.
He would destroy anyone who even possessed it.
The strange touch, however, was gone. Seemingly vanished at the instant of his furious inner cry.
Watchful, Rannick waited.
Slowly he sensed a faint shadow of the presence returning hesitantly. It was almost as if it were reluctant to depart.
Rannick gathered himself for a berserker onslaught to expunge this lingering remnant. The touch slithered away from his rage again. But it did not flee utterly. Rannick hesitated, curious now. He closed his eyes and covered his ears to shut out the sights and sounds around him so that he could better feel this strange presence that was both within and without him.
He sank to the ground, unwittingly increasing his isolation from his surroundings by crouching low and drawing his arms up over his head.
Cautiously he reached out. The presence moved away, wary, nervous. Yet Rannick sensed great strength in it; and its power was both the same and different from his own. It was more whole, more balanced, more assured. But it was also more feral, savage, unfettered.
It was an animal, he realized. A powerful, predatory, animal. Rannick’s curiosity grew. What kind of an animal could it be, and how could it have his power?
And why did it stay with him like this? What did it want?
Then amid the nervousness he began to sense some-thing else. It was familiar, but it eluded him for a moment. Only gradually did he recognize it as subservi-ence.
And need!
The presence lingered because it needed him in some way!
No sooner had he reached this conclusion than the character of the presence seemed to change. A pro-found, black sense of loneliness – eternal loneliness – passed over him. But for all that, it evoked no sympathy, for it was riddled through with a dreadful malice, a malice that Rannick found drawing a like response from somewhere deep within himself.
Whatever this creature was, it was a kindred spirit.
And it needed him.
A small part of him whispered tentatively, Why? but the question died almost before it could be formed. Deeper forces within Rannick were guiding him now. Forces that knew that this creature could serve their needs.
Yet Rannick knew that it was a fearful thing. Could it not in its turn become the master instead of the servant?
It was the last lingering doubt.
No. He had never encountered an animal that he could not master if need arose, with whip or with will. And this one had already accepted him as its superior. Powerful and savage this creature might be, but it would be his to command.
A malevolent glee swept over him as the presence began to fawn on him.
Farnor and Marna were the first to join the growing group of hunters converging on the edge of a small lake. Garren and Gryss had again fallen behind despite the downhill slope.
The group had formed into a circle at the centre of which lay another brutally slaughtered sheep.
From the peaks above came a sound like distant thunder. Farnor’s flesh tingled.
‘Rock slide,’ someone said casually, and attention reverted to the dead animal.
Garren and Gryss arrived, the elder quietly pushing his way to the front of the circle. He bent over the remains of the sheep. ‘This hasn’t been dead as long as the other one,’ he pronounced after a brief inspection. ‘It’s getting hungrier.’
‘Or it’s just acquiring the taste,’ Garren said. Gryss nodded. it was irrelevant which. Both knew that the attacks on the sheep would now become more frequent.
‘It’s making itself at home,’ someone said, by way of confirmation.
Gryss looked up at the sun. ‘We’ve quite a lot of the day left. We must try and find it or we’ll be having to round up the flocks and set a night watch.’
This observation sobered even the merriest mem-bers of the group. A hunt was a hunt, but night watches were a different matter altogether. Dismal affairs at best. Small groups chosen by lot to mount guard on a few huddled sheep. Waiting silent through the cold, dark night, with no fire, no light, not even any talking to set aside the brooding presence of the unseen mountains. And certainly no ale. Fall asleep out there full of ale and glowing and, blanket or no, you could expect to wake up dead.
‘Where do we start?’ a young man asked. ‘There aren’t any tracks to follow.’
Gryss glowered at the speaker. ‘It’s a big dog, or more than one,’ he said, pointing at the corpse. ‘There’ll be signs somewhere if we bother to look properly. If not footprints, then fur snagged on the gorse or a bush. Or bits of this poor beast dropped somewhere. Just spread out carefully and keep your eyes open.’
Subdued, the hunters did as they were bidden.
‘What can we do?’ Farnor asked his father.
‘The same,’ Garren replied. ‘But keep us in sight.’
As Farnor made to walk away, Garren laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I mean that,’ he said sternly but softly so that Marna would not hear. ‘I don’t want you, by the way, drifting off into some thicket with milady there.’
Farnor coloured and opened his mouth to deny the implicit accusation, but too many protestations formed at once and culminated only in an incoherent stutter which Garren waved to silence. He repeated Gryss’s comments. ‘We have to find whatever’s killing these sheep as quickly as possible now, but it’s marked this place out as its territory and it’s liable to attack anyone who stumbles on it carelessly. So be alert. No foolish-ness of any kind. Do you understand?’
‘What’s the matter?’ Marna asked as Farnor joined her.
Farnor, still a little indignant, fought down a petu-lant ‘Nothing!’, and substituted, ‘He was just telling me to be careful.’
Marna looked at him and then back at the two men. They were laughing about something. Her eyes nar-rowed, but she said nothing.