She tells him he must find three pieces of the ' Nanuak' - ' Deepest of all, the drowned sight. Torak escapes, followed by Renn, who's determined to ensure that he goes to the Mountain. She quotes a prophecy about the ' Listener' who ' fights with air, and speaks with silence.' His ' heart's blood' is supposed to defeat the Shadow, but how? Torak demands trial by combat and makes an enemy of the Leader's nephew, Hord, whose sister Renn also mistrusts him. They're captured by members of the Raven Clan. Though Torak means to kill the cub, they end up travelling together into a world of adventure (it's fun seeing Torak - ' Tall Tailless' - through the cub's eyes). Anguished, Torak runs from his father's death, to stumble on a starving wolf cub, whose yowls he understands (his clan is the Wolf), and whose eyes are as ' clear as sunlight in springwater'. It's a race against time, but Fa tells Torak that his ' guide' will find him.

Torak's father tells him to flee, but also makes him swear to journey to the ' Mountain of the World Spirit', where he must find the means to defeat this evil creature before it slaughters all the clans. Now his father lies bleeding to death beside him. He and his father (who have always lived alone away from the clans) were attacked by ' a huge rampaging menace in bear form', a demon-possessed creature that had stalked them.

Torak wakes from a brief sleep into nightmare in the Forest. This is the first in an exciting new series, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, set in the early days of humankind. Wolf Brother: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #1 by Michelle Paver

The wolf brother series