Free Spirit Walker by Michelle Paver

muttered Saeunn, making her jump.
"But what does that mean?"
Saeunn didn't answer. Crouching on a patch of hard red earth by the river's edge, she tented her tunic over her bony knees. Her feet were bare, her toenails brown and hooked.
     
Once, Torak had told Renn that Saeunn reminded him of a raven. "An old one, with no kind feelings left." Renn thought she was more like scorched earth: dried up and very, very hard. But Torak was right about the feelings. Renn had known the Raven Mage all her life,
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and she'd never seen her smile.
"Why should I tell you about the tokoroth?" said Saeunn in her rasping croak. "You want to know this, yet you refuse to learn Magecraft." "Because I don't like Magecraft," retorted Renn.
"But you're good at it. You know things before they happen."
"I'm good at hunting too, but you--"
"You lose yourself in the hunt," cut in Saeunn, "to escape your destiny. To escape becoming a Mage."
Renn took a deep breath and held on to her temper. Arguing with Saeunn was like trying to cut flint with a feather. And it didn't help that there might be some truth in what she said.
    She resolved to be patient until she'd got what she wanted. "Tell me about the tokoroth," she said.
"A tokoroth," said Saeunn, "is a child raised alone and in darkness, as a host for a demon."
As she spoke, the gloom deepened, and a thin rain began to fall, pocking the red earth.
"A tokoroth," she went on, "knows no good or evil. No right or wrong. It is utterly without mercy, for it has been taught to hate the world. It obeys no one but its creator." She stared at the black, rushing water. "It is one of the most feared creatures in the Forest. I never thought to hear of one in my lifetime." 100
     
Renn looked down at her injured hand. Beneath Saeunn's poultice of coltsfoot and cobwebs, the wound throbbed painfully. "You said 'its creator.' What do you mean?"
    Saeunn's clawlike hand gripped her staff. "The one who captured the child. The one who caught the demon and trapped it in the body of the host." Renn shook her head. "Why have I never heard of this before?"
"Few now know about tokoroth," said Saeunn, "and even fewer speak of them. Besides," she added with an edge to her voice, "you don't wish to learn Magecraft. Or had you forgotten?"
    Renn flushed. "How are they created?"
To her surprise, the corners of the lipless mouth went down in an approving grimace. "You go to the roots of things, that's good. That's what a Mage does." Renn stayed silent.
Saeunn drew a mark in the earth that Renn couldn't see. "The dark art of creating tokoroth," she said, "was lost long ago. Or so we thought. It seems that someone has learned it afresh." She took away her hand to reveal the three-pronged fork of the Soul-Eaters.
    Renn had half expected that, but it was a shock to have her suspicion confirmed. "But-
how
are they made?" she said, her voice barely audible above the roar of the Widewater.
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    Saeunn rested her chin on her knees and gazed into the water, and Renn followed her gaze--down, down, to the murky bottom of the river. "First," said the Mage, "a child is taken. Maybe it goes missing when its kin turn away for a moment. They search, thinking it has wandered off into the Forest. They never find it. They grieve, believing it lost, or taken by a lynx or a bear."
Renn nodded. She knew people who'd lost children that way, everyone did, and she always felt a tearing pity for them. She too had lost kin. Her father had been missing for five moons before his body was found. She'd been seven summers old. She remembered the agony of not knowing.
    "Better for the child," Saeunn said grimly, "if it
had
fallen prey to a bear. Better than being taken for a tokoroth."
Renn frowned. "Why? At least it's still alive."
"Alive?" One bony hand clenched. "Kept in darkness for moon after moon? No warmth but what will barely keep it alive? No food but rotting bat meat tossed into its own filth? Worst of all, no people. Not till it has forgotten the touch of