Firebirds Soaring (51 page)

Ratha knew that her friend, sandy-furred Fessran, was leading in the Firekeepers to light the clan leader’s evening fire. The torch-carrying Firekeepers started this ritual when the weather began to cool. Ratha told them that they didn’t have to, but the Firekeeper leader and the others so enjoyed this ceremony that Ratha accepted it.

Behind Fessran came Bira, who, unlike Fessran, held a lighted torch in her jaws. Firelight shone in her pine-green eyes and flickered on her red-gold pelt.

“Ho, clan leader,” announced Fessran, striding past Bira. “We have come, bearing the Red Tongue. Give us your orders. We shall obey.”

Ratha got up, shook her own tawny-gold pelt, and touched noses with Fessran. “Ho, Singe-whiskers. You know scatting well that you like this as much as I do.”

“I’ll enjoy it more if you play the ferocious ruler like you’re supposed to,” Fessran hissed, but Ratha saw more than just firelight dancing in her light green eyes. In a louder voice Fessran commanded, “Firekeeper Chikka, bring forward the Red Tongue’s food so that Firekeeper Bira can give the creature life.”

Chikka, Fessran’s daughter by the herder Mondir, was a smaller version of her lanky mother. She had a few lingering cub-spots and the remnants of a silvery gray mantle along her neck and down her back. Ratha saw Chikka wrinkle her nose slightly at her mother and unload small twigs from her mouth onto the ashy fire-nest. Behind her, a young male Firekeeper dropped a load of heavier wood.

Bira nosed her treeling, Cherfaree, down from his perch in her ruff. With nudges and tooth-clicks from Bira, the treeling carefully arranged the kindling to catch fire easily. Cherfaree was Bira’s second treeling. She’d given her first, Biaree, to Ratha’s daughter, Thistle-chaser, during a critical rescue. Ratha knew this hadn’t been easy for Bira, but she and her new treeling now worked well together.

Ratha watched, marveling at the quick deftness of treeling paw-hands, as compared to the clumsy Named forefeet. She felt Ratharee sway slightly on her back and was deeply grateful that the clan had tamed the lemur-like treelings. She and many of the Named would feel lost without their small helpers and companions.

Having set up the tinder, Cherfaree turned to Bira, crooking his ringed tail. If Bira lowered her head and cocked her ears, the treeling would take the torch from Bira’s jaws and light the fire. Bira, however, lifted the firebrand and swiveled her ears back, indicating that she would light it.

Was it Ratha’s imagination, or did the treeling’s tufted ears droop a little in disappointment?

With a flourish of her plumed tail, the ruddy-coated Firekeeper dipped her torch and kindled the wood. For Ratha, each rebirth of the mystery she called “her creature” brought excited anticipation. Though she had seen it countless times, Ratha still caught herself leaning forward, her whiskers trembling, her eyes widening.

Bira stepped back, letting Chikka take her torch. Delicately spitting out pieces of bark, Bira said, “Your creature called the Red Tongue lives again, to bring you protection and warmth.”

Ratha went to Bira and gave her an affectionate head-bump. “I know Fessran lays it on a bit thick,” Bira purred softly, “but really, we do enjoy doing this for you, clan leader. You’ve endured so much for us.”

For an instant Ratha found it hard to reply. Bira’s simple, open affection and loyalty did not deserve a tart or teasing answer. “You are all worth anything I had to suffer,” she said at last.

Other Firekeepers brought more wood. With help from their treelings, they built the little blaze into a merrily crackling campfire, then put out their torches. Ratha invited everyone to flop down beside her and bask in the light and warmth. She listened to pelts rustling and treelings chirring as the Firekeepers settled themselves. Soon contented purrs became sighs and snores, blending in with the soft song from the fire.

As she had so many times, Ratha laid her nose on her paws and stared into her creature’s heart

Carefully and silently, to avoid waking the sleepers, Ratha took a branch from the small woodpile. She laid it reverently in her creature’s nest and watched as the flame curled around the wood, withering leaves and consuming them in a burst of heat and light.

Then she looked up at the night sky and the stars. There, too, lay a fire, but one that she, however powerful she might become, would never call her own. The starlight shone down on her, suddenly cold and vast with questions.

Not knowing why, Ratha turned to her campfire again and crept closer. Nearby, Fessran stirred and stretched. One of the Firekeeper’s forelegs did not extend out quite as far as the other, the effect of an old wound. The sight reminded Ratha again of Bira’s last words. Yes, she had endured much for the Named, but they had suffered as well, her friend Fessran especially. At least the Firekeeper no longer limped. Fessran was as tough and spare as bark-stripped sun-dried wood. For that, Ratha was grateful.

Fessran yawned, curling her tongue. “Have to go patrol the guard-fires.” She poked her companions. “Stir your tails, you lazy lumps of fur,” she growled, but she interspersed her pokes with nudges and licks. The others got up, grumbling good-naturedly. With their treelings on their backs, they re-lit their torches from the campfire and padded away into the night.

Ratha lay with Ratharee snuggled up against her belly. Her own gold fur was thickening for the coming winter. During the cold and rain, the clan would value the Red Tongue even more.

Her creature’s endless changes drew Ratha’s gaze and held it, while her mind wandered along trails of memory, scenting the marks of her life. From the fiery death of the old clan leader, Meoran, to the near slaying of her friend Fessran at the sabers of the usurper Shongshar, Ratha followed the memories. Then came the recovery of her lost and crippled daughter, Thistle-chaser, and the puzzling but deadly encounter with the wakefully dreaming mammoth hunters and the clan’s rescue of their enigmatic leader, True-of-voice. Now the Named had settled into an uncertain peace with both the face-tail hunters and the clan’s ancient raiding enemies, the UnNamed.

Gradually Ratha’s hypnotic stare at the fire brought sleep.

The one memory that she hadn’t consciously chosen because it still brought pain crept past her guard and into her dreams.

It swirled together from a tumble of images, sounds, scents, and feelings. Again she saw the burnished sheen of copper fur in sunlight and heard a sardonic voice. She stared again into fiercely burning amber eyes, brighter than any in the clan. The first encounter; she, stinging with scratches and nips from an UnNamed stranger. Squashed under his paw while he held her prey, her first catch, dangling by the tail from his jaws. Then he swallowed her kill, and then, unbelievably, spoke to her. She felt rage again melting into astonishment at learning that the UnNamed were not all savage and mindless.

She said again the epithet she had flung at him, which later became a name spoken with wakening and deepening affection.

Bonechewer.

The swirl of dream sensations became one shape. He stood before her, eyes flashing, mouth half-open, showing the broken right fang, challenging her to approach. On his side lay a terrible scar where clan rage had caved in his ribs and torn his lungs. And lifting his head, he showed another scar, one that made the barely healed wound inside Ratha open and bleed. The marks of fangs that took him to the death trail.

Bonechewer. Her first and only mate, killed in a clash between the clan and their foes.

The Named won, using Ratha’s new “creature.” Ratha lost, keeping only Bonechewer’s memory.

In her dream, he still stood before her, marred yet beautiful, his stance cocky, his look proud.

“I still live, clan cat,” said the amber eyes.

Ratha wanted to fling herself at him, to rub against him, covering herself with him and he covering her. She wanted to speak to him, releasing the words that had backed up, telling him everything that had happened since he had died. She wanted to get Thistle-chaser and push her daughter toward him, saying, “Look. This is your daughter. She isn’t lost anymore. We found her. She is healing. We made her together and she is both of us. See her and care for her as I care for you. . . .”

Ratha found herself on her feet, poised as she been in her dream, trembling and tensed to spring. She nearly fell forward into the fire before she caught herself. She glanced to one side, half expecting to see Thistle-chaser’s rusty black and orange mottled coat in the firelight.

A bitterness rose in Ratha’s throat. No Thistle. No Bonechewer, either. Only a dream.

Yet something made Ratha stare across the fire. There was a face amid the flames.

Her fur bristled, her tail flared. Her claws sank into the ground. There was a face whose eyes shone, fiery and deep. Not green, not orange, not yellow, but molten amber. The fangs gleamed, one broken.

A shape matched the face; angular and lean. Standing with that maddening insolence that Ratha recalled too well.

“Bonechewer?” she breathed.

Joy battling with utter disbelief pinned Ratha where she stood. She waited for him to speak. Instead he stared at her as if he knew her immobility, then turned and sauntered off. The sound of his footsteps quickened and he was gone.

Ratha threw herself at the vanished figure as she had longed to in the dream. She scorched her belly in a leap that carried her over the flames, but when she landed, the night had again fallen still.

It was if he had never been there.

Ratha knew that her own skidding feet had obliterated any of his footprints near the fire. Trying not to feel frantic, she cast about for others, but she couldn’t yet see well beyond the firelight and she was too impatient to let her eyes adjust.

Besides, if Bonechewer had really been present, she would have caught his scent, even masked by the campfire’s smoke. She had breathed it so deeply that she would know it even with ashes up her nose.

She halted, whiskers back, sniffing. Did she catch a trace of his scent, or was it her imagination? She did smell something that reminded her vaguely of the fleabane herb she often rolled in, but far more pungent and intense.

She sneezed, and then stumbled at a wave of dizziness. Shaking it off, she prowled around, whisker brushing and nosing the ground for his footmarks. Nothing.

He was always good at hiding his trail,
Ratha thought, letting disappointment sag her body down by the fire.
It’s just like him to taunt me.

What am I thinking?
Ratha asked herself as an irritated and ruffled Ratharee made a nest in Ratha’s fur.
Bonechewer is long dead. His remains are under the old pine tree.

She fought a misery that flattened her even more. Laying her nose on her paws, she growled, “Go away. Don’t make me think of you, Bonechewer. Stay dead.”

The impression, however, remained, keeping Ratha awake. When she caught herself in a longing glance into the dark beyond the fire, she flipped her tail around her feet and over her eyes. Even so, it was long before she slept.

The clan leader woke the following morning with an unwanted answer to the night’s mystery. The clan’s herding teacher, Thakur, looked so much like his slain brother that she could have easily mistaken one for the other, especially late at night. Thakur’s eyes were emerald rather than amber, but firelight sent its colors into everyone’s eyes.

Scuffing sand over the campfire’s embers, she wondered, and even through her morning grooming she chased the thought. It was as elusive as a dappleback mare that had broken from the herd and refused to be rounded up.

Thakur would never pull such a heartless trick. He, of all the Named, understood how Ratha had cared for Bonechewer. Even if Thakur hoped that he might be the one Ratha chose for her next mate, he wouldn’t discourage her so.

As she scratched behind one ear, she spied Bira, who was coming to make sure the campfire was out. With her tail, Ratha beckoned the young Firekeeper to her side. She asked Bira to go and dig under the old pine tree, return, and say what she found there.

Answering Bira’s questioning head tilt, Ratha said only, “I need to know something. I’ll tell you more when you get back.”

When Bira had padded away with a last wave of her plumed tail, Ratha finished a long grooming session. She knew what Bira should find. She was so sure that she dismissed the previous night’s apparition, buried a twinge of sorrow, and began planning her patrol routine. She also had to sit on a slight pang of guilt. She could well have done the task herself, but she didn’t want to raise the same feelings again. She also didn’t want to answer any questions as to why the clan leader was digging under that particular tree.

Thinking that she should start her rounds, and that she could find Bira on the way, Ratha set one paw on the meadow trail, only to lift it again when Bira appeared, front paws covered with soil. “Clan leader, why did you have me dig there?” Bira shook more dirt from her pelt. “I didn’t find anything.”

Ratha’s hindquarters collapsed into a startled sit, but she didn’t betray anything in her voice. “Are you sure you dug under the right tree? Show me, please.”

Bira led her to the excavation. This part of clan ground had few pines. This tree towered above the surrounding scrub oak and bay. It was more majestic now than when she had chosen it for Bonechewer’s memorial.

Ratha looked up through the branches. This was definitely the right tree. Bira had dug frantically and deep, sensing her leader’s need. The bones she should have found weren’t there. Ratha forced herself to nose and scratch around in the dirt piles and leaf litter, wanting, yet not wanting, to find evidence that Bonechewer lay here.