Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (18 page)

She did the exercise as he directed, getting a clawhold in the gray driftwood and pulling back with all her weight to limber and stretch the contracted muscles. He saw Newt grimace as she pulled hard, straightening her leg.

“Hurts,” she said between grunts of effort. “But good for leg.”

Then Thakur saw her abruptly freeze, her claws still embedded in the log, her stare fixed at a point beyond. Even as his gaze followed, his nose caught the smoke-tinged scent of the Firekeeper leader. Beside him, he felt Newt tense, jerk her claws from the driftwood, and start to growl.

Fessran sat in a hollow between two dunes, cocking her head to one side. “Phew, herding teacher,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I had to force myself to follow your trail. You don’t have to roll in seamare dung now that we’ve got the creatures penned.” She got to her feet, her eyes roving over Newt. “And who is that? She stinks as much as you do.”

Thakur didn’t know whether Newt understood Fessran or not, but he heard her growl deepen. “No,” he said sharply, pushing Newt back with his shoulder.

“So I’m not the only one who has dealings with the Un-Named.” Fessran grinned. “What does our clan leader have to say about this?”

“If Ratha has anything to say about it, you can be sure she will,” he said irritably.

Fessran fixed her gaze on Newt, who bristled. “When did she turn up?”

“She’s the one who gave me the idea about herding seamares.” Thakur turned to Newt. “Put your fur down,” he told her. “That is Fessran. She’s often rude, but she won’t harm you.” He halted. Newt’s eyes had gone glassy and started to swirl.

“The smell,” he heard her hiss. “In her coat. The Dreambiter’s smell.”

Before Thakur could stop Newt, she was over the log in a bound and charging at Fessran. The puzzled stare on the Firekeeper’s face turned to an angry snarl. Thakur sprinted after Newt, trying to launch himself between the two, but he wasn’t fast enough. Newt and Fessran met in an angry flurry, then broke apart. Newt suddenly withdrew, muttering to herself. Fessran stood, her head lowered, her nape erect, ready to fight off another attack, but Newt had gone into a strange trance in which she circled aimlessly for several minutes, looking confused, then toppled over onto her side.

“What, by the Red Tongue’s ashes, is the matter with
her
?” Fessran demanded.

Thakur lost his temper. “What is the matter with
you
, Firekeeper? I told the others I didn’t want to be disturbed, but you obviously didn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry, Thakur,” Fessran said contritely. She flattened her fur, came a few steps closer. “Is she all right?”

“Her name is Newt, and she’s not going to die, if that’s what you mean. But she’s not all right. She gets these fits. Her foreleg is injured, and I was trying to help her when you stuck your whiskers in.”

“What was she saying about my smell?”

“I don’t know. I think your scent had something to do with the fit. Maybe you’d better back off.” Thakur nosed the fallen Newt, who had started to twitch and stir. Fessran retreated downwind as Newt slowly rolled onto her front and shakily got up. “Just because I don’t cover myself with duck-footed dappleback dung . . .” Thakur heard the Firekeeper mutter. Newt shook her head in confusion then peered at Fessran. For an instant, he thought she was going to attack again. Then she took a breath and spoke.

“You,” she said hoarsely to Fessran. “You carry smell. You not biting one, but you carry smell.”

“What’s she yowling about?” Fessran asked.

“I don’t know. Fess, just go away, please.”

Newt startled him with a roar. “No! Stay. Tell about smell.” She turned almost desperately to Thakur, stumbling badly on her words. “The one who bites. In my head. Smell is real. Newt didn’t make up.” She lunged away from Thakur, facing Fessran. Then she seemed to catch sight of the scars on Fessran’s leg and chest. She looked up, searching Fessran’s eyes.

“Not only smell, but scars,” she breathed. “Like me.”

Caught in the intensity of Newt’s gaze, Fessran twitched back her ears and narrowed her eyes.

“You know Dreambiter,” Newt insisted stubbornly, unwilling to release Fessran from her stare.

“I have many scents on me, from all those in the clan,” Fessran answered cautiously. “Who do you mean by Dreambiter?”

“She comes. From behind, in darkness. I hear her feet, then she leaps on me and wounds me with teeth. I remember taste of milk, sound of purring, but then came pain and this.” Newt thrust her lame forepaw at Fessran.

Thakur tried again to ease himself into the conversation, but the two were intent upon each other and took no notice of him.

“Newt, who was your mother?” Fessran asked.

She got only a blank stare.

“Mother. You know, the one who birthed you, gave you milk.”

“The Dreambiter gave me milk.” Newt’s voice was flat. “I don’t know mother. Does mother bite?”

“A little nip once in a while, if cubs are being rowdy. But mostly she feeds them, keeps them warm, gives them nuzzles and licks. I’ve had young ones myself, so I know.” Fessran gave her a quizzical look.

Thakur saw that Newt was retreating into her memories, muttering to herself. He saw the link she was forging between Fessran’s description of a mother and the Dreambiter image that plagued and terrified her.

“The one who bit me is the one you call mother, and she is in your clan.” Newt’s ears flattened slightly, and her pupils widened with fear then narrowed with rage. Thakur felt a stab of alarm.

“Who in the clan could... ” Fessran broke off. Thakur saw her mouth a name to herself and felt it tremble on his own tongue: Ratha.

“Enough, Fessran,” he said sharply, wishing he’d stepped in before things got this far. Newt was starting to shiver and growl.

The Firekeeper bristled. “Why shouldn’t I tell her the truth? If this cub is from the loins of our clan leader, then Ratha has no right to judge others.”

“I don’t think it will help us or her to dig up old and rotted dung,” Thakur snapped. “Firekeeper, if you are going to cause trouble, do it somewhere else.”

Fessran left, her tail low and switching. Thakur didn’t like the way Newt’s gaze followed her.

Newt extended her patrol range and hobbled along her new trails with raised nape and bristling tail. Now that she had gone beyond her own beach, she caught the scents of the intruders in the wind and found a trace of the Dreambiter’s among them. It made her shudder—and fight off rising panic that threatened to tip her over into an attack of her strange illness.

The gentle one who called himself Thakur had not come since that meeting with the other female, the one who carried the scent of the Dreambiter. After that encounter, he refused to answer Newt’s questions and at last had turned away, saying he should no longer visit her.

She found herself missing Thakur with a keenness that added to her misery. Why had he come if he meant only to go away again? Why had he tempted her to speak if there was no one to hear her and answer?

She thought of becoming silent once again, but she found that she couldn’t. It seemed as if the words were jammed up behind her tongue, pushing to get out, yet she didn’t know how to say them. Something had changed in her. He had done it.

Her rage made her reckless, and she followed the scents of the Named until she found herself crouched in the lee side of a dune, looking down at a strange sight.

She had come to another river resembling the one that formed her lagoon. This stream meandered its way across sand flats that lay at the base of a sandstone cliff. At one point the cliff was gouged inward, forming a pocket, and there, on the narrow mud-beach beneath the cliff, Newt saw a cluster of seamares.

She stifled her impulse to go and herd them back to the rookery, for the Named invaders on both sides of the river guarded the captives. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if any of the sentries was the Dreambiter.

When she crept closer for a better view, she saw something going on that she didn’t understand. The intruders were doing something she had never seen any animal do: carrying long sticks in their jaws and poking them upright into the mud on the seamares’ beach.

A line of poles already extended down the beach into the water, and as she watched, two of the Named waded out with saplings from which the branches had been stripped and shoved them into the sandy bottom, continuing the line of upright sticks in the river itself.

As the pole-setters worked, forcing the sticks into place with their jaws, another group followed them. This bunch carried odd little animals on their backs. Newt remembered the creature Thakur always carried with him. The ringed tails, strange paws, and sharp little muzzles were the same.

She watched as the intruders brought shorter sticks in their jaws and held them crossways against the uprights. The other animals reared up and did something with their paws and long pieces of vine that then held the crossmembers in place. When they finished each section, Newt saw what they had built. It was like a tree, but not a tree, or like a bush that had been wrenched and bent to serve some unknown purpose. Bewildered and frightened, she crept away.

The next day found her back behind the dunes, spying on the strangers. She could see that the mysterious thing had grown, now extending from the mud-beach to midriver, then bending at an angle to follow the current flow downstream.

She still didn’t know what it was, but as the strangers and their small helpers continued to put poles in place and lash them together, she gained a dim sense of what this thing might be. Then, when the builders brought tangles of thornbrush and added those to the construction (not without grimaces of pain and yowls when tender noses got pricked), she began to understand. She watched a seamare lumber up to the construction, hoping the creature might butt it down. Instead the animal nosed it, then bellowed as the thorns stung its muzzle. It retreated, beaten and bewildered, and made no other attempt to escape.

Now Newt understood. This thing was a barrier, an obstruction, like a wall of rock or tangled, thorny growth. It shocked and dismayed her that anyone would make something like this. She growled deep in her throat as she watched the barrier grow, encircling the apprehensive seamares.

She thought of Thakur and her promise that she would come to him instead of launching an attack on the Named. But the thought of Thakur only made her angrier. He was one of those invading strangers who had captured the seamares; he would do nothing to help.

She was weary from all the thinking she had done. As the afternoon shadows lengthened, she tried and failed to come up with a way to free the seamares. At last she sank into the wordless, dull anger of defeat.

The barrier was nearly completed. The seamares huddled in the center, bewildered and miserable. From her vantage point, Newt could see that the barrier enclosed most of the mud-beach and ran out into the river, giving the creatures only limited room to swim. She remembered swimming with Splayfoot and seeing the seamare fly through the twilight under the ocean. These strangers had no understanding of the seamares, and they didn’t care. She sniffed the scents coming to her on the wind. There was already the taint of sickness in the odors of the trapped creatures.

Shifting restlessly, she raked the dune. Sand ground under her claws. And then she watched again, this time fixing her gaze on the intruders themselves as they worked to set the last stakes in place before bundling them with thorns. She saw how the cats struggled, often getting splinters in their jaws and blunting their fangs while bringing heavy sticks to midriver and setting them in place. Sometimes they set a pole wrong, or a surge of current from the stream pushed the stake over.

Often she saw two or three of the strangers, coats muddy and soggy, hanging on to a pole with their claws and trying to sink the end deep into the mud bottom by their combined weight. Half the time the stake sagged when they released it, then came loose and was carried downstream. Growling with frustration, the workers retrieved it and fought to anchor it in place again.

It was not a task for which they were well suited, and that became more obvious the longer Newt watched them work. Yet, although she disliked what they were doing, she could not help seeing how hard they tried. It reminded her of her own struggles, and she saw a tiny bit of herself in the strangers. She could also see that, despite the difficulty, they were succeeding.

She stayed until evening, hoping to creep closer by dark. When she approached the seamares’ pen, she found that the night she hoped would shield her had been pushed back. On the banks of the river were strange bright spots she had never seen before. They flickered and danced, like reflections of the sun on the surface of her lagoon, and they cast a fierce light. Newt’s nape prickled in terror. Were the invaders so powerful that they could capture pieces of the sun and hold them, as they did the seamares?

Though she trembled and wished she could retreat to the beach, with its soft darkness and swish of waves, she forced herself on. When she drew closer, the bright points took on form. To her they were a nest of yellow and orange snakes writhing together toward the night sky, hissing and snapping their jaws as if the stars were prey.

Beside the fires, outlined by the fierce light, she saw the forms of sentinels. In their eyes, even at a distance, the orange light shone in glints of amber and green.