Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (21 page)

She clung to one hope: that the remaining rags of the friendship she and Fessran had known might make Fessran surrender the cub without a fight. That hope dwindled when she topped a rise that led to the den and looked down to see a sand-colored form pacing the ground. A fire burned beside the lair.

Now the tightness crept from between Ratha’s shoulders to a place in her chest, between her front legs. Would Fessran use the Red Tongue against her? The Firekeeper looked rough, wild, her belly drawn except for the swollen teats she used to nurse the cub. Her face was taut.

She stopped pacing and stood, her gaze fixed. Ratha slowed but did not stop.

“The trails we take turn back on themselves, clan leader,” Fessran hissed, reminding Ratha that she too remembered how they had stood facing each other when Ratha had come to take Shongshar’s cubs. That time, Fessran had seen the truth and backed down. Perhaps now...
 

“No, Ratha.” The Firekeeper’s voice was low and shaking. “I wasn’t sure then. I know now. You are wrong about Mishanti. The light in his eyes is hard to see, but it is there.”

“Has he spoken? Has he done anything to show he has the gift we seek?”

“Not yet. But that doesn’t matter. Not to me.”

Ratha ground her back teeth in frustration over Fessran’s willing blindness. She knew the depth of loss and loneliness that could twist things and make an impossibility into a forlorn hope.

“Let me see him again,” she said wearily. Fessran went into the den and brought Mishanti out. She lay beside him, guarding him with a forepaw, gazing down at him and licking the top of his head.

“I don’t know why I love him,” she said softly, “but I do.” She gathered him in with both forepaws. He fell against her breast, snuggled up against her with his paws waving. “Why do we love cubs?” she asked Ratha, looking up with eyes that were angry and pleading. “Why, when they cause so much fuss and trouble, when they grow up and forget who you are, or when they die and you have nothing left?”

Ratha found herself unable to answer. At last she said, “Fessran, this season has been difficult for all of us. And I didn’t realize... ”

“Do you know why I’m so sure about him, Ratha?” Fessran interrupted suddenly. “Because at night, when I’m lying in the den with him, smelling his scent, I can see what he will be. In the dark I can see him running along a hill crest with a torch in his mouth, his fur silver and his eyes flame. And that fire will burn for the Named, if you give it a chance.”

Ratha stared at Fessran, not knowing what to say. She wondered if the strain of the drought and the move had somehow pushed Fessran onto trails that led beyond reality.

She tried to steer Fessran away from her vision and her strange conviction. Softening her voice, she said, “I know you can’t help loving cubs. It’s part of what you are. Most of the clan sees the Fessran who is the Firekeeper leader, who calls others soft as dung about treelings, who chews the ears of anyone who gives her any nonsense. I have seen the one who ran beside me with the Red Tongue, and I also see the one who loves cubs. But this cub is a mistake. He won’t be able to give back what you are giving him. Please understand. I’m not trying to be cruel either to you or to him.”

Fessran’s gaze pierced her. “Do you really know by looking at a cub’s eyes what he will be like? Do you have some infallible gift that says this one can be Named and this one cannot? I don’t think so. It isn’t as easy as that. And I don’t think you are as sure as you pretend to be.”

“I’m not,” Ratha admitted. “But what my eyes and my nose and my belly tell me is that this cub is worthless to the clan. Khushi never should have brought him, and you never should have kept him.”

“Is that how you think of him?” Fessran’s gaze and voice had a raw edge. “As something that just happened? A creature that died and must now be buried?”

“An Un-Named one whose grandsire probably left those scars in your shoulder,” Ratha said, hardening her voice.

Fessran flattened her ears. “You think you’ll frighten me with that again? Oh no. Just because Shongshar’s blood may run in this cub is no reason to say he will have to grow up that way. It was not just Shongshar’s long teeth that led him to take the trail he did.”

Ratha broke off and stared at the cub, trying to find some indication that she was wrong after all. But Mishanti was diffident, refusing to answer her gaze and turning his head away in the shy way of the Un-Named. What Ratha could see of his eyes held little promise. She swallowed hard, wishing for Fessran’s sake that there was
something
. But she couldn’t lie to herself or to Fessran.

“I cannot accept him in the clan, Firekeeper.”

The dregs of Fessran’s hope seemed to run out of her, making her shrink down. To Ratha’s eyes she seemed to grow thinner, harder. Only her eyes held a trace of softness, and that was for the cub she guarded. Mishanti arched his back, rubbing his little spike of a tail under her chin.

Ratha saw doubt flicker at the edge of her eyes like a snake’s tongue and seized it.

“Fessran, this is a blind trail you run, an empty husk, a dried bone. Next birthing season, you will have your own cubs. Save your love for them.” Ratha paused. “I promise I will not kill this cub. I will take him to the same place as I took the others. At least one of those survived. Perhaps he will too.”

“But I will never know him,” Fessran said in a dried-up, desperate voice. “Don’t you understand that? I will never know him.”

“There is nothing there to know,” Ratha said in a low voice that started to turn into a growl.

“How can you be so sure?” Fessran cried. “You’re not, are you? You are afraid. Afraid of something I don’t understand. You are more frightened by this than you were of Shongshar. What is it, then, that stalks you, and makes you turn and strike out, even if the one before you is only a litterling?”

Fessran’s words struck deep, as if into the heart of a flame, and the sparks they threw coalesced into Thistle-chaser’s face. Ratha shuddered, squeezed her eyes shut, and thrust the memory aside. No, she could not face that, not even now.

“All right. I’ll tell you what I fear. You know that there is something in our kind that sets us apart from the others around us. There are very few of us and many of the Un-Named. Why we have come to be, I don’t know. Why we have the gift that lights our eyes, I don’t know either.”

“We are more clever than the Un-Named,” Fessran grumbled. “Is that such a big difference?”

“No, it is not just cleverness. It is something else that we don’t have a word for. It is what makes us Named and the others not.” Ratha drew a breath. “And what frightens me is I know we can lose this gift. When I was exiled from the clan after I brought the Red Tongue before Meoran, I walked trails with the Un-Named. Some were as clever as we, others no better than herdbeasts, but many stood somewhere between. It was they who frightened me most of all, for what I saw in their eyes was that gift fading away....”

But it was what I saw in Thistle-chaser’s that tore me most of all.

Fessran looked away. “So those who do not have this gift taint us if they come near?” She snorted. “Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t the ones who are tainted. What has this gift you speak of really brought us? The sharper the fang, the deeper wound it can give and the worse pain.” She looked down at Mishanti. “The Un-Named do not have to judge their own and cast them aside. And when the judgment comes from fear, clan leader?”

“Then blame me and leave the marks of blame on my coat. But I have to do what is right for our people,” Ratha said. “The cub must be taken from clan territory so that he does not mate with females of the Named. And he must go now, so that the pain of his going is less.”

Fessran lowered her chin over the cub and raised her hackles. “Mishanti is mine.”

“I won’t fight you, Fessran,” Ratha said quietly. “You may deny the power of Shongshar’s teeth, but the wound they gave you will tell.”

Pain whipped the Firekeeper’s face into a mask of slitted eyes and bared teeth. The eyes were wild with the knowledge that Ratha’s words were bitterly true; that if it came to a fight, Fessran would lose.

“Give him to me. Now.”

Suddenly the eyes were gone from in front of her, and Fessran became a sand-colored streak that blurred the ground near the fire. The Red Tongue spit sparks as Fessran dug a torch into its heart and lifted the flame aloft. Her jaw trembled so that her teeth shuddered against the torch shaft, but she swung the flame around so that it blocked Ratha from Mishanti.

The shock of seeing the Red Tongue raised against her in Fessran’s jaws seemed to wrench the ground from beneath Ratha’s feet. She staggered, squeezed her eyes shut. She opened them again to find the one who had been her friend standing before her with a flaming torch.

“Will you burn me with my own creature?” she hissed. “Maybe you would be right to do so. The two gifts of the Named burn too brightly and leave only ashes.”

A wordless, agonized howl broke from the Firekeeper. The firebrand swung, but it went past Ratha and soared free back into the fire-nest. Fessran faced Ratha, her sides heaving. “Take him then, because I can’t kill you. Because my cursed memory still lets me see the times when you and I ran the trails together, carrying the Red Tongue in our jaws.” She took a shuddering breath. “But before you go, you should know something else: You drove your own daughter away for the same reason you are tearing Mishanti from me.”

Ratha felt a shock go through her body, almost paralyzing her. “How do you know this? I never told anyone. You’re good at lying, Firekeeper. I almost believed you.”

“Thakur told me some of the truth, and the rest I found myself,” Fessran said. “She has nightmares about you, falls into fits when she catches your smell. She calls you the Dreambiter and would kill you if she could. Newt is yours, Ratha. Half-witted, crippled—she is your daughter.”

“No,” Ratha growled.

“And I’ll tell you something else. I think she’s out there, watching, listening to your words.”

Again Thistle-chaser’s spotted face was before Ratha, distorted, crying out in pain. Then Newt’s face overlaid it, but the eyes were still the same. They swirled, taunting her. Could Fessran be right? Was the one who had been Thistle-chaser out there listening?

Ratha shook herself. She could not be distracted. Not now.

She lunged at Fessran, driving her back from the bewildered Mishanti.

“Take him!” the Firekeeper howled. “Take him and then, maybe, I will be able to hate you enough to feed you your own creature and make you live by your own law. ”

Another cry broke from her, a cry that seemed to tear Ratha from inside. She shook with the pain of it and ached to offer the Firekeeper some scraps of comfort, but all she could do was take the cub by the scruff and go.

Thakur had heard Fessran howl before, but rarely had there been such raw grief and rage in the Firekeeper’s voice. The sound drew him to the vale behind Newt’s lagoon, and he went quickly, with Aree crouching on his shoulder. As he was starting up the path, Fessran appeared, galloping past an outcropping. She nearly ran into him.

He dodged to the side while she skidded, raising a plume of fine dust and sand that set her coughing. Her ribs lifted in sobbing breaths.

“Did you see Ratha?” she managed to ask.

“No. What happened?”

“She came and took Mishanti. The cub I kept and wanted to adopt.”

“That’s what set you off running and yowling? Fessran, I can’t stop Ratha from doing what she thinks is best for the clan,” he argued.

“Then why are you here?”

“I need help. Something’s happened to Newt. She went wild, ran off a cliff. She wasn’t killed, but she went into one of her fits, and she can’t or won’t come out of it.”

Fessran stared at him. “What, by the Red Tongue’s ashes, did you do to set that off?”

“I lost my temper and I called Newt by her name. Her real name. Thistle-chaser. I think hearing it brought back all sorts of things.”

“So that proves it. She is Ratha’s daughter. I told Ratha that. I told her she had no right to take Mishanti, but I couldn’t stop her. If we both go after her?”

“I can’t leave Newt. Something’s really gone wrong with her. Please, Fessran,” he pleaded as he saw the Firekeeper stare angrily down the trail in the direction that Ratha had probably gone. “Come with me. At least help me find Bira or someone.”

“If I help, will you come with me to talk some sense into Ratha?”

Wearily Thakur agreed, then led the way back to the cave where he’d left Newt. Apprehensively he approached, listening for muttering or other sounds. He heard only silence and his own footsteps. Crouching down, he peered into the cave, feeling a lump come into his throat when he found everything quiet and still. But when his eyes grew used to the darkness, he saw Newt had gone.

For an instant he stayed there, feeling numb and puzzled. Where could she have gone? Why would she have left? And then the answer came, for he remembered her last words as he’d left the cave: She had gone to hunt the Dreambiter.

He scrambled out, ruffling his fur backward in his haste. Nearby he saw Fessran nosing a set of pawprints in the wet sand.

“These certainly aren’t yours,” the Firekeeper said. “Well, Newt can’t be dying if she’s up and wandering around.” She stared at Thakur. “What’s the matter now?”