Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (24 page)

Again he put himself in front of Ratha, facing Newt. Ratha saw Newt’s lips writhe back, baring her teeth. She struggled to make some part of her body move, but she could get only uncoordinated jerks. Newt snapped at the cub, who wobbled aside at the last moment. Again Ratha tried to reach him and failed. Newt was preparing to lunge for the killing bite.

Ratha had only her voice and her wits.

“Dreambiter. Cub-slayer,” she snarled, throwing Newt’s words back at her.

Slowly Newt’s ice-green stare moved from the cub to Ratha. “You are... ” she began.

“His blood is on your claws now, daughter.”

Newt froze, one paw still raised. A tremor crept over her, turning into shivering.

Ratha hitched herself up, trying to hold her daughter’s gaze. “You may hate me now, and you may hate me more after I’ve said this. You will never slay the Dreambiter, because you have become the Dreambiter.”

“No.”

“You would kill or cripple that cub if it meant you could take out your hate on me. It is the same thing. It was the same thing then.”

“No. He in the way,” Newt spluttered.
 

“You got in the way when I attacked Bonechewer,” Ratha said, her voice hard. “We are both Dreambiters and cub-maulers. We are both fighting for ourselves so hard that it is easy for us to wound others who get in the way.” She paused. “That is the truth, Thistle-chaser.”
 

Now Newt was taking hard, deep breaths. Ratha could see her daughter’s rib cage heave. Was it realization or rage that lit the depths of her eyes? Ratha couldn’t tell and braced herself for another blow.

With a despairing howl, Newt flung herself around. She seemed to go into a wild fit, slashing at empty air, raking her claws across rocks and opening her jaws in a raw-edged scream. Then she turned her wrath on herself, ripping her own fur with her claws and trying to stab herself with her teeth.

“Thistle-chaser!” Ratha howled, then shut her eyes, unable to bear the sight.

A deep roar drowned out Newt’s cries and then there was a booming crash as a storm-lashed breaker surged over the islet. Ratha was caught in a river of icy water that pulled her painfully against her trapped paw. Newt was a mass of soggy fur tumbling between wave crests. And Mishanti was nowhere in sight. Ratha strained as high as she could, trying to spot him. She saw Newt recover, fight her way to a boulder that rose above the water, and cling there, looking dazed.

There was a growing tightness in Ratha’s throat. Mishanti, the little warrior who had fought to protect her, had been swept away by the sea. Anxiously she scanned as much of the islet as she could see and then the heaving ocean. Rain began pelting down. Lightning jumped and flickered overhead, and thunder mixed with the roar of beating surf.

And then Ratha saw a tiny, dark shape on the outlying rocks at the far end of the islet. It moved.

“Thistle-chaser!” she called. Newt only stared back at her dumbly.

“The cub—he’s down on those rocks. I’m stuck. Please... ”

Newt seemed lost in a trance. Ratha turned her gaze back to the small form nearly lost against the foaming surf, wondering if he was really still there or whether her hope had deceived her. A movement at the edge of her vision startled her. It was Newt, leaving her refuge and half swimming, half sloshing through the water. She moved slowly, as if still dazed, but she was going in the right direction. Toward Mishanti.

She halted, stared at Ratha, her eyes smoky, unreadable.

“Get him,” Ratha said. “Not for my sake. For yours.”

Newt seemed to wake up. She took several splashing bounds across the nearly swamped islet, scrambling across the rocks. She had nearly reached Mishanti when another wave broke, sending torrents of water over the rocks. This time the cascade almost drowned Ratha. She fought to keep her nose above the water, pulling as hard as she could on her trapped forepaw. Fear stabbed when she saw foam covering the place where Newt and the cub had been. Neither one was visible.

Now Ratha was alone. Numbly she hoped the next wave would engulf her, filling her lungs with water and giving her a quick choking death. Otherwise she would hang here on the rocks, battered and soaked, until the cold killed her. Or grief.

To lose both her daughter and Fessran’s foster son to a single furious sweep of the sea, yet to be left living and conscious enough to know and feel the loss was cruelty beyond bearing. Ratha felt herself starting to retreat, to close down, turning inward to find shelter from the world around her. Her body was numbed past feeling. She hoped her mind would soon be the same.

A thin wail threaded itself through her dulled hearing. Not until it came again did she even think about lifting her head. It seemed too heavy, not worth the bother. Why the interruption now, when she was starting to feel comfortable? She no longer felt the wind. It was as if she were lying, warm and lazy, in a pool of sun near the entrance to her den.

And then more noises came. Splashes. Panting. Ragged grunts. Ratha forced her eyes open.

Newt struggled in the surf at the islet’s edge, holding the cub in her jaws. He looked like a limp fur mat, and when Newt hauled him out, brine streamed from him. Ratha could see that Newt too was nearly at the end of her strength. She shuddered and staggered. Her weak foreleg had taken more of a battering than it could stand and she was limping again.

She had to set the cub down to get her breath. He sprawled on his front, his rapid breathing the only indication to Ratha that he still lived.

“Bring him here,” she said to Newt, who gave one final deep breath and took the cub once again in her jaws. She made a quick feint toward Ratha, dropped Mishanti near her, and backed off, as if fearing retaliation. With her free paw, Ratha gathered the bedraggled little bundle to her chest, trying to press some of the seawater out of his coat. She curled around him to warm him with her body and her breath, but she knew she had barely enough warmth to stay alive.

Convulsive shudders went through him, and his eyes began to dull. Ratha knew he was dying of cold. However close she held him, he shuddered harder, and her own clammy coat wasn’t helping. She licked the top of his head, full of despair.

Then someone was standing over her. It was Newt. Newt’s gaze was uncertain, but there was something new flickering in her eyes that had never been there before.

“My coat thicker,” she said. With a clumsiness generated by self-consciousness, she took the shivering youngster from Ratha, shook herself as dry as she could, then curled around him. Ratha watched as Newt ruffed her fur and nestled him into it. After a while he stopped shivering.

“If we can wait out the storm and I can free my paw, we might be able to get to the next islet. I think there is a string of these islets that connects with the jetty where your seamares are.” Ratha lifted her head and peered at the sky. Thunder still rumbled overhead, but the rain had lightened to a drizzle, and waves no longer broke so high over their refuge.

She still felt cold outside, but the stabbing despair that was worse than ice around her heart had gone. She dared to hope that they might all get out of this alive and, even more, that things might change between herself and Thistle-chaser.

Waiting for the storm to abate and the seas to calm grew wearying, and Ratha felt the cold creep deeper into her. She had ceased to feel the pain in her trapped paw or the wound on her leg made by Thistle-chaser’s teeth. Gradually she slipped into a daze and thought she was again lying in a pool of sun by her den, the sun’s rays warm on her coat, sliding through drowsiness into deep sleep.

Chapter Fourteen

Thistle-chaser lay near Ratha, trying not to think of anything at all. The events just past were too painful to recall. Bite-and-scratch wounds throbbed and burned all over her body. Some had come from Ratha, others she had inflicted with her own teeth during the fit. She had a scratch on her nose from Mishanti. Though it hurt, she was glad she had saved him, although she still didn’t know why. She felt confused, but it was a new kind of confusion: one that promised rather than one that denied.

She wriggled closer to the cub, nestling him in the longer fur covering her belly. Ratha’s fur was starting to dry in the fitful wind. Mishanti might be warmer, Thistle-chaser thought, if she sheltered him between herself and Ratha. To get herself and the cub into the right position, she had to lay a paw over Ratha. She didn’t want to. It was still frightening to be near this stranger who had somehow given birth to her. She kept her paw in the air above Ratha until it ached with weariness. Gradually she let it sink until her pawpad rested on the fawn-colored fur over Ratha’s ribs.

I am touching my Dreambiter,
she thought.

To her touch, Ratha felt cold, even colder than Mishanti. She lay stretched out by the pull on her imprisoned forepaw, her head lolled to one side, her mouth half open, her tongue flopping out. It frightened Thistle-chaser.

She it so cold and she doesn’t shiver. Dreambiter, wake up.
She pawed Ratha gently, then a little more roughly. There was no response.

Dreambiter, why am I afraid you will die? I wanted you to die.

Feeling as though someone else were using her body, she wriggled closer to Ratha, pulling her mother against her chest.

It hurt to hear what you said, but you are right: We are both the same.

Slowly, because she was so frightened, Thistle-chaser spread herself across Ratha as well as Mishanti, trying to warm both of them. She too was shivering, and she wondered if she would die out on this lonely rock. She felt a strange and painful mixture of hope and despair. Perhaps this one who had cast her into such a gray world would be the one to lead her out of it.

But not if you die, Dreambiter. For my sake, please live.

And at last, Thistle-chaser stopped shivering and fell asleep.

 Dripping and winded, Thakur scrambled up the crest of an island near the end of the chain that extended from the jetty. Fessran was right behind him, though she faltered, and he had to grab her scruff and haul her up. They had swum and scrabbled from island to island after spotting Ratha adrift on the escaped raft. During one channel crossing, Fessran had encountered a vicious fish with skin that grated like sand and an inclination to take a bite out of anything furry that swam its way.

“I’m sorry,” she growled. “You would think that losing my tail tip wouldn’t make any difference, but I feel as shaky as a newborn cub.” She swung her tail around, licked the torn end. “At least it’s stopped bleeding.”

“I don’t blame you for shaking. I’m a bit unsteady myself. That was just too close.”

“Well, I’ll remember that cursed fish the next time I’m tempted to dunk myself. It had more teeth than I do. Brrr!”

The two scrambled down over the rocks as seabirds swirled in flocks around them. “This is the last islet, Fessran,” Thakur said, not adding that if Ratha and Mishanti weren’t on this one, they had been taken by the sea.

They climbed over and around tumbled boulders that had sheared from the cliffs above. Thakur put Fessran in the lead, hoping that would help steady her. He saw her leap atop a flat-topped rock and then freeze where she stood. “They’re here,” she hissed.

Thakur hopped up beside her and looked out. There, on the last few rocks that met the sea, he saw a rust-and-black pelt sprawled atop a fawn one. His first glance sent a cold wash of dismay through him. Both looked still and stiff enough to be dead. Then he saw the twitch of a rust-and-black tail. Newt still lived. There wasn’t enough of Ratha visible to tell.

Beside him, he heard Fessran moan softly and then felt her tense to jump down.

“No, stay here.” Thakur put a paw on the Firekeeper’s flank.

“Ratha... and Mishanti,” Fessran choked out.

“I know. But Newt is there too. If she sees you, she may attack us. If I go alone, it will be easier.”

“You know my part in this, Thakur,” Fessran said in a low voice. “If I hadn’t been so angry at Ratha, you might have had a chance to bring the two together.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Thakur said, his eyes on the two bedraggled forms lying together on the rocks below.

“Mishanti.” Fessran tried to keep her voice from shaking. Thakur knew how hard it was for her to wait here, not knowing. Quickly he leaped down off the boulder and scrambled over the rocks. As he approached, he saw Newt stir.

He came alongside her as quietly as he could, then nudged her. Her nose twitched in response to his scent. Her head lifted, wobbly and bleary eyed. As she raised herself, Thakur saw Mishanti curled up between Newt’s belly and Ratha’s back. His flank rose and fell in a comforting rhythm.

What Thakur could see of Ratha, however, did not look encouraging. Her salt-encrusted fur stood up in spikes, stiffened by bloodstains. Her head lolled to one side, her tongue spilling from slack jaws. Unsteadily Newt half rolled, half crawled to one side, still weak and groggy from exhaustion. “Dreambiter,” she hissed softly, stretching out a paw to touch the ragged fawn pelt. “Her foot... stuck... down between rocks... ”

Thakur could not see any movement in Ratha’s rib cage. His heart sinking, he licked the end of his muzzle and crouched at her head, trying to detect any breath on his dampened nose. He held his own breath until he was nearly dizzy, then let it out in a rush as he felt a tickle of air against his nose-leather.