Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

The stranger’s face resembled those of the Named. She had a delicate muzzle and a well-defined break from the line of nose to forehead that Thakur found attractive. But what made him start when he saw it was a line of reddish-tan flame that licked up her forehead from the top line of her eyes to the crown ofher head. Against the background color of rusty black, the strange marking stood out. It seemed to waver and flicker in his gaze, as if he were looking once again at a windblown line of fire. In his memory, the Red Tongue made its march through the forest.

Suddenly Thakur felt angry with himself. Yes, she had strange markings, but there was nothing that should disturb him about the patterns on her face. There were little touches of white at the corners of her lips and a narrow cream blaze on her nose. In a Named female, the effect would have been one of disturbing ugliness, or perhaps beauty….

If her smell had matched the unsettling attractiveness of her face, Thakur might have found it harder to break off his close examination of the stranger. But his nose continued to remind him that she was ungroomed, filthy, and so full of the pungent stink of the sea-creatures that he couldn’t make out her underlying scent.

She swallowed. The abrupt movement of her throat startled him. Soon she would wake. Should he stay or go? Was it his scent that had thrown her into this fit, and would it happen again if he stayed?

He looked down at her crippled foreleg. Along her shoulder from nape to breast ran a half-collar of rumpled fur that, he guessed, might hide a ridge of scar tissue. The foreleg itself, though shrunken, didn’t appear deformed. He had seen a similar injury in a herdbeast, caused when one creature kicked another in the breast. Whatever made the leg move gradually died, until the creature could no longer use its limb. He remembered that herders had soon chosen the animal for culling.

He saw the stranger’s eartip tremble. Her lips drew back, exposing her fangs as she swallowed again. He noted the shade of her gums to check if she had lost blood or had the paling sickness. No.

He drew back, then changed his mind. If the fit left her weak or ill, she would need help. But his reason for staying was more than that. What he had seen her doing with the sea-creatures might be valuable to the Named.

At last, after many preliminary stirrings and twitchings, she blinked and moved her head. Thakur sat down where he was, letting her gaze find him. Her nape fur rose, and the pupils of her milky-green eyes shrank. Despite her lame foreleg, she moved so fast that she was a rust-and-black blur in his eyes. In the next instant, she faced him, body displayed broadside, head twisted, fangs bared. The upturned tips of her flattened ears signaled fear as well as anger.

Thakur slowly got to his feet, lifting his tail in the greeting gesture common among the Named. He gave a rising purr.

The other stiffened her defensive posture, her back legs doing an angry little dance of their own that tended to swing her hindquarters toward him. He watched her tail. If it relaxed and curved into a hook, that meant he might have some chance of reaching her.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said slowly. “Please. I want to talk to you. My name is Thakur.”

He faltered on the last word. There was no understanding in those milky-green eyes, not even curiosity. He might as well have tried to speak to a herdbeast! She spat at him and made a pitiful wrenching motion with her stunted foreleg, as if hoping to use it to claw him. He lowered his head and tail. How could this be? How could she have established that unusual relationship with the sea-creatures if she was as dull as this? Herding wasn’t a simple task; that he knew well. You had to outthink the creatures you wanted to control; you had to plan ahead.

He stared at her in dismay, his tail sagging. She backed away in a three-legged crab walk, growling deep in her throat.

“Go then,” he said sadly, more to himself than to her. Deliberately he broke eye contact, looking away. When he looked back again, she was gone.

Once Thakur had recovered Aree, the treeling cheered him, but he still remained puzzled about his encounter. He walked along the low bluff above the beach with Aree on his back, airing his thoughts aloud to his small companion as he often did.

“She doesn’t speak. I’m sure of that,” he said over his shoulder to the treeling. “And her eyes are those of a witless Un-Named one.” He stopped, remembering the swirling milky-green irises. Were those eyes indeed empty, or did the opacity hide the spark of intelligence that the Named valued? What about her led him to brood this way?Her companionship with the sea-beasts, part of him answered, but another, more honest part saidno, that is not all.

He needed to find forage and a steady supply of good, fresh water for the clan and its herds. He had already noticed several estuaries and inlets that cut into the coast-line, but most that he sampled were too salty or brackish, even when he moved upstream. Sparse rainfall had dried up the rivers that fed the bays and inlets, allowing seawater to intrude.

Finally he found a creek that fed a lagoon. Though the lagoon water was briny and mixed with the sea, the stream itself, when he tasted it, was fresh. He followed the creek inland until he came to its source. At the base of a second tier of cliffs set far back from the ocean, a spring ran steadily from a cleft in blue-gray stone, collecting in a pool beneath. Shaded by the rock walls and watered by the spring, trees grew at the base of the cliffs with an open meadow beyond. Seepage from the spring moistened the ground, and fresh grass sprouted amid the dappled patterns of sun and shade.

Here, near the sea coast, morning and evening fogs muted the heat that blistered areas farther inland. Thakur drank from the pool, then stood on its margin, letting the feel of the place seep into him.

Several small pawprints in the moist earth near the pool told him that the stranger too knew of this spring. And seeing her prints made Thakur wonder what would happen if the Named did choose to come. She could always drink from the creek that spilled out of the overflow from the spring-fed pool instead of from the pool itself.

His belly gave a twinge: not true hunger, but a warning that he should eat within the next day or so. His time here was drawing to an end; the other scouts that Ratha had sent out would be returning with descriptions of their discoveries. He too would tell his story to those assembled before the sunning rock. This place, with its oasis of fresh growth and unfailing water, appeared ideal for the clan and their herd animals. In addition, the sea-beasts might be the answer to Ratha’s quest for another source of meat. If a lame Un-Named one had formed a protective relationship with one of them, surely the herders of the Named could do more.

Yet even as he thought this he had misgivings. He sensed that the relationship of the stranger to the sea-beasts was different from that of the clan herders to their animals. The creatures’ reactions as she walked among them told Thakur that she had blended herself into their community. She lived with them rather than managing them to serve her needs, as the Named did with their animals.

But she was alone and weak as well. This was the only way she could live, by disturbing the sea-beasts as little as possible. Perhaps she was only a scavenger after all, he thought, but the idea saddened him.

Could she perhaps find a place among the Named? And if the clan came, with their herds and their ways, could she live a better life than one of scratching and scrounging among middens left by these wave-wallowers?

No. She was not like his people. He doubted if she could accept clan ways even if the Named chose to share them. A promise lay behind her shuttered eyes, but not one the Named could easily trust. Could it be that hers was a different sort of intelligence, one that might show not in mastery of words or brightness of eyes, but in another way?