Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Thakur knew that he could determine whether that intelligence — that light — would be given a chance to develop or not. If he returned and stood before the sunning rock to say that nothing here would be of value to the Named, this stranger could continue to live her life among the seamares without interference.

He sighed deeply, knowing this path was not open to him. He could not lie to his clan leader or betray his people for the sake of some odd castoff. He would speak, and herders from the clan would come, for the spring-watered trees and meadow offered the Named refuge from the worsening drought. And the wave-wallowing animals might well become an unusual, though successful, addition to the beasts the Named now tended. Their meat might taste a bit odd, but in times of need, the Named couldn’t be particular about taste.

He knew where his loyalties lay, and it saddened him. The stranger would be pushed out, tossed aside, and no one would think anything of it because she had no light in her eyes.But that would be wrong, because we can learn from her. Even if she can’t speak, she teaches us by what she does. Ratha must be made to understand.

With that thought, Thakur got to his feet, coaxed Aree to his shoulder, and set off on his return journey.

Newt spent the rest of that day, after the confrontation with Thakur, hiding in the deepest sandstone hollow she could find. Panic closed around her, making her want to run blindly away from this place and the stranger whose sudden arrival and smell woke the old terrors.

His smell. Her nose had not lied to her. Yes, he had his own scent, but mixed in with it she had caught the hated stink of the Dreambiter. But the Dreambiter was not real, could not leave a true scent except in memory. Newt had thought the Dreambiter’s scent was as unreal as the apparition itself, until the newcomer’s odor-mark sent its shock through her and brought the nightmare down to rend her. Now she shuddered at the recollection and thought only of fleeing.

But a part of her fought against deserting the beach and the seamares. That she might be forced to abandon this new life she had built for herself was a bitterness she couldn’t swallow. Why had he come? What did he want?

She remembered other encounters with those of her kind, of snarls and sneers and the coldness of hate. She had left all that behind. Would she have to return to it once again?

But worst of all was knowing that the newcomer could wake the Dreambiter. Was he the source of the apparition in her dreams that slashed and crippled her? She bared her teeth at the thought but knew that he was not. Though his smell carried enough traces of the Dreambiter’s to trigger the onrush of the hallucination, his scent itself was not the cause.

Newt’s smell-memories of that maiming attack were stronger than the sight-images. The odor of the one whose teeth had torn her flesh was seared into the center of her being. The smell betrayed one thing: that the Dreambiter was female. Whatever dangers this invading male brought were his own. He might wake her apparition, but he wasn’t the source of it.

If she ever found the one who was, she promised herself there would blood and fur scattered until she took the hated one’s life in payment for her pain or gave up her own.

She crouched in her cave, thinking about the strange male and shivering. Slowly she realized that he himself had done nothing to threaten or harm her. His voice and his tail gestures were not those of one who wished her ill. His manner was careful, gentle, with a quality she was slowly starting to recognize, for she had known it once long ago.

A picture formed in her mind of the copper-furred, amber-eyed face of the one who had loved her and tried so hard to teach her. And then came an image of the intruder, who also seemed to want her to respond. The two faces were strangely alike, even though one had green eyes and the other amber.

A forgotten part of Newt cried out for more of what she had once known. She wanted kindness and the friendly sound of a purr, the sight of a tail lifted in greeting. When had she heard, felt, and seen those things? So long ago that she could barely remember… or was it the mist drifting through her mind that made it all seem so distant?

The Dreambiter had taken it all away.

As Newt lay in her cave, she felt her anger and confusion harden into stubbornness. She would stay here. If she had to face the strange male, she would. The life she was starting to build among the seamares was too precious to yield. No one would drive her away. Not even the Dreambiter.

In the late-afternoon shade of a thicket on the meadow’s edge, Ratha watched a young Firekeeper and his treeling tangle two cords made from twisted bark. Fessran sat nearby, still without her treeling.

“Tell me again why this would be useful,” Ratha said, trying to understand what Fessran’s student was to show her.

“Well, you know that we wrap wood with those lengths of twisted bark so that we can drag more of it. The trouble is that our wrapping often doesn’t hold, so the bundle comes apart, the sticks get scattered, and we have to gather them again. When this student showed me a way to prevent that, I decided you should know.”

Looking nervously at the clan leader, the young Firekeeper pawed apart the two cords, then began again.

“I don’t see any wood, and he’s using separate pieces,” Ratha objected.

“It’s easier to see what he’s doing without twigs in the way. And think of the separate bark-twists as the ends of a single one,” Fessran soothed.

Ratha gave up arguing and watched. She saw how well the youngster and his small companion worked together, as if each knew what the other needed and expected. He had been born after treelings had become a part of clan life, and the two had been raised together.

She listened to the young Firekeeper and his treeling as the two purred and chirred back and forth, exchanging gestures and nudges. The two strings of bark came together under treeling hands, but both wills worked the change.

Ratha asked them to stop so she could see how the cords wound about each other.

“Think of it this way, clan leader,” said the Firekeeper student. “Two snakes have crossed over each other, then the one underneath has looped back and crawled over the top one.”

Ratha stared hard. She was beginning to get the idea.

Do you see what he’s doing, Ratharee? she thought at her treeling, who perched on her head, peering down between her ears.I think I do. Perhaps we can try it together.

The student pulled his tangled cords apart. Ratharee didn’t need any nudging to scramble down from Ratha’s back to get her paws on this intriguing new toy, but she had no idea how to repeat what the Firekeeper’s treeling had done. With soft prrrups and nudges, Ratha directed Ratharee’s hands until the bark cords wound once about each other on theground.

“Now the wrapped snakes rise up and face each other,” said the young Firekeeper, warming to his task, “and they wind again, but they must go in the opposite direction, or the tangle won’t hold. We pull both tails, and the snakes tighten about each other,” he said as his treeling completedtying the knot.

Ratha had the idea, but getting Ratharee to translate that understanding into action was difficult. She could wind the cords, but she wanted to continue wrapping them about each other until she’d turned them into a tangled mess. However much Ratha nudged, purred, and pawed, she couldn’t get past that.

“It isn’t easy, clan leader,” the student said apologetically. “I had to work a lot with my treeling before we could even do the first part.”

“Yes, and I thought you were just fooling around. I cuffed you for not attending to your duties, as you remember well.” Fessran grinned as her prot?g? looked slightly dismayed. She sniffed the treeling-made knot.