Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

“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 andyowls 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.