Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

He was halfway up the beach before he realized that Newt’s fear and headlong flight had proved something he could not have learned in any other way. There was no doubt now. Though he swore he would never say that name to her again, he knew Newt was Ratha’s daughter, Thistle-chaser.

Newt huddled against the sandstone wall of her cave, trying to isolate herself from the one who had crept in after her. Part of her knew it was Thakur, but the frenzied, frightened part of her knew him only as a shadow who walked with the Dreambiter. He had tried to curl up next to her and speak to her, but his words were only a dim buzzing in her ears, and his presence drove the cold fear deeper. She struck out at him, clawing and biting, trying to drive him out. But though he withdrew, he stayed close, and she could only huddle by herself.

She remembered when she had been able to see Thakur as warm and real, not just as a shade allied with the enemy of her dreams. She knew she could lay her head against his flank and gain comfort from him. Sometimes she had been able to let herself slide into the fantasy that he was the kind one with the dark-copper face and amber eyes, who had loved her without judging.

But now all she could see were Thakur’s eyes, and they burned green, like the Dreambiter’s.

Newt curled up tightly, shuddering. She knew Thakur was there, but she could not let him come near. Not after he had spoken the word that broke through the barriers around her memories. Not after he had let the Dreambiter loose.

Her head throbbed and buzzed. She buried her muzzle between her paws, trying to fend off the rising panic. She could feel the Dreambiter prowling the caves of her mind, pacing deliberately toward the hole Thakur had made with that terrible word… that was somehow her name. She trembled, knowing the demon was real and could come down on her at any time, no longer held back or confined by her will.

Newt cried her misery to the cave wall, wishing it could somehow move or answer. The cave only seemed to close in around her, becoming a trap instead of a shelter. If the Dreambiter rose again, where would she flee? Would the terror chase her blindly over a cliff again or just make her run until she died from exhaustion?

A strange calmness settled over her, though she knew it was just a lull. It gave her strength to remember the other times when the Dreambiter had attacked, wounded, and then fled. She knew those skirmishes were over. The Dreambiter had grown strong. Now it would attack to kill.

Thakur crouched at the mouth of Newt’s cave, alarm making the fur rise all over his body as he watched her. He desperately wanted to comfort her, but each time he tried to curl up beside her, he had been met with a blind, slashing attack that drove him away. And then she writhed and muttered or drew up in a pitiful huddle.

That he could only watch and do nothing made him feel trapped and helpless. The scratches she had given him stung and bled, but because her swipes were wild and uncontrolled they were only annoying. Pity and anger wrenched at him, making him creep closer once again.

Her smell alone made him flatten his ears, for rage and despair poured from her like a thick, choking fluid. But it was her words that held him close, that made him risk another flurry of claws and teeth.

“… kill you, Dreambiter, find you kill you… smell is real, you are real, no more hurting ever ever ever… ”

“Newt!” Thakur hissed, but she only jerked and started to writhe in a way that made him wonder if she was dying.

He felt cold and exhausted. Closing his eyes, he confessed to himself that he did not have the strength to endure any more or the skill to soothe her pain. He had to have help. He could feel himself shaking and knew he would be useless both to himself and Newt if he kept struggling. Perhaps one of the females: Bira could be gentle and comforting.

He grimaced in irony. No. The one who really held the key was the Dreambiter herself: Ratha. He had allowed her to evade responsibility for what she had done to her daughter. Not just Ratha alone, but perhaps all of the Named together could do something to help. And if Thistle-chaser was dying, Ratha should know.

“Newt,” he hissed softly. “I can’t do this alone. I need help. Stay here. I won’t be gone long.”

Thakur turned away from the cave, but he could not help hearing the tortured voice saying over and over again that the price of this pain would be the Dreambiter’s life.

Ratha paced toward Fessran’s new lair, hating the tightness that grew between her shoulders with every step she took. Fear stole the fluidity from her stride, the suppleness from her muscles, until she felt wooden.

She wished that Fessran had taken Mishanti and gone beyond her reach. But no. Instead, the Firekeeper had chosen to den nearby and, even worse, to walk on Named ground, leaving footprints whose mixed odors said that the Firekeeper had fostered the witless cub and openly defied the orders of the clan leader.

Sand and salt grass lay under Ratha’s feet now, but the path she trod was the same in bitterness as the trail she had taken before to Fessran’s den when the Named had lived on clan ground.

Last time, Thakur had made the journey with her. This time she would make it alone. There was only one cub to carry from the lair, but that would not lessen the difficulty of the task. The ache in her jaw from the litterling’s weight would be the least of the pains she would know.

And Fessran had already named the cub and kept the name, in defiance of Ratha’s order: Mishanti. The word beat in Ratha’s mind, whispered like the salt grass tearing past her legs. A name worthy of a cub who could bear it and know what it meant to be set apart by the gift of a word — a name — that carried the essence of selfhood. Ratha drew back her lip in scorn at Fessran’s foolishness. A name was worse than useless to a cub who could not use it.

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?”