Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

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.

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.