Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

The other hunters traded looks, bristled, and growled. Thakur noticed that the misunderstanding was starting to draw attention from groups outside their own.

He decided that the time had come to withdraw and think things out before he got himself and Khushi into more trouble. With a poke he got the young herder on his feet. They both backed away from the now-hostile hunters, turned, and jogged in the direction they had come.

Though no one had noticed their initial approach, heads now lifted and eyes followed as they passed. It was as if word of the intruders had somehow spread instantly throughout the group, even though Thakur had heard no cries of alarm.

“Don’t run,” he warned Khushi, even though the muscles in his own hindquarters were twitching with the impulse to turn tail and flee.

Only when he had put the group at a distance did he and Khushi break into a bounding run. It carried them to the bushes, where Bira met them.

“What happened?” she asked.

Thakur sighed.“I said something wrong. I don’t know what.”

“So they do speak like us?”

“They use words, but not the way we do. Bira, we had better not stay here. We’re too close, and they’re angry. ”

Quickly the Firekeeper packed up the coals in an old bird’s nest filled with sand. Khushi helped, taking the resinous pine branches that served as firebrands.

Once Thakur decided they were a safe distance from the hunters, the Named made camp. Bira lit a fire from the embers she carried, and everyone drew close around it.

“I think we should give up on that bunch,” said Khushi, disgusted. “They may speak, but they are as stupid as the Un-Named. And crazy too. They kept mewling about some song. I couldn’t hear anyone singing. Could you, Thakur?”

“No,” the herding teacher confessed. He was disappointed at his failure. Khushi’s dismissal of the hunters as witless and crazy provided an easy escape from his own responsibility. For an instant he was tempted to take it. Perhaps no one could talk to these people. If so, he could not fault himself for failing.

Yet he knew the answer was not so simple. He had been close enough to look into their eyes. He had seen an alertness there, not the blank unawareness of the Un-Named. But it was directed strangely inward in a way he did not understand.

And it echoed something that he had seen and knew well, though at first he could not think what it was. Then he remembered another pair of eyes, sea-green and once shrouded by pain. Those were Thistle’s eyes when he had first found her.

He remembered how he had coaxed Thistle back outside herself, had given her not only words to speak with, but hope. How those eyes had begun to brighten and clear, showing that she was truly of the Named. Yet even now, her gaze would sometimes become opaque and she would retreat where none of the Named could follow. To Thakur it seemed as though Ratha’s daughter walked two paths, one with the Named and another in a cave world of mist and entrancement, where strange voices echoed.

Voices. The hunters had spoken, in their puzzling way, of a voice, a song that Thakur could not hear. Perhaps only they could hear it. The one name they had said was True-of-voice. In some way speech was vital to them, yet why did their grasp of it seem so limited and stilted?

It was clear that they did not walk the same path as the Named. But there was one among the Named who might be able to follow them. Thakur sensed that he would never be able to speak to these hunters by himself. He needed Thistle.

But she was not a clan member and did not have to obey Ratha or anyone else. If he sent for Thistle, the decision to come or not would be hers alone.

Was this the right thing to do? Thakur wondered. Would such a contact with the group of strange cats bring joy or disaster? The hunters could be a formidable enemy, but what if they were an allied clan who could help the Named survive?

He would send for Ratha as well as Thistle, he decided. Experienced as he was, he could not be alone in decisions that involved the future of the Named. Ratha must see these hunters for herself.

When the herding teacher came out of his reverie, he was slightly chagrined to find that Bira had banked the fire and that both she and Khushi had gone to sleep. Try as he would, Thakur could not close his eyes. He remained awake long into the night, thinking.

Days later, wind was kicking up sand on a coastal beach, stinging Thistle’s eyes and nose. She felt lonely and cross, for her friend Thakur had been gone too long. The haze that had once clouded her mind came less often now, but today it was here, making her feel remote and withdrawn.

Keeping her claws fixed in the driftwood log, she pulled at her injured foreleg to make the muscles stretch, as Thakur had taught her. From a short distance away came a splintering sound. Ratha was using the same log to sharpen her claws.

Thistle could not help a glance sideways at her mother. Ratha was on top of the log, raking backward with the powerful muscles in her shoulders. Half fascinated, half resentful, Thistle watched. Ratha looked so beautiful and strong. She was all one tawny color that flowed over her head, down the bowed arch of her back, over her hindquarters, and out the long sweep of her tail.

Thistle wondered if anyone would ever watchher sharpening her claws and think that she was strong and beautiful. No. Even if her limp went away, she would still be small and awkward. And ugly, for her pelt was rusty black, mottled with orange.

She looked quickly away before Ratha could notice her gaze. The hard green light in her mother’s eyes burned too brightly today. Only when those eyes were half-closed or dulled by suffering or illness did Thistle dare approach and touch or lick her mother. When Ratha was strong and well, Thistle kept her inside thoughts well hidden.

Thistle gazed down at her outstretched leg. It was much stronger now. She could almost walk without a limp along short paths. Soon she hoped she would be able to walk for short distances without a limp. The leg no longer hurt either. At least most of the time. Only when…

No. Thistle flattened her ears. She wasn’t going to think about the Dreambiter that appeared to her in nightmares. Thinking about it could too easily bring it, as if thoughts were meat laid on a trail that it prowled. But not thinking sometimes brought it, too.

Today, for some reason, it was hard to think and hard not to think. The wind and blowing sand seemed to catch everything in her mind and whirl it away. She sank her claws deeper into the gray driftwood and stretched her leg muscles until she felt the good healing hurt that promised to make that leg, once shrunken and crippled, as sound as her other limbs.

She heard a yawning sound as Ratha opened her jaws and curled her tongue upward in pleasure. Thistle saw the white sharpness of her teeth. She remembered, before she could catch herself, that the nightmare also had such sharp teeth.

And the nightmare, thus summoned, came.

The Dreambiter’s soft tread quickened, echoing along the caverns within Thistle’s mind. Thistle’s eyes and cars filled with blackness, and she felt herself being pulled deep into those caves. However she might struggle and scream and cry out, she could not break free. The sound of the Dreambiter’s feet became louder and faster.

Dimly, a voice cried out from beyond the cave, but she couldn’t understand it, for words had been lost to the rising howl of the Dreambiter. The blackness that was deeper and harder than anything outside pounced on her, green eyes flaming, mouth open, teeth bared. The upper fangs sank into her shoulder, the lower fangs into her chest, for she was suddenly small enough in the nightmare for her forequarters to fit within the Dreambiter’s mouth.