Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

“Why are you asking for this? Is it for Quiet Hunter’s sake?”

“He is some of the reason. Not biggest part.”

“Then for your sake?”

“Not biggest part either.”

“Then what is the biggest part?”

She watched Thistle take a deep breath.“The Dreambiter, Mother.”

Puzzled to the point of irritation, Ratha tried to get Thistle to explain what she meant.

“Can’t say it any different way,” Thistle retorted. “That’s how it comes out.”

Ratha tried a different approach.“What does your nightmare have to do with saving True-of-voice?”

Thistle’s tone sharpened. “Dreambiter is not just mine. Yours too. Don’t know what joining part is. Have to dig for it. But there is one. Feel it.”

What you mean is that the Dreambiter will soon claim True-of-voice and his people as victims. But I don’t have any alternative, Thistle. How can I make you understand?

After Thistle had finished speaking, she left. Ratha thought for a while and then called her people together. She told them what Thistle had asked her to do.

Everybody gave her incredulous looks. Except Thakur. He just looked amazed.

“Are you asking for help in deciding this, clan leader?” Bira asked in her gentle voice.

“I must make the choice,” Ratha said. “But hearing what all of you have to say will help me.”

“I like Thistle a lot,” Bira said, curling her plumed tail about her feet, “so this is hard for me to say. I do not think that her suggestion is a wise one. Perhaps it would be, if she were the only one involved. For us, it is not.”

Khushi agreed with Bira. If anything, he was more vehement.“When this enemy leader dies, the hunter tribe will fall apart. There’s nothing wrong in letting that happen. Maybe it’ll stop them from hurting us. If it doesn’t, I’m all for using the Red Tongue.” He paused and added, “Why make a weak enemy strong again? It is stupid.”

Well-spoken, Fessran’s son, thought Ratha, but she felt a twinge of sadness.

And why does Thakur have this strange expression on his face, as if he’s been eating rotted fruit?

“Herding teacher, have you thought of something interesting?” she asked mildly.

“Thistle,” he said, his voice almost dreamy. “I thought I knew her all the way through. But she’s surprised me. She’s followed trails that even I have not dared to run.”

“None of us can followyou, respected Thakur,” said Bira. “Please, can you tell us what you mean?”

Thakur sat up a bit straighter and gathered himself together.“I have asked us not to harm these people. But Thistle has gone far beyond me. She has asked us to help them!”

Khushi grimaced.“You think it’s wonderful? I think it’s crazy! I like her, too, but sometimes I get the feeling that not everything is working between her ears.”

“I wouldn’t say it quite that strongly,” Bira interjected, “but I have to point out that Thistle is asking us to take this risk, not her. She is not a clan member; she chose not to be. By that choice, she gave away any right to influence what we do.”

“Everything Bira says is true,” Thakur said after the Firekeeper had finished speaking. “Remember, though, Thistle came because I asked for her help.”

“We can be grateful without doing something that would not be good for us,” Bira argued.

Ratha held up a paw for silence.“So it is clear how you all feel. Khushi, you are in favor of using the Red Tongue and not helping the hunters. Bira agrees?”

“Yes, clan leader,” said the young Firekeeper. “My loyalty is to you and the rest of us.”

“I know how Thakur feels,” Ratha said. “All right. I appreciate what you all had to say.”

“What about you, Ratha?” Thakur asked.

“I can only tell you how I feel, which won’t help. I can’t tell you what I will decide.”

And the Named left their leader alone, knowing that she needed time to think.

Thistle went back to Quiet Hunter, wishing she could do something more for him. He was in a dazed, half-awake state since he had not been able to sleep.

When he lifted his head to touch noses with her, his nose leather was cold, even though he lay in a patch of sun.

For him, everything is icy water, she thought.

She curled around him, trying to drive away the frozen despair.

“Any better?” she asked. “Or everything still cold?”

“Thistle is warm,” he said, and his whiskers lifted a little. “But Quiet Hunter is too weary to come out to where Thistle is.”

She gave an unhappy sigh. There had to be a way to help him. Therehad to.

But the only thing that could help him was True-of-voice’s song. She wished she could become like True-of-voice so that she could help Quiet Hunter.

She grimaced scornfully at herself. She could not begin to do what True-of-voice had done. Wishing was useless. But she still desperately wanted to help Quiet Hunter.

If she tried hard, she could remember how True-of-voice’s song sounded and felt, but she couldn’t give it to Quiet Hunter. She couldn’t reach his “inside ears.” Not the way True-of-voice had.

But you have outside ears too, and I have a voice, even if it is a small one, she thought.

“Listen, Quiet Hunter,” she said, and let her memory lift her voice as she began to sing softly to him.

Ratha did not stay by herself for long. Hard thinking had dug up a possible solution. It was crazy, but it might work. It might accomplish both objectives without harm to anyone except True-of-voice, and nothing would save him anyway.

To try her idea, she would have to convince Thistle. She felt as though her heart would hammer right through her ribs as she went looking for her daughter.

She didn’t find Thistle until she went to the place where she had last seen Quiet Hunter. Her daughter was there. And she was doing something that raised Ratha’s hopes even further. Thistle was singing to Quiet Hunter. As she said that True-of-voice had done. Except that Thistle was using her real voice. And the song was no longer without words.

Ratha saw the tortured look in Quiet Hunter’s eyes fade. They closed, his head sank down onto his paws, and his sides rose and fell in the rhythm of sleep.

She listened, entranced. Thistle sang more eloquently than she could speak, of the pain and struggle and grief and then of the greening of hope, a slender thread that could bind back together the most broken of spirits. Or lives.

She sang as none of the Named had sung before, blending gifts from both peoples whose trails she had run. Ratha heard it with a shiver that ran down her back and an ache in her belly that could have been grief or joy.

The song was not the strong, certain river that Thistle had described as flowing from True-of-voice. It keened with questions. It wavered with fear. It was the trickle of the spring, not the flow of the river. It was at the same time uplifting and heartbreaking.

And as Ratha watched and listened, she felt that something sacred was happening that she dare not disturb.

Who is she, this one who came from my blood, from my belly? My daughter, chaser of thistles, wayfarer on strange trails.

Who is she?

I know, and yet I do not.

As if sensing the presence of her mother, Thistle, without looking up, brought her song to an end. She crouched down, licked the sleeping Quiet Hunter, and walked forward to greet her mother.

Ratha felt the distance, almost the remoteness of the nose-touch, the whisker-brush. She found it hard to begin speaking, feeling that her words were crude and clumsy after the soaring beauty of Thistle’s song.

Yet she had to.