Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Ratha could hear his fast breathing from the chase and a slight strain in his voice as he tried to speak louder.

“I borrowed the idea from some long-legged Un-Named ones who were hunting prong-buck. I tried it out on our fawns and it worked.”

“I imagine that getting it to work took some practice,” Cherfan replied.

The herding teacher took a large breath.“It certainly did. I was pretty winded by the time I got it right.”

His part ended, Thakur hopped down off the outcrop, leaving Cherfan to announce the next event, a contest between the cubs as to who could stay longest on a bucking animal. Ratha, having seen this several times previously, crouched down as Thakur passed the sunning rock, and asked him to come sit with her.

While the crowd’s attention focused on the next event, Ratha touched noses with Thakur, then slid alongside him, both flopping their tails over one another’s backs. She enjoyed a moment of bathing in his scent, and then spoke to him. “Herding teacher, that was amazing! Will you teach it to the cubs?”

“Yes, but I’ll tell them I don’t like to knock a beast down that way unless other culling methods don’t work. It’s a bit rough on the creatures.” Thakur stuck a rear leg forward and curled down, nibbling clots of mud out from between his spread toes. “And you get very dirty.”

Ratha licked streaks of mud from his side. Tasting the salt of minerals, she swallowed it. She spit out the coarse grass, and then sat, curling her long tail over her feet.“That’s nothing new for the Named.”

She saw Thakur grin slightly at the wry tone in her voice. When he lay down next to her, one foot brushing the base of her tail, she felt a wave of warmth surge through her, drawing sweat from her pads and the leather of her nose. It wasn’t the mating season yet. Was her heat coming early?

She distracted herself by watching the bucking contest. This time it was a tie between Ashon and Mishanti, and the latter did not have to be thrown into a tree.

“He’s getting better,” Thakur commented, watching Mishanti pick himself up and lope after his mount. “Maybe there are some things he’ll be good at.”

“Riding bucking dapplebacks and herding rumblers,” Ratha said, her voice slightly sour.

Thakur excused himself, saying that he should help prepare the next pair of riders. He leaped down from the sunning rock. Ratha felt the surge of warmth fade. No, she wasn’t in heat yet.

Her gaze strayed back to True-of-voice’s people. One could be replaced by the next, she thought, and it would make no difference.

Thakur had once told her why he thought the Named varied so much from one another. It was because they had started to farm instead of hunt their prey. Hunters needed to blend into their surroundings. Pelt colors and patterns remained the same from individual to individual and between generations. One whose coat color stood out wouldn’t survive very long.

The need to match the background was far less for herders. Standing out even helped to fascinate and intimidate herdbeasts, making them easier to manage. Freedom from the constraints of the hunter allowed the Named to choose their mates for beauty as well as ability and temperament. This tendency influenced the colors of eyes as well as pelts. Clan eyes ranged from the agate blue of newborn cubs through all shades of gray, green, yellow, gold amber, honey, hazel, copper, and dark sepia.

A part of her still couldn’t be convinced that the differences between True-of-voice’s face-tail hunters and the Named were not alien. Perhaps the impulse that made her reach out, to help rather than harm, was, in the end, misguided. A voice in her kept whispering that her choice could still lead to tragedy. It still whispered, making her search among the True-of-voice’s people for any sign of initiative or individuality.

To her surprise, she did find tiny sparks of it. She saw it among the half-grown ones, the yearlings, and some of the older cubs. In some way, the traits that were so buried in their nature fought their way out. She saw eyes that would widen and brighten with the wish to see more, ears swivel and flick forward with the urge to hear more, tails lash with impatience to know more than just the song. It was then that the young of True-of-voice’s people began to resemble the young of the Named.

As if the power within the song knew that it was being challenged, it reacted. The sparks in those young eyes flamed only briefly before they were suffocated down to embers and then darkened.

Witnessing that fading made Ratha heartsick. What right did True-of-voice or that strangeness emanating from him mistakenly called“ the song” have to strangle or stifle those tiny flames? It was like seeing empty eyes in the faces of Named litterlings. That just happened. This quenching of the soul was a deliberate act.

Ratha’s heartsickness rose to anger. Why was she struggling so hard to understand something that was clearly so wrong? Why was she so willfully blind to the evil? She had the power to snatch away young ones who still held the promise of their own selves from the power that would engulf them.

Accepting Quiet Hunter among us kept his flame from being stifled. Adopting face-tail hunter cubs might do the same, and we need more litterlings.

But if I am blind, she thought, are Thakur and Thistle as well? Is what I thought of as wisdom unwillingness to see? Am I the one whose vision fails?

Before the next performance came a short break. Ratha saw Thistle-chaser’s tail waving in the air, saying that she wanted to speak to her mother.

Ratha sprang down off her perch to meet her daughter. They met and rubbed foreheads. Thistle smelled good — healthy and salty-fresh as the wind from a sea beach. In her abrupt way, Thistle said, “True-of-voice has questions.”

Ratha let herself be led back through the throng to the gray-and-white leader. Watching Thistle move easily ahead of her, Ratha saw that her daughter now walked without even a trace of a limp. When they reached True-of-voice, Ratha started to speak to him, but Thistle put up a paw, stopping her.

Thistle and Quiet Hunter sat very still, eyes closed, ears forward as if listening to something distant, noses lifted as if scenting something faint. True-of-voice gazed at both of his interpreters, but he also seemed to be looking at something else beyond them.

Quiet Hunter opened his eyes, spoke quietly to Thistle, who then turned to Ratha, saying,“The song … I mean, True-of-voice feels pleasure at being shown how we keep and tend our animals.”

“Tell True-of-voice that we are glad that he and his tribe have come. It will lead to better understanding between us.”

She saw Thistle take a short breath, as if those words might be challenging to translate.

“The song is to know,” said Thistle to Quiet Hunter, “that there is … pleasure in its coming. The … spirit of the Named desires to flow close to the song so that the knowledge is mingled in both.”

At Thistle’s last words, Quiet Hunter grimaced as if they were too difficult.

Ratha’s eyes widened. Is this what she had said?

“All right, no ‘both,’” Thistle said hastily. With a glance at Ratha, she added, “Song doesn’t know what ‘both’ means. No word for things in many parts. Only for things in one.”

She turned to Quiet Hunter.“Say, ‘so that knowing pours together like water.’”

It was a little awkward, a little too Thistle-ish, Ratha thought, but Quiet Hunter indicated acceptance.

Again he sat absolutely still with closed eyes, but Ratha could smell his scent changing. The transformations were so subtle and so rapid that she couldn’t follow them. Every once in a while, Quiet Hunter touched True-of-voice and spoke to him in simple words, mixed with a soft singsong that was somewhere between a murmur and a purr. To Ratha’s ears, the sound was oddly beautiful, and she wanted to imitate it. Thistle joined in with Quiet Hunter, her voice sounding in counterpoint and descant to his.