Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

“Smart Thistle, who learned how to make the string-tangles and put them on a dappleback,” Quiet Hunter replied, his purr deep.

“Thistle and Biaree,” she corrected. “Couldn’t do without treeling.”

Quiet Hunter sniffed Biaree, who tried to grab a handful of whiskers.

“You could have a treeling, too,” Thistle said.

The male looked dubious.“This one is not sure about treelings. Their eyes are bright with cleverness, they move with quickness, but they don’t speak and they don’t hear songs. This one is not sure he wants to be close to such a creature.”

“Quiet Hunter, you are funny but sweet. Why does it matter if a treeling can speak or if they can hear kinds of songs we can?”

“Maybe this one is wrong and needs more knowledge about treelings. Do they sing?”

She batted his face softly, cat-laughing again.“Biaree can’t sing. Just screeches.”

Quiet Hunter eyed the treeling.“Strange animal.”

“You,” Thistle retorted gently, “are the strange animal. Love you anyway.” She coaxed Biaree onto a drying but still-salty shoulder. “Will get used to treelings. Maybe even will want one.”

“This one will think about it. Not yet, though.”

Picking up the dappleback’s lead rope, Thistle started across the beach, heading toward the higher dunes and the brush beyond. Instead of walking ahead of her, as she had seen the clan’s males do with their females, Quiet Hunter preferred to pace beside her.

Once out of the sand, they headed toward the place where the sun would rise, a direction Thistle knew would guide her back to clan ground. The sun was already starting to decline down the sky, and Thistle hoped to arrive before late evening.

They broke into an easy jog trot. The dappleback seemed willing to keep pace. Thistle guessed the horse was enjoying the exercise after lazing on the beach for the last few days. The bumpier pace might cause a few fish to fall out of the net bags, but they were quickly replaced. One large clam broke its shell, but Thistle and Quiet Hunter nibbled up the bits and went on, refreshed. They talked and joked to make the journeying time go faster. Quiet Hunter was curious why the clan gave treelings names but didn’t name the herdbeasts. Thistle didn’t know, but guessed that the clan only named creatures they didn’t intend to eat.

“But we aren’t eating this dappleback,” Quiet Hunter pointed out.

“Then maybe it should have a name,” Thistle answered. “You think of one.”

The lively discussion continued along the trail, over and through forested hills, into more open woodland. They were nearing the hunters’ plain, and Thistle was asking her partner why exactly did Quiet Hunter need to know if every new creature he encountered could either sing or hear some sort of True-of-voice song, when someone appeared on the trail in front of them.

Dusk shaded the new arrival’s color to a dark gray and Thistle didn’t recognize any smell except the hunter group-scent. For a tail-flick, she thought it was the renegade Night-who-eats-stars, but beside her, Quiet Hunter said, “This one … I … I … know him. It is not the black fawn-killer. Let me nose-touch.”

Thistle clamped the dappleback’s lead tighter in her mouth, bracing her feet to hold the restive horse. She hoped this hunter hadn’t decided that her dappleback and its seafood cargo might be easy prey.

She growled, but her partner looked back over his shoulder, grimacing to quiet her. Then, with tail lifted in greeting, he approached the other, who stood still, dark-green eyes narrowed to slits.

“This one can smell that he won’t attack,” Quiet Hunter said to Thistle.

“Don’t like the look in his eyes. You sure?” Thistle hissed back, teeth still clenched on the lead rope.

“Yes.”

She squashed her own instinct to attack. The best thing she could do was to hang on to the horse and keep it from bolting. She wished she was close enough to smell the newcomer’s mood, but she couldn’t approach.

She watched Quiet Hunter and the other hunter meet in the half-light. Both tails were lifted, waving with inquiry as their nose leathers touched. Thistle could hear her partner breathe in, inhaling the other’s scent.

Quiet Hunter’s tail stiffened. His head went back in a series of jerks, collapsing him back on his rump and haunches. His fur bristled all over, and he panted in panic. The other hunter ducked aside, eyed the stricken male over his shoulder briefly, and then slunk away.

Thistle’s first impulse was to chase the intruder and shred his ears. Even though she hadn’t seen him lift a paw, he had obviously done something bad to Quiet Hunter. She pulled the laden dappleback forward so that she could reach her partner. Now he was sitting, his head down, eyes squeezed shut, onepaw over his nose, fur still on end. She dropped the lead, put a rear paw on it, and gave him a worried lick. “What is it? Did he hit you? What did he do?” The sudden bitterness in his scent alarmed her and sent her treeling scampering from her shoulders to the root of her tail.

Quiet Hunter lifted his head, but instead of meeting her gaze, he sat rigidly, the expression in his eyes telling her that he was once again turned inward, as he had been when she first met him. She suddenly hated that dreamlike veil that clouded the beauty of his honey-colored eyes.

“Wake up!” she yowled. “Tell me what happened.”

“The song … This one is hearing True-of-voice again.”

Baffled, she laid a paw on his back.“But you wanted to hear him.”

Quiet Hunter jerked away, frightening Thistle.“Not as he sings now. How it has changed in color. Harsh. Black. Thorns. Claws. Fangs behind the eyes …” He reared, lashing both his head and his tail in a maddened frenzy. “No, this one can’t go, must go, why does he sing this way, why has it all turned so bleak, so wild …?”

He started running back and forth, stopping abruptly, then turning again, fleeing the other direction, then halting so sharply he stumbled as if tripped. Now ignoring the horse, Thistle grabbed his scruff, trying to stop him, but he struggled away, howling.

“If True-of-voice has done something bad to you, will shred his face,” Thistle growled, “Quiet Hunter, talk to me!”

He panted, breaking his words up.“This one … must find others who … hear the blackness, the bleakness … Forcing this one to go away, no, not away from Thistle …”

Fear struck deep into her, lancing like pain. He leaped back and forth, head rolling, as if in agony, then with a lash of his tail, he fled before Thistle could catch him.

He was gone. Gone so completely that not even a leaf still rustled. So that there was a stillness inside Thistle before grief and anger rushed in. She tried to track him, but there was no trace, not even the bitterness of fear-scent. She had no idea what direction he’d taken.

She called his name until rawness made her voice harsh, and then cried out that harshness until she lost breath. Then she fell silent, hoping desperately that he would return and rub against her, and things would be as they were before.

She nosed around, wondering what had happened. She caught some of the other hunter’s scent, just a whiff, but enough to tell her that the strange “song,” transmitted in part by scent, was the same as it had ever been, at least for her. No change in tone or color, no bleakness or darkness. Knowing that ruled out one thought, namely that Quiet Hunter had gone berserk becauseTrue-of-voice had suddenly died and the song had fallen silent. That had happened before, when True-of-voice fell from the cliff and lay near death on a ledge below. All the hunters, including her mate, had been affected so severely that the clan thought they would die.