Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Fessran stirred.“This gives me an itch between my shoulders. I don’t know why, but it’s not a nice itch.”

Thakur looked at the Firekeeper steadily. Ratha also felt something low on the nape of her neck, a cold that seeped down along her back. She got up and shook, saying,“I’d be more worried, except that scouts report everything on the hunters’ ground is calm.”

“They are only watching from one edge of the hunters’ land. If those who hear the blackened song are leaving, our scouts might not pick that up,” Fessran observed.

“Then we aren’t sure the affected ones are all young males.” Ratha suppressed her urge to wriggle on the ground in order to get rid of the crawly feeling on her back. She was sure it wasn’t fleas.

“I’ve been with the hunters the most, since I’ve been building their fire,” put in Bira. “I’m sure that the only ones who hear the song as black are the younger males.”

“Why would True-of-voice be doing that?” Ratha asked. “He needs strong young toms to hunt face-tails—”

“Even though the females are the better hunters,” Fessran interrupted. “Well, they are,” she insisted, to Ratha’s annoyed look. “At least they bring in most of the meat.”

“Could we have angered True-of-voice somehow?” asked Bira, tilting her head.

“If he was feeling hissy, why would he take it out on his own people, Bira?” Fessran asked. “We’re the ones he would attack. Thakur, can you follow this impossibly twisted trail? I can’t.”

“Assuming there is indeed a trail to follow,” said the herding teacher. “I’ve said this before — we don’t know how True-of-voice or his people think. There may be no sense to what he does, at least that we can understand.”

Ratha spoke carefully.“They may not think like us, but they must share some feelings with us. Why else would they ask us to join their farewell gathering for the dead?”

“To make us feel bad,” Fessran grumbled.

“No, it wasn’t that,” Ratha retorted. “You were there, Firekeeper.”

Fessran admitted that she was, and the impression she got was not that True-of-voice was trying to induce guilt.

Ratha, glancing at Thistle, saw that her daughter was once again getting impatient with all the talk. To head off another interruption, she pointed out that the clan really didn’t know what was happening. The next step was to recall the scouts, get their reports and then send them out again. Some could go with Thistle on her search for Quiet Hunter.

“What about the fire for the hunter cubs?” Bira asked. “May I build it?”

Ratha was reluctant to answer.“Yes, Firekeeper. Depending on what the scouts report, this might be the last night. You can tell them, if you wish. I’m sorry.”

Bira brushed her whiskers along Ratha’s cheek. “You are still trying to be kind, clan leader. I respect that.”

“Too much kindness may hurt us. You have to understand that.”

“I know,” said Bira. “I’m glad you are clan leader, not me.” With a wave of her tail, Bira went to help Fessran and Thakur recall the scouts to discover what they had learned.

Ratha didn’t realize that she had fallen into a doze until she felt a lick on the back of the neck, combined with a claw-poke. She knew even before she had tried to focus her eyes that the former had been from Thakur, the latter from Fessran. Both helped make the summary that Ratha had requested.

Quiet Hunter was still missing. Thistle was still out with several scouts, searching. The young males were still leaving True-of-voice’s tribe. The only new thing was unsettling, although it confirmed Quiet Hunter’s last frantic words. The renegades were joining together in small groups. They were finding one another, made brothers by being outcasts of the song. Quiet Hunter had also spoken of finding a similar brotherhood, but he had not yet joined them, although Thakur felt that he soon would. Thakur also thought that the smaller groups would coalesce into a single one. Scouts reporting later in the day proved him right.

“Herding teacher,” Ratha said when she met with him again the next day, “could True-of-voice have somehow changed, maybe gone … rotten? I know that leadership can do such things. I’ve had to fight hard against it.”

Pausing in his quick grooming, Thakur spat out some loose fur. Ratha jumped in again before he could reply.“We thought he was bad for a while, then we found he was good. Could he have turned again?”

Thakur stopped his grooming.“You think he has

become… evil?”

“Well, you said yourself that he was unpredictable.”

The herding teacher looked at her, and she felt a strange kind of sadness in his gaze.“Yearling, True-of-voice may have changed, but the ideas of good or evil belong to us, not them. They are things that neither True-of-voice nor his people understand.”

Ratha argued, laying back her ears slightly. She felt if she accepted Thakur’s words, she would just be floating, with no place to put her feet. “You don’t drive your own young away, you don’t deliberately hurt them, and you don’t do that unless there is something in you that is wrong, bad … evil.”

“Or unless you are so swept away by events that you feel you have no choice,” said Thakur, his eyes steady on hers.

Ratha felt her teeth snap together. Was it fair of Thakur to throw her old mistake in her face? She didn’t want to fight with him, though, and she sat on her response, forcing herself to say instead, “You think True-of-voice has no choice in what he does? You don’t think he’s angry … or evil?”

“Whatever moves him, yearling,is far more powerful than either.” was Thakur’s reply.

“We have no right to judge him?”

“No, yearling. We don’t have the capability to judge him.”

Ratha could do nothing more than fall silent. After a while, she said,“Why do we have these ideas … about good and evil? Herdbeasts don’t, treelings don’t, the Un-Named don’t, you say that the hunters don’t….”

In answer, Thakur drew a line in the dirt with one claw.“Because we are awake to see differences in things and are aware that we can choose between them. We see opposites and they somehow have to balance, like your tail and your head when you leap to a branch.”

Ratha fought to absorb and understand this. The question might seem very remote and abstract, but she suddenly knew that it wasn’t.

“Thakur, you stretch my thinking until it hurts.”

“Good,” he said, and then licked the nape of her neck again, reminding her that she had a body and all was not just thought. “I just hope that it doesn’t hurt too much.”

Later Thistle returned, looking disgruntled. Thakur had gone and there was only Ratha there to meet her.

“Found Quiet Hunter, but can’t reach him,” Thistle said. “Went with the other black-song-hearers. Making new group. Separate from True-of-voice.”

“You can’t go to Quiet Hunter and ask him to return?”

“No.” Thistle’s voice was harsh with frustration. “Others won’t let me near him. Yowled, but he didn’t answer. Is not like him. Being stopped, maybe?”

“That’s the only thing I can think of. He wouldn’t stay away from you by choice. I know he wouldn’t.” Ratha looked at her daughter, fur tangled with sticks and thorns, pads worn until blistered, but eyes still full of crashing-wave strength. She both pitied and marveled at this beloved stubborn creature who was somehow her daughter. “Thistle, if we have to free him by force, I promise that we will.”

Thistle let her eyes fall shut.“Know what you would do for me. And him. But don’t think it would work. Feel that something else, not True-of-voice, is happening.”