Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Then he realized that some of the crowd had noticed his presence and other heads were starting to turn. Hastily he ducked down and backed out from among them. He flattened in the grass in the darkness, suddenly aware of his racing heartbeat. Fessran had begun to speak again, distracting attention from him. Quickly he wriggled away on his belly until he was far enough from them to run. As he paused and his eyes grew accustomed to the night again, he saw a form flee from behind the sunning rock.

The figure was slender and lithe, with a long tail. It was gone before Thakur was sure that he had seen it.“Ratha?” he muttered to himself in the darkness, but he wasn’t sure. His first impulse was to follow, but the smoky haze that now filled the air made it impossible to track by scent. He decided it would be best to return to his den to rest and think.

On the way to his lair, he visited Ratha’s on the chance she might be there. He found it empty. Feeling uneasy, he sought his own den and the refuge of sleep.

The night winds had blown away the smoky haze and the morning was clear. Ratha lay atop the sunning rock and watched the dawn. She thought about the previous evening and the Firekeepers’ gathering. Her ears swiveled back and the tip of her tail twitched as she remembered what Fessran had done to the cubs.

There was no need to frighten them like that,she thought, nor to build such a large fire. A smaller one would have kept everyone warm. Her tailtip twitched again.But warmth wasn’t what Fessran wanted from the Red Tongue last night,she reminded herself.

Ratha hadn’t really meant to hide and watch in secret. She had been late and by the time she arrived, the flames of the gathering fire were leaping into the night sky. The Red Tongue’s roar concealed her footsteps and its acrid smoke hid her smell. She could hear Fessran speaking, however, and the Firekeeper’s words weren’t what she expected to hear. The mood of the group was unusually grim and tense, as if they were readying themselves to fight some enemy instead of welcoming the youngsters who were to be trained as Firekeepers. Even the small cubs had serious expressions on their faces, although a few just looked miserable.

She had stopped her approach, sensing that her presence would disrupt what was happening. For a while, she stood still, listening, torn between her wish to approach openly and her need to know more about this gathering. At last, with a pang of regret for her choice, she circled downwind, through the billowing smoke, and found a place behind the sunning rock where she could watch and listen without being noticed.

The sunning rock. She had been there last night and she was here again. If she leaned over the edge and looked down, she knew she would see her own pugmarks in the dirt where she had crouched beside the base of the stone. If she looked the other way, she would see the freshly turned soil mixed with ash where the Firekeepers had buried the remains of the bonfire. This morning, she had squatted there and watered the place before climbing onto the sunning rock, taking some satisfaction in that small act of possession. She turned her back on the site, preferring to look out over the pasture to where the dapplebacks and three-horns grazed, with the herders tending them.

One thought remained in her mind, however, and it kept irritating her like a bone splinter between her teeth. The harshness of the Firekeepers’ test had startled her. Although she knew it was necessary to eliminate timid cubs from those who were to be trained, Ratha found herself disliking Fessran’s method. The idea was so uncharacteristic of her friend that she wondered if someone else, such as Shongshar, had suggested it.

“Ptahh!” Ratha spat, disgusted with herself.“You know better than that. If anyone has her own ideas about things, Fessran does.” Yet, as she thought about the Firekeeper leader, she felt uneasy. Fessran had been a staunch friend and her only ally when she had first taken the Red Tongue before the clan. She had rewarded her by giving her the keeping of this new and awesome creature. It was an honor, but it was also a burden, and Ratha had hesitated before she placed it on her friend.

Often Ratha had watched a fly land on the fresh meat of a kill, knowing that one small insect could lay enough eggs to fill the carcass with maggots and taint the meat. Last night she had admitted to herself that the Red Tongue had its own taint, and she was beginning to think that even the stubborn herder who had been made Firekeeper leader was not immune to it.

As she lay there with her thoughts, she heard a rustle in the grass. She pulled her feet underneath her, crouched and faced out in the direction of the sound. Soon she saw Thakur trotting toward the sunning rock with his treeling on his back. He didn’t look up and he kept his steady pace, as if he meant to pass by on his way to the meadow’s far side.

As he drew near, he swung away from his path and made a small detour that took him near the buried ashes of the bonfire. Again, Ratha could tell that he meant only to glance at the site and trot on, but suddenly he stopped, sniffed and wrinkled his nose. He paced across the ash-flecked soil until he smelled her mark, where she had watered the buried ashes. He grimaced and looked up at the sunning rock.

She felt uncomfortable at having given in to that earlier impulse. Now she had told Thakur, in a way that no words could, how she felt about the Firekeepers’ gathering.

“So you were there and you didn’t like it either,” he said at last.

Either? Ratha narrowed her eyes at him. She flicked her tail, indicating that he should jump up beside her. When he was there and settled, she said,“I see I wasn’t the only one who hid and watched.”

“I didn’t think a herder would be welcome in that group, and I was right,” Thakur answered. “You, clan leader?”

“I might have been welcomed, but my presence would have made Fessran think again about frightening those cubs the way she did.”

She could see that Thakur’s next words were chosen carefully. In a quiet voice, he said, “You can forbid another gathering like that.”

She stared at him in disbelief.“Forbid it? Just because Fessran built the fire too large and scared some of the cubs? They were too young for such a thing anyway.”

“Ratha, I know you well enough to tell how you feel about something. Your words may not tell me, but your mark on those buried ashes does.”

“Arr,” she said, feeling foolish.“I was in a bad mood when I did that.”

“And Fessran had nothing to do with your bad mood?”

“All right,” Ratha snapped. “She did. But let me tell you this: I may not like how she does things, but what she does works. She told me to make Shongshar a Firekeeper and she was right. We are no longer losing guard-fires because the Firekeepers are too timid. The herdbeasts are safer than they have ever been. That is what is important to me. Fessran has done well and I am not going to interfere with her, so you can dig a hole and bury that idea.”

She thought Thakur would lose patience with her, but he only twitched his ears back and then let them come forward again. His eyes held suppressed excitement, as if he had something to tell her but hadn’t found the opportunity until now. “Suppose I were to show you another way to master the Red Tongue, a way that doesn’t require that cubs have their whiskers singed in order to prove themselves.”

She looked at Thakur as he sat there with the treeling on his back. Aree added his gaze to Thakur’s and the combination of the two stares made her feel uncomfortable.

“You haven’t found such a way … or have you?”

“Just follow me, clan leader,” he said and jumped down from the sunning rock.