Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named)

by Clare Bell

  * * *

  To Thistle, the song screamed in a blending of voices high and low. It was True-of-voice himself and all those that sang through him. The fierce hunting sound of the song turned into the sound of terror, a fang thrust through the mind. Then all was bleak and quiet.

  She had been in the center of the song, rushing with Quiet Hunter to defend the beloved singer. Now she was snatched away, thrust back into the caverns inside herself. They were no longer jeweled and shimmering with the light of the song. As if a vaulted arch had fallen in, blocking the sun rays from above, all went dark. The shadows took possession. And shadows were where the Dreambiter prowled.

  What had been a haven for her was now a threat. She fled outward, as if the rumble behind her were the sound of a cave-in. Yet the paths to the outside, once well-known, had become little-used and forgotten. Like the hunters, she, too, was trapped, and though she ran to the side of the beloved one who had fallen under the face-tail’s strike, she could not break through to him. She could only fling herself against the inward walls that would not yield to either panic or rage. And soon, close behind her, she heard the echoing growl of the Dreambiter.

  * * *

  The battle was over. Finished. Ratha let out the breath she was holding, moved legs that felt as though they had been frozen. Thakur was already urging her away silently, with pressure from his body. She resisted, looking frantically for Thistle. Her daughter was there, crouching beside a breathless and dazed Quiet Hunter.

  The other hunters looked dazed, too, even though they hadn’t been struck by the face-tail. They milled in confusion at the edge of the drop-off, as if unable to comprehend what had happened.

  In an instant everything had changed. True-of-voice was gone. Had the song gone with him?

  Ratha saw the answer in the shocked and stricken look in Thistle’s eyes, in the way Quiet Hunter, who had been the bravest of the hunters in his attempt to free True-of-voice, now lay shaking and helpless on the ground.

  True-of-voice was gone. Without him as the source of the song that moved and shaped their actions, the hunters were as helpless as newborn cubs.

  Ratha felt a bleakness within her and a sense of horror as she watched the hunters turn to one another, lost and frightened, perhaps for the first time in their lives. And Thistle ... her Thistle ... shared their loss, their agony. Thistle’s agony was overwhelming her as well. Ratha knew how deeply her daughter cared for Quiet Hunter.

  But isn’t this what you wanted; isn’t this what you worked for? a voice spoke inside her. You said you wanted the hunters dead. Without True-of-voice, they essentially are. There is no opposition now. The Named will prevail.

  She suddenly wished that things had not happened this way. True-of-voice did not deserve this. Nor did his people. Nor her daughter.

  Thakur moved closer to her, silently communicating his presence, his support. He was the one who knew Thistle best. She wanted to ask him to go to her daughter and offer the comfort that she could not.

  Let him comfort her so that I can back away ... again, she thought miserably. But then suddenly something flamed up inside her, as hot and strong as the Red Tongue itself. No. I’m not going to shy away from her any longer. I care too much about her.

  Ratha glanced warily at the hunters, wondering if she should avoid them, but they were all so preoccupied with the loss of their leader that they could only sit and stare or walk in dazed circles. All she got was a puzzled look or a halfhearted growl as she made her way through them toward her daughter.

  Thistle, who had been crouching beside Quiet Hunter, raised her muzzle and stared directly at Ratha. It was hard for Ratha to keep walking toward her, to keep gazing into her eyes. Her overwhelming urge was to veer off, to drop her gaze, to run.

  But Ratha met the sea-green stare and felt the grief deep within it. Forgetting everything else, she bounded to her daughter. With a wild flurry of her heart, she saw Thistle leap toward her—not to attack in protest or anger, but to bury her head against Ratha’s chest.

  Flinging her paws about her daughter, the leader of the Named gathered Thistle to her, holding her fiercely.

  Thistle, my cub, my walker on strange trails. Come to me. Whatever harms you, I will fight it; whatever hurts you, I will heal it. I am the one who birthed you and wounded you. Now let me help you.

  The thickness in her throat made her half purr, half growl as she said softly, “Tell me.”

  Thistle’s voice was ragged, broken. Her ribs heaved as she gasped, “True-of-voice. The song. Ended. Everything. Gone. Lost. Left only ... hurt.”

  “Not everything has ended for you,” Ratha said. “I know you care about Quiet Hunter and his people. I know the song was important, even if I didn’t understand it.”

  “Can’t live if song ends!” Thistle cried, barely able to speak. Her eyes were swirling, her pupils remote. She began to shake, with the same sort of shuddering that was racking Quiet Hunter. Thakur was crouched down beside the young male, trying all his healing skills to soothe and calm him.

  “Yes you can,” Ratha said, gently but firmly. “You can walk both their trails and ours. Come back from the strange trails, my Named one.”

  “Not Named,” Thistle said in a low moan. “Inside, no names, no knowing.” Her voice faltered, faded.

  Ratha sensed that her daughter was slipping into the same abyss of helpless despair that was claiming the hunters. With a rising despair of her own, she knew she would lose Thistle. Unless ...

  “Thistle-chaser. That is your name. I gave it to you. I’ll be meat for maggots if I let you refuse it! As Named and leader of the Named, I command you to come back to me, my Thistle-chaser.”

  But the only answer was in the strangely swirling eyes with their shifting green sea.

  In the endless dark, where dread sent her fleeing toward madness, something suddenly loomed ahead. Not so much seen, but heard and felt. Her name, spoken in her mother’s voice.

  Her name shone ahead. Thistle. Thistle-chaser. Named and spoken and known.

  She who could run on many paths remembered the ones she had run among the Named. She launched herself toward the inside cavern wall that had once been unyielding and suddenly she was through, from inside herself to outside, from ocean into air, from entrancement to awareness. She gasped, taking a huge breath as if she had risen from beneath a murky sea into sharp, clear air.

  She blinked as if she had indeed been swimming in the salt ocean instead of a sea of the mind. But what stung her like ocean brine and made her eyes run was not salt, but mixed joy and grief.

  Joy because she felt her mother’s caring, the power in the forelegs that embraced her, the fire of body and spirit that surrounded her, the raw devotion in a voice that said she was Named and known and deeply loved....

  Grief as well, because outside the protective circle that Ratha and Thakur formed about her, she saw True-of-voice’s people. Some were pacing in circles, others huddled and shuddering like Quiet Hunter. Some were in mindless fights, as if what they had just lost had been stolen and could be wrestled back.

  She could run on paths inside and outside. The dream-walking hunters could not. They were trapped inside, in caverns that had once echoed with the beauty of the song, but now held only emptiness.

  They who were fearless killers were now parentless cubs. For them the world had become a wilderness, the wind keening with unanswered questions.

  And among them, trapped in emptiness, was Quiet Hunter.

  When she pushed gently against her mother’s clasp, Ratha let her go and, apparently understanding, gave her a gentle nudge toward Quiet Hunter. Thakur gave her a brief welcoming lick, then moved aside to let her get close to the stricken young male.

  Thistle tried to reach out to Quiet Hunter in the way she had done before, in the way she knew that True-of-voice had once done. She sensed a wounded bleakness in him, as if something had reached cruelly inside and torn out the core of his being.

  She crouched beside Quiet
Hunter, rubbing against him, licking him, trying to warm him with her body, move him with her voice. Trying to bring him outside to where there was life, even if it was bare and no longer enfolded by the rapture of the song. To where there was light, even if it was clear, sharp, and cold.

  But there was no path for Quiet Hunter to the outside, she sensed sadly. The only trail was one she herself had showed him. He had ventured along it only a short way before turning back.

  She knew, in the bareness and clearness and coldness of life, that the end of the song meant the end of being for Quiet Hunter and his kind. Not for her. With her mother’s gift of name and knowing, she could jump the abyss of loss and despair, or bridge it with her two states of being. Quiet Hunter had only one. His approach to the chasm would be a plunge into death.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the settling dust, Thakur stood over Quiet Hunter, nosing him gently. With a grunt of surprise, he said, “I thought he was dead, Ratha, but he’s not. Maybe I can help him.”

  Ratha, with one paw around her daughter, said, “Thistle came back. Maybe he can, too.”

  “No,” Thistle cried, her voice muffled because her nose was once more buried against Ratha’s chest. “Maybe I can come back, but Quiet Hunter can’t. He knows no trails other than the ways of the song. For him ... everything is ended.”

  And you cry out in agony because you want to help him just as I want to help you, Ratha thought.

  Ratha was not sure whether she felt stunned, shocked, saddened, or relieved by what had happened. She was, for the moment, thankful that the hunters were too stricken and confused to cause trouble for the Named, although she knew that might end soon. Right now it was Thistle who needed her badly.

  Her daughter’s eyes were filled with agony as she gazed at Quiet Hunter. “Their pain ... his pain ... my fault,” Thistle moaned. “Showed his people ... bad way to kill face-tails. Didn’t mean to. But couldn’t hide from True-of-voice. Became part of the song, but learning not complete enough.”

  The words were jumbled, but Ratha understood them. Firmly she answered, though her voice was threatening to shake as much as Thistle’s, “It wasn’t your fault. I won’t let you blame yourself.”

  “Happened ... because I became one of them.”

  “It happened because of what you are and what they are. I was the one who said you could try. And it worked, Thistle. You became one who could walk on both trails, theirs and ours. So we could speak instead of fighting.”

  “Cared much ... for Quiet Hunter. Didn’t want to hurt him.”

  “I know,” Ratha said softly. “Thakur is trying to heal him. ”

  Thistle’s voice broke in a sob as she watched Thakur crouching over Quiet Hunter. “Kindness ... caring ... from the Named, even Thakur ... not enough. Only the song can heal Quiet Hunter. Song died with True-of voice.”

  Again Ratha drew Thistle to her.

  Suddenly Thistle gave a strange gasp, and her pupils widened. She pulled away from Ratha. “No ... Can’t be. Thought it came again ... an instant. No. Imagining because I want it. Not real. Only hope.”

  “What is it?”

  “The song. Thought I ... heard.... No. Can’t be. Can’t be. Not if True-of-voice is dead.”

  Looking at the intense expression on her daughter’s face, Ratha wondered if Thistle’s longing was responsible for what she now sensed. That would be one way to face the situation. Yet she had learned enough about her daughter to know that Thistle would not delude herself.

  Thistle gave an odd little twitch, as if something had touched her. She looked to her mother, a question forming in the depths of her eyes.

  Ratha looked back, her gaze steady. “You are all assuming that True-of-voice is dead. Maybe he isn’t.”

  A tangle of conflicting thoughts made Ratha’s belly churn as she followed Thistle to the edge of the cliff where True-of-voice had fallen. Things were happening too fast. She felt as though she were being jerked one way and then another.

  It had been easy to find sympathy for Quiet Hunter’s people when she thought that the source of their power and direction was gone. In the instant that they had become vulnerable, they were no longer alien, no longer enemy. The Named, too, had experienced loss. At least they had that much in common.

  Now, with the chance that True-of-voice still lived, Ratha felt that she was on much more treacherous ground. She could no longer return to her previous stance of viewing Quiet Hunter’s people as completely alien and easy to hate. Now things were more complex. Thistle and Quiet Hunter had shown that there was shared ground with her own people. Ratha could not and would not deny that.

  Yet if True-of-voice lived, the leader of the Named would have to be on her guard. She had to keep the interests of her own clan foremost. The hunters had already shown that they could be frighteningly powerful. And if there was a chance that they could regain True-of-voice ...

  This is not going to be easy. I want to help Thistle and Quiet Hunter without betraying the Named.

  She looked ahead to where Thistle crouched, peering down over the cliff edge. Near Thistle the ground and the scrub bushes were trampled or torn up. There were dark blood spatters drying in the dust.

  “Here. This is where he fell,” Thistle said, her voice flat.

  Ratha felt a shiver as she passed between blank-eyed hunters who could only stare at her dully. She felt a surge of scorn mixed with revulsion. They had all given up. Just like that. Take away their powerful leader, and their initiative died.

  In that way, they were very different from the Named. If my people lost me, they would grieve, but they would choose someone else and go on.

  And even before the other clan had confirmed that their leader was really dead, they had fallen apart. Thistle was right. These people seemed to get stuck or paralyzed in the strangest ways. Didn’t anyone even look to see if True-of voice might have landed on a ledge or something below?

  She found herself curling one side of her lip up over her fangs. How could she respect these people? They really could not think for themselves. They had to be told what to do. Even trivial things. Everything was ruled by True-of-voice, through the strange, unifying bond of something Thistle could only call “the song. ”

  I hate it. I hate even the idea of it.

  Ratha crouched beside Thistle and peered over, studying the rock face that dropped away from the edge beneath her feet. It looked pretty sheer ... yet there were some ledges. And some bushes growing right out of the rocks, which someone might catch and cling to in desperation. And halfway down there was a shelf and something dark on the shelf....

  Ratha’s heart began to pound. Could it be? Or was her imagination painting that sprawled cat-form on the rocks below?

  The shape lay still. It would do the hunters no good to recover True-of-voice if he was dead.

  But Thistle had felt ... something. A brief echo of the song? Was it just self-delusion or was it real? Ratha knew her kind were tough. She herself had survived wounds and falls. Thistle had once run right off a cliff during one of her strange fits and had not even been badly hurt.

  There was only one way to find out whether True-of-voice still clung to life.

  Ratha herself could not run the paths to where the answer lay.

  Her eyes met her daughter’s. She did not have to ask Thistle to leave the trails of the Named for those of Quiet Hunter’s people. She could see that Thistle was already journeying inward, seeking the source of the song.

  And at last, when she came back, her eyes were wide with astonishment. “It is there,” she whispered. “Oh, so faint. But it is there. True-of-voice lives.”

  * * *

  Thistle was not the only one who could sense the flickering flame of life on the ledge below, although she was the most sensitive, Ratha noted. Only after she had led Ratha to the cliff edge did some of the hunters start to drift in the same direction. True-of-voice’s feeble call had reached them too—Ratha could tell by the startled expressions of hope tha
t broke through the dull resignation.

  But his touch was weak and sporadic. Ratha could almost read the resurgence and waning of his strength in the eyes of his people. And in her daughter’s eyes as well.

  Gradually the hunters at the top of the cliff gathered in a cluster, as if they were moving as close as they could to True-of-voice. Those at the bottom, who had begun halfheartedly eating the carcasses of the slaughtered face-tails, abandoned their kills and crowded to the base of the cliff, staring up at their marooned and dying leader.

  To Ratha’s surprise, Thakur’s skill, or the tenuous return of the song, or both, had revived Quiet Hunter enough so that the young male could stagger to the cliff edge. Ratha had an instant of alarm when she thought he was going to stumble right over, but both Thistle and Thakur blocked Quiet Hunter and pushed him firmly back.

  True-of-voice’s people gazed down at their leader with forlorn expressions and drooping whiskers. Even those whose age should have given them some wisdom looked as lost as the yearlings. And at the bottom of the rock face, more of the grieving clan looked up in hopeful and hopeless longing.

  They know they can’t reach him, Ratha thought. They know he is dying. They can feel it.

  For Ratha it was a heartbreaking yet eerie scene as more and more of the hunters gathered, as if to hold vigil for their lost leader.

  No. He is more than their leader, Ratha thought. He is their life.

  To command such devotion ... Ratha felt a strange flash of envy toward the distant True-of-voice. To be so loved ... without hesitation or question.

  She glanced at her daughter, who was sitting beside the crouching Quiet Hunter. Thistle had laid her paw gently on his back, as if to make sure that he would not lean too far over the cliff in his attempt to get closer to True-of-voice.