SkyClan's Destiny

by Erin Hunter

  “I want you to know that I’ll fight to the end of my nine lives to keep my position as leader,” she vowed quietly, before Sharpclaw had the chance to say anything. “Not because I think I deserve it, but because I am loyal to my Clan, and to the warrior code, above all else.”

  Sharpclaw widened his eyes. Leafstar’s voice grew sharper as she continued. “The code says that as leader my word is law, and my Clanmates must be loyal to me. If any cat cannot be loyal to me in this way, they cannot be part of SkyClan.”

  Sharpclaw just nodded. “I never expected anything else,” he meowed.

  “What?” Leafstar was outraged. “When you challenged me at every turn? When you took patrols into the Twolegplace without telling me? When—”

  “But I’ve never doubted that you should be our leader,” Sharpclaw interrupted. “I’ve always believed that, ever since Firestar took you to the Skyrock to receive your nine lives. I challenged you, yes, so I could be sure of your conviction that you were doing the right thing.” His green eyes flashed. “What SkyClan needs more than anything else is a leader who has faith in herself. Because only then could other cats have faith in her, too.”

  Leafstar stared at him, stunned. I thought he was a traitor! But all he cares about is making our Clan strong!

  “Then you have to accept the daylight-warriors,” she told him, scrambling her thoughts together. “They are our Clanmates as much as any cat, and they have equal roles to play.” Realizing how deeply she believed what she had just said, she added, “So Frecklepaw will be apprenticed to Echosong, just as she wishes, and we’ll offer night training to all cats, not just those based in the gorge.”

  “Even in the Twolegplace?” Sharpclaw asked with a glint in his eyes.

  Leafstar let her neck fur bristle up, but inwardly she was rejoicing at the new relationship that seemed to be unfurling between them. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected him to respect me when I didn’t have enough respect for him. “You’ll have to let me think about that. But you will show respect to the daylight-warriors and include them in all the Clan activities. They are a worthy part of SkyClan.”

  Sharpclaw gave her a sideways glance. There was an edge to his tone as he murmured, “That’s our destiny, right?”

  Leafstar halted and faced him; the other cats gave them curious glances as they padded past.

  “SkyClan’s destiny is that we will never live in isolation from other cats,” she meowed. “We’re not like the forest Clans; we can’t shut ourselves off entirely from kittypets or rogues. And visitors will be welcome.”

  “Just like that?” Sharpclaw queried.

  Leafstar recalled the havoc that Stick and his friends had almost caused in her Clan. “No, there must be conditions.” Excitement tingled through her as she realized that she was expanding the warrior code itself to fit the conditions in which SkyClan had to live. Are these the “deeper roots” that the prophecy spoke of?

  “Visiting cats must hunt every day,” she continued, “but we won’t train them for fighting until they have spent one moon with us. And if they bring danger to the gorge, they must leave. SkyClan does not offer itself to the highest bidder as a fighting force.” She lifted her head. “We are a proud, independent Clan with a code and honor of our own.”

  Sharpclaw let out a small sigh; then he nodded and touched his muzzle to the top of Leafstar’s head. “I am proud to be your deputy,” he murmured. He gave her a long look from sparkling eyes before turning away to pad after his Clanmates.

  Leafstar stayed where she was for a moment, watching him go. Sharpclaw would never be an easy cat, she knew, blindly following her orders. He would always be a tough, challenging presence at her shoulder, with ideas of his own, and he would never be afraid to argue. We’ll have many more quarrels to come, I’m sure, Leafstar thought. And that’s good.

  Watching her Clanmates pad away from her along the riverbank, Leafstar narrowed her eyes. There’s one more part of my destiny that I need to take control of. With energy flooding into her paws she bounded forward until she caught up with Billystorm.

  The ginger-and-white tom turned to look at her, his gaze warm with welcome. Leafstar reveled in the sensation of being close to him. He was so strong, so brave, so loyal in the battle… She knew that he loved her, but he had accepted her destiny to be the leader of SkyClan, and nothing more. He was still prepared to go into battle beside her, and forge a path for other daylight-warriors to follow.

  But Leafstar wanted more than this. If she could choose her Clan’s destiny, she could choose her own. She had a deputy and a medicine cat she would trust with her eight remaining lives. Even if she had to step down from her duties while she nursed a litter of kits. In her Clan, her warrior code, there was no law against leaders having a mate, and a destiny of their own.

  “Will you walk with me a while?” she asked him. “We need to talk…”

  TURN THE PAGE TO READ

  AN EXCLUSIVE SKYCLAN

  MANGA ADVENTURE. . . .

  CREATED BY

  ERIN HUNTER

  WRITTEN BY

  DAN JOLLEY

  ART BY

  JAMES L. BARRY

  TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF

  OMEN OF THE STARS #1

  WARRIORS

  THE FOURTH APPRENTICE

  It has been foretold that Jayfeather and Lionblaze will hold the power of the stars in their paws. Now they must wait for a sign from StarClan to tell them which of their Clanmates will complete the prophecy. Soon, a StarClan warrior will visit a new ThunderClan apprentice—and the lives of the three chosen cats will be forever linked.

  CHAPTER 1

  A full moon floated in a cloudless sky, casting thick black shadows across the island. The leaves of the Great Oak rustled in a hot breeze. Crouched between Sorreltail and Graystripe, Lionblaze felt as though he couldn’t get enough air.

  “You’d think it would be cooler at night,” he grumbled.

  “I know,” Graystripe sighed, shifting uncomfortably on the dry, powdery soil. “This season just gets hotter and hotter. I can’t even remember when it last rained.”

  Lionblaze stretched up to peer over the heads of the other cats at his brother, Jayfeather, who was sitting with the medicine cats. Onestar had just reported the death of Barkface, and Kestrelflight, the remaining WindClan medicine cat, looked rather nervous to be representing his Clan alone for the first time.

  “Jayfeather says StarClan hasn’t told him anything about the drought,” Lionblaze mewed to Graystripe. “I wonder if any of the other medicine cats—”

  He broke off as Firestar, the leader of ThunderClan, rose to his paws on the branch where he had been sitting while he waited for his turn to speak. RiverClan’s leader, Leopardstar, glanced up from the branch just below, where she was crouching. Onestar, the leader of WindClan, was perched in the fork of a bough a few tail-lengths higher, while ShadowClan’s leader, Blackstar, was visible just as a gleam of eyes among the clustering leaves above Onestar’s branch.

  “Like every other Clan, ThunderClan is troubled by the heat,” Firestar began. “But we are coping well. Two of our apprentices have been made into warriors and received their warrior names: Toadstep and Rosepetal.”

  Lionblaze sprang to his paws. “Toadstep! Rosepetal!” he yowled. The rest of ThunderClan joined in, along with several cats from WindClan and ShadowClan, though Lionblaze noticed that the RiverClan warriors were silent, looking on with hostility in their eyes.

  Who ruffled their fur? he wondered. It was mean-spirited for a whole Clan to refuse to greet a new warrior at a Gathering. He twitched his ears. He wouldn’t forget this the next time Leopardstar announced a new RiverClan appointment.

  The two new ThunderClan warriors ducked their heads in embarrassment, though their eyes shone as they were welcomed by the Clans. Cloudtail, Toadstep’s former mentor, was puffed up with pride, while Squirrelflight, who had mentored Rosepetal, watched the young warriors with gleaming eyes.

  “
I’m still surprised Firestar picked Squirrelflight to be a mentor,” Lionblaze muttered to himself. “After she told all those lies about us being her kits.”

  “Firestar knows what he’s doing,” Graystripe responded; Lionblaze winced as he realized the gray warrior had overheard every word of his criticism. “He trusts Squirrelflight, and he wants to show every cat that she’s a good warrior and a valued member of ThunderClan.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Lionblaze blinked miserably. He had loved and respected Squirrelflight so much when he thought she was his mother, but now he felt cold and empty when he looked at her. She had betrayed him, and his littermates, too deeply for forgiveness. Hadn’t she?

  “If you’ve quite finished…” Leopardstar spoke over the last of the yowls of welcome and rose to her paws, fixing Firestar with a glare. “RiverClan still has a report to make.”

  Firestar dipped his head courteously to the RiverClan leader and took a pace back, sitting down again with his tail wrapped around his paws. “Go ahead, Leopardstar.”

  The RiverClan leader was the last to speak at the Gathering; Lionblaze had seen her tail twitching impatiently while the other leaders made their reports. Now her piercing gaze traveled across the cats crowded together in the clearing, while her neck fur bristled in fury.

  “Prey-stealers!” she hissed.

  “What?” Lionblaze sprang to his paws; his startled yowl was lost in the clamor as more cats from ThunderClan, WindClan, and ShadowClan leaped up to protest.

  Leopardstar stared down at them, teeth bared, making no attempt to quell the tumult. Instinctively Lionblaze glanced upward, but there were no clouds to cover the moon; StarClan wasn’t showing any anger at the outrageous accusation. As if any of the other Clans would want to steal slimy, stinky fish!

  He noticed for the first time how thin the RiverClan leader looked, her bones sharp as flint beneath her dappled fur. The other RiverClan warriors were the same, Lionblaze realized, glancing around; even thinner than his own Clanmates and the ShadowClan warriors—and even thinner than the WindClan cats, who looked skinny when they were full-fed.

  “They’re starving…” he murmured.

  “We’re all starving,” Graystripe retorted.

  Lionblaze let out a sigh. What the gray warrior said was true. In ThunderClan they had been forced to hunt and train at dawn and dusk in order to avoid the scorching heat of the day. In the hours surrounding sunhigh, the cats spent their time curled up sleeping in the precious shade at the foot of the walls of the stone hollow. For once the Clans were at peace, though Lionblaze suspected it was only because they were all too weak to fight, and no Clan had any prey worth fighting for.

  Firestar rose to his paws again and raised his tail for silence. The caterwauling gradually died away and the cats sat down again, directing angry glares at the RiverClan leader.

  “I’m sure you have good reason for accusing us all like that,” Firestar meowed when he could make himself heard. “Would you like to explain?”

  Leopardstar lashed her tail. “You have all been taking fish from the lake,” she snarled. “And those fish belong to RiverClan.”

  “No, they don’t,” Blackstar objected, poking his head out from the foliage. “The lake borders all our territories. We’re just as entitled to the fish as you are.”

  “Especially now,” Onestar added. “We’re all suffering from the drought. Prey is scarce in all our territories. If we can’t eat fish, we’ll starve.”

  Lionblaze stared at the two leaders in astonishment. Were ShadowClan and WindClan really so hungry that they’d been adding fish to their fresh-kill pile? Things must be really bad.

  “But it’s worse for us,” Leopardstar insisted. “RiverClan doesn’t eat any other kind of prey, so all the fish should belong to us.”

  “That’s mouse-brained!” Squirrelflight sprang to her paws, her bushy tail lashing. “Are you saying that RiverClan can’t eat any other prey? Are you admitting that your warriors are so incompetent they can’t even catch a mouse?”

  “Squirrelflight.” Brambleclaw, the ThunderClan deputy, spoke commandingly as he rose from the oak root where he had been sitting with the other Clan deputies. His voice was coldly polite as he continued. “It’s not your place to speak here. However,” he added, looking up at Leopardstar, “she does have a point.”

  Lionblaze winced at Brambleclaw’s tone, and he couldn’t repress a twinge of sympathy for Squirrelflight as she sat down again, her head bent like an apprentice scolded in public by her mentor. Even after six moons, two whole seasons, Brambleclaw had not forgiven his former mate for claiming her sister Leafpool’s kits as her own—and therefore his as well. Lionblaze still felt dazed whenever he reminded himself that Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight were not his real mother and father. He and his brother, Jayfeather, were the kits of the former ThunderClan medicine cat, Leafpool, and Crowfeather, a WindClan warrior. Since the truth came out, Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight had barely spoken to each other, and although Brambleclaw never punished Squirrelflight by giving her the hardest tasks or the most dangerous patrols, he made sure that their paths never crossed as they carried out their duties.

  Squirrelflight’s lie had been bad enough, but everything went wrong when she admitted what she had done. She had told the truth in a desperate attempt to save her kits from Ashfur’s murderous fury at being passed over in favor of Brambleclaw, moons before Lionblaze and his littermates were born. Lionblaze’s and Jayfeather’s sister, Hollyleaf, had killed Ashfur to prevent him from revealing the secret at a Gathering. Then Hollyleaf vanished behind a fall of earth when she tried to escape through the tunnels to start a new life. Now the brothers had to accept that they were half-Clan, and that their father, Crowfeather, wanted nothing to do with them. And, on top of that, there were still suspicious looks from some of their own Clanmates, which made Lionblaze’s pelt turn hot with rage.

  As if we’re suddenly going to turn disloyal because we’ve found out our father is a WindClan warrior! Who’d want to join those scrawny rabbit-munchers?

  Lionblaze watched Jayfeather, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. His brother’s sightless blue eyes were turned toward Brambleclaw, and his ears were alert, but it was hard to tell what was going through his mind. To Lionblaze’s relief, the rest of the cats seemed too intent on what Leopardstar was saying to pay any attention to the rift between Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight.

  “The fish in the lake belong to RiverClan,” Leopardstar went on, her voice thin and high-pitched like wind through the reeds. “Any cat who tries to take them will feel our claws. From now on, I will instruct our border patrols to include the area around the water on every side.”

  “You can’t do that!” Blackstar shouldered his way out of the leaves and leaped down to a lower branch, from where he could glare threateningly at Leopardstar. “Territories have never been extended into the lake.”

  Lionblaze pictured the lake as it had been, its waves lapping gently against grassy banks with only narrow strips of sand and pebbles here and there on the shore. Now the water had shrunk away into the middle, leaving wide stretches of mud that dried and cracked in the merciless greenleaf sun. Surely Leopardstar didn’t want to claim those barren spaces as RiverClan territory?

  “If any RiverClan patrols set paw on our territory,” Onestar growled, baring his teeth, “they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

  “Leopardstar, listen.” Lionblaze could tell that Firestar was trying hard to stay calm, even though the fur on his neck and shoulders was beginning to fluff up. “If you carry on like this, you’re going to cause a war between the Clans. Cats will be injured. Haven’t we got troubles enough without going to look for more?”

  “Firestar’s right,” Sorreltail murmured into Lionblaze’s ear. “We should be trying to help one another, not fluffing up our fur ready for a fight.”

  Leopardstar crouched down as if she wanted to leap at the other leaders, letting out a wordless snarl and sliding out her c
laws.

  This is a time of truce! Lionblaze thought, his eyes stretching wide in dismay. A Clan leader attacking another cat at a Gathering? It can’t happen!

  Firestar had tensed, bracing himself in case Leopardstar hurled herself at him. Instead she jumped down to the ground with a furious hiss, waving her tail for her warriors to gather around her.

  “Stay away from our fish!” she spat as she led the way through the bushes that surrounded the clearing, toward the tree-bridge that led off the island. Her Clanmates followed her, shooting hostile looks at the other three Clans as they passed them. Murmurs of speculation and comment broke out as they left, but then Firestar’s voice rang with authority above the noise.

  “The Gathering is at an end! We must return to our territories until the next full moon. May StarClan light our paths!”

  Lionblaze padded just behind his leader as the ThunderClan cats trekked around the edge of the lake toward their own territory. The water was barely visible, just a silver glimmer in the distance; pale moonlight reflected from the surface of the drying mud. Lionblaze wrinkled his nose at the smell of rotting fish.

  If their prey stinks like that, RiverClan can have it!

  Ahead of him, Brambleclaw trudged along next to Firestar, with Dustpelt and Ferncloud on the Clan leader’s other side.

  “What are we going to do?” the deputy asked. “Leopardstar will send out her patrols. What happens when we find them on our territory?”

  Firestar twitched his ears. “We need to deal with this carefully,” he meowed. “Is the bottom of the lake our territory? We would never have thought of claiming it when it was covered with water.”

  Dustpelt snorted. “If the dry land borders our territory, it’s ours now. RiverClan has no rights to hunt or patrol there.”