Dedication
TO THE DREAMBITERS
AND
THE DREAMBITTEN
may they find healing
and
TO MARGARET K. McELDERRY
with love and admiration
Chapter One
On matted, shadow-laced grass in a forest clearing, two wild cats quarreled over prey. They made threat-growls as each circled the other. One was the size and weight of a panther, with a faded dun coat and a ribby, rickety look that spoke his age. The other, a female, was a strange mix of rust brown mottled with orange. A black mask across her face gave emphasis to her chalk-green eyes. Her youth might have given her the advantage despite her smallness, but her left foreleg was withered and drawn up against her chest.
With her pelt of rusty black and orange and her slow uncertain manner, she resembled a newt, an eel-like creature with legs. Once those of her own kind had cruelly kicked a dead one at her, as if to show her what she was. Perhaps they were right. Often she felt as dazed and bewildered as a newt that had crawled from its clammy hole into bright sun.
She remembered the dead thing—cold, limp, and coated with slime that made it too noxious for even her to eat. It was then that the image wormed itself into her mind. From that time, she thought of herself as Newt.
Her gaze fastened on the dusty feathered bundle pinned beneath the old dun-coat’s claws. It wasn’t a fresh catch; her nose told her that the bird had been dead for days. The paw claiming it trembled with age and weakness. The grizzled head bent to strip away feathers.
She gathered her three good legs beneath her, preparing for a rush that would bowl the ancient male over. Carrion rank as this had repulsed her in better days. Now her belly was shrunken, and the odor of any kind of food made her drool.
The dun-coat lifted his head, fixing watery yellow eyes on her. He made sounds that were more than just growls or whines. The sounds and the way he lashed his tail created feelings inside Newt that she didn’t want. She knew the old male despised her.
His noises made her feel just what she was: Ugly. Dull.
The old dun-coat tore at the rotten bird. Newt’s other feelings gave way to her fierce hunger. She lunged, driving into him and knocking him to the ground. He collapsed like the bundle of sticks he resembled. She sank her teeth into the prize and lifted it. He was struggling to his feet again, making mewling sounds.
He faced her so that she looked him full in the eyes. She met there the things she had seen in the gaze of others, but somehow his outraged stare was stronger. It asked questions—questions she could not answer.
What are you that you would take the last scrap of meat from a dying old one? Have you no respect for the ending of life... ?
The message came not in sounds but in the fierce look from those watery yellow-green eyes. She wanted to flee with the ragged carcass, but the elder’s stare held her. And, as she was imprisoned by his gaze and her growing shame and confusion, his eyes seemed to change before her, becoming those of one she knew well and hated.
From somewhere behind her own eyes, inside her own skull, a familiar nightmare swept down on her. She heard rushing, pounding, and an echoing growl that rose to a shriek. In her fevered vision, a cat-shaped apparition rose up before her with gleaming fangs. The flame-colored demon stabbed its teeth into her crippled shoulder and foreleg, waking the old pain. She struggled, but in the vision she was always smaller, weaker, unable to defend herself. The dream-creature seized her, tore her, and then threw her aside into an abyss, where she lay until the blackness lightened.
Newt woke on her side, bleakly aware that she had fallen once again into the grip of her strange sickness. Now the Dreambiter was gone. Episodes like this were half seizure, half nightmare, and totally bewildering. She found herself still moving her legs weakly. Taking deep breaths, she quieted her movements.
As her heartbeat slowed, she pulled her feet beneath her and rolled onto her chest. She waited, dreading the light-headedness that might herald another attack. Often the dream and the illness would return, savaging her a second or third time before releasing her.
This time there was no sudden relapse. She stumbled to her feet, the contracted muscles in her crippled limb pulling as she mistakenly tried to use the leg. Her nightmare was gone. So was the old male and his feathered carrion. Newt sighed, knowing he had been able to stagger a safe distance away while she thrashed helplessly. Yet the memory of him shamed her a little less, perhaps because she knew he would have at least one more meal.
But why care about the old dun-coat? Usually she wouldn’t. It was too hard to think about anything except scratching up something to eat when she could no longer bear the pain of hunger. But sometimes other thoughts and feelings thrust themselves into her narrow world, like those the old one had roused in her, making her care or shaming her because she didn’t.
Newt hung her head, not wanting this hateful clarity of mind that came to her briefly on these occasions and added to her wretchedness. Yet, perhaps she was capable of thoughts beyond the bare needs of survival. She already knew the difference between kindness and cruelty, for she had felt both at some time in her dim past.
She shook her head to drive out some of the lingering dizziness. Sometimes it seemed as though the mist that always fogged her mind might lift, letting her think clearly. There had been a time... once... before the Dreambiter...
No. She wasn’t going to think about her nightmare. It might rise again, battering her from within.
Slowly, awkwardly, Newt turned. With her useless foreleg tucked up beneath her chest, she limped downhill.
A fresh wind blew from beyond the trees, bringing a sea smell to Newt’s nose and a fresh pang of hunger to her belly. She rarely went that way, for she was reluctant to leave the shelter of the forest. But now, frustration and self-pity made her reckless.
The smell teased her, hinting that she might find something washed ashore that she could gnaw on. It sparked a memory, flickering, but strong enough to draw her. A memory of feathers scattered on sand, bleached to brittleness by the salt wind. Of fragile bones splintering between her teeth, releasing crumbled marrow. Shards of flesh, salt encrusted and hard as the bones that softened in her mouth and released an echo of flavor before they slipped down her throat and were gone.
The trees thinned to scrub, and the soil became stony beneath her feet as Newt left the forest for the coast. She hesitated, leaning forward on her good forepaw and switching her tail. Cries and wingbeats overhead made her shoulders hunch. Birds with tapered wings, gray backs, and plump white bellies soared above her. She slunk through sedge grass to low, broken cliffs that overlooked the beach.
There she crouched, feeling the wind lift the fur on the back of her neck and tease the tips of her ears. Lifting her muzzle, she tested the wind. There were queer smells of animals and other things, but no scents of her own kind. She was alone on the clifftop.
She listened to the crash and roll of the surf below. Then she threaded her way down across crumbling bluffs until her paws broke the sand-crust at the top of the beach. For a moment, she retreated, puzzled by the way the sand gave beneath her when she tried to walk on it.
She ventured out once again, feeling the loose sand grind between her pads and drag at her legs, making her limping pace more awkward than ever. For a moment, she looked back up the tumbled slope, wondering if she should turn around. Retreating was the easy thing to do. She had done it most of her life.
Perhaps something in the brisk wind challenged Newt this time. Drawing her whiskers back, she lowered her head and slogged through the crusted sand. She passed a line of sea wrack and nosed among the drying kelp and gull feathers for carrion but found nothing. Hordes of sand fleas scattered in front of her as she made her way down onto the hard-packed sand near the surf line.
The endless march of waves breaking on shore drew and held her gaze. The roar and boom of the surf and the salt spray blowing into her face seemed to dash away some of the confusion that lay like a gray mist over her mind. Frothy water slithered up the beach and spilled onto her toes, drawing the sand from under her pads as it retreated.
She wasn’t sure if the wind blowing in her face or the water stroking her toes bothered her or not. At least this place of water and sand did not demand anything of her.
Swinging her tail, Newt hobbled along the damp sand just beyond the surf line. She squinted against sunglare and the spray that stiffened the fur on her face. Looking back, she saw the wandering trail of her footprints. In the forest she would have scuffed them out, but here it didn’t seem to matter. The slow crash and hiss of the sea lulled her, and she walked as if in a trance, feeling the sun on her back and the wind in her ears.
Newt’s good forepaw struck a rock and she stumbled, falling onto her chest. Irritated and impatient with her clumsiness, she scrambled up and looked around. She had to turn her head to take in her surroundings, for her vision had tunneled, as it often did when she became frightened or angry. She hated that, for it felt as if the world had shrunk to only the small space in front of her, leaving the rest to be engulfed by blackness. And sometimes that small space would retreat far away, and then the Dreambiter would come.
She shook herself fiercely, as if she could free herself of the hateful vision the way she did the sand in her coat. The cool freshness of the wind in her face helped. Gradually her vision opened once again, and the warning throb in the back of her head faded. Now she could see that she had come to a low shelf of gray mudstone, dotted with embedded shells and filled with shallow potholes. She hopped up and sniffed at a shallow tidepool. Several flowerlike objects beneath the surface startled her by withdrawing their narrow petals and huddling into gray-green lumps.
Intrigued, she poked at them with her good forepaw while she lay on her side, trying to get them to emerge and wave about again, but they remained sullenly closed. She got up and went on.
Newt had come to a terraced area beneath a low cliff where slabs of mudstone formed a series of shelves stepping down to the sea. The tidepools on the higher shelves held only more reclusive water flowers and a few empty shells. The lower pools lay near enough to the waves to fill as the surf rushed in and drain when the water retreated.
The brine swirled high around her legs and splashed her belly as she investigated these pools, and she found them filled with swimming, scuttling, and crawling creatures. Spiny sculpins eyed her from niches between rocks. Little crabs danced away sideways when her shadow fell on them. Pearl-shelled snails, waving their horns, glided over mats of purple algae.
She waded from one tidepool to another, her sudden fascination with the inhabitants not just the result of curiosity. The rockfish looked as if they could provide a few bites of food. The seasnails were much easier to catch, but their shells were tough and weren’t as easily cracked as the more fragile shells of land snails. She nearly broke a back tooth trying to crack one and at last spat it out in disgust.
Newt noticed that each wave seemed to roll in farther than before, slowly submerging the lower tidepools. She wasn’t ready to leave yet; she had spied a big sculpin lurking at the bottom of a brine-filled crevice. Settling herself on her side, she plunged her good forepaw into the water after the fish. It scooted away much faster than its large head and clumsy fins had suggested it could. She made another swipe. The fish evaded her, slipping tail first into the deepest part of the crevice and making pop eyes at her. An attempt to claw the sculpin out ended when its spines pierced her pawpad.
With a dismayed yowl, Newt pulled her paw out and floundered away, leaving the tidepools to the rising water. She scrambled over the mudstone terraces back to the beach, her stomach still grumbling and her pricked forepaw stinging.
Feeling vulnerable, she sought shelter in a cave beneath an outcrop of sandstone. She collapsed on her side, brought her bleeding pad to her face, and licked it. A vague sense of dread came over her. With one foreleg crippled, even a minor injury to the other could keep her immobilized, unable to hunt for food or fresh water.
A dull sense of outrage made her bare her teeth and flatten her ears. She whimpered—and trembled at the sound of despair in her own voice. Laying her cheek down on her throbbing forepaw, she sought sleep but found only a fitful doze.
The Dreambiter came, not in a rush and hiss as it had before, but quietly, stealing up behind misted half-dreams. It was huge, and Newt was tiny. Sometimes the Dreambiter wore a pelt of flames, but this time it was a shadow, lit from behind by the colors of sunset. Only the eyes shimmered green, and the look in them was not hatred but anguish.
Newt knew a moment of pity for the Dreambiter, but that instant fled as blood-red light caught and stained the apparition’s fangs. The teeth plunged into her flesh and kept going, striking deep into the center of her soul, ripping a shriek from her throat. Pain bloomed like an ugly flower, grew and grew until she thought even in her dream that this was the end and that the Dreambiter would take her.
But it was a dream, and although the vision could give pain, it could not give death. The final injustice was that she did wake, only to find the bleak landscape of her life before her once again. Ghost-pain danced through her neck and shoulder, through the scars of the old bite, and out into her contracted foreleg, making the stiff muscles spasm. She rolled on the leg to ease the cramping.
Lying on the sand in her shallow little cave beneath the overhang, she tried not to think of anything at all. Often her mind would oblige her by going completely blank, but this time it dwelled on her nightmare. There was something about her memory of the moment before the Dreambiter’s attack that tormented her. In the vision she turned into someone smaller, weaker, yet more agile and not burdened by a lamed foreleg. And there was a difference in her mind too, for she sensed, though only fleetingly, that her thoughts at that time were not as blurred or misted by confusion as they were now. She had been whole; now she was broken. The Dreambiter had destroyed more than just her front leg.
Newt woke from a sleep she had no memory of entering. The pain in her leg had faded, to be replaced by restlessness. She tried out her spine-pricked paw and found that the fire had gone down to a dull ache. Slowly she limped northward up the beach.
High tide covered mudflats and shell beds in the cliff shadow near a river mouth. As she wandered, skirting waves that broke high on the flats, she heard a grinding sound followed by snuffles and snorts. She halted, swiveling her ears. A fishy sea-animal odor teased her nose. Then another scent came, mixed in with the wind. Newt couldn’t identify it, but there was a meaty odor that hinted at food.
Her reflexive swallow started her stomach churning and cramping. She had been about to withdraw, but now, driven by hunger, she had to go on. She limped toward the noise.
In the frothing shallow water covering the flats, Newt caught sight of an animal that was totally strange to her. It looked immense, whiskered and blubbery. Creases formed in the rolls of fat around its neck as it swung its head from side to side. Its muzzle was wide and pushed in. Short but massive tusks protruded from beneath a loose, slobbery upper lip.
As she watched, taking in the details of the animal’s appearance, she wished she could capture the impression in a way that would keep the images in her mind from fading. She sensed that such a way existed, though she didn’t know what it was. Another of her kind had once tried to teach her.
A memory came to her, a picture of a copper-furred face with amber eyes. She remembered a warm tongue that washed her, a male scent, and a deep purring voice. And then the face in her mind started to move, the mouth opening and making sounds. The same sounds came repeatedly until the thought had risen in her mind that the sounds were supposed to mean something. And she had been on the verge of understanding them just as the Dreambiter had attacked, driving the kind one away and burying her dawning awareness under an avalanche of pain.
Yet that memory remained of a gentle voice trying to encourage, to teach. She opened her own mouth, startling herself by making a noise between a growl and a whimper.
The strangeness in her voice frightened her. The edges of her vision started to close in. The Dreambiter stirred but did not rise. Newt’s fear gradually faded.
She became aware of the sea-creature staring at her. It humped itself farther inshore and began raking a submerged shell bed with its tusks. Each time the water receded, exposing shellfish, more of the fleshy food-smell drifted downwind, drawing Newt closer. At first the blubbery, tusked beast seemed to have no legs at all, but then she caught sight of a stumpy, flippered forelimb. The creature itself had an oily stink that caught in Newt’s throat and made her grimace, but the aroma coming from the crushed shellfish enticed her.
With a startled grunt, the blubber-tusker heaved itself upright and stared at her with eyes spaced so far apart they seemed about to fall off the sides of its pug-nosed face. She could see its nostrils twitch as it caught her scent. The hair rose on her nape.
The blubber-tusker lowered its head, lumbering a few paces back. Emboldened by the animal’s retreat, Newt started forward. One step at a time, she limped down the sloping flats, trembling with hunger. She had almost reached the shell bed when the creature bellowed and wriggled toward her, its heaving motion sending ripples through its blubber.
On three legs, Newt scampered shoreward, terrified that her pursuer was about to catch her. Instead the beast had come to a stop, puffing and blowing. It slapped the water with a stumpy hind flipper, roaring at her. Newt’s first reaction was surprise. Here was a creature that she could actually outrun, even at her limping pace.
The realization gave her courage, and instead of hobbling away, she stayed, watching the blubber-tusker shake its fat neck at her. Again she ventured nearer, ignoring the animal’s deafening roars. She nosed the edge of a broken clamshell, tasting what was inside. A shock of delight went through her when the meaty flavor spread over her tongue. In a sudden frenzy, she attacked the shell bed, clawing open damaged shells and swallowing the rubbery meat inside, nearly breaking her fangs in the rush.
A splashing, roaring commotion sent her scooting away, a clamshell still wedged in her jaws. In her urge to eat as much as she could, she had forgotten the blubber-tusker. Again she kept well away from the creature’s lumbering charge, and it halted, quivering, blowing out through its whiskers in frustration.
Newt waited until it had gone back to raking the shell bed before she mounted her next raid. The fact that the huge beast was slower than she was gave her a mischievous joy. She spent the afternoon scavenging from the plundered shell beds and dodging the walrus. At last it lumbered seaward, dived into a wave, and was gone.
As sunset streaked the beach in silver and gold, Newt padded back to the cave where she had napped. Her belly was full enough to ease hunger cramps, though this food was different from anything she had eaten before, and her stomach gurgled.
When she reached her cave, it looked much friendlier. With food in her belly and less pain in her foot, her mind felt clearer. She decided that she disliked the beach less than other places. For the present, this part of it was hers. She limped backward until her tail lay against a block of sandstone and sprayed the rock with her scent.
Newt flattened her ears and snaked her head back and forth, suddenly fearing that someone would come and take this place from her. She waited, stiff and tense. Nothing happened. Waves rolled in and washed out. Birds drifted down the sky with distant calls.
She crawled into the cave, making a nest for herself in the warm sand. She wondered if the tusked sea-animal would return to the shell beds, and while she was wondering, drowsiness crept over her, drew her head down on her paw, and coaxed her into sleep.
Chapter Two
Ratha, the leader of the Named, squinted through the trees to a sun paled by blowing dust. She had grit in her fawn-colored pelt, in the fur of her tail, and between the toes of all four paws. Her tongue felt dry and sticky against her fangs. On the riverbank where she stood, three-horn deer and small dapplebacked horses milled in groups, guarded by her people. The Named had long ago given up the risky life of huters for the more stable existence of herders, living on the meat of the beasts they kept.
Many of the Named carried a small companion called a treeling on their backs: a lemurlike creature with large eyes, a pointed muzzle, a ringed tail, and hands instead of paws. The treelings were the descendants of a single female who had been adopted by one of the Named as a pet. Her hands had proved useful for tasks too difficult for claws or teeth.
Ratha had her own treeling, a female called Ratharee, who sat on her back and groomed her. She felt deft treeling fingers comb the fur along her spine. Ratharee seemed to know exactly where the fleas tickled and would groom there before Ratha twitched or scratched. Sometimes Ratha felt needle-sharp teeth as the treeling nibbled to dislodge a stubborn tick, but Ratharee never nipped her.
Ratha turned her attention to the animals. The dapplebacks stood with their three-toed forefeet in the sluggish flow, nuzzling the water and sucking it up with thirsty gulps. Ratha badly wanted a bath, but she knew she’d have to settle for licking herself with her tongue. The river was too shallow to do more than wet her belly.
At least it had some water. The brook that ran from the river through the home pastures had become a dry channel, forcing the Named to move their drinking site.
Every day the water supply dwindled as the river fell. It was so low now that the three-horns and dapplebacks could not be watered together, or their hooves would churn mud into the water, making it undrinkable. Ratha watched as Named herders held the animals together by circling them, snarling and showing teeth. Firekeepers took up outlying positions, some carrying torches bearing the fire-creature called the Red Tongue. In good times, when the meadow brook ran full and clear and the pasturage was lush, herders rarely displayed more than an irritated grimace to control the animals, and the Red Tongue was needed only to defend themselves against outside raids. Now thirst made the herdbeasts restive, irritable, likely to rebel or stampede. The herders needed the Firekeepers close by, backing up the threat of claws and teeth with the threat of fire.
The dapplebacks grunted and squealed, laying back their ears, shaking their stiff, short manes, and lashing out with hoofed toes at any herder not quick enough to evade their ill temper. Ratha’s flank still stung from an unexpected kick.
She gave a soft prrrup that brought Ratharee from her back onto the nape of her neck. The treeling chirred and draped herself so that her forelegs and muzzle lay along the slant of one feline shoulder, while rear legs and tail extended along the other. The treeling angled her nose out, watching the commotion. Perhaps, Ratha thought, Ratharee was looking at her own treeling offspring, who now rode the backs of young herders.
Ratha paced the bank as the clan rounded up the dapplebacks that had already drunk, clearing the way for a group of three-horn does and fawns. She saw Thakur, the herding teacher, dodge a charge from a thirsty doe who threatened him with its forked nose-horn. His treeling, Aree, leaped from his scruff into the air in front of the deer, screeching and flailing her ringed tail. The startled herdbeast jumped sideways, its charge broken. Thakur and the others moved the does in to drink.
A grunting bellow rose above the tumult of lowing and bawling herdbeasts. Ratharee, startled, clung tightly to Ratha’s neck as the largest three-horn stag broke loose from the herd and headed for the river.
Snarling, Ratha leaped to join other herders dashing to cut the beast off. She found Thakur galloping alongside her through the scattered trees that edged the river. His copper coat flashed as he ran through patches of sun and shade with Aree riding on his nape.
“Turn the stag!” the herding teacher yowled. “Don’t try to block him!” Ratha saw Fessran, the Firekeeper leader, join the fray. A torch flame roared at the end of the branch in Fessran’s jaws. Close behind ran Bira, a red-gold shadow to Fessran’s sand-colored pelt.
Ratha skidded to a stop to let Ratharee scramble off. The treeling bounced on her hind legs over to Bira and jumped on alongside Bira’s own companion.
“Stay behind, Firekeepers,” Ratha called as she raced between saplings. The fire-creature she called the Red Tongue could cow aggressive animals, but the Named used it only if they had no other way.
She and Thakur turned the three-horn stag in tighter circles until it danced and bucked, pivoting on its hind feet to meet the herders with head horns and jabbing at them with both prongs of the forked nose-horn. The stag paused in its flurry, snorting and panting. Ratha saw her chance.
She lunged toward the three-horn stag, stamping with both forepaws together. She caught its gaze, locked her own with the animal’s. The three-horn bellowed, shook its heavy neck, but could not look away. Ratha took another step toward the beast, intensifying her stare. She put all her will into it, menacing and hypnotizing the beast.
She took another slow step, holding her body low, bowing her back, hunching her shoulders. Memories of a similar incident edged into her mind, threatening to distract her. Once, when she had been Thakur’s student, she had confronted a defiant three-horn. That time she allowed her gaze to break, and the animal nearly trampled her.
From behind her came the soft hiss of the Red Tongue as it fluttered on Fessran’s torch. The power was there, if she wanted or needed it. But the Red Tongue was too savage a thing to be used lightly when dealing with herdbeasts. Brought too close, it could madden them, and the only choice then was a quick, killing bite. She didn’t want to sacrifice the stag now, even though the Named needed the meat. It was a bad time and place; the other animals were too restive.
Even so, the instinct to attack rose up in her, almost overwhelming her need to approach slowly, eyes fixed on the quarry. She fought down an urge to spring that tightened her muscles like a cramp. She knew that to return the stag safely to the herd, she must master it by the strength of her gaze. Her stare never faltered or wavered, holding the beast until its proud head dropped in defeat.
Ratha let out her breath as Ratharee came scampering back to her and clambered on. Other herders led the stag back to the herd. She shook herself, sneezed dust from her nose.
Thakur trotted up, his green eyes glowing in his copper-furred face. His treeling, Aree, was Ratharee’s mother. He had originally brought Aree to the clan as a pet.
“Well, yearling,” Thakur said, using his old teasing name for Ratha, “that was one of the best stare-downs I’ve seen.”
“We need every skilled herder we have,” Ratha answered, warmed by his praise. “Even me.” Her tail twitched. “And Shongshar’s rise taught me what can happen if I forget that I am also one of the clan and must work among our people to understand our needs.”
She paced back between the trees with Ratharee on her shoulder, thinking about Shongshar, the orange-eyed stranger she had admitted into the clan. His mating with Bira had produced cubs lacking the intelligence and self-awareness that the Named valued, and Ratha had been forced to exile those youngsters so that they would not grow up in the clan. Embittered by the loss, Shongshar had turned against her, using the Red Tongue to create a worshipful following among the Firekeepers that was strong enough to cast her down from leadership and out of the clan.
It had been two summers since Ratha had fought to gain back her position, but the Named had been long in recovering. Some, like the Firekeeper leader, Fessran, still bore scars on their pelts from Shongshar’s long fangs. Fessran had sided with the Firekeepers and Shongshar in the struggle two summers ago. But when Shongshar held Ratha down for the killing bite, Fessran flung herself between the two, taking the wound. Ratha had escaped his saber-teeth, but her memory of him would never fade from her mind and only gradually from those of her people. And now, too soon after that wrenching time, the drought had come.
The Named watered their herdbeasts with no more major incidents and drove them to a nearby clearing that still had scattered grass and a few thickets with green leaves. Ratha lay down in the shade, missing the sunning rock that stood in the middle of clan ground. She liked to lie on the sunning rock, looking out over the beasts and herders. But now, though spring had not yet yielded to summer, the brook running through the old pasture had dried up, and the green faded into gold and brown.
And how long would the river itself last? Each day it shrank, and the net of cracks in the muddy banks grew and deepened. Ratha remembered tales told by elders of seasons when the Named had left clan ground in a search for pasturage and water. But it had been so long ago that no one could recall where they went or how they managed.
As the animals straggled past, she watched dappleback foals capering about their mothers. Fewer had been born this dry spring. Among the three-horns, several fawns butted and nuzzled at the dams’ flanks. Three-horns often had twins, but this season none of the does had dropped more than one fawn, as if their bodies sensed that they would have food and milk to rear only a single youngster.
Ratha tipped her head back to eye the sun’s white-gold fire against a bleached sky. If rain came again, even a little, the forage might recover enough to last through the summer. But nothing could be done to recover from the disappointment of spring breeding. The herds would decrease instead of expanding this year. Still, if the Named limited the number of their own new cubs, perhaps they could live on what they had.
Ratha gave a soft snort at her own presumption. If there was anything she couldn’t control, it was the fertility of Named females. Though the clan’s mating season had been delayed by the hardships of a dry winter and spring, it would still come. And, if things went as they had the last breeding time, she herself wouldn’t be adding to the number of new cubs.
In a way she felt relieved. Watching mothers cope with their litters of squalling, scrambling youngsters made her feel tired, and the occasional times she did nursery duty, her patience was gone long before someone rescued her. It was clear she was not fit for motherly duties. Still...
Stop dreaming, she told herself crossly. You had your chance, and look what happened. She sighed. Every once in a while thoughts of her lost litter by the Un-Named male, whom she called Bonechewer, still entered her mind. The Un-Named were those of Ratha’s kind who lived outside the clan. Though they resembled her people so closely that they could mate with the Named, they lacked the spark of self-awareness that made thought and language possible. Or so Ratha had believed until her banishment for daring to challenge clan leadership with the Red Tongue, the fire-creature she had found. Her exile forced her to live among the Un-Named, and there she met Bonechewer, an intelligent male with the ability to speak. He and Ratha had mated.
By now she should have forgotten, but images of the cubs, especially of her daughter, Thistle-chaser, still haunted her. She remembered Thisde-chaser’s beautiful empty eyes, which spoke of a mind too stunted to know the world in the way the Named did.
I wonder where she is now. I remember Bonechewer said she lived to run with the Un-Named. Ratha sighed, blowing the breath out between her front fangs and startling Ratharee. Long ago she had dismissed any thought of trying to find the cubs. What good would it do her, or them either? She would look at their eyes and the old rage would rekindle, the fury of knowing that her flesh and blood were nothing more than animals like the herdbeasts on which she fed or the marauders she fought, or the treeling she carried on her back. Even Ratharee’s eyes held more flickerings of the mind’s light than her sons’ and daughter’s ever would.
She tore herself away from the bleak landscape of her memory and gazed out at the herders, their beasts, and their treelings. They were her sons and daughters now —all those who made up the clan, all those who knew names and their worth. She sighted along her nose to a distant point where a fire burned with a Firekeeper standing watch nearby. This too was her progeny, this flame-creature called the Red Tongue, with its power to twist and sear those who bore it. If she had known of this when she first found the Red Tongue, would she have brought it back as a gift to her people? She shivered again with the memory of Shongshar and the struggle between herders and Firekeepers that nearly destroyed the Named.
Now she was wiser. One like Shongshar would never again rise within the clan, not while she had wit and strength to prevent it.
Ratharee rubbed her small head against Ratha’s cheek, as if reminding her of the unexpected gift those events had brought: the coming of Ratharee and her kind. If Thakur hadn’t found that injured treeling cub, or if he had found it and decided to eat it...
She glanced to one side, catching a flicker of motion in the corner of one eye. Thakur, the clan herding teacher, was trotting toward her with Aree bouncing on his shoulder.
“Are the beasts settled?” she called to him.
“Yes, now that they’ve drunk. I’m glad you decided to stay near the river.” He lay down beside her and licked dust from his copper fur.
“I’m worried, herding teacher,” Ratha said. “You know how few young herdbeasts were born this season. We will have to limit the number we use for meat.”
“There won’t be enough,” Thakur said, looking at her steadily.
“I know. We can’t depend on the herdbeasts entirely for food. Later there may be other food, such as those soggy fruit-things the treelings eat. I know you like fruits, but my stomach won’t stand them.” She paused. “The Named used to hunt all kinds of animals. Perhaps some of those that we used to hunt we can learn to herd. It wasn’t that long ago that old Baire brought three-horns to us.”
“I remember when a certain three-horn stag chased a young herding student up a tree.” Thakur’s eyes glowed with amusement at this memory of Ratha. “But you are right, clan leader. We have overlooked other animals. We should keep creatures that can do well in dry seasons, as well as those that flourish in good times.”
“This is what I will do,” said Ratha finally. “I will call all the strong, young herders and Firekeepers to the sunning rock. Those I need to guard the animals and the Red Tongue on our lands I will send back to their posts. Those who remain will stand in pairs in a circle with their backs to me and their noses pointed outward. Each pair will travel in the direction they face, seeking a place with water and forage for our herds, as well as new beasts we can learn to keep.”