Ivypool started, blinked, then scrambled to her feet, her eyes wide and her claws out. “What? What is it?”
“It’s okay,” Dovewing murmured, though anxiety prickled every hair on her pelt. “It’s only me. Were you in the Dark Forest again?”
Ivypool shook her head. “No, just dreaming.” She sat down in her nest and started to groom her fur. “How was the Gathering?”
Dovewing shrugged. “You didn’t miss much. None of the leaders had anything unusual to report.”
“Firestar must have announced that we’re warriors now,” Ivypool meowed.
“He did! And lots of cats were sorry you couldn’t be there. WindClan and RiverClan have new warriors, too,” Dovewing reported. “Oh, and I think WindClan must be having trouble with dogs. Onestar didn’t announce it, but I overheard a couple of their elders saying that a dog had savaged Antpelt.”
“Antpelt!” Ivypool froze. “What else did they say?”
Dovewing blinked. Oh, StarClan, don’t tell me she’s in love with a WindClan warrior!
“Tell me!” Ivypool insisted.
“I wasn’t paying much attention,” Dovewing admitted. “They weren’t talking to me. They said…Antpelt was wounded too badly to tell them what happened, and Kestrelflight didn’t think he would pull through.”
“Oh, no!” Ivypool let out a horrified wail. “It’s all my fault!”
“What do you mean?” But even as she asked the question Dovewing was beginning to understand. “This has something to do with the Dark Forest, doesn’t it?”
Ivypool nodded. Her claws worked in the bracken of her nest for a couple of heartbeats before she began to speak. “Thistleclaw was training Antpelt and me,” she meowed quietly. “We were fighting like you and I would—practicing the moves, but not trying to hurt each other. When I slipped, Antpelt waited for me to get up.” She swallowed. “But that made Thistleclaw call Antpelt a coward, and he went on mocking him and WindClan until Antpelt attacked him. Thistleclaw just shredded him. I think he would have killed him, but I told Antpelt to wake up and he vanished back to WindClan.”
“Then it wasn’t your fault,” Dovewing declared. She was trying to suppress the horror she felt, but shivers ran through her as if she had just been dunked in icy water. “Ivypool, you’re in real danger,” she mewed. “You have to tell Lionblaze and Jayfeather that you can’t spy for them anymore.”
“I’m not giving up now!” Ivypool protested. “I’m so close to finding out when the battle will be. Mapleshade—she’s a really old Dark Forest cat, and all the others seem afraid of her, even Tigerstar—well, Mapleshade is taking a special interest in me. She trusts me now, and I’m so close to the truth!”
Dovewing thought that Mapleshade sounded like the last cat she would want to take an interest in her. Instead, she murmured, “I won’t say anything yet, I promise. Why don’t you get some more sleep? It won’t be dawn for a while.”
Ivypool stretched her jaws in an enormous yawn. “I think I will.” She curled up in the bracken and closed her eyes; soon her regular breathing told Dovewing that she was asleep.
Lying beside her sister, Dovewing couldn’t rest. Her sister’s story, and the discovery that yet another warrior was being trained in the Dark Forest, buzzed in her head like a swarm of bees. Any cat at the Gathering could have allegiance to the Dark Forest.
Even some of our Clanmates…
Sighing, Dovewing wondered if she would be certain about anything ever again.
Chapter 7
As Jayfeather emerged from the barrier of thorns, he located Firestar heading for his den, side by side with Sandstorm. Though Jayfeather was tired, he knew that he had to talk to his Clan leader right now. He had spent too long wondering what he could say to get Firestar to agree to another journey. He sprinted ahead and caught up to Firestar at the bottom of the tumbled rocks.
“Firestar, I need to speak to you,” he called.
He could sense his leader’s surprise. “Now? Can’t it wait until morning?”
“No.”
Firestar hesitated for a heartbeat, then replied, “Okay. Come up to my den.”
“I’ll go check on Poppyfrost and her kits,” Sandstorm mewed tactfully. “They had bellyache last night from eating too much squirrel.”
“I gave them watermint,” Jayfeather meowed after her as she padded toward the nursery. “Call me if they need more.”
Firestar was already climbing the rocks; Jayfeather followed, careful to let his pelt brush the cliff so that he didn’t stray too close to the edge of the path.
“What’s so urgent that it can’t wait?” Firestar’s voice came from his nest at the back of his cave.
Jayfeather slipped inside to join him. “I have to go to the mountains,” he announced. “I’ve been summoned.”
“By StarClan?”
“No, another cat.”
“Oh?” Curiosity radiated from Firestar; Jayfeather could feel it as if he was sitting in a beam of sunlight. “What other cat?”
“That’s…sort of hard to explain,” Jayfeather confessed. Would the ThunderClan leader believe that he had been able to speak with such an ancient cat? “But it’s not something I can ignore.”
Firestar let out a sigh of exasperation; Jayfeather pictured the tip of his ginger tail twitching. “We can’t go on helping the Tribe,” he meowed at last. “StarClan knows, I have a lot of sympathy for them, but they have their life and we have ours.”
“This isn’t about helping the Tribe,” Jayfeather told him. “It’s about discovering something from the past that’s important for the future. Our future, not the Tribe’s.”
“You couldn’t be a bit vaguer, could you?” Firestar’s claws scraped on the floor of the den. “Honestly, Jayfeather, you expect me to—”
“I’m sorry, Firestar,” Jayfeather interrupted. “I’m telling you everything I can. You have to trust me because of the prophecy.”
“No.” There was an edge to Firestar’s voice. “I trust you because you’re a loyal medicine cat who serves his Clan above all else.”
Jayfeather took a breath. “And as a loyal medicine cat, I’m asking you to let me go to the Tribe of Rushing Water, because I believe it’s in our best interests.”
Firestar was silent, though Jayfeather could almost hear the turmoil of thoughts whirling through his leader’s mind. “You need an escort,” he mewed at last. “And I’m not happy about leaving ThunderClan without its best warriors or its medicine cat when we’re bracing ourselves for an attack.”
Though the ThunderClan leader didn’t mention the Dark Forest, Jayfeather knew that was where his thoughts lay. And he’s right. But I have to do this!
“Are you sure this cat isn’t trying to lure you away?” Firestar added.
Jayfeather shook his head. “I’m positive.” Rock is the last cat who would be involved in a Dark Forest plot. “I trust the cat who gave me this message,” he went on. “He isn’t interested in our battles. He doesn’t care who wins. He just knows that this is our destiny, and he has to make it happen.”
“Very well,” Firestar meowed. “You can go. And I’ll choose some warriors to go with you—but you can’t have Lionblaze.”
“What?” Jayfeather’s feeling of triumph was swallowed up in outrage. “But Lionblaze has to go. He’s one of the Three!”
“You can have Dovewing.” Firestar’s tone was uncompromising. “But Lionblaze stays here. He’s our greatest asset in a battle. And you’re not going to the mountains to fight, are you?”
“How do we know that?” Jayfeather muttered mutinously. He was well aware that there was no point in trying to argue when the ThunderClan leader had made up his mind. “Okay,” he meowed aloud. “But I don’t like it.”