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 that 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.