“Take him to the stream,” said Fessran, pushing her way through the crowd of herders. “Water can ease the Red Tongue’s hurt. Hurry!”
Half-dragging and half-carrying Bundi, Ratha and Cherfan lugged him to the little creek near the trailhead.
“Lay him here, where there is no mud on the bottom,” Fessran directed, wading in. “Easy. Hold his nose out of the water.”
Ratha bent her head down, trying to see Bundi’s face. She felt his breath on her whiskers as he panted rapidly and arched his back in a convulsive shudder. He opened his mouth for another scream, but could only gurgle and cough as water filled his throat.
Ratha caught his nape on the uninjured side and lifted him enough for the water to drain out. Cherfan helped her move him so that he was lying in the shallows with his muzzle on the bank. After a while his breathing became steadier and he managed to whisper that the pain was less.
“Can you take care of him?” she asked Cherfan and Fessran. “I want to go back and look at the fire.”
“Poor clumsy cub,” she heard Cherfan moan as she climbed out of the stream and shook herself hard. “You shouldn’t have gone near the Red Tongue when there was no one there to protect you.”
Ratha laid back her ears as she trotted toward the fire. Bundi was awkward, but he wasn’t that clumsy, was he? She circled the firebed, examining the ground carefully. It was no use; the herder’s tracks and her own obliterated Bundi’s and those of anyone else who might have been there. Likewise, the scents of everyone who had been there were too thick for her to detect any suspicious smells.
She could see that the fire had definitely been disturbed. It was lopsided and there was a large imprint in the ash and crushed coals where a body had fallen. Now the question remained: had Bundi tripped over his own paws, or had someone pushed him?
Again, she circled, looking for tracks where the dirt met the grass. She found half of one pugmark and decided that it had been there before the herders had all crowded around Bundi. The print was too large to be Bundi’s. It would only belong to one of two males in the clan: Cherfan or Shongshar.
Cherfan had been there when she arrived, she reminded herself. But Bundi is his own son! I know Cherfan and he could never do such a thing to a cub he sired. That left only Shongshar.
But even if the print was his mark, when had he left it? He could have been one of those who helped build the herders’ fire earlier that evening. Or he could have pushed Bundi. But he seemed even fonder of Bundi than Cherfan was. Neither possibility made much sense.
Was the Red Tongue itself the malignant force? Could Fessran have been right when she suggested the fire-creature could lash out against those who displeased it? Could it have sensed the presence of an ignorant herder, lured him close and then pulled him in?
For a moment Ratha stared at the fire, which was burning steadily as if nothing had happened. This is a creature we do not understand, she said to herself, and the thought sent her tail creeping between her legs. Fear crawled through her fur and she suddenly wanted to flee from this alien thing before it reached out and took her in its fierce embrace.
She made her legs stop shaking and swallowed the lump in her throat. There were questions she had to ask and the answers to those would tell her whether to believe that the fire had needed any help to burn poor Bundi.
When she returned to the stream, Fessran was coaxing Bundi out of the water; she even got him to shake himself off a little. He crouched on the bank with Cherfan close against him on one side and Fessran on the other, trying to warm him. Fessran spoke softly, trying to cheer and reassure him. She was so honest in her concern and her eagerness to help that Ratha knew, whatever had happened, Fessran had taken no part in it. Now and then, Bundi burst into shivers, but he seemed to be in less pain. The three of them looked like an odd moonlit lump on the streambank.
Ratha shivered herself as the night wind touched the dampness in her fur. “Can you walk, Bundi?” she asked him. “You should be sheltered in a den. Fessran, will you take him to your lair?”
“Yes, I will, but there is something I want to do first.”
“What?”
“Post some Firekeepers at the herders’ fire.”
Ratha felt surprise and then a touch of annoyance, but she was too drained and a little too frightened to argue. If the Red Tongue was malevolent, she had a duty to guard her people from it.
“All right,” she agreed at last.
She knew Fessran sensed her reluctance, for the Firekeeper said, “I’ll give Bira that duty. She gets along well with most of the herders. She can choose whom she wants to work with her.”
This cheered Ratha. Bira wasn’t likely to think herself above the herders or make arbitrary decisions about who could come near the fire and who couldn’t.
The young Firekeeper was summoned and soon took up her new post. Several herders eyed her suspiciously, for they were not accustomed to having a Firekeeper in constant attendance. But when the news of Bundi’s injury spread, they changed their minds and welcomed her protection.
Fessran took Bundi to her den and made him comfortable there. Ratha looked in on them just before weariness sent her to her own lair. She crawled into it just as dawn was beginning to color the sky, and she quickly fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.
She was not often troubled by dreams, but the events of the night seemed to replay themselves in her mind in a way strangely altered from what she had seen. In her dream, she stood again before the Red Tongue and, as she watched, the fire-creature changed. The flames that licked up toward the sky seemed to bend down and separate, as if they were becoming legs, and their tips became rounded and solid as if they were turning into paws. The heart of the fire elongated into a body. Part of it drew into a ball and made a head with flame-licked ears and red coals for eyes.
She watched in terror as the rear legs formed and a plume of fire swept itself out into a long tail. The creature opened its mouth, showing teeth that had the impossible sharpness of a reaching flame. In its fur were streaks of blue, violet and yellow against a background of searing orange.
Slowly it began to move, and its flame-substance rippled as if it had muscles. It fixed its glowing eyes on her and she shook until her teeth chattered as she felt its endless devouring hunger. Her mind begged her legs to run, but she stayed, paralyzed by fright and a kind of horrified fascination.
The fire-creature lowered its head and placed one foot before the other. It was leaving the den of coals where it had grown and was coming toward her. Now it spoke and its voice had the soft hiss of the burning flame. “Bare your throat to me, clan leader,” it said. “Bare your throat to me, for I am the one who rules.”
She crouched, drawn and repelled by its terrible beauty. As if in worship, she lifted her chin, showing her throat. The creature that had sprung from the fire’s heart approached her and opened its mouth for the killing bite. She felt its breath on her and its whiskers, made of slender tongues of fire, touched her and left searing streaks on her skin beneath the fur. She felt the points of its fangs draw across her throat.
“No!” she screamed and lashed out with all her strength against it.
She awoke with her claws fastened in the wall of her den and her teeth bared. With a grateful sigh of deliverance, she sank down and lay limp until she was sure the horror of the dream had really passed. Her coat was rough and filled with dirt and she could see where she had writhed on the floor of her lair.
Unsteadily she got up and left the den, shaking the earth out of her fur and smoothing her pelt with her tongue. The early afternoon sun shone down through the scattered trees, comforting her with its warmth and golden light.
But she couldn’t forget those coal-red eyes that glowed with a hunger that would never be sated. She knew the creature was a dream, but she also knew that dreams often spoke truth. Although she had set herself to master the Red Tongue, she understood that a part of her mind would always look upon the fire-creature with a terror that could not be answered with reason.