Clan Ground (The Second Book of the Named) (13 page)

“It would have been no easier for me if Shongshar had taken his cubs out and abandoned them,” she muttered in response to Thakur’s gentle questioning. “It was I who allowed him into the clan to sire those cubs and it was I who decided he must lose them. I wish I could forget that they were ever born, but I keep seeing those little faces before me.”

“You didn’t kill the cubs,” Thakur pointed out. “We chose a place for them where there is food and they will be safe.”

“Until the next hungry beast comes along. It doesn’t really matter. Shongshar thinks they are dead and so does everyone else who knew about them. Only you and I know that they may survive, at least for a little while.”

She sighed, laid her head back on her paws and stared away again, not noticing when Aree hopped up on her and began to groom her pelt. Thakur called the treeling back again, knowing that Ratha’s distress was something she would have to come to terms with by herself; he couldn’t help her. He wondered if the faces she saw in her waking dreams were those of Shongshar’s cubs or of her own lost young.

Gradually she came out of her lassitude, but whether she had resolved her feelings or just buried them, Thakur couldn’t tell. As much as he wanted to stay with her and comfort her, he had other duties that called him. The cubs in the spring litters were now old enough so that he would soon have to begin training some of them as herders.

“It’s too early to wake up,” Thakur grumbled, opening one eye at his treeling. Aree cocked his head at him and evaded his sleepy paw. For some reason the creature was unusually frisky. On all fours he galloped to the threshold of the den, poked his nose out, galloped back and leaped on Thakur. The creature pawed his fur and told him, with various treeling noises, what he thought of those who snored in their dens while there was such a beautiful morning outside.

The scolding, plus the impact Aree had made when he landed on him, brought Thakur fully awake. “I’m feeding you too much,” he growled at the treeling. “You’re getting heavy.” The treeling had grown rapidly, reaching his adult size. Now when Aree stood beside Thakur on all fours, his back reached the level of the herding teacher’s belly. With his legs and tail outstretched, he could extend himself from Thakur’s shoulder to withers.

Aree looked at Thakur with such wide soulful eyes that he knew he must feed his creature. The herding teacher crawled wearily out of his den and found a dead tree that was covered with bark-beetles. Aree climbed up and munched on the insects until he was sated.

Thakur’s belly was still comfortably full from the previous day’s herdbeast kill, so he would not have to eat for a few days. He shivered as the cold in the early morning air crept into his coat. The mothers would eventually bring their cubs to the meadow and the first day’s teaching would begin, but it was still much too early.

He considered returning to his den, but the treeling was still lively. Aree would never let him go back to sleep. He decided instead to take a walk out to the meadow. Some Firekeepers might still be on duty and he could warm himself at the guard-fires.

Only a single fire was still going when he got there, and he could see that the Firekeeper was getting ready to put it out. During winter, the guard-fires burned night and day, but in summer they were only needed in darkness, or when an attack threatened the herds.

He quickened his pace and called to the Firekeeper. He had not expected that it would be Bira.

She greeted him with a nose-touch and asked when he was to start teaching.

“This morning, but not for a while,” he answered. “My treeling got me up.”

“Could Aree groom my tail?” asked Bira, glancing at the treeling. “I didn’t take care of myself for a while and now I’ve got some wretched burrs that I can’t get out with my teeth.”

“I think Aree wouldn’t mind.” Thakur nosed Aree off his back and Bira spread her tail along the ground. She still looked a bit thin and worn, but the fact she had begun to care about how she looked told Thakur that she was recovering from the shock of learning that her young were witless.

“Are the cubs gone?” she asked suddenly.

Thakur hesitated. “Yes. I helped Ratha take them away.”

“Don’t tell me where. I don’t want to know.” Her tail twitched beneath Aree’s paws. “I’ll have another litter next spring. Shongshar will have to go away when the mating season comes again, won’t he?”

“I suppose he will,” the herding teacher answered. Perhaps Shongshar would accompany him on his annual journey away from the clan. The prospect of having a partner during his yearly exile was something he might welcome to help ease the loneliness of being away. However, he reminded himself, his own retreat was self-imposed. Shongshar’s might not be. Ratha certainly didn’t want any more empty-eyed litters born on clan ground.

Bira dug her claws into the dirt and grimaced as Aree pulled hard at a tangle in her tail. The treeling wrapped his own tail around hers, to steady himself. He gave a tremendous yank and the burr came free. Aree held the hair-covered thing up in his paws and Bira sighed with relief.

When the treeling had finished grooming Bira, he climbed back on Thakur and cleaned his own coat. She yawned and then began scuffing dirt on the flickering fire.

“Wait,” said Thakur. “It’s early and I’m still cold. Why don’t you let me keep the Red Tongue for a while?”

Bira looked doubtful. “The ashes should be buried. Fessran said that was important.”

“I’ll bury them when I’ve warmed myself. Look at Aree. He’s shivering too. After all, he did get that burr out of your tail.” He nudged the treeling and Aree responded by giving Bira a mournful look.

“All right. Since the other Firekeepers are gone, I’ll let you have it. But ... don’t let Fessran know. She’s becoming strict with us about the proper care of the fire-creature. She wasn’t that hard on us before, but she is now. I think she’s been listening to Shongshar a lot lately.” Bira wrinkled her nose. “Too much if you ask me.”

Mildly surprised at this, Thakur promised and Bira trotted off, swinging her tail and yawning. He curled up near the fire, which had fallen into embers with a few ragged flames licking charred branches. Aree sat on Thakur’s flank, gazing at the fire. He noticed that the treeling had stopped fidgeting and grown unusually quiet.

All creatures except the Named feared fire and would not come close to it. Even Aree had huddled in Thakur’s fur when he had first brought his new companion near the Red Tongue. Now Thakur wondered if his treeling might have gained some of the same understanding that allowed the Named to tame their fear of the fire. It was ridiculous to suggest that treelings could think as well as the Named did, but Aree had shown surprising cleverness and interest in things other than food and grooming. The treeling also seemed to be aware of Thakur’s feelings; something the herding teacher did not expect from a creature he thought of as an animal Dapplebacks and three-horns were animals too, but they were kept to be eaten. Aree was different.

There was no fear in the treeling’s eyes as he gazed at the fire. Even before Aree moved, Thakur sensed that he was about to do something he had never done before. The herding teacher held himself still, but not stiff as Aree climbed down from him. The treeling crouched in the ash-flecked dirt in front of the fire, staring into the flames with a curious intensity. He lowered his muzzle and blinked against the heat. He reached toward the flame with a paw.

Thakur thought at first that Aree was about to make the same mistake that young cubs often did when they encountered the Red Tongue for the first time. They would try to touch the flame itself, not realizing that the most visible part of the fire-creature was the most insubstantial. He readied himself to snatch Aree away if he should try to grasp the dancing flame. But the treeling’s paw stopped and descended to a stick that was lying with one end in the coals.

Thakur felt his heart jump and begin to race. Now he understood what he had sensed upon finding the injured creature on the trail: the possibility that those clever little paws might serve the Named in the most difficult task the clan had attempted, the mastery of the Red Tongue. He held in his breath as the paw touched the unburned shaft of the stick and closed around it.

Embers broke open, showing their glowing centers as Aree dragged the stick from the fire. As he lifted the branch to his eyes, the tiny flame on the end sank down and died, leaving only the red and orange coals amid the black scale that had been bark. The treeling brought the end to his face and studied it intently. He reached up with its other paw as if to touch the glowing wood, but the heat warned his fingers away.

Softly, carefully, Thakur began to purr. He didn’t know why the treeling had taken the stick from the fire and, at this point, he didn’t care. He only wanted Aree to know that this act had pleased him so that the treeling might be encouraged to do it again. Aree’s eyes brightened when he heard the purr and he ambled over to Thakur on three legs, still holding the stick. The coals had faded to ash.

“Aree?”
the treeling said, as if still unsure of whether he had done anything worthy of praise. With licks and nuzzles, Thakur assured his companion that he was very pleased indeed. He made such a fuss over Aree that the treeling tossed his branch aside and rubbed himself against him, curling and uncurling his tail with delight. When some of Aree’s exuberance had worn off, Thakur retrieved the stick and offered it to the treeling.

Aree quickly discovered that accepting the stick earned him more licks and nuzzles. For a while, Thakur played a simple game with his companion, passing the charred branch back and forth between them: from teeth to paws and then back again. When Aree began to tire of that, Thakur decided he was ready to try a simple test to see if the treeling would repeat his previous action.

He took the stick and placed it on the fire, in the same position it had originally been in. He moved slowly, letting Aree follow everything he did. When the stick was in place, he picked it up in his jaws, took it out and replaced it carefully. He did this several times as Aree watched. Once he was sure the treeling understood, he put the stick back in the fire again, but instead of grasping it with his teeth, he used his pawpad.

The wood only rolled under his clumsy swipes. With an impatient chirp, the treeling reached underneath Thakur’s foreleg, seized the stick and pulled it out. With a gesture almost like a flourish, Aree presented him with the stick as if to say, “This isn’t so hard if you have paws like mine. See?”

Thakur licked the treeling until he was damp and rubbed against him until Aree’s coat was thoroughly rumpled. The creature’s ability had surpassed his hopes. The treeling had grown large and strong enough to handle all but the heaviest branches. Thakur knew that with enough time and patience, Aree could be trained to handle the Red Tongue with greater safety and skill than the best Firekeeper among the Named.

Thakur felt the sun’s warmth on his back and realized the mist had burned off. Soon the mothers would be bringing their cubs to the first training session for young herders. Quickly he nosed Aree onto his back and scuffed dirt on the remains of the Red Tongue. He still had to get the teaching herd ready before the cubs arrived.

He kicked a last spray of dirt on the embers and galloped away. Tomorrow he wouldn’t be angry if Aree woke him up early. In fact, he would be the one to wake the treeling. He would probably be able to talk Bira into letting him have the fire again and then he would see what else Aree could do.

Once Aree’s training had begun, Thakur was eager to continue. He thought that, after the first surge of enthusiasm, the treeling might become balky and unwilling to brave the morning chill, but that never happened. Perhaps Aree had caught the sense of forbidden adventure that Thakur felt each time he left the den in the half-light before dawn.

Aree learned rapidly and was soon responding correctly to Thakur’s directions. He found that the sharp sound he made by clicking his teeth together would command the treeling’s attention faster than would spoken words.

Soon Aree could extract a branch from the fire and walk around on three legs, holding the lighted torch. Once or twice the treeling tried to transfer the branch from his hands to his prehensile tail, but Thakur quickly discouraged that. Aree tended to pay less attention to things he held with his tail than what was in his hands. Once he had nearly scorched his back by letting the torch droop.

Thakur took great care to be sure that Aree didn’t burn or injure himself during the lessons. He didn’t want to wake the fear of the Red Tongue that seemed to lie deep in every creature. The treeling sensed that the fire-creature could hurt if it got too close and Thakur reinforced Aree’s caution with further training.

By early summer, the treeling could ignite a pile of tinder with a torch taken from the guard-fire. That morning Thakur was elated and praised the treeling endlessly. He caught grasshoppers for Aree until the treeling was stuffed and nuzzled his paws, whose dexterity seemed amazing in comparison to Thakur’s clumsy forefeet.

He remembered what Ratha had said to him while Aree was cleaning her fur. “He grooms me the way you would if you had his clever paws.” She had only been half-awake when she spoke those words and hadn’t really known what they meant. He hadn’t either, but now her words brought a half-seen vision of the possibilities of his partnership with the treeling. He stared at Aree as if he had never seen the creature before. A strange feeling prickled up his back from the root of his tail. He suddenly felt afraid, but it wasn’t the kind of fear he knew when facing an enemy, even one unknown. It was a fear closer to the one he got when he looked up into the night sky with its burning stars and felt awe and a strange undefined hunger. It was this hunger, rising from somewhere deep within him, that frightened him.