“Hear me, torchbearers!” Fessran cried. “What has been done to Thakur is a shameful thing. I have disagreed with him, but he is my friend. If any of you have had a part in this or have knowledge that you are concealing, come forward now.”
She strode up and down in front of them, glowering at them. No one moved, except Bira, who shivered.
“Then you are all innocent,” said Fessran in a low voice. “If I am wrong and someone is hiding his guilt, then may the Red Tongue burn in his throat until his tongue falls from his mouth in cinders!”
Ratha felt her breath catch in her own throat. For a moment the Firekeeper leader looked like the old Fessran, the friend who had fought beside her against the old clan leader and whose fierce love and loyalty had sustained her during the chaotic days after Meoran’s death.
I have no right to judge you, Fessran, she thought suddenly. We have both changed more than we wished.
Fessran came to Ratha and looked her directly in the face. “Neither I nor any of the Firekeepers have done such a shameful thing,” she said. “You must accept that as truth, clan leader.”
“If I can,” Ratha answered softly as she turned to go.
Sadly she returned to Thakur and told him that she had learned nothing. Even her suspicions were difficult to justify; for now she felt she had best keep them to herself. It was possible that the treeling had run off to find a mate among his own kind, she suggested.
The next day, she helped him search for the treeling again, but they only saw wild ones who scrambled up to the tops of their trees and clung there in the swaying branches. There was a cull in the meadow that day and Ratha ate as if her belly would never be filled, but she saw that Thakur had no appetite and quickly gave up his place to the one behind him.
He went back to teaching the cubs, but his step was heavy and his scolding harsher than it had been. He closed himself off to all, even Ratha, and he rarely spoke or looked anyone in the face. He seemed to have lost his spirit along with the treeling and he faded day by day until he became like a shadow among the shadows of trees and bushes that fell across clan ground.
Ratha spent much of her time with the Firekeepers. Her major reason for doing so was to prevent gatherings of the sort that frightened cubs, but she also felt she had failed to give the Firekeepers proper guidance in their attitude toward the fire-creature. She did admit to herself that she was a little uncertain about what that attitude should be.
Fessran seemed to welcome this new attention, although Shongshar clearly did not like it. The Firekeeper leader often invited Ratha to come with her at night when she patrolled the ring of guard-fires around the meadow. They frequently had time to talk, and Ratha realized that her position as clan leader had distanced her from the one who had been her most loyal friend.
Summer had come and the warmth of the day stayed into late evening. Only in the hours before dawn did the night grow cold and dew settle on the grass. This was the time when the Firekeepers were weary, when the fires could sink low and the threat of attack was the greatest. Fessran chose this time to patrol, walking from one outpost to the next, seeing that each fire was properly tended and that there was enough wood. She offered encouragement and good spirits to those who stood the early morning guard. Ratha was heartened to see the weary Firekeepers grin at Fessran’s teasing. She noticed that her own presence also seemed to cheer some of them.
She was following Fessran across the moonlit grass and had stopped to shake the dew from her feet when a scream tore through the night’s silence. She knew in an instant that the cry had not come from any of the herd animals nor from raiders lurking nearby. It was a scream of pain and terror and it had come from the center of the meadow.
Ahead of her, she saw Fessran start and freeze as the cry began again. Then both of them were racing across the grass.
“The herders’ fire,” panted Fessran as Ratha caught up with her. “Over there by the old oak.”
The herders had begun to cluster about the fire that they used to warm themselves. In their midst lay an orange-lit form that jerked and writhed. The head stretched back, the mouth snarled open, and Ratha heard another terrible cry.
She sped past Fessran and skidded to a stop in the middle of the herders. Her belly gave a painful twist when she saw that the distorted face was Bundi’s. Cherfan pawed the shuddering young herder, looking frightened and lost.
“Turn him over,” Ratha ordered. “Quickly.”
As carefully as she could, she helped Cherfan roll Bundi over. As the side of his face and neck came into view, Ratha felt her lips draw back from her teeth. From his cheek to his neck and shoulder, his flesh was hlistered and glistening, with ash clinging to charred fur. Even as she watched, the skin of his face began to pucker, drawing the corner of his mouth back.
His eye was swollen shut and both his nose and eyebrow whiskers on that side were gone.
“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?