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.
When Fessran came to her that evening and asked that Bira be assigned to guard the herders’ fire again, it was easy for Ratha to agree. Soon the Firekeeper had that duty regularly. At Fessran’s urging, she forbade any of the herders to go near an unguarded flame.
Bundi recovered slowly. His wounds were less serious than Ratha had thought and she credited Fessran’s idea of bathing him in the stream. The swelling on his face diminished; the eye that had been forced shut opened again. He could walk, but he limped because the burn extended from his face down his neck to his shoulder and it hurt him to stretch the blistered skin.
He was soon back with the herders, doing what he could and trying to do more. Soon he had recovered full use of his shoulder, but he and everyone around him knew that he would always be disfigured.
Ratha continued to seek an answer to the mystery of Bundi’s accident. She questioned him carefully, but shock had driven the memory from his mind and he couldn’t recall exactly what had happened. He knew only that he had flung himself out of the firebed and rolled on the ground until someone came.
Shongshar remained politely evasive and Ratha did not want to alienate Fessran by pressing him harder. She was sure Fessran herself had nothing to do with it and if she suspected Shongshar at all, she would have spoken.
Chapter Thirteen
Ferns stroked Ratha’s side as she padded through them and along the mossy bed beside the streambank. She startled a frog and heard it plunk into the clear water. Above her, scattered trees spread their branches toward each other across the creek. When the breeze died, she could hear the soft splash of a waterfall that lay farther up the trail.
She was following the little creek up from the meadow to its source in the hills, something she often did when she wandered alone with no destination and a wish for only her own company. She thought wistfully that she would like to have taken Thakur along, but he was busy teaching this morning. His unhappiness over the loss of his treeling would have made him a poor companion anyhow. There was not much she could do to cheer him up; she had already tried. Eventually he would forget his grief, but it would take time.
She felt a little angry with him for retreating into sorrow when she was most in need of his help and support. There was no one she could talk to now. She thought briefly of unburdening herself to Fessran, but their friendship had grown too uncertain. The Firekeeper leader had found a new loyalty, one that was pulling her away from her old ties.