Ratha waited. Shongshar paced forward and took Fessran’s place without even looking at her. She melted away from him with a frightened glance that left no doubt who was the real leader of the Firekeepers.
Shongshar spoke again. “The beast was not killed just for food, clan leader. There is another kind of hunger in your people, and it is one that a full belly will not satisfy. You do not understand this hunger, and you have done nothing to feed it. But it is a hunger that I know well.”
Ratha shivered, held against her will by the spell of his voice and the depths of his eyes.
“Look around you, and you will see it in the eyes of your herders as well as the Firekeepers,” said Shongshar, with a strange compelling rhythm in his speech. “Look within you and you will see it there.”
Despite herself, Ratha found her gaze traveling over the faces of the herders. They were silent, held as she was by the sibilant sound of Shongshar’s voice. And yes, he was right. In their faces, in their eyes and even in the changing scents of their smells, she felt a longing that perhaps had always been there, or perhaps had just been conjured out of them by the power of his words. She didn’t know which it was, and that knowledge made her afraid.
Within herself she sensed the same hunger, a feeling that she had never been able to put words to. It was a strange hunger that crept up inside her when she was alone looking up at the stars. It had come upon her when she had first sought a mate; in the closeness with him, it had nearly been filled. And it was the same hunger that drew her to the dance she had seen around the Red Tongue even as she had feared it.
And she knew that the search to satisfy this strange need could lead to things that were good, such as seeing the fluffy beauty of a newborn cub or the sheen of a dappleback stallion’s coat as he pranced about the meadow. Yet the same hunger could be twisted into something that could flourish in the depths of a cave, feeding on hatred amidst bones and tainted flesh.
Shongshar knew how to feed it; she had no doubt of that. It was as if he had fathered a litter that suckled not milk, but blood. Her horror and her anger gave her the strength to tear her gaze away from his and turn his words aside.
“Herders! Listen to me!” she cried. “The need he speaks of is really his own. If you give yourselves and your beasts to the will of the creature he serves, you will be the meat that feeds him.”
“No!” the herders cried, but many voices were missing, and those she heard sounded thin and ragged with doubt. It was too late to command them to attack the Firekeepers. She didn’t know how many of the herders who had spoken so bravely down in the meadow would stand by her if it came to an open battle. Even as they stood beside her, she sensed their courage being stolen from them by the raging creature in the center of the cave from which Shongshar drew his power. It was there that she would have to strike.
“The wood,” whispered Thakur softly behind her. “They have forgotten about it”
She glanced at the side of the cave, to where stacks of branches and kindling lay. Then she looked at the herders and hoped they would follow her. With Thakur at her flank, she leaped up and galloped toward the woodpile.
For an instant she thought she and Thakur would have to face the Firekeepers alone. Then Cherfan plunged after her and the herders followed. They reached the woodpile before the other side could rally and cut them off. Ratha saw that the Firekeepers had mistaken the herders’ charge for an attack on the carcass and had massed together to defend their kill.
“Form a line so none of them can get through,” Ratha said and her pack spread themselves out, guarding the woodpile. Nyang and several other Firekeepers approached, but they soon retreated from the menacing growls and bared fangs of the defenders.
She paced across in front of her own line and faced Shongshar. He looked at her and said nothing as she sat and curled her tail across her feet.
“You may eat, Firekeepers,” she said, turning her gaze toward them, “but this will be your last meal in this cave by the Red Tongue’s light.”
Her words were met with snarls and jeers. Soon, however, the Firekeepers grew tired of taunting her pack and turned their attention to the kill, dragging it around on the cave floor as they wrenched chunks of flesh loose and gulped them down. They did not seem to notice that the fire had already begun to fall and that their shadows were growing longer. Only Shongshar did not eat with them. He sat and watched the herders through slitted eyes.
When the carcass was stripped, the Firekeepers again amused themselves by throwing insults at the herders and trying to break through their line, but Ratha could see that the effort was half-hearted. The grim response the herders gave them quickly discouraged any idea that this was fun.
Shongshar continued to watch, and Ratha sensed that he was waiting. For what, she didn’t know, and she grew uneasy. His strength was waning with the falling fire, yet he made no attempt to launch an attack. He only sat and studied the herders’ faces with an acuteness that made them show their fangs and then try to look away from him.
The Firekeepers groomed themselves, or lay and slept as if the herders weren’t there. Shadows crept in from the sides of the cave and the dying fire’s light turned ruddy. The fire began to smoke and flicker. The flame no longer drew the wind from outside, and the cave started to fill with smoky haze.
Ratha was stiff from sitting and was about to get up and move to ease her legs when she heard Shongshar’s voice. It had grown so dim in the cave that she could see only his eyes, which now burned brighter than the fire.
“Let it die, then, clan leader,” he hissed. “Let it die and give this den back to darkness. It is better that we have nothing to crouch down before or nothing to dance to in wild joy. It is better that we of the Named turn our backs on something as great as this, for we are too weak to hold it within our jaws.”
Ratha heard whispered mutters behind her and the looks she received were shadowed by doubt. Even Cherfan seemed lost and gazed at Shongshar as if he might find a refuge in his words.
She had no answer for Shongshar except stern silence, and soon his voice came again.
“Watch this creature die, you of the clan, and see the death of all you could be. The Named could rule far beyond clan ground and be so fierce and terrible that all who once preyed on us would either flee or throw themselves at our feet. That is the power you are throwing away if you obey her.”
Again voices buzzed behind her, and eyes grew bright with visions of such a future.
“Be silent!” she hissed, as much at them as at Shongshar. The flame sank into its bed of ashes and tumbled coals. Slowly the fierce red glow faded.
Ratha felt herself start to tremble with the triumph of her victory. The cave-fire was dead and Shongshar’s power crippled. She waited, feeling the air around her grow cool.
“It is over,” she said, rising. “Firekeepers, leave the cave.”
One by one, they passed in front of her, with lowered heads and dragging tails until only one was left. Shongshar.
“Do you come, or do I have you dragged out?” she growled.
The two orange slits glared at her from the blackness. His form was a deeper darkness than that of the cave and she tensed, fearing that he would use the instant that he passed her to strike out at her.
Suddenly the eyes were gone. She saw them again as she heard coals break under the slap of his paw.
“You of the clan!” he roared. “Look! It lives!”
A tiny flame burst from the broken embers and grew as he breathed on it. Then she heard the sound of running feet, and before she could fling herself toward the fire to scatter it and beat out the remaining life, she saw that someone had broken from the herders’ ranks, bringing Shongshar wood and tinder.