The Fourth Apprentice Read online

  “Which cat will you send it to?” Bluestar asked. “Lionblaze or Jayfeather?”

  Yellowfang’s amber gaze glowed in the last of the light as she turned toward her former Clan leader. “Neither,” she meowed. “I will send it to the third cat.”

  CHAPTER 1

  A full moon floated in a cloudless sky, casting thick black shadows across the island. The leaves of the Great Oak rustled in a hot breeze. Crouched between Sorreltail and Graystripe, Lionblaze felt as though he couldn’t get enough air.

  “You’d think it would be cooler at night,” he grumbled.

  “I know,” Graystripe sighed, shifting uncomfortably on the dry, powdery soil. “This season just gets hotter and hotter. I can’t even remember when it last rained.”

  Lionblaze stretched up to peer over the heads of the other cats at his brother, Jayfeather, who was sitting with the medicine cats. Onestar had just reported the death of Barkface, and Kestrelflight, the remaining WindClan medicine cat, looked rather nervous to be representing his Clan alone for the first time.

  “Jayfeather says StarClan hasn’t told him anything about the drought,” Lionblaze mewed to Graystripe. “I wonder if any of the other medicine cats—”

  He broke off as Firestar, the leader of ThunderClan, rose to his paws on the branch where he had been sitting while he waited for his turn to speak. RiverClan’s leader, Leopardstar, glanced up from the branch just below, where she was crouching. Onestar, the leader of WindClan, was perched in the fork of a bough a few tail-lengths higher, while ShadowClan’s leader, Blackstar, was visible just as a gleam of eyes among the clustering leaves above Onestar’s branch.

  “Like every other Clan, ThunderClan is troubled by the heat,” Firestar began. “But we are coping well. Two of our apprentices have been made into warriors and received their warrior names: Toadstep and Rosepetal.”

  Lionblaze sprang to his paws. “Toadstep! Rosepetal!” he yowled. The rest of ThunderClan joined in, along with several cats from WindClan and ShadowClan, though Lionblaze noticed that the RiverClan warriors were silent, looking on with hostility in their eyes.

  Who ruffled their fur? he wondered. It was mean-spirited for a whole Clan to refuse to greet a new warrior at a Gathering. He twitched his ears. He wouldn’t forget this the next time Leopardstar announced a new RiverClan appointment.

  The two new ThunderClan warriors ducked their heads in embarrassment, though their eyes shone as they were welcomed by the Clans. Cloudtail, Toadstep’s former mentor, was puffed up with pride, while Squirrelflight, who had mentored Rosepetal, watched the young warriors with gleaming eyes.

  “I’m still surprised Firestar picked Squirrelflight to be a mentor,” Lionblaze muttered to himself. “After she told all those lies about us being her kits.”

  “Firestar knows what he’s doing,” Graystripe responded; Lionblaze winced as he realized the gray warrior had overheard every word of his criticism. “He trusts Squirrelflight, and he wants to show every cat that she’s a good warrior and a valued member of ThunderClan.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Lionblaze blinked miserably. He had loved and respected Squirrelflight so much when he thought she was his mother, but now he felt cold and empty when he looked at her. She had betrayed him, and his littermates, too deeply for forgiveness. Hadn’t she?

  “If you’ve quite finished…” Leopardstar spoke over the last of the yowls of welcome and rose to her paws, fixing Firestar with a glare. “RiverClan still has a report to make.”

  Firestar dipped his head courteously to the RiverClan leader and took a pace back, sitting down again with his tail wrapped around his paws. “Go ahead, Leopardstar.”

  The RiverClan leader was the last to speak at the Gathering; Lionblaze had seen her tail twitching impatiently while the other leaders made their reports. Now her piercing gaze traveled across the cats crowded together in the clearing, while her neck fur bristled in fury.

  “Prey-stealers!” she hissed.

  “What?” Lionblaze sprang to his paws; his startled yowl was lost in the clamor as more cats from ThunderClan, WindClan, and ShadowClan leaped up to protest.

  Leopardstar stared down at them, teeth bared, making no attempt to quell the tumult. Instinctively Lionblaze glanced upward, but there were no clouds to cover the moon; StarClan wasn’t showing any anger at the outrageous accusation. As if any of the other Clans would want to steal slimy, stinky fish!

  He noticed for the first time how thin the RiverClan leader looked, her bones sharp as flint beneath her dappled fur. The other RiverClan warriors were the same, Lionblaze realized, glancing around; even thinner than his own Clanmates and the ShadowClan warriors—and even thinner than the WindClan cats, who looked skinny when they were full-fed.

  “They’re starving…” he murmured.

  “We’re all starving,” Graystripe retorted.

  Lionblaze let out a sigh. What the gray warrior said was true. In ThunderClan they had been forced to hunt and train at dawn and dusk in order to avoid the scorching heat of the day. In the hours surrounding sunhigh, the cats spent their time curled up sleeping in the precious shade at the foot of the walls of the stone hollow. For once the Clans were at peace, though Lionblaze suspected it was only because they were all too weak to fight, and no Clan had any prey worth fighting for.

  Firestar rose to his paws again and raised his tail for silence. The caterwauling gradually died away and the cats sat down again, directing angry glares at the RiverClan leader.

  “I’m sure you have good reason for accusing us all like that,” Firestar meowed when he could make himself heard. “Would you like to explain?”

  Leopardstar lashed her tail. “You have all been taking fish from the lake,” she snarled. “And those fish belong to RiverClan.”

  “No, they don’t,” Blackstar objected, poking his head out from the foliage. “The lake borders all our territories. We’re just as entitled to the fish as you are.”

  “Especially now,” Onestar added. “We’re all suffering from the drought. Prey is scarce in all our territories. If we can’t eat fish, we’ll starve.”

  Lionblaze stared at the two leaders in astonishment. Were ShadowClan and WindClan really so hungry that they’d been adding fish to their fresh-kill pile? Things must be really bad.

  “But it’s worse for us,” Leopardstar insisted. “RiverClan doesn’t eat any other kind of prey, so all the fish should belong to us.”

  “That’s mouse-brained!” Squirrelflight sprang to her paws, her bushy tail lashing. “Are you saying that RiverClan can’t eat any other prey? Are you admitting that your warriors are so incompetent they can’t even catch a mouse?”

  “Squirrelflight.” Brambleclaw, the ThunderClan deputy, spoke commandingly as he rose from the oak root where he had been sitting with the other Clan deputies. His voice was coldly polite as he continued. “It’s not your place to speak here. However,” he added, looking up at Leopardstar, “she does have a point.”

  Lionblaze winced at Brambleclaw’s tone, and he couldn’t repress a twinge of sympathy for Squirrelflight as she sat down again, her head bent like an apprentice scolded in public by her mentor. Even after six moons, two whole seasons, Brambleclaw had not forgiven his former mate for claiming her sister Leafpool’s kits as her own—and therefore his as well. Lionblaze still felt dazed whenever he reminded himself that Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight were not his real mother and father. He and his brother, Jayfeather, were the kits of the former ThunderClan medicine cat, Leafpool, and Crowfeather, a WindClan warrior. Since the truth came out, Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight had barely spoken to each other, and although Brambleclaw never punished Squirrelflight by giving her the hardest tasks or the most dangerous patrols, he made sure that their paths never crossed as they carried out their duties.

  Squirrelflight’s lie had been bad enough, but everything went wrong when she admitted what she had done. She had told the truth in a desperate attempt to save her kits from Ashfur’s murderous
fury at being passed over in favor of Brambleclaw, moons before Lionblaze and his littermates were born. Lionblaze’s and Jayfeather’s sister, Hollyleaf, had killed Ashfur to prevent him from revealing the secret at a Gathering. Then Hollyleaf vanished behind a fall of earth when she tried to escape through the tunnels to start a new life. Now the brothers had to accept that they were half-Clan, and that their father, Crowfeather, wanted nothing to do with them. And, on top of that, there were still suspicious looks from some of their own Clanmates, which made Lionblaze’s pelt turn hot with rage.

  As if we’re suddenly going to turn disloyal because we’ve found out our father is a WindClan warrior! Who’d want to join those scrawny rabbit-munchers?

  Lionblaze watched Jayfeather, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. His brother’s sightless blue eyes were turned toward Brambleclaw, and his ears were alert, but it was hard to tell what was going through his mind. To Lionblaze’s relief, the rest of the cats seemed too intent on what Leopardstar was saying to pay any attention to the rift between Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight.

  “The fish in the lake belong to RiverClan,” Leopardstar went on, her voice thin and high-pitched like wind through the reeds. “Any cat who tries to take them will feel our claws. From now on, I will instruct our border patrols to include the area around the water on every side.”

  “You can’t do that!” Blackstar shouldered his way out of the leaves and leaped down to a lower branch, from where he could glare threateningly at Leopardstar. “Territories have never been extended into the lake.”

  Lionblaze pictured the lake as it had been, its waves lapping gently against grassy banks with only narrow strips of sand and pebbles here and there on the shore. Now the water had shrunk away into the middle, leaving wide stretches of mud that dried and cracked in the merciless greenleaf sun. Surely Leopardstar didn’t want to claim those barren spaces as RiverClan territory?

  “If any RiverClan patrols set paw on our territory,” Onestar growled, baring his teeth, “they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

  “Leopardstar, listen.” Lionblaze could tell that Firestar was trying hard to stay calm, even though the fur on his neck and shoulders was beginning to fluff up. “If you carry on like this, you’re going to cause a war between the Clans. Cats will be injured. Haven’t we got troubles enough without going to look for more?”

  “Firestar’s right,” Sorreltail murmured into Lionblaze’s ear. “We should be trying to help one another, not fluffing up our fur ready for a fight.”

  Leopardstar crouched down as if she wanted to leap at the other leaders, letting out a wordless snarl and sliding out her claws.

  This is a time of truce! Lionblaze thought, his eyes stretching wide in dismay. A Clan leader attacking another cat at a Gathering? It can’t happen!

  Firestar had tensed, bracing himself in case Leopardstar hurled herself at him. Instead she jumped down to the ground with a furious hiss, waving her tail for her warriors to gather around her.

  “Stay away from our fish!” she spat as she led the way through the bushes that surrounded the clearing, toward the tree-bridge that led off the island. Her Clanmates followed her, shooting hostile looks at the other three Clans as they passed them. Murmurs of speculation and comment broke out as they left, but then Firestar’s voice rang with authority above the noise.

  “The Gathering is at an end! We must return to our territories until the next full moon. May StarClan light our paths!”

  Lionblaze padded just behind his leader as the ThunderClan cats trekked around the edge of the lake toward their own territory. The water was barely visible, just a silver glimmer in the distance; pale moonlight reflected from the surface of the drying mud. Lionblaze wrinkled his nose at the smell of rotting fish.

  If their prey stinks like that, RiverClan can have it!

  Ahead of him, Brambleclaw trudged along next to Firestar, with Dustpelt and Ferncloud on the Clan leader’s other side.

  “What are we going to do?” the deputy asked. “Leopardstar will send out her patrols. What happens when we find them on our territory?”

  Firestar twitched his ears. “We need to deal with this carefully,” he meowed. “Is the bottom of the lake our territory? We would never have thought of claiming it when it was covered with water.”

  Dustpelt snorted. “If the dry land borders our territory, it’s ours now. RiverClan has no rights to hunt or patrol there.”

  “But they look so hungry,” Ferncloud mewed gently. “And ThunderClan never took fish from the lake anyway. Can’t we let them have it?”

  Dustpelt touched his nose briefly to his mate’s ear. “Prey is scarce for us, too,” he reminded her.

  “We will not attack RiverClan warriors,” Firestar decided. “Not unless they set paw on the ThunderClan territory within our scent marks—three tail-lengths from the shore, as we agreed when we came here. Brambleclaw, make sure that the patrols understand that when you send them out tomorrow.”

  “Of course, Firestar,” the deputy replied, with a wave of his tail.

  Lionblaze’s pelt prickled. Even though he respected Firestar’s conclusion because he was the Clan leader, Lionblaze wasn’t sure that he had made the right decision this time. Won’t RiverClan think we’re weak if we let them come around our side of the lake?

  He jumped at the flick of a tail on his haunches and glanced around to see that Jayfeather had caught up to him.

  “Leopardstar’s got bees in her brain,” his brother announced. “She’ll never get away with this. Sooner or later, cats will get clawed.”

  “I know.” Curiously, Lionblaze added, “I heard some ShadowClan cats at the Gathering saying that Leopardstar lost two lives recently. Is it true?”

  Jayfeather gave him a curt nod. “Yes.”

  “She never announced it,” Lionblaze commented.

  Jayfeather halted, giving his brother a look of such sharp intelligence that Lionblaze found it hard to believe that his brilliant blue eyes couldn’t see anything. “Come on, Lionblaze. When does a Clan leader ever announce they’ve lost a life? It would make them sound weak. Cats don’t necessarily know how many lives their own leader has left.”

  “I suppose so,” Lionblaze admitted, padding on.

  “Leopardstar lost a life from a thorn scratch that got infected,” Jayfeather continued. “And then straight after that she caught some kind of illness that made her terribly thirsty and weak, too. She couldn’t even walk as far as the stream to get a drink.”

  “Mothwing and Willowshine told you all that?” Lionblaze asked, aware that medicine cats would confide in one another without thinking of the Clan rivalries that made warriors wary of saying too much.

  “It doesn’t matter how I found out,” Jayfeather retorted. “I know, that’s all.”

  Lionblaze suppressed a shiver. Even though he knew that Jayfeather’s powers came from the prophecy, it still bothered him that his brother padded down paths that no cat, not even another medicine cat, had ever trodden before. Jayfeather knew things without being told—not even by StarClan. He could walk in other cats’ dreams and learn their deepest secrets.

  “I guess that’s why Leopardstar is making such a nuisance of herself about the fish,” Lionblaze murmured, pushing his uneasiness away. “She wants to prove to her Clan that she’s still strong.”

  “She’s going about it the wrong way,” Jayfeather stated flatly. “She should know that she can’t make the other Clans follow her orders. RiverClan will be worse off in the end than if they’d just struggled through the drought on their own territory, like the rest of us.”

  They were approaching the stream that marked the border between WindClan and ThunderClan. The water that had spilled into the lake with a rush and a gurgle just last newleaf had dwindled to a narrow stream of green slime, easily leaped over. Lionblaze drew a breath of relief as he plunged into the undergrowth beyond, under the familiar trees of his own territory.

  “Maybe it’ll all blow over,” he meowed hop
efully. “Leopardstar might see sense when she thinks about what the other leaders told her at the Gathering.”

  Jayfeather let out a contemptuous snort. “Hedgehogs will fly before Leopardstar backs down. No, Lionblaze, the only thing that will solve our problem is for the lake to fill up again.”

  Lionblaze was padding through long, lush grass, his paws sinking into water at every step. A cool breeze ruffled his fur. Any moment now, he could put down his head and drink as much as he wanted, relieving the thirst that burned inside him like a thorn. A vole popped out of the reed bed in front of him, but before Lionblaze could leap on it, something hard poked him in the side. He woke up to find himself in his nest in the warriors’ den, with Cloudtail standing over him. His fur felt sticky, and the air smelled of dust.

  “Wake up,” the white warrior meowed, giving Lionblaze another prod. “What are you, a dormouse?”

  “Did you have to do that?” Lionblaze complained. “I was having this really great dream….”

  “And now you can go on a really great water patrol.” Cloudtail’s tone was unsympathetic. Since the streams that fed the lake had dried up, the only source of water was the shallow, brackish pool in the middle of the lake bed. Patrols went down several times a day to collect water for the Clan, in addition to hunting and patrolling as usual. The greenleaf nights seemed shorter than ever when every cat was tired out from extra duties.

  Lionblaze’s jaws gaped in an enormous yawn. “Okay, I’m coming.”

  He followed Cloudtail out of the den, shaking scraps of moss from his pelt. The sky was pale with the first light of dawn, and although the sun had not yet risen the air was hot and heavy. Lionblaze groaned inwardly at the thought of yet another dry, scorching day.

  Hazeltail, her apprentice, Blossompaw, Berrynose, and Icecloud were sitting outside the den; they rose to their paws as Cloudtail appeared with Lionblaze. None of them had been to the Gathering the night before, but Lionblaze could tell from their tense expressions that they knew about Leopardstar’s threats.