The Fourth Apprentice

“We need to test her out,” Lionblaze repeated. “Is that okay?” he added quickly as Dovepaw began to bristle up again.

She met his amber gaze, aware that something had changed in the last few moments. Lionblaze was no longer just her mentor, teaching her things and telling her what to do. Instead, his eyes held respect, perhaps even awe.

Weird, she thought. “I’m fine with being tested,” she meowed. Let’s just get it over with, and then maybe life can get back to normal.

“I’m going to go off somewhere and do something,” Lionblaze told her. “When I get back, I want you to tell me what I did.”

Dovepaw shrugged again. “Okay.”

Without another word, Lionblaze dashed off into the trees, heading toward the WindClan border. Dovepaw felt a bit strange being left alone in the clearing with Jayfeather. She didn’t know the medicine cat like she knew the warriors, though she was well aware of his sharp tongue. But he didn’t seem inclined to talk; he just crouched down with his paws tucked under him, so Dovepaw let her attention wander out into the forest.

Gradually she made sense of the confusion of noise that poured from the trees. A ShadowClan patrol was investigating the scent of a fox near the border; RiverClan warriors were making a fuss about the sticky mud at the edge of the shrunken lake, where Mistyfoot was scolding an apprentice. And farther away, at the very edge of her senses, one of the big brown animals was adding another piece of wood to the blockage in the stream.

She jumped when Jayfeather spoke. “Can you tell what Lionblaze is doing yet?”

Dovepaw swiveled her ears in the direction Lionblaze had gone, toward the WindClan border. But there was no sign of her mentor there. Where could he have gone? She investigated the abandoned Twoleg nest and the training clearing, where she picked up the sounds of Cinderheart and Ivypaw practicing battle moves. Still no Lionblaze.

Dovepaw focused her senses on the edge of the lake. Yes! There he is! She could hear him and scent him, heading down the bank to the pebbly lakeshore. Did he think he would be able to trick me if he doubled back?

Lionblaze’s paw steps thudded on the dried mud. Pausing, he glanced around, then bounded over to a lump of battered wood and started dragging it onto the pebbles. Dovepaw could hear them rasping and rolling as Lionblaze tugged the wood higher. When he had pulled it all the way up to the grass, he pulled a tendril of bramble out of a nearby thicket and laid it over the wood.

“Lionblaze, what are you doing?” Dovepaw heard Sandstorm’s voice and spotted the ginger she-cat appearing around the edge of the thicket, with Leafpool, Briarpaw, and Bumblepaw just behind her. All four cats were carrying bundles of moss.

“Oh, hi, Sandstorm.” Lionblaze sounded startled. “I’m…uh…just trying an experiment.”

“Well, don’t let me interrupt you.” Sandstorm seemed puzzled as she waved her tail and led the two apprentices out onto the mud, heading for the water in the distance.

When Sandstorm had gone, Lionblaze ran back through the trees and arrived, panting, a few moments later. “Well?” he gasped. “Where did I go and what did I do?”

“You tried to trick me, didn’t you?” Dovepaw began; she felt so self-conscious that every hair on her pelt was prickling. “You set off toward WindClan, but then you went down to the lake. And you found a piece of wood…”

As she went on, she saw Jayfeather listening with his head to one side, his ears pricked. He didn’t speak until she had finished. “Was she right?”

“Yes, every detail,” Lionblaze replied.

Suddenly the air around the three cats seemed to crackle with things unsaid, as if a greenleaf storm was about to break. Dovepaw drew a shaky breath.

“It’s no big deal,” she protested. “I thought every cat could tell what was going on, even if it’s not right in front of us. We all have good hearing and sensitive whiskers, right?”

“Not that sensitive,” Lionblaze meowed.

“Listen.” Jayfeather leaned forward with an intensity in his sightless blue eyes. “There is a prophecy, Dovepaw,” he began. “There will be three, kin of your kin, who will hold the power of the stars in their paws. It was given to Firestar a long time ago by a cat from another Clan, and it refers to three cats who will be more powerful than any others in the Clans—more powerful even than StarClan. Lionblaze—”

“But what has that got to do with us?” Dovepaw interrupted; suddenly she felt as if she didn’t want to know the answer.

“Lionblaze and I are two of those cats,” Jayfeather mewed with a flick of his ears. “And we believe that you are the third.”