People of the Morning Star (63 page)

Whatever the symbols meant, they were some part of Walking Smoke’s polluted magic.

By the Creator, please, get me out of here.

She purposely kept her eyes away from where her soul-twisted cousin now sat cross-legged before his sweat lodge, arms up, hands out as they held a steaming cup of black drink. The drying blood had turned them dark red, and his singsong chant filled the air.

The Tula warriors watched him with a mixture of awe and wonder. Nor did they lower their guard in the least when it came to her, her family, and the remaining slaves.

She steadfastly refused to look at the limp remains of Lace or her bluish-pale and lifeless male fetus. For the moment, Walking Smoke had placed the tiny corpse on Lace’s chest, the infant’s slack mouth pressed to her left nipple in a mockery.

Columella fought to purge the images from her memory. But she kept hearing the echoes of Lace’s scream, seeing the flash of the long chert knife. Even while Lace’s and the infant’s dying bodies were being bled out, Walking Smoke had performed some peculiar ritual with a spindle whorl, twirling it above their nostrils and repeating some incomprehensible singsong chant.

The Tula had watched, awe-struck, each whispering softly to himself and making warding signs with their fingers; so it had to be some barbarian trick Walking Smoke had adopted from the south.

Where he shifted uneasily beside her, High Dance rubbed his face as if to peel it from his very skull.

Just wait, Walking Smoke will do it for you.

“Someone will come,” he whispered under his breath. “It’s just a matter of time.”

“It’s been most of a day,” she answered. “I don’t know how, but he’s taken steps. Some sort of spokesman outside giving orders in our name that we’re not to be disturbed.”

“Where’s your dwarf when we need him?”

“If he’s got the sense Power gave a pollywog, he’s running like a winter hare from a red wolf.” Flat Stone Pipe had obviously seen enough to know when to slip out his hidey hole and flee. In spite of her brave words to High Dance, she fervently wished that even now Flat Stone Pipe was being carried at the head of War Duck’s massed squadrons as they crossed the river to storm her palace.

Please tell me that’s the case. Please, blessed Father Sun, get me out of this, and I’ll prostrate myself before you for the rest of my life.

Down from her, her children whimpered and squealed in terror as Walking Smoke opened his eyes and shot a radiant smile in their direction.

“Soon,” he promised them. “I’ll be ready for you soon!”

Tilting the cup, he raised it to his lips, throat working as he chugged the strong and bitter tea to the last drop. One of the Tula stepped forward and handed him a short stub of rattlesnake master root, bowed, and retreated.

Walking Smoke tilted his head back, chewed, and stiffened. Leaning forward on his knees, his stomach pumped. Vomit spewed out to splatter on the bloody matting.

Having purged, he climbed to his feet, carefully washed the long chert knife in a jar of water, and began cutting Lace’s dead infant apart.

Columella’s stomach knotted as he carefully laid the dismembered little limbs on the matting, placing them just so, as if to create some abominable pattern.

*   *   *

With each rhythmic stride, Fire Cat’s moccasined feet hit the hard-packed surface of the Avenue of the Sun. For once he could actually bless the Morning Star for his administrative prowess in keeping the avenue graded, flat, and free of holes and dips. For a runner, in the middle of the night, Fire Cat was making extraordinary time.

Occasionally the three-quarter moon would peek through the clouds illuminating the avenue. But even when obscured by the moon-silvered fog the route was easily followed, having been surfaced in white sand.

Pus and blood! How far is it?

The last time he’d been this way, he’d been carried like a dressed-out deer, half-conscious, soaked in pain.

This time, even in the middle of the night, the immensity of Cahokia awed him to the bones. For the hand of time he’d been running, he’d never been clear of buildings. Sometimes they were more widely spaced, other times he ran through densely packed clusters of houses, temples, granaries, and mound-top palaces. Nor was his nose used to the endless medley of the city’s odors. Mostly, he decided, when this many humans lived in such teaming proximity, they stank.

His weapons knocked hollowly against his armor as he pushed his distance-eating gait. Assuming he managed to survive this, he was going to insist on fitted armor. Makes Three’s oversized wooden breastplate was rubbing his chest raw, the straps eating into his shoulders as the front and back bounced. The bow, however, was a quality piece of workmanship—as if Night Shadow Star’s husband would own a lesser weapon. The same with the war club.

“West, she turned west,” he muttered to himself as he ran.

Rounding a slight bend to the southwest, he caught the flicker of lights ahead of him. He picked up his pace, and within a finger’s time had closed on a litter-bearing party trotting along in flickering torchlight.

“Who comes?” a warrior in the rear called as Fire Cat’s heel strikes could be heard.

“I am Fire Cat, in service to Lady Night Shadow Star, of the Morning Star House, Four Winds Clan.”

He made a face, having no sooner said it, than feeling an ill resentment at both the words and the arrogance with which he’d uttered them. He quickly added, “Myself, I am Red Wing, right down to the root of my souls.”

“Fire Cat?” the dark figure on the litter called back to him. “What are you doing out here in the night? Where’s Night Shadow Star? Pus and blood, tell me she’s not soul-flying again.”

He trotted up to just behind the litter. “Good evening, Keeper. Surprising to find you out here. I’m in pursuit of your niece.”

“Do want to explain that?”

“She slipped out while I was asleep. Her bow, quiver, and war club are missing along with her trail moccasins.”

“You seem quite familiar with her things, Red Wing.”

“I spent a lot of mindless and unproductive time in her room during her last soul flight, Keeper. When I wasn’t dribbling water between her lips, I had nothing to do but stare at her possessions.”

“Did she receive a summons from Evening Star House?”

“If a messenger had come from Chief High Dance, I’d have known. Whatever she’s about, she’s decided upon it on her own.”

“And what’s your purpose out here?” He heard the skepticism in her voice.

“That she took a war club? Bow and quiver? Trail moccasins? Even to a clod like me these things suggest her purpose isn’t a social call. My guess? She knows where Walking Smoke is, and she’s going to confront him.”

“I see.” The Keeper’s shadowy form turned back toward the front, her figure outlined in the torchlight.

“You asked about a summons from Evening Star House?” He shrugged his armor back straight, wincing where it had chafed. “I assume you received one.”

“I did.”

“And why travel in the middle of the night, Keeper?”

“In case it’s a trap, Red Wing. If Walking Smoke is behind it, he might have an ambush set along the road. If Columella has discovered something about his activities, and where to find him, I want to know what, and how. My nieces are at stake.” A pause. “Apparently all three of them.”

“Where’s the thief?”

“Off on some errand of his own.”

“Clever of him. This way he can pop up when it’s all over and claim to have discovered something fascinating.”

She was silent for a bit. “You don’t like him, do you?”

“Lady, only in Cahokia could a squalid sort like Seven Skull Shield thrive. Anyplace else, his relatives, for the sake of social propriety, would have been forced to knock his brains out years ago.”

“Only in Cahokia,” she agreed.

“I should probably run ahead,” he told her, having pretty much caught his breath. Her porters were making good time, but he could almost double it.

“You think you can catch her?” the Keeper asked.

“May Falcon Above help me if I can’t.”

She laughed. “With those long legs of hers? I don’t know if she’s half elk, or, given the way she swims, part fish. How much lead does she have on you?”

“According to the warriors guarding her palace, about a hand’s worth of time.”

“You’ll never catch her.”

“She’s a woman.”

“Despite those hips of hers, she’s as fleet as any man. Besides, she knows two things you don’t.”

“What would those be, Keeper?”

“She knows this road, and …
where
she’s going.”

He shrugged, not that she could see him in the darkness.

“I have a suspicion, Red Wing. I think she’s gone to Evening Star House. Several of my sources reported that Lady Sun Wing passed this way late yesterday. I think we’re going to discover that Walking Smoke has formed an alliance with Evening Star House. That he’s convinced High Dance and Columella that he can actually accomplish this resurrection—call the Water Panther into his body. And when he does, he can defeat the Morning Star.”

“You think Lace and Sun Wing are now hostages?”

“I do.” She grunted to herself. “And, may the Horned Serpent help us, it will be a miracle if he doesn’t take Night Shadow Star as well.”

“Then, you dare not cross the river, Keeper. He’ll have you as well.”

“Not if I cross with a couple of squadrons of warriors. He’s been ahead of me from the start, Red Wing. That stops now. I’ve already sent a runner on to War Duck asking that he have two squadrons meet me at the canoe landing, and that canoes be collected to ferry us across.”

“All the more reason for me to run ahead.”

“Stay, Red Wing.” Her voice tightened. “Please. I may have need of you. Especially if, as you say, you serve my niece.”

“What use would that be, Keeper?”

“As an intermediary to bargain for her life.”

“My oath is not to you.”

“No, it isn’t.” She bitterly added, “But if you do this, help keep my nieces alive, I’d be willing to offer your mother and sisters a deal: restricted freedom in my household. That may not be the best of worlds, but it certainly is not the worst. They would have some control of their lives and bodies. Your sisters could marry if they desired. They’d at least have a future beyond the Morning Star’s next whim. The uncertainty would be over.”

He frowned. “How about if—”

“No bargains!” she snapped. “Take it, or leave it.”

He chuckled hollowly. “I’ll take it.” A sense of relief blew through him. “Though I have to ask why you’d make the offer.”

She was silent for a time. “Your mother and I were young together once. A long, long time ago. It was a different world. Back before the fall of Petaga, before the resurrection.”

“You know we hate you.”

“Hate all you want, Red Wing. As long as oath and honor carry weight in your souls. I can already see that your hatred of my niece has caused you great discomfort. It’s kept you from a relaxing night’s sleep as you charge off through the darkness. Maybe I can make your mother suffer so in my service.”

And then she laughed hollowly.

“I still have to keep Night Shadow Star and the others alive once we get to Evening Star town.”

“Yes,” the Keeper agreed from the top of her swaying litter. “There’s always that. Let’s just hope things aren’t too messy when we get there.”

In the distant west lightning flickered, a sign that the Thunderbirds were again at war with the Underworld.

Oh, they’ll be messy, Keeper. As far ahead of us as he’s been all along, he’s anticipated anything you might try.

Fifty-nine

What have I done?
The words seemed to echo hollowly between Sun Wing’s souls.
Please, please, don’t let this happen to me.

Sun Wing had watched in disbelief as Walking Smoke dismembered their sister and the tiny infant. Her brother’s motions had been smooth, practiced, and he wielded the long, brown-chert blade with an uncommon dexterity.

Terrified to the point of trembling, she needed only to look down to see the paintings her brother had so carefully drawn on her shivering skin. Spirals on her breasts, tadpoles, mudpuppies, and caterpillars.

I am nothing more to him than an offering. Why?

She must have cried out when she wondered,
What did I ever do to you?
because he answered, “Nothing, little sister. You were too small, too helpless to do anything to me. Not at all like my brother, or your sister Night Shadow Star. They betrayed me, betrayed the whole world.”

“What…” She swallowed, trying to wet her mouth. “What are you doing with those body parts?”

Yes, keep him talking, distract him.

He glanced at her where he worked so carefully to reposition one of Lace’s severed legs. Even from where she sat, she could see that he was fashioning an arc out of the body parts. Laying them out on the floor in a pattern. Head at the top, torso, the arms and legs out to either side like drooping wings.

He gestured with his hands as he explained, “When I’m finished, it will surround the sweat lodge, don’t you see? I’m making a vulva, the opening from the womb of the earth. A path for Piasa’s soul to follow when I offer Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies the final sacrifice. Lace and her baby, of course, had to go at the bottom, which is where I started. The top will be there, on the other side of the sweat lodge next to the fire.”