T
HE FLOOR UNDULATED, THE DIPS AND PROTRUSIONS hidden in the darkness. Redcrop crawled on through the black cavern. Every time her injured foot stubbed rock, she wanted to scream.
The strange smell grew in strength: like old bones that had been moldering for sun cycles.
Redcrop’s palm struck something small, cold, and round. She lifted it.
It tinkled.
The notes were so pure and beautiful, she rang it again.
“A bell,” she whispered to herself. “It’s a bell.”
She turned it in her palm, smiling, longing to laugh. It had the cold smooth feel of metal. She touched the bell to her tongue.
A copper bell!
She tucked it into the top of her moccasin, and continued on.
The luminous blur turned into an awl-prick of solid gray light.
Redcrop forced herself to crawl faster. How could the air be getting more foul as she neared the opening? She should be smelling dew-soaked earth and damp trees.
“Ow!” she cried without thinking when her knee ground over a pebble.
Redcrop reached down and had started to throw it away when it clinked.
“What—?”
She turned the object over until she knew for certain that it was another copper bell.
“Gods, how did these get here?”
They must have been left by the First People who had built Longtail village more than a hundred summers ago. Awe prickled
her chest. Perhaps this cave had been one of their secret places. A sacred tunnel …
From her place in the womb of earth, she looked up suddenly and listened.
A faint voice whispered through the darkness.
“Come the brothers … born of Sun …”
The words floated across her souls; she wasn’t certain if she actually heard them, or was remembering what had happened earlier in the rock shelter. Her grandmother told her that First Woman had spoken those words right after she had emerged from the underworlds.
“One is stayed. Here by the … trail … his corpse is laid.”
A man’s voice. Breathless, the words more panted than sung. The voice verged on ecstasy. Or an agony too terrible to be borne.
The voice of a dying man.
Scarcely perceptible footfalls echoed.
“You, born of F-father Sun, laid in the light next to n-night …”
Sobs. Elder Springbank’s voice!
She had heard him Sing many times at ceremonials. Usually, he had a deep, ringing voice. She would know it, even when whispered in agony.
On her knees, her eyes blind with tears, she turned and started back down the tunnel.
A scream froze her blood. In the middle of the scream, she made out the words:
“Come the brothers, born of Sun! …”
The last word ended in a high-pitched wail.
A sudden trembling left her shaking so badly she could barely force herself to breathe. Had they caught him? The warriors he’d been expecting? He said they knew about this tunnel. Perhaps they hadn’t found him where they’d expected to and came looking?
In a fit of frenzy, she turned and scrambled toward the light, toward the foul smell.
Hurry. Hurry!
Behind her, feet scuffed stone. She could hear him staggering, as though the man could not find the strength to put one foot before the other.
Tears ran down Redcrop’s face. She crawled like a madwoman.
The metallic taint of blood carried on the air. She heard a tortured groan, but couldn’t tell if it had come from behind or ahead.
The tunnel opened into a chamber. A yawning maw.
Redcrop’s heart expanded at the sight. Her gaze swept the walls and lifted to the towering ceiling. She might have been kneeling in a womb of dove-colored radiance. Pots, hundreds of them, lined the shelves that had been carved into the stone. Pots of all colors and designs, red-on-tan, black-on-white, red-on-black. Some had lids, others did not. Precious shells and carved fetishes packed the open pots. Redcrop gaped at the wealth. One pot held nothing but jet frogs with turquoise eyes, another had a jumble of malachite wolves and red coral birds.
She heard a body thump onto the stone, and a man moaned, then wept, his desperation beyond pain, beyond words.
In a quavering voice, Redcrop whispered: “Elder Springbank?” She looked back.
The dark throat of the tunnel stirred, then fluttered as though filled with black wings—and she realized someone was coming through. Staggering toward her.
The man stepped into the pale gleam.
Crimson splotched Springbank’s cape and dotted his white hair. Tears flooded the elder’s wrinkled cheeks. He had both fists twined in War Chief Browser’s collar, dragging him along behind.
“Help me, child!” he begged. “I found him lying in the cave entrance. He’s hurt badly!”
“Oh, gods, what happened?” How on earth had the fragile elder managed to drag the War Chief? Redcrop scrambled back, clenching her teeth against the pain in her ankle.
Springbank eased Browser down and sank to the floor as if he’d used his last bit of energy. A club hung from Springbank’s belt. She hadn’t seen it earlier. Had it been hidden by his cape?
Springbank said, “The warriors I was supposed to meet—I think they found him.” He held blood-soaked hands out to Redcrop. “Your grandmother was a Healer, child. Do something!”
Redcrop slid to Browser’s side and brushed the hair from his round face. Blood leaked down his forehead in ropy red lines.
“It may not be as bad as it looks.” She reached down to tear a length of cloth from her skirt. The sound of ripping fabric echoed in the still chamber. “Scalp wounds always bleed like this.”
Springbank used his sleeve to wipe at the blood speckling his wrinkled face. “I’ve suffered enough of them to know that, but he’s
unconscious, and that means the blow was severe enough to make his souls flee.”
“Yes, but often they return fairly quickly.”
Browser’s eyelids jerked. That was a good sign.
Springbank suddenly gasped and slid closer. “Gods, do you think he’s wounded anywhere else? I’ll search while you tend his head wound.”
“Thank you, Elder.”
Springbank’s gnarled fingers untied the laces on Browser’s buckskin cape and pulled it away from his muscular body. “I don’t see any blood.” He continued searching, pulling up the War Chief’s sleeves, scrutinizing his chest and belly. He pulled a bone stiletto from the top of Browser’s red leggings and tossed it away. Springbank’s eyes narrowed when he saw Browser’s small belt pouch. He opened it, and a sharp cry came from his lips.
Redcrop blurted, “What’s wrong?”
Springbank pulled out a magnificent turquoise wolf and clutched it to his chest. “I searched for twenty-two summers before I found this. I feared it was gone forever.”
Redcrop frowned at the wolf, wondering why the War Chief had been holding something that belonged to Elder Springbank. It resembled the wolf Piper had tucked into the top of her legging. “Twenty-two summers? Where did you find it?”
He peered down at the wolf with blurry eyes. “In a walled-up room in Talon Town. It was hanging around the throat of a hideous mummy.”
Redcrop’s veins tightened as fear rushed through her. The mummy in the rock shelter? With trembling hands, she used the cloth to wipe blood from Browser’s forehead. The long gash began at his hairline and extended back across the middle of his skull. Redcrop folded the cloth, placed it over the wound, and pressed hard, but her eyes sought the daylight streaming through the hole less than fifty body lengths away. Escape. It lay so close.
“The bleeding will stop s-soon, Elder,” she stammered. Springbank put a hand on her hair and stroked it. “I thank you, child. I knew you could help him.”
Springbank’s hand gently moved down her hair to squeeze her shoulder. “I wish I knew what happened to him. There were no warriors around when I found him.”
“He was struck from above, Elder.”
Springbank’s wrinkled mouth opened. “How do you know?” “The wound. It’s deeper in the front than the back. I think he was on the ground when someone hit him from above.”
“You mean Browser may have been crawling away and his attacker straddled him and brought the club down on top of his head?”
Redcrop gave him a sidelong glance. “Yes.”
Her hands started to shake. Had the War Chief followed their tracks to the tunnel and been attacked when he got down to crawl inside?
Springbank stroked Redcrop’s arm in a way that sent shivers down her spine. “You are very good at helping people.”
Redcrop pulled away and stared at him.
Springbank grabbed her hand. His bony fingers closed around her wrist in a viselike grip. “Why did you pull away from me?”
“I’m sorry, Elder. I’m just not accustomed—”
“Don’t be frightened,” he whispered, and slid closer to her. The sparse white hair that framed his cadaverish face had a blue glint. “I have been watching you for a long time. Unfortunately, you never left the Matron’s side. It was impossible to speak with you privately. Now that she is gone, we will have a great deal of time together.”
“Run!”
Redcrop saw Browser’s fist come up and felt it slam her in the shoulder, knocking her away from Springbank, then he rolled, ripped the war club from Springbank’s belt, and brutally slammed the old man in the chest. A sickening thump echoed in the room. “Go!” Browser shouted at her. “Run!
Now!
”
The blow sent Springbank toppling backward. He stumbled into the cavern wall and cried, “Why are you attacking me?”
“War Chief!” Redcrop cried, stunned. “What are you doing?” Browser staggered as though he could barely stand. His scalp wound had broken open again; blood poured down his face. “Redcrop,
run!
”
“But you struck the elder!” she shouted, and crawled toward Springbank. “He’s hurt badly!”
Browser reached down, gripped a handful of her hair, and flung her across the chamber. When she landed hard, a wrenching cry broke from her lips. She screamed,
“I was trying to help!”
Browser weaved on his feet. Blood coated his round face and clotted his hair. “Who are you?” he shouted at Springbank. “I want to know!”
Springbank cradled his ribs and slid back against the cavern wall.
He winced every time he inhaled. Pain glazed his old eyes. “What you really wish to know is … if I killed your lover, Hophorn.”
Browser nearly collapsed, as if his legs were failing him. He locked his knees and stood silently a moment, as though mustering his strength to ask: “Did you?”
A smile curled Springbank’s toothless mouth. “She converted to the Katsina faith … as did your wife.”
Browser turned to Redcrop again and said, “For the sake of the gods, girl, leave! I don’t know how long I can stay on my feet. Someone must run back to the village and tell our people what happened here!”
Redcrop slid toward the exit, but she cried, “But I don’t know what’s happening! Why are you speaking to Elder Springbank this way?”
Springbank sat back and laughed. “Do you really think I would guide her in here without having a guard posted at the exit? The instant she sticks her head outside, it will be lopped off!”
Redcrop hesitated, her confusion building.
Browser shouted, “He’s lying! If there was a guard out there, he would have already heard our shouts and come in!”
Springbank’s grin belied the terrible pain in his eyes. “The guard has orders not to enter this chamber until called. I assure you, she’s used to hearing screams from in here.”
Redcrop’s exhausted arms and legs would no longer hold her. She slumped to the floor, a soft mewing in her throat.
Browser shook his head, as though he couldn’t think, or perhaps his vision had gone dim. He wasn’t going to black out, was he? “Are you descended from the Blessed Cornsilk?”
Springbank watched Browser like a hawk with a wounded mouse in sight, as though waiting for the first moment of weakness to pounce.
Springbank sighed. “Cornsilk is the cause of all this, you young fool.
She should have become the Matron of Talon Town.
When she abandoned her duty, she killed us all. Our nation fell to pieces. My father would have been the Blessed Sun, the ruler of the Straight Path Nation!” He lifted a fist and shook it. “I would be the Blessed Sun this instant!”
Browser put a hand over his left eye, as though to block the light, and squinted through his right eye. The blood streaking his face gave him a fearsome appearance. “Did you kill my grandmother?”
Redcrop gaped at Browser.
His grandmother?
Springbank chuckled and flinched. A shiver went through him. “Ash Girl was two at the time. She must have said something to Painted Turtle at one of the ceremonial gatherings. I never knew what, but Painted Turtle found me, dragged me aside, and told me she knew what I was doing to the girl.”