People of the Morning Star (28 page)

“If this was my territory, this thing would be fifteen hands wide, and paved with gravel,” he growled as he raced to make the higher ground before two men bearing a litter filled with peeled saplings could block his way.

High Dance managed a smile as the men nodded at him. From their dress and manner, they must have been Illini. Each, however, had a crude image of the Morning Star sketched on the front of his sweat-stained work shirt.

High Dance kicked at the mud still clinging to his moccasin and followed the entrenched path. It ran off to the northwest between a cluster of cane-roofed houses with their gardens, ramadas, and storage pits. He could just see the temple roof on the far side of the houses where it overlooked Marsh Elder Lake to the south.

To his relief, none of the women tending their little plots of corn, beans, sunflowers, goosefoot, and squash gave him so much as a second look. Instead they kept on with their weeding, corn milling, and weaving. Around the houses, little naked children ran, screamed, and played, often accompanied by hollow-ribbed, tick-infested dogs with slashing tails.

Cutting off from the main path, High Dance made a face as he passed wide of an overflowing latrine and stepped carefully around piles of excrement and broken pottery. High Dance fought the urge to hold his nose and waved away columns of flies. Like so much of Cahokia, the houses were packed close here because the soil was marginal. Clay didn’t grow good corn. Unproductive ground generally ended up crowded with immigrant housing.

He nodded uncomfortably as a young woman stepped out from one of the latrines and resettled her skirt. Given a good wash and a combing she would have been attractive. At his hawkish glance she lowered her large dark eyes and hurried around to the front of her house where an infant was screaming.

Wearing an expression of distaste he hurried toward the temple atop its low mound. Four tall men, obviously warriors, stood in an arc before the building. Each held a war club and nodded at him as he approached.

Tough men, he decided, trying to place their thick-boned and wedge-shaped features in comparison with any of the peoples he was familiar with. They had a curiously foreign look to them, and he was surprised to note that none exhibited the characteristic facial tattoos that proclaimed a man’s people and clan.

He almost gasped in relief as the breeze blowing in from the lake carried fresh air to his abused nostrils. He climbed the five steps to the mound top and walked to the temple door. There a bone-rack of an old man sat, eyes white and sightless, his mouth gaping in a toothless smile. He seemed heedless of the flies crawling over his wrinkled skin. A weathered and cracked wooden bowl was clutched in his filthy hands—empty of even the slightest offering from passersby.

Stepping into the dark interior, High Dance found the floor to be packed clay. Daylight cast slivers of light where cracks in the walls hadn’t been repaired. A central hearth looked cold, the ash having blown out over the floor in a black shadow.

In the rear, perched on a scaffold made of old cedar branches, sat a wood-and-straw statue of Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies. She crouched on a split-cane mat, the top of her face painted white, the bottom black. Her eyes were charcoal dots, and her mouth was a half-open gape in the round head. A squash vine had been wrapped around one shoulder, and the burden basket on her back contained ears of corn, most of the kernels chewed away by mice.

“They come here to share the miracle of the Morning Star,” a voice stated from the left. “But their hearts forever belong to First Woman.”

“It’s only natural.” High Dance glanced at the man who stepped out of the shadows. “The Morning Star can dazzle them with the ritual displays, with stickball games, colorful chunkey tournaments, and all the elaborate pageants and feasting. They see him, so grand and mighty, a living god among them. But in the end, everything depends on the harvest. Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies exhales her fertility into the seeds, goads the Tie Snakes to call the rains, and balances the powers of the Underworld with those of the earth and sky. From her cave deep in the earth she encourages the Tree of Life to flourish.”

The man grunted. “They find no conflict in that. The dirt people admire and fawn over Corn Woman’s resurrected son in its frail human body at the same time they worship and implore his Spirit Being grandmother to save them. How … typical.”

High Dance watched Bead step out into light. He looked exhausted as he stared absently at the shrine in the back of the temple; his face appeared oddly blotched from smeared paints. He wore a simple hemp-thread shirt that hung just below the crotch. Sandals were on his feet. His hair was tied behind his head and hung loose down his back. The faintest slump of his shoulders implied disappointment.

The man arched his brows, took a deep breath, and asked, “You received my token?”

High Dance reached into his belt pouch and displayed the broken half of a wooden bead between his thumb and forefinger. “I was a little surprised by the directions your runner gave me. Here? At the edge of the swamps?”

“Among all these unwashed and uncaring dirt farmers.” The man nodded. “People who’d never remember the likes of us, and of whom no one would ever think to ask questions.”

“And the old man outside the door?”

“Blind and deaf. Removing him might have drawn attention I’d rather avoid.”

“You only sent
half
of a bead.”

Bead pursed his lips and stared at the packed clay of the temple floor. “For reasons I don’t understand, Power has taken a hand in our mutual undertaking.”

“Mutual?” High Dance slipped the bead half into his pouch.

“At the last instant your clansman Cut String was killed by Lady Night Shadow Star. Up until a moment before Cut String acted, she’d been lying naked and groggy on the Earth Priest’s floor. Apparently she was writhing in the delirious grip of Sister Datura. Though wracked by the dry heaves, she nevertheless got to her feet, wandered out into the rain, and arrived just in time to use Five Fists’ bow and arrows to kill your relative.”

“You seem very well-informed.”

“Let’s say that Power whispers to me on occasion.”

“Then maybe you’d better rethink your ‘Power.’ If what you say about Cut String is true, he’s not ‘my man.’ I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bead’s forehead lined. “What if you had the ability to—”

High Dance barked, “I
don’t
appreciate whispered accusations about Evening Star House having
anything
to do with attempts on the Morning Star’s life!”

Bead frowned, his forehead lining. The smudges of color mottled his brow. “You do know that they will be coming, don’t you? Sniffing around for clues, their agents asking discrete questions.”

“They’ll find we had nothing to do with this.”

“Curious … and double curious.” Bead’s cunning eyes fixed on High Dance. “Yet here you are, meeting with me, a willing conspirator in the overthrow of the Morning Star?”

“Let’s say I had no love for the
tonka’tzi
or his spawn. Morning Star House has cost us too much over the years.” High Dance flashed his hand in a dismissive gesture. “That someone used a kinsman in an attempt to assassinate the Morning Star is worth knowing. But you, Bead, claimed that I would know the actions of your hand. What, exactly was I supposed to have seen?”

“The
tonka’tzi
is dead.”

“In his sleep we are told.”

Bead’s face twisted in a distasteful grimace. “What
is it
about those people? Can’t they do
anything
right? I left that arrogant Red Warrior and his sulky little wife with their throats gaping wider than an idiot grins! The whole of Cahokia should be torn and shaking in horror!”

“
You
killed the
tonka’tzi
? We heard the Great Sky died in his sleep, that when his wife awakened beside his lifeless body, she took her own life to accompany his souls to the Sky Path and the Land of the Ancestors.”

Bead rubbed the back of his neck, pacing irritably. “I’ve dreamed this.… Dreamed it for years. Each step, taken so carefully. The order of their deaths just so. And then as the waves of fear and terror flow across Cahokia, then … Yes, that’s the moment Power shakes and trembles. The moment when the grand sacrifice will splinter the Underworld and sunder the Sky!” His eyes were blazing like fire rocks, his fist knotted and raised, muscles standing out on his sweat-damp skin.

High Dance stiffened at the passion. “You almost sound as if you knew the
tonka’tzi
. That it’s personal between you.”

“The great Red Warrior Tenkiller! Whose fire ignited when the reincarnated Morning Star’s hot semen first shot into Magic Woman’s fertile loins! And what did he in turn sire? Nothing but descending orders of ash and charcoal.”

“It’s not wise to use the name of the dead. Doing so not only attracts the attention of the life-soul as it struggles to begin the journey to the Realm of the Ancestors. Naming the dead draws bad luck.”

“Bad luck?” Bead chuckled to himself, his ferocity draining as a confused expression spread over his features. “Luck has nothing to do with it. It’s them! I should have had panic. I
needed
panic. Expected it in fact for the ceremony.” He gave High Dance a conspiratorial glance. “That was Blue Heron’s work, no doubt. My assassin got close enough to leave a gash in her throat.”

His brow knit further. “Just not a deep enough one. The old camp bitch was saved by some commoner Night Shadow Star prompted her to find. A ruffian and thief.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, but Power is aware of what we’re about, High Chief. It has taken an interest in our struggle. But which Powers favor which side? That remains uncertain. My source has heard that Piasa favors Night Shadow Star, but is unsure if the claims aren’t just the lingering visions of Sister Datura.” He paused again, raising his hand to rub the side of his head.

High Dance noted dark outlines around the man’s nails. Blood?

“Why would Underworld Power care what we do to Morning Star? He’s of the Sky World.”

Bead’s lips twitched; he shot High Dance an evaluative glance, reading the thoughts in his head as if they were written in the beads. “Ah, yes, you’re imagining the opportunities, aren’t you? You see what I’m about. Look beyond the chaos you suddenly hope to exploit after the Morning Star’s murder. Myself, I have no problem with your House ascending the heights of authority and prestige. Supplant Matron Wind’s lineage for all I care.

“But for the Clan Keeper’s quick wits, half of Cahokia should be abuzz with the
tonka’tzi
’s assassination. Each of the Houses should be accusing the other … everyone looking up at the Morning Star’s palace, wondering why the reincarnated god remains impotent to anticipate, let alone stop, the murders.”

Bead smacked his hard fist into his palm. “But instead of chaos, what do I get? A simple funeral, a soft, sad mourning for a suddenly dead
tonka’tzi
instead of a boiling turmoil … or a stewing accusation that would take but one more good kick to spill into riots!”

“There will be other chances,” High Dance replied evenly as the pieces began to fit together in his head.

Bead seemed to tremble, then took a deep breath, nodding. “Yes, other chances. I gambled on their arrogance, on their belief that they were untouchable. They are alerted now. As good as my wolves are, our enemies will take precautions with their security.”

High Dance watched the interplay of expressions, the quick eyes, as the man’s agitation built. He was whispering softly to himself, head slightly cocked, as if searching for distant voices.

“Your … wolves?”

Bead’s train of thought seemed to snap, and he glanced suspiciously at High Dance. “It’s all about living gods, isn’t it? The miraculous ability of the Four Winds Clan to call souls back from the Land of the Dead? It’s supposed to be in the blood! Something unique to the Four Winds Clan’s ancestry … perhaps going back to the Creation? Perhaps being descended from Morning Star himself? The Power of resurrection is key, High Chief. You understand that, don’t you?”

High Dance frowned. “The Morning Star’s life-soul has been rekindled in two different men now. Had Cut String’s assassination attempt—”

“Exactly!” Bead frowned again, raising a hand to stop the conversation. For a moment longer he scowled at the floor. “It was such a simple thing. Bobcat’s life-soul hadn’t been separated from his body for more than a day. What could have possibly gone wrong? The cleansing? The painting? Or was it the lust. It’s not like I gave in to the temptation…”

“What are you talking about?”

Bead snorted and began picking at his fingers. The dark matter in his cuticles was definitely dried blood.

“High Chief?” Bead’s sidelong glance fixed on High Dance. “You understand that you are inextricably involved now, don’t you?”

High Dance felt a chill hand tighten around his heart. “My goals remain unchanged, Bead. Or whatever your name is. But remember,
you
contacted
me.
Beyond that, you really don’t want to challenge either me or Evening Star House.” He bent his lips into a frigid smile, and added, “Doing so wouldn’t be conducive to either long life or attaining whatever goal it is that you’ve set yourself with all your blood and barely rubbed-off paint.”

Bead’s expression flickered, his lips twitching. He gave a slight nod. “We understand each other.” A pause. “When you return later this evening, you will find your eldest son Fast Thrower still worried. He’s a handsome young man. You must be extraordinarily proud. The black granite chunkey stone he went to sleep with two nights ago remains missing. You will find it in a jar of corn meal. The jar’s a burnished brownware. Under the third bench from the right, I believe.”

“That’s Brown Bear’s sleeping bench,” High Dance barely whispered. “He’s responsible for my family’s—”

“Their safety, yes. I know. You might want to replace him. Old Brown Bear Fivekiller sleeps too soundly these days. It’s terrifying enough that Fast Thrower might just ‘misplace’ his chunkey stone. At least he
awakened
the next morning to find it missing.”