People of the Morning Star (48 page)

For a moment she fixed her bloodshot and fragile eyes on his. “And why am I wasting my time looking at some pus-rotted canoe?”

“If you’re carrying a captured bound-and-gagged Tula from River Mounds to the Keeper’s palace, and you know that the scorpion is watching, can you think of a better way to transport him here in secret than hidden inside a canoe?”

“A Tula, you say?” She seemed numb.

“He’s in the house. I admit, he’s a little worse for wear. I think he can still talk. But he only speaks Caddo. I need good old War Claw, here, to slip off and let that Yellow Star war second know that we need him to
carefully
and
unobtrusively
make his way here on some pretext that won’t get him killed.”

“Do it,” she ordered War Claw. “And after I look at this canoe—”

“And ooh and ah over it.”

“And ooh and ah over it.” She hesitated, glancing at Black Swallow and his ruffians. “Why am I giving valuable Trade to Black Swallow and … Isn’t he the one who’s fingers I—”

“We’re referring to that as an unfortunate misunderstanding,” Seven Skull Shield told her pointedly. “One that we all wish to, um, make amends for.”

She narrowed a hard eye at him, worked her jaws, and hissed some curse under her breath. “He and his dark-shadow stranglers had better be worth it.”

Seven Skull Shield gave her a flat-lipped smile, then said, “Lady, had it been anybody but me”—he jerked a thumb at Black Swallow and the rest—“and without them, our scorpion would have covered his tracks completely, stymied you again, and denied us even this advantage.”

“But you got one?” she asked, finally realizing what it might mean.

“I got one. But I learned something in the process.”

“What?”

“I learned just how smart and cunning your scorpion beast is.”

“I think we’ve been underestimating him all along,” she agreed sadly. “Tell me? Do you think we can win?”

“After yesterday? I don’t know, Keeper. I really don’t know.”

Forty-three

As Night Shadow Star stared into the depths of the well pot, she could feel Sister Datura’s first gentle caress as it flitted lightly around her souls.

Beneath the reflective surface, the black water shimmered and stirred. Invisible threads of Power undulated in the depths. Fragments of images formed then turned liquid and faded. Any perception of time dwindled into the eternal now. Subtle currents drew her down, wafting her first this way and then the other.

Sister Datura’s embracing arms tightened as she swayed in time with Night Shadow Star’s souls. Twirling slowly, they began the dance, bobbing and dipping, rising and whirling in the perpetual descent into iridescent midnight. Matching each beat of her heart, the darkness pulsed. With the drawing of a breath, it seemed to expand, to fill the universe, only to contract as she exhaled. The endless depths had become a living presence that surrounded and flowed through her.

The fragments of images, sights, faces, visions of the past, snatches of conversation, broken laughter, shattered weeping, spun themselves from nothingness, only to vanish without coherence.…

She felt herself settle, rocking slightly on some soft surface resembling sandy mud. Though in darkness, she had vague impressions of being at a junction. Whichever direction she looked, it was to see yet another shadowy cave vanishing into obscurity.

Something moved to her right, and an impossibly huge snapping turtle rose from the mud. As it lifted its bulk, streamers of sand flowed from the beast’s shell to ripple and flow in patterns. Moss and silt clung to the arching carapace. The thing’s plated head, with its hard angles, extended to fix her with questioning eyes, the round pupils expanding in black interest.

“He’ll be coming.” As it spoke the turtle’s sharp jaws barely moved. The great head drifted toward her, moss waving on the beast’s blocky shell. She shivered in fear as the two nostrils at the point of its snout took her scent.

“You’re still alive,” Snapping Turtle noted, slightly surprised.

Night Shadow Star tried to swallow, only to choke. Sister Datura’s arms tightened around her, squeezing with each terrified beat of her heart.

“Ah.” Snapping Turtle’s head cocked slightly. “You dance with Power. But it does not calm your fears. Were you summoned here?”

“No.”

Snapping Turtle lifted his head slightly, turning it to stare closely at her with one eye. “Courageous … to come on your own. Walk unprotected into
his
domain.” A pause. “Tell me, Lady of Cahokia, did the Water Panther choose well? Are you the one we need? You? Barely more than a spoiled child, weeping and heartbroken over a too-soon-dead husband? Courageous, yes, but drowning in self-pity, grief, and undirected rage. Why are you even here? Why not simply walk out of your splendid palace and surrender yourself to the inevitable? An abomination hunts you, and he will get you in the end.”

Snapping Turtle’s jaws gaped like a sick grin. “Capture would be excruciating, but the pain would be over in a day or two. The woman you are now—possessed by Spirits, hearing voices, afraid, and insecure—might live what? Another fifty or sixty summers? And all of it in slow pain and mindless terror, forever convinced that those around you are plotting, seeking to destroy you. As the years pass, you’ll fall deeper and deeper into despair and self-inflicted misery. The voices will grow louder, and you’ll beg for Piasa to end it once and for all.”

He snapped his jaws like shears. “But by then, you’ll be so pathetic he’ll turn away, unwilling to lower himself even to the point of sullying his talons with the stroke it would take to end your pathetic life.”

Night Shadow Star whimpered, curling in on herself as Sister Datura’s arms wound around her like vines of light.

The voice came from behind her. “Snapping Turtle always expects the worst.”

Night Shadow Star turned, heart hammering; a giant coiling serpent filled the cave behind her. How could such an enormous creature have crept up so soundlessly? She’d felt not a tremor, nor so much as a whisper of its presence. The snake—its body thick as a canoe and as long as a chunkey court—had a head the size of a small boulder. Glassy scarlet antlers rose from the beast’s shimmering head; wings, graced with barred-and-spotted feathers, sprouted from the center of its back. The scales gleamed metallically, glowing with every color of the rainbow. Between the diamond-hatched patterns running down its body, the black circles on its sides seemed to be depthless, as if they were portals into eternity. Rattles the size of pumpkins tipped the mighty beast’s tail. But most terrifying of all were the crystalline eyes that fixed on her. She flinched when the forked tongue flicked in and out.

Night Shadow Star gasped, backing away until she felt Snapping Turtle’s wedge of a nose against her back. The great turtle hissed in irritation.

“Horned Serpent,” she whispered, a coldness settling in her bones.

In the pantheon of the Underworld, Piasa, the Water Panther, and Horned Serpent, the winged snake, were adversaries. Governed only by First Woman, who dreamed the world from her cave beneath the World Tree’s roots, the two Spirit beasts constantly vied with each other for dominance.

“You carry Piasa’s stink, woman.” Horned Serpent inspected her with crystal eyes the size of plates, each surrounded by the three-forked design of the underworld. “Four Winds Clan. What’s left of the Sky Moiety, victors in the great civil wars fought for control of Cahokia. And you’ve brought us to this.”

“I smell ignorance inside her.” Snapping Turtle spoke from just behind Night Shadow Star’s head. “She truly doesn’t know.”

“Know what?” Night Shadow Star whimpered as Sister Datura’s grasp tightened in time to her fear.

Horned Serpent replied, “That you have done this to our world. Your Four Winds Clan. And your family in particular. You have meddled in what you should never have contemplated. You have dared to attempt, and succeeded in a thing that should have horrified you. You have rent the world asunder and changed everything.”

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, fear running bright through her.

Horned Serpent hissed the words. “Spirit possession runs in the Four Winds Clan. But most particularly in your lineage. The mad evil of Tharon? That perversion came of drinking galena tea. But you and your family? The madness lies in the blood, passed from one generation to the next. It infects the male seed and lurks in the wombs of the women. The brilliance that allowed Black Tail to overthrow Petaga and defeat the Dreamer Lichen? It was driven by the Spirit voices that whispered between his souls. They drove him to attempt the impossible and recall the Morning Star’s souls from the Sky World.

“The voices skipped your father’s generation, leaving Red Warrior, your aunts and uncle only the cunning brilliance. But it was reborn in you and your brothers with a vengeance. You hear voices from a world not your own, and it incites you to madness.”

“And Lace and Sun Wing?”

Horned Serpent’s crystalline eyes glowed from within. “Your sisters do not concern us.”

She saw a flicker from the corner of her eye, felt Piasa’s presence as what seemed a blur materialized into the Water Panther. His wings spread wide and radiated a bluish light. Hard yellow eyes fixed on hers, the whiskers quivering as he flexed his eagle-taloned feet. The snake’s tail lashed back and forth in either irritation or threat. A cerulean ripple ran across the Spirit beast’s fur as he bared white curving fangs in a feline snarl.

“We’ve done her no harm,” Snapping Turtle said. “Yet.”

Piasa arched his back, head cocked. “Then you understand her value?”

“If she’s the one.” Horned Serpent’s head remained motionless while his body slipped sideways as if in preparation to strike.

“She’s broken,” Snapping Turtle insisted. “A whimpering, grieving shell. She couldn’t even endure her husband’s death without sending her souls into our realm in search of him. How do you expect her to find enough courage to defeat the abomination?”

Horned Serpent had fixed his crystalline eyes on Piasa; his tongue flicked out like a forked black whip, before he said, “She reeks of pity and privilege. Her Spirit possession will lead her to self-inflicted misery in the end. She knows this … knows she’s different. Nor can she bear the fact that she shattered like a dropped pot, ran to the women’s house, and afterward, married the only man she knew would never question the voices, or the events of that day. Look into her soul, Piasa. She’s hidden the memory of what they did to her, covered it over as if it were a mold-ridden seed cache that could be sealed away with a layer of hard-packed clay.”

Piasa stepped close, his terrible yellow eyes burning into Night Shadow Star’s. “You know who the abomination is, don’t you? I can see the cracks in your souls. Tendrils of memory from that day are filtering through you. It’s been bubbling up in your dreams. Appearing as nightmares that you refuse to believe to be real.”

She bowed her head, wrapping her arms over her breasts. “I … I…”

The images came reeling up, memories, the physical sensation of hands on her body, of his eyes. That was the worst. His eyes seemed to expand, filling the entire world as hungry hands slipped along her skin. Then came the feel of soft fur beneath her back. His weight slammed down, his knee like a wedge between her legs.

His eyes became the universe. His black pupils burned into her, violating, piercing, penetrating her shivering souls.…

She opened her mouth, but no scream came from her paralyzed lungs.

Forty-four

Blue Heron yawned and tried to collect her sleep-muddled thoughts. Her dreams had been nightmares, and in them she kept discovering Lace’s mutilated body pinned to the wall of a filthy hut, swarming with flies and crawling with maggots. She pinched her eyes shut in an attempt to force the details from her souls.

She sat in her bed, a blanket around her hips. The cup of black drink Blue Heron cradled in her hands sent warmth through her stiff fingers. Her cup was a traditional Cahokian design, the handle sticking out from the side like a yearling buffalo bull’s horn. An image of the sun decorated the outside.