People of the Silence (58 page)

Regret lined Sternlight’s face. “I see.” He held a hand out to Silk, inviting her to come closer. “Please tell me more about this. Perhaps I can help.”

Silk came forward, but clenched her fists at her sides, as though bracing for a fight. “My mother always told me that I had cousins here. That they left Turtle Village many summers ago.”

Sternlight appeared to ignore her defensive posture. “Do you know their names?”

“No, I—I never thought to ask. It didn’t occur to me that I might need to know one day. But now…” She gazed at Sternlight and her control wavered. She clenched her fists so hard that her knuckles went white. “Now, I do need to know about my family.
Badly.
”

“I understand,” he said softly. “Don’t worry, Silk. If they are here, we will find them. Shall we sit down and discuss this?”

“I wouldn’t want to bother you.” She’d lowered her voice.

Sternlight turned to Ironwood, “Will you join us?”

“I was thinking I might talk to Silk later. I have duties to perform.”

As if reading the strain on Ironwood’s face, Sternlight gently said, “I understand.”

Ironwood turned to Silk and her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, but enough. “Until later, Silk.”

*   *   *

Heart in her throat, Cornsilk watched Ironwood walk across the plaza. It had never occurred to her that she might be alone with Sternlight so soon after her arrival.

You can do this. Just be careful. You can’t afford a mistake now.
She gave him a careful scrutiny. His brown eyes seemed to see past all of her carefully built defenses and into her soul. The sudden sensation of vulnerability left her ready to run.

Sternlight said, “Why don’t we sit outside where we can watch the canyon? It’s very pretty today. Many of the first wildflowers are out.”

She jerked a nod. “I’d like that.”

Thirty-Five

Father Sun blazed over the canyon, bleaching the normally tan walls a rusty white and sucking the color from the sky. The pale sere blue sparkled with wind-blown dust. As Cornsilk followed Sternlight through the entry, she counted three whirl-winds careening drunkenly down the length of the canyon. Their swaying and bobbing looked playful, and for an instant, the sight eased her.

At dawn, when she and Poor Singer first peered over the rim of Straight Path Canyon, she’d been overwhelmed by how crowded it was. She’d never imagined the hugeness of the buildings, or the number of them. Fires had twinkled everywhere, glowing against the cliffs, dotting the bottomlands, lining the jagged wash, gleaming on top of the mesas. There had to be two or three thousand people living in this narrow canyon. They traded for almost everything, but where did they get their water in the summertime?

Sternlight turned right, his white shirt dancing in the breeze, and Cornsilk chanced a glimpse at Webworm, who still stood above the entry. He looked exactly as she remembered, square-jawed and lanky. His red shirt billowed in the wind. As they walked beneath him, Webworm frowned down and Cornsilk quickly lowered her head to watch her feet. He probably would not remember her, but she didn’t wish to find out.

Green grass fringed the base of the white wall, and a pavement of coral-colored sandstone pebbles crunched beneath her sandals.

Sternlight turned right again and led her around the western side of the half-moon-shaped building, then followed a dirt trail through a maze of toppled boulders. Stones the height of tall men scattered the base of the cliff. Yellow and blue wildflowers thrived in the cool shadows cast by the boulders, their petals trembling in the wind. Behind the town, the sheer cliff rose two hundred hands into the faded sky. Beautiful paintings and rock carvings adorned the cliff face, telling the story of the Great Warriors’ battle to save the First People after their emergence from the underworlds. Cornsilk’s mouth opened as she tipped her head back to follow the spirals, handprints, and sun symbols that climbed the expanse of rock.

Sternlight sat down with his back against the cool stone, looking at the stunted trees clinging to the steep cliff. The gnarled junipers survived in patches of dirt no bigger than a handsbreadth across. Cornsilk knew, from the junipers that grew around Lanceleaf Village, that the trees would never get any bigger. They would remain miniature, their branches twisting and curling more every sun cycle.

Sternlight tipped his stunningly handsome face to peer at Cornsilk. “You’ll find this a perfect place to talk. Father Sun keeps this spot warm all afternoon and long into the night.”

Cornsilk eased down a body-length from him, her mouth dry, heart thumping. “Have you sat out here at night?”

“Often.” An unearthly glow lit his brown eyes, as if one of the gods looked out at her. It made Cornsilk’s spine prickle.

Lifting a hand, Sternlight pointed to the western mesa. The stone glowed a white-gold in the slant of sunlight. “I can tell you every place that Sister Moon, Father Sun, and several of the Blessed Evening People set over that mesa during the cycle, and at exactly what hand of time.”

Cornsilk folded her legs under her and braced her shoulder against rock, facing him. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? As Sunwatcher? You chart the motions of Father Sun, and the other sky gods?”

“It’s part of what I do, yes.”

Cornsilk examined his smooth jaw, the curve of his lips, searching for some likeness between her face and his. The color of his eyes reminded her of a buffalo’s, very dark brown, almost black, and he had a perfect, straight nose.
Nothing.
Her heart sank. She had been hoping so hard … but she saw no family resemblance. She wanted to run away and hide. This man was a stranger. All of the speeches she’d rehearsed in her head, the precisely imagined meeting between them, slipped away into the impossible fantasies they had really been.

“I’m sorry,” she finally whispered, “I shouldn’t have bothered you about this. You are one of the First People and I am just Ant Clan.”

The crow’s feet around his eyes deepened. “You are Ant Clan?”

Cornsilk nodded.

Sternlight cocked his head. “I thought Turtle Village was Coyote Clan.”

Sick at her mistake, she frowned at the golden sand that mounded around her sandals. “Most were. My family was Ant Clan.”

“I see.” He seemed to let it go. He gazed between the boulders toward the steeply eroded banks of Straight Path Wash, where several slaves worked, watched over by a short burly man dressed in red. The kneeling women washed clothing. By pounding the wet cloth with stones, they loosened the dirt. They dipped the garment into a pot of warm soapy water and finally rinsed it in a pot of fresh water. Pine-pole drying racks fluttered with a rainbow of colors. The reds and blues appeared particularly bright in the noon sun.

“Tell me something about these relatives you seek.” Stern-light asked. “We have many Ant Clan masons here—the best in the world, I think.”

“My mother was a mason.” Cornsilk lovingly studied the massive white wall fifty hands away, wondering if her mother had laid the stones beneath the thin veneer of plaster. “She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry. There is so much grief these days.”

“Sh—she was killed … in the raid.” With sudden desperation, she cried, “I don’t know
why
my village was attacked, Sternlight! We had done nothing wrong! Offended no one! Why do you think raiders would come to kill us?” Realizing how she must sound, Cornsilk swallowed and lowered her voice. “We didn’t do anything wrong. I swear it.”

Sternlight touched her fingers. “It’s over. Let it go, and thank the thlatsinas that you escaped.”

“It—it was an accident.” She pulled her hand away from his and clenched it into a fist in her lap. “I should have died, too, but I hid in the brush on a hill above the village—no one saw me.”

“Then you must have seen everything.”

Cornsilk’s tears welled before she could stop them. She looked up miserably into that handsome face, and saw kindness in his eyes. “I watched them kill my friends, my family. I saw them destroy everything I had.”

Sternlight turned to sit cross-legged in front of her, his forearms propped on his knees, his long fingers steepled against his lips. For a time, he just looked at her. Then, in a comforting voice, he said, “You mustn’t be so sad. It would hurt your family very much if they knew you were suffering this way. I know you miss them. But you will see them again.”

“Are you certain?”

Sternlight gave her a confident smile. “Oh, yes, I am. I’ve been to the underworlds, and I’ve been to the skyworlds. I’ve walked among generations of our people. I
know
our relatives live.”

Cornsilk stared at a sprig of grass beside her right sandal, thinking. She and Poor Singer had crossed a shallow trickle of water just after dawn, and mud clotted her yucca sandals and clung to the laces. “What do people do there? In the afterlife?”

Sternlight used his finger to shove around a flake of plaster that had cracked from the wall and been carried by Wind Baby to this nest among the boulders. “I once met an old man in the Soot World. He was a weaver. During his life on earth, he’d been an average weaver. No one had either praised or insulted his work. But after a hundred sun cycles in the Soot World, his weavings were highly prized. People spoke about him in hushed voices. You see, he had different fibers to work with in the underworld. He could pull a strand of purple from the tailfeathers of the Rainbow Serpent, and weave it together with a strand of Brother Sky’s hair, and threads of the purest sweetest yellow, plucked from sage buttercup petals.” Sternlight’s eyes softened as though seeing those brilliant colors again. “I tell you truly, Silk, our families in the afterlives are very industrious and contented. They hunt and fish, and love each other, much as we do here.”

The warmth of his voice affected Cornsilk’s soul like cool salve on a fevered wound. With trepidation, she asked, “And the ghosts raid each other, don’t they? Just like here?”

Sternlight raised his eyes to a hawk that sailed out over the canyon rim. “Yes, I saw wars. But they were not fought for vengeance, Silk. It must be hard, after what you have seen, to understand that there is an element of sport to war. In the Soot World, wars were played as games, just like hoop-and-stick, or the dice game, or throwing bones. Whichever side wins feasts the other after the battle.”

Cornsilk pulled crusted mud from her sandal laces and dropped it onto the golden sand. “I hope the warriors who killed my family have to die over and over in the underworlds.”

“The Blessed Bear Thlatsina told me once that when a wicked warrior dies he is pursued across the face of the world by the Earth Spirits. They chase the warrior until they catch him and then may eat holes in his soul.”

Cornsilk wiped her eyes with her hand. She tried to visualize ghosts with holey souls, and the thought made her frown. “And what happens to bad warriors in the afterlife?”

“They are tormented by the other ghosts who live there. The ghosts can tell, you see, from the holes in the warrior’s soul, that he killed for spite, not out of duty, and they hound and ostracize him until he is reborn.”

Cornsilk had been dreaming about killing Webworm and Gnat. The story gave her hope that if she failed, she might have another chance in a future life. “I hope those warriors are reborn as mosquitoes on my arm.”

“Well”—Sternlight scratched his cheek thoughtfully—“everyone has their own idea of torture. I’d wish them reborn as bushy-tailed wood rats. Hunted by everything alive. Always scurrying in terror.”

Cornsilk gave him a sidelong glance. “Thanks for the suggestion.”

He smiled.

“Sternlight? You’re being very kind to me, but I know you are the greatest priest alive, and—”

“I am?”

“Everybody says so.”

“People say lots of things.” He picked at a loose thread in the sleeve of his white ritual shirt, apparently uneasy with the praise.

Cornsilk hesitated for an uncomfortably long time, then said, “May I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Well, it’s”—she licked her dry lips—“it’s an awkward question.”

“I’ve heard awkward questions before.”

She filled her lungs, in case she never got to take another breath. “Is it … true that when you were an infant all you had to do was point at birds and they would fall dead from the skies?”

Sternlight’s head came up suddenly. After a moment, a soft laugh shook his shoulders. “That’s one I haven’t heard—and I thought I knew all the stories.”

“You mean, it isn’t true?”

Against the towering golden cliff, his wind-blown hair appeared as black as a raven’s wings. “I’m afraid not. Power … well,
my
Power doesn’t work that way. I could speak to the bird in its own language and ask it to fall to the earth and pretend to be dead. The bird might grant my request. But in the end, it would open its bright eyes and fly away, just as alive as before.”

His openness had lent her courage. Suddenly very curious, she asked, “But there are witches who can kill with a glance, or a word—aren’t there?”

A haunted look entered Sternlight’s eyes. “Yes, there are.”

“How do they do that?”

He drew up one knee and laced his fingers around it. “In all honesty, I don’t know. Power is like a finely woven blanket where the warp is made up of strands of light and the weft is darkness. I’ve heard that witches boast they can pull out all the dark strands and weave the malignant Power around themselves like a cape of shadows.”

Fascinated, Cornsilk asked, “Is that why they work at night? Because they can be invisible in their dark capes?”

“Maybe. Who can say? Witches are very clever.”

Cornsilk scooped a handful of the warm sand and let it trickle through her fingers.

They sat in silence for a time, listening to the wind whimper around the boulders and rustle the wildflowers. As Father Sun descended in the west, shadows swelled by the rocks and stretched toward them, cool and dark.

“Did you understand what Dune was trying to tell you in the kiva? About your soul?”

Cornsilk dusted off her sandy hands. “Some of it. Poor Singer told me right after we met that I had a blue sky soul.” She drew a halo around her torso. “He said he could see it glowing around me.”