People of the Silence (86 page)

“Did Swallowtail believe I was the fulfillment of the prophecies? I never knew him very well.”

“I can’t say. But I do know he hated Snake Head. Swallowtail would have done anything to bring Snake Head down and put someone else in his place. That poor boy watched his mother abused over and over, and because he was a slave there was nothing he could do about it. It wounded him deeply. As a child, Swallowtail used to beg me to tell him that I was his father. Of course, I couldn’t.”

“Do you think Snake Head was his father?”

Creeper shrugged. “Mourning Dove would never tell me, but the boy looked like Snake Head. He had the same tall body and dark eyes, and I know that Snake Head gave her permission to bear the child. I just assumed…”

Creeper’s voice faded as he emptied Swallowtail’s sack onto the floor. Several small bags rolled out, then a fine obsidian blade, the one he used for butchering, a beautiful jet figurine, and a cord-wrapped tube of fabric. “What a strange collection.”

Webworm crouched opposite Creeper and frowned down at the figurine. “He must have stolen that.” As he picked up the exquisite jet, his brows arched. “This is such fine workmanship, I’m sure it comes from the Hohokam.”

“Swallowtail did pester the Traders who came through from that region. He had a curious obsession with Hohokam stonework, but he could never have purchased such an item. You must be right. He stole it.”

Creeper loosened the ties on one of the small bags and smelled it. “Mugwort leaves. What’s in that one close to you?”

Webworm lifted the small red bag and took a good sniff. His nose wrinkled. “Goldenweed. These are Healing herbs. And good quality. Expensive.”

Creeper picked up the cord-wrapped tube of fabric. “I wonder what this is?”

He untied the knot and removed the cord. When he shook the fabric pack out, he noticed that four black spirals decorated the bottom. “I don’t understand. Only women from the Red Lacewing family are allowed to use this symbol. I wonder where—”

“It can’t be!” Webworm sank to the floor. His square-jawed face went pale; he held out his hand. “Give it to me.”

Creeper handed him the pack.

Webworm turned it over and over, studying the weave of the cotton thread, the yucca ties, the four perfect black spirals. Tears beaded his lashes. He lowered the pack to his lap. “This is Cloud Playing’s pack, Creeper. She always carried it when she went on the Healing trips with her mother.…” Web-worm’s gaze went to the small bags of herbs, and his lips parted with words that wouldn’t come. Finally, he whispered, “Blessed gods.”

A tingling numbness ran through Creeper. “You mean, you think … Night Sun said Cloud Playing was bringing her pack, but … no, Webworm, I can’t believe it! Swallowtail was a good boy! I sat with him around supper many times. I think I would know if a murderer—”

“Would you?” Misery lined Webworm’s face. “You said he hated Snake Head, that Swallowtail wanted to destroy him. He may not have believed in the Mogollon prophecies, but it didn’t take a genius to know that if you killed Snake Head’s female relatives, he’d be toppled as the Blessed Sun.”

“Then why didn’t he try to kill Night Sun?”

“Perhaps he thought she was out of the way when Snake Head imprisoned her, or that she was so old she would die naturally soon enough and save him the trouble.”

“But Swallowtail was gone when Cloud Playing was killed,” Creeper insisted. “I remember because I bid him good-bye myself. I packed food for him, and—”

“And he came back two days late, didn’t he? That’s what I heard. Who’s to say that he didn’t hide down in the wash for a couple of days, waiting for her? Maybe even track her from Deer Mother Villager?”

“But she was killed with a bow and arrows! Swallowtail had no such weapons!”

Webworm tenderly smoothed his hand over the wrinkled pack. The copper bells on his shirt clinked. “The boy had access to stone tools. He could have refashioned any of them into arrow points, and making a crude bow requires only a piece of wood and a string.” Webworm hesitated. “We must decide what to do about this, Creeper.”

Creeper prodded the fine jet figurine with his fingertip while he thought. It resembled the curious witch pellet that Mourning Dove had seen Lark spit up—some sort of a stylized serpent. Creeper remembered laughter and joy, and many afternoons spent soothing Swallowtail after Mourning Dove returned from a brutal coupling with Snake Head. The boy had gazed at his mother’s bruises, at the blood on her clothing, an insane rage behind his eyes. Swallowtail
had
been crazy enough to kill. But did he have the cunning to destroy Snake Head and his family from the inside out? Perhaps Mourning Dove’s obsession with the prophecies, with assuring that Webworm became the Blessed Sun, had given Swallowtail the idea.

Creeper’s blood turned to ice. Could Creeper have lived and loved the boy for so long and not had the slightest notion of how his soul worked?

“Where is Featherstone?”

Webworm gestured toward the door. “She’s in her old chambers. I was helping her pack. She was talking about Night Sun and how much she missed her, and Mother just drifted off. You know how she is. I spread a blanket over her and thought I’d go back and check in half a hand of time.”

“Webworm, this news will be very hard on Featherstone. She loved Cloud Playing. If it were true that Mourning Dove’s son was the one…” His voice tightened. “I think Featherstone has forgotten all about Cloud Playing’s death. I’m not sure what such knowledge will do to her.”

Webworm carefully rerolled the pack and tied it with the cord. “You mean it might be best to keep this to ourselves?”

“There’s nothing we can do about it anyway. Is there?”

Webworm cheeks reddened, then anger, bright and hot, lit his eyes. “Not at this instant, but may the gods help that boy if I ever have a chance to make war on the Tower Builders.”

Creeper lowered his gaze to the scatter of precious tools and herbs. His heart thumped a slow steady cadence. “I pray with all my heart that Mourning Dove is gone when you do.”

Eighth Day

I lie on my back staring up at the swaying Ponderosa pine branches above me. The needles are long and curved. Moonlight coats them, turning them a ghostly silver. Through the filigree of twigs, the Evening People shine.

My body has gone numb. My soul is floating, barely tied to my flesh.

I am ready, I think. I did not feel ready until tonight, but I have done what I can to cleanse and purify my heart. Either she will accept my offering now, or she never will.

I only know that I must try.

I close my eyes, and listen to the wind soughing through the pines. The branches creak and groan. The air smells sweet with the scent of mountain wildflowers. I fill my lungs and hold it for as long as I can, then slowly let the breath out. I am tired, very tired … one last thing to do.

*   *   *

The Dream stole Poor Singer’s soul away.

He ran as Coyote, his padded feet parting the newly green spring grass and the first delicate wildflowers. From this height, he could see across the infinity of dark mountains that layered the distances. Each range etched the horizon in a lighter shade of hazy blue-gray. Behind him, buttes and mesas carved the lowlands. Ahead of him, jagged peaks punctured the bellies of the Cloud People. His breath puffed whitely. As he bounded higher, the air grew colder, burning his lungs.

He crested the hilltop and loped down a steep slope, scattering gravel and ducking under deadfall. He wiggled through a thicket of brush, leaped a narrow brook, and bounded up the next slope, his paws silent on the soft green grasses. His ability to see in the darkness amazed him. Mice darted through the grass in the meadows, and packrats skittered in the jumble of rocky outcrops. Their sight and scent stirred hunger in his empty belly.

He loped through a patch of wildflowers so tall they brushed his golden muzzle, then ran alongside a grove of aspen trees. Their white trunks glowed in the starlight. Eyes glinted from the densest part of the forest. He tipped his nose and smelled the air.
Elk.
Three of them: two cows and a calf. They watched him pass, then calmly went back to foraging.

The first sliver of Sister Moon’s face blazed over the shining peaks. Poor Singer hurried.

Racing up an icy slope, paws slipping, he stood on a windy knoll and slitted his eyes against the freezing gale. His fur ruffled up and down his back. He searched the jagged snow-covered peaks, until he thought he knew the right one, then headed for it.

Why doesn’t this look familiar? I know these are the right mountains, but this isn’t the trail I followed with my father. Am I lost?

He swerved around a lightning-struck stump and loped higher up the slick side of the mountain, his eyes on the lofty summit. He didn’t see the cave.…

Panic threaded his muscles, turning them shaky, making his breath come in shallow gasps.
This has to be the way. It has to.

Snow had gathered in the fur of his paws and melted to clumps of ice that spread his toes until they hurt, but he refused to take the time to chew them out.

Poor Singer bulled through a snowdrift taller than his head, leaping and struggling to climb the steep incline. After the long days without food, he could feel what little strength he had draining away, being devoured by his trembling muscles. When he clawed his way up, he stood on a rocky ledge and shook snow from his coat. A haze of glittering white surrounded him. As it cleared, he looked up.

A tingle eddied through his veins. This
was
the peak. He could not be mistaken about that. It looked like an ice spear, white and jagged.

Poor Singer scrambled up the rocky ledge, and when he struck a shallow meadow, he ran with all his heart, his pink tongue dangling from the corner of his mouth. His muscles prickled now, as if starved for blood, but he charged up the last slope. Above him, the peak turned to solid rock. Snow filled every crevice, and a fog of windblown ice crystals haloed the summit.

There!

He almost missed it. Since the last time he’d been here, the creeping barberry bushes had grown up, covering half the entry—or disguising it. The holly-shaped leaves reflected the starlight with blinding intensity. No wonder he hadn’t seen the dark hole. Now it blended with the snowy slope.

Poor Singer shouldered through the bramble, his fur catching and tugging painfully. He left a trail of golden tufts on the branches. This time the narrow tunnel was pitch-black and foreboding.

He walked deeper, then broke into a trot, racing down the slope, calling, “Keeper of the Tortoise Bundle? Where are you? I used to be Buckthorn, of the Coyote Clan. I—”

“I know who you are, Poor Singer.”

Her voice came from everywhere, echoing off the walls, resonating in his soul.

Poor Singer licked his muzzle nervously and slowed to a walk. The air grew warmer, and he could hear the plopping of water as it dripped into the dark pool below. He edged forward, one breath at a time, his claws tapping the moist stone, creating a staccato like arrows upon rock.

His padded paws slipped into the water-filled hollows in the floor, soaking his feet, melting the ice between his toes. The cave smelled curious. He knew that odor; it clung to tumbled stone walls and dusty crevice burials: the scent of ancient destruction.

“Where are you?”

“Come closer. I’m here. Down here.”

Poor Singer edged forward, searching the blackness. The
plop, plop
of water grew louder. How close was he to the pool? He couldn’t be more than—

Like an explosion, silver light poured through the entrance, and the cave burst into blinding waves of blue flame. He collapsed on his haunches. Brilliant turquoise sparks tumbled and winked, surging across the roof and flowing down the walls to coat the floor of the cave. The wondrous pool turned luminous. Poor Singer focused on it, trying to still his hammering heart. The water looked so calm. In the midst of this blaze, it provided the single still point. Had he noticed that last time? Or had he been so stunned that fear had devoured his senses?

He saw her.

She walked from a hidden fissure in the rear of the cave, her long black hair draping around her, the folds of her red dress shining with a purple hue. Poor Singer’s whiskers quivered in awe. So … there was another chamber, the entrance perfectly hidden by the seamless appearance of the turquoise walls. She followed a narrow path around the curve of the pool and came to stand over him, her midnight eyes wide, her gaze penetrating. The fire in the cave surrounded her like a effervescent halo.

“What have you to offer me?”

Poor Singer inhaled a breath of the warm, damp air. “Myself.”

“In exchange for what?”

“The life of a man called Ironwood.”

“Your grandfather wishes to kill him?”
she asked as she gracefully walked to the opposite side of the narrow tunnel and sat down, her back against the stone. The conflagration had turned so blinding Poor Singer had to slit his eyes and tip his muzzle to see her.

Was she human? Or a god? “Yes, and I—I can’t let that happen.”

Her gaze bored into him.
“You would give up Cornsilk? You would sacrifice her happiness as well as your own?”

Poor Singer’s forelegs had started to shake so badly, he had to lie down on the warm floor. “I love her, Keeper. I love her very much, but she is young. She will find another.”

The Keeper just stared at him.
“Why would you give up your life for a man you barely know?”

Poor Singer swallowed down his tight throat. “I just … I can’t see any more of them die. Please. This isn’t their fault. Don’t you understand? If I hadn’t been born, none of this would have happened! But I was. And these things have happened because of me. This is
my
responsibility!”

“Do you know how many innocent men and women Ironwood has killed? How many children he has taken as slaves? What makes you think his life is worth more than yours? Are you guilty of any of these crimes?”