The People of the Black Sun (18 page)

Zateri waited for her to continue. When she didn't, Zateri said, “Gwinodje?”

Gwinodje had been staring at her fingers, lacing and unlacing them in her lap. She and Zateri were both small-boned and childlike. “I think Inawa, the leader of my lineage, must be deeply troubled. She will suspect foul play on Atotarho's part. I imagine she is wondering what kind of deal was struck between Kelek and Atotarho to accomplish the task. Everyone knows the Wolf Clan is the largest and most powerful clan in the nation. By all rights, a woman from one of our lineages should have ascended to the High Matronship.”

Zateri's short black hair hung at chin level, shining at the corners of her vision. “Since Yi and Inawa both live in Atotarho Village, what sort of repercussions have there been?”

Kwahseti snorted. “Repercussions? I imagine Yi is on a rampage, organizing our lineage for a political campaign to overturn Kelek's ascension. Things must be getting ugly between the clans.”

Zateri looked across the fire.

Gwinodje's thin heart-shaped face tensed. She thought about it, before quietly answering, “Zateri, you know that Inawa objected heartily to having you follow your grandmother. She knew that if your grandmother did not appoint you, her own lineage would assume the leadership of the Wolf Clan. Inawa would have become High Matron of the nation. She must be stalking about like a stiff-legged dog. In fact, I imagine her indignation enlivens every conversation in Atotarho Village.”

Zateri took a moment to glance at Thona and Waswanosh, judging the war chiefs' expressions. Both appeared to be analyzing the information.

Zateri said, “As we are all aware, my appointment as High Matron of our faction of the Hills People is temporary. Once we have melded our villages with Canassatego Village, every ohwachira will have a chance to speak with its members about who they wish for High Matron. Until then I plan to—”

“But, Mother,” Kahn-Tineta said with a sleepy yawn and opened her eyes. She rolled over in Hiyawento's arms to stare at the matrons' council.

Zateri turned to look at her daughter. Black tangles framed her pretty young face. “My daughter, we are in council. Perhaps your question could wait—”

“But, Mother, Great Grandmother wanted you to be High Matron.” Kahn-Tineta sat up, rubbed her eyes. “She told me.”

Zateri started to dismiss the suggestion, but Kwahseti held up a hand. “Wait. I wish to hear this story. When did your great grandmother tell you this?”

Zateri sighed, and turned around to face her daughter. Hiyawento's gaze focused on Kahn-Tineta with eagle-sharpness.

Kahn-Tineta must have felt the weight of the council's attention. She tucked a finger into the corner of her mouth, and slurred, “The day she died. I was lying beside her on her shleeping bench while she shtroked my hair, and said she was going to tell me a secret that I couldn't tell anyone.”

Gwinodje and Kwahseti glanced at each other.

Gwinodje calmly asked, “We need to know her exact words, Kahn-Tineta. Do you understand what that means? Her
exact
words.”

Kahn-Tineta nodded. She removed her finger from her mouth to say, “Grandmother hugged me very tightly, and said, ‘Can I tell you a secret?' I said, ‘What is it?' and she said, ‘I'm going to name your mother as Matron of the Wolf Clan when she returns, but you mustn't tell anyone.”

Kwahseti said, “And you've been a very good girl, because you haven't, have you?”

Zateri understood Kwahseti's meaning. If the event truly had occurred, why hadn't Kahn-Tineta told them such important news?

“No, Matron Kwahseti,” Kahn-Tineta answered. “Great Grandmother asked me if I could keep her words locked in my heart until it was announced.” Kahn-Tineta looked around, meeting each person's eyes. “That's why I haven't said anything. I'm good at keeping secrets … and it hasn't been announced … has it?”

Kwahseti replied, “No, dear girl, because your great grandmother left for the Land of the Dead before she could tell anyone. What else did she say?”

Kahn-Tineta's eyes narrowed slightly, as though something had occurred to her but she wasn't certain she should say it. She glanced up hesitantly at Hiyawento.

He gently said, “It's all right, Kahn-Tineta. You can tell us.”

Kahn-Tineta licked her lips and swallowed. “I told great grandmother that I wasn't sure Mother wished to be High Matron.”

Zateri bowed her head. “What did she say to that?”

“Oh, she said, ‘That's not a surprise. No one does.' Then she poked me in the chest with her finger”—Kahn Tineta rubbed the spot—“and said, ‘You remember I said that. Someday you will have to make the choice of whether or not to lead your people. It is an overwhelming responsibility. But I suspect in the end you will choose to place the welfare of the Hills nation above your own. You will shoulder the burden for the nation's sake. Just as your mother will.'”

Zateri's throat suddenly ached with emotion. “Was that all she said?”

Kahn-Tineta crossed her legs in Hiyawento's lap and shook one moccasin while she frowned at the swirls of blue smoke gliding above her. “No. I told her I wasn't so sure you would because Father didn't wish to move to Atotarho Village, because he hated Grandfather Atotarho.”

At the mention of Atotarho's name, Hiyawento's arm muscles tightened as though fit to burst through his shirt. He frowned down at his daughter. “Kahn-Tineta, look at me.”

The girl looked up but cringed at his stern expression.

“Are you telling the truth?”

“Yes, Father!” she cried indignantly. “I wouldn't lie about this!”

He glared at her for a few moments, until he'd satisfied himself. “All right. Go on. What else did your great grandmother say?”

“She told me a story,” Kahn-Tineta replied weakly, as though her father's expression made her wish she hadn't said anything at all.

“What story?”

Kahn-Tineta tucked her finger in her mouth again, sucking it for a time to soothe her fears, before saying, “She told me that my great-great-great grandmother used to have a saying. She said that for every one person hacking at the roots of hatred, there were thousands swinging in its branches, and I'd better not do that or I'd fall and break my neck. Great Grandmother told me the only way to survive in this world was to make sure I was the one with the hatchet.” Around her finger, Kahn-Tineta slurred, “I liked that shtory.”

Gwinodje blinked thoughtfully and turned to Zateri. “That sounds very much like something your grandmother would have said, Zateri.”

“Yes,” she smiled sadly. “Grandmother told me that same story when I was a child. I loved it, too.”

Below them, stretched across the hillside, warriors began rising, dusting off their clothing, and preparing to leave. Sounds of weapons clattering replaced the low drone of conversation.

Thona rose to his feet to stand like a scarred giant behind Kwahseti, waiting to be recognized.

Zateri looked up at him. “Please ask your question, War Chief Thona.”

Thona's eyes narrowed. He turned first to Hiyawento, then to Waswanosh, as though silently asking what they thought, before he gazed at Zateri with hard eyes. “High Matron, no child could make up such words. We all agree upon that, yes?”

Hiyawento said, “Yes.”

Nods went round the fire.

Thona continued, “If your daughter speaks the truth, as we all suspect, you have been robbed of your rightful position in this nation.”

Waswanosh hesitated, rubbing his chin while he considered. “I agree, High Matron.”

“You must do something about this crime,” Thona said.

Waswanosh nodded. “You can't just stand by and allow this to happen. Despite the fact that we have the largest and most powerful clan in the nation, it will make us look like feeble fools.”

Zateri turned around to look at Hiyawento. He seemed to be glaring at the ground, but he was seeing something at a great distance, perhaps in the future, or the past. Kahn-Tineta had leaned her head against his broad chest and continued to suck her finger while she glanced around at the adults.

“Hiyawento?”

He looked up with fiery eyes, then they slowly cleared as he returned to the here and now. In a powerful voice, he said, “This only makes a difference if you've decided that our nation should be reunited. If we plan to remain as a separate nation, it should be of no concern to us whom the Old Hills People choose as their High Matron. We must define what our ‘nation' is. Are we the New People of the Hills or not?”

Hisses passed around the fire, Gwinodje shaking her head at something Kwahseti whispered. Thona and Waswanosh stared at Hiyawento with pensive eyes, deep in thought. Finally, Thona nodded in agreement.

Hiyawento said, “Every action we take in the next few days depends upon that decision. If we wish to reunite we cannot, must not, attack our relatives in any of the Hills villages.”

“But what if they attack us?” Waswanosh asked.

“We defend ourselves, but we do not send out warriors to attack them.”

Thona shifted. As his teeth ground, the crisscrossing scars on his face moved like a tangle of white worms. “I do not wish to sit by and allow our villagers to be relentlessly attacked while we bide our time in the hopes that the new High Matron, Kelek, will see the wisdom of reuniting our peoples.”

Zateri noted that he'd said “peoples” not “people.” Thona had already been thinking along the same lines as Hiyawento, assuming that the separation into two nations was inevitable. A similar thing had happened generations ago among the People of the Dawnland. One faction had split off and called themselves the People Who Separated.

Zateri said, “Kwahseti, your thoughts on this?”

Kwahseti ran a hand through her gray hair, and shook her head. “I would hear Gwinodje's thoughts first.”

Zateri turned to Gwinodje. As all eyes fixed on her, Gwinodje blinked and frowned at the flickering fire.

She said, “I confess that, after Atotarho is dead, I would like to see our peoples become one nation again. We all have relatives scattered throughout the other Hills villages. Frankly, I don't wish to consider them my enemy forever.”

Zateri nodded, and turned back to Kwahseti. “And you?”

Kwahseti toyed with the cup in her hands. “There is another possibility. If we remain as two nations, and Sky Messenger can create a Peace Alliance between all our peoples, we will still be able to see our relatives—”

“Forgive me for interrupting, Matron,” Thona said. “But that is a very big ‘if.' I do not believe we should base our decisions upon that possibility. A Peace Alliance is, in my thoughts, the least likely outcome of this war.”

“Yes, probably,” Kwahseti exhaled the words. “But in my heart, it is what I most hope for, and what I am willing to risk almost everything for. What of you, Zateri?”

Zateri's brow lined. Her gaze went around the fire, studying the tense expressions. At last, she looked at Hiyawento. “My husband?”

Hiyawento seemed to think about it for a time, then he set Kahn-Tineta on the ground, and rose to his feet. As he straightened to his full height, his beaked face went hard. His soft words were powerful, striking at the heart like knives: “Sky Messenger's vision
will
come to pass. Elder Brother Sun will cover his face with the soot of the dying world and everything we love will die … unless we do something to stop it. Peace is not an option. It's a necessity for survival.”

Like the pause after an indrawn breath, a curious silence held them. Wind gusted through their camp, scattered the embers in the fire, and whipped the flames into crackling fury.

When it died down, Thona said, “Peace is a comforting notion. I understand. However, at this very instant Atotarho is planning to wipe our faction of the Hills People from the face of Great Grandmother Earth. If we do not strike him first, that is exactly what's going to happen. Perhaps, peace can wait a little longer.”

“No,” Zateri said firmly. “I, like my husband and Sky Messenger, believe peace is our only hope.”

Gwinodje and Kwahseti spoke softly again, then Gwinodje turned. “Yes, Zateri, but how do we accomplish it before our villages are annihilated?”

She sat for some time on the mat before the fire that overlooked the long slope to the west, her shell bracelets flashing in the sunlight that fell through the swaying branches. A queer rhythm pulsed her blood, not like her heartbeat, more like music trickling up from a covered pit that fell forever into a black abyss.

“We must use the clan mothers, not warriors.”

Kwahseti's brows drew together as she frowned. “How?”

Gwinodje sat forward. “I think I understand! First, we must dispatch messengers to Yi and Inawa, telling them that Tila's last words were to appoint Zateri as her successor—and Zateri claims that right.” Words spilled from her lips. “Then we must ask them to dispatch messengers to the other ohwachiras! We—”

“Every ohwachira except those of the Bear Clan. We should leave that decision to Yi and Inawa,” Zateri said with a lifted finger. “The Bear Clan must be overjoyed at Kelek's ascension, probably celebrating their new power. Our words will be of no consequence. We are traitors in their minds.”

“But if you think the Wolf Clan should take a stand against Kelek, we should tell Yi and Inawa,” Kwahseti said.

Zateri carefully considered her next words. She had the sense that they were all suspended upon a zephyr above oblivion. The slightest wrong move now …

“I think Yi and Inawa will know what to do without any suggestions from us, Kwahseti. We are at a great disadvantage. We must be careful. While we have declared independence, if we ever wish to reunite the nation, we must work with the established clan authorities. Yi and Inawa face Kelek every day. Kelek must be swelled with triumph right now, and lauding her victory. However, the Wolf Clan must give her a chance to defend herself before it—”