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THE SUMMONING GOD
Copyright © 2000 by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
B
ROWSER REACHED FOR THE LADDER AND ALMOST missed the marks. Long dark streaks covered the roof. They might have been soot or mud, but they looked more like the claw marks made by bloody fingers.
He touched them, matching them with his own fingers, and suddenly pulled his hand away.
“Matron! I’m coming down.”
He lowered the ladder through the entry and it hit the ground with a solid, ordinary thump.
The dark pit reeked of rot and corruption. It took an act of will to convince himself to put his feet on the rungs. Every instant he expected an arrow in his back. His gaze searched the village again, then he went down the rungs two at a time.
He stepped off onto the kiva floor and blinked at the darkness. Ash puffed beneath his feet, and the stench almost gagged him. If someone had wished to attack him, now was the time. He held his war club at the ready and fought to keep his breathing even.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw the fire hearth three paces in front of him and the woodpile stacked beside it. A faint crimson gleam lit the hearth’s center. Browser went to the woodpile, pulled out a branch, and stirred the ashes until he found red coals. He broke his branch into pieces, placed them on the coals, and bent down to blow on the kindling.
The clawing again.
Desperate, erratic.
“Hello?” he called. “Is anyone in here?”
Something about the urgency of the clawing suggested human hands, someone trying to get to him.
Fighting his own sense of dread, Browser went back to blowing
on the coals. A flame licked up. Then a branch popped in the fire, and sparks whirled toward the entry. Light flared.
Browser couldn’t move.
The flickering images burned themselves into his soul.
The bodies had no heads.
The feral eyes of wood rats blazed as they scrambled from one bloody scrap of cloth to another. The rats must have gotten in through the kiva’s ventilation shaft, a narrow opening in the wall designed to bring fresh air into the kiva.
Most of the bones had been stripped of flesh, then scattered, but a few still had tatters of clothing clinging to arms or legs. He saw an infant’s head lying on the floor to his right. It looked as though it had been tossed. Was this a child he’d seen three days ago? One of the happy little boys playing in the plaza when he had arrived? He looked to be about four summers old.
Claws. Behind him.
Browser turned and stepped into a pool of blood. “Oh, dear gods.”
Walker and Bole slumped against the curving rear wall. They were so recently dead the rats feared to approach them. The little animals would race forward, bite a piece of cloth, and scurry backwards, their feet scratching the floor for purchase.
“What happened?” Browser murmured.
The fools must have come down long before his signal. They must have disobeyed … .
Perhaps they’d been forced down.
“Right after Catkin and I left.”
Walker’s intestines had been pulled out onto the floor and his decapitated head stuffed into the gaping cavity. His wide eyes stared through the slit in his stomach, as though he’d been surprised by his killer.
Bole—he thought it was Bole—leaned against Walker. His face had been mutilated, but the obsidian-studded war club stuffed down his throat had belonged to Bole.
Browser locked his knees. He had seen a great deal of warfare and raiding. This was neither. Raiders killed in haste and stole food and trinkets to take home to their families. Warriors slaughtered their enemies and burned their villages. But this was calm, methodical butchery.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
THE VISITANT
Copyright © 1999 by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Maps and illustrations © 1999 by Miguel Roces
eISBN 9781466823570
First eBook Edition : June 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gear, Kathleen O’Neal.
The visitant / Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear.—1st trade paperback ed. p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3043-7
1. Indians of North America—Fiction. 2. Prehistoric peoples—Fiction. 3. Chaco culture—Fiction. 4. Pueblo Indians—History—Fiction. 5. Chaco Canyon (N.M.)—Fiction. I. Gear, W. Michael. II. Title.
PS3557.E18V57 2011
813’.54—dc22
2011021615
First Edition: July 1999
First Trade Paperback Edition: November 2011