This is unusual. He’s a man who unquestioningly believes in his own ability and personal Power. Who has stated that he fears nothing. I’ve always thought that to be the case.
The Chah’taw caught him once. Hung him in a wooden square and tortured him for several days before Strong Mussel could escape. The scars left from that torture pucker and bunch on his skin. While the war leader might not fear death, pain, or privation, I think the vast thronging hordes at the Cahokian waterfront intimidate him in a different way: This is like being cast loose in a churning and murky water—adrift where we cannot see the currents, threats, and dangers. A chaotic sea where we do not understand the rules or expectations.
I share his anxiety. I had heard—we all had—but never believed the stories about Cahokia. The political emissaries and priests who visited the Sky Hand had been explicit enough over the years. And it wasn’t as if the notion of Morning Star being reincarnated into a human body wasn’t credible—but the stories of the size and scope of Cahokia? Well, we imagined something a little bigger than Split Sky City. And now? To see River City Mounds, the incredible numbers of canoes and people thronging the landing, let alone the soaring heights of Evening Star Town across the river where it dominates the western bluff? Could humans really build such a place?
Hard enough just to think that this many people could be gathered in one locale! Had we not passed the teeming towns along the Tenasee, the Mother Water, and those crowding the banks of the Father Water south of Cahokia, a person might think that all of humanity crowded into this one spot.
For once, I am speechless as I try to take in the bustling landing. As hard as I work to demonstrate my disdain in front of Strong Mussel and his little band of warriors, my eyes are wide, and I know my expression is pinched. I can’t stop from twisting my long braid into a tight knot—a trait I’m heir to when I’m overwhelmed.
The warriors, too, are clearly taken aback. It is visible in their darting eyes, in the slack set of their faces. They have no clue what to make of this place.
Well, good. Let them worry. They are getting no sympathy from me.
Even more discouraging, they have preened and painted themselves, dressed in their finest, each having called upon his personal medicine to make a grand impression upon our arrival. After all, they’re the picked delegation of the lords of the south, of High Minko White Water Moccasin and Matron Evening Oak of Split Sky City. But as our canoe slides up onto the beach, no one so much as glances sideways at us. To the warriors’ chagrin, we are ignored. Insignificant.
In the front of the canoe, Strong Mussel—decked out in his finery—holds the symbolic White Arrow before him. Painted in white, fletched with snowy egret feathers, the arrow symbolizes our arrival in peace. Among the Moskogee peoples it indicates the solemnity and importance of an emissary’s mission.
No one gives Strong Mussel a second glance as they hurry on about their business.
I find this amusing. None of my captors had relished the “honor” of escorting their chief’s despicable daughter to her fated marriage. Bringing me here meant several moons of time away from home, family, wives, and friends. The perils of distant travel, and no chance for the booty or fame that came with a raid.
The order was “Deliver the girl and come home.”
Out of Strong Mussel’s hearing, I’d heard a couple of the warriors mutter, “Assuming the Morning Star doesn’t figure out he’s being duped and kill us all.”
They have such a high opinion of me.
For a long moment after Strong Mussel’s canoe runs up on the beach, we just sit there like dolts. The other two canoes accompanying us have landed to either side.
“Who comes?” a skinny little man in a dirty breechcloth asks as he walks by. His question is in Trade pidgin accompanied by hand signs.
Strong Mussel replies the same way. “Her name is Whispering Dawn. Her father is White Water Moccasin, high minko of the Sky Hand Moskogee and ruler of Split Sky City. She is to marry the Morning Star.”
The man shoots me a knowing glance, his thin face tattooed in designs I have never seen. Then he dismisses me with a shrug, saying, “Of course.” And with no more ado, he walks off.
I blink. I know Strong Mussel does, too.
I was sent as a gift from the most powerful minko in the south to become the living god’s bride! And the idiot just walks away?
“Who are these people?” Strong Mussel whispers to himself. Then, as if shaking himself awake, he steps out of the canoe. Shifting the White Arrow, he reaches down to offer me his hand.
“Shocking, don’t you think?” I ask. “No one cares who you are.” I stare around at all the canoes, hundreds of them, no … thousands. They line the shores or are paddled across the river to the landing below where Evening Star Town perches on its high bluff.
And the people! I see every style of dress imaginable. Their hair is done up, cut, braided, coiffed, and pinned in a bewildering array that defies description. The tattoos on their faces and arms are in alien patterns I’ve never seen. They crowd the landing, laughing, hawking Trade goods. Some perch on inverted canoes as they converse, others pack goods up the slope to the fantastic collection of thatch-roofed warehouses, temples, palaces, and ramadas. They could be a line of ants bent beneath their burdens. Dogs and children are everywhere. Someone plays flute music, and I hear a drum thumping in time. The air is filled with a cacophony of calls, laughter, and hawkers asking to Trade for food or trinkets.
“Hey, you!” Strong Mussel calls in Trade pidgin to a fellow standing beside a ramada. “We are Split Sky warriors. Which of these palaces up on the levy belongs to the Morning Star?”
The man plucks up a sack and hurries down to us. He looks Strong Mussel up and down as if he were a side of venison and says, “These are River House lands. Ruled by High Chief War Duck. Morning Star House is over east. Follow the Avenue of the Sun.” He glances up at the sky. “You hurry, you might make it before sunset.”
“Sunset?” Strong Mussel asks incredulously. “How far?”
“A half day’s walk. A couple of hands’ time if you run,” the man tells Strong Mussel. Then he reaches into his sack, declaring, “I just happened to have a statue of Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies! Carved of native Cahokian wood, by the finest of artisans. Blessed by the Morning Star himself. Consecrated in First Woman’s temple by Matron Wind before she became the tonka’tzi. Very rare.”
He sizes up Strong Mussel’s ornamentation. “I could part with one for that fine swan-feather headdress you’re wearing.”
I gasp, swiveling my head in anticipation of Strong Mussel’s explosion and the idiot Trader’s imminent bloody demise. The war leader just stares wide-eyed, expression confused, as if he doesn’t understand what he’s heard.
Finally, through clamped jaws, he pinches out, “These are war honors! Conferred upon me by the high minko!”
The Trader, smiling happily, lifts the little statue to the light. The image depicts First Woman—called Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies here in the north and among the Father Water Nations. She is sitting with her legs together, arms on her knees, her round head looking amused with a slight smile.
I make my plan. The moment Strong Mussel leaps upon the fool and starts beating the brains out of his skull, I’ll take off running. Surely I can escape into this maze of people, hide, and easily elude my over-eager guard. They’ll be distracted by the crowd as they rush to see the murder. I tense my muscles in anticipation of my chance.
“War Leader?” Cloud Tassel reads Strong Mussel’s expression, steps up beside his superior, and places a hand on his arm. “We do not know the ways here. For all we know, in Cahokia swan-feather splays are Traded like shell beads.”
The Trader, having quickly determined his error, backs a couple of steps away, bowing low and touching his forehead. “My apologies, my lord. I had no intention of causing offense.”
The statue vanishes into the bag, to be replaced by a hand-sized relief carving of Morning Star, ma
ce in hand, his forked-eyed face lifted, eagle wings spreading from his arms.
“This, my good foreign lords, is a one-of-a-kind creation. The image of Morning Star as his body-soul rose to the heavens at the end of the Beginning Times. Very Rare. Carved by one of the master carvers of Cahokia, in the shadow of the Morning Star’s great temple in—”
“Be gone!” Strong Mussel almost bellows, thrusting out a muscular arm and pointing.
In the meantime I have sidled a couple of steps to the right. Checking my escape route from the corner of my eye, I figure I can charge off at an angle. If I can get around the ramada where an old woman is Trading bread loaves, I can dash across a fishing net where its owners were laying it out to fold up.
I just need to get to those buildings up the slope atop the levee. If they are as densely packed as the roofs indicate, I might be able to—
“Don’t even think it.” I jump when Cloud Tassel growls in my ear. How has he sneaked so close?
I shoot him a “who? me?” look of absolute innocence.
The Trader is scurrying away, shouting over his shoulder in a language I’ve never heard before.
Cloud Tassel, one eye on me, asks, “What next, my leader?”
I see the confusion in Strong Mussel’s eyes. This is nothing like he expected. Here he is not a renowned war leader, but a stranger among a throng of strangers. Not the high minko’s representative, but an unknown in the midst of countless vassals from distant Nations. He hasn’t a clue about what to do next. People don’t even notice the White Arrow that would garner instant attention anywhere in the Moskogee world, or among its enemies.
I laugh at the man’s discomfiture. “Gather the things,” I order, and point. “That creature said that the road to the Morning Star House, whatever that is, is up there. Let’s get this over with.”
“What’s your sudden hurry?” Strong Mussel demands, suspicion replacing confusion.
“The sooner you’ve ‘gifted’ me to this Morning Star, the sooner I’m rid of your ugly faces. Or doesn’t that make sense to you?”
I give him my sweetest smile and blink my eyes as if to beguile him.
In return, he glares his disdain, declaring, “It makes all the sense in the world, you disgusting little—” He bites off the rest, unable to say the words to a noble-born, no matter how much he hates me.
“Pack up!” he snaps at the warriors.
Within a couple of breaths, we’re headed up the slope and through the throngs of people.
For the first time, I begin to fear the immensity of Cahokia. But with so many strangers, this will be an easy place in which to disappear.
Four
The Four Winds Clan House was an imposing structure. Situated west of Morning Star’s great mound, and on the north side of the Avenue of the Sun, it dominated the southwest corner of the Four Winds Plaza. Each of the Houses maintained a local clan house in their own territory. They served as common ground where members of the Four Winds Clan could reside and meet. But this one—literally in the shadow of Morning Star’s Great Mound—was the most prestigious. The seat of Four Winds authority and might.
To its great hall had been summoned the matrons from every House in Cahokia. Today they would begin the process of choosing a new clan matron to fill the seat vacated when Blue Heron’s sister Wind became the tonka’tzi: the Great Sky, secular ruler of all Cahokia.
“I’d rather stick my hand into a basket full of water moccasins than go through this,” Blue Heron muttered under her breath.
Dancing Sky, hearing, appeared amused. “Ah, the web you Four Winds weave. As if you didn’t have enough enemies, you turn on each other.”
“It’s the matron’s job to keep us from doing that very thing. The Houses may rule their districts, but the matron keeps them under control. With all the chaos let loose by the Itza’s arrival, we’ve let it go for too long.”
Dancing Sky gave her a bland smile before saying, “You know they’ve all been jockeying for position behind your back. Proposing marriages, spreading lies and subtle innuendo, hosting feasts, pageants, games, and exhibitions to promote their wealth and authority. Oh, sure, they present a benevolent public front, but behind it a ferment of intrigue, sabotage, threats, and accusations have nearly brought the Houses to war.”
A situation that Blue Heron had barely managed to keep a step ahead of.
“That would please you to no end, wouldn’t it?”
Dancing Sky shrugged. “I am no fan of the Four Winds Clan, Keeper. For whatever reason, Power brought me down and destroyed everything I was. But I’m still Red Wing, and I’ve given you my word that I will serve you. Just know that you are walking into a hornet’s nest.”
Blue Heron nodded, studying her new housekeeper through narrowed eyes. That was the thing about the Red Wing. They valued their honor more than life itself.
“A hornet’s nest indeed. But for the occasional tip sent my way from Evening Star House, even my network of informants wouldn’t have been sufficient to keep this pot from boiling over. Thank the Spirits for that little dwarf of Columella’s. His spies are almost as good as my own.”
“Flat Stone Pipe,” Dancing Sky said, placing the man. “I wonder what she sees in him? Columella used to be your worst enemy.”
“Given recent events Columella and I have cobbled together a sort of alliance that benefits both sides.” Blue Heron smiled. “We circle each other like two she-cougars, but we’ve actually come to like each other.”
“You’d better hurry. They’re over there. Waiting.”
Blue Heron could almost feel the growing hostility radiating all the way from the Clan House where it stood diagonally across the Four Winds Plaza from her palace.
The plaza was reserved for the Four Winds Clan only, and boasted the second finest stickball and chunkey courts in the world after the Morning Star’s. Here Dances and clan assemblies were held, as were feasts, weddings, and funerals.
Though she would have preferred to walk, the propriety of appearance dictated otherwise. As the Keeper, she didn’t dare arrive on foot, or a moment too early.
She checked her appearance one last time in her polished copper mirror. Dancing Sky had painted her face in horizontal stripes of red and white. The pattern was unusual for a council session such as this, red being the color of disharmony, blood, and war, while white denoted wisdom and peace.
Let the rest of them chew on that for all the good it would do them.
Her hair was pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head and pinned with a dashing splay of white egret feathers imported from the south. She wore a vivid yellow-and-green cloak made of parakeet feathers. A fine dogbane-textile skirt hung at her waist and was embroidered with the Four Winds Clan spiral pattern. In her hand she carried her copper-clad staff of office.
“How do I look?”
Dancing Sky made a face. “All striped like that? I think you look confused.”
Blue Heron shot the gray-haired woman a warning look. The Red Wing might be a captive and slave—but somehow her souls hadn’t quite caught up to the reality of her new circumstances.
As Blue Heron was trying to decide what to do about it, Smooth Pebble interceded, saying, “I think they will get the point. At least, the smart ones will.”
Which was exactly what Blue Heron had wanted to hear. Yes, this business of picking a new matron was important, but wisdom had to temper passion. If the House matrons allowed the red passion of emotion and self-interest to overwhelm the white of wisdom, they could precipitate disaster.
“How am I doing on time?”
“Late. I have your litter ready at the foot of the stairs,” Dancing Sky called, having gone to the doorway to check.
The Red Wing’s daughters, White Rain and Soft Moon, scrambled out of the way where they were leeching acorns as Blue Heron grabbed up her copper-clad staff of office and started across the floor.
White Rain was in her mid twenties, attractive and long limbed, with a delicatel
y formed face. Soft Moon, though shorter, was all curves, full breasted, with a tiny waist and wide hips; she had just turned twenty. Men paid them way too much attention. After the defeat of Red Wing Town, the murder of their husbands and children, and subsequent slavery, the women didn’t show much interest in returning.
“Wish me luck,” Blue Heron growled. “I’m going to need it.”
She stepped out onto her porch, staring across the avenue that separated her mound-top palace from Morning Star’s great earthen pyramid. On the high palisade that surrounded the Morning Star’s peak-roofed temple she could see a lone figure in one of the bastions. Sunlight glinted on polished copper as it illuminated the figure’s headpiece. She couldn’t distinguish features across the distance, but it could only be the Morning Star.
He seemed to be watching her, head cocked, feathered cloak shifting with the breeze.
Blue Heron walked forward to stand between the two carved Eagle guardian posts that dominated the head of her stairs. She met the Morning Star’s distant gaze and bowed. Touched her forehead in acknowledgment and respect.
The Morning Star inclined his head slightly, but made no other response.
Spit and blood, why is he watching me?
A shiver ran down her back. One never knew with the Morning Star. More than once her life had hung by a thread, depending on his whim. In the living god’s eyes, everyone was expendable—human life as transitory and ephemeral as the shadow cast by a passing cloud.
Inhuman.
But then, he was, after all, a reincarnated Spirit. A being not of this world, but of the Beginning Times. A spiritual essence called down from the ethereal realm to bring peace amidst a world of squabbling human beings. Given that, perhaps he saw people for what they really were.
She started down the staircase of squared logs set into the mound side, to where her litter waited on the beaten avenue. Smooth Pebble followed, and the litter bearers bowed in respect.
“To the Four Winds Clan House,” Blue Heron ordered as she seated herself in the hide-padded chair.
Lifting the poles, her bearers swung her around and started southeast across the Four Winds Plaza. Quite a crowd had gathered at the chunkey courts. As her porters made their way around it, Blue Heron could see Fire Cat. His nearly naked body gleamed from a sheen of perspiration. Still-healing scars traced angry red lines over his skin as he ran forward, bent, and bowled his disc-shaped chunkey stone down the packed-clay court. Shifting his lance in midstride, his right arm went back, then flashed overhand as he cast his lance in pursuit of the fleeing stone.
Moon Hunt Page 4