As dawn blushed color into the surrounding hills and rocky terraces, shouts and screams rent the air, along with the constant twanging of bow strings being released.
Blessed Sun Leather Hand sat on the white-plastered roof outside his third-story suite, sipping hot cocoa from a beautiful black-and-white mug. The chocolaty fragrance was rich and exquisite. From his perch, he had a good view of warriors scurrying around the walls, shooting bows, or shoving heavy rocks over the edges onto the imbeciles below. The crazed attackers always came at dawn. What was wrong with their war chief? They were so predictable, it was depressing. Why, when he was a war chief, he’d have never established such a pattern. It gave the enemy all night to prepare for the next assault, and the defending warriors grew so practiced at their defensive tactics, they could laugh and jest the entire time they were killing the people who hurled themselves at the walls.
“Bunch of idiot farmers,” Leather Hand chuckled. “There’s no true leader out there.”
“Yes, Blessed Sun, so it appears,” Sunwatcher Cub agreed. The man stood to Leather Hand’s right, wearing a white cape, his hands folded primly in front of him. His hooked nose and abnormally triangular face caught the pale lavender gleam of daybreak.
Leather Hand took a sip of his chocolate, and smacked his lips in appreciation. He had the rare cacao beans, along with dried holly leaves for Black Drink, carried to Flowing Waters Town by Traders who traveled to far-flung cultures. Both drinks gave him a heady rush that helped warm his aching body, which seemed more and more necessary these days. Despite the firebowl of hot coals that rested before him, and the thick scarlet macaw feather cape around his shoulders, the morning chill had penetrated all the way to his bones.
“Any news from my daughter or Maicoh?”
Cub shook his head. “No, Blessed Sun. Stinger says that one or more of our signal stations has likely been destroyed by our enemies.”
“Then tell him to send out repair parties to rebuild them.”
“Yes, Blessed Sun. Though…” Cub hesitated. “I suspect he will tell you that he needs every warrior here to defend the town.”
“I don’t care what you suspect. Give him my order. Tell him to concentrate on rebuilding the masonry towers along the roads. One man, properly supplied, can hold off a war party for a moon from those towers.”
“Of course.” Cub bowed and hurried away.
Leather Hand watched the Sunwatcher climb up and down a series of ladders to reach High War Chief Stinger where he stood overseeing the archers along the northern wall. When Cub delivered the order, Stinger threw up his arms and began stamping around. Leather Hand’s eyesight might be dim, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing. Besides, Stinger was shouting at Cub, so it was hard to miss. After thirty heartbeats of being berated, Cub nodded, then left.
By the time Cub had climbed all the ladders to get back to Leather Hand, the Sunwatcher was breathing hard and his face was covered with sweat.
“What did he say?” Leather Hand inquired. “How many men will he dispatch to repair the signal stations?”
Cub’s pink tongue darted over his mouth, wetting his lips. “Blessed Sun, your war chief directs me to tell you that he has counted over two hundred enemy warriors assaulting our walls, and he is absolutely sure that anyone who tries to leave will be immediately cut down. Not only that, he says that opening our gates, or even lowering a ladder over the walls, will create a breach through which our enemies may—”
“Send him to me.”
Cub sucked in a breath, then bowed. “Yes, Blessed Sun.”
While Cub climbed up and down ladders, Leather Hand tottered to his feet and walked into his ten-room suite, where he pulled out a large, tightly lidded pot. He had to wrap both arms around it to carry it outside and lower it to the rooftop beside his glowing firebowl. The intensity of the screams had gone up a notch. When he turned to look in that direction, he saw his warriors pouring pots of boiling fat down upon the attackers. A foolish waste of good fat! Fat fed people. Rocks did not. If they were out of rocks to brain the enemy, then Stinger was at fault for not ordering his men to haul up more.
With a groan, Leather Hand slumped to the rooftop again, and reached for his cocoa, sipping it as he watched Cub and Stinger climbing ladders.
When they arrived, both men bowed to him. Stinger was a burly man. Muscles bulged through his red knee-length war shirt. Thick white scars wormed across his face. His lips were pressed into a tight bloodless line.
“The signal stations must be repaired, War Chief,” Leather Hand said.
Stinger looked like he might explode. “I understand, Blessed Sun. However, every warrior I have is currently engaged in defending Flowing Waters Town. I cannot spare anyone to undertake such a mission. As soon as I have an opportunity, I assure you, I will—”
“Take these—” Leather Hand gestured to the big pot—“and have your warriors throw them right into the midst of the attackers.”
“What’s in there?” Stinger glanced at it.
The red pot, decorated with stunning black and white geometric designs, gleamed in the sunlight.
“Dolls.”
“Dolls? You want my warriors to throw dolls at the attackers?”
Leather Hand aimed a knobby finger at Sunwatcher Cub. “Open the pot and remove one of the dolls for Stinger.”
Obediently, Cub knelt and wrenched the lid off the big pot to look inside. Curious, he gingerly lifted one of the dolls, about the length of two hands, and gave it to Stinger.
Stinger frowned at it. The dolls were formed of unbaked clay and painted with very lifelike features, down to the delicate black eyelash fringes above the red eyes. Only one feature was not lifelike: Each doll had two faces. One face to make people sick, the other to take them to the Land of the Dead.
Stinger thrust the doll back into Cub’s hands, and Cub quickly placed it back in the pot. “Why do we need bewitched dolls?”
Leather Hand chuckled. He’d been making these dolls for decades, taught by an old witch up near Cliff Palace to the north. “Don’t worry. They will not harm you so long as you don’t break them open.”
“I’ve seen how they work.” Stinger wiped his hands on his red shirt, as though alarmed that he had touched one. “But what’s their magic?”
“When you cast these over the walls, the dolls will break open and old rags and special, sweet corn will spill out. The people out there are hungry.” He absently waved a hand toward the attackers. “They will scoop up every kernel and carry it back to their camps.”
“But how do they kill?” Stinger asked.
“The evil Spirits in the rags have been feeding off the sweet corn for moons. They have infested it. They will coat the fingers of the people who touch the kernels, and the Spirits will fly from hand to hand throughout the camps until each person carries an evil beast in his heart.” Leather Hand took another sip of his cocoa. It was starting to get cold, which displeased him. “In a few days, you’ll have your opportunity to dispatch repair parties to the signal stations.”
Cub’s mouth dropped open, his face resembling a wet clay mask deliberately pulled too hard to make it appear misshapen. “But Blessed Sun, what happens if the evil Spirits cling to the broken fragments of the dolls? Anyone who walks outside—”
“When the attackers are gone, we will send out teams of slaves to sweep the area and burn any remaining traces of the dolls.”
“Won’t some of them get sick?”
Leather Hand glared at the Sunwatcher. “Are you truly as stupid as you sound? None of the slaves will ever reenter Flowing Waters Town.”
“Oh.”
Leather Hand could tell the instant Cub understood that the slaves would, of course, be killed. Probably shot down from the walls, but maybe just left to be eaten by the same evil Spirits that had killed the attackers. Leather Hand thought about it. No, they’d have to be shot down. It would not improve his relations with neighboring Straight Path villages if infected people
wandered into their midst.
He had used that tactic before, and it always had unintended consequences. Right after he’d first become Blessed Sun, he’d often allowed his temper to get the best of him. The worst time was about twenty winters ago. Food had been running low, and one chief kept demanding that Leather Hand open his storerooms and give out more corn and beans to neighboring villages. Instead, Leather Hand had ordered that a fine feathered cape be pulled off a dying clan matron. He’d given the cape to a very pretty young woman and sent her to deliver a message to the annoying chief. By the time the young woman stumbled into the man’s chamber, the evil Spirits had eaten half her insides.
Naturally, the troublesome chief had also died—that had been Leather Hand’s intent—but so had most of his village. By late summer, the entire village was abandoned, and the evil Spirits were flying far and wide, moving through the land like wildfire. The consequences were disastrous. When it was over, there were seven fewer villages sending tribute to Flowing Waters Town.
He’d never repeated that mistake—though delivering infested dolls to enemy chiefs was still his preferred method of solving problems. It saved the lives of his own warriors, because attacking those villages became unnecessary. The enemy villages simply faded to nothing and ceased being a problem.
Leather Hand waved a dismissive hand at Stinger. “Tell your warriors to start throwing the dolls into the midst of the attackers immediately.”
Stinger cast a worried glance at Sunwatcher Cub, bowed, and said, “Yes, Blessed Sun.”
Eighteen
Tsilu
Turning one shoulder into the storm, I brace my feet against the gusting rain that’s hammering my head. It runs in streams down my face, and squishes inside my moccasins. I’m soaked, tired, and miserable. My feet keep slipping in the mud.
About thirty paces ahead, a maze of collapsed walls creates a jagged black outline against the cliff.
“That’s it?” I shout against the wind. “GoingBuck Village? That’s where we’re going to make camp?”
Crane walks ahead of me with the wind snapping his cape about him.
He half-turns to say, “Yes. I’ve sought shelter in these ruins before. Isn’t far now. Just follow me.”
Crane plows through the rain ahead of me, but I stop to wait for Kwinsi.
When Kwinsi walks up he says, “Everything all right?”
“Guess so.”
“Want to run off into the night with me?”
I realize he isn’t joking. “Why? Are you all right?”
Kwinsi uses a hand to wipe rain from his eyes. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be all right again.”
Of course not. He’s just found his village destroyed and his family missing, probably part of a mound of burned bodies. Kwinsi isn’t the type to want revenge, but he is the type to mourn the loss until he himself perishes from grief.
“Sorry, Kwinsi,” I say and gently touch his arm. “Wish I could help you.”
“I imagine it’s actually worse for you. My family is dead. No one can hurt them now. But you know your grandfather is alive and being held prisoner by the people who destroyed our village.” He pauses. “Sure you don’t want to run away with me? We can go hide in a hole for the rest of our lives.”
“Maybe later tonight. I’ll wake you—”
“You won’t have to wake me.” He tips his chin toward Crane, who is meandering through the dark, rain-lashed ruins ahead. “I’m going to spend the night with one eye open and fixed on our friend.”
“Me, too.”
When I start walking again, Kwinsi dutifully falls in line behind me.
We find Crane waiting for us in the abandoned village. Standing there amid the dripping ruins, his cape flapping around him, he resembles an evil wraith. The black oval inside his hood might be a bottomless abyss, a doorway to oblivion.
I pick my way around the fallen mud bricks of toppled walls until I discover the path Crane followed through the ruins.
“Thought I’d lost you,” he calls, clasping his hood tight beneath his chin with a skeletal hand.
“No.”
“Another twenty steps and you’ll be warm. I promise.” He leads us to a narrow tunnel that slopes downward, as though diving into the belly of the earth. He has to duck his head to enter. “There’s a dry chamber at the bottom. Many summers ago it was a subterranean storage room.”
When I enter the tunnel, I see that thousands of feet have worn the stone floor into a long hollow runnel. Damp with rain, it’s slippery and treacherous. I have to keep one hand braced on the wall to steady my feet as I follow him down into the darkness twenty hands below.
“Careful, Kwinsi. This is slick.”
“I see that.”
The deeper I go, the more dread I feel. Horror seems to ooze from the smoke-stained bricks and hovers around me like the stench of carrion on a hot day.
“Feel it?” Kwinsi asks softly from behind me.
“Yes. What is it?”
His loud breathing competes with the roar of the flooded river out beyond the ruins. “Something terrible happened in this room. The walls have not forgotten.”
At the bottom of the runnel, a red gleam flares, and I see Crane blowing upon the pot of coals he collected from our last fire. Then, suddenly, a torch blazes, and the room comes alive with dancing flame shadows.
When I step into the old storage room, I find Crane crouching on the floor, putting the lid back on the pot of coals. A stack of juniper-bark torches rests against the wall to my right. Travelers must replace the torches they use as a courtesy to the next traveler. “There. The torch will help warm the room. Come and sit down.”
The juniper poles that create the ceiling look old and rotted. Strips of bark hang down like ancient rags. About thirty hand-lengths long and twenty wide, the mud-brick walls smell of mildew and mold.
“At least it’s dry down here.” Crane carries the torch to a wall holder—a ceramic tube attached to the wall—and tucks it inside, then goes to sit down against the rear wall.
“It’s a relief to be out of the icy wind,” I say.
“Certainly is. Are you hungry?” Crane pulls his bag of jerky from his pack, opens the laces, and holds it out to me.
“Thank you, elder.” Taking a stick, I walk over and slump down against the wall.
Crane lowers the jerky bag to his lap and studies Kwinsi, who remains standing in the middle of the chamber, watching the fluttering torchlight as though afraid it’s more than it seems.
“When was this village burned?” Kwinsi asks.
“Don’t know the exact date. Fourteen or fifteen summers ago.” Crane sinks back against the wall, getting more comfortable. “The villagers were very ill. I heard that Leather Hand sent in a huge war party to surround the sick village, kill everyone, and burn it to the ground. They didn’t have a chance.”
The smoke from the smoldering torch is being sucked straight up the corridor and out into the night air. Only a few gray tendrils float over my head. There must be a ventilator shaft somewhere. Ah … over there. There’s a square hole in the floor that draws air in from outside to create the draft that pushes smoke up the corridor.
“Come and sit down, Grandson.” Crane holds the jerky bag out again. “Have some jerky.”
Kwinsi pads across the floor, pulls his pack off his shoulder, and reaches for a stick.
As Kwinsi backs away, Crane softly asks, “Can you hear them?”
“Hear what?”
“The voices.”
Kwinsi retreats to sit cross-legged beside me. “I don’t hear anything, but I feel … sorrow.”
“You may not hear them tonight, but you do hear the voices of the dead on occasion, don’t you?” Crane studies Kwinsi as he would a curious bird.
“Sometimes, yes. Not often. Usually ghosts are too busy to bother with me.” He flips his hand toward me. “They speak with Tsilu all the time, though. She is truly connected to the Land of the Dead.”
Crane’s
hand shakes slightly as he pulls out a stick of buffalo jerky for himself. “I’m sure she is. Can you hear them tonight, Granddaughter?”
I listen. Though I feel the horror oozing from between the bricks, permeating the air, I do not hear voices. “No, elder. The Spirits here do not speak to me.”
“Ah, well…” Crane takes a bite of jerky, chews and swallows, then says, “Perhaps I hear them because I am an old friend. I’ve come here often over the long summers.”
“What are they saying?” I glance around at the dark crevices between the bricks.
“They’re just talking to each other tonight, but sometimes they tell me about how they died.”
“About the attack on GoingBuck Village?”
“Yes. The women and children ran here to hide when the warriors came.” He stares hollowly at the torch on the wall, as though seeing the attack playing out in the wavering flames. “They heard everything, the war cries, people running, the screams of the dying. As the village above burned, walls toppled, sealing them in here. They couldn’t escape.”
My heart sinks. I lower my jerky to my lap. “Did their families find them?”
“No.” Crane shakes his head. “By the time the women and children in here perished, their families had been dead for days. There was no one to Sing their souls to the Land of the Dead, so they took refuge in the cracks and crevices. At first it was unbearable. But now this is their home.”
Kwinsi’s small nose wiggles, scenting the air. The fragrance of rain-soaked earth has blended with the musty odors of mold and mildew, giving the room the distinctive odor of ancient destruction.
“But someone found their bodies at some time. They are no longer here.”
Crane nods. “I found them, Tsilu. I carried them outside and gave them the best burials I could, but I did not know their clan songs or rituals, so I could not Sing them to their ancestors. The most I could do was care for the souls left in their bones. Their breath-heart souls were beyond my help. Perhaps, if I’d been a better shaman, or a better person, they would have trusted me enough to tell me their songs and rituals.”
“You did the best you could,” I say. “I’m sure they know that.”
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