Had he ever felt so alone, vulnerable, almost naked and defenseless?
“Prostrate yourself, fool,” Five Fists hissed before giving Seven Skull Shield a shove. Burning with embarrassment, Seven Skull Shield dropped and touched his forehead to the matting.
“Rise. What message do you bear?” Morning Star asked, leaning forward on his litter. The living god propped an elbow on his knee, painted face with its forked-eye design done in black and white. The shell masks in the form of human heads gleamed where they covered his ears.
Seven Skull Shield, figuring he was dead already, stood, shrugged. “L-Lady Night Shadow Star w-would like you to know that she has decided to deal with the problem in her own way. She said to tell you that she’d handle it. One way or another. That you’d know what she was talking about.”
The fire snapped and shot sparks into the air, the only sound in the room.
Morning Star studied Seven Skull Shield, something cunning behind his eyes. “What are your thoughts, thief? Do you think she means it?”
Means what?
Think!
Seven Skull Shield pulled up all the courage he could muster. “Whatever this is all about, Lord, my impression was that she’s determined. There wasn’t any give in her.”
Both Spotted Wrist and Rising Flame had clambered to their feet and were fixed on him the way a hawk fixed on a fat rabbit.
“When did she leave?” Morning Star asked.
“About midday.”
“And you just came to tell me?”
“I would have come immediately, Lord. I was in the process when a bunch of warriors showed up figuring they were going to grab her. They tore her palace up looking for her. Someone had to make sure those warriors didn’t steal the lady blind. Green Stick would have let them have—”
“Stop. Go back. What do you mean she’s gone?” Rising Flame demanded.
“She, uh, left.”
“Headed where?” Spotted Wrist stepped forward, a fist clasped before him. “And who are you? What are you doing with Makes Three’s staff of office? You’re not Bear Clan, and no noble I know.”
“He’s Blue Heron’s thief,” Rising Flame said. “The one she keeps around for entertainment. One of her spies. A clanless bit of human flotsam.” She smiled, eyes hard. “And not the sort that Night Shadow Star would leave to keep an eye on her things while reputable warriors were around.”
Seven Skull Shield shrugged, a cold sweat breaking out as people around the room began whispering back and forth.
Spotted Wrist reached out. “Give me Makes Three’s staff, thief.”
“Not mine to give.” Seven Skull Shield hoped his voice wasn’t the quavering warble he feared it was. “Lady Night Shadow Star said to tell anyone who objected that I was acting as her agent. You got a problem with that, you’ll have to take it up with her when she gets back.”
Spotted Wrist took another step, only to have Five Fists impose himself, breastbone to breastbone, and locked eye to eye.
“Stand down, Clan Keeper,” Morning Star said softly. “This man is a messenger in the service of Night Shadow Star. You do not seize a messenger’s staff, no matter to whom it once belonged.”
Spotted Wrist turned to Morning Star, hands out, imploring. “Lord, we’re to believe that Night Shadow Star, of all people, would leave a known thief unsupervised in her palace? Seriously?”
Seven Skull Shield finally managed to get a swallow down his too-tight throat.
“War Leader Five Fists,” Morning Star spoke reasonably, “you have had dealings with the thief in the past. Have you any doubts about his service to Night Shadow Star?”
This is it. I’m dead.
Five Fists had never been anything close to sympathetic when it came to Seven Skull Shield—not that he’d started with a good impression that day when Blue Heron first found him in the shell carvers’ workshop. Calling him “tow rope” was ample reminder of that.
Which meant Seven Skull Shield was going to have to make a break for it. Maybe get his hands on one of the warriors’ war clubs before they knew what was happening. Do his best to take as many with him as he could before …
To Seven Skull Shield’s total surprise, Five Fists said, “Night Shadow Star sent Blue Heron to find the thief when Walking Smoke was murdering Four Winds Clan nobles right and left, Lord. He played an important role in bringing that to a conclusion. He has served Morning Star House since.”
“Preposterous!” Rising Flame hissed loudly enough that half the room heard it.
Somehow Seven Skull Shield managed to keep from wincing.
The living god, who had been staring thoughtfully at Seven Skull Shield, shot an irritated look at Rising Flame. “Do you wish to contradict the war leader, Clan Matron? Perhaps explain how Five Fists might be in error?”
“No, Lord. My apologies.”
“I don’t understand,” Spotted Wrist groused. “Lord, granted, the Cofitachequi expedition is delayed, but it is still under the command of Lady Night Shadow Star. She most assuredly isn’t shedding her responsibility for the expedition. I need to know her whereabouts.”
“Why?” Seven Skull Shield blurted. “So you can send Blood Talon and twenty warriors to kidnap her like some petty chief’s daughter? What’s wrong? Can’t find a woman who wants you?”
Snickers ran through the crowd. Spotted Wrist turned a shade of red.
Five Fists was glaring his own reprimand.
“Sorry,” Seven Skull Shield muttered. “Shouldn’t have noted the obvious.”
“I’ll give you one chance, fool,” Spotted Wrist said through gritted teeth, a promise of death in his eyes. “Where is she?”
“Gone,” Seven Skull Shield said warily. He glanced at Morning Star, the god taking in every nuance of the interplay. “My suspicion, Lord? This thing that has to be dealt with in Cofitachequi? After watching the expedition assemble? She’s hired a canoe and gone to deal with it in her own way. Fast. Simple. And effective.”
Morning Star’s lips quivered in a knowing smile. “I suspect so. Thank you for delivering the lady’s message. You may go on about your duties for her.”
Seven Skull Shield dropped to his knees, touched his head to the matting, and rose. Spotted Wrist’s glare was as dark and cutting as obsidian. Rising Flame’s jaw was locked, her eyes drawn down to angry slits. Ooh, no love there.
As Five Fists led Seven Skull Shield to the rear, under his breath he said, “You’re either an idiot, or you have a death wish. Spotted Wrist’s never going to forget this night.”
“Why’d you back me?”
“I don’t like you. Don’t approve of you. But you have your uses, thief.”
“I’ll remember you said that.”
They were at the door, Five Fists throwing it open enough that Seven Skull Shield could slip out into the snow. As Seven Skull Shield hurried out, the old warrior added, “I’m tempted to say remember this night. But a memory is something you get to keep over time. And after tonight, time is something I don’t think you’ve got a lot of.”
The door closed, leaving Seven Skull Shield shaken down to his bones in a way he’d never been. Out in the darkness. And falling snow.
The Awakening of Sleep
The grassy rise, backed by pine, hemlock, bald cypress, and sweet gum, overlooks water. I sit, my attention on the swamp and backwater where it lurks just this side of the river. I come here to marvel. This land is different. Even from the swampy lower reaches of the Father Water where I traveled after my first exile from Cahokia. It has a different feel, a different Power.
My butt is perched on a fallen and rotting log surrounded by palmetto and supplejack vines; I am aware of the insects that swarm around me. My skin is rubbed to a deep-red sheen with puccoon root and sassafras extract to keep the mosquitoes and biting flies away. Diaphanous wings glitter in the sunlight as dragonflies dart and weave in search of prey.
At my feet, past the bulrushes and swamp grass, the water stretches—green wit
h patches of duckweed, dotted here and there by yellow lotus. It is still, and dark, and murky. Frogs are singing, fish dimple the smooth surface. Towering bald cypress, tupelo, overcup oak, and swamp laurel cast shadows pierced by shafts of sunlight.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and inhale not only the perfume of vegetation, water, and damp earth, but the Spirit that pulses here. The swamp, I learned long ago, bursts with life devouring itself like no other place. Think of the Tie Snake that has swallowed its tail and continues to consume itself. Even as it digests itself, it grows longer.
In all the lands that I have ever traveled, this is the richest.
I can’t tell you how I got to Cofitachequi. One minute I was in the depths of the Father Water, cold, water gurgling around my ears as I raged, clamped my fingers around my sister’s throat, and sought to choke the life out of her.
The next I was here. Surrounded by fire, heat, and cracking bolts of lightning.
As to choking my sister to death?
That is the true measure of love.
One can’t destroy what one does not truly love.
And I love my sister more than any woman alive.
My need to strangle her that day was as great as my need to thrust my bursting shaft into her warm sheath. Were I able, I would have driven it all the way through her, right into her heart. The explosion of my seed would have burst like golden light through her entire body. It would have shone from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. It would have glowed, lantern-like, from her fingers and toes and twinkled in the feathery tips of her ears.
You see, she ruined it all. And I was so close! I had the doorway to the Underworld creaking on its hinges. A flick of the blade, a few body parts to complete the vulva that would have opened Mother Earth’s sheath, and Piasa would have been born into our world.
Would have found me. Waiting. My body the perfect host for his primeval Spirit.
But Night Shadow Star tricked me, lured me away from that last stroke of the knife that would have severed Sun Wing’s throat.
Lured me all the way to the river with the promise of her body and the rapture it would have provided.
And somehow I woke up here. Different. Changed. With half of my face scarred from a terrible burn. I don’t remember how it got burned, or the pain, or the time it would have taken to heal and scar. I just appeared in that burning charnel house wearing the shell mask to hide my hideous face.
From the depths of the Father Water and my hands locked on my sister’s throat to here. In what seemed a single moment.
As I stare at the swamp I try to understand. I was choking Night Shadow Star in spring. I appeared in Cofitachequi in fall.
What happened to the time in between?
Why do I remember none of it, but I can recall every moment of my youth? I know I am Red Warrior Mankiller’s second son. That my older brother, Chunkey Boy, became home to Morning Star’s Spirit. That I am Thrown Away Boy, the Wild One, a force of chaos.
I remember using a beautifully flaked long chert knife to cut my sleeping father’s throat. To sacrifice my sister, Lace, and to cut the fetus from her womb.
Looking down at my hands, I remember the hot blood shooting across them. That red was so much more Powerful than the color of the puccoon root now staining them.
In the distance, I hear the first rumbling of thunder. Through the trees I can just see the high billowing white towers of thunderhead.
It will build, carried by the prevailing winds, to unleash its fury over Cofitachequi where the town stands on its river’s north bank.
The barest of movement in the duckweed catches my attention. I see the eyes, the slit pupils, and an arm’s length in front of them, the two rounded nostrils. He’s a clever fellow, hidden like he is. Alligator is a prized feast among the Muskogee hereabouts. I’ve come to savor it myself. Something about an ultimate predator’s flesh being another ultimate predator’s finest meal.
And I am the ultimate predator.
It is my birthright.
The first gust of wind comes rolling out from under the thunderhead. It rushes through the leaves overhead, shishing through the branches.
Lightning streaks out in multiple contorted and bent fingers, the white light jumping through the swamp.
I hear a name in the wind-blown leaves, it seems to be exhaled: “Joara.”
I cock my head. I hear the voices periodically. Disembodied. Speaking out of the air around me. When I look, there is no one there.
“She is coming, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” the storm wind answers, using the trees to give itself voice.
“Then I shall go to Joara to await her arrival.”
I look down again, flex my fingers, and remember their feel as I clamped them around my sister’s throat.
Seventeen
“What, by Piasa’s hanging balls, is wrong with you?” Spotted Wrist thundered as he stomped before the fire in his palace great room. Warriors, various household staff, and a couple of messengers from Matron Red Temple of the Fish Clan tried to look in every direction except toward Blood Talon.
For his part, the squadron first stood at attention, chin up and out, fuming and burning on the inside.
“Well?” Spotted Wrist demanded, stopping to glare into Blood Talon’s eyes.
“We followed orders, Keeper. From the canoe landing, we marched straight to Night Shadow Star’s palace. We searched the place from top to bottom, figuring the lady had to be hiding there. When it was apparent she wasn’t in the building, I extended the search, sending warriors to Blue Heron’s, the Four Winds Clan House, the tonka’tzi’s, the Council House, and even to the Earth Clans healer’s looking for her.”
“But not the canoe landing?” Spotted Wrist’s lips were quivering. Always a bad sign.
“We had just come from the canoe landing! Why would we have gone back? Surely if Night Shadow Star had magically appeared at the canoe landing, one of our officers would have immediately sent a runner, don’t you think?”
“I think fine.” Spotted Wrist looked as if he were having trouble breathing. “You, apparently, do not. I have to go to the Morning Star’s palace and be humiliated in front of half of Cahokia. By a common thief, no less. A thief who not only knows that I’ve been made a fool of by Night Shadow Star, but that she’s taken a canoe and headed for Cofitachequi.”
Blood Talon blinked, tried to swallow. “She what?”
“You heard me. She sent a messenger, some clanless bit of human trash, to inform the Morning Star that she’s gone to Cofitachequi to deal with some problem of the Morning Star’s. The rumor is that it’s Walking Smoke.”
“That’s crazy!” Blood Talon protested. “She’s a noble. One of the highest-ranking women in the Morning Star House of the Four Winds Clan. She wouldn’t just leave in a canoe. Not by herself. Not without an escort befitting her rank and status. She’s the head of the entire expedition. She has responsibilities.”
Spotted Wrist kept clasping his hands into angry fists. “You didn’t know her as a girl. Didn’t witness the kind of wild things she and her brothers did. Insane, undisciplined, and in many cases unconscionable. Had she and her brothers been anyone’s brat offspring but Red Warrior’s? If we hadn’t had the power to cover for the crimes, the rapes those boys committed, the disrespect with which they acted? The situations they dragged their sister into?”
“Excuse me?”
“We covered for them.” Spotted Wrist frowned. “Running away like this? It’s exactly the sort of thing she’d do. I thought she’d changed. Seemed like it, anyway. She wasn’t the same reckless girl, but a deeper, almost haunted woman. And she’s got the Morning Star wrapped around her finger. Doesn’t matter that she claims to serve Underworld Power. She can get away with anything again. And I won’t have it!”
“Yes, Keeper.”
Blood Talon waited until the Keeper turned away. Only then did he allow himself to take a deep breath and try to cool his suddenly hot body. Pus and blo
od, but he wished they were back in the north. Cold, miserable, and barbaric as it might have been, at least there was an enemy he could deal with up in those trackless forests. Villages he could burn. People he could kill.
Here? Trying to deal with this recalcitrant woman? It didn’t matter how hard he tried, it kept turning to sand under his feet, making him look like a hopeless fool.
He managed to pull in a deep breath. If Night Shadow Star had—for some unearthly reason—taken a canoe and headed off downriver on her own, it meant she was no longer in Cahokia. No longer his problem.
Blood Talon could relax and go on about his usual business of keeping his warriors in line, training, drilling, preparing for whatever war-related duty arose next.
Surely, with Night Shadow Star gone, there would be no need for a large military escort for the expedition. That could be managed by whatever noble they’d now put in charge. No one remaining was of the profile, status, or rank that would demand an entire squadron of …
“You will take your twenty best warriors,” Spotted Wrist’s declaration broke Blood Talon’s concentration. “You will find the fastest canoe you can, and you will pursue her. Find her. And bring her back.”
Blood Talon’s heart missed a beat, then began to hammer against his breastbone. “Er, Keeper? Excuse me? Go find her?”
“You do understand speech, don’t you, Squadron First? At least you did. Once upon a time. Before you lost your wits and became the addle-brained fool I now find before me. Remember that man you used to be? Competent? Trustworthy? No task too difficult to tackle and persevere at? Whatever happened to that man?”
He came to Cahokia where he was asked to play silly games hunting a supposed wife who is smarter than you, War Leader.
But Blood Talon kept his mouth shut. Finally suggesting, “There are other men who might be better suited to chasing down a fugitive woman on the river, Keeper. My experience, as you just noted, is better applied to maintaining the squadron and the preparations that may be—”
Star Path--People of Cahokia Page 10