People of the Morning Star (52 page)

Rides-the-Lightning nodded, as if this was nothing new. “Those same fools might wish to clip their tongues. The three arrows she shot into Cut String’s back would have fit into the size of a cottonwood leaf.”

“Why did Chunkey Boy have his brother exiled and murdered? They were best friends, weren’t they? Inseparable, boon companions?”

“It was the
Morning Star
who ordered the exile. Not Chunkey Boy.” Rides-the-Lightning rubbed a callused hand over his face, rearranging the faded black patterns of tattoos where they hid among the wrinkles. “The living god is under no obligation to explain his orders. Warriors took the younger brother by surprise, escorted him to the canoe landing, and bore him downriver.”

“You do not speak his name. Which tells me the rumors are true, that he really was murdered somewhere in the Nations down south.”

Rides-the-Lightning grunted, knowing full well the Red Wing had tricked him. “We don’t know that he was murdered. The story was that he drowned in a canoe mishap.”

“How convenient.”

“These things happen, Red Wing.”

“Yes. Of course.” He dribbled another couple of drops into Night Shadow Star’s mouth. “Such an unlucky family. The old
Tonka’tzi
murdered, attempts on the Keeper and Night Shadow Star, and now Lace is abducted. But only after her husband was flayed like a butchered turkey and tied to the wall with his severed muscles hanging like obscene feathers. Makes you wonder why the abomination is hunting them so hard.”

Fire Cat raised a forestalling hand. “But wait! Perhaps, like me, he has a hatred for the Four Winds Clan.”

“There is another explanation: he seeks to destroy them because they control the Power. Whoever controls the Power, controls Cahokia. And whoever controls Cahokia, controls the world.” Rides-the-Lightning smiled, displaying sunken and toothless pink gums. “And Night Shadow Star controls you, Red Wing. You and this ‘hate’ you are so fond of. I would be afraid, because Power is depending on the way you feel about the lady. For whatever purpose it chose you? I think it is going to be very unpleasant.”

Forty-eight

The flimsy ramada stood just up from the beached canoes that packed the river landing. Across the Father Water, high atop the bluff, Evening Star town could be seen, the high palace jutting from its mound. Sunlight sparkled on the broad river, bobbing as it was with canoes. A float of firewood was being hauled ashore just below where High Dance’s canoe had landed. The laborers called in unison as they struggled with the wet wood.

The ramada consisted of four slim poles, saplings really, that supported a lattice roof covered with old reed matting gone gray with mold. Bead sat in its shade on a gorgeous red-white-and-black-striped blanket, his feet pulled up, knees clasped in his arms. He had his hair up in a bun, pinned with a turkey-bone skewer, and wore only a stained buckskin apron suspended from a plain belt. The muscles in his arms flexed and relaxed, as if in time to his thoughts.

He glanced up as High Dance walked up from the canoe he’d hired to bring him across the busy river crossing. Like Bead, he had dressed like a commoner, pulling his hair into a twist the way some of the western dirt farmers did.

High Dance stepped into the shade, nodded to Bead, and then at the two warriors, or wolves as Bead called them. They stood out in the sun, bronzed skin shining from perspiration, their young, tattoo-free faces indeed reminding High Dance of the hunting prairie beasts.

“I am so glad to see you,” Bead said easily, a lazy smile on his lips. He’d painted his face a pale gray with two light blue streaks down the cheeks, a pattern with which High Dance was unfamiliar. “And even better, it’s good to see that you’ve come alone.”

He gestured at the tens of men and youths loading and unloading canoe contents around them. Older women, dressed in bright colors, offered cooked and raw food from the shade of nearby ramadas, or paraded past with bowls of victuals. Skinny boys lurked in the crowd, each offering a carving, or other memento of Cahokia in return for a shell.

“As though one could actually tell in this confusion,” Bead amended.

“I came alone.” High Dance squinted at the two guards who watched him through suspicious eyes.

“So glad!” Bead popped to his feet, smacking his hands as if to free them of clinging sand. “I hoped that your sister hadn’t completely frightened you away. I really should make some time to have a visit with her. She seems … I don’t know, serious? Wouldn’t you say? You’re her brother. You’d know why she acts like such a nervous and close-minded old forest hen.”

“My sister is none of your concern.”

Bead glanced at him, an eyebrow lifting. “I’ve got it! Could it be? Tell me she isn’t still letting that ugly little dwarf crawl under her blanket. For the life of me, I just can’t get my imagination around a full-grown and handsome woman like your sister finding any kind of satisfaction from that tiny and misshapen little man.”

“You had better restrict your comments to things that are your business.” High Dance felt a cold fury blow through him. That Columella allowed that cunning little imp into her bed was bad enough, but to have the slippery Bead throw it in his face? Absolutely unacceptable!

Bead seemed nonplussed. “Oh, but it is my business, as you shall see. Come on. I’ve got something that will excite you to no end. Hah, I’ll bet you’ll be so overjoyed you even forgive me for that last deplorable comment about your sister.”

Bead started walking upslope toward the warehouses, and placed his fingers thoughtfully on his cheek. “Perhaps, when they’re eye to eye, the dwarf employs some remarkable dexterity with those tiny little toes?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t seem possible, given that they’re but nubbins. Ah, but when you go back to the original question about why your sister comes off as such a shriveled and dried persimmon, that would make perfect sense.”

“I told you to stop it.” High Dance fumed, but when Bead shot him a sudden, dangerous look, his anger was quickly smothered by a cool resurgence of worry.

They reached the warehouse area where it stood at the highest part of the levee north of the River Mounds. Glimpses of War Duck’s high palace were periodically visible between the rooftops as they wound between the buildings.

Bead stopped at one of the warehouses, shot High Dance a smile, and said, “Come on in. Let me show you what you have only dreamed about for … oh, all of your life.”

With that he opened the split-plank door and gestured High Dance to enter.

The very act of ducking into the dark interior took all of High Dance’s courage. For all he knew, a couple of Bead’s wolves were waiting in the gloomy interior, bows drawn, or war clubs lifted. If they struck him down there would be no witnesses. No one would have the slightest clue about what might have happened to him, or where or when he disappeared.

Just this once, could that meddling little pest of a dwarf have one of his spies following me?

But no blow fell. Instead, Bead’s two guards slipped in and off to one side while Bead refastened the door, deepening the gloom. The only light filtered indirectly through the gap between the roof and walls, blunted by the overhanging eaves.

It took a moment for the room’s contents to come into focus as High Dance’s eyes adjusted. Boxes and packs of what looked like Trade goods were stacked to either side of the door, as if ready to be moved at a moment’s notice. The back of the room appeared vacant but for a…?

He squinted, at first unsure of what he was seeing.

“Go ahead!” Bead almost chortled, clasping his hands in expectation. “Go look up close.”

A sense of foreboding rising in his breast, High Dance warily crossed the packed-clay floor, realizing that what he saw was a litter chair atop raised poles, and upon it was a reclining figure.

His eyes were adjusting now, and as the gloom gave way, he stopped short at the sight of a pregnant young woman, naked, artfully tied to the litter. She stared at him through terrified wide eyes, her hair disheveled, a cloth gag in her mouth. He made her to be in her late teens, the ropes passing just under her enlarged breasts and over her hips. The young woman’s arms were tied down on either side of the litter, as were her ankles. The sight of her distended navel, popping up like an acorn on her swollen abdomen, struck him as incongruous.

“I don’t understand,” High Dance said as Bead walked up beside him.

“Ah, perhaps you don’t. One of my wolves, Bleeding Hawk, is missing. Which may mean a complication. We need a new warehouse, and well, your Evening Star town is a bit more secure. As I proved today at the canoe landing, you can see who’s coming and going on the river. Here? In this warren of buildings? Why, they could come from any direction, at any time.”

He had no more than said that when the door opened, and one of the wolves entered, his eyes narrowed to slits, as if to pre-adjust his vision to the gloom. He closed the door and crossed on quick feet to communicate something urgent in his guttural tongue.

Bead snorted an amused laugh, then glanced knowingly at High Dance. “Poor Bleeding Hawk has indeed run into trouble. A half squad of Four Wind warriors just raided the first warehouse we rented when we got here.” He looked around unhappily. “We’ll be needing that new location sooner rather than later, I’m thinking.”

“And you just expect me to give you an Evening Star warehouse to hide this woman?”

“I’m sure you will. And you disappoint me, calling her ‘this woman.’ I thought you’d be bouncing from toe to toe, delighted in victory.”

“I don’t understand, Bead.”

“Look close, oh noble chief.” The words were laced with scorn.

High Dance did, discounting how her tear-stained cheeks were puffed out by the gag, how her eyes were swollen from weeping, and grief. Something about the lines of her face, the high brow …

“Pus and blood! Lady? Lace, is that you?”

But she just stared back at him, a bright and half-mad terror burning behind her eyes.

Forty-nine

From a great distance, Night Shadow Star slowly returned to herself, as if to find a stranger’s body and soul in place of her own. It might have been an instant that she’d been gone, or a lifetime. Like fading echoes, images from her memories slowly evaporated from her souls.

This time she couldn’t forget, couldn’t wall it away and pretend that day had never happened. His burning eyes, her screams and pleading, the pain and tears, remained stark and plain. Her humiliation and violation lived, raw and exposed, like a quivering muscle stripped of its protective skin.

Both of them. Why both of them?

She found herself crouched on a sandy mud, aware of the weight of water pressing down. Aware she was still in the Underworld, safe within the dark warrens, protected by the depths. And she finally understood why some souls sought refuge here both before and after death. They could return to the womb, away from trouble and violence, safe from abuse and betrayal.

Piasa, Horned Serpent, and Snapping Turtle were regarding her with otherworldly gazes. They knew, had relived the memory with her, felt the disbelief, confusion, and shock.

Piasa’s hollow voice reverberated inside her. “You know why he wants you. You can feel his hunger. The dispossessed voices that whisper to and stroke his twisted souls have convinced him that he must have anything forbidden.” He paused. “As you were forbidden, Lady of Cahokia. He has had his taste, fleeting and self-destructive as it was. He convinced himself that, despite his love, he could sacrifice you for a greater gain. But your escape has only increased his desire to possess you no matter the cost.”

“Don’t send me back,” she whispered, squeezing tears from between her tightly pressed eyelids. “Let my souls stay here in the darkness. Let them drift with the currents. I won’t be any trouble.”

Horned Serpent hissed in frustration. “Do you know
why
we care? It’s not about
you,
or what they did to you. Your exalted Four Winds souls have no value here. Are you so completely preoccupied with yourself that you fail to understand the real threat? What this abomination intends to attempt? The Morning Star’s latest resurrection only
whetted
his appetite and obsession. Do you understand the ramifications if he should
succeed
?”