Shadow on the Sun (19 page)

He saw that his words had angered Lean Bear, as he'd expected, but he had to ignore the Apache's reaction. Better he was angry than dead, he thought.

“Who are
you
?” the old man demanded.

“Billjohn Finley,” he answered. “Government Indian agent in Picture City.”

The Night Doctor gazed at him impassively.

“What boon?” he finally asked.

Lean Bear cut off Finley's voice as he tried to answer the shaman's question.

“You must destroy the son of Vandaih,” Lean Bear said.

The old man's reaction was short-lived, albeit unmistakable—momentary shock dispelled by will.

The impassive look returned.

“I do not know any son of Vandaih,” he said.

Lean Bear stiffened, leaning toward the old man, only pulling back as the old man raised the rifle to his shoulder.

“You invoked this demon!” Lean Bear lashed out at the shaman. “You must rid the world of him!”

The old man's features twisted suddenly into a mask of savage venom.

“Let the creature live forever!” he cried. “Your people drove me from my wickiup and forced me to this solitary life! I owe you nothing! I delight in your certain destruction, every man, woman, and child!”

T
he
shaman raised the rifle to his shoulder once again.

“Leave,” he said. “Or die.”

Finley saw, in an instant, that Lean Bear had moved his right hand to the hilt of his knife. The Apache did not intend that the Night Doctor should continue living, even if it cost him his own life.

“If you fire your rifle, the son of Vandaih will hear it,” Finley said quickly.

The old man's narrowed eyes shifted to him.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Did you think he wouldn't follow us?” Finley said.

The shaman's face grew visibly taut. “You
led
him here?” he asked incredulously.

“How could we do otherwise?” Finley asked. “You know he must be close by when the revocation ceremony is performed.”

Hatred twisted the old man's face. “I'll kill you both,” he snarled.

“No matter who you kill, the creature knows we're in here,” Finley responded. “And you know what he'll do when he finds us—or you.”

The shaman drew in a sudden hissing breath through clenched teeth.

“I do not believe you,” he said, but there was little confidence in his voice.

“Believe him,” Lean Bear said. “I wore the robe of a white buffalo as we rode into the mountains. I watched the sky as we came. High above, so high that I could barely see him, the son of Vandaih followed. The white man speaks the truth. We knew that the creature had to be nearby during the ceremony.”

His pitiless smile made coldness move up Finley's spine.

“He is nearby,” Lean Bear finished. Then, without a pause, he turned away from the shaman. “We will go now. You have some minutes left to live, perhaps an hour. Then the son of Vandaih will have found you.” Another remorseless smile. “I leave it to the eye of your mind what he will do to you.”

Finley remained motionless as Lean Bear walked past him. His gaze stayed fixed on the old man's face. The shaman had to be in a state of horror, he thought. Unless he really didn't believe what they said. But how could he not believe when it was obvious that—

“Wait.” The Night Doctor's voice told Finley everything, thickened by dread, quavering as an old man's voice would quaver.

Lean Bear turned to face the shaman. He did not speak. Neither did Finley. No need for our words now, he was thinking.

The old man shuddered, lowering the rifle.

“I will perform the ceremony,” he said.

 

Finley, Boutelle,
and Lean Bear sat cross-legged on the cave floor, watching silently.

At first, the Night Doctor had informed them that no white man could observe the ceremony he was to perform. Lean Bear had not been opposed to that, but Finley had remained adamant. He and Boutelle had already watched the ceremony performed in the Apache camp, he told the shaman. They were part of this entire situation. They
would
observe.

He knew that under any other circumstances the Night Doctor would refuse to yield. But the old man knew that his time was short, that at any moment the son of Vandaih might burst in on them. He could not take time to argue, so he submitted to Finley's demand. While the shaman gathered what he needed for the ceremony, Finley went and got Boutelle, telling him what had happened.

Now the three men sat in motionless silence, watching the Night Doctor bathe.

The sight of it made Finley restive. If the creature had seen them enter the cavern, he could be close by. The time taken for the old man to wash his body could be fatal to them.

Ironic, too, he thought, a humorless smile drawing back his lips. From the smell of the old man and his living space, cleanliness was not an item high on his list of priorities.

Boutelle leaned over to whisper in his ear, “Why is he doing this?”

“He has to purify himself to ask for help from the Great Spirit,” Finley whispered back.

He glanced at Lean Bear. The chief's son was scowling at them. Clearly despite their attempt to be quiet, their words had not eluded the Apache's keen hearing.

His gaze moved back to the Night Doctor.

The old man had finished drying himself and was putting on a short, clean buckskin shirt.

Picking up a small pottery jug (he'd gotten all the ceremony
elements from a hidden crevice in the cave) he braced himself visibly, then drank, swallowing deeply. He bent over to put down the jug.

Before he'd straightened up, his face was distorted by a spasm of nausea, and making dreadful, gagging sounds, he lurched to the hanging buffalo robe and swept it aside with a brush of his right arm. He lunged outside just in time to void the contents of his stomach.

“What's he doing?” Boutelle asked, sickened.

“He has to purge himself of all impurities,” Finley answered. “There must be no food or drink inside him.”

“It doesn't sound likely,” Boutelle muttered, grimacing as he listened to the violent retching of the old man outside.

Finley noticed Lean Bear shifting restlessly and knew what he was thinking. It was not completely dark yet and as long as the shaman was outside, he could be seen and there was just the chance—

“For Christ's sake, get back in,” he muttered.

He relaxed a little—noticing that Lean Bear did the same—as the Night Doctor came back in, wiping at his lips. The buffalo robe fell back heavily across the opening.

They watched as the old man put on a buffalo robe that had been beaten thin with rocks. The ritual robe, Finley thought.

The shaman worked a leather thong across his head. Hanging from it was a round, metallic medallion with figures inscribed on it. Finley saw from the edge of his vision that Boutelle was looking at him for an explanation. He turned his head and shook it slightly. He dared not speak now. The ceremony was too close.

The Night Doctor had picked up a leather bag and hung it at his waist, its strap diagonally across his bare chest. Then he picked up four pottery dishes with handmade candles in them and placed them at four equidistant points of an invisible circle. These were, Finley knew, the four points of the compass—east, west, north, and south.

Removing a tiny piece of kindling from the fire, the shaman lit the candles.

Then he picked up a deep, dishlike pottery container and scooped up wood coals, dropping them into the container.

Immediately, a thick, greasy smoke began to rise from the dish. Before he had set it down in the center of the circle, the smoke was already starting to fill the cave. Some of it rose toward an opening in the cave roof; some appeared to drift through the hide-covered opening. Finley and Lean Bear both tightened as they saw that. Smoke would be visible for miles.

And it was not yet dark outside. . . .

He bent toward Lean Bear, murmuring, “Must there be such a fire?”

“It is part of the ceremony,” Lean Bear responded, but clearly he was nervous about the smoke as well.

“What is it?” Boutelle whispered.

Finley gestured toward the fire, and Boutelle seemed to understand.

“Why doesn't he start?” he whispered, then winced as Lean Bear glared at him.

By then, the Night Doctor was removing articles from another leather pouch and holding them one by one in the smoke from the fire. Boutelle assumed that it was to purify the objects: a wand, a knife, dried plants, a small leather bag, feathers from a large bird. Probably an eagle, Boutelle thought.

Finley looked toward the opening in the wall again. The smoke had thinned, but some was still escaping outside. Get started, he thought urgently. If the son of Vandaih saw that smoke . . .

A shudder ran up his back. They'd be helpless.

He drew in a quick breath and looked at the shaman again, eyes smarting from the greasy pall of smoke in the cave.

The old man was holding something above the smoking fire. It looked to Finley like strips of skin or dried flesh. He had no idea what they were.

Only Lean Bear didn't start as the Night Doctor began to dance around the fire slowly and rhythmically, chanting in his frail, hoarse voice. He had the wand in his left hand, the knife in his right, gesturing with them as he danced first toward the east, then the west, the north, and the south, chanting in each direction.

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, you are the sun first rising in the east.

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, you are the sun descending in the west.

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, you are the winter sun in the north.

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, you are the rising sun of spring in the south.

“Spirits of fear and death give way to the sun! This is a place of sanctuary! The roof above, a roof of safety! The floor beneath, a floor of protection!

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, protect me from evil approaching from the east, the west, the north, the south.”

Finley glanced at Lean Bear, seeing a look of wrath on the Apache's face. He could understand now why the Night Doctor had failed as the shaman of the Pinal Spring band, why they had expelled him.

Ignoring all else, the old man was performing a rite exclusively for his own protection.

And they could do nothing about it.

He had no doubt that the shaman was well aware of their helplessness.

You miserable old bastard, he thought.

He started slightly with Boutelle as the Night Doctor took some powder from the small leather bag and flung it onto the fire. It flashed
momentarily, then exuded pale smoke which filled the air with a pungent smell that was sweet and sour at the same time.

Boutelle shook himself, blinking hard and swallowing. The smoke from the burning powder seemed to fill his eyes and throat. He could see the Night Doctor only indistinctly. The old man looked to him like some figure from a mad dream. It seemed as though he could hear the thumping of the drum again. The same one-two-three-four rhythm he had heard in the Apache camp. That was impossible, though. There was no drum. It had to be imagination fixing on the rhythmic thud of the Night Doctor's feet on the floor of the cavern—one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.

He felt himself beginning to sink again into the trancelike state he'd experienced in the mountain clearing. The sound of the Night Doctor's voice rose and fell in volume and in pitch, sometimes mournful and suppressed, other times aggressive, vehement.

Finley sat rigidly, watching the old man perform his rite of self-protection. He noticed sweat running down the old man's body and became aware of the perspiration on his own face, too, and the many drops of it trickling down his chest and back beneath his shirt.

He winced as the shaman suddenly jabbed at his left palm with the knife blade, drawing blood. Dancing on, he held the palm above the fire, letting dark drops of his blood fall into the glowing wood coals where they hissed.

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, let this gift of my blood satisfy and please you that you will protect me from whatever evil is around me.”

Soon, the old man would mention the son of Vandaih by name. After the sacrifice. But what would the sacrifice be? Finley tensed, his right hand rising to the hilt of the obsidian knife. The Night Doctor was sapped by age. Still . . .

His hand lowered again as the shaman danced to a nearby corner of the cave and pulled a wolf's hide from a bulky object to reveal a cage woven of twigs inside of which a scrawny hen was standing.

The old man's hands moved swiftly. Opening the cage, he seized the chicken by its throat (so it would make no noise, Finley knew) and carried it to the fire, dancing slowly around the smoking dish, extending the struggling hen to the east, the west, the north, and the south.

Boutelle gasped as the shaman, with a blurring movement of his hands, lopped off the hen's head with his knife, then tore the bird in half and dropped its bloody pieces on the fire.

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, may the sacrificing of this hen also be accepted by you. May you return this gift by helping me in this time of peril.”

What about
us
? Finley thought. Was Lean Bear thinking that as well?

But then the Night Doctor held a folded piece of the animal skin above the fire and chanted, “I have placed the name of Vandaih's son upon this skin, and when I drop this named skin in the fire, you, O, Usen, must, as fire consumes the skin, consume the son of Vandaih, making his body headless and his head bodiless.”

Abruptly, he opened the leather bag at his waist and removed something, which he held above the fire. Boutelle felt his stomach twist with nausea.

It was a shrunken, mummified head, and the shaman was swinging it above the fire by its lank, black hair.

“O, Usen, O, Great Spirit, let it be, in this ceremony, that this head is that of the son of Vandaih. O, Usen, please remove this head once more.”