People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (42 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)

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R
ain Bear sat across the fire with his teacup braced on his knee. Morning was breaking, sending a shallow light through the camp. It illuminated the low blue wreaths of smoke that hung in flat layers. Every muscle in his body cried out for more sleep, but he forced himself to sip his tea and struggled to come awake.

Little Tsauz sat across the fire, Rides-the-Wind and Pitch flanking him on either side. The boy’s dark eyes looked strangely luminous, as though some of Thunderbird’s light had suffused his young body. Rides-the-Wind had cleaned and treated his facial wounds, but a few of the deepest cuts across his forehead still oozed blood.

Rain Bear’s sleep-hazy mind wasn’t capable of rational thought this morning. Instead it kept clinging to memories of Evening Star’s body against his. He had never made love with a woman who fit so perfectly against him.

He glanced surreptitiously at her lodge, wondering when she had slipped away last night. Waking without her this morning had left him with a sense of desolation and loss.

He sniffed at the cold, sipped his tea, and forced himself to concentrate on the here and now.

“What happened?” Rain Bear gestured to the boy’s wounds.

“He flew through the treetops on Thunderbird’s back,” Rides-the-Wind answered matter-of-factly. “The branches scratched him.”

The branches scratched him?
Rain Bear put more faith in good clubs and spears than he did in gods, but he didn’t exactly disbelieve.

Pitch handed Rain Bear a bowl of seal meat stew, and he nodded his thanks while he tried to sort this all out. As he stirred the stew, the mingled scents of seaweed and seal encircled his face. He took a bite. Tender and succulent, the seal melted in his mouth. Swallowing, he gestured questioningly. “I’m glad the boy had a vision, but why am I here?”

Tsauz clasped the bowl Pitch inserted into his hands and slowly let out a deep breath. “Chief Rain Bear, I spoke with Thunderbird.”

Rides-the-Wind gave the boy an intense look. “Did he meet you at the top of the ladder?”

“No. He grabbed the rope and dragged it away, but he made me climb to the middle while it swung through the air”—his lips parted, as though seeing it all again on the fabric of his soul—“and then we soared away.”

Rides-the-Wind leaned forward. A clean dry deerhide rested over his shoulders, but he still shivered periodically, as though the cold night had settled in his bones. “Where did you go?”

“We flew to Fire Village.” Steam curled around Tsauz’s face as he ate a bite of stew. He chewed it thoughtfully and swallowed. “I saw my father.”

That got Rain Bear’s attention. He perked up, studying the boy.

Rides-the-Wind asked, “Did you speak with him?”

“Thunderbird wouldn’t let me.” Grief strained his voice, but his eyes remained clear.

“Then Thunderbird had good reasons. Did you ask him to save your father?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

Tsauz lowered his bowl to his lap and fumbled with it. The words were almost too soft to hear. “He told me that I could either save my father, or save all of our peoples. One or the other.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.”

Rides-the-Wind’s gray brows slanted down. “How are you supposed to do that?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said he’ll come back and tell me more later. Right now, he just wanted me to get word to Matron Astcat.”

“Word about what?”

Tsauz ran his thumb around the rim of his bowl. “He told me how to stop the war.”

Rain Bear’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. He put it back in his bowl with a clunk. “How?”

Tsauz’s blind eyes drifted in his direction. “It’s not something for you, Great Chief. Only Matron Astcat and I can stop it.”

The hair at the nape of Rain Bear’s neck prickled. “Tsauz, I must insist—”

“No, you must not.” Rides-the-Wind gave a shake of his finger. “If Tsauz were to betray the trust of his Spirit Helper by revealing the Dream to you, it might anger Thunderbird. We would be worse off than we are now. At least we know there
is
a way to stop the war.”

Rain Bear set his half-eaten bowl on a warm hearthstone. “You mean that I’m supposed to trust Tsauz when tens of tens of lives are at stake?”

“Apparently. So let’s spend our time thinking about a runner. Who should we send with Tsauz’s message?”

“Just a moment!” Rain Bear glared back and forth. “You’re asking me to bet the future of my people, clan, family, and warriors on the vision of a ten-winters-old boy?”

Rides-the-Wind gave him a thoughtful appraisal. “Do you remember when we talked about why I came here? I told you that Power brought me here. Just as it brought you, Tsauz, and Evening Star to this place. I told you that you would have to make a choice. Do you trust Tsauz’s vision? Or prosecute your war in an attempt to exterminate the North Wind People?”

“I have no wish to exterminate the North Wind People.” He scowled at the old man.

In a gentler voice, Rides-the-Wind asked, “What will be the ultimate price of your alliance, Great Chief? What will Bluegrass, Goldenrod, and Talon demand in return for their service?”

Rain Bear started to shake his head, and then a cold realization sank in. Yes, that would be it, wouldn’t it? He might start out with the assurance that his forces were only going to break the Council’s authority, but once the warfare began, who would keep the pent rage from feeding on a desire for revenge?

“Ah, yes.” Rides-the-Wind read his expression. “Where will it end?” He turned back to Pitch. “Let’s see. We were talking about a way to get Tsauz’s message to Matron Astcat.”

Rain Bear was painfully aware of Tsauz. The boy was staring at him with such intensity Rain Bear would have sworn the boy could see him. It went against every fiber in his body, but he said, “Whatever we do must be done immediately. The next time Coyote prowls Sandy Point Village, he’ll kill Tsauz.”

Pitch’s beaked nose caught the gleam of firelight as he glanced uncertainly at his father-in-law. “It has to be someone special, doesn’t it? Carrying the message will be dangerous.”

“It has to be someone they wouldn’t kill right off,” Rides-the-Wind said. “Someone important enough that they would listen to him.”

“Someone like me.”

Rain Bear and Rides-the-Wind turned to Pitch, asking in unison, “You?”

“I’m perfect for it.”

Rain Bear placed a hand on Pitch’s shoulder. “What about your wound?”

“It’s healed enough. The swelling has gone down. I can do this. And, given my wound, I’m surely not intimidating to them.”

Rain Bear mused, “Roe isn’t going to like this, but if I’m stuck with this lunacy, you’re the best choice. Not only that, you’re my son-in-law—married to Astcat’s granddaughter, for what that’s worth.”

Rides-the-Wind smoothed his hand over his gray beard. “By sending you, they will know the value we place on Tsauz’s vision.”

Pitch muttered, “Tell that to the assassins who speared me on the trail home from Antler Spoon’s village.”

“Yes,” Rides-the-Wind said softly. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

Pitch frowned and looked back and forth between them. “But I thought we’d decided Coyote hired them, and Coyote was Ecan.”

Rides-the-Wind’s eyes glimmered. “If Coyote were Ecan, Evening Star would have recognized him the other night. No, this is someone who can play many roles. Someone smart enough to let other people believe him harmless.”

“If Dzoo was right, and he’s obsessed with her, why isn’t he trying to get her out of Fire Village?”

The old Soul Keeper’s smile was anything but friendly. “Oh, he hasn’t forgotten her. You see, when I say he’s clever, I mean it. How patient he must be, seeing her every day, waiting, knowing that the entire world is about to explode in warfare.”

“And in the chaos …”

“Exactly.”

Rain Bear pinched the bridge of his nose. “We must warn her.”

Rides-the-Wind was watching him from the corner of his eye. “Do not worry about Dzoo, Great Chief. She and Coyote are already Dancing and darting. They have locked themselves in a duel. What happens between them is out of your control.”

Rain Bear shot him a mistrustful look.

Rides-the-Wind replied, “Why do you think she let Ecan take her to Fire Village in the first place?”

Pitch rose. His red ritual cape swung around his long legs. “Let me get my pack. I’ll be ready in moments.”

Rides-the-Wind gripped Pitch’s free hand as the Singer walked past, and whispered, “Take the obsidian amulets to Dzoo. She may need them.”

“Yes, I will.” He sprinted away.

Rain Bear studied Tsauz. The boy had his chin up, bravely facing them, but his fingers had twined in his cape and hardened to fists.

What had Tsauz really experienced last night? Had he truly flown with the god, or was he just a very imaginative child? One touched by Power, to be sure, but the boy had been desperate to get a message to his father.
And now I have given him a way to do just that.

Would the message actually stop the war?

Or start it?

His gaze returned to Rides-the-Wind, and he found the elder staring at him with dark penetrating eyes.

“Quite the unsettling decision, isn’t it?” the Soul Keeper asked.

“I was just wishing I was the only one I had to trust.”

A grim smile curled the old man’s lips. “Then you’d be in real trouble.”

Forty-seven

E
can ducked out of his lodge, his prayer bag in hand, and looked across the mountain. The gleam of dawn painted the belly of Brother Sky, turning it into an iridescent lavender bowl. At least twenty people already stood on the high points around Fire Village, facing east, toward the mountain peak.

He nodded to the young woman who knelt on a woven sea-grass mat ten paces away and proceeded up the trail toward the eastern palisade gate. Wind Woman blew his long black hair and stirred the wolf tails on his knee-high moccasins. They made a pleasant swishing sound.

North Wind People rarely appeared to offer morning prayers, which he thought foolish. Of course it meant associating with the unwashed rabble, but it was also a powerful symbol. If Matron Astcat were any sort of leader, she would order everyone except North Wind People to stay in at dawn, so that the sun shed its newborn light on North Wind People alone.

As he passed a lodge he glimpsed the knot of slaves bent over a still form. Wind Scorpion stood there, his grizzled face stern, arms crossed resolutely. Ecan had never really liked the man. He was taciturn, quiet, and watched the world through predatory eyes. Cimmis placed a great deal of credence in his skills, sending him constantly on scouting chores.

Ecan stepped over, stopping at his side to see what the commotion was.

“Good morning to you, Starwatcher.” Wind Scorpion didn’t raise his eyes to Ecan’s, but continued to stare suspiciously at the proceedings.

“Warrior.” The slaves were busy rubbing Lion Girl’s body with mint leaves and crushed fir needles. “So she died, did she?”

Wind Scorpion’s lip lifted in a sneer. “I asked Cimmis to let me take the witch out into the forest.” He lifted a war club in his bony right hand. “One smack. Right in the back of the head. And she’d never kill another of our people with her potions.”

Ecan glanced at the corpse. “It does seem that everyone around her becomes ill, doesn’t it?”

“Deer Killer is complaining of a stomachache this morning.” Wind Scorpion shook his head. “Ask our chief, will you? See if you can get him to be rid of the witch before we’re all as dead as that girl.”

“And Dance Fly?”

Slaves usually cared for their own. They dared to call upon Ecan’s skills only in the direst of circumstances.

As they had yesterday for Lion Girl and Dance Fly.

When he’d entered the slave lodge, he’d been horrified by the raised wartlike lesions that covered their faces, hands, and legs. They’d been trembling spastically. He’d left willow bark tea and larkspur ointments—both very valuable because they, too, came as tribute—to relieve their pain. Now, seeing how Lion Girl had turned out, he wished he’d saved his precious ointments.

“If Dance Fly isn’t dead by midday, it’ll be a miracle. She’s lost her soul; her breathing is so fast you’d think she’d run for miles.” Anger welled in Wind Scorpion’s voice. But then, it was known that he consorted with most of the slave women.

“If she dies, the rumors about Dzoo will be flying like bats.”

“She’s doing this to scare us.” Wind Scorpion’s war club bounced in his hand. “Just mention it to the great chief, will you, Starwatcher? I’ll drag her out of here on the end of a rope. I’m not afraid.”

Ecan remembered how Wind Scorpion had been with Hunter on the trail back from War Gods Village. No, he wasn’t afraid. Not in the light of day like now. But come nightfall and Dzoo’s proximity, and well, it would be another thing.

“I’ll mention it,” Ecan agreed as he turned back to his duties.

The guard standing at the far northern end of the cliff lifted a
hand to him. Ecan couldn’t tell if it was Hunter, or that bellyaching fool, Deer Killer. He lifted a hand in return and continued on his way through the palisade.

The cliff rose like a giant midnight wall. Another guard stood two hundred hands above. No, not a guard. Ecan knew White Stone’s stance. The war chief always stood with his back straight and legs spread.

White Stone had been acting strangely since Red Dog’s return. Sensing that Red Dog carried important messages, he would rightly assume that plans were being laid in secret.

Ecan shrugged it off. He hadn’t slept well. Tsauz had wakened him several times in the night, calling out as though he was hurt and needed Ecan. The visions had left him drained and anxious.

He reached the trail that led to the top of the lava cliff and climbed. Footprints disturbed the frost. Anger warmed his veins. He’d given strict orders that no one should ever disturb his morning prayers … .

Dzoo leaned over the edge of the cliff above him.

Ecan froze. How had she managed to pass the guard at the palisade gate? Cimmis had ordered her death if she even tried to pass. Now she turned to study him. Inside the frame of her hood, her beautiful face looked pale, like polished chalcedony. Her black eyes shone.

The town had gone quiet. He turned to see people staring, waiting to see what he’d do.

As he stepped off onto the rimrock, her gaze followed him. Just her gaze. She stood three paces away, tall and willowy, silhouetted against the pink sunrise like a dark Earth Spirit.

“A pleasant morning to you, Dzoo,” he greeted, and went to stand at the southern point of the rim, where he always offered his prayers. “They were supposed to kill you if you tried to leave the palisade.”

“My guard said he was sick this morning.”

“Yes. Lion Girl died last night.”

“He’s good, isn’t he?”

Ecan turned his head. “He? Who?”

“The man who killed them.”

“People think you killed them.”

“Yes. They are supposed to.”

He ignored it as another of her ploys. As he loosened the laces of his prayer bag, she moved up behind him, her steps silken.

Ecan’s back muscles crawled. He said, “I’m glad you’re here. It will give us a chance to speak.”

He pulled four small leather pouches—each a different color—from his prayer bag.

As he opened the yellow pouch; he said, “It is considered ordinary courtesy to talk back when—”

“You have no interest in my courtesy.”

Her deep voice had a curiously penetrating quality. It seemed to echo inside him. “I saw you enter Matron Astcat’s lodge last night. You were there for a long time. It would be worth a great deal to know what you discussed.”

He hadn’t heard her approach. Barely more than a handsbreadth from his ear, she whispered,
“Your death.”

Annoyed that he’d jumped, Ecan dumped powdered red cedar bark into his hand and as he sprinkled it to the east, Sang,
“Come Old Woman Above, rise and carry the sun across the sky.”

He stuffed the yellow bag back into his pack and jerked open the laces of the red bag. As he poured powdered clamshell to the south, he said, “Is that something you will accomplish, Dzoo?”

She turned to stare up at the mountainside where White Stone was perched. “What will you do now that Rain Bear has rejected your offer?”

Ecan’s hand stopped. Shell blew from his fingers in a haze. How could she know?

“You must find another way to recover your son—and soon.”

“Or what?”

She paused. “Or he’ll kill you.”

“Who will?”

She just smiled.

Ecan finished his prayers, sprinkling bitter cherry bark to the west and ground oyster shell to the north. Then he offered his shell-covered hands to Brother Sky, and bent to touch Our Mother Earth, chanting,
“Come Old Woman Above, be on your way to the Dark Place.”

Wind Woman swept the lines of bark and shell together, blending them into a rainbow haze before carrying them away down the mountain. They fell over Fire Village like a glistening mist, blessing it.

“Cimmis’s assassin failed. That must make you happy.”

Ecan’s head jerked around. “What assassin?”

“You didn’t know?”

“
What
assassin?”

Her gaze had fixed on the cliff where White Stone stood, as though waiting for something. Waist-length red hair streamed around her hood like long dancing legs. From his angle, he could see
the lavender light shining on her turned-up nose and full lips. The rest of her face remained hidden by her hair.

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“Is this some trick? A lie designed to make me …”

She turned, and Ecan went still. His loins stirred, though he couldn’t say why. Something … lethal … gazed at him from those ebony depths. Something not quite human.

“Your chief sent an assassin to kill your son. He failed. Barely made his escape. A worrisome thing for a man of his skill.”

Ecan’s heart thundered. “You’re lying!”

She didn’t even blink.

His hand quaked as he stuffed his blue pouch back into his prayer bag and tied it to his belt. It wasn’t that he doubted Cimmis would do something so heinous; he just couldn’t fathom why his own spies hadn’t informed him. Cimmis would certainly make another attempt.

“When did this happen, Dzoo?”

“Two days ago.”

“Did Astcat tell you?”

“Are you ready?” She smiled, and he felt it like the final plunge of an assassin’s knife.

“Ready for what? Stop playing games with me.”

“It’s almost over now.” She extended her palm and breathed across it, as though blowing dust to the wind.

“What is?”

“Your life, Starwatcher.”