People of the Morning Star (35 page)

Unless they’ve all played the role for so long it’s just their nature.

Was that it? The hoax had been in place for so long, the act so well practiced, they couldn’t step back from the trickery?

And now I am bound to the very people who destroyed my life, my family, and world.
He tried not to think of his wives, of the guilt and horror. Late at night when he awakened—and needed to torture himself—he freed his souls to imagine what they were enduring. In extreme cases the wives of captured chiefs were passed off to the warriors for their amusement.

In the darkness of the coming storm, he could almost hear the tortured souls of the dead from Red Wing town. They’d been clubbed, shot, or strangled in Spotted Wrist’s vicious attempt to forever break the Spirit of Red Wing town. Now, like that ruined young woman up on the bluff, their souls roamed the empty forests around Red Wing town, wailing in their lonesome and aggrieved misery.

My fault. All my fault.

“There. There’s the stairs,” Field Green called from the front where she’d been leading the way. “Set the lady down. And be careful!”

Fire Cat watched the litter being carefully lowered as another gust of wind blasted out of the night. Night Shadow Star’s steeply pitched mound and the dark palace above were but looming blots. Given the gusts, not even pine-knot torches would have stayed lit.

“Here’s my hand, Lady,” Field Green said, reaching down to help Night Shadow Star to her feet.

In the gloom, it would be so easy. The thought returned as if it clung to Fire Cat’s souls like spider silk.
I could get halfway to the top, reach out, and grasp her by the head. Pulling and twisting, it would break her neck as her body weight fell. Then all I’d have to do is let loose, and she’ll tumble right to the bottom.

He’d be free. The woman he’d given his word to would be dead.

And what sort of man would you be then?

It would seem an accident, an unlucky misstep in the night.

The value of a man’s word …

Fire Cat heard the hiss and hollow thump of impact—even the twang of the bowstring—so close in the night. From the battlefield he instinctively knew Field Green’s choked grunt and startled jerk: an arrow hard in the chest.

Fire Cat hesitated—understanding, with complete clarity, that instant of opportunity. Then, with a curse, he grasped Night Shadow Star and yanked her backward off the litter. As he did, three more arrows whistled in; two slapped flesh and evoked whimpering cries among the porters and guardian warriors.

“Run!” he bellowed as he wheeled and tossed the stunned Night Shadow Star over his shoulder. “
Ambush!
”

Then, despite her savagely thrashing body, he pounded off into the darkness. Dodging and weaving, he kept hearing the vicious hiss of arrows as they cut the air too close to his panicked body.

Three paces. Jump left. Three paces. Jump right. Three paces …

“Put me
down
!” Night Shadow Star’s panicked cry was accompanied by her fists beating his back. Her strength, and the firmness of her supple body surprised him. Keeping a grip on her muscular torso took all of his effort.

“Quiet!” he hissed. “Pus and blood, woman, they’re trying to
kill
you!”

Maybe it was his tone. She ceased her kicking and clawing and let him run for the deeper safety of the darkness. Getting the balance right he dedicated himself to sheer speed. He was on the stickball field where the grass was beaten level. Perfect footing for running flat out.

Behind him, he heard a shrieking wail as someone, perhaps one of the guards, succumbed to the pain and terror of an arrow through the guts.

Running for all he was worth, he began curving to the right and slowed. Panting, he lowered Night Shadow Star to her feet. In the process he pressed his lips against her hair, whispering, “Quiet. They’ll be hunting us.”

Pulling her down with him, he dropped to one knee, keeping his right hand on her elbow.

“Who?” she whispered back, voice tinged with rage and fear.

“Shhh.” He cocked his head, hearing screams and shouts from where they’d fled the litter.

“Lady Night Shadow Star?” a voice called in the night. “Are you all right?”

Fire Cat tightened his grip on her elbow as he softly repeated, “Quiet.”

“Lady Night Shadow Star?” the voice called. “Please. Answer! This is your guard. We have wounded here.”

“I know his voice. It’s commander Talon.” To her credit, she barely mouthed the words.

Keeping his lips next to her ear, he added, “Doesn’t matter who’s calling if we give ourselves away.” A pause. “Trust me.”

He felt her nod.

Easing to his feet, he took her hand in his and headed away into the night and wind. The chaos of shouts and cries at Night Shadow Star’s stairway served as a beacon.

“When can we go back?”

“When it’s safe.” He barely breathed the answer, ears attentive, eyes searching the darkness. Behind them in the distant west, white flashes of lightning sent just enough flicker across the stickball field that he caught a glimpse of the World Tree pole.

Someone screamed in surprise and pain back at Night Shadow Star’s.

“There!” Talon’s distant voice cried. “He’s running!”

“After him!” someone else shouted.

“This is madness,” Night Shadow Star whispered to herself.

Off to his right, Fire Cat heard the muffled pounding of bare feet, then a wary call in some tongue he couldn’t understand.

Heart skipping, he pulled Night Shadow Star down.

Blessed ancestors, please! No lightning. All we have is the darkness.
Then he thought:
They’re armed, unafraid, continuing the attack even though Night Shadow Star’s guard is alerted.

He frowned as two voices hissed in the night, each tense and questioning. The language was nothing he’d ever heard. Dark shadows in the night, they were no more than twenty paces away. A distant flash of lightning illuminated them trotting back toward the west.

A torch was being carried down from Night Shadow Star’s palace. Fire Cat could make out a ring of guards, bows drawn as they stared anxiously out at the night. In the torchlight, a knot of people were clustered around the litter.

“Come,” Fire Cat whispered. Which way? Back? Or would the attackers be waiting, needing only to get a clear shot? Lightning flashed again, illuminating the cloud-thick western sky.

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere they don’t expect us to go.” He turned east, tugging her along. Heading deeper into the safe darkness cloaking the great plaza.

The Lizard

In many ways I have become a creature of darkness. Like the lizards I have seen in the south, I can change my colors to better mingle in any company or background. As I did that day when I followed Blue Heron up the stairs to the Morning Star’s palace, I can act as noble as the rest of them. Or I can become a humble dirt farmer, as common and simple as I was the day that immigrant family invited me into their little farm for a meal of boiled corn and walnut bread. While I can walk in anonymity in the daylight, I nevertheless feel more at home in the darkness.

Most of that, I realize, is because of the shadows in which my souls are now forced to eternally dwell. They did that to me. Taught me to hate. Hatred, you see, is a blackness all its own. Deeper, darker, as impenetrable to illumination as wet charcoal. It coats the souls, leaves them gasping and desperate for the feeblest flicker. While the body basks in a relentless and blinding midday sun, my souls smother in a midnight longing for so much as the shine of a distant spark.

Another gust comes whimpering out of the darkness and pushes at my body as I loiter to one side and caress the arrow nocked in my bowstring.

I had watched and waited patiently as Blue Heron’s people remained with her litter. So, too, did Sun Wing’s. They barely recognized my presence. Many people lingered in the plaza before the great mound. To them I was but another messenger, an emissary, or perhaps just a curious pilgrim basking in the Power of the Morning Star’s mighty palace.

And then she came, descending the stairs. I recognized her voice, tight with tension, and speaking slowly to the Red Wing she’s taken into her household. I couldn’t make out the words, but savored the bitterness with which they were expressed.

Perhaps because I love her with all of my heart, I’m not the least bothered that hers isn’t a happy life.

Little more than a dark shadow, she led the way to her litter. With but a few more words, she was seated, lifted, and they started off to the west. Even as her porters were feeling their way, I was moving, keeping downwind. As I hurried ahead of them, I unrolled the reed-fiber matting and freed my bow and quiver. Ghosting along on silent feet, harried by the wind but buoyed by the anticipation of how I would send yet another shock through the Four Winds Clan, I found my wolves waiting. They were hunkered down in the inky shadows along the slope of Night Shadow Star’s clay-sided mound.

I slapped White Hawk on the shoulder, and told him, “They’re coming.”

Memories of who she once was remain ever sharp in the eye of my souls. Her eyes back then were dark and daring, literally dancing with delight. I can still see her bright white teeth flash behind soft lips. Her hair, in swirls of blue-black, flows around her as she glances at me over a brown and impossibly smooth shoulder.

I tremble from the love that I feel. Such a terrible love. The kind that crushes a man like a cocoon of drying leather. It tightens, presses, and finally squeezes my beating heart and frantic lungs into a strangled silence.

The voices have spoken.

Tonight I must sacrifice the woman I love. It became so clear during my talk with High Dance. I have to kill my Night Shadow Star, abandon everything I desire, to purify the Power. Only when my grief is overwhelming will I be cleansed. I must endure the pain, so much pain, but perhaps when I stand over her bleeding corpse, I will once again be able to breathe, to feel the blood racing in my veins like it did so long ago.

And more, I pray the keen stone point tipping my arrow will pierce the swelling darkness and allow the faintest shaft of light to penetrate the eternal midnight of my souls.

Earlier, while appearing as a salt Trader, I’d taken time to study the mound and its angles, to gauge the distance to our killing zone. My wolves are located where they can shoot from either mound corner without danger of hitting each other.

While I’d hoped for better light, I waited until just the right moment when she’d be rising from her litter. Dark forms clustered around her. My first release was perfect; I heard the arrow hit solidly. At the sound, the rest of my wolves released. We should have killed them all.

At the cry, “Run! Ambush!” At least one figure broke for the plaza. I heard him run heavily, as if perhaps wounded? Then the screams intensified as the rest were shot down.

I hurried forward, just close enough to tell she wasn’t among the shrieking victims!

So now I search the night, remembering the blurred form that fled into the dark plaza. Behind me, Night Shadow Star’s foolish guards have brought torches to the foot of the stairs and are exclaiming their shock and disbelief to one another as they survey the carnage. Night Shadow Star is not among the dying.

Out here in the plaza my wolves and I scour the night, glancing about with each white flash of the approaching lightning.

I hear something. The soft scuffing of a foot? The rasp of cloth against cloth? I tighten my grip on the arrow, holding its notch to the bowstring with old familiarity.

Where are you, Night Shadow Star?

Let me dance in the light of your smile just one more time.

Twenty-nine

“I think we should go back now.” Night Shadow Star shot a sidelong glance at Fire Cat as he tripped over a burden basket someone had left beside a farmstead ramada post.