People of the Morning Star (65 page)

The Tula stared down at his arm where it was pinned to his side, made a half step, and turned toward her. Which allowed her to drive her third shaft through the hollow at the base of his throat.

The startled speaker had raised his hands, staring first at her, and then at the impossibility of his so-quickly-killed friends.

Her bow in her left hand, her right shucked the war club from where it hung in her belt. She advanced on him, head down, flicking the war club as if testing its balance.

The speaker glanced imploringly at the dying Tula. The first was kicking weakly, eyes wide, as he clutched the arrow shaft sticking out of his breastbone. The second was making gargling sounds as blood foamed out of his mouth and nostrils.

“No help there,” Night Shadow Star told him. “And if you run, I’ll shoot you right through the middle of the back.”

“Who
are
you?” the man cried, imploring hands up as he dropped to his knees.

“I’m called Lady Night Shadow Star, of the Morning Star House, Four Winds Clan.”

“He wants you.” In growing light, she could see tears tracking down the man’s face. Finding no give in her eyes, he threw himself prostrate, facedown on the packed clay.

“He’ll get me. But first, you tell me. Who’s in there?”

The man was groveling, his chest heaving as he sobbed. “High Dance and Columella, their children, Lady Lace and Sun Wing.”

“Are High Dance and Columella working with Walking Smoke?”

“No. They, and all of their children, are captive, too. Part of the ritual.”

“And you were supposed to let me pass? Who else might be on that list?”

“The Keeper and the
Tonka’tzi.
”

“And if a squadron of warriors were to show up?”

“The Tula were to run inside and warn him. I was to tell the squadron commander that if he tried to approach, the hostages would be killed before he could take the palace. All Walking Smoke wanted was time. He told me he would be finished by midday.”

She nodded to herself, glancing around. Her attack had come so silently, she hadn’t even awakened any of the sleepers.

“Who are you?”

“River Rock. A Trader. He hired me because I speak Caddo.”

“What did he Trade for your service?”

“He said I’d get a copper headpiece.”

She pivoted, slamming the war club’s spikes down on the back of his skull. River Rock stiffened, lungs contracting in a huffing grunt. His arms and legs jerked and quivered as he died.

“Bad Trade,” she told him before she stepped over and kicked Feather Wand awake.

“Lady Night Shadow Star?” he asked as he peered up in the dim dawn.

“Get up. Find War Chief Brown Bear Fivekiller or his second. I need the Four Winds Clan squadron assembled around High Dance’s palace. As soon as you alert them, contact the Earth Clans, same message. Tell them no one is to come or go without my permission.”

“Yes, Lady!” he leaped to his feet.

“Where are Sun Wing’s warriors? Surely she had an escort.”

“She didn’t bring any, Lady. She said she didn’t need them.”

“Pus take and rot you, sister. What were you thinking?”

But she knew: Walking Smoke would have instinctively understood—and cautiously manipulated—the spoiled youngest child; arrogant and ambitious, she’d have been ripe for conspiracy.

Night Shadow Star glanced off to the east as the first drops of rain began to spatter on the hard-packed earth around her.
Morning Star? Why did you place her, of all people, in charge of investigating the assassination attempts?

But then things were never as they seemed with the Morning Star.

She started up the steps, replacing her war club and nocking another of the stone-tipped war arrows in her bow. She was nearly to the top when she heard the screaming from inside.

*   *   *

A woman didn’t survive to become a Four Winds House matron if she proved even the slightest bit squeamish. The demands of the matron’s position included sitting in judgment, making life and death decisions, and watching them carried out. It included participation in declarations of war, and living with the consequences of doing so. A matron’s choices and judgment had the potential to ruin an entire people, to end in bloodshed, war, and fire. In case of the worst miscalculation, it could culminate in the butchering of everyone you knew, and the possibility that you and your family would die of torture while hanging in some enemy’s square.

Never in her life had Columella seen a person in such absolute and abject terror as Sun Wing when Walking Smoke’s Tula lifted her bound body from the floor.

Panic contorted her young face. Tears soaked her cheeks. Her mouth had gone shapeless and kept popping open only to close slightly before opening again. Snot bubbled in her nostrils each time she screamed.

But terror even silenced those, strangling her cries into a strained whimpering accented by half-formed squeals.

Sun Wing’s body appeared paralyzed, seized as solid as river ice, her fear-glittering eyes having fixed on a pointless eternity. Urine dripped from her thighs and buttocks.

As the Tula carrying her lifted Sun Wing’s wet rump high and lowered her head toward the bloodstained pot, an eerie wailing screech broke from her lips. Sun Wing’s hair had come undone and fell in a midnight swirl across the bloody, vomit-soaked matting. She seemed to come to her wits, glancing this way and that, meeting Columella’s pitying eyes. Her gaze was that of a mindless thing—some inhuman and crazed creature. Then she jerked it away to fix on the corrugated ceramic pot as one of the Tula positioned it to catch her blood.

Walking Smoke was singing, his eyes glittering with anticipation. His painted body glistened in the firelight, the man’s muscles now tensed in anticipation. He tipped his head back and lifted the knife. As he did his blue-painted penis stiffened into an erection.

Columella pursed her lips in disgust.

“Where is Power?” she asked under her breath, fearful Walking Smoke would hear. “Where is the lightning to strike such living pollution dead?”

“Gone,” High Dance whispered. “Taken by Walking Smoke. Drawn into a rope. One he has twisted, looped, and pulled into such a hard knot that it’s strangling on itself.”

“You brought him here, brother.”

“I…” High Dance turned his face away as Walking Smoke’s singing voice filled the room.

Columella slitted her eyes, heart hammering, as Walking Smoke’s incomprehensible song bellowed from his lungs. The man’s blue-painted erection strained and quivered. He stepped forward and placed the blade against Sun Wing’s throat.

One of the Tula holding Sun Wing upside down, uttered an agonized shriek. Then he twisted away to display an arrow jutting from his back. As he turned Sun Wing loose and pawed behind him, she fell head-long into the big corrugated pot. It shattered under her weight.

Walking Smoke’s song stopped, the knife still poised. He appeared surprised and confused, blinking, as if Sun Wing’s taut throat should still be beneath the keen blade. The other Tula had stumbled as Sun Wing fell. He bent down to reach for her, his hands slipping along her skin, smeared as it was with the colorful images of tadpoles and caterpillars.

The wounded Tula, eyes bugged, mouth open, tried to straighten, only to gasp in pain and disbelief.

“Hold!” a sharp voice commanded.

Columella sought the source and stared. Impossible! But there stood Night Shadow Star, wearing a black dress that fell to just above her knees. War moccasins hugged her calves. Her hair was in a braid; eyes hard she backed along the wall. An arrow was nocked, her bow drawn.

“Leave her alone!” Night Shadow Star ordered. “Tell your Tula. The next one who touches her dies.”

Walking Smoke, the surprise vanishing from his features, smiled warmly, and said something in Caddo. The remaining Tula, faces lining in frowns, backed away, their attention turned to Night Shadow Star.

“You’ve come at last!” Walking Smoke’s glee matched his smile. “I’ve made a place for you in the circle.” He squinted one eye. “I don’t think your interruption will change the Power. I can start over from the beginning again with Sun Wing. The important thing … what Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies will pay attention to, is the blood. A couple of mistakes in the ritual? What’s that when compared to Four Winds blood?”

Night Shadow Star seemed to have just noticed the body parts spread out in the partial circle on the floor. She fixed on them, a cold realization reflected in her face.

“I really am relieved,” Walking Smoke told her warmly. “I can’t tell you how much better it is this way. Power interceded, you see.”

“I expect that it did,” Night Shadow Star said through clamped jaws. “It’s brought me here to kill you.”

“Is
that
what you think? You? Here to kill me?” Walking Smoke chortled as he ran a finger along the rippled knife blade. “Had Power wanted it to play out that way, you’d have driven an arrow into my heart. No, my precious love. You’re here to complete me, to join me in accomplishing the most audacious resurrection ever.”

She narrowed an eye, aiming down her slim shaft as she settled on her target.

Columella silently begged her,
Kill him already!

Walking Smoke flicked the long chert knife in his fingers, saying, “I thought if I killed you that night outside your palace, it would be proof of my worthiness. Then Power whisked you away in the darkness.” He laughed as if at himself. “Silly me, I thought it was my unworthiness. But no, it was Power, saving you for here, now. Bringing you to me for the final piece.”

“Of what?” she barely gestured with her bow to indicate the semicircle of body parts. “What is that?”

“The opening from the womb, of course.” Walking Smoke raised the knife in his left hand, his right seeming to dance at the end of his wrist, the fingers flicking this way and that.

Columella gaped.
Pus and rot! Don’t you see what he’s doing? Shoot!

The Tula, as a whole, tensed as they watched his hand signals. Some nodded, their wolfish eyes darting back to fix on Night Shadow Star.

“Womb?” Night Shadow Star swallowed hard. “You’re making a
womb
out of my sister’s body parts?”

Columella caught the faint quiver of Night Shadow Star’s arms, the strain of the bent bow beginning to tire her muscles.

What are you doing? Release the gods-rotted arrow!

“The sacred opening, like that wonderful sheath of yours, Sister. The passage of life through which Piasa’s souls will emerge in order to consume my body.”

“Choose one of your Tula, Brother. Point him out to me. I want to see you order him to pick Sun Wing up and carry her outside.”

Columella could see the trembling in Night Shadow Star’s bow arm now.
Kill him while you can!

“Shoot him!” she finally shouted.

“Silence!” Walking Smoke ordered. “This is between me and my sister.”

Walking Smoke grinned, pointed to the dying Tula with the arrow jutting from his back. “That one.”

The warrior had sagged to his knees beside where Sun Wing flopped in the wreckage of the broken pot. Blood was welling from his mouth. He coughed, crimson dribbling down his chin in a frothy strand.

“I’ll shoot!” Night Shadow Star insisted.

Walking Smoke almost giggled in delight, and quicker than a snap, dropped to his knees. At the same time, he wound his right hand in Sun Wing’s hair and lifted, his muscles straining as he pulled the young woman up before him. In a blink he had the long-bladed chert knife across her throat.

Sun Wing’s panicked lungs drove a whistling squeak from her stretched throat.

Columella’s gut sank. “You’ve killed us all, you silly spoiled little sheath.”

Night Shadow Star was obviously shaking now, straining to keep her hold.

“You’re not the girl you once where, Sister,” Walking Smoke told her. “You’ve gotten soft since you and I shared that magical moment. Go ahead, shoot! You might as well. If your arrow kills her, she’s just as dead as if I do it with my knife.”

“Let her go,” Night Shadow Star insisted. “Once she’s outside, it will be between us. Just the two of us. Your Power, and mine.”

Some awareness in the corner of her eye made Columella glance toward the back. She almost missed it, would have returned her attention to the drama playing out before her. But the faint blue movement was smoke rising from the bottom of the high, woven-cane wall. Even as she watched, a section just above the sleeping bench began to blacken. A steady plume of blue appeared, drifting out of her personal quarters.

Fire?

“You can’t win, Sister!” Walking Smoke cried, drawing Columella’s attention back to the nearest threat.

Walking Smoke was chattering along happily in Caddo.

“Look out!” Columella cried, trying to rise to her feet. Her numb and bloodless legs, too long bound, betrayed her and she only flopped.

Night Shadow Star caught the closest Tula’s movement, swung her arrow—now almost clattering against the bow. The shaft discharged. The Tula had anticipated it, dodged. Then he was on her.

Columella was struggling against the ropes, cursing her numb legs and arms. In desperation she tried to pitch herself from the bench, only to half hang.

Despair filled her. It took a half breath, maybe more, before she realized the ropes that held her were vibrating, as if something were sawing on them.

She glanced at the back wall, seeing the first flames as they burst through the tight lattice of woven cane.

Then her ropes parted and she fell, half paralyzed by numbness, to the floor.

When she glanced back where Night Shadow Star had been, it was to see two Tula dragging her, kicking, biting, and fighting toward the middle of the room. The rest were collecting her bow and the quiver of arrows they’d ripped from her back. Another had her copper-studded war club. He was pointing to blood on the spikes, showing it in amazement to his fellows.

“Ah-ha!” Walking Smoke screamed, dropping Sun Wing and leaping to his feet. “Come, Sister! Because I love you! You can be next! Got to hurry now. Bleed you, bleed Sun Wing, and then the rest.”