The Next Skywatcher: Prequel to The Last Skywatcher Triple Trilogy Series (The Last Skywatcher, Anasazi Historical Thrillers with a Hint of Romance Book 1) (12 page)

“If Pók somehow trained a secret group of children warriors,” Nuva said, “and they defeated Ráana’s men, that would humiliate him and Tókotsi. And The Builder, too, especially after he agreed to give Ráana command over Pók’s special guard.” If Pók were really making a bold move, this could be it. Chumana might be right. “Could Pók really get Ihu and children to work together to do something like this?”

“Maybe Ihu’s not in on it,” said Chumana. “They said Tókotsi handed Black Stone to Ráana two moons ago. They couldn’t keep something like that secret from Pók. Could they?”

They both sat in silence for a few moments. Chumana spoke first. “If anything happens to Ráana and his warriors at Black Stone, Pók would strut like a dancer. He
must
be responsible.”

Nuva nodded. “You must be right, as unlikely as it seems. Pók’s as unpredictable as he is conniving. So, if that’s so, you must tell The Builder that what is happening in Black Stone Town is not a message from the gods or from the outside—but from someone close to him. Someone here, inside Center Place, is behind the attacks.”

“That will send Pók into a panic.” Chumana smiled. “I like that.”

“Will it work to our advantage, though?”

“It will make it harder for him to make his move, no matter what it is.”

“Let’s think about it tonight,” said Nuva. “We must be careful.”

Early the next morning a cough awakened Nuva. She knew the time from the lack of sound. The most quiet part of the night, before the cooks stirred the morning fires. She heard the insistent dry cough again.

Nuva rolled off her sleeping mat and stood slowly, her back and hips shooting arrows of pain, making her take short, lurching steps into the hallway. The lamp had gone out and all was black. She felt for the three fingers and found them.

“Tonight, just a little bit ago,” wheezed a girl. Nuva recognized the voice, though she sounded sick. One of the Fat Man’s girls. “An archer talked about Black Stone Town. A few older boys leading a pack of children defeated Ihu’s patrol. They had archers with small bows and short arrows. Ihu took an arrow in each shoulder and his face is sliced open. The archer said Ihu attacked without warning and he doesn’t know how the boys and children defended themselves so well. He also heard a name: Sowi.”

The girl’s voice trailed off. “You sound exhausted, my little one,” said Nuva. “Go away for a while and rest. Find a place to hide and stay there. I will send medicine tea.”

“The Fat Man would find me.”

“Come here, then. We’ll hide you in a storeroom. No one will find you.”

“If I have to, I will,” said the girl. Nuva heard her shuffling away.

“Wait,” said Nuva. She heard the girl stop and drag her feet back. “Will you send a message for me?”

“Yes, though I don’t see many Sisters.” The girl’s breathing made rattling sounds. The poor girl, Nuva thought, her heart wrenching.

“If anyone goes near Black Stone Town, please observe and send a report back to me.” Nuva kept her eyes closed and tried not to think about the sick girl and the life she had.

“Sisters don’t go south much anymore,” said the girl. “But I’ll ask.”

“Get some sunlight on your skin, young lady,” said Nuva. “Breathe the sun-hot air.”

The girl said she would and slipped away. Chumana stirred when Nuva slid back onto her sleeping mat, and Nuva told her the news.

“So it’s true about children doing the killing,” Chumana said. “How can they kill trained warriors? What does it mean?”

“It means the gods are not happy,” said Nuva.

“With Tókotsi? The Builder? Pók?”

“I don’t know,” said Nuva. “We will decide in the morning.”

But Nuva couldn’t sleep and she kept turning everything in her mind. She and Chumana had only two ways to exert influence. Both were unpredictable. One, Chumana’s predictions as Goddess of the Future, could be certain to have an effect. The other, sending messages out through girls and women in the Sisterhood, would strengthen the groundwork for taking action somehow, but it would be too subtle for most people to even notice. No one will negotiate with power that is not evident. The only choice is to use it at the right time, in the right way.

Okay, she thought, massaging her temples. Be disciplined. Think about the possibilities of what they could do right now.

First came Chumana’s prophecies and predictions to The Builder as Goddess of the Future. The Builder listened to her, and she and Nuva had learned to be careful what she told him. He used to ask for daily predictions, but Chumana kept insisting she couldn’t control her visions, and she knew only what she saw. So now he didn’t crowd her and waited for the small bell she would ring when she “saw” something he needed to know. That meant Nuva and Chumana could plant ideas in The Builder’s head anytime they wished.

They’d also learned that whatever they told The Builder often came with unpredictable side effects. Shortly after they established themselves, unsure what kind of fortune to tell, Chumana made up a story on the spot in The Builder’s chambers about how flute music could cast spells on anyone who heard it, that the flute player could control those who listened, and therefore to beware the flute. Things quickly got out of control. Two flute makers were killed as witches after that, and flutes were confiscated throughout the canyon and burned in piles. Only a few lesser flute makers survived. Worse, in the last three months, reports of flute music came from the side canyons. Warriors stormed up them and would sometimes see a bent man playing the flute and dancing in the distance. They would plug their ears with their fingers to keep him from casting spells on them, and chase him, but they hadn’t caught him yet.

So what should Chumana tell The Builder now? Should Pók be allowed to see Chumana whisper to The Builder? The meeting, during a time of waiting for the full moon before the Summer Council, was a powerful time for a prophecy. Especially if it stoked rumors of children killing warriors. Children trained in secret by Pók.

Never forget, she reminded herself—Pók is a master at turning what Chumana says to his own advantage. They had to be careful. Construct a riddle that would tie Pók’s hands without giving him an opportunity.

She remembered Grandfather’s rattlesnake stories. Sometimes they rattle when they’re coiled and ready to strike, their venomous heads near their tails. But sometimes they rattle on the move, as if to throw off prey, and the head is as far from the tail as it can be. Is the report of children killing warriors in Black Stone Town a coiled rattle of attack? Or a deception while the head evades capture? If Pók really has something to do with it, then he is the head, and the rattles are all the way back at Black Stone Town.

At the first sound of the cook fires being stoked, Chumana sat up on her sleeping mat. “Nuva,” she said softly. “Are you awake?”

“Yes, my dear.” She had not slept all night.

“I’ve been thinking.”

Nuva smiled. Chumana hadn’t slept either. “So have I,” she said.

“I think we’ve got to cast suspicion on Pók. He must have something to do with this, and we’ve got to make The Builder worry that Pók is dangerous to him.”

“How?” Nuva wanted to know how far Chumana had gotten in her plan.

“That’s what I can’t figure out. Every time I open my mouth to The Builder, things happen we didn’t expect. That makes me worry how to say it.”

“But surely they would understand a snake whose head is among you, but whose tail rattles from far away.”

Chumana said nothing for a few moments. “I once saw The Builder pull a large rattle from his personal pouch and finger it, then stuff it back inside.”

“Rattlesnakes carry a lot of power.”

“I was born among rattlesnakes,” said Chumana.

“They did not strike you.” Nuva also remembered the birth story of the boy she raised. In a weak moment during a spring cold spell, she had told Chumana the story of Tuwa’s birth. They had both wept. But Nuva felt she had violated Tuwa’s privacy by telling Chumana first. She had urged Grandfather to explain it to him, but he never had. The poor boy didn’t know his father is the biggest snake of them all. If he still lives and she saw him again, she vowed to make sure he knew.

Chumana took a deep breath to tell her birth story again, mostly, Nuva knew, to ensure she remembered and honored it. “Three snakes started rattling and my mother ran off, leaving me just after I’d been born. But they didn’t hurt me. My mother ran back to get me and they didn’t even strike at her.”

“And that’s when they named you.” It was unusual for a child to be given their permanent name from the moment they were born.

“I’ve been Chumana since.”

“That’s it, then,” Nuva said. “Chumana the Snake Maiden and Goddess of the Future sees a rattlesnake on the move, its head in the canyon and its tail of rattling children in Black Stone. Let’s go over how you’ll say it.”

Pók watched the Goddess
of the Future in that absurd bluestone body armor as she whispered into the ear of The Builder. He saw her jaw and lips moving in dim silhouette, but could make nothing of what she said.

The Builder seemed to take her words gravely and glanced at everyone in the room: An emissary for the absent Tókotsi, a buffoon who said nothing when he spoke; old Koko, a toothless former Chief Másaw Warrior who looked more owl than man; and Wuyoke, the also toothless Eldest Man. Wuyoke had been a master stonemason, a guard captain, an Owl Man priest, a failed skywatcher’s apprentice, and now gave useless advice to people who only pretended to listen. The Builder didn’t allow the Eldest Woman to participate. He said she had been bewitched by flute music and could not be trusted. But Pók suspected the real reason. She didn’t think the gods were impressed by towering buildings and preferred to burrow into the Earth like her ancestors. Her presence also undermined the masculine power structure of Másaw and the canyon. The only female in the room was the Goddess of the Future.

They had been called by The Builder to receive a prophecy for the approaching full moon. The fortuneteller’s livelihood depended on it. Pók resisted a grin. Whatever she said, he would find a way to use it in his favor. He always did. But he had to be careful. The Builder had already tipped his hand in favor of Tókotsi and his frog grandson.

The Builder stood on what some called the Stone of Truth because they believed death came to anyone who did not speak truth while touching it. The Builder, Pók suspected, liked standing on it because everyone in the room had to look up to him.

“I have my prophecy,” announced The Builder. Pók stifled a derisive laugh.
His
prophecy? Certainly not. Pók stared at the woman behind the bluestone mask.

The Builder kept his voice raised in singsong public announcement style. “The snake rattles two ways: when its head is close to its tail in a coil prepared to strike, and when its tail is far from its head as it prepares to deceive. When children kill warriors, it is the rattle. There is nothing in Black Stone Town worthy of a strike. It is a distraction so that the poisonous head can hide itself where there
is
something to strike: here among us!”

Pók’s cheeks stung in spite of his stoic nature. He felt every eye in the room on him. He knew The Builder and the masked lady deliberately put the target of suspicion on him as the head of the snake, the chief of the Másaw Warriors. He held his composure.

The Builder scanned the room, making eye contact with everyone but the woman behind the mask. In his normal voice, he said, “Now we decide what this means.” He looked at Wuyoke, the Eldest Man. Tókotsi’s emissary began to speak, but The Builder ignored him and kept his eyes on Wuyoke.

The old man sucked his cheeks into his mouth, and then spoke in a high voice, his tongue lisping for lack of teeth, “That the poisonous head of the snake is among us is no surprise. It has always been so. People of great power attract people of great threat. We may narrow the ring of suspicion by considering the ring of influence. Who do you see most often, Honorable High Priest?”

The Builder looked around. “Everyone in this room,” he said, with a subtle shake of his hand toward the emissary of Tókotsi, ruling him out.

“And others besides,” said Wuyoke. “All who walk the halls of this grand palace of stone.”

Pók breathed a breath of relief. The old fool had widened suspicion, not narrowed it. Even Madam Bluestone Mask’s albino witch fell inside Wuyoke’s ring of suspicion.

“Who around you has the most ambition, the most desire?” continued Wuyoke. “Who here has loyalty without honor? The bond of loyalty with honor will not break, but loyalty without honor will snap like a dry twig.”

Pók felt the eyes of suspicion upon him once again. A man willing to kill outside of direct battle was said to lack honor, but as Chief Warrior he did that often to serve the interests of the High Priest. And himself, of course, but he would only think such things, never speak them.

Once again, he was saved by another old fool, Koko, the former top warrior, sat forward with both hands resting on the end of a short stick he always carried. “It is seven days before the full moon, a time of strong signs. During the night, I saw three owls in the Owl Tree. The night before, I saw two. The night before that, one. None the night before. That means Wuyoke and the prophecy of the High Priest are true.” He gave a single dramatic twirl with his stick and returned his hands to his lap. People had learned not to sit too close to him for fear of getting whacked.