In the Ruins (67 page)

“We could not count the round of years accurately. We had no sun and no stars by which to measure the calendar.”

Zuangua had brought with him a pair of followers, a tough-looking woman wearing a fox mask and an older man with a merchant’s sash slung around his torso. Fox Mask stood with arms crossed and feet braced aggressively. The merchant sat cross-legged and with a cold stare examined Feather Cloak’s council members as though he would have liked to spit on each one.

“Very well,” he said grudgingly. “It may be impossible to determine.”

“So have we told the sky counters,” murmured Eldest Uncle. “Many times over. But it appears they do not believe us.”

“So it does. That brings us to my second point.” Zuangua raised the next finger beside the little. “What of the priests? No land can survive without order, for we see that it did not. Yet how can it be that every one of the blood knives died?”

None of the elders replied, and most looked at the ground. White Feather’s baby stirred, made restless by the tension, and the infant Green Skirt was holding gave a single, flustered cry before the old woman shushed her gently.

This was a subject no one had ever spoken of, even during exile.

“I wait,” said Zuangua.

Eldest Uncle rubbed his chin. He did not look at the others. “When the famine came, during the first generation, and we died in great numbers, the blood knives offered us no solution, only problems. And when the great sickness came, still they refused to change. They could not count the measure of the sky in that place, but all they spoke of was the way things used to be done. We worship the gods still, and properly, giving of our own blood in tribute, but those who used the power of the blood knife to keep themselves raised high above others are all gone. It is true. They are all gone.”

The merchant coughed, for something in Eldest Uncle’s tone made everyone uncomfortable.

Zuangua frowned. “It is difficult for me to know which of those words I like least, and which I dislike most.” He still held up his hand, and now he raised the middle finger to stand beside little and next. “Three. Two of the twenty clans have vanished from among the exiles.”

“And ten of the remaining clans number less than five bundles in their lineage. Yes. We know how many we lost.”

“How can this be?” The merchant slapped his own chest three times. “I am born into Rabbit Clan. Here in the land I find no house to welcome me!”

“There are others of the Rabbit Clan among those who survived in the shadows,” said Eldest Uncle, “or so I am told.”

“How could you let the clans die?” the man roared.

Eldest Uncle smiled sadly. “How can you know how it felt to watch the people die of hunger and thirst as the land failed? To smell the stench of the sickness that afflicted us? To watch fathers sing the death rites over their only child, and then fall themselves as their strength failed? What do you know of bones left to bleach on the hillside? Hu-ah! What could you have done better than what we did!”

Age gave a man power. Eldest Uncle, as well, was known as a sorcerer. He was a seeker after the grains of truth hidden in the mantle thrown over the universe which most folk call the world, for what most folk call the world is really only the things we can touch and smell and taste and hear and see.

“My apologies,” said the merchant. He set hands on knees and inclined his head, just a pinch, toward the old man. “You must see how it appears to us, to wander in the shadows for so long, watching the Pale Dogs swarm over the Earth we love. To return at last to find our homeland …” He wiped away a tear, and this show of emotion seemed so unforced and genuine that Feather Cloak found her throat choked and her own eyes filling. “It is a land of bones.”

“So it became,” said Eldest Uncle. “So many died. We struggled to stay alive.”

“I am not finished.” Zuangua raised his forefinger, and showed the back of his hand to his brother, to all of them, open now except for the folded thumb. “Four. In the days I remember, the Feathered Cloak rose from the high lineages marked out by the gods from the heirs of Obsidian Snake, who led us over the seas.”

For the first time, he looked at Feather Cloak directly. His regard distracted Feather Cloak for a moment, as it always did. His features were attractive, his bronzed complexion a handsome shade. He wore his long black hair unbound so its glossy fall would dazzle women’s eyes. Yet one might admire in this same fashion Cat Mask and other
warriors she had known all her life. There was this difference: Zuangua had the look of a well-made sword already whetted in battle. Compared to him, the others had no shine and no edge.

His smile was a challenge. She lifted a brow in response, refusing to be baited, not by his challenge and not by his sexuality. Still, it did her no harm to let him see she found him handsome. Some men, receiving women’s regard, puffed up until their vanity made them foolish. It would be interesting to see if Zuangua would succumb to that fault.

“He believes me unworthy of the Eagle Seat,” she said without dropping her gaze, yet the words were directed not at Zuangua but to Eldest Uncle and her faithful councillors.

In Zuangua, doubt held no purchase, but she recognized by the flicker of his eyes that he had not expected her to meet his challenge.

“Are you finished?” she asked him. The infant stirred, smacking and searching, and without breaking her gaze from his she helped it find the nipple. Its suck calmed her.

He said nothing.

“War will come soon,” she continued, still looking at Zuangua. “Today, it comes.”

“Have you seen this in a vision, Feather Cloak?” asked Eldest Uncle.

“I do not need sorcery to see what stands right before my eyes. Choose now, councillors. I can argue one way, but my voice will soon be drowned out.”

“Five,” said Zuangua.

Abruptly he broke the gaze, gestured to his followers, and vanished up the tunnel leading to the entrance.

“Five objections,” commented Green Skirt with the sardonic tone mastered only by women who have reached a certain age. “Did he speak ‘five’? And leave the words unsaid? Or were we meant to understand him by his actions?”

White Feather sighed as she rocked her baby in her arms, the child fussing, getting hungry. “I do not remember the days before, except in the stories told by the grandparents. Now it seems I am sick of hearing about them. The land in exile is the one I know. Yet I am glad we have
come home.” She patted the child’s back, and it murmured baby syllables, content to be held. The older girl had opened her eyes, gaze fixed on the woman who was now her mother.

“Everything has changed,” said Feather Cloak. “It must, and it will. But the qualities and objects we valued in exile will not be valued here on Earth. As one strand straightens, so twists the other. That is the way of the world.”

They nodded. Eldest Uncle regarded her with a fond smile, Green Skirt with the savor of regret. White Feather wore an exasperated frown and Skull Earrings looked tired, jowls drooping in the fashion of men who have finally hit their decline. The others sighed and murmured soft words meant to cheer her, but no one sounded cheerful. Above, wind moaned through the hole, and roots stirred as dust danced in the changeable light.

“I have one more question,” she said as they looked at her. “What happened to the last of the blood knives?”

At first there was silence, a form of speaking measured only by gazes shifting between them, words left unspoken. At length White Feather’s lips twitched in that flutter smile that suggested a grim sort of laughter, or a laughing kind of anger, or maybe a joke.

“We were very hungry,” she said, “so we ate them.”

FIVE days only, hardly any time at all. The horn was blown to summon a council at which Feather Cloak must preside.

Kansi-a-lari entered the underground chamber accompanied by bells and by Zuangua and a dozen of his adherents. Behind them, remarkably, walked the joined forces of Cat Mask and Lizard Mask. Many, warriors and craftsmen, female and male alike, walked in via the tunnel to stand in the cavernous council grounds facing the Eagle Seat where Feather Cloak presided. Blood knives huddled in clusters.
More people waited outside who had walked all the way from their scattered settlements and newly populated towns. The cavern was jammed to bursting and could fit no more than those standing shoulder to shoulder. All had, of course, left their weapons outside, according to the law.

All but one.

Kansi-a-lari strode forward with a stone-tipped spear in her right hand. She halted five paces from the Eagle Seat, set the haft against the ground, and raised her left hand toward the ceiling and the distant sky, visible through the jagged gap in the roof. Dust motes painted the air with a red-gold haze.

“Say what you have to say,” said Feather Cloak, repeating the ritual words.

“I challenge your right to sit on the Eagle Seat and preside over the councils of our people,” said The Impatient One. “In the past six turnings of the moon we have rested and made offerings of our own blood. We have planted our fields. We have built and repaired our houses. We have numbered our craftsmen and our warriors and made an accounting of spears and swords. We must strike while humankind struggles.”

“They outnumber us,” said Feather Cloak.

“Yes! We must strike first, and swiftly.”

“Just as you have done today.”

Kansi glanced back at Zuangua, who shook his head, looking impatient and bored. “We have waited long enough,” Kansi-a-lari said. “We have waited too long!”

Like her uncle, The Impatient One attracted the eye. Hers was the beauty of the jaguar, deadly and fascinating. She prowled among men, and few had the strength of will to resist her. With women, though, Kansi-a-lari behaved differently, knowing she could not sway them with a hard stare or a provocative hand placed on her hip. She liked men better, because she found them easier to control.

“If we strike,” Feather Cloak asked, “to what purpose do our warriors fight and die?”

“To test the strength of humankind. I have sent scouts east and west. West is wasteland, but there is a great city
northeast of here that we may profitably strike. They are rebuilding. They will not be ready for us.”

“So you have said, but what do you intend?”

“Kill those who resist. Bring worthy captives home to offer to the gods. Fill our storehouses with their grain and their treasures. Set in place a governor to rule their farmers and merchants. That way their taxes will serve us, not our enemies.”

Feather Cloak waited while the assembly discussed this proposition in low voices, among themselves, all the blood knives who remind silent, as if they had already known what she was going to say. In the cavern, no wind blew, and despite the cool weather it had gotten stuffy. The great golden wheel of the assembly, resting behind her, remained still. Only in the wind did it turn. In this way it represented the people: each discrete emerald feather was visible at rest, but when in motion the many individual parts blended to become one bright whole, indivisible to the eye’s sight.

She sighed, seeing that she must speak although she knew it would do no good. “So soon you will press past the White Road? It is better to rebuild our own cities and till our own fields until our feet are firmly planted in the roots of this Earth.”

Kansi-a-lari shrugged. “Human slaves can plant and build for us. With their labor, we leave more of our own people free to fight. So it was done in the days before.”

“In the days before,” said Feather Cloak, knowing her words clipped and short and irritated and knowing as well that to show annoyance was to weaken her own argument, “we made enemies who worked in concert to cast us out of Earth entirely! Have we learned nothing from the past?”

“Yes!” Kansi had that jaguar’s grin that made men wonder and sweat. “They hate us. They fear us. But we have to learned to strike while they are weakened so they cannot attack us again! It is time to leave the ways of exile behind and embrace what is ours, this world we were sundered from for so long!”

“No. It is too soon. Let the young ones grow. Let us rebuild and make ourselves strong first.”

Kansi turned in a circle, marking each person standing in the council chamber: the elders and the younger leaders, the warriors and the craftsmen, those born in exile and those so recently returned from the limbo of the shadows. The blood knives watched her hungrily.

“I have walked among humankind, those who live in
these
days, not the ones you remember from the past. I was born in exile, but I have not waited in exile and lost my spirit and my anger.”

Eldest Uncle tugged on an ear, perhaps only to hide his irritation with his only child.

“Do you insult us, who have endured exile with you?” demanded White Feather.

“I say what I have to say. Listen! I have seen that humankind cannot be trusted. Especially not those who call themselves the mathematici. They are the ones who know the secret of the crowns. They are the ones who could harm us again. Therefore: strike now! If she who sits as Feather Cloak will not lead us,
then I will
.”

Among the warriors came a general stamping of feet and pounding of spear butts on the ground, but Feather Cloak shushed this rumble by raising a hand.

White Feather stepped forward. They had prepared for this.

“I say what I have to say!” White Feather displayed Feather Cloak’s twin daughters, one in each arm. Their black hair peeped out of the striped cloth wrapped around those plump baby bodies. The little ones were alert, watchful, quiet. “Those of you who walked in the shadows do not truly understand what became of this land in exile. We endured a great drought. Of water. Of
life
. We died! The carcasses of our mothers and aunts and fathers and uncles littered the land because none had the strength to send them to the gods!”

She swept her gaze around the chamber, challenging any to interrupt her. None did. “Know this! Feather Cloak bore a son and now twin daughters, although most of our people became barren. Even The Impatient One had to couple with a man born of humankind in order to conceive a son!”