The People of the Black Sun (43 page)

 

Forty-two

“Gitchi?” Baji whispered and cocked her ear to the forest. “What's that sound? Do you hear it?”

The wolf, who lay curled in the grass at her side, blinked up at her, as though he sensed nothing wrong, or perhaps he didn't hear the strange wistful cry that had begun to seep across the land the instant Elder Brother Sun passed below the horizon. Riding the wind like a falcon, it rose and fell, sometimes seeming very close, other times vastly far away.

The cold quiet forest stood perfectly still. She listened. A fox over the next ridge? No, she didn't think so. Tremulous, descending in pitch like an eerie wail of longing, it seemed not to be of this earth.

Baji hesitated, listening for a time longer, then she tiptoed into the forest. Nightfall had drained the colors from the land, leaving it slate gray. Downy woodpeckers peeked at her from holes in the trees, their feathers fluffed out for warmth.

She stopped. The woods had gone peaceful. A screech owl sailed through the trees barely six hands over her head, so silent it might have been a shadow rather than a living creature hunting the pine-scented evening.

Baji watched it alight in a red pine twenty paces away. Small, no longer than her hand, he lacked the usual rusty ear tufts. Probably a young owl. When he turned to study her, his eyes glowed with a silvered brilliance.

The call came again, stronger, trying to pull her deeper into the growing darkness.

Baji placed her hand on her belted war club and took another step. The arrows in her quiver uttered a faint rattle, like a rattlesnake's warning.

Gitchi's paws crunched behind her. He whimpered, urging her to go back to the trail, to return to a place where Dekanawida could find her, but the call was too powerful. It continued to pull her into the falling darkness where towering trees turned black, and frost grew like quartz crystals on rocks and deadfall. The astonishing fragrance of wet bark melted into her body. Her nostrils quivered. Just the movement of breath in her lungs filled her with such gladness she might have become one of the sailing Cloud People.

“Wolves?” she whispered. “Maybe that cry is a pack of wolves in the distance?”

The cry turned into long drawn-out wailing. The chorus seemed to resonate in Baji's chest, wild and free, and she strained so hard to hear it that her throat ached. As though untold generations of ancestors Sang to her of a primeval time before fire and roof, of a time before Elder Brother Sun existed, her souls thrilled to the melody. In her heart, she was running with them, hunting the cold and dark in the frost dance of constant winter.

Barely audible, she murmured, “I don't think it's wolves, Gitchi.”

He nosed her hand.

“Don't worry,” she said softly. “I'm fine. Everything is fine.”

But it wasn't, and she knew it. Something was happening to her.

As evening blanketed the forest, dove-colored and iridescent, patches of snow became radiant, turning the air liquid and faintly blue, and shivering light upon the delicate ferns that hid between the rocks. The ache in her heart had become too much to bear.

Baji had to squeeze her eyes closed against it.
What is that unearthly crying?

Against her leg, Gitchi's tail wagged.

She opened her eyes. In the small clearing surrounded by fire cherries and pawpaws, she caught movement. She kept her eyes on it. When she could make out darkness rippling around a black cape, she quickly called, “I don't need you! Leave.”

No sound. No response.

The quiet of evening seemed to intensify. The call faded, leaving behind a huge maw of silence.

As he started to turn, to leave, she swallowed hard. “No, wait. Just tell me one thing.”

He turned back to stare at her. Obviously trying not to frighten her, he slowly walked closer. Dark sad eyes glinted in the frame of his hood. He stopped three paces away, folded his arms beneath his cape, and gently asked, “What do you need to know?”

“Tell me why I feel so alive?”

He blinked, and his gaze shifted. He seemed to be staring over her shoulder, seeing something far away. “It's part of preparing.”

“Preparing?”

He nodded. “Yes. You're at a place where every step you take is illuminated by the Road of Light.” He glanced up at the twilight sky where the brightest campfires of the dead had just begun to shine. The contours of the Road were dimly visible. “It wakes a person up, and that's necessary, because to live your dying fully you must wake up.”

To live my dying fully …

She braced her feet. “So I'm dying?”

A faint smile turned his lips. “That's all any of us ever do, Baji. When the deer come for you, if you let them, you will understand that the Road is all there is. We set foot upon it long before we're born.”

Gitchi slid around her leg and went to stand in front of Shago-niyoh, looking up with loving eyes. When Shago-niyoh smiled down at him, the wolf stretched and wagged his tail again.

“All right,” Baji said as though dismissing a war council. “You can go now.”

He hesitated. “Don't you want to ask me about the strange many-voiced cry?”

Her heart stuttered. She took a quick step toward him, breathlessly asking, “What is it? Do you hear it? Is it human?”

He cocked his head in a curious birdlike manner, examining her with only one shining eye. “They stand at the foot of the bridge. They start calling very early, when we are children. Their Song changes over the summers, as more and more come and lie down, to wait. They're trying to guide you to them so you won't get lost on the way. If you find them, they will protect you as you cross to the other side.”

The animals who wait at the bridge that spans the dark abyss …

Her eyes burned. She wiped them on her sleeve. “So, I'm still alive?”

He stood for a long time, gazing up at the evening sky. Wind waffled his black hood around his face and sent icy fingers probing beneath her cape. When she shivered, he looked back at her.

Baji said, “I'm not sure anymore. I was when I started, but … I'm not sure now. Tell me.”

Shago-niyoh waited for a time, staring at her with kind eyes, then he turned and walked away into the deepening shadows with his cape swaying about his long legs.

She watched until he disappeared. “He knows, Gitchi. Why won't he tell me? I'd still be doing exactly what I am. It wouldn't change a thing.”

The wolf stayed very close to her side as they walked through the old leaves, listening to the wavering moans and sobs that seemed to flutter in the air around them. The cry grew fainter with each step, until it thinned to nothingness across the distances, and the forest felt suddenly hollow beyond words.

 

Forty-three

Sky Messenger

As twilight settles over the forest, I hike up the steep trail behind Hiyawento, heading toward the crest of the hill where I know Baji and Gitchi wait. My friend's broad back sways with his long stride. He has his war club clenched in his fist. Each time he glances over his shoulder at the rumbling crowd that trails behind us like a great thunderstorm, worry and near-panic fill his face. We move rapidly, trying to lose them. The camps surrounding Shookas Village emptied out as we wound our way between the fires, coalescing into a ragged horde of six or seven hundred people. They follow like walking skeletons. Enormous sunken eyes ringed with black circles peer at me from inside ragged hoods.

Hiyawento's nerves are fraying. He keeps looking back, his jaw grinding. His beaked nose glistens with sweat. He doesn't like this any more than I do. Crowds are unpredictable, and none of us is certain why they follow us.

Towa calls, “Hiyawento, let's stop. It's getting dark. We need to speak with Tagohsah.”

“All right, but let's get the information we need quickly, so we can move on. It's impossible to know how many people in that crowd wish to kill Sky Messenger.”

Dusk has coaxed the fragrances of night from the trees and earth and set them loose on the breeze.

Towa's gaze fixes on the ugly little Flint Trader. He waits until Hiyawento strides back to tower over Tagohsah like an avenging Earth Spirit, then the three of us close ranks around him, pinning Tagohsah inside our small circle.

Tagohsah hunches like a trapped packrat pushed into a corner by predators. His roached black hair has picked up a coating of dust that gives it a gray tint. The red porcupine quill chevrons across the front of his cape flash with his uneasy fidgeting.

Tagohsah blurts, “What do you want? If you don't hurry we'll all be trampled to death!” He runs a pink tongue over his rotted teeth and stares in horror at the crowd moving up the slope.

Hiyawento's voice is iron: “You told the Landing People that Bur Oak Village was being attacked. How do you know that? Did you hear it from another Trader? Is the story running the trails?”

“I saw it with my own eyes,” Tagohsah insists. “Towa, you know my rounds take me to Bur Oak and Yellowtail villages around the first of the moon. As I came down the hill, heading toward the valley, two of Atotarho's warriors stepped out and blocked the trail. They told me to go home, that there was nothing left of the Standing Stone nation.”

Towa grimaces. “Then you saw nothing except two warriors.”

“Don't be ridiculous! Do you think I actually turned around and left? I'm a Trader. I need good stories. I sneaked through the trees until I could see down into the valley.” He shakes his head grimly. “Your People are in trouble, Prophet.”

“Describe what you saw,” Hiyawento orders.

Fear has begun to beat a stark refrain inside me. Since I first heard Tagohsah speaking, my souls have been conjuring images too terrible to believe.
Bur Oak Village burned, littered with dead bodies, all my family, my friends …

“I saw around two thousand Hills warriors surrounding the last smoldering villages of the Standing Stone nation.”

Towa glances back at the crowd. The leading edge has arrived and begun forming up into a murmuring multitude, crowding closer and closer. “How do you know they were Atotarho's warriors?”

“I saw the evil chief himself! He stood like a hunchback, wearing the black cape covered with circlets cut from human skulls. It was him. I'm sure of it.”

I'm breathing hard when I turn to meet Hiyawento's tight eyes. “After the battle, he must have split his forces, sending some warriors to punish the rogue Hills villages, while the rest of his army circled back to finish the job at Bur Oak.”

Hiyawento nods, and glances uneasily at the crowd pushing in around us, listening to our every word. Wide eyes stare up at me, as though I'm no longer human, but some strange otherworld phantom. Their hushed voices tremble with awe and fear.

Hiyawento pulls his war club up and menacingly props it on his shoulder for all to see. “If he returned the day after we left, the villages have been under siege for five days. Do you think they could have held out so long?”

Fire seems to rush in my veins, burning a path through my body. “I don't know.”
But I don't think so.

Towa hisses, “Don't forget that Matron Jigonsaseh is there. Sindak, too. He knows how Atotarho's army thinks.”

“If they've made it this long, they need help badly,” Hiyawento replies. “Their water and food must be gone.”

I say, “Do you think Zateri sent the warriors that High Matron Kittle requested?”

“Even if she did, there's no way to know how many she could spare. But it won't be enough to make a real difference. Not if what Tagohsah says is true.” He glowered at the ugly Trader.

“It is! I swear it.”

Towa turns to me. “What of the Flint nation?”

“I doubt they even know the Standing Stone nation is in trouble. Chief Cord's army was attacked by Atotarho right outside—”

“What?”
Towa and Hiyawento shout at once.