“How do you know the way?” the Spirit creature asked.
“I can feel him,” she told him. “As you said. The Morning Star’s presence is a disruption. An infection by Sky World Power that can be felt corrupting what was once healthy. Look at the tree roots, they grow more knotted and twisted the closer we get. It is as if they are writhing in pain. A few fish still flee, but most have gone.”
“What is in your pack?” Piasa extended a pink nose, sniffing as if to get a scent.
“Fire Cat,” she told him. “His souls weren’t ready for the Underworld. He would have gotten lost, perhaps been carried off by the dead who found him amusing. Despite his fear, he nevertheless followed my instructions. Followed me to the end of the cave where we left our bodies.”
“Why bring him at all?”
“I couldn’t have left him in the darkness with Sister Datura and the dead. They would have driven the souls from his body, left him insane.”
“So you are carrying him in a sack?”
“Even the bravest man has a limit to his courage. To journey down from where we left our bodies one has to slip through the narrowest of cracks. The thought of getting stuck, of being forever trapped in darkness, immobile and under a crushing weight of stone, is scary enough for me. By putting his dream soul into the sack … Well, sometimes what we don’t know doesn’t hurt us.”
“Perhaps I should find you another warrior, one with more—”
“There is no braver man, Master. Leave him alone.”
Piasa’s yellow eyes burned hot; then the beast chuckled. “If he amuses you, keep him.”
She shot him an angry glare. “He has earned my respect. And served you well, if you will recall. I will stand by him if no one else will.”
“Then let us hope he has the courage necessary.”
“Let us hope the Morning Star has the sense to accompany me back to his human body.”
They rounded a bend in the winding way, coming upon an open cavern perhaps a stone’s throw across. Roots like fuzz hung down from the arched roof. The sandy substrate had a rumpled and rolled look. There, half buried in mud, his shell covered with green streamers of moss, Snapping Turtle faced a golden-glowing hole in the limestone wall on the other side of the cavern. Something about his posture looked wary, as if the great turtle were ready to either flee or fight.
To his right, patterns of color seemed to ripple along the scaled hide of a huge winged serpent where it coiled atop a low mound of moss. The giant snake’s great triangular head—its crystalline eyes the size of large plates—was raised; the neck tensed as its forked tongue flicked out like a thick and wicked lash. Atop its head gleamed a rack of scarlet antlers similar in shape to a deer’s. The wings—banded in all the colors of the rainbow—were extended high and spread, as though preparatory to launching the mighty serpent into flight.
At her and Piasa’s arrival, the serpent’s terrifying head swung her way, and the sparkling crystalline eyes fixed on hers. “Can you remove him?”
“I don’t know, Lord.” Pus and muck, Horned Serpent frightened her. “What if I can’t?”
Horned Serpent’s crystalline and cold stare projected a chill into her souls. “Then we will take matters into our own hands.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Battle,” Piasa told her. “A fight.”
“Nasty business if we do,” Snapping Turtle noted, the weird pupils in those round and alien eyes still fixed on the glowing hole across the cavern. “Rock is fractured, tunnels collapse, the ground shakes and convulses. The dead are terrified. Fear will be unleashed everywhere.”
“It isn’t just confined to the Underworld,” Horned Serpent told her. “Your world will be convulsed until trees fall, houses collapse, cracks appear. Even rivers are shaken out of their courses.”
“Powers were separated for a reason in the Beginning Times,” Snapping Turtle groused. “They are meant to be kept separate. What was that silly moth thinking?”
“I wasn’t aware that a moth thinks,” Horned Serpent replied bitterly. A glow built behind his eyes as he studied Night Shadow Star. “Can you remove him? Take his Spirit back to where it belongs?”
She cast an uneasy glance at the glowing hole. “I don’t know. I mean … how? I’ve never done anything like—”
“Bah!” Snapping Turtle spat. “She is useless. I should have eaten her the first time her whimpering souls polluted our peace and quiet. She’s been nothing but trouble. If we want this corruption removed, we should just rush in there and tear the Sky Creature and that silly moth to pieces. Get it over with.”
“Like usual, your thinking is mired in the mud,” Horned Serpent replied as he fixed his crystalline gaze on the hole across the way. “Not all problems are best solved by those massive and shearing jaws of yours, old friend. This isn’t a matter of some Tie Snake in a fight with a Thunderer—which is destructive enough. The Morning Star is a Powerful being. That he chose the Sky World over us after destroying the Giants is regrettable, but he did. If we attack, we could collapse the entire Underworld in the ensuing battle.”
“That would get Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ attention,” Piasa muttered distastefully. “It’s bad enough when she drifts from her Dream toward wakefulness, but should she be suddenly snapped out of it?” He made a face.
“Let the woman try,” Horned Serpent said. To Night Shadow Star he added, “Go and see what you can do. See if there is a way to get him back to your world without destroying our own.”
“Because if you don’t,” Snapping Turtle insisted, “we will deal with this in our way.”
The golden light in the hole flickered, brightening and then fading away. She could feel the intensity of some terrible conflict being waged just beyond that portal. Her heart began to race; an insidious weakness sapped her muscles and bones.
This is insane! What do they think I can do? This isn’t some Itza lord, or my twisted brother. They are asking me to step between the Powers of Underworld and Sky! This is a task for Spirit beasts, not a mere woman!
“Well, go on,” Piasa prodded. “He’s been living in your brother’s body, after all. There must be something human clinging to his Spirit that you can appeal to.”
Still she remained frozen, afraid of the pulsing light.
Any further delay was denied her when Piasa shoved her forward with a taloned foot, almost tumbling her in the mud in front of Snapping Turtle’s pointed nose.
On trembling legs she slowly walked forward, almost wincing at the fluctuating pulses issuing from the hole. As she neared the terrible opening, the panic built. Tears streaked her cheeks, and a quavering sounded deep in her throat.
Somehow she kept one foot ahead of the other, one fist knotted in the sack where it hung over her shoulder.
Why are you so afraid?
“Because if you go in there,” the Tortoise Bundle whispered from behind her ear, “and you fail, you will never leave that place.”
“All I have to do is talk the Morning Star into returning to Chunkey Boy’s body,” she insisted in an attempt to convince herself.
Sister Datura’s laughter echoed through the watery depths, the peals of it mocking and derisive.
Night Shadow Star shot a worried glance back over her shoulder. The three lords of the Underworld were giving her the sort of look they’d give the condemned.
She was at the glowing opening now. Each frantic beat of her heart ran electric through her body.
“Go on,” Piasa called.
Like a lash, his words drove her headlong into the glowing hole. Half blinded by the flickering light, she raised her arm to partially shield her face. In staggering steps—as if into the teeth of a blizzard of light and pain—she advanced. How long? A matter of steps? An eternity?
Time twisted around her.
Her eyes ached as they adjusted, and she realized she’d stumbled into another cavern. In a blaze of pulsing and golden brilliance, she could see two figures as they wh
irled and fought.
The Morning Star—a being of light—wore a deer-antler headdress, a raccoon’s back-hide hanging down over his forehead. Eagle wings draped from his arms, and a splayed-feather tail extended behind him. His neck was wrapped in shell necklaces, a sash and pointed apron at his waist. The Morning Star’s face was strained, exhausted, and what she had first thought was red paint around his gasping mouth, she now recognized as blood.
Clasped at arm’s length fluttered a giant humming moth—a huge creature whose brightly colored wings blurred as they battered at the Morning Star’s arms. Each of the buzzing beats was weakening the Morning Star’s grip on the giant moth’s proboscis and thorax.
And then she saw the source of the blood. Though held at arm’s length, it wasn’t far enough. The giant moth’s proboscis streaked out like a whip to lap at the blood welling on the Morning Star’s lips. In desperation, he would release his grip with his left hand and bat the vicious proboscis to the side. As he did the moth would press closer, causing the Morning Star to slap his hand back to its thorax in a desperate effort to push the beast away.
Then the terrible proboscis again struck at his mouth and began to feed.
Night Shadow Star hunched under the force of the battle. The humming wings pounded vibrations of ancient Power through her cowering body, making her teeth ache and her bones feel like they were cracking. The radiance burned her skin—so painful it raised blisters as she watched.
Waves of misery poured through her, leaching away her souls and will. In terror, she sank down, strength draining away. All that remained were the humming beats of those terrible wings, that lashing proboscis as it lacerated and sucked away the Morning Star’s blood … and the horrible realization that she could do nothing.
Screaming in agony, Night Shadow Star tried to rise, only to be beaten down again. She felt the sack slip from her limp fingers as she collapsed on the shivering sand. Her dying gaze fixed on the flashing and battling figures. Morning Star was fading, tiring. It was only a matter of time.
“And then what?” the Tortoise Bundle whispered just beyond her fading hearing.
“Death,” she whispered.
Forty-nine
As she knelt before the altar in Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ temple, Tonka’tzi Wind wondered if she was fated to be the last Great Sky of Cahokia. The thought was sobering.
Just at sunset, she had had her litter carried down the Great Staircase from the Morning Star’s palace, her escort of warriors calling for the mostly silent crowd to make way as they rounded the Morning Star’s great mound and took the avenue north, across North Plaza and Cahokia Creek. They had finally deposited her at the doorway to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ temple, on a low terrace on the creek’s north bank.
The temple was one of a line of mounds and structures on the creek’s low terrace, and stood on a direct line of sight along the avenue that paralleled the western base of the Morning Star’s mound, precisely located one and a half measures to the north. Dedicated to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, the complex consisted of a two-terraced mound, with the temple on the lower, eastern platform and its associated charnel house atop the higher western platform.
It was to this complex that Morning Star House always retreated to show their respect to the greatest of the Earth Spirits. And it was to here that Wind had come, followed by the surging crowd, most of them Singing and Praying for the Morning Star’s recovery.
As she knelt before the altar with its masterfully carved sculpture of the goddess, Wind could close her eyes and feel the thousands who now surrounded the temple. Sense the Power of their combined bodies, all standing, kneeling, and watching. They might have been a single vast being with a thousand lungs breathing the hopes of a world. All waiting on her, expecting her to intercede on behalf of their longings and aspirations. She was supposed to make this right and bring their living god back to his body.
Why does it have to be me?
She glanced sidelong at the priests and priestesses, all ancient, their visages shriveled, faces painted, as they knelt to either side in the dark room. Each held a cornstalk in the left hand, a hoe in the right—the traditional symbols of Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies.
They, too, were looking at her with expectation in their eyes. Pus rot them all, they were the chosen. Why weren’t they interceding on the Morning Star’s behalf and beseeching their patron to send the living god’s essence back to Chunkey Boy’s body?
Wind turned her attention back to the hunched statue of the goddess where it rested atop the altar. She had already laid an offering of corn, squash, and goosefoot seeds in the basket that rested before the old woman’s statue. Now she looked into the shell-inlaid eyes, stared hard into those black pupils that fixed so intently on her.
“First Woman, on behalf of all the peoples of Cahokia, I plead with you. Please send the Morning Star’s Spirit back to us. Free it from the bonds of the Underworld and this ancient and meddling moth. Though we do not understand the creature’s reasons for taking the living god from us, you, who have lived with the ancient Powers, must. Intercede on our behalf. Heed the offerings of the people. All across the city, in every temple, they have laid the proceeds of the harvest before you.”
Did she see a sharpening in those piercing eyes?
She blinked. No. The statue looked just the same. Occasionally it would seem to move, but that, she had discovered, was an illusion caused by the wavering firelight.
Her knees on fire from kneeling, and lower legs numb, her misery was intense.
How many hands of time had passed since she had knelt here? Every muscle ached from being bent into a submissive posture. Try as she might, she couldn’t see that her pleas had made any difference.
The soft whisper of voices from behind caused her to glance over her shoulder. Rising Flame now entered, several of her servants bowed as they were dismissed and then retreated to the outside.
Wind tried to rise, winced, and realized her legs had lost all feeling.
Two of the temple assistants rushed forward, bowed low and touched their foreheads, and took her arms. Gently they eased her up, one saying, “Don’t try to walk, Tonka’tzi. Just let us carry you.”
Oh yes, with legs that felt as senseless as oak, what else could she do?
Obviously practiced for such an event, the young men swiftly bore her to a seat in the rear, efficiently composing her as the first prickles of returning circulation began to torture her legs.
“Any news?” she asked Rising Flame when the matron walked up.
“He still lives,” she replied, casting a nervous glance at the ominous statue atop its altar. Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies was glaring hostilely at them through her shell eyes. “Though Rides-the-Lightning says not by much.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s the middle of the night, Tonka’tzi. Probably close on morning. I couldn’t sleep. Half the city has flocked into the Great Plaza. The other half, hearing that you are here, has camped around this temple. Like you, they are praying for Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ help.”
Rising Flame shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Felt anything like it. It’s huge. All those people, all waiting, their hearts literally aching. You can feel their hope and their fear, a tremendous Power in the night. It’s all coupled with a sort of confusion. They don’t know what to do to fix it, so they can only wait and pray.”
Wind gasped as the tingle in her legs built into a thousand-needle prickling ache, and making a face, she wiggled her feet and shifted her legs back and forth.
To Rising Flame she said, “Just before you arrived, I was contemplating the fact that if the Morning Star dies, nothing is going to save this city. All those people out there? They’re waiting on the outcome. And when they hear that the Morning Star is finally dead by assassination? They are going to turn on each other, on the Earth Clans, and on us. It will be an ocean of grief and betrayal that drives them. No amount of warriors or squadrons will stop them. They wi
ll tear the city apart, and then they will turn on each other.”
“Pus and blood.” Rising Flame dropped to a seat beside her, her empty gaze locked on the statue that continued to glare at them. “What do we do?”
“What can we?” Wind shrugged. “We are outnumbered. We dare not try to make an escape; they’ll see. Imagine what they’d do if they thought we were running out on them.”
Wind chuckled softly, adding, “This might be the safest place in the whole of Cahokia, Matron. To be found humbly praying to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies might cause them to hesitate, and perhaps drop to their knees in prayer beside us.” She paused and made a face. “Or not. They might just tear the temple down and stomp us into the floor.”
“Or just trickle away and go home?”
“Now that’s a nice thought.”
After a silence, Rising Flame said, “Word came late last night that among the dirt farmers, they’ve started sacrificing young women. Purifying them, sweating them, feasting them, and offering them up to First Woman before they put a rope around their necks and strangle them. Then the bodies are buried with the appropriate offerings.”
Wind sighed. “Wonder if it’s going to make any difference.”
At the other end of the room, the statue remained unmoving, still crouched, hoe in hand. But then death had always been Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ particular calling. Before a person could be reborn, they had to die.
So … how long do we have? Moments? A finger of time? A hand, or a day?
Cahokia’s miracle, growth, and expansion had been like nothing ever seen. Now, if the Morning Star died of assassination, the city’s sudden and convulsive death would be epically cataclysmic.
Fifty
The dreams were fragmented, broken snippets: images of people and places long gone. Feasts, good times shared, moments of joy with old friends lasting long into the night. Her brother Red Warrior Tenkiller held his stomach as he laughed so hard at one of her jokes that his face turned red and he almost threw up. Memories of lovers and spectacular sex that had left her body trembling in the afterglow. Being present at the birth when White Pot squirted Chunkey Boy out of her sheath. Black Tail’s death, and the emptiness that had sucked away her souls.
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