Peacemaker (9780698140820)

by Stewart, K. A.

  “The stone.” Caleb jerked his chin at the medallion lying on his chest. “It blocks me from him, keeps me from reaching him.”

  Crying Elk pursed his lips thoughtfully. “When I was a boy, a man with pale skin and black hair upon his face came to our lands. He had a headdress and shirt made of metal, and rode a horse before we had ever seen such a creature. His own people had left him behind, but he fell in love with a beautiful woman of the People, and he chose to stay with my band. We learned much of the white man’s ways through him.

  “Once, in battle against another tribe, he split himself in two, the piece of his spirit aiding him much as your spirit guide does. When the battle was over, the piece of his spirit remained, separate from him, yet always a part of him. Is it not the way with all white men and their spirit guides?”

  Caleb blinked in the dim light for a few moments, disturbingly certain that the old man had just described the arrival of the Spaniards on this land, something that had taken place over three hundred years ago. Dear Lord . . . Three hundred . . . ? There had to be some mistake, some error in translation perhaps. “We don’t know where familiars come from. They just . . . appear. Ernst just came to me.”

  The shaman shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Perhaps he was a different kind of white man, then.”

  “What about yours? Is he part of your spirit?”

  The coyote cocked his head at Caleb’s words, giving every impression of being indulgently amused.

  “Coyote visits when he wants, and aids me when he chooses. We are friends, but he is not of my spirit.” Crying Elk rested a hand on the head of his own familiar, more a gesture of respect for an equal than affection bestowed on a pet. The coyote looked up, and Caleb swore he could see the animal smile fondly in return.

  Even knowing he would not be able to move past the nullstone, Caleb tried to reach out for his connection to Ernst. It was like pushing through yards of wet wool, but he gritted his teeth and tried anyway.

  The woman slapped his arm lightly and shook a finger in warning. Caleb resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her petulantly.

  “You are not strong enough just now to fight the power of the draining stone. I will teach you later, when you are more yourself.” Crying Elk drew on his pipe deeply, his eyes watching the dance of the fire before him. “Now is the time when we must speak of more serious things.”

  Caleb dragged his gaze away from the woman with her hands all over him to look at the old shaman. “What things? And you know, it’s hard to have a conversation all tied up like this.”

  “Is it? It is not bothering me in the least.” The old man blew a perfect smoke ring, amusement in his dark eyes. “Attend now. Time must not be wasted in this place.”

  “But you said time—” Caleb fell silent at a look from the old man. Something told him that the shaman would answer only what he chose to.

  “The dark man must be stopped. The mountain sleeps for now, but if he continues to dig at the heel of the giant, it will awaken, and all will feel its wrath. Even now, it stirs fitfully in its sleep, and the world shakes.”

  The image of the sleeping rock giant sprang vividly to Caleb’s mind, and he looked toward the woman, who had her head down over her mystery concoctions. Her eyes met his, and she subtly shook her head no. He was not to mention their little dream adventure, then, hmm?

  “What happens if the . . . if the mountain wakes?”

  “Who knows? It has not happened in all of my three hundred forty winters, nor those of my father before me nor of his father before him. But if the sleeping giant can cause the mountain to fall down upon our heads, imagine what an angry and wakeful one could do.”

  Caleb had to blink and allow that information to sink in. Three hundred forty winters. He really did see the Spaniards arrive. Granted, strong magic users were blessed with longer lives, but . . . Even Caleb could expect to see only one hundred and thirty years, if he was truly fortunate.

  The rumors of the ancient Indian shamans had trickled back east, spread by gruesome war stories and sensationalized penny dreadful novels. Privately, Caleb had always scoffed at such tales as dramatized yarns good for frightening women and children on dark nights around the fire.

  If it was true, though . . . No wonder the white man could not defeat the red man’s magic.

  “Why don’t you just stop him then? Drive him off the mountain?” Even as powerful as Warner was, this Crying Elk was more than a match. Of that Caleb was certain.

  “Because if my people attack the white men, the soldiers will come just like in the north. I do not wish to lose my people, or to kill any of yours. I have no hatred for those who simply wish to live in peace, so long as they allow us to do the same.”

  He spoke the truth, though Caleb couldn’t have said why he was so sure. Maybe it was the great weariness that lurked in the old man’s eyes, that threatened to stoop his proud shoulders. “You didn’t raid the Anderson homestead, did you?”

  “The family in the foothills? No. That was the dark man, poorly made to look like a raid by the people. I do not allow my warriors to raid.”

  Caleb nodded, resting his head back to gaze up at the thick leather above his head. “I thought you’d say that.”

  “You do not believe me?”

  “No, I believe you. I bet they’re on top of another gold vein; that’s why he wanted them out. The Cheyenne woman is showing him where they are somehow.”

  The old man nodded. “That is a sad tale. She was a daughter of the People, but now she angers the spirits greatly. The dark one has tethered her to his will, but if she were free, I think she would fight against him.”

  “Tethered . . . I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “You will see. When you go there.”

  “Now, wait.” Caleb tried to raise his head, the muscles in his neck quivering. “What makes you think I’m going out there? Just because you tell me to?”

  “You will go, because that is the path I see before you. All of your roads lead to the dark man.” Crying Elk tapped out his pipe into the fire and stood.

  “And if I don’t believe in your . . . vision?”

  The old man chuckled. “We shall see. I do not see whether you will die, but if you do, it will be a good day for it. I will find you again when it is done, Good Man.” He paused at the leather flap that led outside. “Do not attempt to leave the teepee. There are things in the Place Between that are not brothers and would not be happy with your presence.”

  Caleb eyed the ropes still binding his wrists and ankles. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

  The old man left, chuckling.

  That left Caleb alone with the woman, who was humming softly under her breath again. “How long are you going to keep me here?”

  She glanced up briefly, but went back to her work without a word.

  “I guess you don’t talk here, either.” With a sigh, Caleb laid his head back to stare at the ceiling again. The poultice was drying on his arms, itching faintly, but he could tell that the pain had receded already. If it was a hallucination, at least he wasn’t suffering.

  “I do not know what to say to you.” Her voice was low, soft, and Caleb looked at her in surprise to hear her speak at all. She blushed faintly under his gaze.

  “Tell me your name, then.”

  She returned to his side with more water, helping him drink as she spoke. “I am called Falcon Woman.”

  He swallowed the water gratefully, feeling his parched tissues suck up the precious moisture. She laid his head down gently, and began checking the packs of damp herbs covering his body. He watched her long enough that she blushed again.

  “Why do you stare at me so?”

  “Why do you walk in my dreams?”

  She bit her lip as she bent to smear more poultice on his raw wrists. “I should not have done that. Fa
ther would be very angry if he knew. It is not polite to walk in another’s dreams without being invited.”

  “Do many of your people walk in dreams like that?”

  “No. It is a gift in Father’s line. His children, their children, and so on. Many of them have grown to be great medicine men and women of our people.”

  Caleb glanced at the door and back. “That man . . . Crying Elk? He’s your father?” He would have guessed grandfather at the very least, and maybe a couple of greats to go along with it.

  Falcon Woman nodded. “I am one of the youngest of his children. I have two sisters who are younger still. There are many who are older. Like Tall Bear. The man you fought at the village.”

  “He is your brother.”

  She nodded with a small smile.

  “I hope I didn’t hurt him. I think I lost track of what happened that night.”

  “He was not harmed. Only shamed. He should not have asked the fire for aid. The fire is always hungry, and in the dry times, it can devour too much.” She wrung a cloth out in a bowl of water, beginning to bathe some of the plaster off his chest. “You did well to contain it. I do not think Tall Bear himself could have done that. If Father had been forced to step in, Tall Bear would have been twice shamed, so it was a doubly good thing you did.”

  “Glad I could help,” he muttered, watching her hands move over him with clinical detachment. “So . . . my dreams. If you’re not supposed to do it, why are you bothering me?”

  Her dark skin went ruddy in her embarrassment. “I wanted to see what kind of man you were. After the day in the mountains . . . You could have harmed me easily, and yet you protected yourself and did not attack. I wished to know why.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  Instead of answering him, she lifted his head again. “Look at your chest.”

  It took some doing to crane his neck and see, all trussed up as he was, but where she indicated was a deep bruise in the area of his heart. “Damn. I must have landed on a rock.”

  She shook her head, her braids falling around her face. “These injuries were from the great blue fire.” She touched his poultice-covered forearms, his forehead, traced her fingers over the ribs on his right side. “Because your body and spirit are one, I can heal your spirit in this place, and your body. But this . . .” She laid her warm palm flat over the bruised place, and still she could not cover it all. It was an expansive wound. “This is older, and a wound of the spirit alone. You fought a great battle. I saw it in your dreams. This is something only you could heal. Perhaps later you can ask Father to show you how. He has guided many wounded warriors through such a healing.”

  “I don’t understand any of this. You know that, right? This is all . . . myth to me. Legend.”

  “And yet it is life to us.” She smiled softly. “I have heard of the great lakes-with-no-shores and the large canoes belching blue fire that cross them bearing hundreds of people. That is myth to me, and life to you.”

  “Fair enough.” His shoulders ached, stretched out as they were, but at least it was better than the screaming pain of before. “Can you untie me? Or at least take this necklace off me?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot.”

  “I promise, I won’t hurt you.”

  “I know you will not hurt me. You are the Good Man.” She did tuck a small pile of soft tanned hides under his head so he could rest more comfortably. “But as you are both flesh and spirit, so I can affect you here. The ropes that bind you, they are part of the other world, and in this place I cannot touch them.”

  “So . . . I’ll wake up back on the prairie, still tied up like a snared rabbit?”

  “Yes. But if Coyote saw fit to tell Father about your need for aid, he may also see to your freedom. He is like that.” She rose once again, returning to her pile of belongings on the far side of the lodge.

  “I saw a coyote when I was out there. And a buffalo, and a deer and other things. Were they real or did I dream them?”

  “Yes.” At first, he thought she was going to leave him with that enigmatic answer, but she returned to his side with a bowl of hot broth and went on. “When I took you to see the mountain spirit, I gave you the sight to see. Do you remember?”

  He nodded as best he could. “You touched my face.”

  “The sight will linger for a time, I think. It is possible that you saw Buffalo, and Deer, and Coyote. It is also possible that they were simply animals. A warrior’s visions are his own on his quest.”

  He sipped the broth with her help, his stomach growling hungrily even as the salt in it made him crave more water. “I didn’t go on a vision quest. I was left out there to die.”

  “Then perhaps the vision quest found you. Though I do not know how you could have a spirit guide before you had your vision. As Father said, perhaps it is because you are a white man and your spirit guides are different. You must be a very powerful medicine man among your people.”

  That thought made him chuckle, though he tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “No, I’m not. Not anymore.”

  “Then you are a puzzle, Good Man. Drink. It will nourish you.”

  He allowed her to feed him in silence for a long moment, his mind too rattled to even form a logical question. Perhaps he was still hallucinating, but he couldn’t recall any before that had been so very real. Every detail was crystal clear in his vision, from the quillwork on her dress to the tiny feather braided into her hair behind her right ear. The firelight cast a warm glow around, and it was reflected in her ebony tresses until they nearly shimmered with flame themselves. When she leaned over him, he could smell the herbs she had used to wash, see the pulse fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings in the hollow of her throat.

  He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He had not been with a woman in some time, to be sure, but this was not the time or place to be thinking of it.

  A wet cloth stroked his forehead as she wiped away the poultice there, too. He could feel the water trickling through his short hair and down his neck. It tickled, and he squirmed a bit.

  She giggled at him, a trilling laugh made of sunlight. “I am sorry. This is difficult with you tied so.”

  He opened his eyes to find her bent over him, her dark eyes alight with merriment. He couldn’t help but smile in return. “It’s all right. If I get out of this, it will be an interesting story to tell someday.”

  Falcon Woman nodded, patting his face with a dry cloth. “And we will tell it often. You will be known among the People. When Father meets with the other medicine men here, he will speak of the Good Man, and they will know that not all white men are evil.”

  “We’re not, you know. There is good and bad in all of us. I’m sure it’s the same with your people.”

  She nodded, resting her hands in her lap finally. “Even within the same person, yes. It is a matter of which side is stronger, I think.” She placed one delicate hand on his chest again, over the bruise. “Your good side fights hard and wins. But I think you make the struggle harder than it must be.”

  “You know all that just from walking through my dreams?”

  “I knew that the first time I looked into your eyes. The dreams only told me why.” With her other hand, she drew something from a pouch at her side and cast it into the fire. Fragrant smoke rose again in pale blue billows, and a sweet scent drifted to fill the lodge.

  Caleb’s eyelids grew heavy almost immediately. “What . . . ?”

  “You must rest, Good Man. The road Father sees for you is not an easy one, and you need to gather your strength.” She stroked her hand down his scarred cheek lightly, and her humming filled his ears once more.

  He tried to fight it, he truly did. But the smoke whispered to him to sleep, and her song spoke of safety, and it became harder and harder to keep his eyes open. “Falcon?”

  “Yes?”

  �
�My name . . . it’s Caleb.”

  “Rest now, Caleb Good Man. I will watch over you until you wake.”

  Chapter 14

  It was not the morning sunlight that woke him so much as the interruption of that light as the shadow of something large loomed over his face.

  Caleb blinked his eyes open to find himself staring up a very long, very furry face, one deep brown eye observing him curiously. The nose, no more than an inch from his own, breathed warm, grainy breath into his face, snuffling at him with interest.

  “Gah!” His startled yell resulted in wrenching his shoulders against his bonds, and the painted horse danced away nervously. “Christ!”

  His time spent in the Indian teepee had surely been a dream or fevered hallucination. There was no flattened grass, no tracks, no smoldering fire, nothing to show that anyone had ever been there. The Place Between . . .

  Once his heart stopped thundering in his ears and he lay still, the inquisitive horse came back, nosing his hair and chest with strong nudges, blowing horsy breath all over him. It examined him in some uncomfortably personal places, and he tensed, knowing full well he was unable to defend himself if the animal got cranky. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  The horse’s ears flicked once, perking at the sound of his voice. The animal was colored in splashy brown and white spots, the white half of its face sporting a glassy blue eye in contrast to the gentle brown eye on the darker side. Someone had painted dark blue handprints on its flanks. He realized the creature was also wearing a crude bridle, the reins knotted loosely over the animal’s withers. It obviously belonged to someone. Were they missing their mount?

  It started nibbling at the grass, finding the shoots beneath Caleb’s left arm particularly tantalizing. Caleb kept an eye on those sharp-looking hooves, waiting for one of them to lash out and end his misery. Everyone knew how erratic horses could be; that’s why all civilized folk rode transports.

  Something tugged at his wrist, and he realized the horse was nibbling at the rope. He froze, trying to stop even his pulse as those large white teeth snipped closer and closer to his bare skin. “Good um . . . boy? Just don’t bite me. . . .”