The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  “Years ago, men from those land companies back east would just draw lines on maps and call them claims. Then some came to put up markers proclaiming this valley or that mountain range to be theirs. Now they come in secret, taking sight lines and measurements, then racing back to have some tame magistrate sanctify their greed with a damned wax seal.”

  “I am no land agent,” Duncan protested.

  Boone ignored him. “Those bones are part of this Kentucky land. They are here because the gods of Kentucky put them here. I can’t decide which is worse, stealing the land or stealing from those land gods for glory back home.”

  “You’re here to chastise me on behalf of the gods?” Duncan spat. “Or perhaps you are so land-hungry yourself that you want to frighten anyone who might be a competitor?”

  Boone’s eyes flashed as hot as the embers. “You earn land by soaking it with your blood and sweat, not with hot wax and a guinea to a foul judge!”

  “That is between you and the Shawnee, I suspect,” Duncan shot back.

  The tribesmen laughed. Boone grunted, as if conceding the point, then poured the simmering tea into mugs and handed one to Duncan. He accepted it as a gesture of conciliation and drank. The tea had an unusual hint of anise and spice, but he relished the brew and drained his mug.

  “You should have studied his tattoos better,” Boone said.

  Duncan shook his head to clear a sudden cloud in his brain. He seemed to be sinking, and held onto his log seat to stay upright. “Tattoos?” he mumbled, then pitched headlong toward the fire.

  Shadows moved. Owls called. A wolf howled. Duncan’s eyes fluttered open and he fought to collect his senses. He was moving but not on his own legs. His head was flopping and the world was upside down. He struggled to lift his head and saw that he was slung over someone’s back. A man spoke in a tribal tongue he did not recognize. He faded back into unconsciousness.

  Visions came, nightmares of skeletal monsters and man-shaped demons with horns coming out of their skulls. Through a smoky miasma, he thought he saw the long face of the woodsman Boone, holding a bundle of smoldering twigs. Small pots spread before him gave off an eerie glow.

  Suddenly cold water sluiced over his head and he shot up with a Gaelic curse on his lips. Before he could stand, someone shoved him down. He shook his head and his eyes cleared. One of Boone’s tribal friends stood over him, one hand pressing on his shoulder, an upturned gourd in the other.

  It was no nightmare of his imagination. This nightmare was real. He was sitting in a cavern, or perhaps a chamber carved out of the living earth, that was lined with bones. Curving ribs were spaced along the walls, rising along the ceiling like gothic arches. Pillars made of giant stacked vertebrae stood between the bone arches, each capped by a huge skull inside which pots of burning fat flickered. Some of the skulls appeared to be of large bison and giant bears; others were of creatures Duncan could not identify. Smaller skulls were arranged before him in a broad oval that contained something covered by a buffalo robe.

  Boone and Ishmael sat on either side of Duncan, both looking deeply worried. Across the oval of smaller skulls, three fierce-looking figures sat before a pile of embers on which bundles of fragrant twigs smoldered. The two flanking the central figure wore the tops of bison skulls on their heads, from which sharp, stubby horns extended. The man between them sat on a throne made of tusks and wore a breastplate of bones over his bare torso. Fitted over his head so that only the center of his face showed was a skull with an intact jaw from which two long, slightly curving fangs jutted downward, similar to but bigger than the skull Dumont had shown Duncan. The effect was terrifying at first glance, for the skull was fitted so perfectly to the man’s head that the fangs appeared to extend out of his own mouth. His bright eyes glowed in the shadow of the skull.

  Duncan realized he was in a holy place of some kind, and that the man with the fangs had to be the chief of the holy men, a high priest or shaman of the tribes. The shaman did not acknowledge Duncan but gazed reverently into the skull oval. In the flickering light Duncan made out strands of silver hair over the haunting eyes.

  One of the two men with the bison skull caps lifted a bundle of the smoking twigs toward Duncan, gesturing with them to his chin and forehead, then handed them around the circle. Duncan understood. At Iroquois council fires the ceremonial pipe was passed around, its fragrant smoke at once calling in the spirits and purifying those present. Duncan held the smoldering bundle close to his mouth when it reached him, letting the smoke wash over his face, then nodded at the fanged priest.

  “Jiyathontek! Jiyathontek!” the shaman abruptly called, his voice dry as ash, then looked up toward the heavens. He was, to Duncan’s great surprise, speaking in the tongue of the Mohawk, offering greeting to the gods.

  One of the horned men, responding to Duncan’s reaction, spoke in perfect English. “You have no Shawnee. So Chief Catchoka will use the tongue of our Mohawk brothers,” the tribesman explained.

  “You the Ancient Ones came before,” the old man intoned, raising his hands high. It had the sound of an invocation. “You the Ancient Ones knew the first ways of the earth. You the Ancient Ones tamed the earth for the people and took your blessed giants with you to the next world. You the Ancient Ones then ended your own time to allow the people to inhabit the endless forests.”

  As Duncan had learned from sitting at Iroquois council fires, tribal elders spoke with powerful eloquence. Those few words were a story of origins, and would have been passed down through the mists of time. He studied the bone chamber with new reverence. Tribesmen long ago, perhaps even centuries before, had built this secret shrine and passed down its ceremonies in a sacred chain from generation to generation. The mysterious leviathans who had left their bones at the Lick had died taming the earth for humans. It was as good an explanation as any Duncan had heard.

  “Praise for those who have gone before,” the old shaman Catchoka said, then offered a chant in the Shawnee tongue. The two priests beside him repeated the words, which were then taken up by Boone and his companions. The old chief gazed expectantly at Duncan and Ishmael, who did their best to repeat the words. He kept staring at them, and in the eyes between the fangs Duncan saw an unexpected mix of sadness, confusion, and anger. With a chill he realized that he might have been brought here to be punished for disturbing the bones.

  “You took the bones without asking the gods,” Catchoka declared, confirming Duncan’s fear. “For all the life of our tribe the bones have rested in this place, where the gods intended to put them. Now they will go with you,” the shaman said.

  “Some of the bones are packed in my boat, yes,” Duncan agreed in a nervous whisper.

  “You misunderstand. The gods will follow the bones. No one can stop them now. They have great power. Lives will change.” Duncan sensed no anger in his voice now, but rather something like pity. “They are old earth. You are new earth. You will suffer the consequences. You will die, again and again.”

  Duncan was struck dumb by the horror of the words, and by his own deep shame. In his haste, in his zeal to honor Franklin’s request, he had failed to recognize that the bones would hold deep meaning for the tribes.

  Catchoka sighed, then swept his arms to indicate the chamber they sat in. “Even among the tribes most do not know this place exists,” the shaman said. “It is between worlds. If you sit here alone you can feel the gods breathing. It can be terrifying. I was not the first choice to take up the fanged helmet. To wear it one must stay here alone five nights and five days. My older brother was chosen but when our people came after his vigil, the gods had taken him. I had spent much time sitting in the Gods’ Gate as a boy and had spoken of my visions of huge creatures no man alive today has ever seen, so the elders chose me to replace him. The bones changed the course of my life.” Catchoka stared at Duncan over the fangs. “Now they will try to trust you. If you stray from the truth in this chamber, you will die,” the old man stated. “If you survive, they will change you
r life as well.”

  Duncan gazed around the circle of men, then solemnly nodded at Catchoka. He slowly reached into a belt pouch and extracted a narrow band of white wampum beads, then touched it to his heart and lips before draping it over his wrist.

  Catchoka instantly recognized the gesture. The fanged head nodded. “You are a truthsayer among the Iroquois,” he acknowledged. “I do not recall ever seeing a European with such beads. If those Iroquois gods have not killed you yet there may be hope,” he said, then made a small gesture to his attendants. They rose from his side and stepped to the oval of skulls.

  “You will suffer the consequences,” the shaman said again. “But first you will share your secrets, Deathspeaker.” The two men carefully pulled back half the buffalo robe, revealing Ezra’s body.

  Duncan shut his eyes, fighting a new wave of emotion at the sight of the dead man. Why would the Shawnee bring Ezra to their secret shrine? “He was my friend,” he said.

  “He was my friend,” Catchoka repeated. “When I first met him he was with one of those survey parties that came from the east. I could see he had a big heart, and a bigger spirit. His party took sick and stayed a month in our village upriver. He became like one of us, running in the forest on our hunts. The night he joined with us he told me his other name. Ajoka was his true name, given by his tribe. You need to know that secret, given us by Ezra. Ajoka. Now you know the first truth of him.”

  The shaman fell silent and aimed his challenging gaze at Duncan again. “So far all the secrets have been mine, Duncan Deathspeaker.”

  Duncan felt his heart racing. This place was indeed not of the world he knew. He felt shamed that he’d never seen the complexity in the African named Ajoka or gotten close enough to share the secret of his real name while he lived. Now he had so little to honor the dead man with. He began anyway. “My friend Ezra, known on the other side of the great water as Ajoka, did not die of an accident as the men of his boat believe.” The shaman extended a hand and beckoned Duncan toward the body. Duncan rose and paced around the oval of skulls as he studied the dead man once more. “Ajoka was attacked from behind, struck unconscious, then his killers stole his breath by stuffing a paper down his throat. His killers went to great trouble to make it look like the old bone had killed him.”

  “The paper had your writing on it,” the shaman stated.

  Duncan stiffened, then realized he meant European writing, not his own writing. “It was a letter from a great American peacemaker.”

  One of Catchoka’s attendants extended a soiled piece of paper to the shaman. Duncan saw that it had been wadded up and then straightened, and he suddenly recognized it as the letter that had choked Ezra. “Was this a letter to Ezra?” the shaman asked as he held it out for Duncan to see.

  “I don’t know. I think so. Most of it was destroyed in the act of murder.” Duncan knelt by Ezra’s bare chest.

  “So he was killed by this American peacemaker.”

  “No, no,” Duncan protested.

  “A trap set by the peacemaker.”

  “No,” Duncan said again. “It wouldn’t be . . .” His voice trailed off. He realized that if Ezra had been on his own secret mission for Benjamin Franklin, there might have been others secretly trying to stop that mission.

  Catchoka’s gaze grew more insistent, and he made an impatient gesture toward the body, which was bare to the waist.

  Duncan felt a pang of guilt for having ended his first examination of Ezra after finding the cause of his death. He had noticed the markings on his friend’s body, but he had not studied them. Duncan had read stories of tribesmen’s lives in scar images and tattoos inked on their torsos, but the images he saw now, done by a tribe on a different continent, he could not decipher. Along the top of Ezra’s torso, from one shoulder to the other, were patterns of raised flesh. The skin had been pierced to create a circle of pinpoint scars, then two rows of small rectangles, some of which had been stained with something crimson, making a sharp contrast with the mahogany skin. There were two small star-shaped scars, three small shapes that seemed to be representations of animals, and two larger, jagged scars, positioned over the right and left pectoral muscles, that had been made many years earlier. Something sharp had been inserted into Ezra’s flesh. Duncan shuddered as an image of a defiant captive being tamed by being hooked in his flesh and dragged flashed through his mind. Gideon had said a neighboring tribe had captured them to be sold as slaves.

  Although the rows of bar-shaped scars reminded Duncan of the wampum bead patterns used to distinguish tribes of the Iroquois Confederation, he could find no message in them. The tattoos below the scars were different. His eyes widened as he saw two stick men, one leading the other by a neck rope, and a three-masted ship.

  “It wouldn’t be?” Catchoka asked, reminding him he had not finished his sentence.

  “It would not be the way of the man who wrote that letter to intend a death.”

  “It is not for you and me to know the ways of such a man.”

  Duncan looked into the eyes that glowed inside the fanged skull. “I don’t understand,” he confessed.

  “Lightning carries messages between the gods.”

  Duncan stared in confusion at the shaman, then glanced at Boone to see if he was following Catchoka’s meaning. The woodsman grinned back.

  “The one who sent the letter, Deathspeaker,” Catchoka stated, “is the man who tamed the lightning.”

  Duncan’s jaw dropped open. The old shaman in the ancient fanged skull was speaking of Benjamin Franklin. Catchoka gestured toward the last rows of tattoos on Ezra’s body in explanation. Three small images were over his left rib cage: a broad-limbed tree opposite a fish, a sign of home or domestic life. Between them was a lightning bolt.

  Duncan found himself shaking his head. “It isn’t what—” he began, his voice gone hoarse. “Ezra couldn’t have—”

  Catchoka waved the paper at Duncan. “The spirits will decide what Ajoka and the lightning wizard intended,” he stated. Before Duncan could react, he dropped it onto the glowing embers. Duncan forlornly watched as the letter burst into flame, sending its message toward the spirits.

  Catchoka thrust a fist into the air, as if striking a blow at some unseen enemy. “The truth is before you, Deathspeaker! Are you a child that you are too frightened to speak of it?”

  Duncan looked back at the smaller images along Ezra’s rib cage. First came a flying bird, then a keelboat and a bundle of arrows. “After he won his freedom, he came down the Ohio the first time, with surveyors.” He pointed to the boat, then the arrows. “That is when he befriended the Shawnee.” He hesitated over the next two images, a deer and a bear, then leaned over Ezra’s bicep to discover another tattoo, also that of a bear. Duncan rolled up his own sleeve to reveal the tattoo of a turtle above his elbow, in the same position as Ezra’s bear. “He had a relationship with a deer person perhaps, and was adopted into your tribe,” he said, surprise evident in his voice. “Bear clan.”

  A slight nod of the shaman’s head told Duncan he was right. Catchoka pointed to the turtle image. “You understand then. Your blood too was mixed with that of the tribes.” The old chieftain rose, helped to his feet by the men beside him. He stepped into the circle and gently lifted up the entire robe. There was a second body lying beside Ezra. It was a young woman in her prime, wearing a doeskin dress decorated with elaborate quillwork. Catchoka bent and lifted her lifeless hand and laid it on Ezra’s. “My granddaughter, Singing Deer,” he said in a choked voice. “We found her in the forest edge near the Lick. She had been waiting for Ezra to finish speaking with his gods.”

  Catchoka had spoken of the night Ezra had joined them, the night Ezra had shared his secret tribal name. He had meant the night Ezra had married the chieftain’s granddaughter.

  The old man did not bother to wipe away the tear that rolled down his leathery cheek and fell out of the fanged jaw. “The ones who did this are from your world, McCallum. We will not be able to find t
hem. You came here because of the lightning tamer. Ezra came here because of the lightning tamer. You are linked. He told our friend Daniel Boone that he trusted you. You have to become a hunter for the Shawnee now, our stealthy wolf. You must be our eyes, our claws, our hope. These men who snuffed out three good lives cannot go unpunished. You are the only one of that world we can trust to make them pay.”

  Duncan took a moment to find his voice. “Three?”

  Catchoka pointed to Ezra. “My adopted grandson.” He pointed to the young woman. “My granddaughter, his wife.” He pointed to a slight bulge in the woman’s belly. “My great grandson.”

  A great weight pressed down on Duncan’s shoulders. “They all died because of a letter from Franklin,” he said in a sorrowful whisper, “and because we were at the Lick.”

  “Truths from your world, not ours,” Catchoka said, as if agreeing.

  “Men come and go,” Daniel Boone observed. He too was staring mournfully at the dead couple. “Some with proper London accents.”

  “Meaning what?” Duncan asked, turning to the woodsman.

  “In the river settlement there were strangers asking questions. Just like the tribes, the British have scouts and hunters, some looking for signs along a trail.”

  “Signs of what?”

  Boone rose and aimed a bony finger at the tattoo to the left of the lightning bolt. “Of whoever drops out of that tree, ye might say.”

  With a chill Duncan finally recognized the image of the tree. It wasn’t just a tree—it was the big oak he had seen near the Boston Common. It was the Liberty Tree, the sign of the Sons of Liberty. Ezra had been bonded not just to a Shawnee beauty but to the Sons as well.

  Duncan gestured to the woman. Catchoka nodded, and Duncan bent over her, looking into a face that had been vibrant and beautiful, now grown gray and stiff. She had unhealed abrasions along the side of her face. He lifted the quillwork band that been laid, but not tied, over her neck, thinking to examine the bones of her neck. But there was no need. Her throat had been sliced open with a single deep cut made by a strong arm and a razor-sharp blade. When he found his voice again it was hoarse. “I think there were two men. At least two men. She was fighting one man and he hit her, causing the wounds on her face. But unlike Ezra, she did not suffer blows that would have made her unconscious. While she was fighting one man, I think another came at her from behind and sliced her throat.”