People of the Fire(117)

She looked up, desperate eyes meeting his for the first time. "L-Little Dancer," she moaned. "He's ... Oh, no . . . he's dead." And she burst into tears again.

Two Smokes started to say something, hugging her close, patting her—but his eyes caught the wolf effigy where it had been pecked into the sooty rock.

Power had been at work this night. He could practically taste it in the air. And he'd felt the lurch, the same sort of wrenching as the night the Wolf Bundle had been desecrated.

His heart skipped, for he could have sworn the wolfs eyes gleamed for that brief instance, and it looked like triumph.

* * *

"So close,” the Wolf Bundle whispered. “We hang by a thread. Must you play so perilously with the passions of youth ?''

"The girl, Tanager, acted on her own. The storm took all of my ability. Let's hope it's enough. I had to throw the Spiral out of balance to effect this." Wolf Dreamer sounded weary. ''Perhaps I bought us time. Perhaps I can reach Little Dancer. The Watcher is ready."

"Or you may have just condemned us."

"It's up to free will now. Heavy Beaver's . . . and the boy's."





Chapter 19




Heavy Beaver glared at the snow blowing out of the sky around his camp. Icy wind roared down from the Buffalo Mountains, moaning around the cap rock on the hogbacks, twisting across the flats before lining out to blow wraiths of snow across the sage flats, piling little diamond-shaped drifts to taper away behind the craggy sagebrush.

He wet his lips, tasting the flakes, feeling the crystals battering against his skin. Eyes slitted to the gale, he stared into the storm, wondering. Never since he'd first heard the stories had such a storm as this come so late to the plains. Never had he seen the buckwheat, the phlox and aster, frozen on their stalks.

He contemplated the fate of the warriors he'd sent to scout the trail up Clear River, past the Red Wall and into the Anit'ah country. The snow should have been melting by now, the trails opening. Anit'ah camps, lean from winter, should have been easy pickings for his young men.

Not all of his youths had gone to scout Anit'ah. Many had gone for spring buffalo, hoping to pick up fresh meat from the nursery herds, and perhaps waylay antelope at the same time. This was the time when does left the big herds, wandering out by themselves to look for fawning grounds in the thick sage where coyotes wouldn't find the newborn twins.

And how did those young men fare? So far, a handful had come stumbling in, feet frozen, faces frostbitten and burned. Not good. The flesh had gone black on the ones he'd treated. The ability to feel ice in a living human limb appalled him. And the ones who hadn't returned? What of them? They'd left camp dressed lightly for the hunt, not wearing much in the way of clothing. After all, a hunter didn't take a pack dog with him. What kind of foolishness would that be?

The wind battered at him, seeking to push him back, whipping his clothing about his legs and tugging at the fox lining of his hood.

Impassive, he stood before the storm, slitted eyes seeking the Buffalo Mountains, and the people who resisted him. Sometime soon, he'd move into those hills with their lush viridian meadows. He'd have to. The drought had been stealing back on them, the rains ever more scarce. Buffalo had become almost as few and far between as the year he'd cursed Sage Root and broken the power of the elders among the People. This time, he'd need those Anit'ah hunting grounds. If he couldn't find new lands for his people to hunt, if he couldn't raid enough spoils from the Cut Hair and White Crane and Fire Buffalo, then they might begin to question the vision he'd imparted to them.

"Dreamers can be killed," he whispered into the wind. "But only Dreamers with no imagination need worry."

Filling his lungs with the icy air, he frowned into the storm. Where were his young men? Had they all reached safety? Or did they lie dead and frozen even now, sightless eyes blown full of snow, stiff fingers rising above the drifts, clawing at the driving wind?

Illusion. Life, the world, everything was created of illusion. He Dreamed . . .

. . . Sinking into the warmth, like a feather on air, he drifted, slipping back and forth as he settled into the haze.

“Your soul could be mine now. You're on the verge of parting with your body, of turning ghost or rising to the Star-web. What is your wish, Little Dancer?

"Would you see your wife again? Would you conceive your children? Would you leave your people to the false Dreamer's ways? Will you leave the Wolf Bundle to die? Why will you do this thing? Why will you ignore the cries of the Spiral? Of the Circles? Of your people?"

In the haze, Little Dancer floated, enjoying a feeling of relief, aware that his suffering lay somewhere behind him— up beyond the haze of warmth that soothed his tired soul. "But it's so nice here. So . . . nice ..."