Black Skull refused to let up, especially now. At sight of those four strange war canoes—paddles flashing in stroke after measured stroke—a lance of icy dread had shot through his soul.
He was responsible for the four most important men in the world, and he had only himself and Three Eagles to protect them. He shot a glance over his shoulder, checking. Those strange canoes should be far upriver by now. Still, he couldn’t rest until the Clan Elders were safe.
Foolishness! This whole silly journey is the work of insanity!
Only a complete idiot would place his faith in the Power of the Spirit World to protect him, A wise man backed up his beliefs with five tens of seasoned warriors and their atlatls and darts.
Green Spider … it all came back to Green Spider. The gibbering idiot was the cause of all this craziness. Possessed, that was it. Something evil had taken over the silly young man’s soul. Some malignant ghost had sneaked into the City of the Dead, undetected by the Ancestor Spirits, and fastened on the boy.
Everything he does is contrary to any kind of sense. Contrary to the simplest rules of behavior that even a child knows. Contrary to the way the world is supposed to work.
Contrary to—.
Black Skull’s hair prickled across his scalp. He’d heard of Contraries—but they were beings of legend, half amusing, a curiosity of Power when it interacted with the world of men.
Was that what Old Man North had wanted him to discover for himself?
Black Skull shook his head, refusing to believe. More likely, the lightning had fried all the sense out of Green Spider’s soul when it hit.
Black Skull understood the world and the things in it to be orderly. Everything in its place. A man planned his objective, then pursued it through discipline and hard work. Life was like war. You could be dealt unexpected blows, but the prepared warrior applied a counterstrategy and sought to regain the initiative.
The more desperate the situation, the more dogged the response, until tenacity brought victory.
The approach was simple. Now, as he glared at Green Spider through slitted eyes, he thought of another simple solution to his problem. This madness would end if he could get his fingers around the fool’s skinny throat when the Clan Elders weren’t watching.
Or will I incur the wrath of Power? And that presented a problem. Was Green Spider truly a Contrary? Had he been touched by Power? Or just made into an idiot?
As a child, Black Skull had believed in the Power of the Spirit World. He’d prayed to it to come and save him from Mother, from her sneering dislike and the way she looked at him with such loathing. She’d told him how disgusting he was.
He’d been a lonely boy, unable to fit into the rough-and tumble society of other children. As a result of his shy ways, he’d always ended up as the butt of the cruel, practical jokes children play. That, coupled with general snubbing by his peers, drove him farther into himself, and ever closer to his only friend and benefactor: Granduncle.
Granduncle, not Power, had shown Black Skull how to save himself. Granduncle had taught him relentless discipline, practice, and unflinching obedience. No one sneered at Black Skull these days. In the end, he had triumphed—even over Mother.
What would Granduncle say if he could see Black Skull now, responsible for a fool’s venture—the four Clan Elders at perilous risk from the simplest of calamities?
He could still see the old man, as thin and brittle as last summer’s goosefoot stalks. Granduncle sat with his bad leg out straight, his rheumy black eyes staring into the past, seeing other days, other times. The firelight flickered across the grass shock walls of his house and sent the wavering shadows of roof poles across the soot-thick thatch above. Net bags were tied up there in the rafters, each with a trophy—a dead warrior’s skull—staring hollowly out through the confining cordage.
The old man’s atlatl hung from a thong on the wall behind him. Long, deadly darts, tipped by crudely chipped stone points, leaned against the cane room divider, their polished wooden shafts gleaming blood-red in the firelight.
Granduncle understood Black Skull’s humiliation at the hands of the children that day. And that other humiliation inflicted by his mother as she beat and spit upon him, and then shamed him with her probing fingers. The old man had waited, squinting as they sat in silence.
Black Skull had been staring raptly at the scar on Granduncle’s wounded knee when the old man spoke: “Boy, everything in the world, the rocks, the trees, the creatures, and men—all are different. No two things are exactly alike. Not even two seeds from the same pod are the same. Power sorts them.”
The old man nodded as he affirmed some internal thought.