People of the Moon(153)

When he finally awoke, morning was breaking; dawn looked bloody and dull as sunlight fingered the smoke-blackened eastern horizon.

When he glanced over, only flattened grass marked the place where she’d laid her bed the night before.





Forty-four



To think about walking unafraid into the middle of the First People’s world by himself was one thing; to actually set foot inside Dusk House without Nightshade’s protection was something else.

Terrible stories were told of the First People late at night by crackling pit house fires. Tales of their evil deeds, of the hideous rites they practiced, and of how their heartless cruelty knew no bounds. Of course, they had enslaved many of Spots’s people over the years, and those few whom fate had spared often broke into tears as they related their experiences in the quarries, or of building the great roads, ramps, and stairways that tied the Straight Path Nation together.

“I should be on my way home,” Spots mumbled as he stared at the massive buildings. The symmetrical perfection of Dusk House contrasted to the thriving activity as tens of tens labored to raise Sunrise House. He could hear the distant clattering as the masons used stone hammers to true sandstone slabs for the walls.

His attention kept going back to that immense construction. One wrong move and that’s where they would put him: just another slave to build their great house. Assuming, that is, that they didn’t just crack his skull and toss his body out to rot in the cornfields.

We all have choices to make. Nightshade’s words echoed hollowly within him.

Gods, did a choice have to include the runny feeling of fear that coursed through his guts?

Did Nightshade really need him? Surely, if she had, she would have kept him at her side. On the other hand, he remembered that clear look of fear and resignation behind her eyes as she’d dismissed him.

Something terrible is going to happen to her.

“Then don’t let it happen to you,” he growled to himself as he watched the dawn light grow brighter.

He stood, throwing his pack over his shoulder. That’s it: Be gone. Back to First Moon Valley. He had obligations to his kin. Yellow Petal had to be warned—for what little good that would do. He made a face as he imagined her mocking eyebrow as he told her to pack her things and leave. And what about his kiva? He owed it to his brothers to warn them. And then there was his clan. His duty was to take Nightshade’s warning straight to Elder Rattler. Tell her to prepare for disaster.

He nodded, his mind made up. He made no more than four steps toward the Spirit River ford and stopped.

Who did he think he was? Worse, who would his people think he was? A young hunter? Bearing warnings from the Mountain Witch?

They would brand him a fool.

He groaned aloud as he fingered the rough fabric of his sack. Placing himself back in time, to the person he had been before Ripple’s vision, he knew how he would have reacted to hearing another young hunter give such a warning of disaster: He’d have dragged him kicking and screaming to have a Healer return his lost Dream soul to his body, for this was obviously the ranting of a sick man.

Choices.

He looked back over his shoulder, turned, and started forward. As he broke the cover of the willows and set foot down the path toward Dusk House, he glanced at the corn. The immature ears were thickening, the kernels green within them. It would be a good crop.

Enough to keep them from stripping First Moon Valley bare? he wondered. As he walked, the smoke plume in the north could be seen. The entirety of the northeastern horizon had turned murky. It matched the Rainbow Serpent’s smudge to the southwest.

Fire on two corners of our world.

That notion kept repeating itself as he tried to figure out what he’d say if one of the guards stopped him.

“I’m a Trader.”

“Oh, and what did you bring to Trade?”

“Well, nothing. I thought I’d see what they needed here.”

He wrinkled his nose. This was Flowing Waters Town. They needed nothing. They took everything.

“I’m here looking for my brother.”

“What might your brother’s business be here?”

“He’s a stonemason.”

“Then you’d better go down, put on a slave’s work shirt, and join him.”

Spots didn’t like that one, either.

“I’m here with a message for the Mountain Witch.”

This time, the guard didn’t respond; instead his wrist flicked and a war club caved in the side of Spots’s head.

“Gods,” he muttered as he left the cover of the cornfields and stepped out onto the Great North Road. He stopped for a moment, looking at the wide thoroughfare.

He imagined it, running straight as a stretched cord southward, across high desert to Straight Path Canyon, and from there on down in the distance. How far south? To the end of the world? It was said that the souls of the dead were released at Center Place to travel this road northward to the sipapu that allowed them to descend into the Underworlds. There they would find the Land of the Dead and their ancestors. Did Spirits walk this way even as he stood here? Did they pass him, wondering at the poorly clad barbarian hunter with his pack?