Six
The growing community of Flowing Waters Town baked under a hot midday sun. The new capital of the Straight Path Nation had been placed on the first terrace above a shallow westerly bend of the Spirit River. Located by the Priests after a careful survey, the center of the community lay in direct line with the Great North Road, which ran up from Straight Path Canyon. That line transected the space between the Blue Dragonfly Clan’s Dusk House and the Red Lacewing’s Sunrise House. On the higher terraces the Made People clans were already at work building small towns. The entire area was a hive of construction as immigrants moved in, desperate to make a new start in the Spirit River bottoms.
Wind Leaf, war chief of the Straight Path Nation, stood atop the towering fourth-story roof of Dusk House. The giant building was a dominating rectangle of stone, its walls plastered with buff-colored clay carried down from the uplands a day’s walk to the north.
Traders, hawkers, and others with goods to Trade had placed their blankets along the walls. For food, trinkets, or luxury goods, they engaged in the game of give and take, always in search of some sort of advantage.
At that moment Wind Leaf could have cared less about the exotic goods changing hands four stories below him. His attention was focused on the brightly dressed party that approached from the south. Like a thin worm the ragged line inched wearily down to the shallow ford.
For days he had been kept apprised of the party’s progress after leaving Straight Path Canyon. Now he watched as the Blessed Sun’s procession splashed across the Spirit River.
His lips bent into a wry smile as he thought, So, it is finally finished. The Blessed Matron Featherstone’s souls are officially gone, sent to join the Cloud People. Webworm is home.
The world is changed forever.
Webworm’s party emerged as it climbed laboriously up onto the silt-gray floodplain, crossed the feeder canal, and plodded wearily along the cord-straight road that ran between green fields of corn, beans, and squash. The Blessed Sun walked first. Then came the Priests followed by a large party of red-shirted warriors under the command of Deputy War Chief Ravengrass. After them walked four lines of Made People, one each for the Ant, Buffalo, Coyote, and Bear clans. Finally the slaves and servants followed, nearly empty packs swinging on their backs.
The war chief raised his gaze. Beyond the river, lumpy uplands rose in juniper and piñon-dotted hills. The worn trail across them led a half-day’s run to the south, where Northern Town stood on the bluff above the River of Souls. Farther south, across the desert uplands, beyond Smoking Mirror Butte, lay Straight Path Canyon, now mostly abandoned.
At the hollow sound of wood knocking on wood, he looked to the east and snorted at the irony of it all. No more than two bow-shots away, the Blessed Sun’s master mason, an Ant Clan woman named Yellowgirl, labored under the hot sun with a series of strings, pegs, and a level. On the ground, the first outlines of a new building could be seen in the lines of string, courses of stone, and the foundation ditches the slaves had dug into the soil. Toiling slaves marched back and forth between piles of sandstone that had been stacked during the previous winter and spring. More slaves brought large water jars perched like bulbous second heads on their thin shoulders as they trekked up from Spirit River.
Proof once and for all that the Red Lacewing Clan has fallen! The thought stuck in his head like a bitter thorn.
That building, too, was a constant reminder to all how the world had changed.
Wind Leaf heard light footsteps behind him, and smiled as a soft voice said, “So, my husband has returned?”
“He has, Blessed Matron.”
“Then daft old Featherstone is nothing more than a memory.”
“That is correct.”
Desert Willow, Blessed Matron of the Straight Path Nation, stepped up beside him, her thoughtful eyes on the building project to the east. “They’re making progress … despite their dead Matron.”
“The Red Lacewing Clan is in decline. It shows in their building. Sunrise House is going to be much smaller than Dusk House.”
She smiled at that, a cunning humor reflected in her full red lips. Her eyes were sharp, active, betraying a calculating mind behind her heart-shaped face. She wore a white skirt of softest cotton belted by a bright yellow sash. Strands of turquoise beads graced her slim neck and hung down between her round breasts. Though only twenty-three summers of age, Desert Willow’s manner couldn’t be mistaken. Anyone who had known Matron Moon Bright at the height of her authority in Kettle Town would have recognized her granddaughter’s commanding presence.
“I think I shall go and see to the construction of my husband’s house.”