The muscles in the young man’s jaws were clamped, and the vein in his neck was pulsing.
The guard standing behind Ripple smacked his club into the palm of his hand. “Blessed Water Bow, should I bruise him up a little? Loosen his tongue?”
Burning Smoke shot a questioning glance at Water Bow, one eyebrow lifting. The war chief most assuredly thought it a good idea, but Water Bow remembered another occasion when an overzealous guard had leveled one blow too many, leaving the prisoner suddenly and quite inarticulately dead.
Water Bow fingered his chin as he studied the young man. The look in his eyes erased all doubt but that he was at the bottom of this ludicrous rumor; nevertheless something in that posture communicated that beat, flogged, or tortured, the youth would rather suffer and die than speak.
Still, there might be another way.
Water Bow bent down. “Beating him will do no good.” In Ripple’s language, he said, “Take him and lock him in the hole until you can return with his kin. Sisters, you said? Sometimes a man will talk with greater facility when someone he loves is doing the screaming.” He made a gesture with his hand, then added, “And send warriors to bring in his friends, as well.”
An ashen pallor washed over the hunter’s face. This time when Water Bow looked into his eyes it was to see outright terror.
Fir Brush was no one’s fool. When she had awoken to find Ripple missing, she had feared the worst. Rumors were already passing from lip to lip that the young man seen escorted by warriors just at dawn was Ripple. She considered that as she sat under the low branches of a juniper tree and inspected the contents of the small pack she had assembled. Slipped Bark sat beside her, a corn-husk doll clutched tightly to her narrow chest as she watched the tree-dotted slope between them and Guest House. If the warriors came, it would be from that direction.
The breeze made a soft shushing sound as it played through the piñon and juniper branches. To her left, rain and wind had scrubbed the sandstone bare of soil. A single perfectly round sipapu had been painstakingly ground into the solid rock.
The sipapu, about three hands across, had originally been higher on the slope, closer to the twin pillars of stone where Sister Moon had emerged from the Underworlds. It was on that spot that the First People had built Pinnacle House. They had placed their kiva directly over the sipapu, thereby controlling that doorway to the Below Worlds.
After much bickering—or so the story went—the First Moon People had drilled this second sipapu. It had been located with precise deliberation where, it was said, First Man had seen the first sunrise after his emergence from the Underworlds.
Nor was that the only celestial event that had ties to this place. The oldest of the surviving elders still talked about how Morning Star had burned so brightly he had outshone Father Sun. It had occurred just after the First People occupied First Moon Mountain. The First People had said it was an affirmation of their authority. To the Moon People, it was a sign that Morning Star had been so incensed he burned for days in anger. During those weeks, there were three heavenly lights that had been visible during the day—and his daily rising had been directly in line between the sun tower and the newly drilled sipapu.
Looking east, she could see the high tower of the observatory where it perched on the cliff overlooking First Moon Valley. Twice a year, on equinox, Father Sun rose in direct alignment. His light was cast from the watchtower, over the sipapu, and clear across the River of Stones valley to Mid-Sun Village.
The Priests, Healers, and Shamans had conducted secret rituals to redirect the Spirits of the Underworlds to this new sipapu. On both summer and winter solstice, the Priests came to conduct their rituals here, calling on the gods of both sky and earth to bring them rain and mild weather, to intercede with the dead, and grant health and fertility to the people.
Just to her left, Fir Brush counted no less than five tens of prayer sticks; pahos, or feather plumes; and other offerings made to the spirits of the Below Worlds. These brightly painted, carved, and feathered offerings were left propped on the rock, set on small tripods, or otherwise displayed. People knew that their prayers had been heard when the offerings began to fade, weather, and deteriorate. When they did, it meant the message, or soul, of the prayer stick had been taken, leaving only the corpse of the offering behind, much as a human body deteriorated after its soul flew off to the afterlife.
“Fir Brush?” Slipped Bark ventured softly. “They’re coming.”
Fir Brush followed her little sister’s pointing finger. It wasn’t with surprise that she caught sight of the four red-shirted warriors striding purposely down the hill. They were weaving their way through the pit houses and ramadas of her neighbors toward her house.