“No doorway leading down,” Wrapped Wrist muttered as he took in the grandeur. “Come on.”
Bad Cast followed him out, then ducked into the next doorway. A Priest lived here. Probably Water Bow himself. Bad Cast recognized images of the Flute Player, Spider Woman, and the Blue God. They seemed to be glaring at him with a burning hatred.
Bad Cast stopped short, staring into the Blue God’s angry eyes.
“Not here,” Wrapped Wrist murmured, reaching out to pull Bad Cast back.
Bad Cast tried to stifle the shakes that were making his muscles liquid. “Horribly spooky place, that.” His teeth were chattering as he ducked into the last room, finding a plethora of weapons: the long S-shaped war clubs; shields of wicker and buffalohide; several long bow staves, the strings hanging; quivers of arrows; and stone-headed war axes. A line of grinning skulls hung from a cord stretched between the roof poles. The patches of hair neatly lashed to small hoops looked suspiciously human.
“Burning Smoke’s room!” Wrapped Wrist stopped short, his throat working. A wide-eyed slave girl wearing a doeskin kirtle stared up from where she was feeding twigs into a fire.
“Where’s the prisoner, Ripple?” Bad Cast demanded.
She looked at him as if he were one of the gods freshly set foot on earth. Her eyes were wide, surprise filling her pretty face.
He switched to the Made People’s tongue. “We’re looking for the Moon People hunter known as Ripple.”
“Blood and dung!” Wrapped Wrist cried. “She probably doesn’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“I show you way,” the girl said in Made People’s tongue. “You take me? Hide me? Protect me?”
“Yes, yes,” Bad Cast hissed.
“There.” She pointed at a leather war shield lying on the floor in one corner of the room.
“That’s the way to find Ripple?”
She nodded.
Bad Cast took two steps across the room, lifted the heavy shield, and tossed it aside. A rectangular hole opened below. The two uprights of a ladder were leaned against the pole frame of the doorway.
“Down there?” Wrapped Wrist asked.
“It’s black as a snake’s belly.” Bad Cast started down, aware of the coolness of the room. “Gods, if she pulls this ladder up while we’re down there …”
“You need this,” the young woman said, plucking a bowl from behind her. White, decorated with fine black lines and the blocky shapes of mountains, it was made in the form of a duck. She lit a twisted yucca wick in the fire bowl and handed the lamp to Wrapped Wrist.
Holding the lamp, he leaned over the doorway to set his feet on the rungs before climbing down to stand beside Bad Cast.
In the lamplight, they could see row on row of large jars, each brimming with foodstuffs. One was heaped high with corn, another with dried squash. Yet another was topped with dried beeweed. Rawhide boxes yielded stacks of desiccated rabbits, and venison and buffalo jerky. Still more pots were filled with beans.
“Tribute?” Wrapped Wrist asked.
“Enough to feed them for a year. This is surplus. It’s late summer, little more than a moon before the harvest. The First People keep this for a reserve.”
Wrapped Wrist frowned. “We’ve always thought if it became necessary, we could starve them out.”
“We’d best think again.” Bad Cast stepped over, seeing a ladder leaned at an angle in the room’s rear. “Over here.”
“Should one of us watch that ladder?” Wrapped Wrist hesitated. In the lamplight, they stared at each other, well aware of what would happen if the slave girl pulled it up behind them.
“You stay.” Bad Cast stepped over and looked at the floor.
Another war shield lay in the open space at the ladder’s feet. Bad Cast lifted it aside, then reached for the lamp. He lowered it into the black oblong hole and stared down. For a moment, he couldn’t place the broken and pathetic thing as human, let alone the cocky Ripple he’d once known. Black and filthy, the shape tried to curl away from the light.
“Ripple?”
“Go away!” the apparition cried with an oddly slurred speech. “Leave me alone.”
“Gods,” Wrapped Wrist whispered.
“We’ve got to get him out of—”
At that moment, the girl came climbing down the steps. “Hurry! Get man! They come back!”
Bad Cast reached for the ladder, wondering how, if they survived, he was going to explain a slave girl to White Eye. When he started down the ladder, the temperature dropped. He could see his breath. When he bent to Ripple, the man’s flesh was like ice.
“Gods, it’s cold in here!”