“I’ve had a special supper prepared. Fresh venison tenderloins are being slow roasted with beeweed seasoning, some of those peppers Traded up from the south, and fermented corn. Sassafras and raspberry tea will be served with cattail bread and cranberry syrup sweetened with honeysuckle nectar.”
“I notice a couple of his favorites there.”
White Squash glanced sidelong at her as they passed Night Shadow Star’s palace. “I thought a celebration might be in order, my Lady. There’s been more than enough fretting and danger to go around. Nor do we know when the terror is going to end.”
“When we catch the plotter and kill all of his Tula assassins,” she replied shortly, and rubbed her forehead. “Forgive me. Maybe it’s being pregnant, but I feel so helpless. Everything has me worrying to the point I’ve chewed my lip raw.” She chuckled hollowly. “Maybe I should be more like Sun Wing. She’s either fascinated or horrified. She doesn’t seem to feel this sense of growing fear.”
“That why you’re not sleeping?”
Lace placed her palms on her swollen abdomen. “Do pregnant women ever sleep? I just want this to go away. I imagine eyes in the night, watching me as I sleep. I dream that my guards are murdered, their throats slit where they stand by some unseen attacker. This menace, he exists as a shadow … a darkness that fills every corner of the room. But when I raise an oil lamp, he flits from one to another, darker, corner.”
White Squash looked up skeptically. “You haven’t been listening to your sister, have you? That’s how Night Shadow Star describes Piasa.”
“No.” Lace shook her head. “This isn’t Piasa. It’s him.” She hesitated. “I can almost see his face. I know him, White Squash. I swear. It’s just at the edge of my souls, like a shadow mist. And each time I spin around and stare, the figure dissipates into smoke.” She stopped, feeling her souls shift with certainty.
“Lady?”
“No. It’s nothing.” But it wasn’t. She almost had it. Just awhile more, she closed her eyes, willing the sense of …
“Lady? We’re here.”
The image that almost formed evaporated as her litter was placed on the ground before her palace. The structure was nothing like Night Shadow Star’s huge and opulent palace. Nor did that bother Lace. Overbalanced by her belly, she walked up the ten paltry steps to the top of her mound, touched her chin respectfully as she passed the guardian posts, and was thankful for the sacrificed dog that had been buried beneath the top of the stairs. The canine’s Spirit was there to guard against intruders.
At the same time she watched her warriors marching out to surround her low mound, two taking position by her door, and one each positioning himself at the corners of her palace.
Her two living dogs greeted her at the door, tails wagging.
“Were the two of you good today? You didn’t cause Fine Silt any trouble? Didn’t raid the venison or bread as it cooked?”
Apparently not, for neither dog betrayed even the slightest hint of guilt. They rubbed enthusiastically against her legs, panted, and waited to be scratched.
Entering she smelled the food, and started forward, wondering where Fine Silt might have been.
Lace passed the fire, seeing it was burning brightly. Meanwhile White Squash went about checking the cooking pots where they bubbled and filled the air with tantalizing odors.
Lace removed her cape as she stepped into her sleeping quarters and stopped short. In the dim light she could barely make out the line of people prostrate on her floor. Her husband, Heavy Cane, stood awkwardly just to the right. And behind him, a shadowy second figure.
“Husband? What is—”
“Call White Squash in here.” His voice sounded horrible and strained. And, as her eyes adjusted, she gasped. The odd shape at his neck was a long, thin, chipped blade—the kind of ritual knife they had all become too familiar with.
From behind Heavy Cane, a familiar voice, in a most reasonable tone, said, “Please, if you like your husband alive, make no alarm. If you scream, you both die. Now, call the delightful White Squash in here. And if you don’t behave, I’ll cut that darling little child right out of your womb.”
“It’s … you,” she choked, the mists around her souls parting with a terrible certainty.
Forty-one
The hollow terror in Blue Heron’s stomach knotted and twisted like a physical pain. With a flickering torch in her hand, she stared in abject horror at the room’s contents. Her instinct was to call for a squadron of warriors and, once surrounded by them to run, flee, as fast as possible from Cahokia. When she made it—if she made it—to the canoe landing, her impulse was to take the first worthy craft she could find, and launch it into the river. Only after a moon’s travel, born wherever the river carried her, would she land, hopefully to disappear into the forest where no one would ever find her again.