“Perhaps.” Blue Heron couldn’t help but remember the possessed look Night Shadow Star had given her, or the blood-chilling words she’d issued in a stranger’s voice.
“She is your concern, Clan Keeper. Her oddities grow worse by the moon. Bring her back in line before I am forced to take measures I would rather not.”
She read the anger he worked so hard to subdue, and said nothing. The Morning Star had always shown a special preference for Night Shadow Star. For reasons of his own he’d given her the magnificent palace at the Great Plaza’s northwestern corner as a wedding gift in the first moon of his resurrection. No one, however, doubted that the god’s patience had limits.
“Meanwhile, step up here.” He waited while she climbed to her feet before he gave a slight gesture to the west and said, “What do you see?”
She declined to brace herself on the posts as he did, thinking that presumptuous. But stepping close, she peered over the high wall; the slope of the great pyramid dropped precipitously to the distant ground. The height was dizzying, and she fought the urge to step back. Then she followed his gaze to the west, past Night Shadow Star’s palace-topped mound, past the Four Winds’ clan house. Farther west, the circle of tall poles marking the great observatory cast long shadows as the sun hung low over the distant river. The setting sun shone in a swirl of reflected silver from the old oxbow lakes to the north and west.
In the yellowing twilight the air was smoke-hazed from the countless fires. Thousands of peak-roofed buildings stippled the floodplain—many perched atop the multitude of mounds that speckled their way toward the river—all silhouetted by the setting sun.
To the southwest, along the Avenue of the Sun that led to River Mounds City, an irregular string of temples and palaces pimpled the high ground along the margins of Marsh Elder Lake. The land around them was thickly dotted as if the thousands of buildings had been cast upon the land by the Sky Spirits themselves. Across the river, and tiny in the distance, rose the high mound-top palaces of Evening Star town.
“Do you see the three big clusters of tall mounds and palaces?” he asked.
“Of course.” Each was governed by one of the subordinate Four Winds Clan “Houses”—a collection of lineages under the leadership of an appointed chief.
The dense concentration of taller palace-topped mounds on the eastern bank of the river called River Mounds City was ruled by Blue Heron’s distant cousin War Duck. Many of the wealthiest families in Cahokia had built elegant palaces and temples in proximity to their warehouses there.
Across the water from River Mounds, the far-off bluff-top mound center that had once been known as Pretty Mounds rose in silhouetted black humps against the sunset sky. Morning Star had renamed it Evening Star town in reminder of his celestial victory over the “female” west. Evening Star town was ruled by yet another Four Winds House, this one supposedly under the authority of Chief High Dance, though his much-more-capable sister Columella remained the real power. Blue Heron’s marriage to High Dance had proved to be one of her more spectacular failures.
Turning her eyes on the hazy south, she could see the Avenue of the Moon, a raised causeway that ran straight south from the twin mounds at the base of the Great Plaza, to the distant Rattlesnake Mounds, before angling south-southeast. Through the smoke-filled and damp air Blue Heron could barely make out Horned Serpent City, the Avenue of the Moon’s terminus. The lord there was called Green Chunkey; he’d married an even more distant cousin named Red Shawl Woman. The town had originally been known as Quill Dog, but Morning Star, seeing parallels in Cahokia’s construction with the celestial world, had renamed it in honor of Horned Serpent’s constellation in the southern summer night.
And in the interim were the closely packed settlements of the Earth People, the matrilineal clans of old Cahokia consisting of the more prominent Deer Clan, Hawk Clan, Panther Clan, Bear Clan, and Fish Clan. Sprinkled among them were a few lesser Clans, and around them, in even greater numbers were the tens of thousands of immigrants—the dirt farmers and foreigners who’d crowded into the city after the resurrection of the Morning Star.
Blue Heron cautiously asked, “Why, specifically, did you bring me up here?”
“I had a dream last night. One filled with terror, death, and suffering. In it a shapeless blackness stalked the night, walking through walls as if it were no more solid than smoke. The thing had only one very long, slim arm, and a narrow hand with but one finger. It was tipped not with a fingernail, but a thin and barely curved claw. I never saw the creature, only its shadow. As it passed over sleeping people, it seemed to trace that wicked-looking claw across their skin. The action was so delicate, the way a lover slips a fingertip across his mate’s skin. But where it traced, black blood, pus, and corruption welled in its wake.” He paused. “In the end, the earth ruptured, water blasting upward as fire spiraled down from the sky and bored into the earth. Great gouts of flame, lightning, and water like horrendous tornados ripped the world into pieces.”