At the door, she hesitated, then moved the heavy planks to one side. As she stepped out, a voice asked, “Who’s there?”
“The lady Night Shadow Star,” she told the warrior who stood guard. “You need to ensure that my palace remains secure. Walking Smoke could try to sneak in at any moment. Just like he did at Lace’s.”
“Yes, Lady.” The warrior bowed and touched his forehead. “Let me call you an escort. Summon your porters and the litter to—”
“No.” She tapped the war club at her side. “I need to do this alone.”
“But I—”
“Alone!”
“Yes, Lady.”
She smiled grimly as she hurried forward, patted Piasa’s guardian post with quick fingers, and almost skipped down the dark stairs.
Passing the last of the warriors guarding the approaches to her palace, she turned onto the Avenue of the Sun, faced west, and forced herself into a warrior’s distance-eating trot.
As she passed the Great Observatory with its monitoring priests, she touched her forehead in respect, whispering, “I understand now, Sky Flier. Your prophecy was correct. Twenty years was all the time I was allotted.”
The inevitability filled her with a curious serenity.
A low mist clung to the ground; it turned silver on those occasions when the three-quarter moon broke through the patchy clouds. At other times, she ran in almost total darkness.
Breathing easily, she felt her legs warming, catching their stride in time to the rhythmic working of her lungs. She’d always loved running, but tonight, she felt a different exaltation as she kept catching glimpses of Piasa where the Water Panther’s Spirit image loped along behind her. She could feel his presence and hear the occasional patter of his taloned feet on the packed surface of the roadway.
I go to kill my brother.
A sense of destiny filled her, pulsing in time to her quickened heartbeat, rushing with the blood that pumped through her running legs.
“You’ve been chosen as the champion of Power.” Piasa’s voice seemed to entwine with the damp night air.
“I find no honor in that.”
“Honor? Hardly.” Piasa’s voice hardened. “For those touched by Power, let alone those who would pervert it, there is only suffering and misery. Nothing comes free, Lady. Not even your birthright.”
“Where will I die?”
“If you are successful—and very, very lucky—his fingers will be locked around your throat as you drown in darkness and terror.” He paused. “You do understand, don’t you?”
“I understand,” she answered, seeing it in the eye of her souls. His fingers might already be around her neck given the tightness under her tongue.
* * *
Lace blinked, startled into awareness as the unwelcome sensation of hands on her body finally registered in her numb and pain-wracked brain. For long moments she couldn’t place herself. She squinted her eyes, trying to make sense of the young men who now flipped lengths of rope from her arms, legs, and torso.
Who are they? What are they doing?
Groggy and filled with agony, a fluffiness like cottonwood-down filled her thoughts.
She struggled to understand.
“Mother?” she whispered hoarsely. “Who’s there?”
Then one of the men lifted her right arm into view. How odd that she couldn’t feel it, that it flopped down senseless and dead when he let loose of it.
Her other arm was lifted, and she could see where tight ropes had purpled her skin, the imprint of the fibers visible. Next they removed the ropes from her completely numb legs. As two of the men worked their arms under her back, however, spears of pain shot through her; she screamed as they lifted.
They carried her through a palace of some sort, but the walls—bathed in flickering yellow light—had the oddest decorations: crimson snakes, tadpoles, frogs, caterpillars and butterflies, mudpuppies and salamanders, oddly proportioned Spirit beings, all painted on the plaster in rusty red-brown tones.
Her back spasmed again as the four men who held her stopped and turned her. In the process, she screamed again as they bent her backward and her head dangled. She could just see her long black hair where it trailed across intricately woven matting. The first tingles of agony began to be felt in her arms and legs. Her baby squirmed in her womb, as if it too were now afraid.
From her upside-down vantage point, she could see a line of children seated on the benches along one wall. And there was Chief High Dance and Matron Columella. Glancing to the other side she was surprised to see Sun Wing, naked, her body painted and tied securely to one of the wall benches. Her younger sister’s hair was down, a cloth gag in her mouth. Even as Lace watched, Sun Wing was tugging at the ropes binding her. A desperate fear glittered behind her eyes.