“It looked like someone tried to recall a soul from the realm of the dead,” Blue Heron finished. She glanced to the side, aware that Night Shadow Star had paled, a tension in the set of her mouth. For some odd reason her niece had brought her dead husband’s chunkey stone with her. The black stone disk was clutched tightly, Night Shadow Star’s long fingers wrapped around the curve.
She had applied no makeup or face paint, and wore a simple muskrathide cape that hung down past the unadorned fabric skirt she wore. With her thick hair worn loose, she appeared more feminine and attractive than usual.
“Does that mean anything to you, Niece?” Blue Heron asked.
Night Shadow Star’s mobile lips curled, her eyes wistful. “Only if it had worked to recall someone from the dead,” she replied.
“Apparently it didn’t,” Blue Heron growled, irritated by the desperation Night Shadow Star hid so poorly. “The way the woman lying on the floor had been brutally butchered had nothing to do with any recall ceremony I’m familiar with. The family on the bed were obviously offerings. That poor young woman’s life-soul was driven out of that tormented body by rage.”
“What purpose was served?” Morning Star wondered.
“A message.” Night Shadow Star fixed the living god with her dark gaze. “The Powers of the Underworld are disturbed. Not only by the attempt to summon a dead soul for uncertain purposes, but by the strength of the frustration and rage that ensued.”
Blue Heron added, “Not to mention that somewhere in the city, that dead woman’s life-soul is loose in the night. Enraged as it is, it will find a home in some newborn, or chase the loose souls away from someone who’s sick and possess his body.”
Sun Wing made a warding against the evil, her face echoing a sudden fear.
“Nor is the ritual pollution conjured up on the bluff just an isolated incident of witchcraft.” Blue Heron reached into her pouch and pulled out the bit of brown chert, holding it high. Her eyes fixed on the Morning Star. “He was jamming his knife into her sheath with such violence that this bit wedged between the bones. It snapped off.” She paused. “It’s the same kind of stone as the knife that almost took your life, Lord. And mine.” She saw his eyes narrow as she added, “I would imagine that if we had the knife that slashed the tonka’tzi’s throat, we’d find it, too, was the same translucent brown chert. Perhaps the very blade from which this snapped.” She wiggled the fragment suggestively.
Sun Wing half rose, staring at the bit of chipped stone with rabid intensity. “He was cutting out her sheath?”
“More like shredding it.”
“And you made a determination of witchcraft,” Morning Star mused, his eyes distant again.
She was acutely aware of Fire Cat’s balled fists, the clamped muscles knotting in his jaws. The man’s hatred for Morning Star radiated like smoldering coals. Why did Night Shadow Star bring him here?
Blue Heron shrugged it off. “What else could I do? Too many people had seen the victims. Matron Corn Seed and Chief Right Hand have to keep order up there. I made a point of saying the witch had flown away into the sky. The last thing we need is for the ignorant dirt farmers to start murdering each other if an owl hoots outside their house some night. You know how a witch scare works. People turn on their neighbors first.”
“What of the Deer Clan?” Night Shadow Star narrowed her eyes. “Could Right Hand and Corn Seed be involved in this in any way?”
“I doubt it.” Blue Heron shook her head. “Why would they have sent a runner to me? Why not just torch the place before it could implicate them?”
Sun Wing declared, “Deer Clan is one of our strongest allies among the Earth Clans. I’ve heard the stories. Chief Right Hand once boasted he was going to marry Night Shadow Star when she came of age. I heard he used to tease her, bounce her on his knee when she was little.”
“You only heard half the story. His arrogance also cost him his hand.” Blue Heron cast a sidelong glance at the Morning Star. Not so long ago that body had belonged to the jealous Chunkey Boy. Losing his souls to the god hadn’t been a complete tragedy for the Four Winds Clan.
She glanced again at Fire Cat, trying to assess his place in all this, and why Night Shadow Star had cut him down from the square instead of simply slicing him up.
“They still bear watching,” Night Shadow Star insisted as she monitored Morning Star’s response. Whatever she was looking for, he remained oblivious.
“You should have seen the horror in Matron Corn Seed’s eyes when she saw this bit of the knife.” Blue Heron studied the finely flaked fragment, aware that even now the edge remained sharp enough to cut. “It might have been a rattlesnake poised to strike.”