People of the Raven(16)
Rain Bear rubbed his forehead. He looked sick in the soul, like a man who had just discovered his wife had been unfaithful to him and who couldn’t figure out how to shove his guts back inside.
Now was the time to make the last cast of the gaming pieces. “As to how I would live among your people, another North Wind woman did quite well here. Her name was Tlikit. I hear she had a most satisfying life.”
He strode briskly to the door, a decision made.
Evening Star watched him, her heart aching. Gods, why wouldn’t he face her?
When he reached the exit, he pulled the leather curtain aside without looking back, and said, “I grant you sanctuary in Sandy Point Village, Matron. Do not make me regret it.”
She found enough breath to whisper, “Thank you, Great Chief.”
As he stepped out into the misty morning, she heard him order, “Dogrib, pick five men. I want them to build a suitable lodge in the space next to mine. And I want it done right, not a slapped-up mess. Pitch, you must find Dzoo and bring her here. Accept no excuses. Tell her we are about to be attacked. Get your things and go immediately.” A pause. “Oh, and you’ll have to avoid Ecan’s war party in the process.”
Evening Star tilted her head back, spilling her hair down her back. She took a deep breath, the memory of Ecan’s cackling laughter deep in her soul.
Six
Rides-the-Wind, propped by his walking stick, carefully made his way down the slick trail that wound along the rim. Below him, the cliffs dropped away, ragged rock supporting green patches of moss and winter-bare currants. Fog tufted the shoreline one hundred hands below him, and far out on the water, dugout canoes rose and fell, riding the waves with the grace of dolphins. If his sense of direction was right, Capped Finch Village lay just ahead. Because of the terrain, he could not see it yet, but he smelled the sweet fragrance of their alder fires.
The trail dipped, and Rides-the-Wind had to pay special attention to the damp moss-covered stones. He took them one at a time, propping his walking stick, lowering his foot, and propping his stick again. At his age, the slightest fall could mean a broken bone, and despite his Healing powers, that could mean death.
Since his meeting with Red Dog, the Spirits had been disturbing his sleep, plaguing him with peculiar Dreams. He had seen lightning flash around him, and heard a voice whispering in the darkness. A man’s voice, rich, raspy, and full of menace.
“Power is loose,” he muttered under his breath, and glanced up. A cow and calf elk vanished into the dense brush that skirted the black timber.
Something wasn’t right. Rides-the-Wind could feel it on the wind. An old evil, malignant and insidious, drifted on the breeze.
The source of it baffled him. He could almost suspect a witch was loose upon the land, but where? As a Soul Keeper, he knew most of the Dreamers, Healers, Soul Keepers, and Soul Fliers. He knew who had trained whom, and what their skills and talents were. But beyond that, there were the stories, the rumors that seemed to trot up and down the trails of their own volition.
“If you need to make a girl love you, see so and so.” “If you want to contrive a man’s death, contact you-know-who.” “Unlucky in gambling? This man will provide a charm.” And so it went. People liked to talk about witches. Better yet, witches liked to be talked about. How else did they ply their craft?
Rides-the-Wind had heard many such rumors in the time he had been away from Fire Village. Each time he ran one to ground it turned out to be a midwife skilled in the use of herbs, or some old man with more imagination than skill.
No, he was looking for a man—and yes, he was sure it was a man—driven by obsession. Ecan, of course, had come to mind early, and despite his brave words to Red Dog, Rides-the-Wind had no illusions about the danger the Starwatcher presented. Ecan, however, was concerned with political prestige and authority, not the ways in which Power could be turned to evil.
When Rides-the-Wind looked up from the treacherous footing he glimpsed a young man trotting through the wind-sculpted grove of spruce trees where the trail rounded the brow of the hill. Beneath his elkhide cape, the young man wore the long red leather shirt of a Sandy Point warrior.
He continued edging down the trail until he reached the last rocky step, then sat down, propped his walking stick across his lap, and waited. The pack on his back felt like a sack of stones. He shifted it to a more comfortable position and studied the ferns that sprouted from every crack in the rocks. Delicate and lacy, their fronds glistened with dew.
Below the cliffs, where the water poured into the sea, the beaches had been cut back, the rocks scoured clean. The water appeared murky. Every drainage that ran to the ocean was flooded and had been for three sun cycles. No wonder the salmon no longer swam up the rivers to spawn. No wonder the numbers of mussels and clams had dwindled to the point that a woman was lucky to be able to collect enough in a moon to feed her family a single supper. Even the terns and gulls had declined. He could count on one hand the number of terns wading in the surf below.