The old crone's jaw clenched indignantly. "I am well aware of that. Sun Chief. That's why I urged you to meet with us." She swung around and waved a clawlike hand at the other clan leaders. "Tickseed said that if Petaga won this war, the system would be changed, that each village would be able to handle its own affairs, and that we would reorganize so that every village designed and paid for its own projects."
"That's what the Moon Chief is preaching. So?"
Tharon's attention fixed on the berdache, who was whispering into Checkerberry's ear. Strange creatures, the berdache. Magical. Filled with Power. Especially Primrose. Tharon had admired him before. Primrose wore a beautiful pale-blue dress decorated across the breast with red porcupine quills. His long black hair draped over his shoulders in thick waves, as though he had braided it while wet, then shaken it loose to dry.
Tharon lifted his chin and studied Primrose intently. Perhaps, if Locust didn't return from this battle-walk, Tharon might consider taking Primrose as a lover. He'd had ber-dache lovers before and found them . . . interesting. His thoughts danced around the images of muscular male arms enfolding him, male lips pressing against his. Primrose had a reputation for feminine gendeness. But perhaps beneath that facade, true male passion lurked. It would be fascinating to find out.
Yes. Tharon decided on the spot. He would take Primrose as his lover, regardless of whether or not Locust survived. He flashed the berdache a seductive smile and laughed when Primrose caught his look and straightened in surprise.
"This old woman!" Redhaw walked between Tharon and Primrose to gesture at Tickseed. "She suggested that all of the clans turn against you, my Chief, and join Petaga!"
Caught by surprise, Tharon went rigid. "What?"
"Yes," Redhaw insisted. "Treason! That's what—"
"Liar!" Tickseed rose and waddled forward uncertainly. Her blind eyes shone like frosted lakes in the sunshine. The skeletal prominence of her old cheekbones made her look like a shrunken corpse. "We were discussing the war, that's all. We ..."
Tharon's mind closed in upon itself. The edges of his vision went dark, and he started to tremble. That had been happening a lot lately, so often that he had begun to believe the common superstition that Father Sun actually could communicate with human beings. A breathy voice spoke in his head: "Like a corpse . . . a corpse ..."
Tharon barely heard Tickseed's voice over the dull thudding of his heart. Her words slipped to the outermost edges of his awareness, where they rose and fell like the dirty foam that rims the surface of a turbulent lake. This world of hot sun and pungent fear-sweat draped around him with the unreality of a vague nightmare.
. . . while his soul looked across a field of mangled yellow stalks, sucked dry by the relentless winter wind.
He held Badgertail's sleeve as they peered over the steep bank into the ice-varnished lake below. BadgertaiVs face had tightened as the corpse rose, dredged up through the thinfdm of ice that had formed since the weighted net had been lowered. Thousands of ice shards flickered in the early morning light.
A stifled cry caught in Tharon's throat.
The attack had been brief brutal. The warriors from Quill Dog Mounds had ambushed the trading party, killing, looting, and then burning the litters and packs. Tharon's father, Gizis, had been the last to die. The enemy had saved him to make sport of him.
The men began reeling in the net. Gizis twisted as if hurt and fighting the diamonds of webbing. His mouth gaped in a soundless scream. Waterlogged wounds crisscrossed his flesh like the swollen bites of monsters.
Voices buzzed around Tharon. Someone sobbed.
The body rode toward him, bobbing on the current as it plowed the ice — a naked blue lump against black water.
"Why did they do this, Badgertail?"
"Because they could, my Chief. "
"They could?"
"Yes. Gizis should have taken more guards. He trusted his own people too much. The vulnerable are always the first to die. Quill Dog must have been watching and waiting to find your father exposed. It's part of the price of being Sunborn ..."
"Redhaw has always been jealous of the Horn Spoon Clan's status," Tickseed raged. "That's why she makes these accusations against us!"
Tharon gasped air explosively when the vision burst—and saw Redhaw eying him speculatively. The sound of shattering ice receded as the hot sun banished his sensation of bitter cold. But the image remained. Gizis' blue corpse overlaid Redhaw's form like a ghostly presence, writhing, twisting to show its ghastly knife wounds, while its mouth screamed for help that would never come.
. . . reminding Tharon of what every Commonborn person longed to do to the Sunborn.