People of the River(159)

Sometimes that just happens. Especially on windy nights. A stray whiff of wind might penetrate the cracks . . .

Orenda tiptoed down the corridor to the first intersection. The darkness wrapped her like a smothering blanket. She listened for any sound. Hearing none, she hesitantly turned into the corridor that led to his chamber. No one walked about tonight.

Bracing her back against the cold wall, she slid slowly along while her lungs gasped for air. Passing the entry to the temple, she listened again, then proceeded onward.

Two guards stood on either side of the doorway to Tharon's chamber. The tall, ugly one, named Hoofprint, glared uneasily as she approached. The other, skinny, with a belly that bulged through his warshirt, frowned. Orenda could not recall his name.

From within, a girl's voice begged, "Stop it! Why are you hurting me? I don't understand ..." Orenda halted six hands away.

"I don't require that you understand, child. Only that you obey," Tharon responded in that mockingly nice voice. "I am the great Sun Chief. Everyone obeys me or they die. You can understand that, can't you?"

A choking sob. Then a small voice said, "Yes."

"Do as I say and get over there on that mat and lie down."

"But why?"

"Because you're a pretty little thing and I want to ... to look at you." Laughter echoed. "Yes, that's it. I want to look at you."

Orenda's knees shook so badly that she could barely remain standing. She looked pleadingly at the guards, but they had turned to stare down the hall, pretending they heard nothing. She fought with herself, twisting her hands, trying to figure out what she could do.

When the little girl inside screamed "No!" as though she'd been grabbed, Orenda acted instinctively. She dove and crawled beneath the door-hanging on hands and knees.

The guards bellowed behind her, and one of them clutched at her foot, but she jerked loose and kept crawling. She knew they wouldn't dare follow her inside unless summoned.



In an instant, Orenda had reached the middle of the luxurious room. His big bed, mounded high with hides and blankets, sat to her left. Odd pieces of furniture lined the wall beneath the window in fi:ont of her, things stolen from faraway places. The window-hanging had been lowered so that only a slit of dusk crept into the room, joining the dozen blazing firebowls that stood in their holders along the walls. Everywhere she looked. Power objects watched her through blank eyes. He had moved them out of the temple. Why? To protect him here in his own chamber? Old Marmot's Bundle, with its blue designs, lay in shreds beside his bed, the contents strewn over the floor in a strange, glittering wealth. On her right, all of her mother's things—jewelry, robes, sandals—had been thrown into a careless pile.



A horrified sob caught in Orenda's throat.

Tharon turned, his golden robe whirling around his legs like sunlit clouds. He carried a war club in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Orenda recognized the strange, detached expression that creased his face. He's been drinking that galena tea with crushed morning-glory seeds in it. On occasion, he had forced Orenda's jaws open and poured some of it down her throat, all the time telling her that she would like it.

And she had. Because the tea had given her the Power to take her soul out of her body and hide it in the dirt floor, a place so hard and dark that his hands couldn't find her there.

He strutted forward with that arrogant tilt to his chin. A deerbone stiletto hung from his belt. "Why, Orenda, I've been wondering when you'd come to your senses and return to me." Then he glanced at the other little girl, who crouched in the comer, half-hidden behind an old, heavily carved maple bench. The front of her green dress had been torn, and Orenda could see the claw marks on the girl's chest.

"I h-hate you!" Orenda blurted.

"You've gotten bold since you've been with Nightshade, Orenda. Well, all the better. Get over there with Lichen. Hurry it up! I haven't got all night."

"No!"

"I order you—"

"N-No."

His bat face tensed before he let out an incoherent cry and ran at her with his club raised.

Orenda jumped to her feet and fled across the room. When she dove behind the bench. Lichen stared at her in astonishment. They held each other's eyes as they had a hundred times in their Dreams.

Lichen grabbed Orenda's arm. "Hurry! Maybe we can get to the window."

They scurried like mice, shoving over furniture when they couldn't crawl beneath the legs. His shrill laughter echoed, as though their desperate flight amused him, but Orenda could hear the crack-crack of the club smacking his open palm. The firebowls threw his shadow like a flickering giant over the walls. It moved with the stealth of Wolf on a blood trail as it tracked them through the maze of furniture.