People of the River(178)

A figure loomed out of the darkness and glided toward them soundlessly. "Who is that?" Hailcloud asked suspiciously.

Petaga frowned. He could see in the firelight that it was a woman, tall and willowy. Long black hair hung in a midnight wealth over her shoulders and framed her full lips and tumed-up nose. She bore a beautiful cedar box under one arm.

Petaga's heart almost burst. He leaped up, threw off Hailcloud's hand, and ran. "Nightshade!"

"Petaga?"

He fell at her feet and hugged her around the legs, as he had when he was a child and frightened of the dark. "Oh, Nightshade, I knew you were alive. I knew you were helping us." Petaga desperately kissed the hand that had lowered to touch his hair. "I knew you wouldn't turn against me."

"Your family gave me a home when I had none. I couldn't turn against you, my Chief."

Petaga had never heard her call him by his new title, and the word sounded so magnificent on her lips that he smiled up at her radiantly. "How did you get away? Did Tharon—"

"Tharon is dead, Petaga. Badgertail sent me to you to try to end this killing."

Hailcloud, who had rushed up to stand behind Petaga, sucked in a breath. "Tharon dead? Why?"

"He committed sacrilege. Incest."

Petaga rose to his feet, searching Nightshade's black eyes. "Incest? With who?"

"His daughter."

"Orenda? But she's a little girl! Blessed Father Sun . . . my poor cousin." He had never met Orenda, but he knew the requirement that ritual law would place upon him. To right the sacrilege, he would have to obliterate all memory of Orenda and her father. Petaga lowered his eyes and shook his head.

Nightshade said, "Petaga, Badgertail wants to surrender. He—"

''What! Surrender! I won't let him! These are the men and women who murdered our village. Nightshade. I want them dead!"

She stepped closer as she put a graceful hand on Petaga's cheek. "You have won the war, my Chief. Now save what's left of this village. You need a foundation on which to build your new chiefdom. The farmers, artisans, and merchants here have the knowledge needed to help you. And Badgertail believes that his warriors will be loyal to whoever the next Sun Chief is."

"Do you believe it?" Petaga asked, taken aback by the thought.

"Yes. My Chief, the time has come to cleanse and heal."

Riddled with conflicting emotions, Petaga walked a few paces away from her and stood at the edge of the water. A dark oval lay on the opposite shore. He squinted, and in the sudden, livid flaring of the temple roof as sparks ignited it, he saw that the oval was a corpse sprawled among charred weeds. The face had been burned beyond recognition. Anger roiled in Petaga's belly. His need for revenge battled like a rabid wildcat with his understanding that Nightshade was right. He needed the Cahokia clans. All of them. It's the boy in you fighting with the man. Despite all of the death and despair he had seen in recent weeks, and all of the difficult decisions he had had to make, only now, when faced with the challenge of being either merciful or spiteful, did he feel like a man.

Petaga bowed his head, studying the obscene film of ash that bobbed on the dark surface of the water. In his dreams, he had been returning again and again to his father during the last moments at River Mounds. He saw his father standing calm and erect, serene with the dignity of his office, no matter that his life was threatened. Nightshade had faithfully advised his father, and his father had trusted her judgment implicitly.

The rear part of the temple roof erupted in a ball of crackling flame. People stood transfixed, watching in awe as the rolling gouts of fire billowed into the sky, scorching the very clouds. And then part of the high roof collapsed in a thunderous blaze. The gaudy light bleached the faces of the warriors struggling at the base of the palisades. They stopped in shock, and then screams of triumph ululated as sweat-gleaming bodies broke into a spontaneous Dance of triumph.

"Petaga?" Nightshade called urgently. "There is something else." She offered the box. "Badgertail asked me to bring you your father's head. He asked that it be returned to the body so that Jenos' Spirit can walk with pride in the Underworld."

Petaga started to reach for the box, and stopped himself. His muscles trembled as he remembered that last encouraging look his father had given him before Badgertail struck. "If Badgertail thinks—"

Nightshade shook her head. "It is his belief that you will torture him to death. He accepts that."

Petaga reverently took the box. As he did so, rain pattered out of the sky, splatting in the bone-dry dust. It so surprised Petaga that he jumped as though he had been struck by a fist. In only a moment, the drops turned into a heavy downpour that drenched the world in an impenetrable wall of water. The sizzling and sputtering of flames grew so deafening that they drowned out all other noises.