Tharon threw up his hands in exasperation. "Nightshade! You never play right! Not even when we were children. Can't you ever let me have fim?"
She shoved her blanket away and rose from her bench like a dandelion seed borne on a lazy summer breeze. Her grace, mixed with the perfection of her naked body, struck Tharon like a physical blow. His mouth gaped while he watched her slip on a clean red dress, then braid her long hair into a single cord that hung down to the middle of her back.
Tharon clumsily got to his feet and stood with his fists clenched at his sides. "Nightshade, talk to me. Oh, come on!" A pause. "Nightshade, you can't treat me this way. I command you to speak to me!"
She strode back across the room, reached around him, picked up the Tortoise Bundle, and stroked it reverently. "I'm going to spend the day in Old Marmot's Star Chamber, Tharon, Singing for the Bundle. I'm surprised it's still alive after what you've done to it. Don't disturb me."
Then she crossed the room, ducked under the hanging, and vanished.
Tharon stamped his feet. "Nightshade, I hate you! I hate you, / hate your
His voice echoed around him. Humiliated and angry, he fled the room, running wildly down the halls until he reached the fi*ont doorway of the temple, where he burst out into the daylight.
Badgertail and Locust stood at the edge of the playing field in the center of the plaza. Leaning on their gaming poles, they were breathing hard from their seventh straight game of chunkey. Badgertail had suffered so many nightmares about Bobcat that he had been unable to sleep. Nervous and irritable, he had awakened Locust hours ago to challenge her to a game, hoping the physical activity would drive away the grief that knotted his stomach. They had dressed in brown breechclouts and begun playing as soon as the first lavender rays of dawn poured over the palisades onto the plaza. The light glistened on the sweat covering Locust's small, bare breasts.
In the past two fingers of time, the rest of the village had roused. From the distance came the rhythmic thumping of pestles being driven into hollow-stump mortars as com was processed into flour. Smoke from cook fires curled into the silent morning sky. Soft voices and the sweet scent of com gruel carried on the stillness. Badgertail allowed himself a few moments to appreciate the shadows of the mounds that lay in long black fingers over the plaza. Then he turned to Locust. "Ready?" he asked as he lifted the round chunkey stone to start the eighth match.
Locust wearily braced herself on her beautifully decorated pole. Sixteen hands long, it had a red-and-blue serpent painted up the length of the shaft. "No. Give me a few more moments to catch my breath." She had pinned her short hair behind her ears with wooden combs, but strands had come loose, fluttering around her flushed cheeks. "That's the sixth game you've won," she panted. "I'm beginning to feel like an amateur."
"Don't be modest. You're the best chunkey player in the chiefdom, and everyone knows it—including me."
"I used to think so, too. But I'm not so sure now. Maybe I should try playing on Wolf Slayer's side." She gestiired toward the white band tied to his upper arm.
The game had ancient origins, representing the primeval struggle of the Heroes to kill the monsters who had inhabited the world in the Beginning Time. One player took the side of Wolf Slayer, the other took the side of Bird-Man. The chunkey stone symbolized the monsters, while the players' lances represented the bolts of lightning that the sacred Brothers had thrown.
With a flourish, Badgertail took the white band from his arm and presented it to Locust. "There. All yours."
She gave him a wry look as she tied it to her arm. "Leaving me no excuses, eh?"
He smiled and gazed down the length of the field. It stretched two hundred hands long and forty hands wide. A white clay line cut across each end, twenty hands from the edge. The game began when one player hurled the chunkey stone to roll down the field; then both players raced to the throwing line and cast their poles, trying to hit the speeding stone. The player who managed the feat scored two points, but if neither hit it, the player whose pole landed closest to the stone when it quit rolling scored one point. If the poles lay at an equal distance, neither scored. Whoever achieved ten points first won.
Locust sucked in a few more deep breaths. "All right. I'm ready."
Badgertail brought his arm around in a complete circle to fling the stone underhandedly. When it hit the ground rolling, he and Locust charged for the throwing line, already calculating the speed and motion of the stone. They cast simultaneously as their toes touched the line, then raced over it, eyes on their poles, trying to influence the flight by chanting their own special Power Songs. Badgertail slowed to a half-trot when he saw his pole making a perfect arc toward the chunkey stone. Locust let out a frustrated cry as his pole struck the stone and sent it careening sideways.