People of the Silence (37 page)

A man stood up, his black-painted chest and arms almost invisible. But as he stepped toward her, she could see the colors of his mask: red, blue, and yellow. One of the sacred thlatsina masks! Very few people had the right to touch them.

Cloud Playing’s nerves hummed as she backed away. “Are you a priest? Out offering prayers to the full moon? What is your name?”

“You … you are really Cloud Playing?”

“Yes, I told you!”

“Oh,” he said in a strained voice. “Oh, no. I prayed you would not be here. Why are you here?”

She unslung her bulging pack, where she had crammed both her things and her mother’s, and held it like a weapon before her. The four black spirals painted across the front glowed darkly. “I am the daughter of Night Sun, Matron of Talon Town! My father is Crow Beard, our Blessed Sun. I am on my way home! You
will
let me pass!”

He spread his eerie black arms like a bird preparing to soar, and leaped at her, lifting his knees high in some perverted imitation of an eagle hunting on the ground.

“Don’t you know who I am?” Cloud Playing screamed. “Stop it! Leave me alone!” and swung her pack with all the force she could muster. It struck his shoulder, knocking him sideways.

She sprinted back down the trail into Straight Path Wash and up the opposite side. Hearing no one pursuing, she risked a glance over her shoulder … and saw nothing. Nothing at all. A beam of moonlight briefly struck the wash, shadowing every undulation.

Terror drew a noose about her throat. She stopped and fought for control. Cocking her head, her ears strained for the sound of breathing or carefully placed steps. Could it have been an obscene joke?

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not walking that trail!”
And as soon as I can send word to War Chief Ironwood, he’ll have his warriors scouring every square hand of this country until he finds the culprit and brings him in.

She looked westward. If she headed down the drainage, she would find the cut in the bank where the slaves came to fill water jugs and wash clothes. For a woman of her status to walk a slave’s trail would create a stir, but better that than the black apparition.

Slinging her pack over her left shoulder, she proceeded stealthily, clinging to the deep shadows cast by the overhanging bank. All around her, golden owl eyes winked. The birds burrowed holes into the banks and lived there until the spring runoff cracked their homes off the drainage walls and washed them downstream. Her terror retreated. She braced a hand on the bank and continued cautiously.

A huge black cloud sailed over, and just as Cloud Playing looked up, Thunderbird bolted through the Cloud People, using his sharp talons to rip open their bellies. Sheets of rain gushed out, shining whitely in the moonlight.

Cloud Playing huddled beneath the overhang. The lower half of her dress quickly became sodden, clinging to her legs like a second skin, but her torso stayed dry.

That morning she had passed a Trader on his way to the Green Mesa villages, and he’d told her rumors that the Blessed Night Sun had been accused of adultery and imprisoned at Talon Town. Cloud Playing had stared at him mutely, too shocked to believe it. But after they’d parted, she’d started running, trying to get home as fast as she could.

When she’d been a little girl, there had been gossip among old women with nothing to lose—gossip about a child born and hidden away. Those old women had believed that someday the child would return to Talon Town with an army to avenge his abandonment. Cloud Playing had never thought much about it … until today.

The rain lasted barely thirty heartbeats.

When the cloud passed, moonlight slanted down, and a long shadow stretched across the wash, cast by someone standing right above her.

Cloud Playing froze.

Unable to breathe, she longed to flee, but her good sense told her to stay put. He could not possibly see her from where he stood. The slave’s trail cut the bank less than twenty body-lengths ahead. If she did not move, did not give him any sign—

“I see you,”
he whispered, and his tall shadow dipped and swayed like a Dancing ghost. “What are you doing here? Why haven’t you run away?”

“I am Cloud Playing! Daughter of Crow Beard and Night Sun! I’m trying to get home. I—”

“In Beauty it is begun,” he Sang in a deep and haunting voice. “In Beauty it is begun.”

A white haze showered down before her eyes, and she saw that it was sacred cornmeal. Three more handfuls fell, shimmering.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“This is sacrilege!”

“In Beauty it is finished,” he Sang. “In Beauty it is finished.”

Terror shot through her soul—and she burst from cover like a hunted animal, stumbling over rocks, racing blindly for the cut in the bank. Rainwater ran down it, turning it into a silver swath. Just as she neared the crossing, black arms spread above her.

He leaped down the slave’s trail, swaying from side to side, his mask shining, and stood ten hands from her. In an agonized voice, he repeated, “I prayed you would not be here. Why are you here?”

She shook her fists. “I am just trying to get home!”

“I—I’m afraid.”

“Why? I’m not going to harm you!” Did she recognize that voice? It brimmed with such pain she couldn’t be certain. She glanced at the trail that sloped up out of the wash. “Let me go! Please, it’s important that I get to Talon Town. I
must
see to my mother.”

He tilted his head curiously. “Are you Solstice Girl?”

“S-Solstice Girl?” she asked in confusion. “What are you talking about? We won’t select a Solstice Girl for another three moons!”

He reached over his back and pulled up a bow and an arrow, which he calmly nocked.

“Wait … I—I’ll do anything you want! What is it you wish from me?” She backed warily away from him.

He gestured to the trail with his bow. “You … you go first. I will wait until you are at the top, then I will follow. Go!”

She flew by him, struggling up the slope.

Behind her he cried,
“Oh, no! No!”

When she hit the top, she ran full speed across the muddy flats, gibbering in terror, her wet dress tangling about her legs as she headed for the torchlit brilliance of Talon Town.

She hadn’t made it twenty paces when the sharp sting lanced through her chest. She heard as well as felt the thumping impact, and staggered, almost losing her footing. Then the sting grew into a searing pain that burned white-hot through her lungs and left breast. After four more wobbling steps, she fell to her knees. Stunned, she didn’t understand at first. Then she looked down.

The translucent obsidian point had sliced through the fabric of her dress. It glittered just beneath her left breast. Confused, she reached up, fingering the razor point, surprised by how firmly it was planted in her body.

“I beg you,” he called. “Don’t fight me! I must do this thing quickly!”

Steps pounded on the wet sand. He crouched in front of her and peered at her through the eyeholes in the glorious sacred mask.
It’s the Badger Thlatsina.
Blue slashes rimmed the eyeholes, and a white line, bordered in red, ran down the center of his black face. Raven feathers fringed his head. The white teeth painted on his long black muzzle glowed. He carried a bow in his left hand and another arrow in his right.

The violent strength of the North lived in Badger’s bones.…

A terrible weight had grown in her chest, and blood bubbled on her lips. She coughed, and pain speared her.

Cloud Playing stared into the blue-rimmed wells of his eye sockets as he raised another arrow. The shaft hovered against the background of moonlit clouds.

He whispered, “You
are
Solstice Girl.”

Fourth Day

Magenta veils of light sheathe the peaks as sunset creeps across the face of the land. The shallow wash where I sit has turned still and quiet. The only sound comes from a piping piñon jay in the pines far below me.

I had a vision today.

It came upon me while my eyes were wide open. At first, I saw the images as if at a great distance. I squinted, trying to make them out. Faint voices punctured the quiet. Suddenly, the images sped toward me, growing larger, opening like a maw, until that alien world consumed the desert.

I found myself wading through a lake of blood. The Wolf Thlatsina waded beside me, his tall moccasins sending out bobbing silver rings. He had a wolf’s head with pricked ears and a long black muzzle. His human body had been painted with white clay.

In front of us, a strange creature appeared, dark and feathered, chasing sparkles of morning sunlight reflecting from the red lake. She ate each one she caught, gobbled it down, and cried out in a voice that sounded very much like a woman’s scream. Abruptly, she stopped chasing the sunlight and turned on us. Mouth gaping, she shrieked, spread her feathered wings, and flew at the thlatsina.

“Help me!” the thlatsina cried.

I shouted for her to go away, then dove for her legs, bringing her down. She struggled. I had to fight to keep her down until she drowned. But as her blood flowed out into the lake, a new creature took shape. Beautiful and golden, a human boy rose and floated on top of the blood.

The sea grew violent. Waves rolled in, crashing over us, hot and steamy, like molten rock. The lake grew deeper and deeper until it devoured the land and the people and nibbled at the belly of the sky.

The thlatsina drowned.

I saw order disintegrate into chaos. Nothing remained. Nothing, except blood for as far as I could see.

When the vision faded, I gazed wide-eyed across the sunny vista. Finches twittered as they winged through the cloud-strewn heavens.

I had a curious sensation that I had not been seeing through my own eyes—but someone else’s. A man. Powerful. Filled with despair.

But I do not know what the vision means.

Since I turned six summers, I have plagued every Trader with questions, and I have discovered that Dreamers everywhere speak of an End of time.

Did I see it?

Was that my own death?

… Or my own birth?

In the Dream, they seemed the same.

I blink wearily at the expanse of land and sky. Twilight has turned the forested peaks purple, and shadows stretch long and dark across the rumpled folds of mountains. Layer upon layer. Ever more distant.

Evening is coming fast.

Against the blackness, one image lingers: a golden boy, tiny fists waving, melting to a shriek.

I am suddenly afraid of the dark.

Terribly afraid.

Twenty-Two

The white walls of Talon Town shimmered with starlight as Dune made his way across the plaza. The slave who had wakened him had run ahead, leaving Dune to follow as he might. He tipped his head to check the positions of the Evening People; it had to be almost midnight. The clouds had long since scudded off to the east. He clamped a hand around the collar of his cloak, pulling it tightly closed. An icy breeze wandered the canyon, ruffling his white hair and batting at the hem of the long brown cape Sternlight had given him. Woven of dyed cotton and strips of rabbit fur, it kept his frail old body warm.

A faint red light penetrated around the door curtain of Crow Beard’s chamber. Propped Pillar reflected the wavering light. Dune nodded. Someone had left a bowl of warming coals for the lonely thlatsinas who Danced on the walls. Sternlight, probably. It would never occur to Snake Head that the gods, too, might need light and warmth. Few other people had access to that chamber. After Snake Head had discovered his father’s smashed skull, he’d even ordered Dune to stay away.

Dune sighed. No doubt Snake Head needed privacy to pillage his father’s possessions before his sister returned and claimed them.

He kicked at a pebble and continued on his way.

He passed through the gate that connected the plazas and emerged in the western plaza. Three kivas sank into the ground to his right, leaving two-hand-high white plastered circles on the hard-packed dirt. Ladders thrust up from the entries.

As he passed beneath the Great Warriors he heard their soft voices, whispering to each other. Dune craned his neck to look up at them. The sacred Brothers peered down ominously, their thirty-hand-tall bodies shining as though they had run through the heart of Sister Moon and stolen some of her radiance.

“I know,” Dune murmured. “I’m just as worried as you are.”

To his left, near Talon Town’s entry, the sacred stump of Spider Woman’s Tree stood. A hundred sun cycles before, the Tree had lived there. Bright prayer fans encircled the stump. The white hawk feathers on one of the fans blazed. During the first frenzy of building, the Straight Path people had cut down every pine they could find, to shore up roofs, make ladders, and use for firewood. But no one had dared take that ancient conifer. It had been planted by Spider Woman herself, right after the First People emerged from the underworlds. When it had finally died, the very foundations of the world had shaken. The First People said that the Creator herself had wept.

Dune walked straight across the plaza, heading west. As he neared the slave chambers, someone moaned. Then a woman’s angry shout pierced the night. He hurried. To enter this chamber, he had to climb the ladder to the roof, then climb down another ladder into the small circular chamber. He prayed his aching knees could stand it.

Gripping the rungs on the pole ladder, he began slowly hauling himself up. He stepped off onto the roof and caught his breath. From here he could look out across the barren flats to the south side of the canyon. A fire sparkled at Sunset Town. The cliff shone blackly, but some of the angular boulders on the talus slope caught the starlight and gleamed silver. Darkness cloaked the rest of the canyon.

Yips and howls erupted from three different locations, coyotes calling to each other. Dune smiled toothlessly. He loved their voices. Sometimes the coyotes hit notes so pure and beautiful he could swear he listened to a master flutemaker’s prize instrument. One female who hunted the desert near his house sang like one of the gods.