The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries (13 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries
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B
ROWSER PASSED THE GREAT KIVA AT THE SOUTHERN edge of the plaza. The kiva roof stuck up four hands high above the plaza floor. Nearly twice the size of the tower kiva, it resembled a gigantic circular pot ring covered with brightly colored ears of corn; the kernels created a shimmering blanket of red, blue, yellow, and white.
Redcrop walked anxiously beside Browser, her face down, hands tucked beneath her cape.
Cottonwood and juniper trees lined the bank, forcing them to walk through a well of cold shadows and piles of fallen leaves. Browser studied the brush. They’d hacked at it and cut it out to use as firewood or split-twig mats, but the tangled briar still stood the height of a man in places.
“Did you hear anything last night, Redcrop? Her steps when she rose? Her blankets being thrown back?”
“No, and I don’t know why. Usually I hear her every time she turns over.”
“Well, perhaps she was trying not to wake you. You’ve been working very hard on the harvest.”
Beyond the brush, a faint sound erupted. Browser cocked his ear, and his hand went to his war club.
Probably a deer in the water …
Redcrop said, “But she always wakes me, War Chief. If there is a village emergency, the Matron asks me to help. You know, to carry water, or gather wood for a fire. She has never …”
The thrashing turned to panting. Feet kicked dead leaves.
Browser gripped Redcrop’s arm and tugged her backward with one hand, while his other hand raised his club.
Her dark eyes widened. “Wha—”
“Shh.”
Redcrop went as still as Mouse beneath Hawk’s shadow.
The sound grew louder: several people panted as though running.
Browser flared his nostrils, instinctively sucking in more air, preparing …
Three boys came bobbing out of the brush.
“Little Calf!” Browser said. “Why are you running?”
Little Calf had a broad flat face with front teeth like a beaver’s. His dark eyes went huge when he saw Browser. “War Chief, come quickly! We found a dead woman in the bathing pond!”
“A dead woman?” he called. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know, War Chief! They skinned her face! She has gray hair. I thought it might be one of our elders.”
Redcrop let out a small wretched cry, lurched from behind Browser, and raced down the path.
“Redcrop, wait!”
She disappeared into the brush.
Little Calf started to run by, and Browser caught him by the wrist. The boy looked up in terror. Browser sternly said, “When you get back to the village, tell Catkin what’s happened. She’ll know what to do. Do you understand? Go straight to Catkin.”
“Yes, War Chief!” Little Calf dashed for the village with the other boys on his heels.
Browser sprinted after Redcrop. As he cleared the brush, he saw her charging down the hill in front of him, her long hair flying out behind her.
“Redcrop!” he shouted. “Please, stop! There may be danger! We don’t know what happened. She may have been attacked by raiders!”
Redcrop leaped a log that lay across the trail and half-stumbled down the hill before catching her balance and sprinting on.
Browser’s legs pumped, trying to catch her. “Redcrop!”
The girl splashed through the shallow river, crossed to the trail on the other bank, then ran flat out.
Browser scanned the trees and brush as he splashed through after her. Tracks dimpled the wet sand: Redcrop’s, the boys’, and the tracks of one adult. They probably belonged to the dead woman, but they might be the killer’s tracks. Browser couldn’t afford to study them now. The bathing pool lay just around the bend in the trail ahead.
Redcrop battered her way through a thicket of brush that clotted
the trail. Browser caught up with her, grabbed a handful of her buckskin cape, and jerked her backward. “Wait!”
“Let me go! I have to go to her!” Redcrop cried.
Browser grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. Her face had contorted with terror. “Listen! I have seen many ambushes that begin like this, Redcrop. People rush down to see who’s been killed, then enemy warriors emerge from the surrounding hills and kill them all. It’s my duty as War Chief to see that no one else dies today. You will stay here in the brush. Let me go down and make certain this isn’t a trap. If it’s safe, I will call to you.”
She looked up at him through brimming eyes and choked out, “Soon? You will call me soon?”
“Yes. I promise.”
She nodded and Browser released her.
Finches and siskins flitted through the autumn trees. They didn’t seem to be watching anything. The air rang with their songs. A flock of pinyon jays circled overhead. Smart birds, they examined him as they flew over, but did not pay undue attention to anything else along the river. They landed in a cottonwood fifty paces away and began socializing, calling
rack! rack! rack!
and trilling in beautiful voices.
Browser cautiously worked his way through the thicket. Ten hands below, the bathing pool sparkled in the sunlight. The woman’s body floated at the water’s edge. The deep stab wounds in her chest were clearly visible, and she’d been savagely beaten. Her face resembled a pink mask with bugged-out eyes. Browser clutched the bone handle of his knife and took the path down. As he made his way across the rocks that ringed the pool, his gaze noted every place a killer might hide.
Browser tucked his knife into his belt sheath and grasped the woman’s arms. Her flesh chilled his fingers, feeling rubbery in his grip. He dragged her from the pool onto the rocks. Blood began to pound in Browser’s ears, the rhythm slow, sickening. He saw the large freckle that darkened the side of her throat.
Gods, the Katsinas’ People will go mad. She was our heart, the one person we looked to for solace and hope. Flame Carrier kept the Dream alive.
Browser glanced up. Redcrop stood in the brush watching him.
He vented a breath, and called, “Redcrop, you may come down.”
“Is it … ?”
For the next four days, no one would speak the Matron’s name aloud, and they would try not to dream of her, for fear that they might pull her afterlife soul back from its sacred journey to the Land of the Dead.
“Yes.”
Redcrop stood woodenly for a moment, as though too stunned to move, then she raced down the path, crying, “No, no, it can’t be!”
The breeze picked up, rocking the trees and blowing long black hair around Redcrop’s pretty face as she hurried across the rocks. “H-how do you know it’s her?”
Browser gave her a short while to take in what she saw, before he turned Flame Carrier’s head to show her the freckle.
Redcrop did not make a sound, but she started shaking badly.
Gently, he said, “Please, Redcrop, sit down.”
“No,” she sobbed, and stepped backward. Tears dripped from Redcrop’s chin and beaded the curtain of her black hair.
Browser waited.
After several moments, she came forward again, dropped to her knees, and whispered, “Are you certain it’s her?”
Patiently, he said, “Yes, Redcrop.”
Redcrop studied Flame Carrier’s bloody face with widening eyes, then gasped, “Oh, gods, no.” She threw herself over Flame Carrier’s body and sobbed, “Grandmother! Grandmother!”
Browser touched her hair. “I’m sorry. I know how much you loved her.”
Her cries turned shrill.
As his gaze scanned the trees, Browser said, “You are not alone. I hope you’re not thinking that. You are a member of the Katsinas’ People, and we all love you.” She was also free now, no longer a slave. She could leave them if she wanted to. “I pray that you will stay with us, Redcrop, to help us in our quest to find the First People’s kiva and fulfill the Blessed Poor Singer’s prophecy. I know that the Matron would wish …” The words died in his throat.
Movement—in the trees above the river …
Browser touched a finger to Redcrop’s lips. She understood immediately. Her gaze riveted on the trees.
Browser drew his war club from his belt and slowly got to his feet. He whispered,
“Stand up. Be ready to run.”
Redcrop rose on shaking legs.
Browser backed toward the river, but his eyes never left the bank in front of them.
Twigs cracked straight ahead.
A familiar piercing cry wafted on the wind,
keee-ar, keee-ar.
The song of the flicker …
“Why didn’t you signal me earlier?” Browser called, and lowered his war club.
Catkin emerged from the brush with her bow in her hands. She wore a knee-length red war shirt painted with the white images of wolf and coyote. Despite the cold, sweat glistened on her turned-up nose and across her cheekbones. “I thought you might be surrounded by enemy warriors, and I believed it wiser to sneak up behind them so they wouldn’t just shoot you and run.”
From every direction, warriors began to appear, sneaking out of the brush, rising from the river.
Catkin walked down the trail toward him. “But forgive me for the delay. I ordered our warriors to scout the area first.” She slung her bow over her right shoulder and slipped a slender arrow back into the quiver that draped her left shoulder. She looked at the corpse lying beside the pool.
Redcrop knelt at Flame Carrier’s side, drew the Matron’s hand into her lap, and clutched the cold fingers as though she would never let them go.
Catkin stopped in front of Browser. “You are sure—”
“I’m sure.”
Grief tightened her eyes. She glared at the rocks for a long moment.
“By the time the boys ran into the village, your great-uncle Stone Ghost had risen. He wished to come with us. I wouldn’t allow it, of course.”
Browser sighed. “Thank you. I think sometimes that he does not realize his age. He—”
“He said something that worried me, Browser.” She fixed him with penetrating eyes.
He cocked his head. “What?”
“He said, ‘It would seem The Two have finally come home.’”
After several moments, Browser whispered, “The Two? But I thought—I mean, after my wife’s death—Isn’t there only one? The witch named Two Hearts?”
Catkin just stared at him.
The legendary witch, Two Hearts, preyed upon women and girls. He lured them from their blankets, killed them, and then dragged their bodies through the village plaza, as if to mock their relatives, before finally burying them in the shallow mass graves.
Browser whispered, “I must speak with him.”
“He’s waiting for you in the plaza.”
 
CATKIN WATCHED BROWSER, REDCROP, AND THREE WARRIORS carry the litter with Flame Carrier’s body along the brush-choked trail that led back to Longtail village. Redcrop trotted beside Flame Carrier, holding the dead Matron’s limp hand. The sight wrenched Catkin’s heart.
Straighthorn and Jackrabbit stood beside Catkin. Barely fifteen summers old, lines already incised Jackrabbit’s forehead. He had a pug nose and wide mouth. “I pray that Redcrop has the strength to stand it,” he said. “The Matron meant everything to her.”
“She has the strength,” Straighthorn answered softly. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”
Straighthorn frowned at the blood-streaked rocks at his feet. Long black hair fluttered around his braided leather headband and stuck to the sweat that beaded his long hooked nose. “Catkin? Forgive me, but I heard you say something to the War Chief that I did not understand.”
“What was that, warrior?”
“The Two. Who are they?”
Jackrabbit clenched his fists. Straighthorn noticed, and tensed.
Catkin considered not answering out of fear that he might panic, but he would hear the story soon enough. Better that it come from her than someone who might embellish for effect. “Nine moons ago in Talon Town a woman named Hophorn was struck in the head and then one of our warriors, Whiproot, was murdered. We think they were killed by the witch, Two Hearts.”
“I remember as if it were yesterday,” Jackrabbit said and kicked at a rock.
Straighthorn glanced between them. “But you said there were two of them.”
“Yes.”
Catkin studied the footprints. A man and a woman had walked
around the pool, their feet slipping off the dew-slick river cobbles and into the sand. She put her hand over them, measuring their sizes. “A woman helped Two Hearts with the murders. Hophorn saw them, but the blows to her head had damaged her ability to speak. All she could say was that ‘The Two’ had done it. Then, when old Stone Ghost examined Whiproot’s body, he found evidence that one person had held Whiproot while another stabbed him.”
Straighthorn wet his lips. “Stone Ghost thinks those same people are here? That they killed your Matron?”

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