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

The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries (17 page)

BOOK: The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries

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B
ROWSER, FOLLOWED BY STONE GHOST, WADED THE RIVER with his war club in his hand. Sunlight fell through the cottonwood branches above him and scattered the water like shattered pieces of amber. Where the sun struck floating yellow leaves, they seemed to spark and flame before bobbing away on the current.

“This way, Uncle.”

Browser stepped out onto the trail and looked down at the tracks. Stone Ghost continued splashing through the water behind him. The dirt had been churned up by too many feet. Any chance he might have had to find further evidence of the murderer’s passage had vanished.

Stone Ghost waded out of the river into a shaft of sunlight, and his white hair glowed. His deep wrinkles cast a thousand crisscrossing shadows over his face. He gestured to the trail and said, “Please, lead the way, Nephew.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

Browser walked toward the brush thicket and the bend in the trail above the bathing pool. As he shouldered through the brush, the scent of damp earth and wet plants filled the air. Birds sang in the cottonwood branches. The serenity of the place seemed strangely out of kilter with the fact that an old woman had been murdered here only a few hands of time ago. He stepped out of the thicket and used his war club to hold the brush aside for his uncle.

Stone Ghost said, “I thank you, Nephew.” He came through, and his gaze went to the bathing pool ten hands below. Sunlight dappled the cool green water.

“Where did you find your Matron?”

Browser pointed. “There, floating at the water’s edge. Do you wish to see the place?”

Stone Ghost’s sharp old eyes took in everything, the blood on the
rocks that ringed the pool, the tracks, the drag marks along the shore. He shook his head. “Perhaps, later. The torture site is more important right now.”

“Very well, Uncle.”

They walked side by side into the trees. Most of the autumn foliage lay in windblown piles at the bases of the cottonwoods, but a few golden leaves flipped around his feet. Browser had visited the site earlier with Catkin, but as he approached the place where Flame Carrier had been tormented, rage twisted his gut.

“I see it,” Stone Ghost said. He stopped a short distance from the torture site and studied the tracks.

Browser stood behind his uncle. “The four holes that you see—”

“Are where she was staked down, yes, that’s clear.” Patiently, methodically, his uncle’s gaze moved from the holes to the bloody cords, the blood-soaked cloth, then lingered on the broken branches and pieces of driftwood the murderer had used as clubs.

“So,” Stone Ghost said softly. “The man was not here when she tortured your Matron.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

Stone Ghost turned to look back toward the bathing pool. Wind gusted through the trees and tore a brown-and-white feather loose from his tattered turkey feather cape; it spun away with a whirlwind of yellow leaves. “He met her at the pool?”

“Yes.”

“And the woman’s tracks, what did you find?”

Browser aimed his war club across the river. “The woman’s tracks begin there and proceed down the river about fifty body lengths, where her steps meet our Matron’s. They struggled on the ground. The woman must have forced our Matron into the water, then they crossed the river to this place where the murderer staked her down—”

“When she finished, she dragged your Matron into the bathing pool?”

Browser nodded. “Yes.”

Stone Ghost exhaled hard as he looked around. “That is curious, don’t you think?”

“What is?”

“That she dragged the Matron into the pool.”

Browser shook his head in confusion. “Why is that curious? I assume she was still alive and the murderer wished to drown her.”

“But she didn’t drown her. She stabbed her to kill her.”

Stone Ghost’s bushy white brows plunged down over his beaked nose. He walked away into the densest trees, and said, “When I was a boy—let me see, that would have been about sixty-five summers ago—that pool was known as the Witches’ Water Pocket.”

“The Witches’ Water Pocket? What did it mean?”

Stone Ghost used the toe of his sandal to move a patch of yellow leaves on the ground. “It was whispered that an army of witches lived beneath the water. To open the doorway to that underworld, a witch had to coat the water with blood. Only through a haze of blood could the witches below see his face, identify him, and decide if he should be allowed to come down.”

“How did they get the blood?”

“According to the legends, they summoned people here, then they cut their chests open so that the heart pumped blood straight into the water.”

The breeze fluttered black hair over Browser’s eyes. He brushed it away. “What are you saying? That a witch killed our Matron? That she dragged her into the pool to coat the water with blood—”

“I’m not saying anything yet, Nephew. At least nothing of consequence.” Stone Ghost bent down to examine the small spot he’d cleared of leaves. “I was merely telling you the legend. It is interesting, don’t you think?”

Browser stared at the sparse white hair on top of his uncle’s head. Stone Ghost never told stories just for the sake of relating legends.

“It’s interesting,” Browser granted, and continued, “Uncle, this morning Catkin told me you said, ‘It would seem The Two have finally come home.’ What did you mean by that?”

“Hmm?” Stone Ghost frowned. “What did I mean? Well …” He paused and appeared to be considering his answer, then lowered his finger to the ground. “Do you see this, Nephew?”

Browser dropped to one knee. “What is it?”

“Someone placed a pot here. See how the rounded pot bottom smoothed the dirt?”

“Yes.”

“And look here.” His crooked old finger moved. “This looks like a child’s toeprint, but it might be a small woman’s. Most of the track has been obliterated by this larger print—a man’s, possibly. Do these look like the same tracks you found near the bathing pool?”

Browser’s eyes went wide. “The man’s tracks, and the woman’s tracks! Right here! How did we miss them?”

Stone Ghost put an affectionate hand on Browser’s shoulder. “The leaves, Nephew. Wind Baby keeps blowing them around. I suspect they cover much of the sign.”

“Great Ancestors, I will have the women come down immediately and sweep—”

“No, Nephew, let us look ourselves. The fewer people who come here over the next few days, the better luck we will have finding evidence of the murderers’ activities. Were I you, I would order my villagers not to come here at all until I had finished my examinations.”

Browser swallowed hard. He should have already done that. The Matron’s murder coming so soon after the Aspen village slaughter had muddled his thinking. What else had he missed? “I will do that the instant we return, Uncle.”

Stone Ghost patted his shoulder and lowered his hand to brush at more leaves. The tracks had sunk deeply into the damp earth, but the pot bottom had barely left an impression.

“The pot must have been empty,” Browser said.

“Perhaps,” Stone Ghost replied. “But things like herbs are almost weightless.”

Browser inclined his head. “That’s true. Do you think the murderers carry herbs with them? Healing herbs? Herbs used to witch people?”

“I think the murderers carry a small light pot. That’s all I see here.” He struggled to his feet. “Walk with me, Nephew. Let us see what else we might find beneath the blanket of golden leaves.”

Stone Ghost wandered from place to place brushing at leaves, grunting to himself. He surveyed every spot that had been blown clean by the wind and brushed the leaves from many others, particularly close to the torture site. Browser followed along, his gaze on the hills and trees, anywhere a warrior might hide.

“Hmm.” Stone Ghost leaned over a white oblong river cobble.

“Looks like chert,” Browser said.

“Looks like an old fire pit to me.”

Browser bent to examine it. Tiny hackling fractures veined the rock. Someone, many summers before, had thrown the rock into a fire. The heat had cracked it. Browser’s people heat-treated chert to
make it easier to work into stone tools, but Browser hadn’t noticed the fractures until his uncle mentioned them.

“Your eyes are still excellent, Uncle. Better than mine.” He peered at his uncle. “But why would an old fire pit matter today?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Stone Ghost touched the cobble. “Who was standing guard last night?”

“Water Snake.”

“Was he alone?”

Distastefully, Browser said, “No. Obsidian was there part of the time.”

Stone Ghost turned the cobble in his hands. “Did either of them hear anything?”

“I haven’t spoken with Water Snake yet. Right after I found our Matron’s body, Water Snake left with the search party. I will question him tonight when he returns.”

Stone Ghost placed the cobble back on the ground and took a few moments to fit it into the shallow hole it had come from. “What did Obsidian tell you?”

Browser propped his hands on his hips and filled his lungs. “She says she heard nothing. But she saw our Matron leave and walk down toward the river. That’s why Redcrop and I searched the river first. I thought that—”

“Yes, I would have too.” Stone Ghost stood and pinned Browser with sharp old eyes. “What did you find in Aspen village, Nephew?”

Thrown off-balance by the switch in subjects, Browser stammered, “I—I should gather the elders and tell them before I—”

“I do not wish to sway you from your duty, of course, but it might help me to better understand what happened here last night.”

“Why? The two events have nothing to do with each other.”

Stone Ghost scratched his wrinkled throat, and his gaze lifted to the golden leaves trembling in the wind and the Cloud People sailing through the turquoise sky. “What makes you so certain?”

Browser shifted uncomfortably. The woman on the kiva roof? The “wounded” woman Catkin saw? Could she be the same woman who had murdered their Matron? It didn’t seem likely, though a hard run would have brought her to Longtail village last night—as it had them. He and Catkin had made it around midnight, but they hadn’t been dragging a little girl along. On the other hand, they’d spent six
or seven hands of time sleeping and eating. If the woman had run straight through …

Browser looked down and found his uncle staring at him with expectant eyes.

Stone Ghost said, “Did they fit?”

“What?”

“The broken sherds you were piecing together?”

Browser leaned his war club on his shoulder, and considered what he could say without betraying the elders’ trust. It was his duty as War Chief to notify them first, but his uncle had a special talent for “putting sherds together,” and they all needed that talent today.

Through a taut exhalation, Browser said, “I counted forty-two dead people in the kiva at Aspen village, Uncle. Almost all had been decapitated. We found their heads about half a hand of time from the village.”

Stone Ghost didn’t speak for a time. “What else?”

Browser tied his war club to his belt and reached for his pouch. “I found these.” He drew out the three shiny copper bells.

Stone Ghost stared at them unblinking, but awe slackened his face. “Where did you find them?”

“I picked up two in the empty village plaza, but there were three more arranged in a line leading to the kiva.”

Stone Ghost’s gaze went from the bells to Browser’s eyes and stayed there. “You followed the bells and you are still alive?”

“I think our enemy wished to have someone left to tell the tale of his handiwork.”

Stone Ghost started walking through the trees again, his eyes focused on the ground. His feather cape swayed with his irregular gait. “Tell me about this handiwork.”

“The villagers had been butchered, Uncle, the flesh stripped from their bones and carried away. I don’t know where to, but it was not in the kiva. Nor did we find it with the heads.”

Stone Ghost’s steps faltered. “It would take time to strip that much flesh from the bodies. Even with five or ten people, it would take a few days.”

“They had three days, Uncle. And”—Browser tucked the bells back into his pouch—“we found the heads a short distance from the village. They’d been arranged in four concentric circles. We think their Matron had been sitting in the center of the heads for some time.
The grass had been mashed down and frozen.” Browser exhaled hard. “We saw a white-caped man kill her, Uncle. He found her in the forest, dragged her back, and clubbed her to the death.”

“What else? Tell me everything you remember.”

“There was also a mummy. We found a mummy.”

“A mummy? In the kiva?” Stone Ghost turned around to face him.

BOOK: The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries

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