Standing at the head of the stairs, Night Shadow Star watched the Horned Serpent Dancer as Morning Star’s warrior awarded him the eagle-wing cloak. She glanced sidelong at the living god who inhabited her brother’s body. In his splendid feathers and face paint, he looked every bit the resurrected hero from the Beginning Times. Bedecked with a polished copper headpiece in the shape of Hunga Ahuito, the two-headed eagle, he wore beautifully dyed fabrics and a spotless white leather apron with its soul bundle tied to the front.
When his gaze met hers, his dark eyes caught the reflected firelight and glinted in the black forked-eye design on his white-painted face. The Morning Star’s Power came from the Sky World, celestial, born of the wind, sun, clouds, moon, and stars.
Night Shadow Star’s Power had once been of the Sky, born as she was, into the Four Winds Clan. But that had been before she’d made a paste from Sister Datura’s sacred seeds and rubbed it into her temples. As the Datura’s Power had wrapped around her souls, she had sent them through a sacred well pot and into the Underworld to search the watery passages for her dead husband. Lost in those perilous depths, her souls had been ambushed and devoured by Piasa.
The beast had sunk his fangs into her skull. Night Shadow Star jerked, forcing the terrible images from her memory. Shivering in the aftermath, she took a breath.
“Lady?” Fire Cat asked from behind her.
“I’m fine,” she whispered unsteadily.
As if reading her thoughts, the Morning Star nodded slightly, acknowledging that they were adversaries. He served the Sky World and Hunga Ahuito, the mottled, two-headed eagle who perched at the heights of Creation. She served Piasa and the Powers of the Underworld, dominated by Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies.
The symmetry didn’t escape her. Her brother had surrendered his body to be consumed by the Morning Star’s Spiritual essence. She had been devoured by the Lord of the Underworld. Brother and sister. Vessels for two different Powers. Balance. Every act—all of existence—was an attempt to maintain Spiritual equilibrium.
“Once again, we teeter on the precipice,” Piasa whispered, as if the Spirit Beast hovered behind her right ear.
In recent days, she had been catching more glimpses of Piasa than usual. Sometimes it was only a flicker at the edge of her vision, a shifting of shadows. Other times it was a yellow flash of the great water panther’s eyes, the momentary gleam of a fang, or the lightning-quick whip of the creature’s snake-like tail. While on second glance, nothing seemed amiss, she could feel his heavy presence, like the electric crackling of rubbed fox fur.
Now she sensed the great beast as he hovered at her shoulder.
“Grant me some peace,” she growled under her breath as she watched the Quigualtam noble raise the eagle cape in honor of the Morning Star.
“Lady?” Fire Cat asked again from his position behind her. The man knelt on one knee, guarding her back as always.
He had been the heretic war chief of Red Wing Town, her sworn enemy. Her husband Makes Three had died at Fire Cat’s hand. Her desperate hope had been to torture the Red Wing to death. Slowly. Painfully. To repay him for the grief and suffering he’d caused her.
One of the hardest things she’d ever done was order Fire Cat’s shivering, half-dead body cut loose from the square. Her skin had crawled at the realization that she’d have to take her most-hated enemy into her household and watch him breathe her air, eat her food, and share her hearth.
Proof that Power had a wicked sense of humor.
“It’s nothing,” she told him, and steeled herself, knotting her fists; the premonition of chaos filtered through her souls.
“Power is shifting,” Piasa whispered. “Feel it? Just there, barely over the horizon of the future. Soon, now, it will begin.”
“We just managed to bring everything back into balance,” she muttered. “Now you tell me it’s all starting over again?”
Night Shadow Star was aware that the tonka’tzi, her Aunt Wind, was watching her warily. Since Night Shadow Star had fallen under the Piasa’s control, she and the Great Sky hadn’t managed to quite define their relationship. Once Night Shadow Star would have followed her aunt into the position of Clan Matron and finally ascended to the Great Sky’s chair. But, possessed as she was by the Piasa’s Power, Night Shadow Star’s life had taken a different path.
Nor could Night Shadow Star blame her aunt, or any of the kinsmen around her. For devotees of the Sky World, having a relative possessed by the Lord of the Underworld had to be like living in the shadow of a dark and terrible storm where lightning and chaos might strike at any moment.
Only the Morning Star seemed to accept her transformation without reservation, but then the resurrected god inhabiting her brother’s body was a creature very like herself.
“Who is he?” she asked aloud. “The Natchez Dancer?”
“His name is Nine Strikes,” Blue Heron called back. “He is the Quigualtam Great Sun’s younger brother, one of the ‘Little Suns’ sent here as an emissary to represent the interests of Natchez confederacy.”
“His costume is remarkably accurate. He even moves like the Horned Serpent.”
“And you know this, how?” the tonka’tzi asked dryly.
“Horned Serpent was among those who passed judgment on my souls in the Underworld.”
She ignored the uncomfortable stares that all but the Morning Star sent her way.
“You can feel it coming, can’t you?” The Morning Star’s words were meant for her alone.
“Of course. Odd, isn’t it? That beauty and terror can mix in such a deadly fashion. Which side do you play for this time? Or like usual, are your motives hidden under layers upon layers, Sky Lord?”
Refusing to answer, the Morning Star raised his arms once again, eliciting a roar of approbation from the thousands in the milling crowd. As though an afterthought, he shot a sidelong glance at Blue Heron, saying, “Keeper? I’ve pardoned an exile. Someone we hadn’t discussed. I know you will do your duty.”
“What? Who?” Blue Heron asked, clearly unsettled. Her eyes were wary, the starburst tattoos on her old cheeks looking smudged in the gaudy red glow from the night.
An enigmatic smile on his lips, Morning Star turned on his heel and strode through the palisade gate to indicate that the final ceremony marking this year’s Busk was over.