Blue Heron panted after the long climb to the Morning Star’s high palace. The midsummer sun and hot humid air had cooked all the energy from her body. Sweat beaded on her skin, the tickle of thirst clutching the base of her tongue.
She nodded as the two guards at the palace gate touched their foreheads. Despite their athletic youth, they, too, looked wilted and ready to melt.
Inside she found Five Fists leaning against the palisade, his shoulders stooped and arms crossed as he took advantage of the little bit of shade cast by the clay-covered wall.
“Keeper? This is unexpected,” he greeted, not bothering to move. “We heard Notched Cane was ill. Hopefully it was nothing serious.”
“Ill?” she asked incredulously. Then, thinking it through, had to admit that she’d ordered him carried straight to the Earth Clans soul flier’s temple. Who knew what sort of stories were flying about?
“He’s dead, Squadron First. Poisoned. Nor was he the target. The deadly potion was meant for me.”
Five Fists pushed himself away from the wall, a tightening behind the eyes. “And you know this how?”
“The soul flier confirms it. Claims the poison is exotic, something he’s unfamiliar with, but very deadly. Had Notched Cane not managed to alert us to the bit of herb, we’d have no clue. He’d just be dead, his body showing none of the usual signs like foaming, thrashing and convulsions, or seizures.”
“Who did this?” Five Fists asked dully. “Do you have any idea?”
“My suspicion is Horn Lance, of course. And we know he and the Itza possess boxes of potions and hallucinogens that we’ve no experience with. Nor do I think this is the first time they’ve been employed.”
“Oh? I don’t recall any suspicious deaths.”
“I’m referring to the dead Natchez.”
“He was lanced, gutted.”
“I meant his brother and aunt. The old White Woman and Great Sun. According to the stories we’ve heard, they just up and died. And in a manner that didn’t raise suspicions. Had White Rain not stepped outside when she did, we’d have found Notched Cane propped against a ramada post. Nothing would have indicated anything except that his souls had slipped peacefully out of his body as often happens.”
Five Fists pursed his lips around his misshapen jaw and stared angrily at the trampled grass by his feet.
“What is it?” Blue Heron asked, reading the old warrior’s frustrated worry.
“The Morning Star is up there.” He pointed to the high bastion that dominated the western courtyard wall.
Following his callused finger, she saw the Morning Star, uncharacteristically dressed in a breechcloth, only his face painted and his hair wrapped around a simple bun pinned with polished copper.
“He hasn’t been going to his usual chunkey game in the mornings. He’s been up there since dawn.” He paused before adding, “Three times now, an eagle has come to land upon the wall beside him. They seem to converse for a while; then the bird takes flight and vanishes.”
Messengers from the Sky World?
A shiver, despite the draining heat, whispered along her bones.
She sighed, bent to rub her aching thighs, and gestured that Five Fists stay. “I’ll go tell him.”
“Be careful, Keeper. I’ve never seen him like this. Not even when Walking Smoke was threatening us all.”
She strode wearily to the ladder that led up to the high platform. As she placed a hand on the polished wooden rung, she glanced around. The palace staff was engaged in cooking under the small ramada shade, and the high World Tree pole cast a slanting shadow, its position marking the date and time of year.
Resigned, she climbed, calling out, “It’s me. I need to speak with you.”
“Come, Keeper,” came the reply through the square hole in the bastion floor. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Someone tried to poison me last night. Killed Notched Cane. Rides-the-Lightning thinks you’re next.” She climbed through the hole, scrambled to her feet, and tried to place herself as far from him as possible in the cramped area.
“The soul flier is a wise man.” The Morning Star’s somber gaze hadn’t shifted, his attention on the west, where humid air burned oddly silver as it wavered over the city. Smoky haze softened the faraway river and Evening Star Town’s distant bluff.
“Lord? I don’t hear the outrage I expected. The Itza is moving against us.” She swallowed hard, raising her hands defensively. “I understand that he comes offering Trade, and that Cahokia could gain immensely through establishing relations with the other side of the world. The Itza no doubt have astonishing things to teach us. We’ve been played like dolls on strings. They arrived with a plan to destroy you. I know that it seemed like a reasonable request to marry Night Shadow Star to the—”
“It wasn’t my choice.”
“Excuse me?”
He turned to face her for the first time, a vulnerability in those eyes that she hadn’t seen since before the living god had been resurrected in Chunkey Boy’s body. The smile playing along his lips had a bitter twist.
“I don’t care, Keeper. Not in this contest between Cahokia and Chichen Itza. The Powers of Sky and Underworld take no sides. The world was Created as it was Created. Since the first humans, the stories have been told. Like individuals, stories have lives, are born, grow, change, and adapt. Sometimes they split, become different. And stories eventually die; others expand to take their place. The gods and heroes have different names. But beneath it all lies the One. The thunderous silence. The brilliant and blinding darkness. Beginning and end. Everything and nothing. The Spiral.”
She tried to swallow against her building unease. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither does the Itza. He thinks I failed his test.”
“What test?”
“When he asked in his language if I was the Hun Ahau. The One Lord. Their name for the Morning Star.”
“And are you?”
Morning Star smiled sadly. “I am so much more. And so much less.”
He slapped a palm to the worn clay plaster atop the wall. “The extent to which Horn Lance and Thirteen Sacred Jaguar have made inroads into the people’s beliefs is surprising. Horn Lance’s manipulation of the Itza’s arrival, the wedding, and the lord’s preaching has been masterful.”
“You admire him?” She made a face. “He’s trying to destroy you!”
“He can’t.”
“If he can get a bowl of poison broth into your—”
He raised a hand to stop her. “Keeper, if he kills this body, that part of it which is the Morning Star will thankfully return to the Sky World where it belongs. Chunkey Boy’s body will molder in its fine new tomb, and most likely Thirteen Sacred Jaguar will convince enough people not to call the living god into another person’s body, preferring that they worship him.”
“Worship him?” she almost sputtered.
“And he in turn will serve the Lords of the Sky, One Lord, and the First Father–First Mother by spilling the blood of thousands to release the life essence. Use it as a means of drawing the gods from their Spirit World to this. Eventually his story, too, will fade or change into something else. Only the One remains, uncaring, existing for the Dreamers to find and Dance in.”
“What about us? What about the Four Winds Clan? The Earth Clans? All the people who have come from great distances to be near you? Do you just desert them? Surrender them to the Itza?”
“I need not surrender anyone, Keeper. They will surrender themselves. More to the point, they will do it in joyous abandon, with a smile on their faces and a song in their hearts. It’s just what people do.”
“What about those of us who’ve served you?”
“The Four Winds Clan?”
She pursed her lips, eyebrow arched in a question.
He studied her with veiled eyes, then asked softly, “Do you think living here among you is easy? Putting up with your petty little intrigues? The endless fawning sycophants and flatterers seeking personal gain? The endless supplicants? Everyone wants something from me. And it never stops.”
“I…”
“Go, Keeper. Leave me. Piasa and I have made our wager. The future of Cahokia is up to you.”