Lake of Fire by Linda Jacobs Read Free Book Online Page A

small-boned, fragile-looking Kamiah said was unintelligible to him. Thankfully, Bitter Waters spoke a stilted formal English that sounded as though he’d been taught by a Britisher.
    Kamiah gestured at Bitter Waters in apparent anger, a dusting of camas flour falling from her handsonto the tule rush mat on the earth. The starchy root was one of their staple foods. Boiled and mashed, baked in a pit of hot coals, or dried and pounded into flour, the roots of the camas were harvested in summer but used year-round.
    Notwithstanding his wife’s protest, the hard expression remained on his uncle’s sun-beaten features. “She thinks we should not send you out into these mountains, that we should wait until we have reached safety in the land of the Crow … or in Canada.” He did not speak of the prospect of being captured by the Army of the United States. “But women and children of the People have died on this journey, many on the battlefield at Big Hole where we had to abandon our tipis.”
    Leaning back on his heels, Bitter Waters delivered his verdict. “As no one is given tomorrow, you will seek your guardian spirit tonight.”
    And so, alone in the backcountry, Cord had hugged himself against the night wind and watched the moon rise over the jagged tops of Castor and Pollux, the highest peaks in the Absarokas. From the place Bitter Waters had left him, on a bare mountain peak covered in loose cinders, the enormous coin of moon appeared tinged red by the smoke of late summer forest fires.
    Could that bloody orb be his
wayakin?
    His mother had taught Cord that in the Nez Perce way, a spiritual protector revealed itself in many and varied forms. A jackrabbit might pause to sniff at the wind, a distant mountain peak might catch theillumination of the setting sun, or a
hohots
—a grizzly—could happen by.
    Sarah had told Cord how Heinmot Tooyalakekt, or Chief Joseph, as the white men called him, had discovered his
wayakin
in the hills overlooking the Wallowa Valley. After ten-year-old Heinmot had watched and waited for five suns without food or water, a storm poured fury upon the peaks, sending down jagged lightning bolts and rain that soothed his parched throat. Thereafter, Heinmot was known as Thunder Rolling in the Mountains.
    Twelve-year-old Sarah Tilkalept had wandered alone for a day and a night on her own pilgrimage, until the crisp tinkling of water pouring over a ledge of sandstone attracted her to a crystal pool. From that day forward, she adopted the name of her guardian spirit, Falling Water.
    Hours passed. Cord watched and waited for a sign.
    He steeled himself against his hunger and thirst, and tried to stay awake, lest the spirit pass him by while he slept. Repeatedly, he nodded, his head falling forward with a jerk that brought him back to that twilight between wakefulness and sleep.
    Suddenly, before his widened eyes, flames belched from the surrounding mountains, great pillars of fire rising to heaven. Liquid lava, cherry red, ran thick and viscous down the broad slopes, cooling and breaking into great blocks. Violent explosions threw vast clouds into the air, to the very edge of the inky night.
    Ash and rocks rained on the green valley, buryingeven the tallest trees beneath a deep suffocating blanket.
    In a single heartbeat, more than a thousand cubic miles of earth blew up into a roiling gray column that seemed to have a life of its own. Pyroclastic flows filled the canyons and valleys while smoking lava poured into the vast vacant chamber left by the explosion.
    More eruptions followed, though not as great as the first cataclysm.
    Cold winds came to the land, blowing down from the Arctic. Snow fell for many years. Vast mountains of ice ebbed and flowed, carving out valleys and leaving streams cut off to cascade to the valleys below. The glaciers left great grooves and dragged boulders hundreds of miles, only to leave them behind like a child’s forgotten building blocks.
    Beneath the earth, hot magma