People of the Morning Star by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear Read Free Book Online Page A

themselves, soft voices laden with the rich delight of victory.
    Nothing could mistake the sensation of a canoe being pushed off, or the rocking as it shifted under the weight of warriors as the last of them leaped aboard, water trickling from their feet.
    “Upon your lives,” the voice had called from shore, “you’d better deliver all four of them to the Morning Star!”
    Someone had called back from the canoe, “You think we’d disappoint the Morning Star? They shall be delivered alive, Spotted Wrist, upon our honor!”
    Spotted Wrist! Fire Cat had longed to face the renowned Cahokian war chief, but in his fantasies it had been in battle. There, Fire Cat imagined they would fight, war club to war club, shield to shield, dodging, dancing, slashing, and circling. And in the end, Fire Cat had always known he’d strike the Morning Star’s greatest war chief down. He’d place his foot on Spotted Wrist’s neck, and cave in his skull with one, final, well-placed blow.
    Fool!
    When the end finally came, he’d never even cast eyes on his formidable adversary. Unless, of course, the war chief had been one among the jumble of elbows, shoulders, and hands in that mad melee atop his bed.
    My fault. All my fault.
    White Rain shifted in the cramped canoe and whimpered in pain. Her sudden movement jerked Fire Cat’s bound wrists back, wrenching his arms. To keep from crying out, he ground his teeth and stared dully at the wood grain so close before him.
    I am taken. Prisoner of the Morning Star.
    He considered the nameless warrior’s words: “It would be worth it to be there when Lady Night Shadow Star gets her hands on him.”
    She was the eldest of the Morning Star’s sisters. Heir to the matronship of the Four Winds Clan. She was said to be a great beauty, a tempestuous young woman of remarkable abilities and passions.
    “And I killed her husband,” Fire Cat mouthed the words.
    She and the Morning Star would be waiting.
    *   *   *
    The black bowl—known as a well pot—brimmed with water. The exterior had been polished until its deep luster reflected the world around it. The well pot sat cushioned on a black-panther hide atop a four-sided altar that rose from the floor. Night Shadow Star’s altar stood in her personal quarters, a separate room in the rear of her palace.
    She lowered herself before the well pot; her triangular face and naked body reflected disproportionately in the bowl’s mirror-black surface. The intricately woven cattail mat she knelt upon ate into her unprotected knees. As she bowed her head above the bowl, raven waves of hair slipped from her bare back and slid across her arms like a silken veil that served to exclude the world.
    “Sister Datura, I beseech you. Know the longing in my souls. Hear the echoes of love that resonate from my empty heart. Hollow. Feel the aching want in my womb, the longing in my sheath. All that makes me a woman is desolate. Look into my souls, Sister. See the shattered memories … the hope and warmth of my husband’s smile torn away forever. Hear the words he once spoke to me, overflowing with love and concern. See his face, gone dead and cold. Feel the ghost of his touch slide across my skin. The warmth of his body next to mine is nothing more than the bitter cold of an endless and frozen winter.
    “Hear me, Sister. Fill me with the essence of your Dance. I am blind. Allow me to see between the worlds of the living and dead. Enfold me in your arms, dear Sister. Hold me. Sway with me. Free my souls to journey to him, past or present, here or there.”
    She swallowed in her misery. “All is hollow and blackness.”
    The visions had grown worse since his death: flickers of movement at the corner of her eye; faint whispers that she alone heard. Voices of Power that spoke out of thin air. When she turned, she’d find no one there. She had stopped asking her house staff if they, too, had heard. Their wary glances in one another’s directions had left her