People of the Morning Star by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear

The grief and pain…”
    Eyes closed, mouth open, her heart beginning to dance in her chest, she slipped her naked arms around the smooth sides of the bowl, and shuddered as his souls slipped around hers. In that instant, her body exploded with joy.
    “Then you have nothing to lose,” a strange voice boomed in her head.
    Startled, she opened her eyes and stared into a nightmare. The yellow-eyed gaze of a great panther burned into hers. Black and empty it seemed to swell and suck at her. Each burning yellow eye was surrounded by the three-forked design of the Underworld. Furry round ears strained forward, and the beast’s pink nose almost touched hers. Even as she gaped in horror, those bristly whiskers flared, and the mouth opened wide to expose gleaming white fangs.
    Before she could fill her lungs for a scream, the terrible beast shot forward; the wide mouth snapped down on her head. Pain speared her as needle-sharp teeth pierced through scalp and bone. Like knives they drove into her brain, stabbed into her mouth and nose. Shrieking in agony and terror, she heard as well as felt her skull sheering between those terrible teeth.
    And then came blackness, empty, impenetrable blackness …
    Her limp body collapsed onto the well pot. The delicate and thin-walled bowl crushed under her weight. Then she slipped down the water-soaked panther hide and sprawled comatose on the floor.

 

    Three
    Riding atop her litter at the head of her small retinue of servants, Clan Keeper Blue Heron was carried across Cahokia’s great plaza. From her swaying perch she squinted up at the spring sun. For the moment it burned hot enough to raise a sheen of perspiration beneath her armpits and where her white-and-red-striped feather cape hung over her shoulders.
    She’d been advised to have the slaves bring her sun shade, an affair crafted from shaved buffalo-calf hide atop poles that could be extended to shelter her.
    Probably should have listened, she thought bitterly. But her mind had been absorbed with the problem of her niece, the lady Night Shadow Star. With the exception of the occasional oddity when she’d respond to a voice that wasn’t there, or suddenly glance off to the side and frown as if she’d seen a movement no one else did, the young woman had been progressing nicely—a logical successor to leadership should anything unexpected happen to her aunt, Matron Wind.
    Until Makes Three was killed last fall.
    It’s not like she’s the first woman to ever lose the man she loved.
    Blue Heron made a face. Pus and blood! As if she’d know. For a time in her life she’d gone through husbands at the rate of one or more a year. A few had been able to stand her for less than a moon before they’d picked up their belongings and walked out of her house.
    She squinted at the sun again as her litter swayed in time to the porters’ gait. Enough fluffy patches of cloud soared over Cahokia to provide just a taste of relief before they marched on across the pale blue sky. Shadows moved lazily below them, slanting through the smoke-hazy air that forever cloaked the city. She raised her hand to block the blinding light, and estimated the angle. From long practice she guessed she had another five hands before it slipped behind the high bluffs west of the river. Time enough.
    Blue Heron tapped her long brown fingers on the litter arms, scowling across the plaza in the direction of Night Shadow Star’s tall wedge-roofed palace. What silliness possessed the woman? She’d been sent no less than three messengers and not a reply in return!
    “So help me, Night Shadow Star,” she threatened under her breath, “if you’re moping around, feeling sorry for yourself, I’ll give you some real grief.”
    She took a deep breath. The breeze came from the southwest, carrying the damp scents of wood smoke, cooking corn, and boiling meat. Spring grass, so recently crushed by the stickball games that had culminated the Planting Ceremony, gave off its