The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries Read Free Page A

had four. I don’t know what it means.”
    His gaze landed on every human-shaped shadow on the trail below. Pine needles glimmered. Boulders wavered in the moonlight.
Had someone expected him to be here? Perhaps known he would be here? No. Many people wore tattoos. Many tattoos included spirals. This was coincidence. Nothing more.
    The sun-bleached shreds of cloth that hung from the mummified body fluttered in the wind. Browser looked at the darker splotches, brown with age. He used his club to push the cloth aside and saw the wide slit in the abdomen. “They cut her open.”
    Catkin shifted to look, and her eyes widened. “Gods. I wonder how long it took her to die?”
    Browser shook his head tiredly. “A person can live for days with a belly wound. I remember once when I and four of my warriors were captured by the Fire Dogs. They sliced Mug’s gut open and slowly pulled out his intestines. He screamed for three days.”
    Catkin reached for the dead woman’s necklace, but halted when she noticed that skeletal fingers twined in the brightly beaded strip of rawhide. Alternating chevrons of turquoise, shell, and coral covered the hide. Magnificent work. Catkin backed away.
    “Browser”—her voice had gone tight—“she deliberately grasped the necklace before she died. It must have been very important to her, like a Power bundle or sacred pendant.”
    Browser studied the delicate fingers that clutched the hide. “Are you sure it’s a necklace? Or is it a collar?”
    She gave him an incredulous look. “No one would waste such beauty on a slave.”
    Browser pulled the mummy out from the boulder to examine her back. “A necklace would have laces. The woman might wish to take it off. This is sewn together. And look here.” He indicated the scar tissue beneath the necklace where the flesh had been rubbed raw and healed. “The rawhide must have been wet when they sewed the collar together. It shrunk tight to her throat. Too tight. She must have had trouble breathing.” Browser met Catkin’s gaze. “A slave, but a very highly prized one.”
    Catkin frowned for a long moment at the fingers in the collar. “Gods, Browser. She’s not holding the hide. It’s wrapped around her fingers, as though she used the collar to cut off her own air.”
    Browser touched the hide. It felt dry and as hard as rock. Despite the tightness of the collar, the woman had managed to slip two fingers beneath it and twist the hide into a loop. Her mummified fingers
remained locked in the twist. She hadn’t let go. Not even at the end, when panic must have set in.
    “What a brave woman. I wonder who she was?” Catkin asked. “A clan matron?”
    “Or maybe a great warrior.”
    Catkin got to her feet and looked at the woman’s belly slit. She straightened and her mouth fell open. “Did you see this?”
    “What?”
    Catkin held something up. It tinkled.
    “A bell?” he said in surprise.
    She held it up to the moonlight. The bell shimmered and twinkled. “A bell worth a village’s ransom.”
    Catkin handed him the cast copper bell, and Browser turned it over and over in his palm, awed by the sight. They were rare and beautiful. The Feathered Serpent People who’d made them had died out long ago. They had lived far to the south, but had traded with the legendary First People of the Straight Path Nation.
    During the Age of Emergence, the First People had bravely climbed through a series of dark underworlds to get to this world of light. On the second day, the Creator decided the First People were too few and needed help to build the world. He had turned a variety of animals into humans: badgers, buffaloes, tortoises, ants, wolves, and other creatures. Hence, they were “made” people. The First People had never liked the Made People. They had considered them inferior, and had enslaved and tortured them. Fortunately, First People only married other First People, and their blood weakened over time. When the Power began to dwindle, the