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

Made People rose up and made war on them. The last of the First People had died more than a hundred summers ago, and the Made People had celebrated for a full sun cycle. Browser’s people, and all people alive today, were Made People.
    The bell might have been an offering, placed inside her wound by the people who’d buried her. In that case, they had either been very wealthy, or they’d sold everything they had to possess it.
    He said, “Whoever buried her loved her very much. No one today would squander such wealth on the dead.”
    Browser put the copper bell into his belt pouch. His village, Longtail village, had been raided six times in the past nine moons. They
could trade the bell for enough food to feed their children through the winter.
    “No, Browser.” As she turned, moonlight gilded the smooth dip in her nose and splashed her broad cheeks.
    “What do you mean?”
    “That bell was loose in her belly. If it had been placed there when she was buried, it would have melted into the drying flesh and become part of it. I would not have been able to just pick it up. Someone put it there tonight.”
    “But why?” he whispered, and slowly rose to his feet. “Whoever hung the mummy here must have known the first traveler who came by would take it.”
    Catkin pinned him with dark moon-glazed eyes. “I’m sure they did. They probably also figured they would get it back when they killed us.”
    Browser turned to search the trees and cliffs for any sign of an ambush. Wind Baby whimpered through the boulders on the slope below.
    “Maybe, but I’m still going down. We have to know what has happened. I wish you to stay at the top of the trail where you can see the trees.”
    Catkin nodded, but her gaze remained on the mummy. The corpse’s stubby teeth gleamed. Moments ago, she had seemed to be caught in a final scream. Now she looked like she was laughing, a great deep belly laugh.
    Browser’s skin prickled. Your shattered souls are playing tricks on you, you fool. The mummy hasn’t changed.
    “Shout to me if anyone comes out of the forest. I will return as soon as I know what’s happened.”
    “Go. I will guard the trail.”
    Browser cupped a hand to his mouth and gave the melodious call of a raven in flight, kloo-kloc-kloo-kloc, to signal Walker and Bole to start down the western trail.
    Then he headed down himself.
    Aspens grew in the spaces between the boulders. The trembling autumn leaves appeared white in the pale light, but he remembered that in the daylight they glowed a brilliant luminous yellow.
    Browser silently skirted a large boulder and navigated the first bend in the trail. He lost sight of Catkin. Wind Baby gusted across
the cliff, rattling the fringes on his knee-length shirt. As the trees blew, splotchy wind-spawned shadows danced over the slope.
    He’d never had much love for solitary heroics. He preferred a large and conspicuous war party at his back. But he had no choice tonight.
    He proceeded slowly, on the balls of his feet, until he came to a fallen tree where he crouched and gazed at the village no more than half a bow shot away. They’d built in a secure but difficult location. The huge rain-eaten hollow in the stone swallowed the small two-story village. Just a few body lengths beyond the plaza, the sheer cliff dropped seven hundred hands to the canyon bottom. If a person slipped, it meant his doom.
    Where were Walker and Bole? Inside, searching from room to room? The faint trace of smoke clung to the air. Someone had lit a fire today, but he saw no glow of flames in any of the windows or doors. Aspen village appeared dead.
    Browser turned when he heard a sound.
    He whispered, “Walker?”
    No, the soft scraping couldn’t be an adult. A child’s moccasins on gravel? Claws working at stone?
    He could not identify it yet, but some other scent twined with that of the smoke, a tang that clung to the back of his throat like pine pitch.
    Browser moved only his eyes.
    There, on the ground