The Feverbird's Claw Page 14

  At the bottom they turned left into a long, dim hallway hung with tapestries that showed Delagua history. From these the fighters learned, proud to take their place in some future tapestry. Moralin made her way cautiously toward the first small pool of light, cast by a high window. Silver-gray shapes seemed to rustle, but when Moralin whirled around, her heart lurching, no person stepped forward to challenge them.

  The shushing of their cloaks sounded loud in the hallway. Figt made a startled noise as hers caught around her ankles. From the tapestry on the wall, Cora Linga’s eyes gazed down with a strange expression. Amusement? Pity?

  The next tapestry made Moralin bite her lip and taste blood. Delagua victory, Arkera defeat. Shocking things were being done to the Arkera people in the picture. The soldiers had looked majestic, almost holy, when she had walked here with Old Tamlin. Now they looked fierce. She might have even said bloodthirsty and cruel. Some were guarding shadows who tended fires. Bright pieces of Delagua cloth danced. The cloth is the only way.

  She moved on to a tapestry with five panels. First, sacred visitors stood before a Delagua royalborn. Then the visitors offered a precious jewel that had a hole in its middle. The weaver of the third panel had used vivid colors to show the Delagua ruler beckoning to a worm. In the next panel the worm was crawling into the jewel, trailing a thin silken line. Last, the gem hung on the silken string around the ruler’s neck, while the worm was lifted high on a golden tray and all the people stood around with open mouths, giving the joy cry.

  Keep going. Would the tapestry she needed be here? Yes. She stopped in front of the weaving she most wanted—and did not want—to see. Shadows ran through the streets with guards after them. A few were outside the gate. On top of the wall a shadow dangled a screaming child. So this was the great revolt. The child—

  A thump somewhere above them nudged Moralin out of her thoughts. They hurried the remaining steps to the end of the corridor, and she put her hand to the door. A cry shuddered, deep inside. Please, Cora Linga. She pushed the door open.

  The room stank with a sour smell of sweat and old food. A shadow knelt in front of a soldier, who had turned toward the sound of the door. Moralin made her voice into a low growl. “Shadow inspection.” To her relief, he merely nodded.

  Shadows sat along the walls or stretched on mats. This was the room for those who had committed some transgression or whose lives changed when calamity forced adjustments to a household. Old Tamlin had come here every morning and afternoon.

  Please, Cora Linga. We have come so far. May we find some clue here. She and Figt walked up and down the lines. “Look up. Look up.” No. No one had the mark of the one-legged bird.

  Back in Old Tamlin’s house, Figt gave a bitter laugh. “We can never find him.”

  “It’s not good.” Moralin’s spirit was stone. How could it be that sometimes people came so far and did so much, still only to fail? While Figt curled in a corner, Moralin sat, lost in her tangled thoughts about the history she had seen.

  When the Delagua chose to retreat inside the city walls, they demanded tribute from nearby settlements but they were also given the sacred secret of cloth making so they could trade for other things they wanted. Who would keep the sacred secrets? Even shadows couldn’t be trusted with that.

  She shook herself loose of her musings. They must seek the temple, she decided, and beg Cora Linga’s help. “Come over here,” she told Figt. “Let me put your velee on.”

  Figt stood still while Moralin covered both of their heads. “Do the best you can,” she said, her words slightly muffled by the cloth. “We need our faces hidden.”

  As she opened Old Tamlin’s little-used back door, she strained against the velee, wishing she could see more clearly. Everything seemed both sweetly familiar and dazzlingly new. It was as if she had lived here a long time ago. At first she had to look around after every few steps. Water was starting to run in the channels again, and its voice murmured secrets to her, but she didn’t know its language. She tripped as one thing and then another caught her attention. Finally Figt made an impatient, anguished sound, and they began to walk more quickly through the bustling city.

  There. That was the temple wall where she had seen Salla and the others. Poor Salla.

  They climbed. Moralin touched her forehead, and they stepped inside. The great hall was filled with sunlight. She went to the central tapestry and lifted her arms. “Help us, Cora Linga.”

  Silence. She thought about the other tapestries she had just seen. At least she now knew the answer to the question she had asked herself for so long. It wasn’t a fish that changed her life. No, the guard said that before the great revolt Old Tamlin spoke often of his vision. That was why the shadows wanted her dead. Some shadow had probably also risked death to tell the fierce trainer that she was a girl. The shadows wouldn’t have forgotten, any more than the guard at the trapdoor had.

  She studied the toad scene. Speak to me, Cora Linga. She moved on to one where the Great Ones were shown as spiders. “I’m here. I’m waiting. Show me how to find the shadow we seek.” She barely breathed the words, as softly as if she could keep even the other Great Ones from hearing.

  But though she felt dizzy with the effort of listening, she heard nothing. Nothing except the whoosh and shush of her own blood in her ears.

  She must at least get Figt out of here tonight, while she still had a way to reach the secret tunnel. Even now the messengers for judgment and pity must be wrestling with Old Tamlin’s spirit, making their decision. Tomorrow, after the priestesses had come for his body, the house would belong to Old Tamlin no longer.

  She saw the tapestry that had scared her so much when she was a child. In the first panel, priestesses in their dui-duis, carrying bodies covered in white cloth, walked the silent, dark streets of the city to the temple. The next day’s dawn brought temple mourning for families. Then bodies were taken to the convent for seventy days. After that, the bodies of highborn and royalborn Delagua were carried back to the temple, where they lay in an underground room with the body of a shadow on either side to serve them in death even as in life.

  She returned to the first panel. “On the night when the invisible ones walk,” Cora Linga had told her in the dream. “Then does the fly escape.” No one dared look on the priestesses while they did their work, and tonight such would walk. Moralin nodded slowly. Could two people search a whole city in one night and find a one-legged bird? No. But what else was there to do?

  When they were safely back, she explained. Tonight, the first moon-dark night, white figures would leave the temple. No one was allowed to look upon them or speak to them. So she and Figt could also walk through the city if they could only find the place where the dui-duis were kept.

  “The priestesses will come to this house for your grandfather?” Figt asked.

  Moralin stuttered out the word “yes” and fell silent.

  Later, as they shared a piece of hard bread, Figt explained that The People said a dead person’s bones must be out where the birds could pick them clean and where the sun and wind could purify them. Then their spirits would return to the air and not hover to steal people’s breath.

  It comforted Moralin a bit that The People, too, thought spirits went somewhere. She held out a piece of cheese and managed a small smile when Figt wrinkled her nose at the taste. Then they stretched on the floor of the great room to rest. After a long time Moralin said, “Figt.”

  “Hmm?” The other girl was either full of her own pale thoughts or nearly asleep.

  “Never mind.” Easier not even to try to find the words.

  As the feverbirds whistled, signaling their evening’s hunting, Moralin stood up. “Should we wear the velee?” Figt asked.

  “I don’t know.” Moralin rubbed the silk cloth nervously between her fingers. “My people believe it is death to look upon a priestess, so they will be in their houses. And the streets will be dark with no moon.”

  “We can move better without them.�
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  In the end they decided to leave them behind. When night swallowed the sun, they left the house to walk swiftly through the streets. “Afraid?” Moralin whispered.

  “Yes.” Figt was silent for a moment. “Afraid?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Silence cloaked the temple. Even priests and elders must not look on a priestess doing death work. Moralin hoped the stairs were in the same place as in the fighting yard. Important buildings were oriented to the stars and probably designed much the same way. Yes. And when they reached the bottom, she saw a lamplit hall to her left, just as with the fighting yard.

  One thing was different: an alcove straight ahead. She motioned, and they quickly crossed the hall and stepped into it. The back wall was crisscrossed with red lines. In the center was a tapestry of a young girl kneeling. Cora Linga. What do we do now?

  Something creaked at the end of the hall.

  “If someone finds us here?” Figt asked.

  Moralin silently drew one finger across her throat. As if in answer, a sword clanked against stone.

  Moralin caught the gasp that leaped in her throat. Shhhh-shhhh. Perhaps the men were not coming this way.

  She heard a drip, drip of water far away. Then … footsteps. Maybe three men. Walking down the corridor.

  She tried to swallow, but her mouth was sand-dry. To reach the stairs, they would have to walk right in front of the approaching men. Anyplace else to hide? Anyplace at all?

  No.

  Once the men reached this room, she and Figt would surely be seen.

  Then?

  Moralin remembered the feel of her finger on her throat.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  SO SHE WOULD DIE A DELAGUA DEATH AFTER all. She was suddenly glad she had gotten a chance to see amazing things. Who would have thought even Grandmother’s stories could not hold the whole of the frightening and marvelous world out beyond the wall? And the voice on the cliff.

  Slap, slap. Sandals on stone.

  Nothing here but walls and floor. They’d be seen anywhere in this empty room. Slap, slap. Perhaps twenty footsteps more, and the soldiers would reach the stairs.

  Help me die bravely, Cora Linga. All those times she had escaped death. Cora Linga had surely been with her the whole time after all. But now that the sword of the enemy was at her throat …

  Wait. What had Cora Linga told her that night in the Arkera camp? “Go to the web when a sword is at your throat.” But she had gone to the web in the hollow log.

  Slap, slap.

  No! Humans almost always got it wrong. Daughter of the night. The bloodred web. Go …

  Slap, slap. Maybe ten more footsteps before the soldiers reached them.

  Go to the web. With one quick motion, Moralin pulled Figt—rush, hush—up against the kneeling figure.

  Several things happened almost at the same time. From somewhere deep, she heard chanting begin. The footsteps stopped. A man cursed. At their backs a bolt squeaked, and she felt cool air.

  A door had been opened. Moralin took a deep breath and pulled Figt around the edge of the tapestry and inside.

  They were in a huge, dim room that smelled of incense and smoke. A robed figure, walking away from them, was beating on a drum, singing some kind of summons.

  Ah. The invisible ones would now walk. She and Figt must also become invisible. Moralin silently pointed to dui-duis draped on a web made of cloth.

  In a few swift steps, she had reached them and was pulling a dui-dui hurriedly over her head. She backed into the river of white cloth, hoping Figt was following, hoping they were now hidden ripples on that river. When the drum had thrummed ten more times, she heard footsteps, saw—through the eyeholes—a woman with a shaved head reach for a dui-dui. And another. The priestesses walked solemnly, looking at the ground.

  Moralin joined the stream of figures. Was Figt behind her? Soon she could see that the line was approaching the woman with the drum. Moralin mimicked the person in front and felt something pressed into her hand. She glanced down. Three pieces of cloth, painted with symbols.

  They moved into a lamplit room. Around the walls were tapestries, a huge map of the city. All right. The pieces of cloth were instructions to go to certain households to collect the dead. The priestesses found their way with this map. She tested her idea, looking for Old Tamlin’s house. Yes, it was marked as a coiled creeper.

  She was glad for the chanting that must cover her loud and leaping heart. Study each section. North. South. East. West. Nothing. Someone touched her elbow.

  She slowly turned. Figt was trying to show her something. The one-legged bird was here in the temple. Of course.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ALMOST ALL THE SHADOWS HAD PROBABLY worked here until the uprising had forced the Delagua to scatter them. They would be needed for the backbreaking demands of the cloth.

  Watch. Listen. Do what the others do. The priestesses seemed to work in twos and threes, taking the supplies they needed, rolled straw mats and white sheets of cloth. When she and Figt were back out in the corridor, Moralin looked around. Doors now stood open. She heard the shiick, shiiick of a sword being sharpened. Guards—by the stairs. One coughed. “Dusty night.”

  Shhh-shh-shh. Cora Linga, be with us.

  “Deep dryness was bad this year.” She had heard this man in the fighting yard, shouting at the boys. “The little rains haven’t helped much yet.”

  “Many lost,” the first man said. “Fortunately mostly shadows.”

  They laughed. Then one nudged the others and turned quickly as Moralin and Figt approached.

  Down the corridor, past more guards, who hastily faced the wall. Into the room. Five rows of shadows sleeping on cots. About ten in each row. “See him?” Moralin’s whisper was hoarse with the fear she was holding in. She stepped slowly and deliberately. Figt reached out and put her hand on Moralin’s shoulder.

  Masks. One-legged birds. Behind each mask was a face. How could the Delagua keep something with a human face in a cage, when she couldn’t even bear to hold a star-footed wood creature?

  The squeeze startled her. Figt gestured at the leg of the boy and traced the half-moon scar in the air. Quickly Moralin unrolled the straw mat. What if he cried out?

  Figt bent over him.

  “Are you death, heard my wish and come for me?” he whispered.

  “Hush.” Figt eased her hands under his arms. “Lie still as death.”

  When he was covered with the white cloth, they threaded their way out the door, down the corridor past the guards. At the top of the stairs, they found a dark spot in the temple and set down their burden.

  Figt pulled another dui-dui from underneath the one she was wearing. “As I’ve discovered,” Moralin whispered, “just wishing for death is not enough to make death come.”

  They retraced their steps. Moralin went first, wary until she was sure the priestesses had not yet come for Old Tamlin. Inside her childhood room they pulled off their dui-duis. Nazet made a small noise of astonishment. “My brother.” Figt picked up one of his hands and covered it with kisses. His blank, masked face stared at her.

  Later Moralin sat on the floor outside her room, hugging her knees. One time when she was young, she had been caught in a big rain, and she had raced along the stone streets, watching the ferocious, tantrum wind whirl leaves from the trees. Now she trembled as if she were once again caught by that storm.

  She had known Nazet would be angry, of course, but still she was stunned by the pain and fury in his eyes. He refused to speak while she was in the room. Of course, why should he? What human being would be able to break years of such training … and hatred?

  Eventually she had stepped into the hall, beckoning for Figt to come with her. “Can you see if he knows anything about the rooms where the girls do temple service? Tell him your dream. Anything will help.”

  If only she could talk to Old Tamlin just one more time. Tell him what she now knew. Ask
his advice.

  She moaned, letting her head droop to her knees. Her people had done this. Old Tamlin had done it.

  Sometime tomorrow workers would fill this house. It would have to be cleaned and made ready for some new official. She glanced down at the painted squares they had dropped on the floor. What kind of cry would go up when bodies were discovered still in their houses and not at the temple?

  She scrambled to her feet and paced fearfully, frantically, a river of steps up and down the hall, trying to think. Trying to plan. Finally Figt opened the door.

  Moralin grabbed her hand, listening as Figt explained that shadows carried wood to the door of the complex where the girls did temple service. Over the years they had listened and watched and whispered to one another, sure that someday they could make use of the little things they learned.

  “Tell me everything you can,” Moralin said. “I need to see this place for myself.” Perhaps she could make small amends.

  Back to the temple then. Be a white cloud, a white tooth, the spirit of the moon itself floating to the heart of the heart of the city. She followed priestesses down the stairs and moved without hesitation through an open door.

  All right. Her neck and shoulders ached, and she let out her breath in a slow whoosh. Here she was. The huge main room stank of smoke, and she stopped breathing for a moment, trying not to cough. Carefully she tugged at the eyeholes of her dui-dui as she turned. There were the ovens, hungry for the wood the shadows carried. Around the edges of the room girls were asleep on cots. This was her awa clan.

  Don’t stay here.

  She moved like a wraith into the first room that branched off. When she stepped inside it, she thought for a moment the big rains had come, spattering the roof over her. Stepping closer to the trays, she realized the sound was from fat gray worms munching on leaves. Nazet said they would eat only leaves from the trees that grew in the convent garden.