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

keep them in place.
    “ Mother, I’m tired. Can we go now? ”
    Laughter again, almost shrill with delight. “I told you the brightness of the heart flows from bright veins. It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”
    The child skipped across the roof, and the woman’s footsteps followed.
    Browser cried, “Wait! Who are you? I’m War Chief Browser from Longtail village. Let me out!”
    Silence. But only for a moment.
    With the darkness, the rats grew frenzied. They scampered and squealed, fighting over the best nesting materials. The scratching of animal claws on human bone unnerved him.
    Browser clenched his fists and shouted: “Catkin? Catkin! ”

2
    C ATKIN KNELT IN THE LEE OF THE BOULDER WITH HER war club across her knees. Wind gusted through the forest, flailing the branches and stroking her flesh with icy fingers. Every muscle in her body cried out for sleep. They had run the canyon rim for three days, stopping only to gobble a bowl of food, or close their eyes for a few hands of time. She needed rest badly.
    “Soon,” she promised herself.
    The mummy swayed and the rope around her middle raked the stone. Catkin reached up to steady her, and her gaze rested on the ridges of scar tissue that crisscrossed the mummy’s legs and back. She had been studying the mummy. Several of her toes had been cut off and the bleeding stanched with fire. Hideous burn scars covered her feet.
    Catkin whispered, “Who hurt you, Mother? Did you know them, or were they … ?”
    Feet struggled for purchase on the dirt trail below. Catkin went still.
    Browser had a light tread she would recognize a thousand sun cycles from now in the Land of the Dead. Walker or Bole? Young and brash, they both thundered about like bull buffalo in rut. It might be one of them.
    Catkin eased to her feet.
    Barely audible, a woman’s voice rose, deep-throated, anguished.
    Catkin had seen warriors drawn into ambushes by women pretending to be injured. She stepped back into the thick shadows cast by the boulder.
    A low, wolfish growl eddied on the wind.
    Catkin took her club in both hands.
    Predators didn’t pursue the healthy. The scent of blood and death drew them.
    As the terrible growls grew louder, Catkin took deep slow breaths. The fire-hardened wood in her fists felt cool.
    Sobs.
    Catkin almost stepped out, but forced herself to stay put. The sobs shuddered, as though the woman could find just enough air to give voice to her pain.
    The growl became a deep hoarse rumble—the sound made by a wolf that’s been chasing wounded prey for days and knows the end is near.
    Whatever was going to happen, it would happen soon. The cries and growls closed in.
    Catkin searched the trees for hidden warriors. Pines and brush rustled … and fingernails clawed at the dirt less than a body length away.
    “Halt!” Catkin ordered, and leaped onto the trail with her war club over her head.
    The woman lay on her belly. Blood soaked her clothing, and locks of long blood-clotted hair covered her face. Her skin shone like frost, as if she’d lost a good deal of blood—or perhaps she had rubbed her hands with a mixture of corn flour and ground evening primrose in honor of White Shell Woman, the grandmother of Father Sun. But only worshipers did that for rituals. Had the people of Aspen village been engaged in a ceremony when the attack came?
    Catkin scanned the trail and the forest behind her, then knelt at the woman’s side. “What happened? Tell me quickly.”
    The woman’s head wobbled as she lifted it, and a large black pendant fell from her dress. The jet had been beautifully carved to show a snake coiled in the center of a broken eggshell. Catkin’s fingers dug into her war club. She had seen a pendant like that before— around the throat of a friend who would soon be dead. Through the thick tangle of bloody hair, one of the woman’s black eyes gleamed, as though she sensed Catkin recognized it.
    “The War Chief,” the woman whispered. “He—he’s in the