The Rift

PROLOGUE LAST CHANT OF THE SUN MAN

He was a god to his people. He lived high above the earth, in the realm of his brother the Sun, and his rule stretched from the world of life to the world of spirits. His word was absolute. Even the gods respected his desires.

So why did the dogs disturb his dreams? It seemed unfair that he could not order them to stop their howling.

The unearthly crying of dogs awakened the Sun Man before dawn. Leaving the slave Willow Girl asleep on the pallet beneath her buffalo robes, he dressed himself in the dark—a cape of bright bird feathers, a headdress of white swan feathers that ringed his head like the battlements of a tower, an apron of pierced whelk shells brought two thousand miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico—and then he picked up his boots and made his way out of the long house and into the still, cool predawn air.

“How may I serve the Divine Sun, my husband?” said a voice.

The Sun Man was startled, then annoyed. His wife, the Great Priestess, had a habit of turning up when she was neither wanted nor expected. Now she lay before him, stretched full on the ground in a prostration of respect. He wondered how long she had been there.

The Sun Man dropped his boots before her. “You may lace up my boots, if it suits you,” he said. The Great Priestess rose to her knees. She held out one of his boots, and he stepped into it. Her tattooed face pursed with disapproval as she worked the hide laces.

“That lazy Willow Girl hasn’t done the job?” she said. “She doesn’t know enough to protect the feet of the Divine Sun against the dew?”

“She was asleep,” the Sun Man said.

Her voice grew more severe at this weak excuse. “It is not her business to sleep when the Divine Sun is awake.”

“I will speak to her.”

“It is a whip of braided deerhide that will do the speaking,” the Great Priestess said. “I will see to it myself.”

The Sun Man kept his face still. “If you do not think such a matter beneath your notice,” he suggested hopefully.

“Nothing that concerns the Divine Sun is beneath my notice,” she replied. The Sun Man restrained another sigh. His wife was the absolute ruler of the household, and he had no business disrupting her domestic arrangements. If she wanted to whip a slave, she could do so. He could only hope that she would do the whipping herself, frail and old as she was, and not order a burly male servant to do the job.

He would have to try to think of a way to make it up to Willow Girl later.

The problem, he reflected, was his wife’s common birth. If she had been born into the privileged and sophisticated Sun Clan, the divine rulers of the People, she would have had a greater tolerance for his flings with the slave girls. She would have known that his liaisons meant nothing, that he was merely exercising one of the perquisites of his birth.

But the Sun Clan was very small, and the noble clans weren’t very large, either, so both were required to marry outside of their caste, which meant marriages with commoners. The Sun Man’s wife had brought her commoner’s views into his household, and expected her husband to remain faithful to her bed as if he were merely a farmer or a stinking fisherman. Such behavior was proper to one of the lowborn, perhaps, but certainly not for an all-powerful autocrat whose rule had been ordained in heaven. The Great Priestess did not understand that his slave girls were not a threat to her own position, but were just a way of keeping his bed warm at night. They were an itch that he scratched, nothing more. The Great Priestess finished tying the laces of his boot. She held out the other, and the Sun Man stepped into it.

“The funeral of your divine brother, the Fierce Badger, was very expensive,” she said, her voice deliberately casual.

Here, he thought, was the real reason why he found her waiting here in the doorway.

“True,” he said.

“And Eyes of Spring, your sister and the mother of your heir, is growing frail.”

“Also true.”

“It will be necessary to give her an expensive funeral as well. Should you not consider a war on the northern barbarians by way of acquiring spoils?”

“I will give the matter thought.”

He had given it thought—these facts were obvious enough—but it was clear that he had not given it as much thought as the Great Priestess.

“The war chief is new to his post,” she continued, “and we have a whole class of young warriors that require seasoning.”

“Relations with the barbarians are good,” the Sun Man said. “There hasn’t been any trouble between us in years. I do not want my old age to be troubled by wars, and a war would disrupt our trade northward for copper and pipe clay.”

“It is sad that Eyes of Spring is so weak,” the Great Priestess reminded. “There will be great mourning soon, and disruptions one way or another.”

She tied the bootlace with a little snap of finality, then turned her head to direct her stony face to the horizon. She had made her point, and now her husband was dismissed to go about his business. Out in the town below, the dogs yowled.

“I will speak to my brother the Sun on this matter,” the Sun Man said, and walked across the level, grassy field atop the mound until he gazed over the edge at his sleeping kingdom below. The Sun Mound on which the Sun Man lived covered ten acres, its base larger than that of the pyramid of the Egyptian king Khafre. Across the plaza was another mound equally as large, the Temple Mound where the Sun Man worshipped his divine brother, the Sun. Each mound had been built over the last hundred years by the painstaking labor of thousands. The great mounds had been raised one basketful of earth at a time, each basketful dug by hand and carried to its destination by a dutiful citizen. Twelve thousand people lived below the two great earthen mounds, half within the ditch and wooden stockade that surrounded its center. The City of the Sun was one of the great cities of the world, its population larger than that of barbaric Saxon London over four thousand miles to the northeast. Many more thousands of the Sun Man’s subjects lived in large towns linked to the city by road and river, and thousands more in small villages or isolated farms. If the Sun Man ordered the new war chief, his nephew Horned Owl, to make war on the barbarians of the northwest prairies, he could bring over three thousand warriors into the field, more if the Sun Man called in the allies. It was the largest armed force on the North American continent, and assured the Sun People’s domination of their world. And the Sun People in turn were dominated by the Sun Man, the divine ruler who held the power of life or death over every single one of them, who spoke daily to his brother, the Sun, the great burning sphere that ruled the heavens and commanded all things on earth.

The Sun Man regulated everything within his empire. The time of planting, the time of harvest. He kept track of the calendar, scheduled all ceremonies, festivals, and initiations; ordered entire populations to report for duty to build mounds, repair the stockade, or maintain roads. He collected taxes in the form of corn, and traded it for precious objects or distributed it in times of famine. Though other chiefs acted as magistrates, the Sun Man was the court of final appeal—he gave justice, imposed fines, and ordered exile, punishment, or death. Although the war chief led the soldiers into battle, it was the Sun Man who declared the war and made the peace that followed.

His word was not only the law, it was the divine law. To defy him was no mere rebellion, it was blasphemy.

If only, he thought, he could command the dogs to be silent. What was bothering them?

The Sun Man began to descend the earthen ramp that led from his Dwelling Mound to the plaza below. Pain shot through his knees and back at the impact of each step. Walking downhill was always painful for him. His shoulders ached so dreadfully that he could barely raise his arms above shoulder height. He had lost half his teeth, and the rest were worn to nubs by grit in the stone-ground maize that made up most of his diet.

The Sun Man was very, very old.

He was forty-one years of age.

At the bottom of the grass ramp the Sun Man met his two chief attendants, his pipe-bearer He Who Leaps Ahead, and his new mace-bearer, Calls the Deer. Both had been about to chant their way up the Sun Mound in order to formally awaken him—approaching the Sun Man required a degree of ceremony—but the dogs had done their job for them. They prostrated themselves before the Sun Man, faces into the turf, outstretched arms offering the pipe and mace for his use. The carved and ornamented pipe and the simple, heavy stone mace symbolized the Sun Man’s spiritual and temporal powers, the first able to summon spirits to the earth, the second capable of splitting a man’s skull.

“Stand,” the Sun Man said.

Calls the Deer, at twenty-five in the prime of life, sprang easily upright, then had to help He Who Leaps Ahead to his feet. The old pipe-bearer’s name, the Sun Man thought, no longer reflected the man who stood before him, but instead the swift youth of memory, first in races and first in war, who had joined the Sun Man’s official family back when they both, and in memory the world itself, were young. Now Leaps Ahead was ancient, crook-backed and white-haired, the tattoos on his face blurred with age, as if smudged by tears.

The Sun Man cast an admiring glance at Calls the Deer. The young man was a fine example of the noble caste: he was strong, a fine hunter, and his splendid memory gave him perfect recollection of the large number of chants and other religious ceremonies that were a part of his duties. He was deferent to his elders, but knew also how to maintain the dignity of his own high position.

A pity he will die soon, the Sun Man thought. For he knew that he, himself, would not last much longer. And when he died, much of his world would die with him.

The Sun Man and his attendants wove left and right as they ascended the Temple Mound. It was not proper to face the god directly when approaching him.

Through long practice, the words came easily to the Sun Man’s lips. But his mind was occupied by thoughts of life and death.

Barring pains in his joints and in his teeth, the Sun Man remained healthy. He was still able to chant loudly at the ceremonies, participate in some of the slower dances, and pleasure himself with Willow Girl. His mind was clear. But at his age it only took a little thing to bring him down, a chest cold that wouldn’t leave, a winter chill, a careless fall.

And when he passed from the world, Calls the Deer would die with him. As would He Who Leaps Ahead, and many others.

For the divine Sun Brother could not go unaccompanied to the spirit world. His two chief attendants would be strangled at the funeral by bowstrings, and so would his wife the Great Priestess, and Willow Girl, and all the slave girls who had borne him children. Members of the Sun Clan—including his sister Eyes of Spring, if she outlived him—would volunteer to be strangled, and so would prominent members of the noble and commoner castes. The cavernous long house atop the Sun Mound would be burned, the mound raised above its ashes, and a new long house constructed for the Sun Man’s nephew, who would reign after him.

A new conical burial mound would be raised above the Sun Man, and at least thirty young girls would be laid to rest with him there, and an equal number of young warriors, all to serve the Sun Man in the afterworld. To provide these ghostly servants, any young person would do, including slaves. But if there was not a sufficient supply of slaves, then the People of the Sun would have to volunteer, or be persuaded to volunteer.

That was why the Great Priestess had chosen to speak of war this morning. The funeral of the Sun Man’s younger brother, the war chief Fierce Badger, had reduced the number of suitable slaves, and his older sister, Eyes of Spring, was in frail health. If she died soon, a few dozen girls and warriors would be called upon to accompany her. If the supply of attractive, youthful slaves actually ran out, the Sun People themselves might be called upon to die before their time.

When this happened—and if there was an insufficient number of volunteers to make up the difference—there was sometimes an unseemly discord within the Sun People as the community’s leaders chose those most suitable for strangulation, always the fittest warriors and the most beautiful and pleasing young women, people whose lives the selfish commoners sometimes wanted to preserve. In the past there had been loud protests and even violence, disharmony that could mar the funerals of the great. It was always good for the community’s health if there were a supply of slaves on hand for sacrifice. That was why the Great Priestess wanted war now, why she wanted the Sun Man to send the new war chief and three thousand warriors marching northeast onto the prairies.

She wanted to make certain that her husband’s funeral, which would also be her own, would be suitably grand, and that the mound would be raised above them without disharmony among the People. There was sense behind this plan, the Sun Man conceded.

But wars, also, lacked harmony. And the Sun Man, perhaps selfishly, did not want strife to mar his last years.

He would speak to his Brother Sun, he thought. And if the Sun was in favor of war, then the Sun Man would order his mace-bearer to carry the declaration of war to the war chief.

The chant had carried them to the top of the mound. Before them was the big temple with its steeply pitched roof of prairie grasses. Fragrant pine smoke rose to scent the air. The three prostrated themselves before it once again, and then rose to approach the temple.

Chanting voices answered from the temple where the night attendants waited. It was their duty to feed the eternal flame, to make sure that this little bit of the sun that glowed atop the altar was never extinguished. Horrid penalties waited for those who neglected this duty and permitted the fire to die, but these hideous tortures had never been inflicted in the Sun Man’s lifetime.

The night attendants piled more pine boughs atop the altar. Flames crackled higher. The Sun Man stepped to salute the altar, arms raised high, blazing heat burning on his face and palms. Then he turned to face the East, where the first pearl light of dawn was spreading over the dark horizon.

They chanted until the Sun Brother was high above the horizon, until Grandfather River to the east had turned first to gold, then to silver, and the fields and homes of the Sun People shone bright in the cloudless morning.

The Sun Man brought the chant to an end, and there was a moment of silence in which the Sun Man felt harmony radiating over the world like the beams of the sun. And then the dogs began to whine again, and the mood was spoiled.

“What is wrong with the dogs?” said Leaps Ahead. “Is there some kind of sickness among them?”

“Perhaps there is a cougar upwind,” said Calls the Deer.

The Sun Man raised his face to the sky. He felt no wind on either cheek. The air was utterly still. And still the dogs howled.

“If the Divine Sun wishes,” Calls the Deer said, “I will order men out to look for a cougar.”

“Yes,” the Sun Man said. “That would be best. But come back after giving the order—I may have another errand for you.” He might have to send the mace-bearer to the war chief with a declaration of war. He turned to He Who Leaps Ahead. “You may go to breakfast, old friend. I won’t need you till my afternoon audience.”

“As the Divine Sun wishes,” Leaps Ahead said.

After the two chief attendants prostrated themselves before the Sun Man and then made their way down the mound, the Sun Man dismissed his other attendants as well. He wanted to be alone to consult the Sun concerning this weighty matter of war.

Beneath the sky’s canopy of divine blue, the Sun Man could see the waking city spread out before him. Below the two giant mounds were lesser earthworks, peaked burial mounds and the ridged mounds where the nobles dwelt. Below these lived the commoners in mud-and-wicker buildings with peaked grass roofs. Round granaries were set on stilts to keep animals from plundering them. Smoke rose from breakfast fires, staining the air. Children played ball games in the plaza, women knelt in the open before their homes and ground corn for breakfast, craftsmen sat in the open working with flint or basketry. Fertile cornfields, the source of the Sun People’s wealth, stretched out flat almost to the horizon, the young corn turning the red-brown soil to a sea of green.

To the west was the creek that supplied the town with its water. To the east was Grandfather River, the huge brown expanse, over a mile wide, that wound its serpentine way to the Gulf of Mexico far to the south. The City of the Sun was set a respectful distance from the Grandfather River, which usually overflowed its banks twice a year, and in fact sometimes flooded the city itself, forcing its population onto the mounds for protection.

Grandfather River was hidden along almost all its length by the tangle of cottonwood and cypress that lined its banks, but the Sun People had long ago cut all the nearby timber for building and for firewood, and now fields traveled down almost to the water’s edge. Crops were planted there following the spring flood. On the water’s edge were stacks of wood, lumber rafts that had been floated down Grandfather River and then broken up to provide the city’s firewood.

The land, the crops, and the firewood were all owned by women, and descent and ownership traced through the female line—this was why the Sun Man’s successor would not be a child of his body, but rather the eldest son of his eldest sister. The Sun Man could not but approve of this arrangement—freed from the distractions of property, economics, and agriculture, the men were able to concentrate on more important matters, like hunting, diplomacy, religion, and war.

War. It would be his decision, taken in consultation with his brother, the Sun. No mortal being had the right to interfere. What he planned to do now was to enter the temple alone, feed the temple’s eternal fire with willow bark and tobacco to summon the god, and then explain the problem to his brother. Only then could harmony be achieved and the correct decision made.

But harmony was going to be difficult to achieve, even in the Sun Man’s mind. The wailing dogs unsettled his thoughts. Their cries reached a kind of crescendo now, an eerie chorus that sent a shiver of fear up the Sun Man’s back. What is going on? he wondered. What is happening? And then the Earth flung him off its back. He landed on the turf with a cry, the wind going out of him. His swan-feather headdress fell from his head and rolled away. The mound throbbed beneath his belly, as if a giant was kicking the mound again and again. There was a crackling, snapping sound, and the Sun Man looked over his shoulder to see the great Sun Temple tumble and fall, the cypress posts that supported its roof snapped off clean.

My brother’s home! he thought in anguish. The Earth, he thought, had committed a blasphemy against the Sun.

A sulfurous stench assailed his nostrils. The air was filled with a horrid growling noise, like a beast snarling through teeth it had planted in the throat of its prey. The Sun Man clawed at the turf and tried to rise, but the Earth threw him down again. He managed to get to his hands and knees and crawl to the edge of the mound.

A terrible incomprehension filled his mind. The scene before him was so unaccountably strange that he could not wrap his understanding around it.

The ground was heaving up in waves, rolling from east to west like a storm swell on a huge lake. Houses and people were being flung from the green wavetops like driftwood. The grass roofs waved in the weird, turbulent surf, or tumbled down as the lightly built houses collapsed. Great cracks split the earth, and here or there an entire house was swallowed, tumbled into dark chasms. Faint against the sound of the terrible growling, the Sun Man could hear screams and cries for help.

Everywhere, it seemed, the Earth was attacking the Sun People. Huge jets of water shot out of the land, dozens of them, taller than trees, their towering heads crowned with vapor. These fountains flung white sand into the air as well as water, and some had already built tall pale cones around their roots. Some of the water jets even spat big stones from the ground, black rocks large enough to crush houses. Across the plaza, the Sun Man watched as the Sun Mound, his own home and that of his ancestors, came to pieces. An entire corner of the mound suddenly fell away, slumping onto the flat ground below as if it were nothing more than liquid mud instead of dry soil stabilized by turf. Tons of soil spilled like a wave onto the town below, sweeping away a half-dozen houses. Horror struck the Sun Man as he saw little human figures struggling in the moving flood of soil.

Above, atop the mound itself, the Sun Man’s house had fallen as one corner of the foundation spilled down the mound into the town below. The grasses of the crumpled roof thrashed, and the Sun Man hoped that this was caused by survivors trying to dig their way out rather than by the motion of the earth. The scent of smoke touched his nostrils. He turned, scuttling on hands and knees like an insect, and looked in horror as a tower of flame blazed up above the roof of the Sun Temple. It had fallen onto the roaring altar fire, just stoked with pine logs, and sacred flame had set the roof alight. No! the Sun Man thought. There were sacred objects inside—ancient pottery and flint, a black stone that had fallen from the sky, figures of gods and animals, and these could not be sacrificed to the flame. The Sun Man tried to rise again, was once more flung to his knees. So he crawled, the Earth’s terrible growling in his ears, toward the temple to rescue the holy things.

It was useless. The dry grass roof caught in an instant, and the old cypress log timbers and wickerwork walls were well seasoned. By the time the Sun Man could crawl more than a few paces, the entire structure was ablaze. Heat beat on the Sun Man’s face. It was so intense that he had to turn and crawl back the way he had come. The strings holding together his whelk-shell apron had broken, and he trailed carved shells behind him as he crawled.

Still the Earth shook, still her horrid roar rumbled in his ears and in the very marrow of his bones. It was beyond him. There was nothing he could do in this war of the Earth against the children of the Sun, nothing except finally to remember his chief role, that of intermediary between the people and the divine forces that controlled their world.

He crawled again to the edge of the mound, threw himself flat, and began to pray.

“Brother Sun, rescue us!” he cried. “Earth Woman, please do not punish your children! Cease the war between you!” And then he lost all sense and could only babble.

“My wife!” he said. “My children! Save them! Don’t let them die! Save my babies!” At his words, to his own great astonishment, the rumbling ceased. The Earth’s violence faded, but the Sun Man could still feel smaller tremors shivering through the ground beneath him. The Earth had ceased her attacks, and all at his divine command. He blinked in awe at his own power as he looked at the scene below. Thousands of buildings in his city had fallen, almost every one. Many, fallen onto breakfast fires, were now alight, columns of gray smoke rising in the still air. Most of the long wooden stockade that protected the central part of town had fallen. The fountains of water continued to gush from the ground, each now rising from a cone of white sand that had built up around its base. Some of the fountains were luckily placed so as to put out fires, but most just added to the confusion and terror of the people and animals below.

His poor people, he thought. Most that he could see were prone and helpless as himself. A few were on their feet, but they staggered helplessly, as if possessed by a fit. Howling dogs spun in circles or barked and snapped at everyone nearby. Hundreds of children were wailing. Many adults were screaming as well, injured or trapped in fallen houses.

The sky was very strange. A few minutes ago it had been blue and cloudless, but now low clouds were forming, black and threatening. He could see the clouds growing, expanding in the air like a black stain.

“Thank you, Earth Woman!” he said. “Thank you for sparing us!” He peered across the plaza—now torn in half by a rent twenty feet across—and tried to distinguish the few people he could see wandering around the Sun Mound. Had the Great Priestess survived? Eyes of Spring, his sister? His many children?

Willow Girl?

The Sun Man tried to stand, but a horrid vertigo seized him, and he fell again. Why was the world so dark? he wondered.

“Praise to the Earth!” he continued automatically. “Praise to Brother Sun!” He cast a look to the east, to where Brother Sun was rising above the riverbank, and he stared. Grandfather River, he realized dumbly, was gone. Gone. Gone completely. Between the fields on the west side of the river, and the great thicket of oak and cottonwood on the far side—now mostly fallen, he saw—there was nothing but the muddy brown bed of the river, and here and there a long silver pond, all that was left behind when the river left its bed.

Grandfather River fled, the Sun Man realized. Horrified by the war between Sun and Earth, the river had turned its face from the world.

A moving cloud crossed the empty riverbed and poured itself across the Sun Man’s vision, as if the river had inverted itself into the sky and was now in flood. Passenger pigeons, tens of thousands of them, risen in alarm from the wrecked forests on the far bank, headed west in search of a safe place to land.

“Praise to the Earth!” the Sun Man continued to chant, and turned again to the wrecked city below. He should try to stand again, he thought, and show himself to the people. Demonstrate to them that their divine ruler was unharmed, and ready to face the fearful emergency.

And then an actinic flash lit the dark sky, turning the world into light and shadow, and to the Sun Man’s utter horror he saw the lightning strike his ruined house on the Sun Mound. The grass roof exploded, flinging burning thatch in all directions. At once the entire structure was alight. “My children,” he moaned. He had only a few seconds to absorb this dreadful sight before another firebolt lanced down, striking the burning temple behind him. The Sun Man clapped hands to his ears at the shattering sound, and cowered as flaming debris fell around him.

The Divine Sun, his brother, was fighting back, flinging his lightning bolts at the Earth. But his own people were caught in the middle.

“Spare us!” the Sun Man whimpered. “Turn your dreadful lightning away!” His answer was another flash, another boom. He looked across the plaza to see people spilling down the slopes of the Sun Mound, fleeing from the dreadful thunder. “Don’t run!” the Sun Man commanded.

“Rescue my family!”

But they could not hear him. Another bolt smashed into a field not far away. The cloud of passenger pigeons overhead dispersed, each bird frantic to escape the blasts. Screams and wails were rising from the city.

“Save us,” the Sun Man moaned. “Spare us your anger. Save my family.” But the shattering bolts continued to fall, one after another. The Sun Man felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and tried to burrow into the turf of the Temple Mound, clutching the soil with his fingers. The lightning bolt crashed to earth mere yards away. The Sun Man’s head rang with the sound. The flash blazed through his closed eyelids. He could smell his own hair burning. Deafened, stunned by the blast and by the catastrophe that overwhelmed him, the Sun Man lay on the scorched grass, unable even to beg the gods for aid. He could hear the shiver and boom of lightning around him, but he kept his face pressed to the mound, cringing from the sound of each blast.

In time the blasts grew less. The Sun Man blinked, opened his eyes. The world was still dark, and low clouds still threatened overhead. Gray smoke rose into the heavens from dozens of fires. Tens of thousands of frantic birds circled madly in the air.

“My family,” the Sun Man whimpered. He propped himself up on an elbow and gazed across the wrecked plaza to the Sun Mound.

The long house was still in flames. Nothing living could be seen on the mound, though a few sprawled, motionless figures testified to the deadly nature of the lightning blasts that had rained on the high platform. The city below was half-concealed by smoke from burning lodges. Only a few stunned human forms moved in the murk. If they were wailing or calling for help, the Sun Man’s deafened ears could not hear them. The tall fountains of water had subsided, though their white sand cones still covered the drenched corn fields.

The war between Sun and Earth seemed to have reached a truce.

The Sun Man rose to his knees. “Praise to the Sun Brother,” he murmured, and held out his hands, palm upward, in a prayer position. “Save your people.” His head whirled. He looked around, and his mouth dropped open.

Grandfather River was coming back! But he was not returning to the old riverbed; he was pouring across the fields to the south, heading straight for the City of the Sun. He was running backward, south to north! And he was angry, foamy white teeth snarling as he rolled steadily toward the city, a wall of brown, churning water ten feet high.

Terror snatched the Sun Man and pulled him to his feet. His head spun. Madly he pointed and shouted at the stunned people below.

“Flood coming!” he cried. “Run to the mounds! Run now!”

A few people stopped and stared. “Run now!” the Sun Man screamed. “Run to the mounds! Grandfather River is flooding!”

The people seemed to be conferring. Only a few began to move toward the earthen mounds.

“Run! Run! Grandfather River is flooding!”

The river’s foaming front poured into the southern reaches of the city, sweeping broken houses before it. The river was full of wreckage, entire uprooted trees standing in the flood like fangs. A few people looked south in alarm, but they were on the flat ground, lines of sight broken by mounds and wreckage and smoke, and they could see nothing.

“Run! Run!”

And then the river burst through the broken stockade, rolling the shattered logs of the wall before it like a row of pinecones. The people below stiffened in horror, and then, too late, began to run. The Sun Man’s words dried up on his tongue as the river ran through his city, sweeping away the shattered lodges, carrying the straw roofs and wicker walls along on the white-toothed tide. He saw dozens of people madly trying to swim, others clinging to wreckage and crying for help. Only a few dozen managed to stagger up the Temple Mound’s earthen ramp, or climb its steep sides. Others scrambled up conical burial mounds, or clustered on the flat-topped mounds the nobles used for their lodges.

The Sun Man collapsed, wailing. Earth Woman had made war on him, and his divine brother the Sun had abandoned his people.

He would die, he thought. He would refuse food and water, and he would perish along with his nation. He sat down on the Temple Mound, crossed his legs, and began to sing a song of death. His people, cowed by the world’s inexplicable fury, did not dare to approach him. Within a few hours the river’s level had dropped, and the survivors gazed down to a mass of wreckage that littered a steaming swamp.

Other than the rubbish that floated in the still water, and the mounds with their clusters of stunned, homeless refugees, nothing remained of the greatest city that had ever been raised on the continent of North America.