'Because you promised to teach me,' Sam said.
'Hey hey, Dog boy, wasn't talking to you. Don't need you to tell me the answer. I already know it.'
'Then why never mind.' Sam was tired. He had been working all morning at perfecting the shuffling steps the shaman had shown him, but obviously not hard enough for Howling Coyote. In spite of the simplicity of the dance, Sam continued to lose the pattern after only a few minutes. It was as though he couldn't match the rhythm of the music for more than a short period. Though the music didn't seem to change, Sam continued to end up out of step.
It was all so simple. So why couldn't he get it right?
He wiped a sweaty forearm across a sweatier brow, then held his arm there to shade his eyes as he looked at the sky. No wonder the old man was exasperated. The sun was low in the sky, and Sam had not managed to keep the dance going for more than half an hour. The history chips said that the Ghost Dancers had performed their ritual for days on end, fresh dancers taking the place of the exhausted, without ever a break in the pattern. The power Sam needed to help Janice wouldn't require that level of performance, but Sam knew he was still not going strong enough or long enough.
'Are you going to play some more?' Howling Coyote shrugged, then spat. 'Ain't what I want to do at issue here.'
'You're the teacher,' Sam objected. 'I'm here to learn lessons from the master. Seems to me you're not doing your job very well. You promised to teach me.' The old man's eyes narrowed, and he stood. 'Ya want a lesson, I'll give ya a lesson. Ya gotta strip yourself clean before ya can do the big magics.' The laman's hand snaked out and grabbed the pendant nat swung from a thong around Sam's neck. He waved in front of Sam's eyes, then let it drop heavily against Sam's chest. 'What's that, Dog boy? What's that thing ou wear around your neck?' 'A fossil tooth that I use as a power focus.' 'Uh-huh. And those things ya got tied onto your aeket?'
'Fetishes. They help with the magic.' 'Uh-huh. Got all ya started with?' 'Of coarse not. I lost a lot of them when Urdli H^ttMed me through the Weapons World window.'
'Ti-huh. What's the tooth and the fetishes ya got:: iave in common? Where'd ya get them?' ' 'I found the tooth in the badlands, just before I met ~›og for the first time. I thought it was a dragon tooth the time. Dragons are magical beasts, so I made it into something to help me with my magic. That's what -e fetishes are, magical tools I made to help me.' 'What about the other stuff?'
P'What other stuff?' 'The pictures in the inside pocket, left front.' Sam didn't bother to ask how Howling Coyote knew? out that. 'They're just pictures. They're not magi-al.'
'They show your sister, your brother, and your par-its, right? What's more magical than family? It's real aportant to you, Dog b'oy. Leastways, that's what ya told Urdli. Ya telling me connections ain't important to magic?'
Sam wasn't sure what answer the shaman wanted.
'Ya don't have to answer that. Answer this, though. WhatVe they all got in common?'
Nothing. Everything. Sam didn't know. What was the old man driving at? All he could do was guess. 'They're all connected to my magic.'
'Think up that answer by yourself?'
'Yes, I did.'
'Just yourself?'
Exasperated, Sam snapped, 'Yes, just myself.'
'Exactly.' The old man sat down, took off his reservation hat, and laid it on the ground beside him. From his pouch he took a comb, then he began to braid his hair. The gray strands glinted like metal in the sunset. 'Now build a fire.'
It took Sam better than an hour to arrange the wood to the shaman's satisfaction. Following Howling Coyote's directions, Sam gathered herbs from the jars on the shelf in the kiva and brought them to the shaman, who scattered some over the wood and some into the air. The rest he made into a little pile atop the small bundle of plant fiber and kindling. Then he directed Sam to bring a coal from the kiva's firepit to light the fire.
The fire caught at once, and Sam was glad. Chilled by the early evening breeze, he craved the warmth of the fire. He wanted to sit by it and relax, but Howling Coyote had other plans.
'Follow me,' the shaman ordered. 'Do the steps as I do. Listen to the chant. Sing it when you know it.'
Howling Coyote began a shuffling, stomping dance around the perimeter of the fire. His voice was low and gravelly as he sang the chant. He beat time with a rattle made from a hollow gourd. The song grew in
206 Robert N. Charrette strength until it throbbed with power. It was a calling song:
He comes, in fire and smoke. He comes, opening the way. He comes, with lies and truth. Tlirning to beauty, he comes.
Sam followed in the dance, moving in perfect rhythm to the song. Smoke washed across his body and filled his nostrils with the rick, resinous odor of burning pine. The chant filled his mind and he joined the song, his voice blending with the old man's. They danced the moon into the sky.
The smoke that had seemed to reach out and enfold Sam pulled back. It hung low over the fire, in defiance of the leaping flames. The smoke gathered into a roiling cloud that obscured the shaman dancing on the opposite side of the firepit. A shape began to coalesce within the cloud. It stretched, arms reaching for the sky. Though human from waist to neck, the smoke image had the head of a coyote. Its pointed snout split wide in a canine grin, then snapped shut. Head raised, it howled soundlessly at the moon. The snout came down and the ghostly image turned its dark, knowing eyes of emptiness on Sam. The jaws opened again, pausing briefly in that grin before yawning wider and engulfing him.
Sam's consciousness swirled in the magic. Enfolded in its embrace, he was at harmony with the world and with himself. He was not afraid.
He sensed that he was whole now, all he was and all he had ever been. At first he let himself float, riding the mana stream, letting it take him deeper into the otherworld, into himself, and into the unbridled realm of magic. For magic was the root and he needed to see the beginning, the seeds of his trials and triumphs.
When had it begun? When had magic first touched his life?
He thought about his first meeting with Dog, but immediately realized that as potent and outlandish as that experience had been, the magic had touched him even before that. According to Professor Laverty, Sam had used magic to protect himself from an attacker's spell long before meeting his totem. Sam remembered the glade and the fireball that had blasted him, burning his clothes and nearly killing him. He hadn't even known what he was doing at the time, but he had deflected the mana force of the spell. Would that have been the first time magic had affected his life? It was the first personal, tangible effect he could remember. His earlier contacts had been simply as an observer when someone else had used a spell. Surely that had to be it.
He cast his mind back, willing the magic to let him relive his first magical experience. Surely there was something to be learned now that he understood magic better. This must be what Howling Coyote intended by arranging this dream flight. Howling Coyote had hinted that it would be a key to his life and Janice's. If that were true, Sam would use that key to unlock the chains that bound her.
The magic embraced him and swirled him away. Time slipped from the present to the past, merging the two. Then became now and he was as he was then, except that memories of things yet to happen also wrapped his perceptions. Twist the shaman coexisted with Sam Verner, mundane.
The spell almost broke when he realized the day and time to which he had been projected. It was nine o'clock on the night of February 7, 2039. He was young, a teenager who was still Sammy to his family. That wouldn't last long. In an hour, he would be an orphan. February 7, 2039, the terrible day that later became known as the Night of Rage. On that night, the world spasmed in a massive explosion of violence. Though metahumans were mainly the victims of the destruc-tiveness and brutality, in some instances they struck back, individually and hi groups. In major cities and metroplexes, riots and fires raged for days. In the less urbanized areas, the violence sputtered on for weeks. The media blamed it on everything from outside psychic influences and coincidence to the spontaneous release of repressed aggressions and any other magical or scientific reason the various experts could think to spout. Somehow, the media hounds never saw their own role, never realized that the global village created by communications was also a powder keg of emotions that a single spark could set off across the world.
Like so many other families, the Verners were involuntarily caught hi the violence. That evening Sammy's father had made a rare, impetuous suggestion that the whole family abandon their usual routine and go out to
