Free The Shadows of God by J. Gregory Keyes

wings of blood.”
    “Perhaps you are the serpent with wings of blood,” Paint Red said. “Perhaps you are not who you say you are.”
    “It is the danger of being a hopaye,” one of the Onkala priests said quite suddenly. “Sometimes they walk out into the woods human and return as—something else.” He turned to Minko Chito. “We cannot hold this council here, great chief. We must go where the truth lives, to the navel of the world.”
    The chief nodded. “To Nanih Waiyah. Yes. We will go there now.”
    An involuntary chill crept up Red Shoes’ back, the snake in him moving. For an instant, the winter rage came on him, and he knew he could kill them all, that perhaps he should. His sister’s warning came back to him. •
    But if he killed them, he failed. And the Bone Men might surprise him. They THE SHADOWS OF GOD
    remembered things no one else did. They might destroy him.
    Besides, the rage wasn’t his. The anger wasn’t his. It was in him, but he did not have to accept it. Each time he used the snake’s venom it became easier to swallow, and it tasted better.
    He remembered the Wichita village, where he had killed everyone, from the smallest child to the oldest man. That could not happen here, even if it meant his own life.
    “To Nanih Waiyah,” he said. “Let us go, then.”
    5.
    King Philippe’s Reception
    It was several seconds after the crackle and thunder of weapons faded that Franklin understood that he was alive and well and that the volley had merely been a welcome, a sort of friendly handshake.
    “Silly,” he muttered. “And wasteful. Why not drums and fifes, or bugles or shofars or what have you, if a noisy greeting is needed? That volley could have been spent more wisely. I, for one, will be quite cross if this war is lost by one volley.”
    “Will that be the opening speech of your parley?” Robert asked.
    The French captain on shore shouted something. For all the ringing in his ears, Franklin could scarcely hear it.

    THE SHADOWS OF GOD
    “He says we are welcome, and to follow him in to dock,” Penigault translated.
    “Said the spider to the fly,” Robert muttered.
    Franklin got his wish, albeit belatedly, as they marched up the muddy street to the sound of trumpets and drums. Negro page boys in filthy stockings scattered flower petals before them, but that did nothing to keep the earth from sucking their shoes half off. Throwing down a good layer of gravel or sand, Franklin reflected, would have been an infinitely more practical use of time and labor.
    Once inside the gate, the same page boys scrupulously cleaned the Carolinians’
    shoes. Embarrassed, Franklin shooed his away, taking the rag to do the cleaning himself. A bit later, they were offered some sour but drinkable wine.
    Franklin took it in moderation, worried about poison but very much in need of something to drink, as sweet water had become scarce near the salty Mobile Bay. They were at the mercy of the French now, and if he was to die, poison was probably as pleasant a way as any.
    The grand hall was dimly lit by alchemical lanthorns in motley shapes. Indeed, the lack of theme—here an angel, there a sort of pumpkin, there a naked woman—suggested that the lamps had been salvaged from various places rather than made to suit the particular architecture of the place. The inconstant glow of some of them suggested the same—most had probably been made more than twelve years ago, before the comet fell, and were nearing the end of their usefulness.
    But for those uneven lights, the hall might have been a troglodyte’s cave, so little could he see of it.
    They were ushered into an anteroom, this one better lit and decorated with fleurs-de-lys wallpaper. There they waited for half an hour, if the sun-faced pendulum clock on one wall kept proper time. At last a thin fellow with a ridiculous periwig and vivid green frock coat came out and had a look at them, though he didn’t say anything and ignored Voltaire’s