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At first his countenance was smooth and blank; as I proceeded, he became gravely attentive; then, as I ended, he gave me a quick, unembarrassed, and merry look. "Loskiel," he said laughingly, "Mayaro plays with the Cat-People. A child's skill only is needed to take their half-shed fur and dash them squalling and spitting and kicking into Biskoonah!"
Amochol, frozen to a scarlet statue, stared at the contortions of the executioner for a moment, then, livid, wheeled on the Prophetess, shaking from head to foot. "Is this your accursed magic?" he shouted. "Is this your witchcraft, Sorceress of Biskoonah? Is it thus you strike when threatened? Then you shall burn! Take her, Andastes!"
Witchcraft, the frenzied worship of goblins, ghouls, and devils, the sacrifice to Biskoonah, all these have little by little taken the place of the grotesque but harmless rites practiced at the Onon-hou-aroria. Amochol has made it sinister and terrible beyond words; and it is making of the Senecas a swarm of fiends from hell itself. "This, sir, is the truth.
"What do I care?" he said. "I am a Sagamore of the Enchanted Clan!" He struck the painted symbol on his chest. "What do I care for this red priest's sorcery I, who wear the great Witch Bear rearing in scarlet here across my breast! "Let the Cat People make their magic! Let Amochol sacrifice to Leshi in Biskoonah! Let their accursed Atensi watch the Mohicans from behind the moon.
At this awful blasphemy, the Mohican fairly blanched so that under his paint his skin grew ashy for a moment. The Grey-Feather shouted: "Lying and degraded priest! Mowawak Cannibal of a Sinako Cat! It is Atensi herself who burns with Iuskeha in Biskoonah; and the sacrilegious fires lick your altars!" The Erie laughed horribly: "Where is your fool of a stripling called Loskiel?
Not one soul except myself will raise hand against you. By Tharon, I swear it! Choose! And the victor passes freely and whither he wills!" The Erie mocked him from his high perch: "Squirrels talk! Long since has your Tharon been hurled headlong into Biskoonah by Atensi and her flaming grandson!"
But rumour whispered with a thousand tongues of horrors viewless, nameless, inconceivable; and that far to the westward Biskoonah yawned, so close indeed to the world's surface that the waters boiling deep in hell burst into burning fountains in the magic garden where the red priest made his sorcery, alone.
Then into the crazed orgie leaped the Toad-woman like a gigantic scarlet spider, screaming prophecy and performing the inconceivable and nameless rites of Ak-e, Ne-ke, and Ge-zis, until, in her frenzy, she went stark mad, and the devil worship began with the awful sacrifice of Leshee in Biskoonah. Horror-stricken, nauseated, I caught Mount's arm, whispering: "Enough, in God's name! Come away!"
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