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They do not expect us to arrive with our wits about us. Panic-stricken men are easy to pull down. This time Lumbrilo has overreached himself. Had he not played that game with the rock ape, he might have been able to stampede us now." Though the white thing continued to move inland, it did not change course to fall in behind them on the new route. Whatever it was, it did not possess a mind.
Dane could not understand the words, but he knew that they patterned in and out of the drum beats, weaving a net between singer and listeners as Lumbrilo had woven his net on the mountain terrace. Tau had them! Had every one of the native outlaws ensnared, so that Dane rested his weapon across his knee and took up the lower beat with the fingers of his right hand as well.
"I want you to see whether there is trickery in this. Trickery I can fight, for that there are weapons. But if Lumbrilo truly controls forces for which there is no name, then perhaps we must patch up an uneasy peace or go down in defeat. And, off-worlder, I come from a line of warriors we do not drink defeat easily!" "That I also believe," Tau returned quietly.
"Separation of church and state," commented Tau thoughtfully. "Yet in our Terran past there have been times when church and state were one. Does Lumbrilo desire that?" Asaki raised his eyes to the mountain peaks, to the northward where lay his beloved work. "I do not know what Lumbrilo wants, save that it makes mischief or worse!
But I would suggest we now hunt a cave before nightfall." "Lions?" asked Jellico. Dane, remembering the black and white beast Lumbrilo had presented, did not enjoy that thought. They had his gaze went from man to man checking weapons the needler Asaki carried, and another the pilot had slung by its carrying strap over his shoulder.
Dane forced his heavy hands to continue the beat, his wrists to rise and fall in defiance of that which crept to eat their strength and make them less then men. "Lumbrilo! I, Tau, of another star, another sky, another world, bid you come forth and range your power against mine!" Now there was a sharper note in that demand, the snap of an order.
Lumbrilo and the evil behind him must be rooted out. There was no trickery in my invitation!" They stood eye to eye, equal in height, in authority of person, and that indefinable something which made them both masters in their own different worlds. Then Jellico's hand went out, his fingertip flicked the hilt of the bared blade. "There was no trickery," he conceded.
For he fronted no animal but a man, a small, lean man whose lips wrinkled back from his teeth in a snarl. His attendant priests fell back, leaving the spaceman and the witch doctor alone. "Lumbrilo's magic is great," Tau said evenly. "I hail Lumbrilo of Khatka." His hand made the open-palmed salute of peace. The snarl faded as the man brought his face under control.
If we could only find out how! Here are no drums, no singing none of the tricks to tangle a man's mind that he usually uses to summon his demons. So without Lumbrilo, without his witch tools, how does he make us see what is not?" "That we must discover and speedily, sir. Or else we shall be lost among the unreal and the real." "You also have the power. You can save us!" Asaki protested.
Shapes came flooding out of the night, some monstrous, some human, streaming past Lumbrilo to crowd into the circle of firelight. Some Dane thought he knew, some were strangers. Men wearing space uniforms, or the dress of other worlds, women they strode, wept, mingled with the monsters to laugh, curse, threaten.
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