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Now he stooped and caught up a pinch of soil and spat upon it three times. Then he threw the tiny clod of earth at the witch doctor. It struck Lumbrilo just above the heart and the man reeled under what might have been a murderous blow. The Khatkan broke then, completely. With a wailing cry he whirled and ran, crashing into the brush as one who runs blindly and without hope.
A black and white beast stood where the man had been, its tufted tail lashing, its muzzle a mask of snarling hate and blood lust. But Tau met that transformation with laughter which was like the lash of a whip. "We both be men, you and I, Lumbrilo. Meet me as a man and keep those trickeries for those who have not the clear sight.
So that when the knife came up in a vicious thrust which was the finish of his last attack, Dane stared stupidly at the ground, half expecting to see a body lying there. Once more Tau ceremoniously saluted with his blade to the east. Then he laid it on the ground and stood astride its gleaming length. "Lumbrilo!" His confident voice arose above the call of the drum. "Lumbrilo I am waiting."
Dane guessed that Lumbrilo sent now against the Terran the harvest of the medic's own memories. He shut his eyes against this enforced intrusion upon another's past, but not before he saw Tau's face, strained, fined to the well-shaped bones beneath the thin flesh, holding still a twisted smile as he met each memory, accepted the pain it held for him, and set it aside unshaken.
But over here, this close to the Mygra swamps, we have not done so. We may have to chance it." "Do you think we are literally poisoned?" Jellico bored directly to the heart of their private fears. "None of us have been drinking too heavily," Tau observed thoughtfully. "And I don't believe Lumbrilo had outright killing in mind. How long the effect will last I have no way of telling."
But I any of my men can walk unharmed if we obey the rules of our magic. Only Lumbrilo does other things which his forefathers did not. And he boasts that he can do more. So he has a growing following of those who believe and those who fear." "You want me to face him?" The Chief Ranger's big hands closed upon the rim of the parapet as if they could exert enough pressure to crumble the hard stone.
Lumbrilo turned away and then looked back over his shoulder. "The strength you depend upon may become a broken staff, off-worlder. Remember my words in the time when shadows become substance, and substance the thinnest of shadows!" "You are truly a man of power!" Tau shook his head in answer to that outburst from Asaki. "Not so, sir. Your Lumbrilo is a man of power.
But of the witch doctor there was no sign. And Dane, thinking of that mist-born thing at the swamp's edge, shivered. He could believe Tau's explanation of the drug which produced hallucinations back on the mountain side. But how that likeness fashioned of phosphorescence had been sent by an absent man to hunt his enemies was a eerie puzzle. "Lumbrilo is not here."
In the firelight, as the wave receded sullenly, men moaned, lay face down upon the ground, beat their hands feebly against the earth. But, as Lumbrilo came on from the shadows, one of them got to his hands and knees, moving with small tortured jerks. He crawled toward Tau, his head lolling on his shoulders as the head of the dead rock ape had done.
Asaki's wide shoulders and upheld head showed for an instant against the light from the camp. "You want Lumbrilo," Tau replied. "Very well, sir, I believe I can give him to you, and in the doing discredit him with your Khatkans. But not with the off-worlders free to move." The program was not going to be easy, Dane decided.
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