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Updated: May 13, 2025
Asaki stood before a rack of very modern weapons. Now he made his selection, a silver tube with a stock curved to fit a man's shoulder. "Lumbrilo will not forget." Tau laughed shortly. "No, but then I have merely done as you wished, have I not, sir? I have focused on myself the enmity of a dangerous man, and now you hope I shall be forced, in self-defense, to remove him from your path."
Those shadows were growing as plants might issue from the packed soil of the camping ground. When his hands were shoulder high, Tau held them steady. Now on either side of his tautly held body crouched one of the black-and-white lions with which Lumbrilo had identified his own brand of magic throughout the year.
He drew level with the medic, passed beyond toward Lumbrilo, whining as a hound prevented from obeying his master might lament. "So be it, Lumbrilo," Tau said. "This is between you and me. Or do you not dare to risk your power against mine? Is Lumbrilo so weak a one that he must send another to do his will?"
"They do so accept." Once more Asaki's voice was drained of life. "And Lumbrilo does not accept something you believe necessary?" "Again the truth, Medic. Lumbrilo does not accept his proper place in the scheme of things!" "He is a member of one of your Five Families?" "No, his clan is small, always set apart. From the beginning here, those who spoke for gods and demons did not also order men."
Dane forced himself to look away from the swaying cat-dog, to watch instead the singers who were now furtively eying their lord and his guest. The Terran knew that there were feudal bonds between the Ranger and his men. But suppose this was a showdown between Lumbrilo and Asaki whose side would these men take?
"Well, we've faced gambles before." Tau sealed the medical kit. "I'd like to see one of those trees before sundown. And I don't want to face another pointed rock today!" "Why the leopard?" asked Jellico reflectively. "Another case of using flame to fight fire? But Lumbrilo wasn't among those present to be impressed." Tau rubbed his hand across his forehead. "I don't really know, sir.
His own wrists ached with the strain of his drumming as he lifted one hand and tried to shield his sight from the glare of that pillar of fire. Lumbrilo was chanting a heavy blast of words. Dane stiffened; his traitorous hands were falling into the rhythm of that other song!
Nymani's thoughts must have been moving along the same path. Dane could hear movements in the dark beside him. "There's a long-distance com unit in that third hut," Tau observed. "So I see," Jellico snapped. "Could you reach your men over the mountain with that, sir?" "I do not know. But if Lumbrilo is not here, how can he make his image walk the night?" the Chief Ranger demanded impatiently.
Tau drew his arm across his face. Very little of the normal color had returned to his thin, mobile features. He still leaned against Dane's supporting arm. "A man can do only so much, sir. To battle Lumbrilo on his own ground is exhausting and I can not fight so very often." "But will he not also be exhausted?"
What balanced there now, as if walking the treacherous surface of the swampland, was no animal. It was a man, or the semblance of one, a small, thin man a man he had seen once before, on the terrace of Asaki's mountain fortress. The thing stood almost complete, its head cocked in what was an attitude of listening. "Lumbrilo!"
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