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Updated: June 3, 2025
Had the shaman retreated so far along the road to his past that he now believed in his own supernatural powers? Or was this to impress his watching followers? "You call upon your spirits for aid, Menlik? But the Apache has the companionship of the ga-n. Ask of Kaydessa: Who hunts with the Fox in the wilds?" Travis' sharp challenge stopped that wand in mid-air. Menlik's head swung to the girl.
Or was it true recognition of something beyond human description? Travis could not be sure, but he knew that he must return to the valley and see for himself. "Listen," Menlik said, leaning closer, "I have heard your tale, that you were on that first ship, the one which brought you unwilling along the old star paths. Have you ever seen such a thing as this?"
There was a different kind of adventure here. He reached out and gathered up the bundle of the burners, glancing from Buck to Jil-Lee to Menlik. Then he stood up, the weight of the burden in his arms, the feeling of a greater weight inside him. "Shall we go?" To get the weapons back that was of first importance.
There was a curse on these weapons, on every bit of knowledge gathered in that warehouse of the towers. As Menlik had already noted, that curse was power, the power to control Topaz, and then perhaps to reach back across the stars to Terra. When the shaman spoke again his words were a half whisper. "It will take a powerful curse to keep these out of the hands of men."
Menlik turned his wand about in his hands. He was no longer smiling, and his glance at Travis was sharp and swift. "Do you sit as Khan in your tribe, Lord?" "I sit as one they will listen to." Travis hoped that was so. Whether Buck and the moderates would hold clan leadership upon his return was a fact he could not count upon as certain.
Then over the lip of the other slope rose a wave of men their curved swords out, a glazed set to their eyes heading for the Amerindians with utter disregard for any personal safety. Menlik in the lead, his shaman's robe flapping wide below his belt like the wings of some oversized predatory bird. Hulagur ... Jagatai ... men from the outlaws' camp.
"And what would bring the pilot nosing farther in?" the Apache asked. Menlik shrugged again. "Any manner of things. The Reds have never ventured too far south; they are suspicious of the heights with good cause." His fingers, near the hilt of his tulwar, twitched. "Anything which might suggest that their party is in difficulty would bring them in for a closer look " "Say a fire, with much smoke?"
"This shall be a thing we share. We are three who know. Do you be three also, but choose well, Menlik!" "Be assured that I will!" the Tatar returned. "We start a new life here; there is no going back. But as I have said: The land is wide.
"This is a thing which we must hold council over," Menlik continued. "But it is an idea of power. Yes, one to think about, Lord. And I shall think...." He got up and moved away. Travis blinked at the fire. He was very tired, and he disliked sleeping in this camp. But he must not go without the rest his body needed to supply him with a clear head in the morning.
"The Khatun Kaydessa says that when she was slave to the caller, you did not feel its chains," he began. "Those who rule you are not my overlords. The bonds they set upon your minds do not touch me." Travis hoped that that was the truth and his escape that morning had not been just a fluke. "This could be, for you and I are not of one blood," Menlik agreed. "Tell me how did you escape your bonds?"
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