The line spread out wider and wider, until it seemed to stretch halfway across the lake horizon. Blade realized that if the line kept on all the way to the shore, he would end up almost in the middle of it. Slowly and cautiously, he rose to a crouching position, and moved away from his piled branches. He would have liked to scatter them so that they gave no sign of his presence, but there was no time for that. The lights were coming on faster now. Blade could hear a distant but fast-swelling chant as they did so.
He slipped up the slope from the beach, taking care to avoid softer patches of ground where he might leave footprints. Fifty yards up the slope, he came to a particularly thick patch of the bushes, some of them eight feet high. The close-grown rough branches were hard to push apart and painful to slip through. But when he had done so, he could crouch almost invisible to anyone on the beach.
The chant coming out of the darkness was definitely getting louder now. With relief Blade recognized human voices-at least forty or fifty of them, all chanting together to a beat set by two deep-toned drums. He had encountered a fair number of nonhuman or semihuman beings in his Dimension X travels, but he always preferred to at least start by dealing with human beings. Not that human beings were necessarily that much more predictable than nonhumans, or less likely to shoot first and ask questions afterward. It was more a question of what contributed most to his own peace of mind.
The lights kept growing brighter, the chant kept growing louder. Now Blade could make out words, and understand them. Once again Lord Leighton's computer had done its incomprehensible work on his brain, altering it so that he understood and responded in the language of the new dimension, however strange it might be.
The chant was a repetition of a single set of sentences, in a complex and varying pattern. Blade could pick out at least three different parts, and every fourth repetition they seemed to shift key entirely.
Over and over again the words came:
«Hail, flower of life! Hail, flower of death! We come to you in the service of Ayocan. We come to you in the judgment of Ayocan.»
Ayocan? thought Blade. King, priest, saint, devil, god, spirit? And the flower of life/death? Blade had a sudden chilling thought. Could the «flower» be the one growing on the bushes where he was lurking, the bushes with the narcotic sap? There didn't seem to be anything else living here that might match the description. And what were the people approaching across the lake planning to do with the bushes?
He had no time to answer these questions, or ask himself any more. Suddenly even more yellow-orange light was shining from the lake. Narrowing his eyes against the new glare, Blade saw that behind each of the nine original lights a second one was now burning, brighter than the first. Then the original lights all went out, suddenly, simultaneously, with almost military precision. Now Blade could see what was approaching him across the lake-and who.
Chapter 3
Nine long outrigger canoes were approaching Blade across the lake, each sixty-odd feet long and filled with men. He counted more than thirty men in each canoe. All were thin-faced and brown-skinned, but otherwise they seemed divided into two groups.
One group was obviously warriors. They carried long swords that gleamed in the torchlight with the sheen of polished bronze, and daggers and short-handled axes that seemed to be made of polished green stone. They wore dark blue armor from neck to wrists and ankles, consisting of dyed leather patches sewn on a cloth backing, and on their heads they wore vividly dyed orange, red, yellow, and green helmets plumed with white feathers. About twenty of the men in each boat were warriors. Two stood at the bow, tending the torch that poured out yellow-orange light, one stood at the stern, tending the steering oar, and the others paddled.
The other men in each canoe were-what? They wore only simple flowing yellow-orange robes, with a bit of blue embroidery at the neck, and no weapons that Blade could see. Their heads were not only shaved bald but apparently oiled, from the way they glistened in the light. Their faces were also oiled, and cheeks, forehead, and neck were marked with cryptic signs in white. Each of them, Blade noticed, carried a large blue cloth bag also marked with white signs and slung from a blue leather belt at his waist. It was these men who were keeping up the chant about the flower of life and death.
That was all Blade was able to make out before the warriors suddenly drew in their paddles. The canoes floated in to shore and grounded on the gravel beach with gentle scraping sounds. The warriors in the bows of each one leaped down into the water, carrying a large stone with a rope tied around it, and dropped this improvised anchor on the beach. In each canoe a yellow-robe rose to his feet and went forward to the torch in the bow, pouring some liquid over it from a small bronze ewer he took from the bottom of the boat. Each torch blazed up still more brightly, spreading yellow-orange light still farther up the slope from the beach.
In Blade's mind the need to be cautious fought a brief battle with the need to make contact with the human population of this dimension. Normally he would not have hesitated to step out from his hiding place and greet the men in the canoes. But the shaven-headed men looked too much like priests-priests of Ayocan, perhaps? And where there were priests, there was often some religious rite that it was ill-advised for a stranger to interrupt. The best plan for the moment was to stay under cover, watch, and wait. The torches were so bright now that making a run for it undetected would probably be impossible. Particularly with two hundred or more warriors ready to pursue him. Blade lowered himself into a more comfortable position and settled down to follow his own advice.
As soon as the canoes were safely beached and anchored, the warriors put away their paddles and began climbing out. They splashed onto the beach and formed a double line extending inland from the bow of each canoe. Then it was the priests' turn. Without breaking their chant, they filed out of the canoes and onto the shore, unfastening their bags as they went and holding them up high over their heads. When all had reached dry ground, the leader of each file barked a single word.
«Nolk!»
And all the priests went down on their knees, placing their bags reverently on the ground in front of them, each at the base of one of the bushes. Except for the breathing of many men, silence fell over the shore.
Definitely a religious rite, thought Blade. He was sorry he had not made a run for it when he first saw the yellow, orange lights. Now it was even more dangerous than before to try to escape. Since the priests did not seem to be coming far up the slope, the remains of his bough-bed might pass unnoticed, he hoped.
Now each priest picked up his bag, opened it, and pulled out a large curved knife, like a pruning knife, and a small brass bottle. With a quick slash of the knife each priest cut through the bush in front of him. Then he picked it up, and dipped the broken end into the bottle. Finally, he laid the bush gently and carefully aside. Blade noticed that the cutoff end now gleamed black.
The priests then rose to their feet, the chant sounded again, and each took two steps forward. Then they knelt again and repeated the ritual. Slash-dip-lay aside. And again, and again. Blade realized with a chilling shock that they were moving rapidly up the slope toward him, toward where he had mutilated more than a dozen of the bushes.
The intervals between the cutting of bushes were growing longer now, and the priests were also fanning out as they climbed. They formed a solid line nearly a quarter of a mile from end to end, with Blade still near the center. Behind them as they advanced came the warriors, picking up the bushes as gently as they would have picked up newborn babies and carrying them back to the canoes. Unless both priests and warriors were blind, they must see those broken branches soon.