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headed for Singing Rock. Singing Rock spread his fingers, and the bullets
sprayed off his hands in a screeching, whining burst of fire and hot lead.
Then there were nothing but echoes, and they were gone.
Harry stood up. Singing Rock was silent and pale, and there were beads of
perspiration glistening on his forehead.
"You deliberately attracted those bullets," said Harry, hoarsely. "You dumb
Indian, you. What would have happened if Crazy Horse's spell hadn't worked?
They would have blown you away. Straight to the happy hunting grounds with no
stop for lunch."
Singing Rock wouldn't look at him. "I have to trust my spells," he replied
quietly. "If I lose my faith in my magic, what do I have left?"
Harry let out a long breath. "Okay. But next time, why not just duck when the
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bullets start flying? All right?"
Singing Rock nodded. There wasn't time for any more banter. The night was
crisscrossed with flashing spotlights, and hideous with the whooping of
sirens, but over it all they could still hear Misquamacus as he completed the
incantation for calling down the first of the Indian demons. They could feel
the rumble of thunder through their feet, and the lightning that had stalked
the distant hills was now flickering closer.
"Listen," said Singing Rock. "Between them, those medicine men are calling
down Nashuna and Pa-la-kai and Coyote. The demons won't be able to resist
their summons, because they're too powerful, all together like that."
Neil, wiping a smudge of dirt from his face, said, "What are we going to do if
they do call the demons down? How can we possibly fight them?"
Singing Rock took a look at the spirit cage he had left on the fence. So far
it was quiet, and showed no signs of activity. He rearranged the ribbons and
beads, and finished casting the powders he had brought with him.
Then he said, "What you have to remember is that almost every demon can be
appeased. Some demons want blood, others want manitous. If you can offer a
demon what he needs to survive and maintain his strength on the great outside,
then you can usually succeed in dismissing him."
"Usually?" asked Harry. "How often is usually?"
"More often than never," replied Singing Rock. "And right now, we're clinging
on to every straw we've got."
There was an earsplitting burst of thunder, and they looked in fear up at the
sky. All the way down the dark length of the lake, huge trees of forked
lightning sizzled and crackled, and the air reeked of electricity. Then
darkness swamped them again, and the heavy clouds rolled over the mountains
and blotted out the stars and the moon and the night sky.
Misquamacus was calling now, at the top of his voice. "Nashuna, we summon you!
Nashuna, we command you! Nashuna, god of darkness, we summon you!"
Above the circle of medicine men, a hundred feet in the air, a roiling knot of
darkness appeared, darker than the clouds. Out of its threatening, amorphous
midst, Harry could make out scores of what looked like red glittering eyes,
evil and ravenous, and from beneath its cloudy bulk, dark smoky tentacles
trailed toward the ground. The spirit cage on the fence began to rattle and
shake as if it were being worried by a mad dog.
There were heavy bursts of gunfire from police and soldiers on both sides of
the bridge, and again both Highway Patrolmen and onlookers were cut down by
slicing bullets. Over the transmitter, Harry and Neil could hear the National
Guard colonel insisting on a cease-fire, and phoning Travis Air-Force Base for
an air strike.
Singing Rock, though, was totally preoccupied by Misquamacus, and by the huge
bulk of Nashuna the demon of darkness. He stepped forward now, through the
lines of police cars, and walked to the end of the bridge. Harry, from where
he was crouching, was sure that he could see Misquamacus bare his teeth and
smile. Singing Rock was caught in the floodlight, one man alone against
twenty-two, and against all the terrible powers of the elder gods, and
Misquamacus was at last going to get his revenge.
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Misquamacus raised one arm. Singing Rock stopped, only thirty or forty feet
away from the circle of wonderworkers.
In his distant, strange, echoing voice, Misquamacus called: "Why do you fight
me, little brother? Why do you defy me?"
Singing Rock didn't answer. Instead, he lifted his medicine bones and beat
them together over his head in a complicated rhythm. Then he pointed one bone
up to the sky, up toward the dark bulk of Nashuna, and spun the other bone in
his free hand.
Misquamacus suddenly understood what Singing Rock was doing, and raised his
own arm toward Nashuna. But he was moments too late. Singing Rock's
incantation was completed, and he abruptly pointed his second bone toward
Neem, the bringer of thunder, one of the most celebrated wonder-workers of all
time.
There was a roaring, grinding, screeching sound like a cliff collapsing. Neem,
a muscular Indian in a buffalo-horn helmet, crossed his arms in front of him
to prevent Singing Rock's spell from reaching him. For almost a minute, the
two of them struggled against each other, with Misquamacus powerless to
intervene. Branches of lightning spat and fizzed around them, with sparks
showering across the road surface. From where he was standing, Harry could see
that Singing Rock was hunched forward with effort, and that the arm which was
still raised toward the grim shape of Nashuna was trembling with effort.
Suddenly, there was a horrendous scream. Neem, the bringer of thunder, had
fallen to his knees. Singing Rock was almost standing over him now, pointing
one bone toward his body and keeping the other bone directed at Nashuna. The
rumbling noises were deafening, and Harry felt sure the whole bridge was going
to collapse.
"Nashuna, demon of darkness, I give you this being's darkness for your stores
of night!" called Singing Rock, in a high, strained voice. "Take his darkness
as my sacrifice, and go back to the great outside!"
Neem fell to the road. He tried once to claw his way toward Singing Rock, but
he knew that he was defeated. Singing Rock had been too quick, too direct, and
had used one of the most powerful sacrificial spells. Dying, the
thunder-bringer shrieked in agony, as his skin peeled away from his body,
transparent layer by transparent layer, and as his muscles and membranes and
bones were bared. He fell apart like a dissected flower, while his inner
darkness, the secret shadows inside his body, were drawn through Singing
Rock's steadily pointing bone and funneled into the black knots of Nashuna's
maw by the other, upright, bone.
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