Revenge of the Manitou (28 page)

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 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.

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.

There was
another peal of thunder, and
Nashuna
was gone.
Singing Rock stepped away from the spread-out remains of
Neem
the medicine man, warily watching
Misquamacus
. No
emotion showed on
Misquamacus
’ face, but he kept his
arms raised as a protection against Singing Rock’s magic.

“You have
defied me,” said
Misquamacus
. “Not for the first
time, but for the second time. You will die for this, and your
manitou
will wander the great outside forever, in constant
agony of mind and body. I,
Misquamacus
, promise you
this!” Singing Rock said nothing, but abruptly turned his back on
Misquamacus
and walked off the bridge. He came back to
Harry and Neil and set his bones back in his case with almost casual
professionalism. It was only when he turned to look at Harry that the strain on
his face really showed. He was white with effort, and his eyes seemed to have
lost all expression.

“How can you
turn your back on him?” asked Neil. “Why doesn’t he strike you down?”

Singing Rock
dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief. “He let me go because we’ve
declared this a kind of contest. There are rules to any contest, and the rules
to this one are that you don’t unleash your medicine on anyone whose back is
turned.”

Captain Myers
came across from the protection of his Highway Patrol car. He said briskly, “I
thought I told you jokers to stay out of this. I thought I specifically ordered
you out of here.”

“It’s just as
well you didn’t,” Harry told him. “You’d all be lying around like cut-up frogs
by now.”

“I demand to
know what’s going on here,” said the captain.

Singing Rock
sorted through his case. “What’s going on here is that I’m saving your life,”
he said brusquely. “Now, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of my
way and let me get on with it.”

“But what the
hell did you do out there?” demanded Captain Myers. “What was all that stuff
with the bone’s?”

“It’s very easy,”
said Singing Rock, taking out two leather pouches of powder. “
Nashuna
is the demon of darkness, and darkness to him is
like a blood transfusion. Everybody has inner darkness, physical and mental. I
gave
Nashuna
the inner darkness of
Neem
, that medicine man there, and
Nashuna
was satisfied and went away. I’m afraid you have to understand that the inner
darkness of a great medicine man is worth a great deal more to
Nashuna
than that of a captain of the Highway Patrol. He
might have had to dissect a few hundred policemen to achieve the same result.”

“Listen, you
refugee from a traveling sideshow,” snapped Captain Myers, “I’m ordering you
off this area at once. If you try to make your way back again, I’ll personally
make sure that you’re shot.”

Singing Rock
said, “If you make me leave, then I assure you that you won’t be here to shoot
me.”

On the fence,
the spirit cage began to rattle and shake again. Singing Rock turned around to
listen to it, and then said, “It’s Pa-la-
kai
.
Misquamacus
has summoned down the demon of blood.”

“The demon of
blood?” asked Captain Myers. “This sounds like a goddamn horror comic.”

There was more
thunder and blinding lightning, and for a few seconds
Misquamacus
and his medicine men were silhouetted by what looked like floating globes of
light, intensely brilliant suns that swam above their heads. Harry, his hand
raised to shield his face, could just make out the blue-white outline of
something within that intense light source before the bridge and the creek were
plunged into darkness again, and all he could see were red and green spots in
front of his eyes.

Singing Rock
went forward again, and stood in the gloom facing the bridge where
Misquamacus
had formed his circle. He called, “O spirits of
wind, I call you now to help me. O spirits of the storm, give me your strength.
I call upon you, hurricanes and whirlwinds, to give me your power.”

Captain Myers
said, “What the hell is that idiot doing? Doesn’t he know he’s going to get
himself killed?”

Harry held the
captain back. “Don’t go after him. Give him a chance. He knows the risks better
than you do.”

A faint breeze
began to disturb the grass around them. Then the breeze rose to a soft wind,
and whistled through the fence, and through the bones of the spirit cage. In a
few seconds, the wind had whipped up even harder, and clouds of dust were blown
up from the sides of the highway.

In a minute, it
had become a shrieking gale, and they couldn’t even hear themselves speak.

Behind
Misquamacus
, in the center of his medicine circle, the swimming
globes of Pa-la-
kai
, the demon of blood, flared up
again. They were brighter than the sun, brighter than anything Harry had ever
seen before. In the end, he found it impossible to look. The dazzling globes
were slowly floating together to form one shatteringly brilliant sun.

With his eyes
screwed up against the light, Harry watched Singing Rock anxiously. He could
see that the Indian was already tired, pitting his magic against
Misquamacus
and twenty other medicine men, any one of whom
was more experienced and more powerful than Singing Rock could be in three
lifetimes. And as the demon shone and shone, and slowly brought
himself
together into one supremely evil and unconquerable
shape, Singing Rock’s head fell onto his chest, and his arms gradually dropped.

The gale-force
winds, which had sprung up so quickly, began to die away.

“Come on, damn
you,” whispered Harry. “You can’t let him beat you now. Come on, damn you.

Come on!”

But Singing
Rock was exhausted. He sank down on one knee, and held his hands to his head to
concentrate on the spell he was trying to work. And meanwhile Pa-la-
kai
, in all his ravenous majesty and brilliance, swelled
larger and brighter and ever more devastating. Out of his dazzling maw came a
cacophony of gruesome howls and shrieks of bloodlust, and he
rose
again, high over Singing Rock, to take his sacrificial due.

Singing Rock
raised his eyes. Harry could see that he was almost blinded by the light of
Pa-la-
kai
. Neil, standing close by, said, “He’s
finished, Harry. He can’t fight that. He must be finished.”

Singing Rock
spread his arms. Only a few feet away now,
Misquamacus
stood over him in his eagle-winged headdress, tall and triumphant and
vengefully straight-backed. Behind
Misquamacus
, in a
silent semicircle, stood the greatest of the Indian wonder-workers,