Eyes of arctic blue gazed back at him. “I asked you to please step aside. I need room.”
“You need … ?” The swordsman’s expression narrowed. “All of a sudden it’s not ‘Hunkapa need’ or ‘Hunkapa want Simna move.’ It’s ‘Would you please step back, Simna’—glib and polite as a thrice-bedamned court orator.” He straightened and took a couple of steps backward, staring hard, hard, at the massive, looming figure. “By every goddamned god I’ve ever sworn by—what’s going on here?”
“I need room in which to work.” Having concluded his hasty but thorough examination of the herdsman’s corpse, Hunkapa Aub rose to his full height, tilted his shaggy head back until he was gazing at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and stretched both arms up and out.
Opposite, Ahlitah was in stealthy retreat, muscles tensed, head held low. “I knew there was something about him. I knew it.”
“What’s that?” Simna shouted across Ehomba’s prostrate body at the big cat. “What did you know?”
The black litah growled softly, its rending claws fully extended as they scraped backward across the floor. “He never smelled stupid.”
“Simbala!” cried Hunkapa Aub, imploring forces that lay deeper than his words. “Acenka sar vranutho!”
A brilliant white glow appeared above his head, a fierce effulgence that pulsed with scarcely restrained energy. Descending on the far side of the dais, Hymneth the Possessed and his new consort paused and turned. Behind the helmet, the ruler of all Ehl-Larimar—blinked.
Eyes closed tight, chanting to himself, Hunkapa Aub lowered his arms until both hands were pointing at the floor—and at the prone figure of Etjole Ehomba. “Haranath!” he rumbled, and the pulsating, glittering orb responded. Drifting down from its location above the shaggy head, it impacted the body of the herdsman, and sank into it like milk into a sponge. A pale brilliance suffused the slender cadaver, overflowing it with radiance from head to toe. Eyes still shut, Hunkapa sustained the incantation as an obviously agitated Hymneth released the Visioness Themaryl and started hurriedly back around the base of the dais.