Shadowplay

WATCHER 3

The fire bloomed in the dark, sudden as a sneeze. A naked man painted in horizontal stripes of dusty black and chalky white rose from the ring of painted men who raised a noise of rattles and rattling drums that seemed to lift him off the ground. Nata kata atahao, they sang in the Oldiangue, Kiki kiska kiskelita.

The dancer scooped resins from the spirit pouch and flung them into the fire with passionate intensity in every line of his body, flung himself into leaps and cartwheels, the capers and caprioles of his sacred dance. The ring of men swayed and chanted in unison, breathed in unison, even thought in unison.

Na-priests came from the trees in black cowls and black leather, pellet rifles in their black-gloved hands. Sunk deep in their outlaw ceremony, the celebrants saw nothing, the dancer saw nothing but the grand images of the dreamgods. A black hand lifted, the rifles snugged against black leather cheeks. The hand fell. There was a rapid, spitting volley. The celebrants fell over between one breath and the next, dead before they knew they were shot.

Several of the Na-priests gathered the bodies into a pile while the rest of them vanished into trees. There was the shriek of chainsaws and other less definable noises, then the priests were back with chunks of wood which they piled around and over the bodies. They emptied half a dozen carafes of fuel over the pyre and tossed matches at it. In silence as intense as the chanting and the dance, they squatted and stared into the fire until the pile was ash, flesh and wood alike.