Clash of Star-Kings by Avram Davidson Read Free Book Online Page A

explosion of all the rockets at once, Luis saw the catafalque come stumbling, heavily, to the ground. He cried out. He saw the Hermit fall, he saw his splendid coverings in the dust, he saw the Hermit rise and look from side to side —
    Total pandemonium now. Glimpses of people fighting, fainting, screaming, struggling. Glimpses, totally inexplicable, of figures half-human and halfcoyote —
    — darkness again —
    — the Hermit, with tottering steps, uncertain at first, then very quickly, vanished into the blackness.
    And Luis, seeing the footsteps which glowed briefly and phosphorescently as they appeared and then disappeared, Luis followed after them, after the swiftly retreating figure of the Holy Hermit.

IV
    Long and long he followed these evanescent tracks, like the glistening of snail trails or the fitfully cold flames of the fireflies, up through the hills into the cold black night where the cold white stars seemed peering low upon the land of Earth. Sometimes it seemed to him that he knew the path he followed and sometimes he was sure that he did not. Now and then he heard the howling of coyotes and he shivered less from the cold than from the recollection of every tale he’d ever heard about the
Naguales
, the men-who-were-coyotes, the-coyotes-who-were-men, and who, as part of wicked sorcery, were infinitely more dangerous to men than any real coyotes would or could ever be.
    He pushed these fears aside, not only because fear was not
macho
, but because these legends stemmed from the malevolent Meshika, the Tenocha-Aztec people, whose decadent descendants lived in the
Barrio Occidental;
not from the benevolent Moxtomi, the real heritors of the land. If indeed the Hermit of the Holy Mountain had Power or Powers — and, after seeing him rise from the dead, Luis scarcely felt capable of doubting it — then his power ought certainly to protect Luis, who was literally now following in his footsteps. Following in something akin to numbness, something not far from a kind of terror he had never known before, following with feet which stumbled now and then not only from the darkness but from fatigue … for had he not made the long, long walk up these same hills earlier in the day and then down again? … But, still:
    Following.
    Now and then he saw below him the huddled handful of lights which was Los Remedios; sometimes, very infrequently, a moving spark which he knew must be an automobile, or, likelier, a truck on one of the roads down on the lower slopes; and once he saw the tiny spurt of flame in the fire-box of the
mas o menos
, toiling to Amecameca with a line of freight cars. And overhead, the deliquescent stars dripped dew and delicate mist upon him.
    But for the most part he saw only the shining, fleeting footprints of the Hermit, and he hesitated to plant his own feet upon them to guide his steps before the pallid light faded away forever.
    How far ahead the Hermit now was, Luis did not know. A faint notion that the old stories were true and that the Holy man was on his way to Rome took hold of him — but he cast it off. The mood of it stayed with him, though, with all its intimations. Whatever the Hermit was, he was not a mere corpse or effigy. Was
not
. Such did not rise and walk off into the darkness and the mountains. But in the name of … anything! … what
did
rise and walk off — anywhere! — after having supposedly been dead for four hundred years?
    He had not, surprisingly, formed any answer to this by the time he reached the pueblo of San Juan Bautista Moxtomí. He was very tired, stumbling with stiff and twitching legs, eyes burning; he needed rest and warmth … and answers … answers … answers. He saw the men posted along the path, answered their hail in The Language, passed by them into the small open area which was the plaza, and there he saw the people of the pueblo sitting in a wide circle with faces of awe and joy and inside the circle burned a fire and the night air was odorous with