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Show rain dance," began Elsen good naturedly, for the Desert Kingdom was most proudly atheistic and worshipped naught but good food and lusty battle. "Aye, but-fools we were indeed," said Jothra, "not to keep praying and fasting for a cure." "Fast we will, and that rightly," growled Zud, "with not a drop of rain since last NinthMonth!" "Ho! Ho!" cried a weary Eastern Messenger, staggering into the room with an enormous box of hardcopy- He looked road worn and dusty and was in fact one of the number of scouts sent out to transmit the request to the Commendium folk through the FarthestPost and sustain themselves, it should be noted, through plunder of the nearby villages and settlements over there. Lusela looked around at the scout, pleased and gratified. 'Twas a good investment, having her priestesses throw out the demons that possessed the Easterners and their forebears ever since their settlement on BauerWorlde, so that these scouts here could pass over the Tartars without fear. For of the entire Four Kingdoms folk, the Seljuks were the ones least afraid of those incredible peaks. The northerners avoided them for fear of awakening the drones in the Network of their presence and finely wrought gold. And the RedDesert folk avoided them through sloth and fear of the logic-disproving magic the Commendium folk practiced on everything under the BauerWorlde Twin Suns. But the Easterners, infested with every sort of worship and suspicion, peppered with self-avowed priests and priestesses skilled in casting out devils, and forever besprinkled and hung about with potions and powders and amulets for warding off evil-though 306 |