From Chapter Seven: Resurrection

The mountain was loftier than any I had seen in the Schinderschands, but the forest was dense and full of hardwoods choked in thick underbrush and ancient power grooved in their hardened bark.

Among them scuttled spiders, larger and blacker than panthers, withering each plant they touched with their corruption.  They were demons, ancient and deathless.  It was easy to see this, and they stalked a figure who lingered in the deep shadows, holding only a gleaming, curved, single edged sword and a small, curved, gilded bow .

I strained to see the figure, but it remained dark and unresolved to me.  The spiders leapt at the wielder of the weapon and were met with a sudden fury.  This person made the deathless taste death.  Almost effortlessly the fighter made the demon spiders fall.  Effortlessly the sword fell and arrows flew, a technique that amazed me.  It sank death’s teeth into the deathless creatures. Each one melted in its boiling blood and its eyes rolled to the feet of the fighter.  I glanced a necklace of such eyeballs, like beads, around the shadowed figure’s neck.  I strained to see anything at all of this person, and at last resolved thick fur.

The fur shimmied and lit up and the figure turned, but I could see no face.  The figure danced as music played.  I could see no face because the dancer wore a wooden mask elaborately carved into the face of an ape.  Several such dancers whirled around a huge pot full of boiling milk.  I smelled milk and tea leaves and spices as the dancers sang out:

“Tsaza burab meil!  Vankhishinar ai Ankhaboot Tsaza meil!  Mubharka! Mubharka! burab-tzaisan!”