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 then, but this I tell you, Taori, there are those against us who being viewless we cannot strike, whose nets are spread for us, whose spears are prepared.”

“Aioma,” said Dick, “no net can hold me such as you speak of. Nets spread by the viewless ones are for the spirit—Ananda—not the body. My spirit is with Katafa, safe in her keeping, how then can Uta Matu seize it?”

“Who knows?” said Aioma. “He is artful as he is strong, and Le Juan who is dead with him is more artful still, and, look, we have the child of Le Juan’s daughter with us—Le Moan. Aie! had I thought of all this I never would have brought her.”

“How can she hurt us?”

“It is not she. It is Le Juan, the wicked one, whose blood is in her.”

To Aioma, as I have said before, people were not dead as they are with us, only removed to a distance, and though he might speak of Spirits, he spoke of people removed out of sight, yet still potent.

He did not believe that Uta Matu could use a real net or spear against Dick, but he did believe that the dead king of Karolin and his witch woman could, in some way, stretch through the distance to lay nets and strike with spears. Ghostly spears and nets not meant for the body, but the man.

If you could have pierced deeper into the mind of Aioma you would have found the belief—never formulated in words—that a man’s body was just like the shell of a hermit crab, a thing that could be thrown