Yonker held the microphone out to the audience.
The crowd answered, “NO.”
“No.” Yonker got terribly serious. “Are we a success if we’re not happy?”
“NO.”
“If we are God’s chosen, than how can we glorify His Name if we’re sad and wretched? How can we be a witness to His Power if we are weak and lacking? We can’t. We must stand strong. We must stand united. We are the Blessed. We must provide an example of His Love for us, for we are His Will upon this Earth. We must spread His Glory to the farthest corners, so those who don’t know Him look at us and seek Him out.”
Jack pondered if he could get away with sneaking out to “use the washroom” and decided he couldn’t.
“People come to me, and they say, ‘Ed, how can we help bring God’s will to those less fortunate?’ And I say, ‘Share. Share the blessings that God bestowed on you. Give of yourself to the Church, and the Church will glorify God in your name.’ I will tell you now, those who sit on their checkbooks and hoard their money in their bank accounts, those people do not witness for our God. You must give! Write that check today. Fill out that direct transfer form the children handed you at the entrance. Fill it out and sign your name if you want to go to Heaven, and send it to the business office.”
Yonker kept talking. Jack yawned and closed his eyes. If only he could curl up in his chair . . .
A finger jabbed him in the ribs. His eyes snapped open. Next to him, Audrey was listening to Ed. Her lips barely moved. “Stay awake.”
Jack sighed and stared at Yonker walking around onstage. For a while, he imagined what would happen if he turned into a lynx. People would run around, and he would growl and scare them. Then he wondered what Yonker would look like with a mustache.
Finally, people came through the aisles, passing some sort of platter around. Kaldar dropped a folded stack of bills held together with a small clip on it, and Jack gave it to some older lady standing in the aisle. The old lady made big eyes at the clip and took the platter away.
Then there was more annoying preaching: blah-blah-blah, we are so good, blah-blah-blah, God wants us to have money, then Yonker went offstage to the back while the choir sang some more, and Paul came to get them. Audrey hugged Jack and told him to be a really good boy and that she would see him soon.
Paul took them to the back of the church, all the way to the service entrance. A van waited for them. Paul opened the van door. Two other kids sat in the backseat, a dark-headed girl and a tall, lanky-looking kid with freckles and red hair.
“Get in,” Paul said.
George pondered the van.
“We’re going to camp,” Paul said patiently. “That’s all we’re doing.”
“Climb in already.” Jack pushed George a little.
“Don’t shove me.”
“Move so I don’t have to.”
They climbed into the van and bickered for the next fifteen minutes, until Paul told them that he would turn the van around and that, so help him God, making Ed happy wasn’t worth this. They both decided that would be a good time to shut up and rode the rest of the way in silence. The van crept up a narrow road, angling away from the main streets.
“Now this is going to feel a little weird,” Paul said. “There is nothing to be scared of. Just the pressure in the air here is different.”
“Why?” George asked.
“Subterranean gas,” Paul said. “It comes out through the cracks in the road. Take a deep breath and try to relax, okay?”
The van came to a stop. Paul stepped out and opened the side door. “Melanie and Robert, out. And you, too.”
Jack climbed out of the van. Melanie took his hand. “Don’t worry; it feels funny the first time.”
Jack rolled his eyes. George and the red-haired kid were trying to come up with some sort of arrangement that didn’t involve their holding hands. Finally, the tall kid put his hand on George’s forearm.
“Let’s go.” Melanie stepped into the boundary. “If you feel bad, you tell me, and we’ll go slowly.”
Jack took a step.
The pressure of the boundary ground on him. Magic ripped through Jack, thudding in his blood, saturating his muscles. Scents flooded his nose. He felt strong again.
Slowly, step by step, Melanie led him through the boundary to the Edge on the other side. Behind them, the city still teemed with life and the noise of cars, but before them wilderness stretched. Scraggly woods sheathed hills, growing denser in the distance. A lonely road led over them into the distance, where a mountain range jutted out of the hills. He hadn’t seen those kinds of mountains when Kaldar drove them around the city. Hills, sure. Mountains, no.
Melanie smiled at him. “You made it.”
George yanked his arm out of the red-haired kid’s grip.
“You okay?” Paul asked.
That’s right, I’m not supposed to know what just happened,
Jack recalled. “Yeah,” he said. “Where is the city?”
“It’s complicated. Come on, boys, get into the van. The camp’s straight ahead up that mountain. That’s where you’ll be staying tonight.”
The road took them over the hills, all the way up the spine of a mountain bristling with pines. They climbed and climbed, the van creaking, until finally they conquered the apex and rolled to a wooden arch marking the entrance. Beyond the arch, wooden buildings waited, all simple rectangles sitting side by side in two rows, and at the end of the row a large structure rose. Jack had expected a church, like an old Edge church they had seen a thousand times in their small Edge town of East Laporte. This church looked more like a barn, complete with heavy double doors. A man with a rifle stood at the entrance.
Paul steered the van to the arch, stopped to talk to some girl sitting on the side, and drove on, to one of the smaller buildings.
“This is your place for the night,” Paul said. “Lillian will make sure that you guys get sheets and toothbrushes and all that issued to you. Okay? It’s just you two in the room, since you guys are all jumpy, so you can lock the door at night.”
“Why do they get a separate room?” the tall kid from the back asked.
“Because I said so,” Paul said. “Anyway, go on, you two.”
Paul wasn’t a bad guy, Jack decided, once the van pulled away. He just had a lousy boss. The way Jack looked at it, you should know who you were working for. They worked for Kaldar, who was a cheat, a thief, and a gambler, but he was honest with them about it. George swung the door open, and they went inside. The room was small, barely any room between two beds. About fifteen minutes later, a young girl with freckles on her nose brought their sheets, toothbrushes, some towels, and two paper bags. She told them that food was served in the cafeteria, but they’d missed dinner, so they’d have to get dry rations. She smiled at George a lot.
Jack’s paper bag contained another turkey sandwich, some bars made out of grain and seeds, and an apple. Jack ate the sandwich and left the bar alone. He wasn’t a bird, and he wouldn’t be eating any seeds.
They locked the door and settled in their beds to wait for sunset.
Two hours later, the sun finally rolled past the horizon. George sat up in his bunk and pulled a plastic bag out of the pocket of his hoodie. Inside, a small furry body lay still.
“Should’ve gone with the squirrel,” Jack said quietly.
“Rat is better. They can get into tighter spaces.”
“Yeah, but people see a rat, they try to kill it. They see a squirrel and go, ‘Oh, how cute, look at its fluffy tail!’”
“It’s dark. Nobody will see it.” George closed his eyes.
“George?”
“Mmm?”
“What’s the point of this church?”
“That’s how Yonker makes money.” George shrugged.
“Yes, I get that part. But what do people who go to his church get out of it?”
George furrowed his eyebrows. “People are scared to die. Most religions say that there is life after death, that only your body dies, but your essence, your soul, keeps living. Yonker tells them that if they give him money, their soul will go to a good place.”
“Is Yonker a god?”
“Of course not.”
“So how can he control where the soul goes?”
“He doesn’t,” George answered.
“So he lies.”
“Yes.”
“Why do people believe him?”
“Because most people are decent, Jack. They don’t want to think that someone would stand up like that in front of a crowd and lie just to get their money. They want to believe that they’re doing something good when they go to church.”
“Do you believe in gods?”
George sighed. “I believe you have to be a good person. Whatever you do, good or bad, it will come back to you.”
It made sense, Jack decided.
“Look, not all churches are like Yonker’s church,” George said. “Some of them are good; some of them are bad. You have to decide for yourself if you want to go and which god you want to worship or not. It’s up to you not to be a sucker. Life gets really hard sometimes. You don’t remember when mom died, but I do. I cried, and Grandmere told me that Mom was in heaven, in a beautiful garden, where she was happy and safe. It helped. Anyway, we’ll talk about this later.”
George touched the rat. A faint pulse of magic sparked from his finger to the dark fur. The little rodent rolled to its feet and sat unnaturally still.
“Ready?” George glanced at him.
Jack took a deep breath, clearing his mind. He had to commit every word George said to memory. Kaldar had a recorder, but both he and Audrey worried that the boys would be searched, so in the end they decided not to risk bringing it. Now he was the recorder. All those memorization drills William made him do would finally pay off. “Ready.”
George stared into space. The rat scurried to the door, squeezed out through the narrow gap between the lower edge and the floor, and vanished from view.
“Log houses on the right, one, two, three, four, five,” George said, his voice a low monotone. Jack focused, committing each word to memory. “Identical houses on the left. Six, seven. The houses end in a wide space. Cafeteria on the left. Guardhouse on the right. Three people are playing cards. The one on the left is upset because he can’t remember the poker combinations. He’s accusing the others of cheating him. Two more people are in their bunks. Five guards total. There is a gun rack with rifles. Pathway from the wide space leading northwest. Trees. More trees. The path is maybe two hundred elbows in length. Large building.”
George fell silent. Jack waited.
“I’m at the ward. The Night plan won’t work. These wards are really old, at least as rooted in as ours were on the house in the Edge. You probably can get through in the lynx form, but none of us in human form can penetrate this. Going back into the camp now.”
So much for stealing the gadget.
“I’m at the church. The inside is large, one, two, three . . . twenty-five rows, in two sections in the middle of the floor. A lot of open space on the sides and before the stage. Another guard in the front row, carrying a rifle. He’s reading a book. The pulpit is empty. There is magical residue. Hallway to the right.” George’s face jerked.
“A cat. Damn it.”
“Did you get eaten?” Jack murmured, and cursed inwardly. George was so deep in trance he wouldn’t hear.
“I’m hiding under a mop bucket. He broke my neck. Hurt like hell.”
For the next ten minutes, they sat quietly.
“Okay, he went away.” George winced. “Two rooms. One on the right has another guard. He’s drinking coffee. The door on the left is fitted tight. I’ll have to backtrack and chew through the wall.”
Jack growled to himself. The longer George stayed in the trance, the harder it was to bring him back.
“This is a really thick wall,” George said. “It will be a while.”
Curse it.
Footsteps. Jack tensed. Closer, closer. Someone knocked on the door.
Go away.
The knocking persisted.
Jack padded to the door, dropped down, and sampled the draft floating under. The freckled girl from before.
He got up and opened the door half an inch. “Hey. How’s it hanging?”
She blinked. “Umm, is your brother here?”
Jack braced the door with his foot. If George started mumbling, their lives would get complicated fast. “He’s sleeping.”
The girl licked her lower lip nervously. “Maybe you could wake him up.”
“He’s tired. I’m tired, too.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you woke him up for me.”
The way she stood, determined, one foot forward, meant she wouldn’t go away on her own. He had to say something mean now, or they’d be stuck here with the door half-opened, and George could start talking any moment. Jack rummaged in his brain.
“He has a girlfriend. And she’s prettier than you.”
The freckled girl took a step back. “You know what? Fuck you.”
“Fuck you back. Bye now.” Jack shut the door and latched it.
Phew.
An hour passed. Another. This was taking too long.
Finally, George announced, “Okay, I’m through. The room is empty except for the table. On the table there is a square glass case. I see it now. It’s a low-grade Karuman emotional amplifier, level three, standard cloak-chain model, known as the Eyes of Karuman. There is a book in my luggage on automatics; it should have a picture. This item was used by a cult, and it’s been banned in the realms for at least a hundred years. It doesn’t just influence emotions; it cooks your brain until you become a fanatic. Judging by the mineral crust on the lower edges of the disks, this thing has been used a lot. You need to tell Kaldar and Audrey that when the device is active, the people likely think Yonker is a prophet and will defend him with their lives. But the effect is short-lived, so he has to continuously use it to keep the congregation together. The use of the device induces euphoria, and some research suggests that the congregation will exhibit dependent tendencies.”