As the Ritual moved into individual confessions, the Elders paced among the prostrate forms, listening closely. Confessors who seemed insincere or who offered trivial confessions were rewarded with a knock on the head or a kick to the ribs. But confessing anything too heinous would be more severely punished. Two years ago, the Elders had overheard a father confess that he loved his daughter more than his sons, and he had been outcast ever since.
Confessing brought greater danger for women. If the Elders judged a woman’s confession incomplete, they asked her father, husband, or son to stand and list her offenses. The village still discussed, in awed but excited tones, the year a husband accused his wife of “sympathizing with centaurs.” In the middle of the Ritual, the village—including the woman’s five children—rose up and drove her into the forest. She had not been seen again.
The Elders ignored the outcasts during the rite of Confession—they were unredeemable, their every breath an offense to those who followed Vran. As Abisina pushed the dirt and gravel from her mouth, she tried to block out the murmurs, accusations, and prescribed punishments.
Only a few more hours.
Never again would she be sub-jected to this harrowing day with its humiliation and pain. But a groan from Paleth recalled her mother’s words: You know it’s wrong that Paleth was punished for speaking the truth.
“Supplication!” an Elder cried.
As Abisina pulled her stiff body into the correct position—on her knees again, hands cupped before her—she noticed that Paleth was not the only villager crumpled on the ground. Older women, widows, and a few men had fallen and could not be roused by the prodding of the Elders. One Elder tried to kick Paleth awake, but she did not rise. And after a few more kicks, he gave up and moved on.
The sun was setting behind the fence, and the cold wind gained new strength as Abisina and the rest of the villagers assumed the final position: Adoration—sitting back on their heels, arms extended toward the sky, palms up, heads raised. Abisina felt her anger rise at the cruelty of the ritual: more villagers had collapsed, including a small girl a few feet from her. Paleth had curled into a ball, and Abisina could no longer hear her labored breath.
Charach had not come.
Abisina’s left leg cramped painfully. She tried switching her weight to her right, but her knee pressed into the sharp rock that had bedeviled her all day. She had no idea where the Elders were and took the chance of sliding slightly backward. She braced herself, but no blow came.
The chanter was singing the story of Vran—his miraculous descent down the Mountains Eternal with a small band of followers. Like everyone in the Vranian villages, Abisina knew the story as well as the Elders did. At every ritual, every funeral, every wedding, some version of the story was sung. Today they would chant the longest, but even this Abisina could recite herself.
She let her focus drift—the scene blurring to a swath of browns and grays. She tried to blur sensation, too, losing her pain in the haze, but a stirring in the crowd claimed her attention. She blinked a few times and realized that the Elder’s rough voice had been replaced by a clear, musical one.
A tall young man stood behind the altar now, a wreath of golden curls crowning his head. High cheekbones and a strong jaw gave his face dignity and power. His shoulders were broad, his waist thin. He was dressed in the same simple clothes as the villagers, but his were made of a rich fabric that contrasted sharply with the rough wool and soiled leather of the suppliants in the dirt. He stood in the posture of Adoration, eyes closed, the setting sun making a nimbus of his golden curls.
Is this—Vran?
Many villagers had dropped their arms in amazement, while the Elders stared and held their rods still. The young man continued to chant, but his melodic tones brought Vran’s story to life in a new way. Warmth radiated from Abisina’s chest to her stiff limbs. She wanted to pull the stranger’s words into her, make them part of her.
His voice changed as he described what Vran and his followers found when they descended from the mountains: “The land teemed with bestial centaurs, lustful and licentious! And as your people spread east, O Vran, we met demonic fauns, vile and depraved! And the dirty ground-dwellers— the dwarves—repugnant perversions of Man’s beauty!” The youth’s high forehead was furrowed as he spoke, his voice shaking with disgust. Abisina had never seen dwarves or fauns; though she had heard these descriptions at all of the Rituals, she felt them now more vividly than ever before. At the stranger’s words, Abisina’s stomach churned and she thought she might vomit into the dirt.
“But, you, O Vran,” the stranger sang, his tone now high and ethereal, lifting Abisina out of her disgust, “your beauty and perfection remind us of what we can be, what we must be, with you as our ideal and guide.”
As he sang, Abisina soared to heights beyond the Mountains Eternal. Gone were the pain and stiffness. She could kneel through the night and into the next day, if only the stranger kept singing!
For almost the whole of his chant, the young man stood motionless and reverent.
How does so much music come from his still body?
Abisina wondered. But as he began the final phrases of the Adoration, he lowered his arms until his hands rested on the stone table. And at the last word, he opened his eyes.
As the stranger looked toward where Abisina knelt in the dirt, the beauty he had woven with his words fell to shreds and darkness threatened to swallow her. The handsome young man was gone. In his place stood a grotesque figure: a White Worm, propped up on two thick limbs with razor claws. Its mouth gaped, dripping a viscous fluid. But the eyes were what revealed its evil heart, a ring of black pits circling the creature’s head.
Charach!
The White Worm’s eyes rested on Abisina for a long moment, then moved across the crowd. The darkness receded. The golden youth again stood behind the altar.
The silence of the Ritual broke, and throughout the crowd, people were getting to their feet, crying out, jockeying to get closer to Charach. Abisina rose unsteadily. In the rush, she glimpsed a prone old woman stepped on as if she were a hillock of grass.
Paleth!
No one was watching the outcasts now. Abisina ran to where Paleth lay in the dirt and took the girl in her arms. “Paleth!” She tried to rouse her, but her eyelids didn’t even flutter.
Shouts came from throughout the crowd: “Deliverer!” “Come to save us!”
Abisina laid Paleth gently back on the ground and got to her feet. She needed her mother! If Bryla had her baby already, Sina would have come to the Ritual. But as Abisina searched the crowd, she saw no sign of her mother. The people were looking hungrily toward the altar, hoping for Charach’s gaze to fall on them.
Didn’t they see the Worm?
Even the outcasts had joined the growing chant, “Charach, Charach!”
She bent back to Paleth. If she couldn’t wake her, she’d have to carry her to Sina. She worked her arms under the girl’s back and was just starting to lift her when Jorno appeared, taking the burden from her.
“I’ve got her,” he said, settling the limp form on his own shoulder.
“My mother—she’s with Hain’s Bryla. I’ll go with you.”
“No, you stay here!” Jorno glanced toward the Elders, who had joined the chanting. “If we both leave, they might notice.” Jorno took off, barely slowed by Paleth’s added weight. He disappeared among the village huts.
Abisina looked back toward Charach. He stood now on the altar, his cloak pulled from him in the frenzy, and reached out to the hysterical villagers—taking the dirty, work-worn hands in his own strong fingers. His face, lit with a smile and the blush of health, beamed on the sallow faces lifted to him.
He straightened and called to the crowd. “My friends! My friends! You do me too much honor!” The people tried to drown his humility with their roar, but he held up his hands and said, “Please! Let me speak!” and the shouts died to a murmur.
“We have sung today the story of our Deliverer. Vran brought us here so many generations ago, and we have repaid him with our humbleness and adoration. He is our Paragon, and we offer him our hearts. I see the love on your faces.”
“Vran! Vran!” the crowd chanted.
“But I see something else, too: Hunger. Disease. Suffering.” Charach paused as if overcome with their pain. “We have come far, but we have labored hard.”
“He speaks as if he is one of us!” someone cried and the shouts resumed.
“For years”—Charach spoke over the tumult—“our crops have been plagued by rains that wash away the seeds sown with our sweat. Or the summer’s heat beats down on the tender seedlings, killing them in the inferno.”
A groaning cry rose from the throng.
“And the beasts set upon us! We must keep our flocks inside our walls”—he gestured toward the sheep and goats—“while they grow thin and listless on this barren common. We cower behind our walls, afraid to harvest what we have sown. Is this what Vran wanted for his people?”
“No!” the crowd cried in unison.
“Is this why Vran led us over the treacherous mountains?”
“No!”
Abisina fought the urge to cover her ears.
Charach let the people vent their fury before raising his hand for silence.
He spoke just above a whisper at first, but his voice grew louder and louder. “We offer our voices in song to Vran. We confess our transgressions and beg forgiveness. We offer sacrifices.” Charach picked up a handful of onions from the altar and held them toward the crowd as he thundered, “It’s not much, but we have so little!”
A few shouted, “Yes,” but other villagers hesitated. Could they have given more? The Elders shifted uneasily.
“Maybe we do not quite deserve what Vran gave us.” Charach’s words sent a tremor through the crowd. “Maybe we are too weak. Maybe we hold to our small comforts because we cannot seize his great reward. Look at these gifts.” His voice echoed off the village walls. “Is this what our Lord Vran deserves?”
“No!” called a lone voice, and immediately the rest of the crowd bellowed, “NO!”
Jorno appeared beside Abisina, panting slightly. “Is she safe?” Abisina had to shout to be heard.
Jorno nodded, but before he could say more, Charach began to speak again.
“We stand on the brink of realizing Lord Vran’s vision! Right now, in the other Vranian villages, men and boys, even women and girls, are hard at work: training to be soldiers, fletching arrows, stringing bows. Will Vranille join them? Will Vranille follow me against the beasts who have kept us down far too long?”
The response of the crowd was deafening. Across the common, people screamed, hands in the air, fire in their eyes.
“Then you must show Vran your love—as the rest of the Vranians have done!” Charach screamed. “Show him that you deserve what he foresaw for you: defeat of the beasts and the dominion of Man!”
Abisina remembered her churning stomach when Charach had first spoken of the beasts. But this time, as his eyes flicked toward her, it was his gaze that brought a sick fear.
“There is pollution here, within these very walls! You have grown soft in enforcing Vran’s law! How can you expect to conquer the monsters that plague your land, when you cannot conquer yourselves? You must wipe out all that is weak in you! You must atone!” The crowd was again on the move, pushing harder to get close to Charach. The outcasts joined the press, drawn by his rousing words.
“It is time for the rise of Man! It is time to take our rightful place. But first, we must rid ourselves of all that is not worthy!”
The crowd went mad—a woman in front of Abisina tore at her arms until they bled. Men ripped off their tunics and beat their chests. The outcast Delvyn fell to her knees and dashed her head against the ground. Through the crush of bodies, Abisina could make out Elder Theckis standing back, arms crossed, watching.
Next to her, Jorno put a warning hand on her arm. “Be ready to run.”
Abisina spotted a large man throwing himself through the crowd like a fish swimming against the current. “The outcasts!” he screamed. “The cursed outcasts!”
His cry spread, and the crowd rounded on the outcasts. Without a second thought, Abisina was running—vaulting a fence, rushing down a lane. Jorno matched her stride for stride. She glanced back only once as the surging crowd trampled two outcasts who had fallen. She turned and ran for her life.
Abisina ran blindly, slipping behind huts, leaping short garden fences, switching direction with no plan for where she was going. Jorno was no longer with her, but she didn’t know when or how they got separated.
Eventually her mind caught up with her feet. She had to run
somewhere
.
The cries of the mob became fractured as their quarry scattered. Abisina paused for a minute against a hut, thankful that the sun was now behind the wall, leaving the village in twilight.
I have to find Mama!
Abisina tried to get her bearings. Bryla lived on the northeast side, in one of the outer rings of huts. Luckily, she had run north. It was not far.
She took a step out of the shadows, intending to cross the lane and lose herself in the huts beyond, when a figure came around the corner of a hut twenty paces from where she stood. She leapt back and held her breath. The figure stopped a few feet away, and Abisina recognized the familiar blonde braid.
Lilas.