“I’m willing to do that,” Stephen said earnestly. “If it will work.”
“That was a joke, boy.”
“Oh,” Stephen said, and his sarcasm got the better of his sense. “My mistake, but a natural one. A joke from you? Apologies, but the first time you see a fish fly, you’re likely to think it’s a bird.” Then he sobered again. “Well, what, then?”
“I have no idea,” the holter said. “I’ll think of something before we catch up to them.”
“Marvelous plan.”
Aspar shrugged. “Do you have a better one? Something you read in a book, maybe?”
“Well,” Stephen considered, “in the Travels of Hinn, when beset by brigands, Hinn and his companions made themselves seem more numerous by building figures of mud and straw.”
“Yah. Were they able to make these figures walk?”
“Ah … no. But if we could lure Desmond and his men to come after us—”
“To fight our stick men?”
“Fine, maybe that wouldn’t work. What if we set a trap? Dig a pit and put sharpened stakes in it, cover it over with leaves or something?”
Aspar nodded. “Fine idea. We’ll dig this pit with our hands, shall we, before sunup? Maybe you can lead them in circles while the horses and I dig.”
“I’m just trying to help,” Stephen muttered. “And you asked.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Aspar sighed. “Next I’ll ask for a clout on the head. It would be more useful.” He remounted Ogre, then shot Stephen a more companionable glance. “Keep thinking,” he said. “Who knows, maybe you’ll actually come up with something helpful.”
Stephen did prove himself useful a few bells later, when he waved for Aspar’s attention. The holter caught the motion instantly and reined Ogre to a halt. Stephen tapped his ear, then pointed. He could hear men talking up ahead, and he was certain it was the rogue monks.
He had formed the opinion that none of the men they pursued had senses as well honed as his own, but there was still no point in taking chances. Thus far, remaining at the edge of his own hearing had kept them undetected. Stephen intended to treat it as a rule.
Aspar understood his signals and carefully dismounted. Stephen followed suit. The holter quietly commanded the horses to stay where they were, and the two men began creeping through the forest edge toward the source of the sound.
They stopped and crouched in a tangled mass of grapevines on the worn shoulders of a hill. Below, the forest broke into sparsely wooded fields, and beyond that a broad plain, green-gold in the afternoon sunlight.
Sixteen men were setting up camp around a small conical mound in the lightly wooded fringe. A couple of tents were already up. Ten of the figures wore broad-brimmed hats and their faces were wrapped in gauze; that would be the Sefry, Stephen mused. The rest were human, and their number included Desmond and his remaining monks. Stephen glanced over at Aspar, who wore a look he had come to recognize as quiet fury. Stephen raised an eyebrow, and the holter glanced back, mouthing a word.
Fend.
Doubtless the holter was already working out how to kill fifteen men so he could get to the one.
Aspar motioned for Stephen to remain where he was and prowled off so silently he might have been a forest cat. Stephen desperately wanted to ask him where he was going, but he didn’t dare.
Once the holter had vanished from sight, Stephen lay there, watching, wondering what he was supposed to do.
Below, the monks and Sefry were soon done preparing their camp, but their activities didn’t cease. In fact, the small mound became the focus of new activity. It was with foreboding that Stephen realized the hill must be a sedos.
It was cool, but sweat beaded on his brow as he crawled nearer, hiding at last behind the mounded roots of a huge oak on a lower part of the hill. His senses expanded, and the life of the forest pulsed through him in sound. The chattering of squirrels above him worried into his head, accompanied by the stridulations of crickets and cicadas anticipating the coming of dark, just a bell or so away. The clicking chorus of leaf-cutting ants going about their tasks tickled the drums of his ears. Finches twittered happily and jays protested the presence of Spendlove’s party below.
He strengthened his concentration, and through the stir of forest heard his enemies talking.
Spendlove chanted in a language Stephen did not recognize, though every now and then he caught a word that sounded like Old Vadhiian. Two of the other monks—Seigereik and one Stephen didn’t know—had been stripped to the waist, and one of the Sefry was painting strange glyphs or symbols on their chests. Yet another man—Stephen did not recognize him either, but did not think him a monk—had been stripped naked. He was taken to the top of the sedos and staked out spread-eagle. He had something stuffed in his mouth.
Where is Aspar? Stephen wondered desperately. Something very bad was about to happen, something that needed stopping. He searched the surroundings, but the holter could move so invisibly when he wanted to that even Stephen’s saint-given senses couldn’t always locate him.
Desmond switched languages, to Old Vadhiian, and Stephen was suddenly riveted. His mind translated so swiftly it was like hearing his native tongue.
One to open the way, dread power, and one to walk the way. A path of blood for the changeling, a soul to work the change.
Spendlove drew something from his robes, something that glittered so sharply it brought an ache to Stephen’s eyes. Brother Desmond moved to the prone man, who tried to shriek but could not. Desmond knelt over the bound man, and Stephen realized with a dull shock that the terrible thing in his hand was some sort of knife, as the monk split the man open from sternum to groin and begin pulling out his innards. The struggling quickly diminished to twitching.
Stephen’s morning meal rose to his throat, but he kept it there, tightening his will, concentrating on the details of what was happening, trying to abstract them, to pretend it wasn’t the end of a human life he was watching, that those weren’t intestines Spendlove and his men were spreading in strange patterns around the still-writhing figure.
After a time, seemingly satisfied, Spendlove beckoned one of the bare-chested monks—Seigereik—to step forward. Seigereik did so, face grim, straddling over the still-twitching, disemboweled figure.
“Are you ready, Brother?” Spendlove asked softly.
“I am, Brother Spendlove,” Seigereik said, his voice tight with determination.
“Be strong,” Spendlove bade him. “There will be a moment of disorientation. There will be pain, but you must bear it. And you must succeed. There can be no more failure.”
“I will not fail, Brother Spendlove.”
“I know you won’t, Brother Seigereik, my warrior.”
Seigereik lifted his arms and closed his eyes.
“A soul to work the change,” Spendlove intoned, and struck Seigereik in the heart with the glittering knife. Stephen choked back a gasp as the monk’s legs folded and he dropped lifeless. The air around the sedos seemed to darken, and something like a high keening of wind whipping black smoke soughed off through the treetops.
What have I just seen? Stephen wondered. Two sacrifices, one willing, one not. And Seigereik was supposed to complete a task after he was dead? It didn’t make any sense. Unless …
Would the corpse rise again? Had Desmond done the unthinkable and broken the law of death?
But the monk’s body remained where it had fallen. No, it was the soul that had been sent away, wrapped in dark magic.
He shook himself away from his suppositions. The Sefry and two of the remaining monks were mounting their horses.
“He’d better succeed,” one of the Sefry—by his eye patch, probably Fend—remarked.
“Your way is prepared,” Spendlove assured him. “It might even be over by the time you get there.”