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They’re looking forward to this expedition as much as I’m dreading it.
Ster. Torstem pulls out a small chest from beneath the bench. He produces several vials of a greenish liquid that he passes around to each of us. “Let’s buoy up our festive mood! The gods deserve all our emotions bared.”
With a few whoops, everyone else unstoppers their vial. I do the same and take a quick whiff.
It smells the same as the stuff we drank before. One small relief.
Feeling Torstem’s gaze on me, I toss mine back with the others. I don’t risk trying to spit any down my sleeve while I’m in his sights, but I do pop the other two antidote pills into my mouth under the guise of wiping it.
How do you feel?Julita asks, as if I can answer her right now.Do you think the antidote is working?
My nerves are still jittering, but none of the dizziness has come over me so far. Around me, my companions are laughing and swaying on their seats. I force a grin onto my face and giggle at a jolt of the wheels as if I’m equally ecstatic.
Avoiding the drug was the least of my many problems. What’s this special something Torstem has planned?
In the midst of the growing clamor, someone pulls out a sack of clay masks like the kind we wore during my initiation. I guess we college-goers still want to stay disguised from the rest of the Order of the Wild, wherever they come from.
Or maybe they see it as part of their worship, merging our humanness with animal forms.
I fix a mask over my face, the sense of concealment oddly reassuring even though I know everyone here is aware of who I am already. A quiver of energy tickles against my skin, but the illusions don’t spring into being yet—they must be triggered by other magic cast near the place where the Order of the Wild carries out their rites.
It isn’t much longer before I have the sense of the wagon tilting up a slope. We jostle against each other with more giddy laughter that I have to fake.
Did Torstem drink any of the drug? I think he might be totally sober too, though he joins in the laughter with a few chuckles of his own.
When the wagon lurches and stops, we scramble out onto a broad hilltop. A bonfire is already roaring away in the center of the grassy plateau, where three other covered wagons are parked nearby.
A figure whose mask gives the look of a weasel is just tossing more logs to feed the flames. At least a dozen others stand around the fire, cloaked in illusions of various beasts.
As Ster. Torstem ushers us forward, the heat crackles over my skin alongside a ripple of the magical energy that must be concealing it to more distant eyes. Some of the other conspirators start reaching their hands toward the flames and whirling around in chaotic dances.
“We open ourselves up for the All-Giver!” someone shouts.
More cries go up through the warbling of the flames. “Worship the wildness within!”
“Remember where we came from!”
“Honor the spirit at our center, the true life the Great God gave us!”
I spin and clap my hands as if thrilled to be there, eyeing the supplies around us surreptitiously. There are the four wagons, although I need to be careful of the horses. A couple of people have brought out crates, one holding a few bottles of wine and another a heap of apples. Several of the revelers have dropped their cloaks or jackets to bask in the fire’s heat.
I have no sense of where the materials my men arranged to have stashed for me ended up relative to our unexpected diversion in route, but I think I have everything I need with me as it is. Should I ask Kosmel to guide my magic now or let the scourge sorcerers get even more caught up in their arcane ritual?
My magic stirs in my chest, and I instinctively balk against it.
What if Kosmel doesn’t approve of the course I’ve taken? I don’t even know how much might be at stake if I give my power free rein without any divine direction at all.
In my hesitation, Torstem waves toward one of the wagons and raises his voice. “Wildings, we have a special guest with us tonight! Throughout our realm, there are those who’ve sacrificed much to support our cause and enhance the gifts we’ve been granted. Please celebrate Ginelle for all she’s given us and her deep devotion to our gods!”
A woman emerges from the wagon with a masked figure on either side of her. Or at least I assume she’s a woman from her name.
A shroud—pale gray, unlike the black ones the Order has favored before—drapes across her from head to feet. But even with that covering, having seen people like her before, I can make out the signs of a sacrificial accomplice.
No hair fills out the folds around her head, where her scalp will have been carved bald. No doubt she gave up her ears too. The fabric falls flat across her face, where she’s probably sacrificed her eyes and nose.
Her entire body looks oddly slim, because she’s had both arms carved off at the shoulders like Wendos’s accomplices in the tower. Her lurching gait suggests she gave at least part of one of her legs as well.
And who knows how much they cut out of her insides.
