Hinck considered not going. He thought about playing sick or riding alone back to Everton and begging Trevn’s forgiveness for his cowardice.
He could do none of those things, of course. His sovereign had given him an order. More than that, his friend had asked this favor. He could not let Trevn down—especially if he was about to gain insight into the mysterious Lahavôtesh and the plots against Trevn and Wilek. Rumors around Canden said that the king had arrested Wilek for treason. Hinck found this inconceivable. Perhaps he might learn something tonight that could help.
So into the dungeon he went, twisting his way through a grid of cells until he saw a masked man standing before a door at the end of the final corridor.
Oh gods, oh gods. A deep breath and he walked the final stretch on legs of pudding. He stopped just out of reach of the guard, feeling as if he had arrived for his own execution.
The man stood a head taller than Hinck. He wore a white mask shaped like a bird’s face. The breast of his black tabard was embroidered with silver spirals.
Hinck held out the runestone. The man grabbed Hinck’s arm and yanked him close.
“Why have you come here?” His voice was unmistakably familiar.
“Oli?” Hinck held up the marker again, relieved to speak with someone he knew. “They said to give this to the man at the door.”
“Leave. Quickly!” Oli hissed. “Before anyone else sees you. I cannot explain now. Just trust me.”
Oli’s words made everything worse. Hinck had to know what was beyond the door. He could not fail. “Is this about Eudora?”
Oli shook him. “Fool! This . . .” He tapped the marker. “Once you enter, they’ll own you. Forever. They’ll consume your soul, use you to hurt those you love, use you against Sâr Trevn. Once they have you . . . death is your only freedom.”
Five Woes, the man was foreboding. “What is this place? Who are they? I must know.”
Footsteps behind Hinck sent him spinning around. A second man approached, this one wearing a bronze fish mask.
“Too late,” Oli whispered, snatching the stone from Hinck’s hand.
The man stopped before them. “Is there a problem?” His voice was deep and oddly familiar, yet Hinck couldn’t place it. Curse his foggy brain!
Oli held up Hinck’s stone. “The gods have set you before us, Hinckdan Faluk.” His voice was now cold and formal. “You have been weighed and found worthy to enter the Sanctum of Mysteries. First you must take an oath. Will you answer the call with a vow of loyalty?”
Hinck spoke before he lost his nerve. “I will.”
A small sigh. “Inside the sanctum you must never use your name. Inside, our identities are hidden. You enter a Spark. Next time you are summoned, hood and mask yourself. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then enter the Sanctum of Mysteries.” Oli pushed open the door. Nothing but a dimly lit corridor lay beyond.
As Hinck hesitated on the threshold, the fish man slipped past him and entered. Hinck followed. The corridor was lit with torches, the air clouded with incense.
The fish man walked briskly, and Hinck hurried to keep up. At the end of the corridor, a stone door hung ajar. The man ducked through. Hinck glanced behind him, saw no one. Oli must still be guarding the entrance.
Hinck slipped through the open door and froze in the darkness, blinded. He waited for his eyes to focus. A pale yellow glow on the left beckoned him. He stumbled his first few steps, but once he turned a corner, a rectangle of fiery orange light straight ahead silhouetted the fish man’s figure.
Hinck walked forward, praying that the father god—Arman, if Father Tomek had been right—would protect him from whatever went on here tonight.
He reached the doorway and peeked inside, breathless. The room was the size of the great hall above. On the far end, opposite where Hinck stood, a dais stretched the width of the room. In its center, a smaller stone platform stood as high as a man’s waist, like a table.
The room was filled with black-clad, masked people—some men, some women—standing in groups, talking. Men wore black ensembles. Women, black gowns. All but Hinck wore masks. He saw every kind of mask: animals, solid colors, multiple colors, one that depicted a huge eyeball, another a yellow sun.
Hinck suddenly wished he had heeded Oli’s warning and fled. Everyone here would recognize him, yet he knew only Oli. How was that fair? How could he tell Trevn who was involved in this cult when he could not see their faces?
The smell of lavender gusted over him. “Are you coming in?” a soft voice asked.
A woman was standing behind him. A silver mask covered the top half of her face, leaving her lips and chin exposed.
“Eudora.”
“Shh! No names tonight.”
“I don’t have a mask.” A stupidly obvious statement but all Hinck could manage.
“You are being initiated. You aren’t supposed to have one.”
Initiated? “What will happen?”
Those lips twisted into a smirk. “You’ll see.” She kissed his jaw and slid past, her body tight against his in the doorway.
He followed her, not wanting to lose the one person he knew in the room. She stopped in a group of men, who greeted her, each kissing her hand.
Hinck felt exposed, standing in the center of the room, the only one without a mask. Eudora and her admirers seemed in no hurry to end their discourse, so Hinck backed into the corner opposite the dais and waited.
More people entered, all masked. The chatter grew until a gong silenced it. Hinck located the bronze disk on the back corner of the dais. A masked man gripping a mallet stood beside it.
“Hinckdan Faluk,” a man’s voice called out, “come forward.”
Five Woes. The voice had come from the other side of the crowd. Hinck couldn’t see the speaker. He swallowed his fear and entered the mob. It parted for him, dozens of masked people stepping back, staring.
Trevn owed him for this. He owed him forever.
Hinck reached the front, where a low altar ran along the floor in front of the dais. In the center a fire pit burned. A shallow, silver pan hung above the flames, suspended from an iron chain. A man in black robes stood between it and the platform. He wore a silver mask with fangs around the mouth. His eyes, looking out from two holes in the mask, were gray.
A mantic!
“I am Moon Fang, Inferno and Supreme Master of the Flames. The gods have found you worthy, Hinckdan Faluk. A hundred souls agree. You have been given the call. Do you accept it?”
The room was silent.
Hinck swallowed. “I do.”
“The Veil that hides the Sanctum of Mysteries is drawing aside. Will you enter?”
What kind of a game were these people playing? “Uh, I will?”
“Place your right hand over your heart and raise your other to the gods. Repeat after me to make your vow under the name Shadow Claw.”
A vow? He would break any vow the moment he saw Trevn. But he couldn’t very well back out now. Hinck set his hand over his heart and lifted his other. Moon Fang spoke, and Hinck repeated his words.
“I, Shadow Claw, in the presence of the gods, the shadir, the chosen demigods, and the heroic human worshipers, most solemnly pledge and swear to faithfully obey the commands of my elder Flames, to give my steadfast respect and support, and to heed all mandates, decrees, edicts, and charges set before me. I will divulge to no one the happenings beyond the Veil, upon punishment of death. This oath I seal with my blood.”
Oh gods, blood?
Moon Fang reached out, those eyes seeming to look through him. “Give me your right hand.”
Hinck held out his hand. It was shaking.
The man pulled a knife from his robes. Hinck drew back and bumped into someone.
A snicker from the crowd.
Moon Fang flipped the knife around, hilt out. “Take the sacred blade.”
It looked like a regular blade to Hinck, though as he took it in his hands, he saw that the pommel was made of bone, carved in runes—some he recognized from the stone marker.
“Add the blood of your right hand to the pan,” Moon Fang said.
They wanted a blood oath. It was no different from the Renegade Rs he and Trevn had cut into their hands years before. An oath that superseded this one.
Hinck made a careful cut across the fat edge of his hand and pinched the skin until a drop of blood fell into the pan.
It sizzled.
Trembling, Hinck returned the knife to Moon Fang, who set it on the platform behind him. “The gods accept your offering, Shadow Claw. All initiates must also undergo a physical trial in order to receive mystic wisdom. Do you accept?”
There was more? “I do,” Hinck said, and hoped he would not regret it.
“Remove your tabard and tunic and kneel at the altar.”
Hinck stared at the man, then glanced over his shoulder at the wall of masked faces, at the eyes glinting from the holes.
Should he make it out alive, he was going to kill Trevn. Cut Trevn’s hand and fry his blood. Make him strip down in front of a hundred people. He pulled off his cloak, dropped it at his feet and loosened his belt. He pulled off his tabard, his tunic, and dropped both on top of his cloak. The chillness of the dungeon kissed his skin. He dropped to his knees at the altar.
Moon Fang reached down to the coals, then came to stand before Hinck on the opposite side of the altar. Hinck’s gaze clapped onto the branding iron in the man’s hand, on the fiery orange glow of its head.
They were going to burn him? Fear pulsed through his veins. He edged back from the altar.
“Hold him,” Moon Fang said.
“No!” People lunged up from behind, grabbed his arms, pushed him down on the altar. The stone was cold against his chest and arms. He struggled against those holding him, terror making him desperate. “Stop! I changed my mind. I don’t want it.”
“You have given your pledge and will honor it,” Moon Fang said.
Fire seared the center of Hinck’s back, between his shoulder blades. He screamed, shocking himself with the volume and pitch of his voice. It sounded foreign. He hadn’t known he could make such a sound.
The hands let go, but the burning continued. Hinck sat back on his heels, trembling, and gasped in air where there wasn’t enough. His back throbbed.
“Be discreet,” Moon Fang said. “Discuss this matter with no one. Now take your place at the back of the line.”
Hands again grabbed Hinck, pulled him to his feet. Someone shoved his clothes into his shaking arms. He hugged them to his chest and wandered through the crowd to the back of the room, glad to put distance between him and the branding iron.
“White Raven. Come forward!” Moon Fang yelled.
Hinck found a place against the far wall and stood wobbling—back, throat, and heart pulsing. The crowd parted as a man wearing a white bird mask made his way forward. It was Oli.
“White Raven, you disobeyed a direct order,” Moon Fang said. “Do you deny it?”
“You will be fed tonight, but you will not be cleansed. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“Then take your place at the back of the line.”
Oli wove his way back through the crowd, heading for Hinck. He stopped before him. “You should get dressed.”
Hinck looked down at the forgotten bundle in his arms. His back ached. He imagined raw skin, cooked skin, peeling . . .
Oli grabbed his arm. “Hey.”
Hinck stared at the dark eyes looking at him from behind the mask.
“I tried to warn you,” Oli whispered. “Now snap out of it and put on your clothes.”
Oli grabbed the wad from Hinck, shook out his tunic, and dropped everything else. He held it up as a onesent might. “Arms in, let’s go.”
Hinck threaded his arms through the holes, and Oli pulled it over his head. The fabric scraped against the burn like a razor. Hinck arched his back and whimpered, trying to get it off.
Oli did not coddle him. “Now the tabard. Come on.”
Hinck gave in and allowed Oli to dress him.
“There will be a moment where you can spit it out,” Oli said, cinching Hinck’s belt around his tabard. “See how they take their portion, then circle back? You can get rid of it then.”
What was he talking about? Hinck glanced back to the dais. A line had formed before the altar. Moon Fang was feeding each person a spoonful of something.
“What’s on the spoon?” His raspy voice startled him and he cleared his throat. He needed to snap out of this daze, gather what little wits he had left, and pay attention.
“Evenroot,” Oli said. “It allows us to see the black spirits in the Veil.”
Hinck moaned. “But that’s poison.”
“Yes. We take the poison, then pray to the spirits to cure us. The prayer is an oath of allegiance. Tonight the spirits won’t accept my oath. That is my punishment.”
Hinck met the dark eyes in the bird mask. “But you’ll die!”
The bird mask shook from side to side. “Not from one spoonful. They water it down. But I will be painfully sick.”
“Then you should spit it out too,” Hinck said.
“The spirits will know. They always know.” Oli grabbed Hinck’s shoulder and squeezed, looked directly into his eyes. “But you must not swallow. Spit out the poison and ignore the spirits. The brand means nothing. As long as you don’t swallow, don’t pray to them ever, they cannot claim your soul. Don’t give them power over your soul, Hinck,” Oli whispered. “Death is better.”
Hinck shuddered.
Oli led Hinck to the line. As each person approached the front, Moon Fang whispered something, then fed them a spoonful of evenroot. When Hinck reached the front, the man said, “This is the milk of Gâzar, the King of Magic. Taste and become one of his children.”
Gâzar of the Lowerworld?
Moon Fang lifted the spoon to Hinck’s lips. Hinck opened his mouth and took it. It was sweet and gritty and icy cold and made the inside of his mouth tingle. He turned and followed the line of people toward the back of the room, holding the substance in his mouth. He tripped on his own feet, and a single drop of milky pulp slid down his throat like a shard of ice. He spit out the rest immediately, but it was too late. What had he done?
He grew frigid inside, as if ice had melted into his veins. Every nerve tingled, burned with cold. Hinck gasped, wanting the sensation to stop. Someone grabbed his shoulder.
“What did you do?” Oli. Angry.
The cold intensified. Hinck fell to his knees, shivering, gasping for breath.
A creature dressed in shadow reached out to him. Hinck stretched his arm toward it, then pulled back. No. He must not give himself to the spirit. “Go away,” he said. “I don’t want you.”
The spirit vanished in a wisp of smoke.
Hinck blinked, panted in tiny hitches of air. The room warped and twisted in bands of colored smoke. The candlelight stretched. Drums came from somewhere. People started dancing. Someone screamed. A woman lay on the stone platform on the dais, writhing, shrieking in horror. Chains held her captive. Drums beat louder. Creatures appeared from the smoky air, leathery with wrinkled skin in various colors, some with three eyes. They fell upon the woman. Her wails intensified, then quickly silenced.
People continued to dance. Some fell to the ground and thrashed about. Others got up and went on dancing. The creatures continued to reach out, and Hinck denied them each time.
In the midst of it all, Hinck saw Oli fall to the floor, screaming. He did not rise.