FIFTEEN

The service passed with liquid ease.

Standing in the shadowed balcony that overlooked the parishioners, Buyard Cholik watched as the crowd fidgeted and waited through the singing and the addresses of the young priests speaking of Dien-Ap-Sten's desires for each and every man, woman, and child in the world of men to rise and succeed to their just rewards. The young priests stood on the small stage below Cholik's balcony. Mostly, though, the young priests' messages intoned the virtues of serving the Prophet of the Light and sharing profits with the church so that more good work could be done.

But they were all truly waiting on the Call to the Way of Dreams.

After the last of the priests finished his message and the final songs were sung, songs that Kabraxis had written himself, which echoed of drumbeats like a hammering heart and melodic pipes that sounded like blood rushing through a man's ears, a dozen acolytes stepped up from the pit in front of the small stage with lighted torches in their hands.

The drums hammered, creating an eerie crescendo that resounded among the rafters of the high-vaulted ceiling. Cymbals crashed as the pipes played.

Frenzy built within the crowd. There still, Cholik saw, were not enough seats in the church. They'd just opened the upper floor of the church three weeks ago, and the membership had more than filled the cathedral again. Many of the worshippers were from other cities up anddown the coastline, and a number of them were from Westmarch. They made pilgrimages from the other cities by hired caravan or by paying ship's passage.

Some ships' captains and caravan masters made small fortunes out of operating twice-weekly round-trips to Bramwell. Many people were willing to pay passage for the chance to walk the Way of Dreams, for health reasons or in hopes of gaining their heart's desire.

Once Cholik had discovered the startup of the lucrative business, he'd sent word to the captains and caravan masters that they would be expected to bring offerings in the way of building materials for the church with each trip. Only two ships had gone down and one caravan was destroyed by a horde of skeletons and zombies before the tribute asked of them started getting delivered on a regular basis. More caravans were starting up from Lut Gholein and other countries to the east.

The crowd shouted, "Way of Dreams! Way of Dreams!" Their manner would not have been permitted in the Zakarum Church, and they bordered on the fringe of becoming an unruly crowd.

Guards Cholik had chosen from the warriors who believed in Dien-Ap-Sten lined the cathedral walls and stood in small raised towers in the midst of the congregation. For the most part, the guards carried cudgels that bore the elliptical rings that were Kabraxis's sign cleverly worked into the wire-bound hilt. Other guards carried crossbows that had been magically enchanted by mystic gems. The guards dressed in black chainmail with stylized silver icons of the elliptical rings on their chests. All of them were hard men, warriors who had ventured down the Black Road, as the Way of Dreams was called by initiates, and had been imbued with greater strength and speed than normal men.

The dozen acolytes touched their torches to different spots on the wall that held the stage and Cholik's balcony. Cholik watched as the flames leapt up the whale-oil-fed channels and came straight up to him.

The flames, aided by a ward that was laid upon the wall, raced around Cholik and lifted the balcony and the design from the wall, exposing the flaming face of the cowled snake that had been designed by black stones intermixed with white. The flames danced along the black stones and lit in the pits of the snake's eyes.

The audience quieted waiting expectantly to see what would occur. But Cholik sensed the violence in the room that was on the cusp of breaking out. The guards moved at their posts, reminding everyone they were there.

"I am Master Sayes," Cholik said into the sudden silence that filled the cathedral. "I am the Wayfinder, designated so by the hand of Dien-Ap-Sten, Prophet of the Light."

Polite applause followed Cholik's words as it was supposed to, but the expectant air never left the room. Believers though they were, the people waited like jackals at a feast, knowing that as soon as the larger predators left the area, they would have what was left.

Cholik scattered powder around him that ignited in great gouts of green, red, violet, and blue flames that stopped short of the closest parishioners. The scents of honeysuckle, cinnamon, and lavender filled the cathedral. He spoke, unleashing the spell that held the gateway to the wall.

In response to the spell, the flaming cowled snake's head lunged from the wall, hanging out over the crowd and opening its mouth. Cholik rode the balcony that stood out over the snake's eyes. The snake's mouth was the entrance to the Black Road, leading to the gateway where a black marble trail wound over and under and through itself, winding around to bring the traveler back to the snake's mouth bearing the gifts Kabraxis had seen fit to bestow.

"May the Way of Dreams take you where you want to go," Cholik said.

"May the Way of Dreams take you where you want to go," the audience roared back.

Beneath the hood of his robe, Cholik smiled. It felt so right to be in charge of all this, to be so powerful. "Now," he said, knowing they hung on his every word, "who among you is worthy?"

It was a challenge, and Cholik knew it, reveled in the knowledge.

The group went wild, screaming and yelling, announcing their needs and wants and desires. The crowd became a living, feral thing, on the brink of lashing out at itself. People had died within the church, victims of their friends and neighbors and strangers over the past year, and the limestone floor had drunk down their blood, putting down crystal roots into the ground beneath that Kabraxis had one day shown Cholik. The roots looked like cones of weeping blood rubies, never quite solid and seeming to ooze into the earth more with every drop that was received.

Undulating, taking Cholik with it, the fiery snake head reached out over the crowd, over the first tier of people, then over the second. People held their ill and diseased children above them, calling out to Dien-Ap-Sten to bless them with a cure. The wealthier people among the audience hired tall warriors to hold them on their shoulders, putting them that much closer to the entrance to the Black Road.

The snake's tongue flicked out, a black ribbon of translucent obsidian that was as fluid as water, and the choice was made.

Cholik gazed at the child who had been held up by his father, seeing that it wasn't one child but two somehow grown together. The children possessed only two arms and two legs attached to two heads and a body and a half. They looked no more than three years of age.

"An abomination," a man in the audience cried out.

"It should never have been allowed to live," another man said.

"Demon born," still another said.

The dozen acolytes with the torches raced forward, aided by the guards till they reached the chosen one.

There has to be some mistake, Cholik thought as he stared at the afflicted children knitted together of their own flesh and bone. He couldn't help feeling that Kabraxis had betrayed him, though he could think of no reason the demon would do that.

Children so severely deformed usually died during childbirth, as did the women who bore them. Their fathers put the children who didn't die to death, or it was done by the priests. Cholik had executed such children himself, then buried them in consecrated earth in the Zakarum Church. Other deformed children's bodies were sold to mages, sages, and black marketers who trafficked in demonic goods.