Chapter Text
The blood on the stone slate had not yet dried, smeared across the gouges of the letters. In the darkness it appeared completely black. Two children were still crying. The woman sitting beside them stared with an unseeing gaze into their little faces, red from crying, twisted in despair. She did not try to soothe them, nor cuddle either of the little ones. She just watched as they screamed loudly and desperately, waving their fists helplessly.
“I still don’t think it’s right.” The only person in the darkened room who spoke up was a young girl with big, bright eyes in which fear lurked.
“Right or not, the only one.” A brief movement of her hand beckoned her to a table with a bloody slate positioned in its centre. “Clean up.”
“We shouldn’t...” The whisper was lost in the cries being carried around.
A heavy gaze rested on the shaky girl.
“What would you rather defend your home with an iron sword or some rocks?”
“That should not be our choice...” The girl’s gaze fled to the crying children. The stigma of fire on her robe was still not very extensive, the stain barely reaching her shoulder from one of the long, straight sleeves of her dark robe.
Allowing her into the ceremony might have been a mistake from the very beginning, Céad Sh'agart realised. The girl did not take well either its proceedings or the moment when complete calm and consideration should have been maintained. She also spoke too much.
“And who else should make that choice?” she asked nevertheless, pointing questioningly at the crying children. “He? Or do you want to go and tell everything to him?”
The contradictory head movement was so full of terror that uplifted Sh'agart. As long as that one man was arousing so much fear in her, it was irrelevant whether she felt it towards her gods. For some people, the fear of other people was enough to do the right thing.
“So not another word. Clean up here,” she commanded, sending the girl away with a flick of her hand as she hesitated over the table. “Bring the forest water. Cold.”
None of the other women in the chamber looked past the distant girl. Only another nod from Sh'agart summoned one of the elders, whose fiery blessing covered her robes from the sleeves to the high collar and mask covering her face.
“Do you know the name of the novice?”
“I do not, banlámh.”
At least one thing, therefore, succeeded during that moonless night, after which would come a day full of glory, forever written in the history of a certain family and a certain country. A beautiful, noisy day of celebration so inspired by faith that only the minister, close to the deities only in his own eyes, separated it from one great ceremony in honour of the gods. The day was to be a day of grace for prisoners, a day of sacrifice for believers, joy for families and afflatus for poets.
For the time being, however, there was still only that night, an impenetrable night shaken by the cries of children.
“See to it that she does not say a word to anyone about what has happened here.” Sh'agart did not need to repeat or specify what she meant. She received a brief nod and the older priestess disappeared into the darkness of the chamber.
None of the others took any interest in where she had gone. Focused on their work, the women with their faces covered by red masks ignored both this and the increasingly quiet sobbing of the children, who were finally getting used to the pain.
There were still a few hours until dawn.