Moonscatter Read Online Free Page B

could they bear to listen? And how could Floarin doamna-regent sponsor such … such … she couldn’t find the words. Grimly she watched what was happening, determined to know the worst.
    The Agli was winding up to a climax, his voice hammering at the Followers. They stared at him, eyes glazed, unfocused, faces idiot-blank, surrendering will and intellect utterly to him. “Follow the hag and you will be cast into the outer darkness, foul to foul, eaten by worms.” He flung his arms out again, black wings silhouetted against the red and gold and dancing blue of the flames. “Do you renounce the sins that taint you?”
    â€œWe do.” At first the answer was ragged, uncertain, then the Followers found their voices again. “We do renounce them.”
    â€œDo you renounce the dark hag?”
    â€œWe do.” A full-throated roar.
    â€œConfess your sins, oh sons of evil. Confess. Set your hands in the fire and confess.
    Nilis staggered to her feet and stumbled forward, arms outstretched.
    Tuli shuddered. Teras and she had laughed at the idea but the reality was not funny at all.
    Nilis stopped before the Agli, her face shining with an eagerness that Tuli found obscene. The Agli laid his hands on hers, then he stepped aside. Without hesitation she plunged her arms to the elbows into the flames. She stepped back a moment later, raised her arms high, small tongues of fire racing up them to curve into a crackling arc above her head. “Blessed Soäreh Father, I have sinned.” Her voice was triumphant, no hint of shame, a thin harsh whine that grated on Tuli’s ears.
    The two acolytes began tapping out a simple rhythm. “Fire cleanses,” the tenor sang. Again Tuli had no idea which of them spoke.
    â€œFire cleanses,” the Followers answered him.
    â€œI accuse myself, I dwell with evil.”
    â€œThe light is pure.”
    â€œPure is the light.”
    â€œI accuse Tesc and Annic Gradin.”
    â€œBlessed be the light.”
    â€œThe Light be blessed.”
    â€œThey plot against the light. They plot against our blessed patron Doamna Floarin. They plot to withhold the grain share owed to the blessed of the Light.”
    â€œThe Flame will purify.”
    â€œBe purified in the Flame.”
    â€œTesc Gradin, my father, called the Taromate of River Cym together to plot treason. All of them will hide in secret cellars a portion of the harvest from the Servants of the Light when they come to take the Doamna’s tithe.”
    Tuli bit her lower lip to keep from crying out in blind fury. She pounded her fists on her thighs and couldn’t even feel them; she wept and didn’t know she wept. She heard as from a great distance her brother’s muttered curse. When her eyes cleared, the first thing she saw was Nilis looking smug and self-righteous. To control her rage she swallowed and swallowed again. How can she do this to her own? How can she?
    â€œThe light be blessed.”
    â€œBlessed be the light.” There was a greedy pleasure in the Followers’ response, a stench of malice.
    Tuli searched the faces of some she knew, seeing in them hunger and spite, greed and hate. Chark—three healthy older brothers who stood between him and any chance at his own land, a father who despised him, a sickly stooped body; his eyes glistened with spite as he chanted. Nilis—a cursed woman, her single suitor a stuttering second son courting her only because no one else would have him and even so only lukewarm in his pursuit while her sister Sanani, two years younger, was promised already and happy in it. Kumper—only son of Digger Havin, a good old man; Tesc endured Kumper’s whines and complaints and slovenly work for his father’s sake, but two seasons ago, when he found him tormenting a macai, he threw him off the Tar, telling him not to come back ever.
    â€œThe Taromate has named Tesc Gradin spokesman. He leaves tomorrow early