“Little chance of that,” he murmured, looking around himself.
“But Behemoth might let us go,” I offered, more loudly than I intended. “We could pray to it … ”
I had not seen Mitigan edge up behind us. I didn’t know he was there until I heard his howl of rage:
“Make prayer to an animal?”
“Mitigan.” I faltered, stepping back, away from him. “I meant it only as a suggestion. Perhaps if we offered … repentance, self-sacrifice … ”
It was the wrong thing to say. Perhaps anything would have been the wrong thing to say. He had been teetering on the edge of rage and frustration for too long.
“You think it would accept a sacrifice?” he bellowed, grabbing me by the arm, lifting me with one mighty hand, and flinging me across his shoulder. “Well then, let us make sacrifice!”
It happened so quickly that we were halfway up the slope toward the scraggy ridge before I could catch my breath and cry out. Any sound I made was drowned by his fury.
“We will build us an altar! We will make blood sacrifice!”
All the breath was driven from my lungs when he dropped me at the crest of the ridge. He took a thong from his belt and lashed my feet and hands together with one quick motion while I gasped and struggled. Dimly I saw him heaving great slabs of stone, stones too heavy to lift, stones no man could have lifted.
I rolled my head to one side. The others were halfway up the hill. Leelson. Lutha. Above me Mitigan held a huge boulder aloft.
“Want to join her, Famber? Come closer and you will!”
“Mitigan!” cried Leelson. “This isn’t the way—”
“I’ve had enough of this heresy, these devil beasts,” Mitigan howled, casting a manic glance in my direction. “Enough!”
He backed toward me, holding the great stone aloft with one hand while he fumbled for a weapon with the other. Something to kill me with, kill them with. Almost he could have killed them with his eyes, so berserk he was.
“Why me?” I gasped. “Why sacrifice me, Asenagi?”
“Why not you?” He dropped the stone and jabbed a contemptuous thumb toward Lutha. “She belongs to Leelson Famber. And the other one is of some use. But you are no use and you belong to no one but your devil god, so let it have you!”
“I didn’t create it!” I cried. “I only saw it, listened to it. I only sensed what was really there, Mitigan. As you did—”
“Lies,” he cried, heaving a huge slab of stone into place upon his pile, now waist-high. He tossed me onto the stone like wood onto a fire, effortlessly. My head hit, and I felt myself go limp, dazed. I couldn’t struggle, though I could feel him lashing me to the slab. “The Gracious One warns us against your kind! Animal-lovers! Devils! Mistresses of lies!”
He licked at the spittle that ran down his chin. Past him I could see Snark on her belly, worming her way up the slope, and behind her, Lutha struggling with Leelson, trying to get free from him. It was all happening too quickly and too slowly, both at once. There was time to be terrified, not time enough to do anything. I prayed, begging Weaving Woman to let my pattern end cleanly, swiftly, without pain. Surely there had been enough pain!
“Not nearly enough,” Mitigan jeered, and I knew I had spoken aloud. Now his hand was aloft, already reddened by sunset, glittering with the blade it held. That was for me.
Far off, as though in another world, I heard Lutha and Snark shouting, not pleading. There was a strangeness in their voices, something inappropriate. I had time to think that. Why did they sound that way? I squeezed my eyes shut, clenched my teeth tight, waiting for the knife to come …
It didn’t come. Instead Mitigan bellowed, harshly, horrified.
I opened my eyes against a dazzle of light. Mitigan stood with his back to me, his head thrown back. Beyond him was Behemoth, up from the sea, serpent-necked, dragon-jawed, caldron-eyed.
“No,” it said in a voice of wind.