Marool ignored the tabs that would have led to one of the more healthful, “normal” deities. Instead, she knelt at the directory and began to turn its pages, leaf by leaf. The Hags left her there. At noon, she went away, returning some time later to continue her perusal. When it grew too dark to see in the Temple, she left it, only to return on the following morning, and thus two days passed. Late afternoon on the second day, she left the lectern and went to kneel before the center image.
D’Jevier, who had become interested in this process, was watching from the back of the Temple. She saw the hollow robe waver, as though something inside it moved. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them it was to see a fiery presence peering out of the hood, not at her, but at the kneeling girl, and a fiery hand held out, as though in welcome. She closed her eyes again, disbelieving, and when she opened them for a second time, she saw Marool rising from before the empty effigy. Though D’Jevier told herself she had imagined it, for a moment she was sure she saw that the carved marble around the opening of the hood had been blackened by fire.
As Marool passed her, going up the aisle, D’Jevier kept her eyes slightly averted, though not so far averted that she did not see the terrible and triumphant smile which lent a horrid allure to the girl’s features.
“A smile,” she said to her sister Onsofruct, “such as a demon in hell might wear. The smile of a fiend.”
“What Hagion did she pray to?”
D’Jevier shook her head. “I didn’t look.”
“Is the book still open?”
“I think so.”
They went to look. The name at the top of the page was not familiar to them: Morrigan. They read what was written below and turned toward one another with horrified expressions.
“Oh, by all the Hagions of life,” whispered Onsofruct. “Why would a child of that age choose to worship the patroness of sexual torture and death? Which image?”
D’Jevier indicated the center one, noticing there was, in fact, no blackening around the hood. “The strong one,” she said. “The being in its greatest physical strength.”
They closed the book. D’Jevier thought of cutting out the page. She could not, of course. Everything she had learned as a Hag instructed her that dark pages of death and destruction were part of the book, along with bright pages of pleasure and health. Still, she resolved to take the earliest opportunity to speak to Stella Rikajor g’Mantelby about her daughter.
Any speaking would have come too late, for Marool had left the Temple with Morrigan’s name dissolving on her tongue like a poisonous candy, sweetly fatal, and she did not return home. Instead, she stalked down the stony stairs to the walkway beside the Giles and along it until she encountered a small group of those supernumes, losers and layabouts who lived beneath the bridges and viaducts of Sendoph and called themselves, unimaginatively enough, the Wasters. Though she had not met them before, she went to them unerringly and did not return to her parents again.
Among the Wasters, she continued to call herself Rooly, avoiding any use at all of the Mantelby name. Having access to money was not a good idea in this company. Those with money were victims. If she was known to come from a wealthy family, she could neither exist in happy association with her fellow predators nor take part in their forays, and Marool intended to be one of them in all respects.
She obtained a black knit garment that started above the breasts and ended above the knees and over this a collection of veils, cloths, drapes, or skins brought together more for their appearance of defiant dilapidation than for any purpose of warmth or protection. She poked bones through her ears and painted her face and body in ugly colors. Everyone around her wore similar garments, poked various things through their ears or other parts, and painted themselves, for this was their fashion, their statement, their comment upon society.
The Wasters weren’t numerous, a few score at most. They found shelter where they might, under bridges, or in culverts, or in abandoned barns or falling-down warehouses or anywhere else that offered modest cover from the rain, which was frequent, and the snow, which was not. They sometimes stole their food, sometimes extorted it from passers-by, sometimes traded for it the items they had looted. A few of them wore their hair twisted on top of their heads, the knot hidden inside the dried skull of a carrion bird and fastened there with thigh bones thrust through the eye holes to signify they would kill for what they wanted, and Marool soon and zealously joined this subgroup for, perhaps coincidentally, the carrion bird was the symbol of Morrigan.