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down after the fighting, and were foraging. He stood gazing thoughtfully at the Great God who loomed above the village, smoke curling upward from it in the near-windless morning, as it had for weeks now. Crying, screaming, and coarse laughter sounded from the lodges, but the Great God gave no sign of hearing.
He did not doubt though. It is waiting, he thought. It is ready.
Since the moderate eruption seven years earlier, he’d been preparing. Six years ago he’d begun proselytizing and recruiting throughout the region, speaking always moderately and quietly in the villages, but playing on old fears of the mountain, and reminding the people of beliefs that were older than cristianismo, which had been forced upon the people by foreigners long ago.
When he had followers enough, they’d withdrawn, forming a village of their own, their numbers increasing gradually with new recruits. There they’d prepared for three years. Then, a month earlier, the Great God had belched, and smoke had been rising quietly from its top ever since. And one night, while praying in a mushroom trance, the master had felt the Great God’s eagerness vibrate through his bones, telling him he had seven nights to prepare.
He had made as ready as he could. He and his three sevens had sweated in their steam huts, fasting, eating only the sacred ants and certain special mushrooms, and in the spirit had communed with the Great God. Then, with the others of the cult, they had smoked the holy seed heads. After which, full of the Great God’s spirit, the men had danced while their women chanted the special prayer-song.
The attack had gone almost perfectly. Clearly the Great God had heard and watched, had found their actions good.
The cult master began to move again. After scanning the plaza, he drove a stake near its center, tied a long cord to it, and paced a semicircle at the cord’s end, jab-
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bing the ground at every fifth stride with his steel-headed spear. Some of his men—those who were being punished for some misdemeanor—had been standing unhappily, waiting for orders. They sprang into action now. Some began to dig holes where he’d marked. Poles were set, and the ground tamped firm around them, then firewood and broken furniture were dumped near each. A table of heavy split planks, planed and smoothed and stained nearly black, was lugged from the small adobe church by eight sweating men and set down in the middle of the semicircle of posts, at the place he’d staked. Then, when the master had assured its proper orientation to the Great God, they evened the ground till the table stood level and steady.
It all took somewhat less than an hour. By that time the crying and screaming had long stopped; the only villagers left alive were those sequestered in a hut. These were herded out, nine girls and three older men, all naked except for their crucifixes. The men had been beaten and castrated. Eight of the girls and the three men were tied to stakes. The eight were not molested sexually; they were the bridesmaids. One of the older men, el sacerdote, was invited to renounce el cristo, and when he refused, the master cut his belly open so that his guts spilled to the ground. He screamed, then prayed so loudly to his Lord, the cult master feared it would anger the Great God, and had his mouth tied shut. By the time it was done, his state of shock was so profound, he was beyond speech anyway. Wood was piled around them all on their stakes. Next all of the cultists filled their pipes with sacred seed heads, lit them, and smoked. When they were high, they lit the fires.
Amidst the screaming, the ninth girl swooned and was carried to the table. There, with a single smooth stroke, the cult master cut her throat with a razor-sharp knife of obsidian.
The ground shook, jumped, set the branches bobbing on the trees. A sound greater than thunder stunned
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the cultists, drove them to their knees. Their master looked upward at the Great God and saw a turbidity flow, a dense, furnace-hot cloud of incandescent ash and fumes rolling down the mountain toward them with astounding speed. He cried out, partly in exultation, partly in terror . . .